ASTON MANOR (54), a suburb of Birmingham.

ASTOR, JOHN JACOB, a millionaire, son of a German peasant, who made a fortune of four millions in America by trading in furs (1763-1848).  His son doubled his fortune; known as the “landlord of New York” (1792-1875).

ASTOR, WILLIAM WALDORF, son of the preceding, devoted to politics; came to London, 1891; became proprietor of the Pall Mall Gazette and Budget in 1893; b. 1848.

ASTO`RIA, in Oregon, a fur-trading station, with numerous salmon-tinning establishments.

ASTRAE`A, the daughter of Zeus and Themis, the goddess of justice; dwelt among men during the Golden Age, but left the earth on its decline, and her sister Pudicitia along with her, the withdrawal explained to mean the vanishing of the ideal from the life of man on the earth; now placed among the stars under the name of Virgo.

ASTRAEA REDUX, the name given to an era which piques itself on the return of the reign of justice to the earth.

AS`TRAKHAN (43), a Russian trading town on the Volga, 40 m. from its mouth in the Caspian Sea, of which it is the chief port.

ASTRAL BODY, an ethereal body believed by the theosophists to invest the animal, to correspond to it, and to be capable of BILOCATION (q. v.)

ASTRAL SPIRITS, spirits believed to animate or to people the heavenly bodies, to whom worship was paid, and to hover unembodied through space exercising demonic influence on embodied spirits.

ASTROLOGY, a science founded on a presumed connection between the heavenly bodies and human destiny as more or less affected by them, a science at one time believed in by men of such intelligence as Tacitus and Kepler, and few great families at one time but had an astrologer attached to them to read the horoscope of any new member of the house.

ASTRUC, JEAN, a French physician and professor of medicine in Paris, now noted as having discovered that the book of Genesis consists of Elohistic and Jehovistic portions, and who by this discovery founded the modern school called of the Higher Criticism (1681-1766).

ASTU`RIAS (579), an ancient province in the N. of Spain, gives title to the heir to the crown, rich in minerals, and with good fisheries; now named Oviedo, from the principal town.

ASTY`AGES, last king of the Medes; dethroned by Cyrus, 549 B.C.

ASTY`ANAX, the son of Hector and Andromache; was cast down by the Greeks from the ramparts after the fall of Troy, lest he should live and restore the city.

ASUN`CION, or ASSUMPTION (18), the capital of Paraguay, on the left bank of the Paraguay, so called from having been founded by the Spaniards on the Feast of the Assumption in 1535.

ASURAS, THE, in the Hindu mythology the demons of the darkness of night, in overcoming whom the gods asserted their sovereignty in the universe.

ASYMPTOTE, a line always approaching some curve but never meeting it.