AMERICA, SPANISH, the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, till lately belonging to Spain, though the designation is often applied to all the countries in N. America where Spanish is the spoken language.

AMERICAN FABIUS, George Washington.

AMERICAN INDIANS, a race with a red or copper-coloured skin, coarse black straight hair, high cheek-bones, black deep-set eyes, and tall erect figure, limited to America, and seems for most part fast dying out; to be found still as far south as Patagonia, the Patagonians being of the race.

AMERI`GO-VESPUC`CI, a Florentine navigator, who, under the auspices first of Spain, and afterwards of Portugal, four times visited the New World, just discovered by Columbus, which the first cartographers called America, after his name; these visits were made between 1499 and 1505, while Columbus’s discovery, as is known, was in 1492 (1451-1512).

AMES, JOSEPH, historian of early British typography, in a work which must have involved him in much labour (1689-1759).

AMHA`RA, the central and largest division of Abyssinia.

AMHERST, LORD, a British officer who distinguished himself both on the Continent and America, and particularly along with General Wolfe in securing for England the superiority in Canada (1717-1797).

AMICE, a flowing cloak formerly worn by pilgrims, also a strip of linen cloth worn over the shoulder of a priest when officiating at mass.

AM`IEL, a professor of aesthetics, and afterwards of ethics at Geneva, who is known to the outside world solely by the publication of selections from his Journal in 1882-84, which teems with suggestive thoughts bearing on the great vital issues of the day, and which has been translated into English by Mrs. Humphrey Ward.

AMIENS` (88), the old capital of Picardy, on the Somme, with a cathedral begun in 1220, described as the “Parthenon of Gothic architecture,” and by Ruskin as “Gothic, clear of Roman tradition and of Arabian taint, Gothic pure, authoritative, unsurpassable, and unaccusable”; possesses other buildings of interest; was the birthplace of Peter the Hermit, and is celebrated for a treaty of peace between France and England concluded in 1802.

AMIRAN`TES, a group of small coral islands NE. of Madagascar, belonging to Britain; are wooded, are 11 in number, and only a few feet above the sea-level.

AMMANA`TI, BARTOLOMEO, a Florentine architect and sculptor of note, was an admirer of Michael Angelo, and executed several works in Rome, Venice, and Padua (1511-1592).

AMMIA`NUS MARCELLI`NUS, a Greek who served as a soldier in the Roman army, and wrote a history of the Roman Empire, specially valuable as a record of contemporary events; d. 390.

AMMIRATO, an Italian historian, author of a history of Florence (1531-1601).

AM`MON, an Egyptian deity, represented with the head of a ram, who had a temple at Thebes and in the Lybian Desert; was much resorted to as an oracle of fate; identified in Greece with Zeus, and in Rome with Jupiter.