Au´dit, an examination into accounts or dealings with money or property, along with vouchers or other documents connected therewith, especially by proper officers, or persons appointed for the purpose. Also the occasion of receiving the rents from the tenants on an estate.
Au´ditor, a person appointed to examine accounts, public or private, to see whether they
are correct and in accordance with vouchers. In Britain the public accounts are audited by the Exchequer and Audit Department, Somerset House, at the head of it being a comptroller and auditor-general, and an assistant-comptroller and auditor, with a large staff of clerks. In Scotland there is an auditor attached to the Court of Session appointed to tax costs in litigation.
Auditory Nerves. See Ear.
Audley, a town (urban district) of England, in Staffordshire, to the north-west of the district of The Potteries, with coal and iron mines. Pop. (1921), 14,751.
Audran (ō-drän), Gerard, a celebrated French engraver, born 1640; studied at Rome; was appointed engraver to Louis XIV; died at Paris 1703. He engraved Le Brun's Battles of Alexander, two of Raphael's cartoons, Poussin's Coriolanus, &c., and takes a first place among historical engravers. Other members of the family were successful in the same profession: Benoît, 1661-1721; Claude père, 1592-1677; Claude fils, 1640-84; Germain, 1631-1710; Jean, 1667-1756.
Au´dubon, John James, an American naturalist of French extraction, born near New Orleans in 1775, was educated in France, and studied painting under David. In 1798 he settled in Pennsylvania, but having a great love for ornithology he set out in 1810 with his wife and child, descended the Ohio, and for many years roamed the forests in every direction, drawing the birds which he shot. In 1826 he came to England, exhibited his drawings in Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh, and finally published them in an unrivalled work of double-folio size, with 435 coloured plates of birds the size of life (The Birds of America, 4 vols., 1827-39), with an accompanying text (Ornithological Biography, 5 vols., 8vo, partly written by Professor Macgillivray). On his final return to America he laboured with Dr. Bachman on a finely-illustrated work entitled The Quadrupeds of America (1843-50, 3 vols.). He died at New York in 1851.
Auerbach, a manufacturing town of Germany, in Saxony. Pop. 2200.
Auerbach (ou'ėr-bäh), Berthold, a distinguished German author of Jewish extraction, born 1812, died 1882. He abandoned the study of Jewish theology in favour of philosophy, publishing in 1836 his Judaism and Modern Literature, and a translation of the works of Spinoza with critical biography (5 vols., 1841). His later works were tales or novels, and his Village Tales of the Black Forest (Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten), as well as others of his writings, have been translated into several languages. Other works: Barfüssele, Joseph im Schnee, Edelweiss, Auf der Höhe, Das Landhaus am Rhein, Waldfried, Brigitta.
Auerstädt (ou'ėr-stet), battle at, 14th Oct., 1806. See Jena.