The number of auctioneers’ licences issued during the year ended the 31st of March 1908 was in England 6639, in Scotland 760, and in Ireland 839. A central organization having its headquarters in London, the Auctioneers’ Institute of the United Kingdom, was founded in 1886, in order to elevate the status and further the interests of auctioneers, estate agents and valuers. It has nearly 2000 members.
(H. Ha.)
AUCUBA, the Japanese name for a small genus of the Dogwood order (Cornaceae). The familiar Japanese laurel of gardens and shrubberies is Aucuba japonica. It bears male and female flowers on distinct plants; the red berries often last till the next season’s flowers appear. There are numerous varieties in cultivation, differing in the variegation of their leaves.
AUDAEUS, or Audius, a church reformer of the 4th century, by birth a Mesopotamian. He suffered much persecution from the Syrian clergy for his fearless censure of their irregular lives, and was expelled from the church, thereupon establishing an episcopal monastic community. He was afterwards banished into Scythia, where he worked successfully among the Goths, not living to see the destruction of his labours by Athanaric. The Audaeans celebrated the feast of Easter on the same day as the Jewish Passover, and they were also charged with attributing to the Deity a human shape, an opinion which they appear to have founded on Genesis i. 26. Theodoret groundlessly accuses them of Manichean tendencies.
The main source of information is Epiphanius (Haer. 70).
AUDE, a river of south-western France, rising in the eastern Pyrenees and flowing into the Golfe du Lion. Rising in a small lake a short distance east of the Puy de Carlitte, it soon takes a northerly direction and flows for many miles through deep gorges of great beauty as far as the plain of Axat. Beyond Axat its course again lies through defiles which become less profound as the river nears Carcassonne. Below that town it receives the waters of the Fresquel and turns abruptly east. From this point to its junction with the Cesse its course is parallel with that of the Canal du Midi. The river skirts the northern spurs of the Corbières, some distance below which it is joined by the Orbieu and the Cesse. It then divides into two branches, the northernmost of which, the Aude proper, runs east and empties into the Mediterranean some 12 m. east-north-east of Narbonne, while the other branch, the Canal de la Robine, turning south, traverses that town, below which its course to the sea lies between two extensive lagoons, the Étang de Bages et de Sigean and the Étang de Gruissan. The Aude has a length of 140 m. and a basin 2061 sq. m. in extent. There is practically no traffic upon it.