AFGHAN`ISTAN` (5,000), a country in the centre of Asia, between India on the east and Persia on the west, its length about 600 m. and its breadth about 500 m., a plateau of immense mountain masses, and high, almost inaccessible, valleys, occupying 278,000 sq. m., with extremes of climate, and a mixed turbulent population, majority Afghans.  The country, though long a bone of contention between England and Russia, is now wholly under the sphere of British influence.

AF`GHANS, THE, a fine and noble but hot-tempered race of the Mohammedan faith inhabiting Afghanistan.  The Afghans proper are called PATHANS in India, and call themselves Beni Israel (sons of Israel), tracing their descent from King Saul.

AFRA`NIUS, a Latin comic poet who flourished 100 B.C.; also a Roman Consul who played a prominent part in the rivalry between Caesar and Pompey, 60 B.C.

AFRICA, one of the five great divisions of the globe, three times larger than Europe, seven-tenths of it within the torrid zone, and containing over 200,000,000 inhabitants of more or less dark-skinned races.  It was long a terra incognita, but it is now being explored in all directions, and attempts are everywhere made to bring it within the circuit of civilisation.  It is being parcelled out by European nations, chiefly Britain, France, and Germany, and with more zeal and appliance of resource by Britain than any other.

AFRICA`NUS, JULIUS, a Christian historian and chronologist of the 3rd century.

AFRIDIS, a treacherous tribe of eight clans, often at war with each other, in a mountainous region on the North-Western frontier of India W. of Peshawar.

AFRIKAN`DER, one born in S. Africa of European parents.

AFRIT`, a powerful evil spirit in the Mohammedan mythology.

AGA`DES, a once important depot of trade in the S. of the Sahara, much decayed.

AGAG, a king of the Amalekites, conquered by Saul, and hewn in pieces by order of Samuel.

AGAMEM`NON, a son of Atreus, king of Mycenae and general-in-chief of the Greeks in the Trojan war, represented as a man of stately presence and a proud spirit.  On the advice of the soothsayer Calchas sacrificed his daughter IPHIGENIA (q. v.) for the success of the enterprise he conducted.  He was assassinated by AEgisthus and Clytaemnestra, his wife, on his return from the war.  His fate and that of his house is the subject of AEschylus’ trilogy “Oresteia.”

AGAMOGENESIS, name given to reproduction without sex, by fission, budding, &c.

AGANIPPE, a fountain in Boeotia, near Helicon, dedicated to the Muses as a source of poetic inspiration.

AG`APE, love-feasts among the primitive Christians in commemoration of the Last Supper, and in which they gave each other the kiss of peace as token of Christian brotherhood.

AGAR-AGAR, a gum extracted from a sea-weed, used in bacteriological investigations.