APPALACHICOLA (-chi-c[=o]´la), a river of the United States, formed by the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, which unite near the northern border of Florida; length, about 100 miles; it flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and is navigable.
APPAM, the name of a British merchant ship of the Elder-Dempster line captured by the German raiding cruiser _Moewe_ (Sea-gull) on 16th Jan., 1916. A German prize crew succeeded in bringing the _Appam_ westward, and was able to pass the British cordon off Chesapeake Bay and to reach Norfolk, Virginia. The vessel was carrying, among others, an ex-governor of Sierra Leone and some military officers from the west coast of Africa, but the passengers were at once released and allowed to return to England.
APPA´RENT, among mathematicians and astronomers, applied to things as they appear to the eye, in distinction to what they really are. Thus they speak of apparent motion, magnitude, distance, height, &c. The _apparent magnitude_ of a heavenly body is the angle subtended at the spectator's eye by the diameter of that body, and this, of course, depends on the distance as well as the real magnitude of the body; _apparent motion_ is the motion a body seems to have in consequence of our own motion, as the motion of the sun from east to west, &c.
APPARI´TION, according to a belief held by some, a disembodied spirit manifesting itself to mortal sight; according to the common theory an illusion involuntarily generated, by means of which figures or forms, not present to the actual sense, are nevertheless depicted with a vividness and intensity sufficient to create a temporary belief in their reality. Such illusions are now generally held to result from an over-excited brain, a strong imagination, or some bodily malady. In perfect health the mind not only possesses a control over its powers, but the impressions of the external objects alone occupy its attention, and the play of imagination is consequently checked, except in sleep, when its operations are relatively more feeble and faint. But in an unhealthy state of the mind, when its attention is partly withdrawn from the contemplation of external objects, the impressions of its own creation, or rather reproduction, will either overpower or combine themselves with the impressions of external objects, and thus generate illusions which in the one case appear alone, while in the other they are seen projected among those external objects to which the eyeball is directed. This theory explains satisfactorily a large majority of the stories of apparitions; still there are some which it seems insufficient to account for.--See _Crystal Gazing_, _Hypnotism_, _Spiritualism_.--BIBLIOGRAPHY: F. Podmore, _Modern Spiritualism_; F. W. H. Myers, _Human Personality, and its survival of bodily Death_.