Atavism
in biology, the tendency to reproduce the ancestral type in animals or plants which have become considerably modified by breeding or cultivation; the reversion of a descendant to some peculiarity of a more or less remote ancestor.
ATBARA (at-bar'a), the most northerly tributary of the Nile. It rises in the Abyssinian highlands, receives several large tributaries, and enters the Nile about 18° N.
ATCHAFALAYA (ach-a - fal - a'a), ("Lost Water"), a river of the United States, an outlet of the Red river, which strikes off before the junction of that river with the Mississippi, flows southward, and enters the Gulf of Mexico by Atchafalaya Bay. Its length is 250 miles.
ATCHEEN (also ACHEEN or ATCHIN; called by the Dutch ATJEH), until 1873 22-Vol. I-Cyc ATCHISON an independent state in the N. W. part of Sumatra, now a province of the Dutch Indies, with an area of 20,471 square miles; pop. about 800,000. The surface is divided into an eastern and a western half by the mountain chain which traverses the whole island, and which rises in Abong-Abong to 11,000 feet.
The flora and fauna agree with those of Sumatra; pepper and areca nuts are produced in Atcheen. The natives employ themselves in agriculture, cattle rearing, trade, fisheries, weaving cloth, and working in gold, silver, and iron. In appearance, dress, character, and manthe inhabitants of Sumatra. Of darker ners they are distinct from the rest of color and lower stature than the latter, they are also more active and industrious, good seamen and soldiers; but they are treacherous, revengeful, bloodthirsty, immoral and inordinately addicted to opium. The capital of the government is Kota Radja or Atcheen, in the northwestern extremity, situated on a stream navigable by boats. It contains a Dutch garrison of several thousand men.
During the earlier half of the 17th century Atcheen was a powerful sultanate, with supremacy over several islands and a part of the Malay Peninsula. Its power gradually declined; but an attempt was made by the treaty between the English and the Dutch, in 1824, to reserve its independence. The inevitable war, however, broke out in 1873, and ended as inevitably, though not without a desperate resistance, in the conquest and annexation of the sultanate.