AMORPHOUS ROCKS or MINERALS, those having no regular structure, or without crystallization, even in the minutest particles.
AMORPHOZO´A, a term applied to some of the lower groups of animals, as the sponges and their allies, which have no regular symmetrical structure.
AMORTIZA´TION, in law, the alienation of real property to corporations (that is, in _mortmain_), prohibited by several English statutes.
A´MOS, one of the minor prophets; flourished under the Kings Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam II of Israel (810 to 784 B.C. by the common chronology). Though engaged in the occupations of a peasant he must have had a considerable amount of culture, and his book of prophecies has high literary merits. It contains denunciations of Israel and the surrounding nations, with promises of the Messiah.
AMOY´, an important Chinese trading port, on a small island off the south-east coast opposite Formosa; has a safe and commodious harbour, and its merchants are among the wealthiest and most enterprising in China; one of the five ports opened to foreign commerce by the treaty of Nanking in 1842. The privilege was confirmed and extended by the treaty of Tien-tsin in 1858, and the port is now open to all countries. Pop. 114,000.
AMPÈRE ([.a][n.]-p[=a]r), André-Marie, a celebrated French mathematician and philosopher, founder of the science of electro-dynamics, born at Lyons in 1775, died at Marseilles in 1836; professor of mathematical analysis at the Polytechnic School, Paris, and of physics at the College of France. What is known as _Ampère's Theory_ is that magnetism consists in the existence of electric currents circulating round the particles of magnetic bodies, being in different directions round different particles when the bodies are unmagnetized, but all in the same direction when they are magnetized.
AMPÈRE, Jean-Jacques-Joseph-Antoine, historian and professor of French literature in the College of France; the only son of André-Marie Ampère; born at Lyons 1800, died 1864; chief works: _Histoire Littéraire de la France avant le 12^{ _e_} siècle_ (1839); _Introduction à l'Histoire de la Littérature française au moyen âge_ (1841); _Littérature, Voyages et Poésies_ (1833); _La Grèce, Rome et Dante, Études Littéraires d'après Nature; l'Histoire romaine à Rome_ (4 vols. 8vo, 1856-64); _Promenades en Amérique_ (1855); _César, Scènes historiques_ (1859), full of hostile allusions to the French Empire.