Articles in This Slice

871

ECHINODERMA.1 The ἐχινόδερμα, or “urchin-skinned” animals, have long been a favourite subject of study with the collectors of sea-animals or of fossils, since the lime deposited in their skins forms hard tests or shells readily preserved in the cabinet. These were described during the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries by many eminent naturalists, such as J.T. Klein, J.H. Linck, C. Linnaeus, N.G. Leske, J.S. Miller, L. v. Buch, E. Desor and L. Agassiz; but it was the researches of Johannes Müller (1840-1850) that formed the groundwork of scientific conceptions of the group, proving it one of the great phyla of the animal kingdom. The anatomists and embryologists of the next quarter of a century confirmed rather than expanded the views of Müller. Thus, about 1875, the distinction of Echinoderms from such radiate animals as jelly-fish and corals (see Coelentera), by their possession of a body-cavity (“coelom”) distinct from the gut, was fully realized; while their severance from the worms (especially Gephyrea), with which some Echinoderrns were long confused, had been necessitated by the recognition in all of a radial symmetry, impressed on the original bilateral symmetry of the larva through the growth of a special division of the coelom, known as the “hydrocoel,” and giving rise to a set of water-bearing canals—the water-vascular or ambulacral system. There was also sufficient comprehension of the differences between the main classes of Echinoderms—the sea-urchins or Echinoidea, the starfish or Asteroidea, the brittle-stars and their allies known as Ophiuroidea, the worm-like Holothurians, the feather-stars and sea-lilies called Crinoidea, with their extinct relatives the sac-like Cystidea, the bud-formed Blastoidea, and the flattened Edrioasteroidea—while within the larger of these classes, such as Echinoidea and Crinoidea, fair working classifications had been established. But the study that should elucidate the fundamental similarities or homologies between the several classes, and should suggest the relations of the Echinoderma to other phyla, had scarcely begun. Indeed, the time was not ripe for such discussions, still less for the tracing of lines of descent and their embodiment in a genealogical classification. Since then exploring expeditions have made known a host of new genera, often exhibiting unfamiliar types of structure.

The vast mass of material made known by these and many other distinguished writers has to be included in our classification, and that classification itself must be controlled by the story it reveals. Thus it is that a change, characteristic of modern systematic zoology, is affecting the subdivisions of the classes. It is not long since the main lines of division corresponded roughly to gaps in geological history: the orders were Palaeocrinoidea and Neocrinoidea, Palechinoidea and Euechinoidea, Palaeasteroidea and Euasteroidea, and so forth. Or divisions were based upon certain modifications of structure which, as we now see, affected assemblages of diverse affinity: thus both Blastoidea and Euechinoidea were divided into Regularia and Irregularia; the Holothuroidea into Pneumophora and Apneumona; and Crinoids were discussed under the heads “stalked” and “unstalked.” The barriers between these groups may be regarded as horizontal planes cutting across the branches of the ascending tree of life at levels determined chiefly by our ignorance; as knowledge increases, and as the conception of a genealogical classification gains acceptance, they are being replaced by vertical partitions which separate branch from branch. The changes may be appreciated by comparing the systematic synopses at the end of this article with the classification adopted in 1877 in the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit. (vol. vii.), or in any zoological text-book contemporary therewith. In the present stage of our knowledge these minor divisions are the really important ones. For, whereas to one brilliant suggestion of far-reaching homology another can always be opposed, by the detailed comparison of individual growth-stages in carefully selected series of fossils, and by the minute application to these of the principle that individual history repeats race history, it actually is possible to unfold lines of descent that do not admit of doubt. The gradual linking up of these will manifest the true genealogy of each class, and reconstruct its ancestral forms by proof instead of conjecture. The problem of the interrelations of the classes will thus be reduced to its simplest terms, and even questions as to the nature of the primitive Echinoderm and its affinity to the ancestors of other phyla may become more than exercises for the ingenuity of youth. Work has been and is being done by the laborious methods here alluded to, and though the diversity of opinion as to the broader groupings of classification is still restricted only by the number of writers, we can point to an ever-increasing body of assured knowledge on which all are agreed. Unfortunately such allusion to these disconnected certainties as alone might be introduced here would be too brief for comprehension, and we are forced to select a few of the broader hypotheses for a treatment that may seem dogmatic and prejudiced.

Evolution of the Echinoderms.—It is reasonable to suppose that the Coelomata—animals in which the body-cavity is divided into a gut passing from mouth to anus and a hollow (coelom) surrounding it—were derived from the simpler Coelentera, in which the primitive body-cavity (archenteron) is not so divided, and has only one aperture serving as both mouth and anus. We may, with Sedgwick, suppose the coelom to have originated by the enlargement and separation of pouches that pressed outwards from the archenteron into the thickened body-wall (such structures as the genital pouches of some Coelentera, not yet shut off from the rest of the cavity), and they would probably have been four in number and radially disposed about the central cavity. The evolution of this cavity into a gut is foreshadowed in some Coelentera by the elliptical shape of the aperture, and by the development at its ends of a ciliated channel along which food is swept; we have only to suppose the approximation of the sides of the ellipse and their eventual fusion, to complete the transformation of the radially symmetrical Coelenterate into a bilaterally symmetrical Coelomate with mouth and anus at opposite ends of the long axis. We further suppose that of the four coelomic pouches one was in front of the mouth, one behind the anus, and one on each side. Such an animal, if it ever existed, probably lived near the surface of the sea, and even here it may have changed its medusoid mode of locomotion for one in the direction of its mouth. Thus the bilateral symmetry would have been accentuated, and the organism shaped more definitely into three segments, namely (1) a preoral segment or lobe, containing the anterior coelomic cavity; (2) a middle segment, containing the gut, and the two middle coelomic cavities; (3) a posterior segment, containing the posterior coelomic cavity, which, however, owing to the backward prolongation of the anus, became divided into two—a right and left posterior coelom. Each of these cavities presumably excreted waste products to the exterior by a pore. There was probably a nervous area, with a tuft of cilia, at the anterior end; while, at all events in forms that remained pelagic, the ciliated nervous tracts of the rest of the body may be supposed to have become arranged in bands around the body-segments. Such a form as this is roughly represented to-day by the Actinotrocha larva of Phoronis, the importance of which has been brought out by Masterman. But only slight modifications are required to produce the Tornaria larva of the Enteropneusta and other larvae, including the special type that is inferred from the Dipleurula larval stages of recent forms to have characterized the ancestor of the Echinoderms. We cannot enter here into all the details of comparison between these larval forms; amid much that is hypothetical a few homologies are widely accepted, and the preceding account will show the kind of relation that the Echinoderms bear to other animals, including what are now usually regarded as the ancestors of the Chordata (to which back-boned animals belong), as well as the nature of the evidence that their study has been, or may be, made to yield. How the hypothetical Dipleurula became an Echinoderm, and how the primitive Echinoderms diverged in structure so as to form the various classes, are questions to which an answer is attempted in the following paragraphs:—

Analysis of Echinoderm Characters.—Regarding the Echinoderms as a whole in the light of the foregoing account, we may give the following analytic summary of the characters that distinguish them from other coelomate animals:—

ECHINUS (Gr. for “hedge-hog” or “sea-urchin”), in architecture, the convex moulding which supports the abacus of the Doric column. The term is sometimes given to the ovolo of the Ionic capital, especially when curved with the egg-and-tongue enrichment. The origin of this use of the word in architecture, which comes down from ancient times, is uncertain.

ECHIUROIDEA (Gr. ἔχις, adder, and οὐρά, tail), the zoological name for a small group of marine animals which show in their larval life-history a certain degree of segmentation, and are therefore grouped by some authorities as Annelids. Formerly, together with the Sipunculoidea and Priapuloidea, they made up the class Gephyrea, but on the ground that they retain in the adult a large preoral lobe (the proboscis), that they have anal vesicles, that their anus is terminal, that setae are found, and finally that they are segmented in the larval stage, they have been removed from the class, which by the proposed further separation of the Priapuloidea on account of their unique renal and reproductive organs, has practically ceased to exist.

Echiuroids are animals of moderate size, varying roughly from one to six or seven centimetres in length, exclusive of the proboscis. This organ is capable of very considerable extension, and may attain a length in Bonellia viridis of about a metre and a half (fig. 1). It is grooved ventrally and ciliated. At its attachment to the body the groove sinks into the mouth. In Bonellia the proboscis is forked at its free end, but in the other genera it is short and unforked. The body is somewhat sausage-shaped, with the anus at the posterior extremity, surrounded in Echiurus by a single or double ring of setae. The skin is usually wrinkled, and in B. viridis, Thalassema lankesteri, Th. baronii, Hamingia arctica, and in the larva of many species, is of a lively green colour. A pair of curved bristles, formed in true setal sacs as in Chaetopoda, project from the body a short distance behind the mouth, and are moved by special muscles; they are of use in helping the animal to move slowly about, and they take a large share in the burrowing movements (C.B. Wilson, Biol. Bull., 1900), for some species tunnel in the mud and sand and form more or less permanent burrows, the walls of which are strengthened by mucus secreted from the skin. The openings of the burrows become silted up, leaving, however, a small aperture through which the proboscis is extruded. This organ carefully searches the neighbourhood for particles of food. When these are found the grooved proboscis folds its walls inwards, and the cilia pass the particles down the tube thus formed to the mouth. Echiuroids also move by extending the proboscis, which takes hold of some fixed object, and, then contracting, draws the body forwards. Recently it has been shown that Echiurus swims freely at night-time, using for locomotion both the proboscis and the contraction of the muscles of its body-wall. The motion is described as “gyratory,” and the anterior end is always carried foremost. Those species which do not burrow usually conceal themselves in crevices of the rocks or under stones, or at times in empty Mollusc or Echinid shells. They are occasionally used by fishermen for bait.

Classification and Distribution.—The Echiuroidea consists of the following genera:—(1) Bonellia (Rol.), with four species, widely distributed, but inhabiting the temperate and warmer waters of each hemisphere. (2) Echiurus (Guérin-Méneville), with four species. This genus reaches from the Arctic waters of both hemispheres into the cooler temperate regions. (3) Hamingia (Kor. and Dan.), with one species, which has been taken in the Arctic Sea and the Hardanger Fjord. (4) Saccosoma (Kor. and Dan.) was described from a single specimen dredged about half-way between Iceland and Norway. (5) Thalassema (Gaertner, Lamarck), with twenty-one species. This genus is in the main a denizen of the warmer waters of the globe. Sixteen species are found only in tropical or subtropical seas, three species are Mediterranean (Mt. Stat. Neapel, 1899), whilst three species are from the eastern Atlantic, where the temperature is modified by the Gulf Stream (Shipley; see Willey’s Zoological Results, part iii. 1899; Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1898, 1899; and Cambridge Natural History, ii.). The following are found in the British area:—E. pallasii (Guérin-Méneville), Th. neptuni (Gaertner), and Th. lankesteri (Herdman, Q.J.M.S., 1898).

Affinities.—The occurrence of trochosphere larva and the temporary segmentation of the body have led to the belief that the Echiuroids are more nearly allied to the Annelids than to any other phylum. This view is strengthened by certain anatomical and histological resemblances to the genus Sternaspis, which in one species, S. spinosa, is said to carry a bifid proboscis resembling that of the Echiuroids.

ECHMIADZIN, or Itsmiadsin, a monastery of Russian Transcaucasia, in the government of Erivan, the seat of the Catholicus or primate of the Armenian church. It is situated close to the village of Vagarshapat, in the plain of the Aras, 2840 ft. above the sea, 12 m. W. of Erivan and 40 N. of Mount Ararat. The monastery comprises a pretty extensive complex of buildings, and is surrounded by brick walls 30 ft. high, which with their loopholes and towers present the appearance of a fortress. Its architectural character has been considerably impaired by additions and alterations in modern Russian style. On the western side of the quadrangle is the residence of the primate, on the south the refectory (1730-1735), on the east the lodgings for the monks, and on the north the cells. The cathedral is a small but fine cruciform building with a Byzantine cupola at the intersection. Its foundation is ascribed to St Gregory the Illuminator in 302. Of special interest is the porch, built of red porphyry, and profusely adorned with sculptured designs somewhat of a Gothic character. The interior is decorated with Persian frescoes of flowers, birds and scroll-work. It is here that the Catholicus confers episcopal consecration by the sacred hand (relic) of St Gregory; and here every seven years he prepares with great solemnity the holy oil which is to be used throughout the churches of the Armenian communion. Outside of the main entrance are the alabaster tombs of the primates Alexander I. (1714), Alexander II. (1755), Daniel (1806) and Narses (1857), and a white marble monument, erected by the English East India Company to mark the resting-place of Sir John Macdonald Kinneir, who died at Tabriz in 1830, while on an embassy to the Persian court. The library of the monastery is a rich storehouse of Armenian literature (see Brosset’s Catalogue de la bibliothèque d’Etchmiadzin, St Petersburg, 1840). Among the more remarkable manuscripts are a copy of the gospels dating from the 10th or 11th century, and three bibles of the 13th century. A type-foundry, a printing-press and a bookbinding establishment are maintained by the monks who supply religious and educational works for their co-religionists.

To the east of the monastery is a modern college and seminary. Half a mile to the east stand the churches of St Ripsime and St Gaiana, two of the early martyrs of Armenian Christianity; the latter is the burial-place of those primates who are not 884 deemed worthy of interment beside the cathedral. From a distance the three churches form a fairly striking group, and accordingly the Turkish name for Echmiadzin is Uch-Kilissi, or the Three Churches. The town of Vagarshapat dates from the 6th century B.C.; it takes its name from King Vagarsh (Vologaeses), who in the 2nd century A.D. chose it as his residence and surrounded it with walls. Here the apostle of Armenia, St Gregory the Illuminator, erected a church in 309 and with it the primacy was associated. In 344 Vagarshapat ceased to be the Armenian capital, and in the 5th century the patriarchal seat was removed to Dvin, and then to Ani. The monastery was founded by Narses II., who ruled 524-533; and a restoration was effected in 618. The present name of the monastery was adopted instead of Vagarshapat in the 10th century. At length in 1441 the primate George brought back the see to the original site.

ECHO (Gr. ἠχώ), in Greek mythology, one of the Oreades or mountain nymphs, the personification of the acoustical phenomenon known by this name. She was beloved by Pan, but rejected his advances. Thereupon the angry god drove the shepherds of the district mad; they tore Echo in pieces, and scattered her limbs broadcast, which still retained the gift of song (Longus iii. 23). According to Ovid (Metam. iii. 356-401), Echo by her incessant talking having prevented Juno from surprising Jupiter with the Nymphs, Juno changed her into an “echo”—a being who could not speak till she was spoken to, and then could only repeat the last words of the speaker. While in this condition she fell in love with Narcissus, and in grief at her unrequited affection wasted away until nothing remained but her voice and bones, which were changed into rocks. The legends of Echo are of late, probably Alexandrian, origin, and she is first personified in Euripides.

In acoustics an “echo” is a return of sound from a reflecting surface (see Sound: Reflection).

ECHTERNACH, a town in the grand duchy of Luxemburg, on the Sûre, close to the Prussian frontier. Pop. (1905) 3484. It is the oldest town in Luxemburg, and was the centre from which the English Saint Willibrord converted the people to Christianity in the 7th century. There are the Benedictine abbey, the hospital almshouse, which is said to be the oldest hospital in Europe except the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, and the church of St Peter and St Paul. The Benedictine abbey has been greatly shorn of its original dimensions, but the basilica remains a fair monument of Romano-Gothic art. The church of St Peter and St Paul stands on an isolated mound, and for the ascent sixty steps have been built in the side, and these are well worn by the tread of numerous pilgrims who come in each succeeding year. The interior of the church is curious more than imposing, and is specially noteworthy only for its gloom. Under the altar, and below a white marble effigy of himself, lies Saint Willibrord.

Echternach is famous, however, in particular for the dancing procession held on Whit-Tuesday every year. The origin of this festival is uncertain, but it dates at least from the 13th century and was probably instituted during an outbreak of cholera. Nowadays it is an occasion of pilgrimage, among Germans and Belgians as well as Luxemburgers, for all sick persons, but especially for the epileptic and those suffering from St Vitus’ dance. The ceremony is interesting, and the Roman Catholic Church lends all its ritual to make it more imposing. The archbishop of Trier attends to represent Germany, and the bishop of Luxemburg figures for the grand duchy. There is a religious ceremony on the Prussian side of the bridge over the Sûre, and when it is over the congregation cross into the duchy to join the procession, partly religious, partly popular, through the streets of the town. The religious procession, carrying cross and banners and attended by three hundred singers, comes first, chanting St Willibrord’s hymn. Next comes a band of miscellaneous instruments playing as a rule the old German air “Adam had seven sons,” and then follow the dancers. Many of these are young and full of life and health and dance for amusement, but many others are old or feeble and dance in the hope of recovery or of escaping from some trouble, but on all alike the conditions of the dance are incumbent. There are three steps forward and two back; five steps are thus taken to make one in advance. This becomes especially trying at the flight of steps mounting to the little church where the procession ends in front of the shrine of the great saint. There are sixty steps, but it takes three hundred to reach the top for the final time. It is said that those who fall from age or weariness have to be dragged out of the way by onlookers or they would be trampled to death by the succeeding waves of dancers. The procession, although it covers a distance of less than a mile, is said to take as much as five hours in its accomplishment. In olden days the abbey was the goal of the procession, and King William I. of the Netherlands—great-grandfather of Queen Wilhelmina—changed the day from Tuesday to Sunday so that a working day should not be lost. This reform did not answer, and the ancient order was restored. Some critics see in the dancing procession of Echternach merely the survival of the spring dance of the heathen races, but at any rate it invests the little town with an interest and importance that would otherwise be lacking.

ECHUCA, a borough of the county of Rodney, Victoria, Australia, 156 m. by rail N. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 4075. It is situated on the river Murray, across which it is connected by bridge with Moama, on the New South Wales side, whence a railway runs to Deniliquin. The town is the terminus of the Murray River railway and the entrepot of the overland intercolonial trade; it has large wool stores, saw-mills, coach factories, breweries and soap-works. The rich agricultural district is noted for its vineyards.

ÉCIJA, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Seville; on the Cadiz-Cordova railway and the left bank of the river Genil. Pop. (1900) 24,372. The river, thus far navigable, is here crossed by a fine old bridge; and the antiquity of the town betrays itself by the irregularity of its arrangement, by its walls and gateways, and by its numerous inscriptions and other relics. Its chief buildings include no fewer than twenty convents, mostly secularized. The principal square is surrounded with pillared porticoes, and has a fountain in the centre; and along the river bank there runs a fine promenade, planted with poplar trees and adorned with statues. From an early period the shoemakers of Écija have been in high repute throughout Spain; woollen cloth, flannel, linen and silks are also manufactured. The vicinity is fertile in corn and wine, and cotton is cultivated. The heat is so great that the spot has acquired the sobriquet of El Sarten, or the “Frying-pan” of Andalusia. Écija, called Estija by the Arabs, is the ancient Astigis, which was raised to the rank of a Roman colony with the title of Augusta Firma. According to Pliny and Pomponius Mela, who both wrote in the 1st century A.D., it was the rival of Cordova and Seville. If local tradition may be believed, it was visited by the apostle Paul, who converted his hostess Santa Xantippa; and, according to one version of his life, it was the see of the famous St Crispin (q.v.) in the 3rd century.

ECK, JOHANN MAIER (1486-1543), German theologian, the most indefatigable and important opponent of Martin Luther, was born on the 13th of November 1486 at Eck in Swabia, from which place he derived his additional surname, which he himself, after 1505, always modified into Eckius or Eccius, i.e. “of Eck.” His father, Michael Maier, was a peasant and bailiff (Amtmann) of the village. The boy’s education was undertaken by his uncle Martin Maier, parish priest at Rothenburg on the Neckar, who sent him at the age of twelve to the university of Heidelberg, and subsequently to those of Tübingen, Cologne and Freiburg in the Breisgau. His academic career was so rapidly successful that at the age of twenty-four he was already doctor and professor of theology. During this period he was distinguished for his opposition to the scholastic philosophy; and, though he did not go to all lengths with the “modernists” (Moderni) of his day, his first work—Logices exercitamenta (1507)—was distinctly on their side. This attitude 885 brought him into conflict with the senate of the university, a conflict which Eck’s masterful temper, increased by an extreme self-confidence perhaps natural in one so young and so successful, did not serve to allay. His position in Freiburg becoming intolerable, he accepted in 1510 an invitation from the duke of Bavaria to fill the theological chair at Ingolstadt, where he was destined for thirty years to exercise a profound influence as teacher and vice-chancellor (Prokanzler).

A ducal commission, appointed to find a means for ending the interminable strife between the rival academic parties, entrusted Eck with the preparation of fresh commentaries on Aristotle and Petrus Hispanus. He had a marvellous capacity for work, and between 1516 and 1520, in addition to all his other duties, he published commentaries on the Summulae of Petrus Hispanus, and on the Dialectics, Physics and lesser scientific works of Aristotle, which became the text-books of the university. During these early years Eck was still reckoned among the “modernists,” and his commentaries are inspired with much of the scientific spirit of the New Learning. His aim, however, had been to find a via media between the old and new; his temper was essentially conservative, his imagination held captive by the splendid traditions of the medieval church, and he had no sympathy with the revolutionary attitude of the Reformers. Personal ambition, too, a desire to be conspicuous in the great world of affairs, may have helped to throw him into public opposition to Luther. He had won laurels in a public disputation at Augsburg in 1514, when he had defended the lawfulness of putting out capital at interest; again at Bologna in 1515, on the same subject and on the question of predestination; and these triumphs had been repeated at Vienna in 1516. By these successes he gained the patronage of the Fuggers, and found himself fairly launched as the recognized apologist of the established order in church and state. Distinguished humanists might sneer at him as “a garrulous sophist”; but from this time his ambition was not only to be the greatest scientific authority in Germany but also the champion of the papacy and of the traditional church order. The first-fruits of this new resolve were a quite gratuitous attack on his old friend, the distinguished humanist and jurist Ulrich Zasius (1461-1536), for a doctrine proclaimed ten years before, and a simultaneous assault on Erasmus’s Annotationes in Novum Testamentum.

It is, however, by his controversy with Luther and the other reformers that Eck is best remembered. Luther, who had some personal acquaintance with Eck, sent him in 1517 copies of his celebrated 95 theses. Eck made no public reply; but in 1518 he circulated, privately at first, his Obelisci, in which Luther was branded as a Hussite. Luther entrusted his defence to Carlstadt, who, besides answering the insinuations of Eck in 400 distinct theses, declared his readiness to meet him in a public disputation. The challenge was accepted, and the disputation took place at Leipzig in June and July 1519. On June 27 and 28 and on July 1 and 3 Eck disputed with Carlstadt on the subjects of grace, free will and good works, ably defending the Roman Semipelagian standpoint. From July 4 to 14 he engaged with Luther on the absolute supremacy of the papacy, purgatory, penance, &c., showing a brilliant display of patristic and conciliar learning against the reformer’s appeals to Scripture. The arbitrators declined to give a verdict, but the general impression was that victory rested with Eck. He did, indeed, succeed in making Luther admit that there was some truth in the Hussite opinions and declare himself against the pope, but this success only embittered his animosity against his opponents, and from that time his whole efforts were devoted to Luther’s overthrow. He induced the universities of Cologne and Louvain to condemn the reformer’s writings, but failed to enlist the German princes, and in January 1520 went to Rome to obtain strict regulations against those whom he called “Lutherans.” He was created a protonotary apostolic, and in July returned to Germany, as papal nuncio, with the celebrated bull Exsurge Domine directed against Luther’s writings. He now believed himself in a position to crush not only the Lutheran heretics, but also his humanist critics. The effect of the publication of the bull, however, soon undeceived him. Bishops, universities and humanists were at one in denunciation of the outrage; and as for the attitude of the people, Eck was glad to escape from Saxony with a whole skin. In his wrath he appealed to force, and his Epistola ad Carolum V. (February 18, 1521) called on the emperor to take measures against Luther, a demand soon to be responded to in the edict of Worms. In 1521 and 1522 Eck was again in Rome, reporting on the results of his nunciature. On his return from his second visit he was the prime mover in the promulgation of the Bavarian religious edict of 1522, which practically established the senate of the university of Ingolstadt as a tribunal of the Inquisition, and led to years of persecution. In return for this action of the duke, who had at first been opposed to the policy of repression, Eck obtained for him, during a third visit to Rome in 1523, valuable ecclesiastical concessions. Meanwhile he continued unabated in his zeal against the reformers, publishing eight considerable works between 1522 and 1526.

His controversial ardour was, indeed, somewhat damped by Luther’s refusal to answer his arguments, and with a view to earning fresh laurels he turned his attention to Switzerland and the Zwinglians. At Baden-in-Aargau in May and June 1526 a public disputation on the doctrine of transubstantiation was held, in which Eck and Thomas Murner were pitted against Johann Oecolampadius. Though Eck claimed the victory in argument, the only result was to strengthen the Swiss in their memorial view of the Lord’s Supper, and so to diverge them further from Luther. At the Augsburg diet in 1530 Eck was charged by Charles V. to draw up, in concert with twenty other theologians, the refutation of the Protestant Confession, but was obliged to rewrite it five times before it suited the emperor. He was at the colloquy of Worms in 1540 and at the diet of Regensburg (Ratisbon) in 1541. At Worms he showed some signs of a willingness to compromise, but at Regensburg his old violence reasserted itself in opposing all efforts at reconciliation and persuading the Catholic princes to reject the Interim.

Eck died at Ingolstadt on the 10th of February 1543, fighting to the last and worn out before his time. He was undoubtedly the most conspicuous champion produced by the old religion in the age of the Reformation, but his great gifts were marred by greater faults. His vast learning was the result of a powerful memory and unwearied industry, and he lacked the creative imagination necessary to mould this material into new forms. He was a powerful debater, but his victories were those of a dialectician rather than a convincing reasoner, and in him depth of insight and conviction were ill replaced by the controversial violence characteristic of the age. Moreover, even after discounting the bias of his enemies, there is evidence to prove that his championship of the Church was not the outcome of his zeal for Christianity; for he was notoriously drunken, unchaste, avaricious and almost insanely ambitious. His chief work was De primatu Petri (1519); his Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum ran through 46 editions between 1525 and 1576. In 1530-1535 he published a collection of his writings against Luther, Opera contra Ludderum, in 4 vols.

ECKERMANN, JOHANN PETER (1792-1854), German poet and author, best known owing to his association with Goethe, was born at Winsen in Hanover on the 21st of September 1792, of humble parentage, and was brought up in penury and privation. After serving as a volunteer in the War of Liberation (1813-1814), he obtained a secretarial appointment under the war department at Hanover. In 1817, although twenty-five years of age, he was enabled to attend the gymnasium of Hanover and afterwards the university of Göttingen, which, however, after one year’s residence as a student of law, he left in 1822. His acquaintance with Goethe began in the following year, when he sent to him the manuscript of his Beiträge zur Poesie (1823). Soon afterwards he went to Weimar, where he supported himself as a private tutor. For several years he also instructed the son of the grand duke. In 1830 he travelled in Italy with Goethe’s son. In 1838 he was given the title of grand-ducal councillor and appointed librarian to the grand-duchess. Eckermann is chiefly remembered 886 for his important contributions to the knowledge of the great poet contained in his Conversations with Goethe (1836-1848). To Eckermann Goethe entrusted the publication of his Nachgelassene Schriften (posthumous works) (1832-1833). He was also joint-editor with Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer (1774-1845) of the complete edition of Goethe’s works in 40 vols. (1839-1840). He died at Weimar on the 3rd of December 1854.

ECKERNFÖRDE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, on a fjord of the Baltic, 20 m. by rail N.W. from Kiel. Pop. (1905) 7088. It has a good harbour, fishing, trade in agricultural products, and manufactures of tobacco, salt and iron goods. There are a technical school of building and a Protestant teachers’ seminary. Eckernförde is mentioned as far back as 1197. It was taken by Christian IV. of Denmark in 1628 from the Imperial troops. In 1813 the Danes were defeated here, while in 1849 the harbour was the scene of the blowing up of the Danish line-of-battle ship “Christian VIII.” and of the surrender of the frigate “Gefion” after an engagement with the German shore batteries. The place lost most of its trade after the union with Germany in 1864, and suffered severely from a sea-flood in 1872. In the immediate neighbourhood is the village of Borby, much frequented for sea-bathing.

ECKERSBERG, KRISTOFFER (1783-1853), Danish painter, was born in south Jutland. He became successively the pupil of Nikolaj Abildgaard and of J.L. David. From 1810 to 1813 he lived at Paris under the direction of the latter, and then proceeded, as an independent artist, to Rome, where he worked until 1816 in close fellowship with Thorwaldsen. His paintings from this period—“The Spartan Boy,” “Bacchus and Ariadne” and “Ulysses”—testify to the influence of the great sculptor over the art of Eckersberg. Returning to Copenhagen, he found himself easily able to take the first place among the Danish painters of his time, and his portraits especially were in extreme popularity. It is claimed for Eckersberg by the native critics that “he created a Danish colour,” that is to say, he was the first painter who threw off conventional tones and the pseudo-classical landscape, in exchange for the clear atmosphere and natural outlines of Danish scenery. But Denmark has no heroic landscape, and Eckersberg in losing the golden commonplaces scarcely succeeds in being delightful. His landscapes, however, are pure and true, while in his figure-pieces he is almost invariably conventional and old-fashioned. He was president of the Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Charlottenburg.

ECKHART,1 JOHANNES [”Meister Eckhart”] (?1260-?1327), German philosopher, the first of the great speculative mystics. Extremely little is known of his life; the date and place of his birth are equally uncertain. According to some accounts, he was a native of Strassburg, with which he was afterwards closely connected; according to others, he was born in Saxony, or at Hochheim near Gotha. Trithemius, one of the best authorities, speaks of him merely as “Teutonicus.” 1260 has frequently been given as the date of his birth; it was in all probability some years earlier, for we know that he was advanced in age at the time of his death, about 1327. He appears to have entered the Dominican order, and to have acted for some time as professor at one of the colleges in Paris. His reputation for learning was very high, and in 1302 he was summoned to Rome by Boniface VIII., to assist in the controversy then being carried on with Philip of France. From Boniface he received the degree of doctor. In 1304 he became provincial of his order for Saxony, and in 1307 was vicar-general for Bohemia. In both provinces he was distinguished for his practical reforms and for his power in preaching. Towards 1325 we hear of him as preaching with great effect at Cologne, where he gathered round him a numerous band of followers. Before this time, and in all probability at Strassburg, where he appears to have been for some years, he had come in contact with the Beghards (see Beguines) and Brethren of the Free Spirit, whose fundamental notions he may, indeed, be said to have systematized and expounded in the highest form to which they could attain. In 1327 the opponents of the Beghards laid hold of certain propositions contained in Eckhart’s works, and he was summoned before the Inquisition at Cologne. The history of this accusation is by no means clear. Eckhart appears, however, to have made a conditional recantation—that is, he professed to disavow whatever in his writings could be shown to be erroneous. Further appeal, perhaps at his own request, was made to Pope John XXII., and in 1329 a bill was published condemning certain propositions extracted from Eckhart’s works. But before its publication Eckhart was dead. The exact date of his death is unknown. Of his writings, several of which are enumerated by Trithemius, there remain only the sermons and a few tractates. Till the middle of the 19th century the majority of these were attributed to Johann Tauler, and it is only from Pfeiffer’s careful edition (Deutsche Mystiker d. XIV. Jahrhunderts, vol. ii., 1857) that one has been able to gather a true idea of Eckhart’s activity. From his works it is evident that he was deeply learned in all the philosophy of the time. He was a thorough Aristotelian, but by preference appears to have been drawn towards the mystical writings of the Neoplatonists and the pseudo-Dionysius. His style is unsystematic, brief and abounding in symbolical expression. His manner of thinking is clear, calm and logical, and he has certainly given the most complete exposition of what may be called Christian pantheism.

Eckhart has been called the first of the speculative mystics. In his theories the element of mystical speculation for the first time comes to the front as all-important. By its means the church doctrines are made intelligible to the many, and from it the church dogmas receive their true significance. It was but natural that he should diverge more and more widely from the traditional doctrine, so that at length the relation between his teaching and that of the church appeared to be one of opposition rather than of reconciliation. Eckhart is in truth the first who attempted with perfect freedom and logical consistency to give a speculative basis to religious doctrines. The two most important points in his, as in all mystical theories, are first, his doctrine of the divine nature, and second, his explanation of the relation between God and human thought. (See Mysticism.)

ECKHEL, JOSEPH HILARIUS (1737-1798), Austrian numismatist, was born at Enzersfeld in lower Austria, 1737. His father was farm-steward to Count Zinzendorf, and he received his early education at the Jesuits’ College, Vienna, where at the age of fourteen he was admitted into the order. He devoted himself to antiquities and numismatics. After being engaged as professor of poetry and rhetoric, first at Steyer and afterwards at Vienna, he was appointed in 1772 keeper of the cabinet of coins at the Jesuits’ College, and in the same year he went to Italy for the purpose of personal inspection and study of antiquities and coins. At Florence he was employed to arrange the collection of 887 the grand duke of Tuscany; and the first-fruits of his study of this and other collections appeared in his Numi veteres anecdoti, published in 1775. On the dissolution of the order of Jesuits in 1773, Eckhel was appointed by the empress Maria Theresa professor of antiquities and numismatics at the university of Vienna, and this post he held for twenty-four years. He was in the following year made keeper of the imperial cabinet of coins, and in 1779 appeared his Catalogus Vindobonensis numorum veterum. Eckhel’s great work is the Doctrina numorum veterum, in 8 vols., the first of which was published in 1792, and the last in 1798. The author’s rich learning, comprehensive grasp of his subject, admirable order and precision of statement in this masterpiece drew from Heyne enthusiastic praise, and the acknowledgment that Eckhel, as the Coryphaeus of numismatists, had, out of the mass of previously loose and confused facts, constituted a true science. A volume of Addenda, prepared by Steinbüchel from Eckhel’s papers after his death, was published in 1826. Among his other works are—Choix de pierres gravées du Cabinet Impérial des Antiques (1788), a useful school-book on coins entitled Kurzgefasste Anfangsgrunde zur alten Numismatik (1787), of which a French version enlarged by Jacob appeared in 1825, &c. Eckhel died at Vienna on the 16th of May 1798.

ECKMÜHL, or Eggmühl, a village of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the Grosse Laaber, 13 m. S.E. of Regensburg by the railway to Munich. It is famous as the scene of a battle fought here on the 22nd of April 1809, between the French, Bavarians and Wurttembergers under Napoleon, and the Austrians under the Archduke Charles, which resulted in the defeat of the latter. Napoleon, in recognition of Marshal Davout’s great share in the victory, conferred on him the title of prince of Eckmuhl. For an account of this action and those of Abensberg and Landshut see Napoleonic Campaigns.

ECLECTICISM (from Gr. ἐκλέγω, I select), a term used specially in philosophy and theology for a composite system of thought made up of views borrowed from various other systems. Where the characteristic doctrines of a philosophy are not thus merely adopted, but are the modified products of a blending of the systems from which it takes its rise, the philosophy is not properly eclectic. Eclecticism always tends to spring up after a period of vigorous constructive speculation, especially in the later stages of a controversy between thinkers of pre-eminent ability. Their respective followers, and more especially cultured laymen, lacking the capacity for original work, seeking for a solution in some kind of compromise, and possibly failing to grasp the essentials of the controversy, take refuge in a combination of those elements in the opposing systems which seem to afford a sound practical theory. Since these combinations have often been as illogical as facile, “eclecticism” has generally acquired a somewhat contemptuous significance. At the same time, the essence of eclecticism is the refusal to follow blindly one set of formulae and conventions, coupled with a determination to recognize and select from all sources those elements which are good or true in the abstract, or in practical affairs most useful ad hoc. Theoretically, therefore, eclecticism is a perfectly sound method, and the contemptuous significance which the word has acquired is due partly to the fact that many eclectics have been intellectual trimmers, sceptics or dilettanti, and partly to mere partisanship. On the other hand, eclecticism in the sphere of abstract thought is open to this main objection that, in so far as every philosophic system is, at least in theory, an integral whole, the combination of principles from hostile theories must result in an incoherent patchwork. Thus it might be argued that there can be no logical combination of elements from Christian ethics, with its divine sanction, and purely intuitional or evolutionary ethical theories, where the sanction is essentially different in quality. It is in practical affairs that the eclectic or undogmatic spirit is most valuable, and also least dangerous.

In the 2nd century B.C. a remarkable tendency toward eclecticism began to manifest itself. The longing to arrive at the one explanation of all things, which had inspired the older philosophers, became less earnest; the belief, indeed, that any such explanation was attainable began to fail. Thus men came to adopt from all systems the doctrines which best pleased them. In Panaetius we find one of the earliest examples of the modification of Stoicism by the eclectic spirit; about the same time the same spirit displayed itself among the Peripatetics. In Rome philosophy never became more than a secondary pursuit; naturally, therefore, the Roman thinkers were for the most part eclectic. Of this tendency Cicero is the most striking illustration—his philosophical works consisting of an aggregation, with little or no blending, of doctrines borrowed from Stoicism, Peripateticism, and the scepticism of the Middle Academy.

In the last stage of Greek philosophy the eclectic spirit produced remarkable results outside the philosophies of those properly called eclectics. Thinkers chose their doctrines from many sources—from the venerated teaching of Aristotle and Plato, from that of the Pythagoreans and of the Stoics, from the old Greek mythology, and from the Jewish and other Oriental systems. Yet it must be observed that Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and the other systems which are grouped under the name Alexandrian, were not truly eclectic, consisting, as they did, not of a mere syncretism of Greek and Oriental thought, but of a mutual modification of the two. It is true that several of the Neoplatonists professed to accept all the teaching both of Plato and of Aristotle, whereas, in fact, they arbitrarily interpreted Aristotle so as to make him agree with Plato, and Plato so as to make his teachings consistent with the Oriental doctrines which they had adopted, in the same manner as the schoolmen attempted to reconcile Aristotle with the doctrines of the church. Among the early Christians, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Synesius were eclectics in philosophy.

The eclectics of modern philosophy are too numerous to name. Of Italian philosophers the eclectics form a large proportion. Among the German we may mention Wolf and his followers, as well as Mendelssohn, J.A. Eberhard, Ernst Platner, and to some extent Schelling, whom, however, it would be incorrect to describe as merely an eclectic. In the first place, his speculations were largely original; and in the second place, it is not so much that his views of any time were borrowed from a number of philosophers, as that his thinking was influenced first by one philosopher, then by another.

In the 19th century the term “eclectic” came to be applied specially to a number of French philosophers who differed considerably from one another. Of these the earliest were Pierre Paul Royer-Collard, who was mainly a follower of Thomas Reid, and Maine de Biran; but the name is still more appropriately given to the school of which the most distinguished members are Victor Cousin, Théodore Jouffroy, J.P. Damiron, Barthélemy St Hilaire, C.F.M. de Rémusat, Adolphe Garnier and Ravaisson-Mollien. Cousin, whose views varied considerably at different periods of his life, not only adopted freely what pleased him in the doctrines of Pierre Laromiguière, Royer-Collard and Maine de Biran, of Kant, Schelling and Hegel, and of the ancient philosophies, but expressly maintained that the eclectic is the only method now open to the philosopher, whose function thus resolves itself into critical selection and nothing more. “Each system,” he asserted, “is not false, but incomplete, and in reuniting all incomplete systems, we should have a complete philosophy, adequate to the totality of consciousness.” This assumes that every philosophical truth is already contained somewhere in the existing systems. If, however, as it would surely be rash to deny, there still remains philosophical truth undiscovered, but discoverable by human intelligence, it is evident that eclecticism is not the only philosophy. Eclecticism gained great popularity, and, partly owing to Cousin’s position as minister of public instruction, became the authorized system in the chief seats of learning in France, where it has given a most remarkable impulse to the study of the history of philosophy.

ECLIPSE (Gr. ἔκλειψις, falling out of place, failing), the complete or partial obscuration of one heavenly body by the shadow of another, or of the disk of the sun by the interposition of the moon; then called an eclipse of the sun. Eclipses are of three classes: those of the sun, as just defined; those of the moon, produced by its passage through the 888 shadow of the earth, and those of the satellites of other planets, produced by their passage through the shadow of their primary. Jupiter (q.v.) is the only planet of whose satellites the eclipses can be observed, unless under very rare circumstances.

The geometrical conditions of an eclipse of the sun or moon are shown in fig. 1, which represents the earth E as casting its shadow towards C, and the moon M between the earth and sun as throwing its shadow towards some part of the earth and eclipsing the sun. The dark conical regions are those within which the sun is entirely hidden from sight. This portion of the shadow is called the umbra. Around the umbra is an enveloping shaded cone with its vertices directly towards the sun. To an observer within this region the sun is partly hidden from view. As the apparent path of the moon may pass to the north or south of the line joining the earth and sun, the axis of its shadow may pass to the north or south of the earth, and not meet it at all. An eclipse of the sun is called central when the shadow axis strikes any part of the earth; partial when only the penumbra falls upon the earth. It is evident that an eclipse can be seen as central only at those points of the earth’s surface over which the axis of the shadow passes.

A central eclipse is total when the umbra actually reaches the earth; annular when it does not. These two cases are shown in figs. 2 and 3. In the first of these the sun is entirely hidden within the region uu′. In fig. 3 within the region aa’ the apparent diameter of the sun is slightly greater than that of the moon, and at the moment of greatest eclipse a narrow ring of sunlight is seen surrounding the dark body of the moon.

We shall treat the subject in the following sections:—

I. Phenomena of Eclipses of the Sun and conclusions derived from their observation.

II. Eclipses of the Moon.

III. The Laws and Cycles of recurrences of Eclipses of the Sun and Moon.

IV. Chronological list of remarkable eclipses of the Sun, past and future, to the end of the 20th century.

V. Description of the methods of computing eclipses.

I. Phenomena of Eclipses of the Sun.

While an eclipse of the sun, whether partial, annular or total, is in progress, no striking phenomena are to be noted until, in the case of total eclipses, the moment of the total phase approaches. It will, however, be noticed that as the moon advances on the solar disk the sharply defined and ragged edge of the moon’s disk contrasts strongly with the soft and uniform outline of the sun’s limb. As the total phase approaches, the phenomenon known as shadow bands may sometimes be seen. These consist of seeming vague and rapidly moving wave-like alternations of light and shade flitting over any white surface illuminated by the sun’s rays immediately before and after the total phase. They are probably due to a flickering of the light from the thin crescent, produced by the undulations of the air, in the same way that the twinkling of the stars is produced. The rapid progressive motion sometimes assigned to them may be regarded as the natural result of an optical illusion. A few seconds before the commencement of the total phase the red light of the chromosphere becomes visible, and will be seen most distinctly as continuations of the solar crescent at its two ends. Owing to the inequalities of the lunar surface, the diminution of the solar crescent does not go on with perfect uniformity, but, just before the last moment, what remains of it is generally broken up into separate portions of light, which, magnified and diffused by the irradiation of the telescope, present the phenomenon long celebrated under the name of “Baily’s beads.” These were so called because minutely and vividly described by Francis Baily as he observed them during the annular eclipse of May 15, 1836, when he compared them to a string of bright beads, irregular in size and distance from each other. The disappearance of the last bead is commonly taken as the beginning of totality. An arc of the chromosphere will then be visible for a few seconds at and on each side of the point of disappearance, the length and duration of which will depend on the apparent diameter of the moon as compared with that of the sun, being greater in length and longer seen as the excess of diameter of the moon is less. The red prominences may now generally be seen here and there around the whole disk of the moon, while the effulgence of soft light called the corona surrounds it on all sides. Before the invention of the spectroscope, observers of total eclipses could do little more than describe in detail the varying phenomena presented by the prominences and the corona. Drawings of the latter showed it to have the appearance of rays surrounding the dark disk of the moon, quite similar to the glory depicted by the old painters around the head of a saint. The discrepancies between the outlines as thus pictured, not only at different times, but by different observers at the same time and place, are such as to show that little reliance can be placed on the details represented by hand drawings.

During the eclipse of July 8, 1842, the shadow of the moon passed from Perpignan, France, through Milan and Vienna, over Russia and Central Asia, to the Pacific Ocean. Very detailed physical observations were made, but none which need be specially mentioned in the present connexion.

The eclipse of July 28, 1851, was total in Scandinavia and Russia. It was observed in the former region by many astronomers, among them Sir George B. Airy and W.R. Dawes. It was specially noteworthy for the first attempt to photograph such a phenomenon. A daguerreotype clearly showing the protuberances was taken by Berkowski at the Observatory of Königsberg. An attempt by G.A. Majocchi to daguerreotype the corona was a failure. Photographs of the eclipse of July 18, 1860, were taken by Padre Angelo Secchi and Warren De La Rue, which showed the prominences well, and proved that they were progressively obscured by the edge of the advancing moon. It was thus shown that they were solar appendages, and did not belong to the moon, as had sometimes been supposed. The corona was barely visible on De La Rue’s plates, but those of Secchi showed it, with its rifts and the bases of the tall coronal wings, to about 15’ from the sun’s limb. The sketches taken at this eclipse proved that the corona extended in some regions 1° from the sun’s limb. As the sensitiveness of photographic plates has increased, they have gradually been wholly relied upon for information respecting the corona, so that at the present time naked-eye descriptions are regarded as of little or no scientific value. Owing to the great contrast between the brilliancy of the coronal light at its base and its increasing faintness as it extends farther from the sun, no one photograph will bring out all the corona. An exposure of one or two seconds is ample to show the details of inner corona to the best advantage, while longer exposures give greater extent of the brighter portions. The most extended streamers are very little brighter than the sky, and must be photographed with long exposures.

889

The first application of the spectroscope to the phenomenon was made during the total solar eclipse of August 18, 1868, by P.J.C. Janssen and other observers in India. By them was made the capital discovery that the red solar prominences give a spectrum of bright lines, and are therefore immense masses of incandescent gases, chiefly hydrogen and the vapours of calcium and helium. Janssen also found that this bright-line spectrum could be followed after the eclipse was over, and, in fact, could be observed at any time when the air was sufficiently transparent. By one of those remarkable coincidences which frequently occur in the history of science, this last discovery was made independently by Sir Norman Lockyer in England before the news of Janssen’s success had reached him. It was afterwards found that, by giving great dispersing power to the spectroscope, the prominences could be observed in a wide slit, in their true form. At this eclipse the spectrum of the corona was also observed, and was supposed to be continuous, while polariscopic observation by Lieutenant Campbell showed it polarized in planes passing through the sun’s centre. The conclusion from these two observations was that the light was composed, at least in great part, of reflected sunlight.

At the total eclipse of August 7, 1869, it was independently found by Professors C.A. Young of Princeton and W. Harkness of Washington that the continuous spectrum of the corona was crossed by a bright line in the green, which was long supposed to be coincident with 1474 of Kirchhoff’s scale. This coincidence is, however, now found not to be real, and the line cannot be identified with that of any terrestrial substance. The name “coronium” has therefore been given to the supposed gas which forms it. It is now known that 1474 is a double line, one component of which is produced by iron, while the other is of unknown origin. The wave-length of the principal component is 5317, while that of the coronal line was found at the eclipses of 1896 and 1898 to be 5303.

The eclipse of December 28, 1870, passed over the south-western corner of Spain, Gibraltar, Oran and Sicily. It is memorable for the discovery by Young of the “reversing layer” of the solar atmosphere. This term is now applied to a shallow stratum resting immediately upon the photosphere, the absorption of which produces the principal dark lines of the solar spectrum, but which, being incandescent, gives a spectrum of bright lines by its own light when the light of the sun is cut off. This layer is much thinner than the chromosphere, and may be considered to form the base of the latter. Owing to its thinness, the phenomenon of the reversed bright lines is almost instantaneous in its nature, and can be observed for a period exceeding one or two seconds only near the edge of the shadow-path, where the moon advances but little beyond the solar limb. Near the central line it is little more than a flash, thus giving rise to the term “flash-spectrum.” Young also at this eclipse saw bright hydrogen lines when his spectroscope was directed to the centre of the dark disk of the moon. This can only be attributed to the reflection of the light of the prominences and chromosphere from the atmosphere between us and the moon. The coronal light as observed in the spectroscope may thus be regarded as a mixture of true coronal light with chromospheric light reflected from the air, and it is therefore probable that the H and K (calcium) lines of the coronal spectrum are not true coronal lines, but chromospheric.

At the eclipse of December 12, 1871, visible in India and Australia, Janssen observed, as he supposed, some of the dark lines of the solar spectrum in the continuous spectrum of the corona, especially D, b and G. This would show that an important part of the coronal light is due to reflected sunshine. This feature of the spectrum, however, is doubtful in the most recent photographs under the best conditions. At this eclipse the remarkable observation was also made by Colonel John Herschel and Colonel J.F. Tennant that the characteristic line of the coronal spectrum is as bright in the dark rifts of the corona as elsewhere. This would show that the gas coronium does not form the streamers of the corona, but is spherical in form and distributed uniformly about the sun. Photographs were also taken on wet plates by a party in Java and by the parties of Lord Lindsay (at Baikul, India) and of Colonel Tennant (at Dodabetta). The Baikul and Dodabetta photographs were of small size (moon’s diameter = 3⁄10 in.), but of excellent definition. A searching study was made of them by A. C Ranyard and W.H. Wesley (Memoirs R.A.S. vol. xli., 1879), and for the first time a satisfactory representation of the corona was obtained. The drawings in the volume quoted show its polar rays, wings, interlacing filaments and rifts as they are now known to be, as well as the forms and details of the prominences.

The eclipse of April 16, 1874, was observed in South Africa by E.J. Stone, H.M. astronomer at the Cape, who traced the coronal line about 30’ (430,000 m.) from the sun’s limb. The visual corona was seen to extend in places some 90′ from the limb.

The eclipse of April 6, 1875, was observed in Siam by Sir J. Norman Lockyer and Professor Arthur Schuster. Their photographs showed the calcium and hydrogen lines in the prominence spectrum.

The eclipse of July 29, 1878, was observed by many astronomers in the United States along a line extending from Wyoming to Texas. A number of the stations were at high altitudes (up to 14,000 ft.), and the sky was generally very clear. The visible corona extended on both sides of the sun along the ecliptic for immense distances—at least twelve lunar diameters, about eleven million miles. Photographs taken by the parties of Professors A. Hall and W. Harkness gave the details of the inner corona and of the polar rays, showing the filamentous character of the corona, especially at its base in the polar regions. A photograph taken by the party of Professor E.S. Holden showed the outer corona to a distance of 50′ from the moon’s limb. The bright-line spectrum of the corona was excessively faint and, as the solar activity (measured by sun-spot frequency) was near a minimum, it was concluded that the brilliancy of the coronium line varied in the sun-spot period, a conclusion which subsequent eclipse observations seem to have verified. It is not yet certain that the other coronal spectrum lines vary in the same way.

The eclipse of May 17, 1882, was observed in Egypt. On the photographs of the corona the image of a bright comet was found, the first instance of the sort. (A faint comet was found on the plates of the Lick Observatory eclipse expedition to Chile in 1893.) The slitless spectroscope showed the green line (coronium) and D3 (helium) in the coronal spectrum.

The eclipse of May 6, 1883, was observed from a small coral atoll in the South Pacific Ocean by parties from America, England, France, Austria and Italy. A thorough search was made by Holden (with a 6 in. telescope) for an intra-Mercurial planet, without success, during an unusually long totality (5 m. 23 s.). J. Palisa also searched for such a planet. Janssen again reported the presence of dark lines in the coronal spectrum. “White” prominences were seen by P. Tacchini.

The eclipse of August 29, 1886, was observed in the West Indies. The English photographs of the corona, taken with a slitless spectroscope, show the hydrogen lines as well as K and f. Tacchini devoted his attention to the spectra of the prominences, and showed that their upper portions contained no hydrogen lines, but only the H and K lines of calcium. He also observed a very extensive “white” prominence. It was shown on the photographs of the corona, but could not be seen in the Hα line with the spectroscope. It has been suggested by Professor G.E. Hale that the colour of a “white” prominence may be due to the fact that the H and K lines (calcium) are of their normal intensity, while the less refrangible prominence lines are, from some unknown cause, comparatively faint. It is known that the intensity of such lines does, in fact, vary, though it is not yet certain that the “white” prominences are produced in this way. The subject is one demanding further observation. High prominences are generally “white” at their summits, “red” at their bases. The Harvard College Observatory photographs show the corona out to 90′ from the moon’s limb, though no detail is visible beyond 60′. W.H. Pickering made a series of photographic photometric measures of the corona, some of which are given 890 below, together with results deduced by Holden from the eclipses of January and December 1889:—

The eclipse of August 19, 1887, was total in Japan and Russia, but cloudy weather prevented successful observations except in Siberia and eastern Russia.

The eclipse of January 1, 1889, was observed in California and Nevada by many American astronomers. The photographs of the corona, especially those by Charoppin and E.E. Barnard, show a wealth of detail. Those of Barnard, of the Lick Observatory party, were studied by Holden, and exhibited the fact that rays, like the “polar-rays,” extended all round the sun, instead of being confined to the polar regions only. The outer corona was registered out to 100′ from the moon’s limb on Charoppin’s negatives, to 130′ on those of Lowden and Ireland. On other plates the outline of the moon is visible projected on the corona before totality began. The spectrum of the corona showed few bright lines besides those of coronium and hydrogen.

The eclipse of December 22, 1889, was observed in Cayenne, S. America, by a party from the Lick Observatory under rather unfavourable conditions. Expeditions sent to Africa were baffled by cloudy weather. Father Stephen Joseph Perry observed at Salute Islands, French Guiana, and obtained some photographs of value. The effort cost him his life, for he died of malarial fever five days after the eclipse.

The eclipse of April 16, 1893, was observed by British and French parties in Africa and Brazil, and by Professor J.M. Schaeberle of the Lick Observatory in Chile. The Chile photographs of the corona were taken with a lens of 40 ft. focus, and are extremely fine. They show a faint comet near the sun. No great extensions to the corona were shown on any of the negatives, or seen visually, though they were specially looked for by British parties. The neighbourhood of the sun was carefully examined by G. Bigourdan without finding any planet. The spectrum of the corona was the usual one. The following lines were photographed in slitless spectroscopes, and undoubtedly belong to the corona: W. L. 3987; 4086; 4217; 4231; 4240; 4280; 4486; 5303 (the last number is the wave-length of the green coronium line). All of these have been seen in slit spectroscopes also. It is possible that two lines observed by Young in 1869, namely, W. L. (Ångstrom) 5450 and 5570, should be added to the list of undoubted coronal lines. It is not likely that helium or hydrogen or calcium vapour forms part of the corona. The wave-lengths of some 700 lines belonging to the chromosphere and prominences were determined by the British parties.

The eclipse of August 9, 1896, was total in Norway, Novaya Zemlya and Japan. The day was very unfavourable as to weather, but good photographs of the corona were obtained by Russian parties in Siberia and Lapland. Shackelton, in Novaya Zemlya, with a prismatic camera obtained a photograph of the reversing-layer at the beginning of totality. This photograph completely confirms Young’s discovery, and shows the prominent Fraunhofer lines bright, the bright lines of the chromosphere spectrum being especially conspicuous.

At the solar eclipse of January 22, 1898, the shadow of the moon traversed India from the western coast to the Himalaya. The duration of totality was about 2 m. The eclipse was very fully observed, more than 100 negatives of the corona being secured. The equatorial extension of the visible corona was short and faint, and the invisible (spectroscopic) corona was also very faint. The spectrum of the reversing-layer was successfully photographed; one set of negatives shows the polarization of one of the longest streamers of the corona, and proves the presence of dust particles reflecting solar light. The bright-line spectrum of hydrogen in the chromosphere was followed to the thirtieth point of the series, and the wave-lengths were shown to agree closely with Balmer’s formula (see Spectroscopy). The wave-length of coronium was found to be 5303 (not 5317 as previously supposed), and the brightness of the corona was measured. E.W. Maunder made the curious observation of coronal matter enveloping a prominence in the form of a hood.

Observations of the eclipse of May 28, 1900, were favoured in a remarkable degree by the absence of clouds. The photographs of the corona obtained by W.W. Campbell extended four diameters of the sun on the west side. The sun’s edge was photographed with an objective-prism spectrograph composed of two 60° prisms in front of a telescope of 2 in. aperture and 60 in. focus. A fine photograph, 6 in. long, of the bright- and dark-line spectra of the sun’s edge at the end of totality was thus obtained. It shows 600 bright lines sharply in focus besides the dark-line spectrum, to which the bright lines gave way as the sun reappeared. The coronal material radiating the green light was found to be markedly heaped up in the sun-spot regions. No dark lines were found in the spectrum of the inner corona. G.E. Hale and E.B. Frost also photographed the combined bright- and dark-line spectra of the solar cusps at the instants before and after totality. On one photograph showing no dark lines 70 bright lines could be measured between 4070 and 4340. On another were 70 bright lines between Hb and Hs. On a third were 266 bright lines between 4026 and 4381, and some dark lines. These lines show a marked dissimilarity from the solar spectrum.

The eclipse of May 18, 1901, was observable in Mauritius with 3½ minutes of totality, and in Sumatra with 6½ minutes. Unfortunately there was cloudy weather in Sumatra, which at some stations prevented observations entirely and at others neutralized the advantages promised by the long duration of totality. Thus spectroscopic observations for the detection of motion of the corona, for which the long totality gave a special opportunity, failed owing to cloud; and the search for intra-Mercurial planets had only a negative result, though stars down to magnitude 8.8 were photographed on the plates. But though no particular step in advance was taken, successful records of the eclipse were obtained, which will enable comparison to be made with other eclipses and will contribute their share to the discussion of the whole series. These include photographs of the corona, showing that it was of the sun-spot minimum type, and available for measures of its brightness; photographs of the spectra of the chromosphere and corona which are of the same general character as those obtained at previous eclipses; photographs showing the polarization of the corona, available for quantitative measures of polarization at different points. Photographs of the spectrum of the outer corona taken by the Lick Observatory party show a strong Fraunhofer dark-line spectrum, consistent with the view that the light is reflected sunlight. At Mauritius there was no cloud, but the definition was poor. Successful photographs of the corona were obtained for comparison with those taken in Sumatra one and a half hours later, but nothing of great interest was revealed by the comparison.

The eclipse of August 30, 1905, offered a duration of 3½ minutes in Spain, the track running from Labrador through Spain to North Africa, and affording excellent opportunities for observers, who flocked to the central line in great numbers. Unfortunately it was cloudy in Labrador, so that the special advantages of the long line of possible stations were lost. Exceptionally good weather conditions were enjoyed in Algeria and Tunisia, and full advantage was taken of them by H.F. Newall, C. Trépied and others at Guelma, by the party from Greenwich and G. Bigourdan at Sfax. That G. Newall’s spectroscopic photographs for rotation of the corona again gave no result is a clear indication of the faintness of the corona at 3′ from the limb; but F.W. Dyson at Sfax obtained two new lines at 5536 and 5117 in the spectrum 891 of the corona; and a very large number of photographs of the corona (including many in polarized light on several different plans), of its spectrum, and of the spectrum of the chromosphere, were obtained by the various parties, which will afford copious material for discussion. Newall also obtained a polarized spectrum of the corona. Altogether no less than eighty stations were occupied. There were English, American, Russian and German observers in Egypt; English and French in Algeria and Tunisia; English in Majorca; observers of almost all nationalities in Spain; and English and American in Labrador. In Egypt the weather was bright, though the sun was low; in Majorca and Spain there were local clouds. Consequently many observations, in addition to those in Labrador, were lost, notably the special spectroscopic observations undertaken by Evershed on the northern limit of totality, and the observations of radiation undertaken by H.L. Callendar. A search for intra-Mercurial planets was conducted on an elaborate plan, with similar batteries of telescopes, in Egypt, Spain and Labrador, by three parties from the Lick Observatory, but the examination of the plates showed nothing noteworthy. Pending discussion of the greater part of the material, some interesting preliminary results were published in 1906 by the French observers. C.E.H. Bourget and Montangerand conclude that there is a marked division of the chromosphere into two regions or shells, a lower or “reversing-layer,” extending only 1″ from the limb, and a chromospheric layer extending to 3″ or 4″; and that the coronal light contains less blue and violet, but more green and yellow, than sunlight; while Fabry, by visual methods, obtained measures of the total and intrinsic intensity of the light from the corona closely confirming recent photographic observations, finding the total brightness about equal to that of the full moon, and the intrinsic brightness at 5′ from the limb about one quarter of that of the full moon.

II. Eclipses of the Moon.

The physical phenomena attending eclipses of the moon are no longer of a high order of interest either to the layman or scientific observer. A brief statement of them and their causes will therefore be sufficient. An observer watching such an eclipse from the moon would see the earth, which has nearly four times the apparent diameter of the sun, impinging on the sun’s disk and slowly hiding it. The phenomenon would be quite similar to that of an eclipse of the sun seen from the earth, until the sun was completely covered. During the progress of this partial eclipse the moon would be passing into the earth’s penumbra. As the moment of total obscuration approached, a red band of light would rapidly form in the neighbourhood of the disappearing limb of the sun, and gradually extend around the earth. This would arise from the refraction of the sun’s light by the earth’s atmosphere, and the absorption of its blue rays. When the light of the sun was completely hidden, a reddish ring of great brilliancy would, owing to this cause, surround the entire dark body of the earth during the period of the total eclipse.

The aspect of the moon, as seen from the earth, corresponds to this view from the moon. The fading of the moon’s light, due to its entrance into the penumbra, is scarcely noticeable without direct photometric determination until near the beginning of the total phase. Then, as the limb of the moon approaches the earth’s shadow, it begins to darken. When only a small portion has entered into the shadow, that portion is completely hidden. But, as the total phase approaches, the part of the moon’s disk immersed in the penumbra becomes visible by a reddish coppery light—that of the sun refracted through the lower parts of the earth’s atmosphere. The brightness of this illumination is different in different eclipses, a circumstance which may be attributed to the greater or less degree of cloudiness in those regions of the earth’s atmosphere through which the light of the sun passes in order to reach the moon. Its colour is due to absorption in passing through the earth’s atmosphere.

III. Laws and Cycles of Recurrences of Eclipses of the Sun and Moon.

It has been known since remote antiquity that eclipses occur in cycles. These cycles are known now to be determined principally by the motion of the moon’s node and the relations between the revolutions of the earth round the sun and the moon round the earth.

Owing to the inclination of the moon’s orbit to the plane of the ecliptic, an eclipse of the sun can occur only when the conjunction of the sun and moon takes place within about 16° of one of the nodes of the moon’s orbit. The Eclipse seasons. eclipse can be total only within about 11° of the node. An eclipse of the moon can occur only when the line sun-moon-earth makes an angle less than about 11° with the line of nodes; and the eclipse can be total only within about 8° of the node, the average limiting distances varying 1° or 2° according to the circumstances. These conditions being understood, the cycles of recurrence of eclipses of either kind can be worked out geometrically from the mean motions of the sun, moon, node and perigee by the aid of geometric conceptions shown in their simplest form in fig. 4. Here E is the earth, at the centre of a circle representing the mean orbit of the moon around it. MN is the line of nodes which is moving in the retrograde direction from N towards S1, at a rate of about 19.3° in a year, making a complete revolution in 18.6 years. Let the sun at the moment of some new moon be in the line ES1, continued. If the angle NES1 is less than 16° there will probably be an eclipse of the sun, which may be central if the angle is less than 11°. Let the next new moon take place in the line ES2 a month later. The mean value of the angle S1ES2 is about 29°; but as the node N has moved towards S1 about 1.4° during the interval, the sum of the angles NES1 and NES2 will be somewhat greater than S1ES2 by about 1.6°. The result is that if these two angles are nearly equal there may be two small partial eclipses of the sun, after which no more can occur until, by the annual revolution of the earth, the direction of the sun approaches the opposite line of nodes EM, nearly six months later. The result is that there are in the course of any one year two “eclipse seasons” each of about one month in duration, in which at least one eclipse of the sun, or possibly two small partial eclipses, may occur. One eclipse of the moon will generally, but not always, occur during a season.

Owing to the retrograde motion of the node the direction ES of the sun returns to the node at the end of about 347 days, so that a third eclipse season may commence before the end of a year. In this way there is a possible but very rare maximum of five eclipses of the sun in a year. Owing to the motion of the line of nodes each eclipse season occurs about 19 days earlier in the year than it did the year before. Another conclusion from the greater eclipse limit for the sun than for the moon is that in the long run eclipses of the sun, as regards the earth generally, occur oftener than those of the moon. But as any eclipse of the sun is visible only from a limited region of the earth’s surface, while one of the moon may be seen from an entire hemisphere, more eclipses of the moon are visible at any one place than of the sun.

If, starting with a conjunction along some line ES1, we mark by radial lines from E the successive conjunctions year after year, we shall find that at the end of 18 years and about 11 days the 223rd conjunction will fall once more very near the line ES1, the angle NES1 being about 24′ greater than before. Successive eclipses will then occur very nearly in the same order as they did 18 years and 11 days before. This period of recurrence has been known from remote antiquity and is called the Saros. What is most remarkable in this period is that in addition to the distance from the node being nearly the same as before, the longitude of the sun increases by only 11° and the distance of the moon from its perigee has changed less than 3°. The result of this approach to coincidence is that the recurring eclipse will generally be of the same kind—total, annular or partial—through a number of successive periods.

892

To see the law of recurrence of corresponding eclipses in the successive periods let us suppose the line of conjunction ES1 to be that at which there is a very small eclipse, visible only in high northern or southern latitudes. At the end of 18 years 11 days a second eclipse will occur along a line nearly half a degree nearer EN, the line of nodes. The successive eclipses will occur at the same interval through about ten periods, or 180 years, when the line of conjunction will pass within 11° of EN. Then the eclipse will be central, whether annular or total depending on circumstances: in the first one the central lines will pass only over the polar regions; but in successive eclipses of the series it will pass nearer and nearer to the equator until the conjunction line coincides with the node. The path of centrality will then cross in the equatorial region. During 22 or 23 more recurrences the path will continually approach to the opposite pole and finally leave the earth entirely. The entire number of central eclipses in any one series will generally be about forty-five. Then a series of continually diminishing partial eclipses will go on for about ten periods more. The whole series of eclipses will therefore extend through about sixty-five periods; and interval of time of about twelve hundred years.

Another remarkable eclipse period recurs at the end of 358 lunations. At the end of this period the line of mean conjunction ES1 falls so near its former position relative to the node that we find each central eclipse visible in our time to be one of an unbroken series extending from the earliest historic times to the present, at intervals equal to the length of the period. The recurring eclipses in this period do not, however, have the remarkable similarity of those belonging to the Saros, but may differ to any extent, owing to the different positions of the line of conjunction with respect to the moon’s perigee. Moreover, they recur alternately at the ascending and descending node. The length of the period is 10,571.95 days, or 29 Julian years less 20.3 days. Hence 18 periods make 521 years, so that at the end of this time each eclipse recurs on or about the same day of the year. As an example of this series, starting from the eclipse of Nineveh, June 15, 763 B.C., recorded on the Assyrian tablets, we find eclipses on May 27, 734 B.C., May 7, 705 B.C., and so on in an unbroken series to 1843, 1872 and 1901, the last being the 93rd of the series. Those at the ends of the 521-year intervals occurred on June 15, O.S., of each of the years 763, 242 B.C., A.D. 280, 801, 1322 and 1843. As the lunar perigee moves through 242.4° in a period, the eclipses will vary from total to annular, but at the end of 3 periods the perigee is only 7.1° in advance of its original position relative to the node. Hence in a series including every third eclipse the eclipses will be of the same character through a thousand years or more. Thus the eclipses of 1467, 1554, 1640, 1727, 1814, 1901, 1988, &c., are total.

IV. Chronological Lists of Eclipses of the Sun.

The following is a brief chronological enumeration of those total eclipses of the sun which are of interest, either from their historic celebrity or the nature of the conclusions Notable eclipses. derived from them. In numbering the years before the Christian era the astronomical nomenclature is used, in which the number of the year is one less than that used by the chronologists. The Chinese eclipses are passed over, owing to the generally doubtful character of the records pertaining to them.

We give below, in tabular form, a list of the principal total eclipses during the 19th and 20th centuries, omitting a few visible only in the extreme polar regions, and some others of which the duration is very short. The first column gives the civil date of the point on the earth’s surface at which the eclipse is central at noon. The next two columns give the position of this point to the nearest degree. The fourth column shows the Greenwich astronomical time of conjunction in longitude. The next column gives the duration of the total phase at the noon-point; this is sometimes 0.1′ less than the absolutely greatest duration at any point. Next is given the node near which the eclipse occurs; and then the number in the Saros. Corresponding eclipses at intervals of 18 y. 11 d. have the same number, and occur near the same node of the noon, which is indicated in the next column.

Recurrence of Remarkable Eclipses.

From the property of the Saros it follows that eclipses remarkable for their duration, or other circumstances depending on the relative positions of the sun and moon, occur at intervals of one saros (18 y. 11 d.). Of interest in this connexion is the recurrence of total eclipses remarkable for their duration. The absolute maximum duration of a total eclipse is about 7′ 30″; but no actual eclipse can be expected to reach this duration. Those which will come nearest to the maximum during the next 500 years belong to the series numbered 4 and 6 and in the list which precedes. These occurring in the years 1937, 1955, &c., will ultimately fall little more than 20″ below the maximum. But the series 4, though not now remarkable in this respect, will become so in the future, reaching in the eclipse of June 25, 2150, a duration of about 7′ 15″ and on July 5, 2168, a duration of 7′ 28″, the longest in human history. The first of these will pass over the Pacific Ocean; the second over the southern part of the Indian Ocean near Madras.

All the national annual Ephemerides contain elements of the eclipses of the sun occurring during the year. Those of England, America and France also give maps showing the path of the central line, if any, over the earth’s surface; the lines of eclipse beginning and ending at sunrise, &c., and the outlines of the shadow from hour to hour. By the aid of the latter the time at which an eclipse begins or ends at any point can be determined by inspection or measurement within a few minutes.

V. Methods of computing Eclipses of the Sun.

The complete computation of the circumstances of an eclipse ab initio requires three distinct processes. The geocentric positions of the sun and moon have first to be computed from the tables of the motions of those bodies. The second Elements of eclipses. step is to compute certain elements of the eclipse from these geocentric positions. The third step is from these elements to compute the circumstances of the eclipse for the earth generally or for any given place on its surface. The national Astronomical Ephemerides, or “Nautical Almanacs,” give in full the geocentric positions of the sun and moon from at least the early part of the 19th century to an epoch three years in advance of the date of publication. It is therefore unnecessary to undertake the first part of the computation except for dates outside the limits of the published ephemerides, and for many years to come even this computation will be unnecessary, because tables giving the elements of eclipses from the earliest historic periods up to the 22nd century have been published by T. Ritter von Oppolzer and by Simon Newcomb. We shall therefore confine ourselves to a statement of the eclipse problem and of the principles on which such tables rest.

Two systems of eclipse elements are now adopted in the ephemerides and tables; the one, that of F.W. Bessel, is used in the English, American and French ephemerides, the other—P. A. Hansen’s—in the German and in the eclipse tables of T. Ritter von Oppolzer. The two have in common certain geometric constructions. The fundamental axis of reference in both systems is the line passing through the centres of the sun and moon; this is the common axis of the shadow cones, which envelop simultaneously the sun and moon as shown in figs. 1, 2, 3. The surface of one of these cones, that of the umbra, is tangent to both bodies externally. This cone comes to a point at a distance from the moon nearly equal to that of the earth. Within it the sun is wholly hidden by the moon. Outside the umbral cone is that of the penumbra, within which the sun is partially hidden by the moon. The geometric condition that the two bodies shall appear in contact, or that the eclipse shall begin or end at a certain moment, is that the surface of one of these cones shall pass through the place of the observer at that moment. Let a plane, which we call the fundamental plane, pass through the centre of the earth perpendicular to the shadow axis. On this plane the centre of the earth is taken as an origin of rectangular co-ordinates. The axis of Z is perpendicular to the plane, and therefore parallel to the shadow axis; that of Y and X lie in the plane. In these fundamental constructions the two methods coincide. They differ in the direction of the axis of Y and X in the fundamental plane. In Bessel’s method, which we shall first describe, the intersection of the plane of the earth’s equator with the fundamental plane is taken as the axis of X. The axis of Y is perpendicular to it, the positive direction being towards the north. The Besselian elements of an eclipse are then:—x, y, the co-ordinates of the shadow axis on the fundamental plane; d, the declination of that point in which the shadow axis intersects the celestial sphere; μ, the Greenwich hour angle of this point; l, the radius of the circle, in which the penumbral or outer cone intersects the fundamental plane; and l’, the radius of the circle, in which the inner or umbral cone intersects this plane, taken positively when the vertex of the cone does not reach the plane, so that the axis must be produced, and negatively when the vertex is beyond the plane.

Hansen’s method differs from that of Bessel in that the ecliptic is taken as the fundamental plane instead of the equator. The axis of X on the fundamental plane is parallel to the plane of the ecliptic; that of Y perpendicular to it. The other elements are nearly the same in the two theories. As to their relative advantages, it may be remarked that Hansen’s co-ordinates follow most simply from the data of the tables, and are necessarily used in eclipse tables, but that the subsequent computation is simpler by Bessel’s method.

Several problems are involved in the complete computation 895 of an eclipse from the elements. First, from the values of the latter at a given moment to determine the point, if any, at which the shadow-axis intersects the surface of the earth, and the respective outlines of the umbra and penumbra on that surface. Within the umbral curve the eclipse is annular or total; outside of it and within the penumbral curve the eclipse is partial at the given moment. The penumbral line is marked from hour to hour on the maps given annually in the American Ephemeris. Second, a series of positions of the central point through the course of an eclipse gives us the path of the central point along the surface of the earth, and the envelopes of the penumbral and umbral curves just described are boundaries within which a total, annular or partial eclipse will be visible. In particular, we have a certain definite point on the earth’s surface on which the edge of the shadow first impinges; this impingement necessarily takes place at sunrise. Then passing from this point, we have a series of points on the surface at which the elements of the shadow-cone are in succession tangent to the earth’s surface. At all these points the eclipse begins at sunrise until a certain limit is reached, after which, following the successive elements, it ends at sunrise. At the limiting point the rim of the moon merely grazes that of the sun at sunrise, so that we may say that the eclipse both begins and ends at that time. Of course the points we have described are also found at the ending of the eclipse. There is a certain moment at which the shadow-axis leaves the earth at a certain point, and a series of moments when, the elements of the penumbral cone being tangent to the earth’s surface, the eclipse is ending at sunset. Three cases may arise in studying the passage of the outlines of the shadow over the earth. It may be that all the elements of the penumbral cone intersect the earth. In this case we shall have both a northern and a southern limit of partial eclipse. In the second case there will be no limit on the one side except that of the eclipse beginning or ending at sunrise or sunset. Or it may happen, as the third case, that the shadow-axis does not intersect the earth at all; the eclipse will then not be central at any point, but at most only partial.

The third problem is, from the same data, to find the circumstances of an eclipse at a given place—especially the times of beginning and ending, or the relative positions of the sun and moon at a given moment. Reference to the formulae for all these problems will be given in the bibliography of the subject.

ECLIPTIC, in astronomy. The plane of the ecliptic is that plane in or near which the centre of gravity of the earth and moon revolves round the sun. The ecliptic itself is the great circle in which this plane meets the celestial sphere. It is also defined, but not with absolute rigour, as the apparent path described by the sun around the celestial sphere as the earth performs its annual revolution. Owing to the action of the moon on the earth, as it performs its monthly revolution in an orbit slightly inclined to the ecliptic, the centre of the earth itself deviates from the plane of the ecliptic in a period equal to that of the nodal revolution of the moon. The deviation is extremely slight, its maximum amount ranging between 0.5′ and 0.6″. Owing to the action of the planets, especially Venus and Jupiter, on the earth, the centre of gravity of the earth and moon deviates by a yet minuter amount, generally one or two tenths of a second, from the plane of the ecliptic proper. Owing to the action of the planets, the position of the ecliptic is subject to a slow secular variation amounting, during our time, to nearly 47″ per century. The rate of this motion is slowly diminishing.

The obliquity of the ecliptic is the angle which its plane makes with that of the equator. Its mean value is now about 23° 27′. The motion of the ecliptic produces a secular variation in the obliquity which is now diminishing by an amount nearly equal to the entire motion of the ecliptic itself. The laws of motion of the ecliptic and equator are stated in the article Precession of the Equinoxes.

Attempts have been made by Laplace and his successors to fix certain limits within which the obliquity of the ecliptic shall always be confined. The results thus derived are, however, based on imperfect formulae. When the problem is considered in a rigorous form, it is found that no absolute limits can be set. It can, however, be shown that the obliquity cannot vary more than two or three degrees within a million of years of our epoch.

ECLOGITE (from Gr. ἐκλογή, a selection), in petrology, a typical member of a small group of metamorphic rocks of special interest on account of the variety of minerals they contain and their microscopic structures and geological relationships. Typically they consist of pale green or nearly colourless augite (omphacite), green hornblende and pink garnet. Quartz also is usually present in these rocks, but felspar is rare. The augite is mostly a variety of diopside and is only occasionally idiomorphic. The garnet sometimes forms good dodecahedra, but may occur as rounded grains, and encloses quartz, rutile, kyanite, and other minerals very frequently. The hornblende is usually pale green and feebly dichroic, but, in some eclogites which are allied to garnet-amphibolites, it is of dark brown colour. Among the commoner accessory minerals are kyanite (of blue or greyish-blue tints), rutile, biotite, epidote and zoisite, sphene, iron oxides, and 896 pyrites. The rutile is invariably in small brown prisms; the kyanite forms bladed crystals, with perfect cleavage; felspar, if present, belongs to basic varieties rich in lime. Other minerals which have been found in eclogites are bronzite, olivine and glaucophane. The last mentioned is a bright blue variety of hornblende with striking pleochroism. The eclogites in their chemical composition show close affinities to gabbros; they often exhibit relationships in the field which show that they were primarily intrusive rocks of igneous origin, and occasionally contact alteration can be traced in the adjacent schists. Examples are known in Saxony, Bavaria, Carinthia, Austria, Norway. A few eclogites also occur in the north-west highlands of Scotland. Glaucophane-eclogites have been met with in Italy and the Pennine Alps. Specimens of rock allied to eclogite have been found in the diamantiferous peridotite breccias of South Africa (the so-called “blue ground”), and this has given rise to the theory that these are the parent masses from which the Kimberley diamonds have come.

ECLOGUE, a short pastoral dialogue in verse. The word is conjectured to be derived from the Greek verb ἐκλέγειν, to choose. An eclogue, perhaps, in its primary signification was a selected piece. Another more fantastic derivation traces it to αἴξ, goat, and λόγος, speech, and makes it a conversation of shepherds. The idea of dialogue, however, is not necessary for an eclogue, which is often not to be distinguished from the idyll. The grammarians, in giving this title to Virgil’s pastoral conversations (Bucolica), tended to make the term “eclogue” apply exclusively to dialogue, and this has in fact been the result of the success of Virgil’s work. Latin eclogues were also written by Calpurnius Siculus and by Nemesianus. In modern literature the term has lost any distinctive character which it may have possessed among the Romans; it is merged in the general notion of pastoral poetry. The French “Églogues” of J.R. de Segrais (1624-1701) were long famous, and those of the Spanish poet Garcilasso de La Vega (1503-1536) are still admired.

ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY, the name given to the study of insects based on their relation to man, his domestic animals and his crops, and, in the case of those that are injurious, of the practical methods by which they can be prevented from doing harm, or be destroyed when present. In Great Britain little attention is paid to this important branch of agricultural science, but in America and the British colonies the case is different. Nearly every state in America has its official economic entomologists, and nearly every one of the British crown colonies is provided with one or more able men who help the agricultural community to battle against the insect pests. Most, if not all, of the important knowledge of remedies comes from America, where this subject reaches the highest perfection; even the life-histories of some of the British pests have been traced out in the United States and British colonies more completely than at home, from the creatures that have been introduced from Europe.

Some idea of the importance of this subject may be gained from the following figures. The estimated loss by the vine Phylloxera in the Gironde alone was £32,000,000; for all the French wine districts £100,000,000 would not cover the damage. It has been stated on good evidence that a loss of £7,000,000 per annum was caused by the attack of the ox warble fly on cattle in England alone. In a single season Aberdeenshire suffered nearly £90,000 worth of damage owing to the ravages of the diamond back moth on the root crops; in New York state the codling moth caused a loss of $3,000,000 to apple-growers. Yet these figures are nothing compared to the losses due to scale insects, locusts and other pests.

Injurious insects occur among the following orders: Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera (both heteroptera and homoptera), Orthoptera, Neuroptera and Thysanoptera. The order Aptera also contains a few injurious species.

Among the Coleoptera or beetles there is a group of world-wide pests, the Elateridae or click beetles, the adults of the various “wireworms.” The insects in the larval or wireworm stage attack the roots of plants, eating them away below the ground. The eggs deposited by the beetle in the ground develop into yellowish-brown wire-like grubs with six legs on the first three segments and a ventral prominence on the anal segment. The life of these subterranean pests differs in the various species; some undoubtedly (Agriotes lineatum) live for three or four years, during the greater part of which time they gnaw away at the roots of plants, carrying wholesale destruction before them. When mature they pass deep into the ground and pupate, appearing after a few months as the click beetles (fig. 1). Most crops are attacked by them, but they are particularly destructive to wheat and other cereals. With such subterranean pests little can be done beyond rolling the land to keep it firm, and thus preventing them from moving rapidly from plant to plant. A few crops, such as mustard, seem deleterious to them. By growing mustard and ploughing it in green the ground is made obnoxious to the wireworms, and may even be cleared of them. For root-feeders, bisulphide of carbon injected into the soil is of particular value. One ounce injected about 2 ft. from an apple tree on two sides has been found to destroy all the ground form of the woolly aphis. In garden cultivation it is most useful for wireworm, used at the rate of 1 ounce to every 4 sq. yds. It kills all root pests.

897

In Great Britain the flea beetles (Halticidae) are one of the most serious enemies; one of these, the turnip flea (Phyllotreta nemorum), has in some years, notably 1881, caused more than £500,000 loss in England and Scotland alone by eating the young seedling turnips, cabbage and other Cruciferae. In some years three or four sowings have to be made before a “plant” is produced, enormous loss in labour and cost of seed alone being thus involved. These beetles, characterized by their skipping movements and enlarged hind femora, also attack the hop (Haltica concinna), the vine in America (Graptodera chalybea, Illig.), and numerous other species of plants, being specially harmful to seedlings and young growth. Soaking the seed in strong-smelling substances, such as paraffin and turpentine, has been found efficacious, and in some districts paraffin sprayed over the seedlings has been practised with decided success. This oil generally acts as an excellent preventive of this and other insect attacks.

In all climates fruit and forest trees suffer from weevils or Curculionidae. The plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar, Herbst) in America causes endless harm in plum orchards; curculios in Australia ravage the vines and fruit trees (Orthorrhinus klugii, Schon, and Leptops hopei, Bohm, &c.). In Europe a number of “long-snouted” beetles, such as the raspberry weevils (Otiorhynchus picipes), the apple blossom weevil (Anthonomus pomorum), attack fruit; others, as the “corn weevils” (Calandra oryzae and C. granaria), attack stored rice and corn; while others produce swollen patches on roots (Ceutorhynchus sulcicollis), &c. All these Curculionidae are very timid creatures, falling to the ground at the least shock. This habit can be used as a means of killing them, by placing boards or sacks covered with tar below the trees, which are then gently shaken. As many of these beetles are nocturnal, this trapping should take place at night. Larval “weevils” mostly feed on the roots of plants, but some, such as the nut weevil (Balaninus nucum), live as larvae inside fruit. Seeds of various plants are also attacked by weevils of the family Bruchidae, especially beans and peas. These seed-feeders may be killed in the seeds by subjecting them to the fumes of bisulphide of carbon. The corn weevils (Calandra granaria and C. oryzae) are now found all over the world, in many cases rendering whole cargoes of corn useless.

The most important Hymenopterous pests are the sawflies or Tenthredinidae, which in their larval stage attack almost all vegetation. The larvae of these are usually spoken of as “false caterpillars,” on account of their resemblance to the larvae of a moth. They are most ravenous feeders, stripping bushes and trees completely of their foliage, and even fruit. Sawfly larvae can at once be recognized by the curious positions they assume, and by the number of pro-legs, which exceeds ten. The female lays her eggs in a slit made by means of her “saw-like” ovipositor in the leaf or fruit of a tree. The pupae in most of these pests are found in an earthen cocoon beneath the ground, or in some cases above ground (Lophyrus pini). One species, the slugworm (Eriocampa limacina), is common to Europe and America; the larva is a curious slug-like creature, found on the upper surface of the leaves of the pear and cherry, which secretes a slimy coating from its skin. Currant and gooseberry are also attacked by sawfly larvae (Nematus ribesii and N. ventricosus) both in Europe and America. Other species attack the stalks of grasses and corn (Cephus pygmaeus). Forest trees also suffer from their ravages, especially the conifers (Lophyrus pini). Another group of Hymenoptera occasionally causes much harm in fir plantations, namely, the Siricidae or wood-wasps, whose larvae burrow into the trunks of the trees and thus kill them. For all exposed sawfly larvae hellebore washes are most fatal, but they must not be used over ripe or ripening fruit, as the hellebore is poisonous.

The order Diptera contains a host of serious pests. These two-winged insects attack all kinds of plants, and also animals in their larval stage. Many of the adults are bloodsuckers (Tabanidae, Culicidae, &c.); others are parasitic in their larval stage (Oestridae, &c.). The best-known dipterous pests are the Hessian fly (Cecidomyia destructor), the pear midge (Diplosis pyrivora), the fruit flies (Tephritis Tyroni of Queensland and Halterophora capitata or the Mediterranean fruit fly), the onion fly (Phorbia cepetorum), and numerous corn pests, such as the gout fly (Chloropstaeniopus) and the frit fly (Oscinis frit). Animals suffer from the ravages of bot flies (Oestridae) and gad flies (Tabanidae); while the tsetse disease is due to the tsetse fly (Glossina morsitans), carrying the protozoa that cause the disease from one horse to another. Other flies act as disease-carriers, including the mosquitoes (Anopheles), which not only carry malarial germs, but also form a secondary host for these parasites. Hundreds of acres of wheat are lost annually in America by the ravages of the Hessian fly; the fruit flies of Australia and South Africa cause much loss to orange and citron growers, often making it necessary to cover the trees in muslin tents for protection. Of animal pests the ox warbles (Hypoderma lineata and H. bovis) are the most important (see fig. 2). The “bots” or larvae of these flies live under the skin of cattle, producing large swollen lumps—“warbles”—in which the “bots” mature (fig. 2). These parasites damage the hide, set up inflammation, and cause immense loss to farmers, herdsmen and butchers. The universal attack that has been made upon this pest has, however, largely decreased its numbers. In America cattle suffer much from the horn fly (Haematobia serrata). The dipterous garden pests, such as the onion fly, carrot fly and celery fly, can best be kept in check by the use of paraffin emulsions and the treatment of the soil with gas-lime after the crop is lifted. Cereal pests can only be treated by general cleanliness and good farming, and of course they are largely kept down by the rotation of crops.

Lepidopterous enemies are numerous all over the world. Fruit suffers much from the larvae of the Geometridae, the so-called “looper-larvae” or “canker-worms.” Of these geometers the winter moth (Cheimatobia brumata) is one of the chief culprits in Europe (fig. 3). The females in this moth and in others allied to it are wingless. These insects pass the pupal stage in the ground, and reach the boughs to lay their eggs by crawling up the trunks of the trees. To check them, “grease-banding” round the trees has been adopted; but as many other pests eat the leafage, it is best to kill all at once by spraying with arsenical poisons. Among other notable Lepidopterous pests are the “surface larvae” or cutworms (Agrotis spp.), the caterpillars of various Noctuae; the codling moth (Carpocapsa pomonella), which causes the maggot in apples, has now become a universal pest, having spread from Europe to America and to most of the British Colonies. In many years quite half the apple crop is lost in England owing to the larvae destroying the fruit. Sugar-canes suffer from the sugar-cane borer (Diatioca sacchari) in the West Indies; tobacco from the larvae of hawk moths (Sphingidae) in America; corn and grass from various Lepidopterous pests all over the world. Nor are stored goods exempt, for much loss annually takes 898 place in corn and flour from the presence of the larvae of the Mediterranean flour moth (Ephestia kuniella); while furs and clothes are often ruined by the clothes moth (Tinea trapezella).

By far the most destructive insects in warm climates belong to the Hemiptera, especially to the Coccidae or scale insects. All fruit and forest trees suffer from these curious insects, which in the female sex always remain apterous and apodal and live attached to the bark, leaf and fruit, hidden beneath variously formed scale-like coverings. The male scales differ in form from the female; the adult male is winged, and is rarely seen. The female lays her eggs beneath the scaly covering, from which hatch out little active six-legged larvae, which wander about and soon begin to form a new scale. The Coccidae can, and mainly do, breed asexually (parthenogenetically). One of the most important is the San José scale (Aspidiotus perniciosus), which in warm climates attacks all fruit and many other trees, which, if unmolested, it will soon kill (fig. 4). These scales breed very rapidly; Howard states one may give rise to a progeny of 3,216,080,400 in one year. Other scale insects of note are the cosmopolitan mussel scale (Mytilaspis pomorum) and the Australian Icerya purchasi. The former attacks apple and pear; the latter, which selects orange and citron, was introduced into America from Australia, and carried ruin before it in some orange districts until its natural enemy, the lady-bird beetle, Vedalia cardinalis, was also imported.

After the Coccidae the next most important insects economically are the plant lice or Aphididae. These breed with great rapidity under favourable conditions: one by the end of the year will be accountable, according to Linnaeus, for the enormous number of a quintillion of its species. Aphides are born, as a rule, alive, and the young soon commence to reproduce again. Their food consists mainly of the sap obtained from the leaves and blossom of plants, but some also live on the roots of plants (Phylloxera vastatrix and Schizoneura lanigera). Aphides often ruin whole crops of fruit, corn, hops, &c., by sucking out the sap, and not only check growth, but may even entail the death of the plant. Reproduction is mainly asexual, the females producing living young without the agency of a male. Males in nearly all species appear once a year, when the last female generation, the ovigerous generation, is fertilized, and a few large ova are produced to carry on the continuity of the species over the winter. Some aphides live only on one species of plant, others on two or more plants. An example of the latter is seen in the hop aphis (Phorodon humuli), which passes the winter and lives on the sloe and damson in the egg stage until the middle of May or later, and then flies off to the hops, where it causes endless harm all the summer (fig. 5); it flies back to the prunes to lay its eggs when the hops are ripe. Another aphis of importance is the woolly aphis (Schizoneura lanigera) of the apple and pear: it secretes tufts of white flocculent wool often to be seen hanging in patches from old apple trees, where the insects live in the rough bark and form cankered growths both above and below ground. Aphides are provided with a mealy skin, which does not allow water to be attached to it, and thus insecticides for destroying them contain soft soap, which fixes the solution to the skin; paraffin is added to corrode the skin, and the soft soap blocks up the breathing pores and so produces asphyxiation.

Amongst Orthoptera we find many noxious insects, notably the locusts, which travel in vast cloud-like armies, clearing the whole country before them of all vegetable life. The most destructive locust is the migratory locust (Locusta migratoria), which causes wholesale destruction in the East. Large pits are dug across the line of advance of these great insect armies to stop them when in the larval or wingless stage, and even huge bonfires are lighted to check their flight when adult. So dense are these “locust clouds” that they sometimes quite darken the air. The commonest and most widely distributed migratory locust is Pachytylus cinerascens. The mole cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris) and various cockroaches (Blattidae) are also amongst the pests found in this order.

Of Neuroptera there are but few injurious species, and many, such as the lace wing flies (Hemerobiidae), are beneficial.

The Treatment of Insect Pests.—One of the most important ways of keeping insect pests in check is by “spraying” or “washing.” This method has made great advances in recent years. All the pioneer work has been done in America; in fact, until the South-Eastern Agricultural College undertook the elucidation of this subject, little was known of it in England except by a few growers. The results and history of this essential method of treatment are embodied in Professor Lodemann’s work on the Spraying of Plants, 1896. In this treatment we have to bear in mind what the entomologist teaches us, that is, the nature, habits and structure of the pest.

Beneficial Insects have also to be considered in economic entomology. They are of two kinds—(1) those that help to keep down an excess of other insects by acting either as parasites or by being insectivorous in habit; and (2) insects of economic value, such as the bee and silkworm. Amongst the most important friends to the farmer and gardener are the Hymenopterous families of ichneumon flies (Ichneumonidae and Braconidae); the Dipterous families Syrphidae and Tachinidae; the Coleopterous families Coccinellidae and Carabidae; and the Neuropterous Hemerobiidae, or lace-wing flies. Ichneumon flies lay their eggs either in the larvae or ova of other insects, and the parasites destroy their host. In this way the Hessian fly is doubtless kept in check in Europe, and the aphides meet with serious hindrance to their increase. If a number of plant-lice are examined, a few will be found looking like little pearls; these are the dried skins of those that have been killed by Ichneumonidae. The Syrphidae, or hover flies, are almost exclusively aphis-feeders in their larval stage. Tachina flies attack lepidopterous larvae. One of the most notable examples of the use of insect allies is the case of the Australian lady-bird, Vedalia cardinalis, which, in common with all lady-birds, feeds off Aphidae and Coccidae. The Icerya scale (Icerya purchasi) imported into America ruined the orange groves, but its enemy, the Vedalia, was also imported from Australia, and counteracted its abnormal increase with such great results that the crippled orange groves are now once more profitable.

ECONOMICS (from the Gr. οἰκονομική, sc. τέχνη, from οἶκος, a house, and νόμος, rule,—the “art of household management”), the general term, with its synonym “political economy,” for the science or study of wealth (welfare) and its production, applicable either to the individual, the family, the State, or in the widest sense, the world. How far the same considerations apply to all these spheres is one of the problems of economic thought in its widest sense. The term “economy” (q.v.) by itself, which should strictly mean the art of applying money (or wealth) wisely, has commonly come to mean the art of saving money, or spending as little as possible. In practice the study of “political” economy is mainly devoted to the sphere of the State; the welfare of the individual as a member of the State, and of the State in its relation to the world, being internal aspects of the prosperity of the State itself. Economics thus includes the discussion of all the numerous factors which make life profitable, whether to the nation or to the business, or to the individual man. It may be conceived either as an historical science (What principles have in fact paid?), or as an abstract science (What are the true principles which must pay, presupposing an ideal?). Economists at different times have studied both aspects, according to their lights, and influenced by historical conditions of philosophic thought. A text-book on economics necessarily deals, therefore, with the whole subject in a manner which need not here be followed, since separate articles are devoted in this work to the biographies of writers on economics, and also to the principal economic 900 questions involved, under their own headings. In this article we propose therefore to confine ourselves to discussing the character and subject-matter of the science, indicating its relation to other sciences, and explaining the methods by which economists reach their conclusions.

We understand by economics the science which investigates the manner in which nations or other larger or smaller communities, and their individual members, obtain food, clothing, shelter and whatever else is considered desirable or necessary for the maintenance and improvement of the conditions of life. It is thus the study of the life of communities with special reference to one side of their activity. It necessarily involves the scientific examination of the structure and organization of the community or communities in question; their history, their customs, laws and institutions; and the relations between their members, in so far as they affect or are affected by this department of their activity.

At the root of all economic investigation lies the conception of the standard of life of the community. By this expression we do not mean an ideal mode of living, but the habits and requirements of life generally current in a community or grade of society at a given period. The standard of life of the ordinary well-to-do middle class in England, for example, includes not only food, clothing and shelter of a kind different in many respects from that of a similar class in other countries and of other classes in England, but a highly complicated mechanism, both public and private, for ministering to these primary needs, habits of social intercourse, educational and sanitary organization, recreative arrangements and many other elements. Many influences operating for a long period of time on the character and the environment of a class go to determine its standard of life. In a modern industrial community it is possible to express this standard fairly accurately for the purposes of economic investigation in terms of money (q.v.). But it is doubtful whether the most complete investigation would ever enable us to include all the elements of the standard of life in a money estimate. The character, tastes and capacity for management of different individuals and groups differ so widely that equal incomes do not necessarily imply identity of standard. In the investigation of past times, the incommensurate elements of well-being are so numerous that merely money estimates are frequently misleading. The conception of the standard of life involves also some estimate of the efforts and sacrifices people are prepared to make to obtain it; of their ideals and character; of the relative strength of the different motives which usually determine their conduct. But no carefully devised calculus can take the place of insight, observation and experience. The economist should be a man of wide sympathies and practical sagacity, in close touch with men of different grades, and, if possible, experienced in affairs.

It is evident that no permanent classification is possible of what is or is not of economic significance. No general rules, applicable to all times, can be laid down as to what phenomena must be examined or what may be neglected Character of subject-matter. in economic inquiry. The different departments of human activity are organically connected, and all facts relating to the life of a community have a near or remote economic significance. For short historical periods, indeed, many phenomena are so remotely connected with the ordinary business of life that we may ignore them. But at any moment special causes may bring into the field of economic inquiry whole departments of life which have hitherto been legitimately ignored. In times past, biblical exegesis, religious ideals, and ecclesiastical organization, the purely political aims of statesmen, chance combinations of party politics and the intrigues of diplomatists, class prejudice, social conventions, apparently sudden changes of economic policy, capricious changes of fashion—all these causes and many others have exerted a direct and immediate influence on the economic life of the community. In our own day we have had many illustrations of the manner in which special circumstances may at once bring an almost unnoticed series of scientific investigations into direct and vital relation with the business world. The economist must, therefore, not only be prepared to take account of the physical features of the world, the general structure and organization of the industry and commerce of different states, the character of their administration and other important causes of economic change. He must be in touch with the actual life of the community he is studying, and cultivate “that openness and alertness of the mind, that sensitiveness of the judgment, which can rapidly grasp the significance of at first sight unrelated discoveries or events.”

Some people are of opinion that the factors to be taken account of in economic investigation are so numerous that progress on these lines is impossible. It would certainly be impossible if we had to begin de novo to construct the whole fabric of economic science. But, as we shall see, it is no more necessary to do this in the world of science than it is in the world of business or politics. There is in existence a vast store of accumulated knowledge, and few, if any, departments of economics have been left quite unilluminated by the researches of former generations. Progress is the result of adaptation rather than reconstruction. It must be remembered also that economic work in modern times is carried on by consciously or unconsciously associated effort, and although it must always require high qualities of judgment, capacity and energy, many of the difficulties which at first sight appear so insuperable give way when they are attacked. In some ways also the study of highly developed organizations like the modern industrial state is simpler than that of earlier forms of society.

In the earliest times for which we have abundant material the economic life of England had already reached in certain directions a high degree of complexity. Even in the rural districts, manorial records reveal the existence of a great variety of classes and groups of persons engaged in the performance of economic functions. The lord of the manor with his officials and retainers, the peasantry bound to him by ties of personal dependence and mutual rights and obligations, constituted a little world, in which we can watch the play of motives and passions not so dissimilar as we are sometimes led to believe Ancient and modern conditions in England. from those of the great modern world. In many a country district the gradations of social rank were more continuous, the opportunities of intercourse more frequent, and the capacity for organization greater than in modern times. The manorial accounts were kept with precision and detail, and we are told that a skilled official could estimate to the utmost farthing the value of the services due from the villein to his lord. The manor was indeed self-sufficient and independent in the sense that it could furnish everything required by the majority of the inhabitants, and that over the greater part of rural England production was not carried on with a view to a distant market. But in the earliest times the manor was subjected to external influences of great importance. Vast areas of the country were in fact under the single control of a territorial lord or an ecclesiastical foundation. Every manor composing these great fiefs was likely to be affected by the policy or the character of the administration of the feudal lord, and he, again, by the policy or the difficulties, the strength or the weakness, of the central government. Foreign trade and foreign intercourse were undeveloped, but their influence was in historical times never entirely absent, while the influence of Roman law and the Christian Church constantly tended to modify the manorial organization. In the towns the division of labour had proceeded much further than in the rural districts, and there were in existence organized bodies, such as the Gild Merchant and the crafts, whose functions were primarily economic. But one of the most striking characteristics of town life in the middle ages was the manner in which municipal and industrial privileges and responsibilities were interwoven. In modern times the artisan, however well trained, efficient and painstaking he may be, does not, in virtue of these qualities, enjoy any municipal or political privileges. By means of his trade union, co-operative society or club he may gain some experience in the management of men and business, and in so far as the want of a sufficient income does not constitute an insuperable difficulty, he may share in the public life of the country. But in his character as 901 artisan he enjoys no municipal or political privileges. In the middle ages this differentiation of the industrial, municipal and political life had not taken place, and in order to understand the working of at first sight purely economic regulations it is necessary to make a close study of the functions of local government. But this, after all, does not carry us very far. From the very nature of the records in which we study the town life of the middle ages, it follows that we obtain from them only a one-sided view. No one knows what proportion of the industrial population was included in the organized gilds, or how complete was the control exercised by these bodies over their members. Elaborate regulations were in force, but no one knows how elastic they were in practice. Medieval Englishmen were particularly apt to put their aspirations into a legal form, and then rest satisfied with their achievement. The number of regulations is scarcely to be regarded as a test of their administrative success. Further, as the country became more consolidated and the central government extended its authority over economic affairs, new regulations came into force, new organs of government appeared, which were sometimes in conflict, sometimes in harmony, with the existing system, and it becomes for a time far more difficult to obtain a clear view of the actual working of economic institutions. Thus the study of the economic life of the middle ages is one of the most complicated subjects which can engage the attention of man. It is impossible to carry the process of isolation very far. The different threads of social activity are so closely interwoven that we cannot follow any one for very long without forming wrong impressions, and it becomes necessary to turn back and study others which seemed at first sight unrelated to the subject of our investigations. Under an apparently uniform and stable system of social regulation there was much variation and movement, the significance of which it is impossible to estimate. Materials for forming such an estimate no doubt exist, but before doing so we have to study in infinite detail a vast number of separate manors, municipalities or other separate economic areas. This involves great industry on the part of many scientific workers. Meanwhile we can illustrate the economic life of the middle ages, describe its main features, indicate the more important measures of public policy and draw attention to some of the main lines of development.

It is only as we approach more modern times that the conditions of economic study are realized and economic science, as we understand it, becomes possible. Those conditions are: (i.) the life of the state or other community Conditions of economic science. or communities we are studying must be so differentiated that we can isolate those functions which are wholly or predominantly economic. The “separation of employments” is not only a condition of economic efficiency; it was necessary before we could have an economic science. (ii.) We must be in a position so far to understand and estimate the character and motives of different classes and groups in these communities that we can rightly interpret their action. This condition cannot be realized without great difficulty, for “economic motives” are very different in different periods, nations and classes, and even for short periods of time in the same country are modified by the influence of other motives of an entirely different order. In studying the economic history of the 18th century, for example, it is not enough to assume with Defoe that “gain is the design of merchandise.” We have to be saturated, as it were, with 18th-century influences, so that we can realize the conditions in which industry and trade were carried on, before we can rightly explain the course of development. In our own day labour disputes, to take another example, can scarcely ever be resolved into a question of merely pecuniary gain or loss. The significance of the amount of money involved varies greatly for different trades, and can only be understood by reference to the character and habits of the people concerned. But questions of sentiment, shop-feeling and trade customs invariably play an important part. (iii.) Economics can never lead to anything but hypothetical results unless we not only realize that we must “take account of” other than the purely economic factors, but also give due weight and significance to these factors. No explanation of the industrial situation in Germany, for example, would be intelligible or satisfactory even from the economic point of view which ignored the significance of the political conditions which Germans have to deal with. So, again, it is impossible to make a useful comparative estimate of the advantages and disadvantages of the transport systems of England, the United States and Germany, unless we keep constantly in view the very different geographical, military and political conditions which these systems have to satisfy. (iv.) Sufficient information must be available to enable us to test the validity of our hypotheses and conclusions. Whatever “method” of economic investigation we employ, we must at every stage see how far our reasoning is borne out by the actual experience of life. This obvious condition of scientific inquiry is very far from being completely realized even at the present time. It implies the existence of a well-trained class engaged in the work of collecting information, and much organization both by the state and private bodies. These four conditions can be reduced to two. The community we are studying must have reached such a stage of development that its economic functions and those immediately cognate to them form a well-defined group, and adequate means must be available so that we can, as it were, watch the performance of these functions and test our hypotheses and conclusions by observation and experience.

It is easy to understand, therefore, why we trace the beginnings of economics, so far as England is concerned, in the 16th century, and why the application of strict scientific tests in this subject of human study has become possible only in comparatively recent times. Medieval economics was little more than a casuistical system of elaborate and somewhat artificial rules of conduct. From the close of the middle ages until the middle of the 18th century thousands of pamphlets and other works on economic questions were published, but the vast majority of the writers have little or no scientific importance. Their works frequently contain information given nowhere else, and throw much light on the state of opinion in the age in which they wrote. It is also possible to find in them many anticipations of the views of the economists of later times; but such statements were as a rule generated merely by the heat of controversy on some measure or event of practical importance, and when the controversy died down were seldom regarded or incorporated in a scientific system. Trade bias, personal impressions and guesswork took the place of scientific method. This was inevitable in the absence of trustworthy information on an adequate scale, and from the immediately practical aims of the writers. But from the end of the 17th century economics has been definitely recognized as a subject of scientific study.

In modern times the conditions which have made economic science possible have also made it necessary. While it is impossible to give a strictly economic interpretation of the earlier history of nations, economic interests Necessity of economic science. so govern the life and determine the policy of modern states that other forces, like those of religion and politics, seem to play only a subsidiary part, modifying here and there the view which is taken of particular questions, but not changing in any important degree the general course of their development. This may be, in the historical sense, merely a passing phase of human progress, due to the rapid extension of the industrial revolution to all the civilized and many of the uncivilized nations of the world, bringing in its train the consolidation of large areas, a similarity of conditions within them, and amongst peoples and governments a great increase in the strength of economic motives. When the world has settled down to the new conditions, if it ever does so, we may be confronted with problems similar to those which our forefathers had to solve. But, for the time, if we know the economic interests of nations, classes and individuals, we can tell with more accuracy than ever before how in the long run they will act. Public policy therefore requires the closest possible study of the economic forces which are moulding the destinies of the great nations of the world. In most civilized countries except England this is recognized, and adequate provision is made for the study 902 of economic science. But the subject is not only of immediate concern to the state in its corporate and public capacity. The neglect of it in the domain of private business can now only lead to disastrous results. To quote from a useful work (National Education: a Symposium, 1901), “the commercial supremacy of England was due to a variety of causes, of which superior intelligence, in the ordinary business sense, was not the most important. Her insular position, continuity of political development and freedom from domestic broils played an important part in bringing about a steady and continuous growth of industry and manufactures for several generations before the modern era. The great wars of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, which arrested the growth of continental nations, gave England the control of the markets of the world. When peace was restored, England enjoyed something in the nature of a monopoly. The competition of France ceased for a time to be an important factor. What is now the German empire was a mere congeries of small states, waging perpetual tariff wars upon each other. In the old Prussian provinces alone there were fifty-three different customs frontiers, and German manufactures could not develop until the growth of the Zollverein brought with it commercial consolidation, internal freedom and greater homogeneity of economic conditions. The industries of the United States were in their infancy. Thus the productive power of England was unrivalled, and her manufactures and business men, under a régime rapidly approximating to complete freedom of trade, could reap the full advantages to be derived from the possession of great national resources and production by machinery. Commercial supremacy required not so much highly trained intelligence amongst manufacturers and merchants as keen business instinct and a certain rude energy. In the last generation all that has changed, and the change is of a permanent character. The struggle of the future must inevitably be between a number of great nations, more or less equally well equipped, carrying on production by the same general methods, each one trying to strengthen its industrial and commercial position by the adoption of the most highly developed machinery, and all the methods suggested by scientific research, policy or experience. Under these conditions, it is no longer possible for the individual merchant, or for small groups of merchants, to acquaint themselves, by personal experience alone, with more than a fractional part of the causes which affect the business in which they are engaged. The spread of the modern industrial system has brought with it the modern state, with its millions of consumers, its vast area, its innumerable activities, its complicated code of industrial and commercial law. At the same time, the revolution in the means of transport and communication has destroyed, or is tending to destroy, local markets, and closely interwoven all the business of the world. Events in the most distant countries, industrial and commercial movements at first sight unrelated to the concerns of the individual merchant, now exert a direct and immediate influence upon his interests. The technical training of the factory or the office, the experience of business, the discharge of practical duties, necessary as they are, do not infallibly open the mind to the large issues of the modern business world, and can never confer the detailed acquaintance with facts and principles which lie outside the daily routine of the individual, but are none the less of vital importance.” Economics, therefore, under modern conditions, is not only a subject which may usefully occupy the attention of a leisured class of scientific men. It should form part of the training of educated men of all classes, on grounds of public policy and administrative and business efficiency.

The relations between economics and other sciences cannot be stated in a very general form. They vary for different periods, and are not the same for all branches of economics. There is no subject of human study which Relations between economics and other sciences. may not be at some time or other of economic significance, and anything which affects the character, the ideals or the environment of man may make it necessary to modify our assumptions and our reasoning with regard to his conduct in economic affairs. But if the economist, while studying one side of man’s activities, must also cultivate all other branches of human learning, it is obvious that no substantial progress can be made. The economist frankly assumes the reality of the existing world and takes men as they are, or as they have been if he is studying past times. His assumptions are based upon ordinary observation and experience, and are usually accurate in proportion to his practical shrewdness and sagacity, so that he is not interested in the speculative flights of philosophy, except in so far as they influence or have influenced conduct. In times past, and to a less extent in our own day, philosophical conceptions have formed the basis of great systems of politics and economics. The historical relations between philosophy and economics are of great importance in tracing the development of the latter, and have done much to determine its present form. But the modern conception of society or the state owes more to biology than philosophy, and actual research has destroyed more frequently than it has justified the assumptions of the older philosophical school. Experimental psychology may in course of time have an important bearing on economics, but the older science cannot be said to be of much significance except in its historical aspects. Ethics is in much the same position. That is, it is possible to conceive of an ethical science which would extend considerably our knowledge of economic affairs, but no important new principle or original discovery, relevant to economic investigation, has come from that quarter in recent years, and at present ethics has more to learn from economics than the latter has from ethics. It is in the adaptation of biological conceptions and methods, in the positive contributions of jurisprudence, law and history, in the rigorous application, where possible, of quantitative tests, that the explanation of the present position of economics is to be found. Mathematics has influenced the form and the terminology of the science, and has sometimes been useful in analysis; but mathematical methods of reasoning, in their application to economics, while possessing a certain fascination, are of very doubtful utility.

There is no method of investigation which is peculiarly economic or of which economics has the monopoly. In every age economists have applied the methods ordinarily in use amongst scientific men. There would probably Method of economic investigation. have been no controversy at all on this subject but for the fact that economics was elaborated into systematic form, and made the basis of practical measures of the greatest importance, long before the remarkable development in the 19th century of historical research, experimental science and biology. The application of the a priori method in economics was an accident, due to its association with other subjects and the general backwardness of other sciences rather than any exceptional and peculiar character in the subject-matter of the science itself. The methods applied to economics in the 18th and the early part of the 19th century were no more invented with a special view to that subject than the principles of early railway legislation, in the domain of practical policy, were devised with a special view to what was then a new means of transport. As a matter of fact, discussions of method and the criticism of hypotheses and assumptions are very rarely found in early economic works. It is only by reference to the prevailing ideas in philosophy and politics that we can discover what was in the minds of their authors. The growth of a science is much like the growth of a constitution. It proceeds by adaptation and precedent. The scientific and historical movement of the 19th century was revolutionary in character. When it began to affect economics, many people were afraid that the whole fabric of science would be destroyed and the practical gains it had achieved, jeopardized. These fears were justified, in so far as those who entertained them shut their eyes to everything new and assumed an attitude of no compromise. Where the newer methods were assimilated, the position of economics was strengthened and its practical utility increased. General discussion of method, however, is rarely profitable. In all branches of economics, even in what is called the pure theory, there is an implied reference to certain historical or existing conditions of a more or less 903 definite character; to the established order of an organized state or other community, at a stage of development which in its main features can be recognized. In all economic investigation assumptions must be made, but we must see that they are legitimate in view of the actual life and character of the community or communities which are the subject of investigation. In common with other sciences, economics makes use of “abstractions”; but if for some problems we employ symbolic processes of reasoning, we must keep clearly in view the limits of their significance, and neither endow the symbols with attributes they can never possess, nor lose sight of the realities behind them. Every hypothesis must be tested by an appeal to the facts of life, and modified or abandoned if it will not bear examination, unless we are convinced on genuine evidence that it may for a time be employed as a useful approximation, without prejudice to the later stages of the investigation we are conducting.

We shall best illustrate the character and method of economic reasoning by examples, and for that purpose let us take first of all a purely historical problem, namely, the effect on the wage-earners of the wages clauses of the Statute of An illustration of economic method. Apprenticeship (1563). It is at once obvious that we are dealing not with an abstract scheme of regulation in a hypothetical world, but with an act of parliament nominally in force for two hundred and fifty years, and applicable to a great variety of trades whose organization and history can be ascertained. The conclusions we reach may or may not modify any opinions we have formed as to the manner in which wages are determined under modern conditions. For the time being such opinions are irrelevant to the question we are investigating, and the less they are in our minds the better. There is no reason why we should apply to this particular act a different method of inquiry from that we should apply to any other of the numerous acts, of more or less economic importance, passed in the same session of parliament. The first step is to see whether there is a prima facie case for inquiry, for many acts of parliament have been passed which have never come into operation at all, or have been administered only for a short time on too limited a scale to have important or lasting results. The justices were authorized to fix wages at the Easter quarter sessions. Did they exercise their powers? To answer this question we must collect the wages assessments sanctioned by the magistrates. This is a perfectly simple and straightforward operation, involving nothing more than familiarity with records and industry in going through them. Without having recourse to any elaborate process of economic reasoning, by confining our attention to one simple question, namely, what happened, we can establish conclusions of the greatest interest to economic historians and, further, define the problem we have to investigate. We can show, for example: (1) that the Statute of Apprenticeship did not stand alone; it was one of a long series of similar measures, beginning more than two centuries before, which in their turn join on to the municipal and gild regulations of the middle ages; one of an important group of statutes, more or less closely interwoven throughout their history, administered by local authorities whose functions had grown largely in connexion with this legislation and the gradual differentiation of the trades and callings to which it related. (2) That wages were regulated with much greater frequency during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I. than at any later period. (3) That they were regulated in some counties and not in others. (4) That in the counties and towns where they were regulated the action of the magistrates was in general spasmodic, and rarely continuous for a long series of years. (5) That the magistrates used their powers sometimes to raise wages, sometimes to force them down. (6) That the local variations of wages and prices were what we should call excessive, so that the standard of comfort in one district was very different from that of others. (7) That the wages assessments group themselves round certain short periods, coincident in many instances with high prices, increase of poverty, and other causes of exceptional action. (8) That what we may call, with the above limitations, the effective period of the act terminates with the outbreak of the Civil War. (9) That subsequent to that period organic changes in the industries affected, coupled with the incompetence of parliament to adapt the old legislation to new conditions, and the growing acceptance of the doctrine of laissez faire, brought about a general disuse of the statute, though isolated attempts to enforce it were made and new acts applicable to certain trades were passed in the 18th century. (10) For more than one hundred years before the repeal of the act, trade unions and other forms of voluntary association amongst wage-earners, combinations amongst employers, collective agreements, customary regulations, were established in many of the important trades of the country. But these conclusions, after all, suggest more difficulties than they remove, for they show that our inquiry, instead of presenting certain well-marked features which can be readily dealt with, has to be split up into a number of highly specialized studies: the investigation of rates of wages, prices and the standard of comfort in different localities, bye-industries, regularity of employment, the organization of particular trades, the economic functions of local authorities, apprenticeship and a host of other subjects. Moreover, all these subjects hang together, so that it seems impossible to come to a decision about one of them without knowing all about the others.

It is a comparatively simple thing to state the question to which we want an answer, but extremely difficult to define the exact nature of the evidence which will constitute a good answer; easy enough to say we must try hypothesis after hypothesis, and test each one by an appeal to the facts, but a man may easily spend his life in this sort of thing and still leave to his descendants nothing more than a legacy of rejected hypotheses. Every volume of records we look through contains a mass of detailed information on the economic life of England in the period we are studying. How much of it is relevant to the subject of inquiry? What is to be the principle of selection? How shall we determine the relative weight and importance of different kinds of relevant evidence? As in modern problems, so in those of past times, a man requires for success qualities quite distinct from those conferred by merely academic training and the use of scientific methods. A correct sense of proportion and the faculty of seizing upon the dominant factors in an historical problem are the result partly of the possession of certain natural gifts in which many individuals and some nations are conspicuously wanting, partly of general knowledge of the working of the economic and political institutions of the period we are studying, partly of what takes the place of practical experience in relation to modern problems, namely, detailed acquaintance with different kinds of original sources and the historical imagination by which we can realize the life and the ideals of past generations. These qualities are required all the more because, in order to make any further progress with such an inquiry as we have suggested, we have deliberately to make use of abstraction as an instrument of investigation.

Let us see how this will work out. Suppose we have selected one of the numerous subsidiary problems suggested by the general inquiry, and obtained such full and complete information about one particular industry that we The plan of a general theory. can tabulate the wages of the workers for a long series of years. We may do the same for other industries, some of them coming under the Statute of Apprenticeship, others not. If all the industries belong to one economic area over which, so far as we can tell from general statistics of wages and prices, and other information, fairly homogeneous conditions prevailed, we may be able to reach some useful conclusions as to the operation of the act. But it would be absurd to suppose that we could reach those conclusions by simple reference to the trades themselves. We cannot assume that the fluctuations in wages were due to the action or inaction of magistrates without the most careful examination of the other influences affecting the trades. In economic affairs the argument post hoc propter hoc never leads to the whole truth, and is frequently quite misleading. We cannot suppose that the policy of the Merchant Adventurers’ Company had nothing to do with the woollen industry; that the export trade in woollen cloth was quite independent of the 904 foreign exchanges and international trade relations in those times; that the effect on wages of the state of the currency, the influx of new silver, the character of the harvests, and many other influences can be conveniently ignored. In studying, therefore, such an apparently simple question as the effect of an act of parliament on wages in a small group of trades we want a general theory which we can use as a kind of index of the factors we have to consider.

Assuming that we have in our minds this safeguard against loose thinking and neglect of important factors, the investigation of the special problems arising out of the general inquiry resolves itself into a careful definition of each Difficulties due to want of evidence. problem we wish to deal with, and the collection, tabulation and interpretation of the evidence. In most cases the interpretation of the facts is far from obvious, and we have to try several hypotheses before we reach one which will bear the strain of a critical examination in the light of further evidence. But at this stage in historical investigation it is generally the want of evidence of a sufficiently complete and continuous character, rather than difficulties of method, which forces us to leave the problem unsolved. It is, for instance, practically impossible to obtain reliable evidence as to the regularity of employment in any industry in the 17th century, and the best approximations and devices we can invent are very poor substitutes for what we really want. For this reason guesswork must continue to play an important part in economic history. But every genuine attempt to overcome its difficulties brings us into closer touch with the period we are examining; and though we may not be able to throw our conclusions into the form of large generalizations, we shall get to know something of the operation of the forces which determined the economic future of England; understand more clearly than our forefathers did, for we have more information than they could command, and a fuller appreciation of the issues, the broad features of English development, and be in a position to judge fairly well of the measures they adopted in their time. By comparing England with other countries we may be able in the distant future to reach conclusions of some generality as to the laws of growth, maturity and decay of industrial nations. But like the early statisticians of the 17th century, economic historians are the “beginners of an art not yet polished, which time may bring to more perfection.”

When we come to exclusively modern questions, there is no reason or necessity for a fundamental change of method. We cannot suppose that there occurred, at or about the commencement of the 19th century, a breach of The investigation of modern questions. historical continuity of such a character that institutions, customs, laws and social conventions were suddenly swept away, the bonds of society loosened, and the state and people of England dissolved into an aggregate of competing individuals. The adoption of machinery gradually revolutionized the methods of production; but in the first instance only certain industries were affected, and those not at the same time or in the same degree; old laws grown obsolete were repealed, but other laws affecting wage-earners and employers took their place, more complicated and elaborate than the Elizabethan code. Trade unions, so far from disappearing, were legalized, gathered strength from the changes in industrial organization, and nowhere became so powerful as in the most progressive industries; while other forms of combination appeared, incomparably stronger, for good or evil, than those of earlier times. But while we recognize these facts, we must not suppose that we have to study the action of men as though they were all enrolled in organized associations, or covered by stringent laws which were always obeyed. There has never been in the history of English industry such licence as we find in certain directions in the earlier part of the 19th century.

It is not in the decay of combination and monopoly or in the growth of competition that we must look for the distinctive characteristics of modern problems. A 17th-century monopoly was a very weak and ineffective instrument compared The distinctive features of modern problems. with a modern syndicate; the Statute of Apprenticeship was certainly not so widely enforced as the “common rules” of trade unions; and many of the regulations of past times, which look so complicated to modern eyes, were conditions of free enterprise rather than restraints upon it. It is due to the influence of the laisser faire doctrine that we regard law and regulation as a restraint on liberty. As a maxim for guidance in public affairs, laisser faire was genuinely relevant at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, when the Statute Book was cumbered with vexatious and obsolete laws. As an explanation of what has taken place in later years, or of the actual economic life of the present day, it is ludicrously inadequate. Competition, in the sense in which the word is still used in many economic works, is merely a special case of the struggle for survival, and, from its limitation, does not go far towards explaining the actual working of modern institutions. To buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest; to secure cheapness by lowering the expenses of production; to adopt the less expensive rather than the more expensive method of obtaining a given result—these and other maxims are as old as human society. Competition, in the Darwinian sense, is characteristic not only of modern industrial states, but of all living organisms; and in the narrower sense of the “higgling of the market” is found on the Stock Exchange, in the markets of old towns, in medieval fairs and Oriental bazaars. In modern countries it takes myriads of forms, from the sweating of parasitic trades to the organization of scientific research. Economic motives, again, are as varied as the forms of competition, and their development is coeval with that of human society. They have to be interpreted in every age in relation to the state of society, the other motives or ideals with which they are associated, the kind of action they inspire, and the means through which they operate. Apparently the same economic motives have led in the same age and in the same nation to monopoly and individual enterprise, protection and free trade, law and anarchy. In our own time they have inspired both the formation of trade combinations and attempts to break them up, hostility to all forms of state interference and a belief in collectivism.

The conditions which are peculiar to the modern world are the large numbers we have to deal with, the vast and fairly homogeneous areas in which justice is administered and property secured, and the enormously increased facilities for transport and communication. These conditions are of course not independent of each other, and they have brought in their train many consequences, some good and some bad. But they supply the bases for that general theory which, as we have seen, is indispensable in economic investigation. From the standpoint of general theory economic movements assume an impersonal character and economic forces operate like the forces of nature. Although economic motives have become more complex, they have just as much and no more to do with general economic reasoning and analysis than the causes of death with the normal expectation of life, or domestic ideals with the birth-rate. So far as we have anything to do with psychology at all, it is the psychology of crowds and not of individuals which we have to consider. If we study the economy of a village, the idiosyncrasies of every individual in it are of importance. If the village is replaced by a large area, inhabited by millions, with modern facilities of communication, it is a matter of observation and experience that for the purposes of general reasoning the idiosyncrasies of individuals may be neglected. Whether such large numbers have the character of the “economic man” of the early economists matters very little. All the assumptions we require are furnished by observation of people in the mass and the larger generalizations of statistics. Thus we can construct a kind of envelope of theory, which, by careful testing as we proceed, can be made to indicate in a general manner the reactions of one part of the activities of the economic world upon the others, and the interdependence of the several parts. From its very nature this general theory can never correspond strictly to the actual life and movement of any given state. It is useful and necessary, and plays somewhat the same part in economic 905 investigation as ton-mile statistics do in the administration of a railway. To express in any language or to illustrate by any images, from a purely objective standpoint, the infinitely complicated movements of the actual world, is a task far beyond human capacity.

With the aid of this general theory the methods we have sketched in relation to historical problems apply with greater force to the special problems of modern times, and are rewarded with results more accurate, more fruitful, Application to modern problems. more relevant to difficulties which all civilized nations have to face, than those of historical research. To many minds the interest and usefulness of economics depend entirely on the application of these methods, for it is the actual working of economic institutions about which the statesman, the publicist, the business man and the artisan wish to know. Under the conditions we have described, many of the most interesting problems of our own time, when they are once defined, resolve themselves into statistical inquiries. But in most cases such an inquiry cannot be successfully carried out by a mere statistician. Definite economic problems can very rarely be dealt with by merely quantitative methods. In the tabulation and interpretation of statistical evidence, as in its collection, it is scarcely possible to overrate the importance of wide knowledge and experience. There is another very important instrument of investigation which can be used in our own time, but cannot be employed in historical research. Historical documents, however detailed, rarely show all the factors we have to deal with or fully explain a given situation. No sane person would suppose that the minutes of a modern legislative body explain the steps by which legislation has been passed, or the issues really involved. The ostensible cause of a modern labour dispute is frequently not the real or the most important cause. In modern problems we can watch the economic machine actually at work, cross-examine our witnesses, see that delicate interplay of passions and interests which cannot be set down or described in a document, and acquire a certain sense of touch in relation to the questions at issue which manuscripts and records cannot impart. We can therefore substitute sound diagnosis for guesswork more frequently in modern than in historical problems.

What then, it may be asked, becomes of the “old Political Economy”? Of what possible use are the works of the so-called classical writers, except in relation to the history of economics and the practical influence of theory in past times? If we take the mere popular view of what is meant by the “old Political Economy,” that is, that a generation or so ago economics was comprised in a neatly rounded set of general propositions, The “old political economy.” universally accepted, which could be set forth in a text-book and learnt like the multiplication table, it is not incumbent on the present generation to define its attitude at all. In this sense of the words, there was no faith delivered to our fathers which we are under any obligation to guard or even explain. If by the “old Political Economy” we mean the methods and conclusions of certain great writers, who stood head and shoulders above their contemporaries and determined the general character of economic science, we are still under no obligation to define the attitude of the present generation with regard to them. The fact that Adam Smith, with the meagre materials of the 18th century at his disposal, saw his way to important generalizations which later research has established on a firm basis, may enhance greatly the reputation of Adam Smith, but does not strengthen the generalizations. They stand or fall by the strength of the evidence for or against them. In the history of economics or the biography of Ricardo it is of interest to show that he anticipated later writers, or that his analysis bears the test of modern criticism; but no economist is under any obligation to defend Ricardo’s reputation, nor is the fact that a doctrine is included in his works to be taken as a demonstration of its truth. The appeal to authority cannot be permitted in economics any more than in chemistry, physics or astronomy. But the cases stated above suggest more or less false issues. There has been no revolution in economic science, and is not likely to be any. The question we have really to determine is how we can make the best use of the accumulated knowledge of past generations, and to do that we must look more closely into the economic science of the 19th century.

Any one who has taken the trouble to trace the history of one of the modern schools of economists, or of any branch of economic science, knows how difficult it is to say when it began. “Anticipations” of method and doctrine can generally be found by the diligent investigator in the economic literature of his own or a foreign country. So that cross-sections of the stream of economic thought will reveal the existence, at different times, in varying proportions and at different stages of development, of most of the modern “schools.” Again, the classification of an economic bibliography at once shows how varied has been the character of economic investigation, ranging from the most abstract speculation on the one hand to almost technical studies of particular trades on the other. Of the great army of writers who flourished in the first half of the 19th century some were closely identified with the utilitarian school, and the majority were influenced in a greater or less degree by the prevailing ideas of that school. Others, however, were hostile to it. In many works, such as those of a statistical or historical character, there are frequently to be found passages which could have been written in no other period, but are only of the nature of ejaculations and do not affect the argument. In stating the position of economics during this time we cannot ignore all writers, except these who belonged to one group, however eminent that group may have been, simply because they did not represent the dominant ideas of the period, and exercised no immediate and direct influence on the movement of economic thought. We must include the pioneers of the historical school, the economic historians, the socialists, the statisticians, and others whose contributions to economics are now appreciated, and without whose labours the science as we know it now would have been impossible. If we take this broadly historical view of the progress of economics, it is obvious that even in England there was no general agreement, during the 19th century, as to the methods most appropriate to economic investigation.

Suppose, now, we ignore the writers who were inaugurating new methods, investigating special problems or laboriously collecting facts, and concentrate attention on the dominant school, with its long series of writers from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill. It is the work of these writers which people have in mind when they speak of the “old Political Economy.” There are several quite distinct questions we can ask with regard to them. That they must be studied closely by every one who wishes to follow the history of economics goes without saying. That they must be studied by the economic historian is equally clear, owing to their practical influence and the fact that they furnished the theoretical bases of much of the economic policy of the 19th century. This is true whether their method is good or bad, whether their conclusions are true or false. It is not so easy to determine their relevance and usefulness in relation to distinctively modern problems, or to indicate within what limits their work is of permanent value, and we can only deal with these questions in their more general aspects.

It must be clear to every observer that the economists of the classical period, with the one exception of Adam Smith, will speedily share the fate of nearly all scientific writers. They will be forgotten, and their books will not be read. Adams Smith’s Wealth of Nations, if it has ever been, has long ceased to be a scientific text-book. Whether a modern economist accepts his views or not is of no importance. There is probably not a single chapter in the Wealth of Nations which would be thoroughly endorsed by any living economist. But the reputation of the book and its author is quite independent of considerations of this kind. The Wealth of Nations is one of the great books of the world, many of the sayings of which are likely to be more frequently quoted in the future than they have been in the 19th century. Malthus is already an author whose name is probably more widely known than that of any other economist, but whose works are rarely read, and studied only by a small proportion of 906 the few people who write books on the history of economic theory. Of economic students, many are unaware of the fact that he wrote any other book than the Essay on the Principle of Population, and what is of permanent importance in that work is contained in the generalization which it suggested to Darwin. Moreover, modern economists, while accepting in the main the general tenor of Malthus’s theory of population, would not agree with his statement of it. Like Malthus, Ricardo owes his reputation very largely to the theory associated with his name, though it has long ceased to be stated precisely in the terms he employed. But there are very few people in the world who have made a careful study of his works; and although his theory of rent has a wide and increasing application in economics, it is not comparable in general scientific importance with Malthus’s theory of population. It is already impossible to take J.S. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy as a text-book. Important as it was for thirty or forty years, it will soon be as little read as M’Culloch’s Principles. For the rest of the economists of this period, it is difficult to see how they can escape oblivion. When the generation whose economic training was based upon J.S. Mill has died out, the relevance of the “old Political Economy” is not likely to be a question of any interest to ordinary educated men and women, or even to the great mass of economic students.

The explanation of this decay of interest does not lie upon the surface. It is frequently supposed that the influence of the “old Political Economy” has been gradually undermined by the attacks of the historical school. But great as the achievements of this school have been, it has not developed any scientific machinery which can take the place of theory in economic investigation. If our view is correct that, broadly speaking, the two ways of regarding economic questions are complementary rather than mutually exclusive, there does not seem to be any reason why the growth of the historical school should have been destructive of the “old Political Economy” if it had been well founded. The use of the historical method has, in fact, raised more reputations than it has destroyed, because by keeping carefully in view the conditions in which economic works have been written, it has shown that many theories hastily condemned as unsound by a priori critics had much to be said for them at the time when they were propounded. This observation is true not only of old-world writers like the Mercantilists, but also of Ricardian economics. No one is concerned to prove that the Ricardian economics applies to the manorial system, and it is generally supposed at any rate that the world has been approximating more and more nearly during the last century to the conditions assumed in most of the reasoning of that school. On the principles we have explained, therefore, the Ricardian economics should supply just that body of general theory which is required in the investigation of modern economic problems, and the reputation of at any rate the leading writers should be as great as ever. It would be of immense advantage from a scientific point of view if this could be taken for granted, if for a time the work of the classical economists could be considered final so far as it goes, and for the purposes of investigation regarded as the theoretical counterpart of the modern industrial system. This assumption, however, has been made quite impossible, not by the historical school, but by the criticism and analysis of economists in the direct line of the Ricardian succession.

Modern economic criticism and analysis has destroyed the authority of the “old Political Economy” as a scientific system. The assumptions, the definitions, the reasoning, the conclusions of the classical writers have been ruthlessly overhauled. Defects in their arguments have been exposed to view by those who are most concerned to defend their reputation. Writers with none of the prejudices of the historical school, but with the cold and remorseless regard for logic of the purely objective critic, have pointed out serious inconsistencies here, the omission of important factors there, until very little of the “old Political Economy” is left unscathed. In fact, there never was a scientific system at all. What was mistaken for it was fashioned in the heat of controversy by men whose interests were practical rather than scientific, who could not write correct English, and revealed in their reasoning the usual fallacies of the merely practical man. So the “old Political Economy” lies shattered. It is useless to suppose that this destructive criticism from within can be neutralized by generously sprinkling the pages of the classical writers with interpretation clauses. This may serve to show that the ideals of our youth were not without justification; but the younger generation, which does not care about our ideals, and looks to the future rather than the past, will not read annotated editions of old books, however eminent their authors. If the Ricardian school of economists had been merely philosophers, or even a group like the French physiocrats, this state of things might be regarded with equanimity. We might assume that criticism and analysis had separated the wheat from the chaff in their writings, that everything of permanent value had probably been preserved and incorporated in the works of later economists. But the character of much of their work makes this assumption impossible. It is, in fact, quite true that many of them were more interested in practical aims than in the Ricardo’s limitations. advancement of economic science. We may talk of the assumptions implicitly involved in Ricardo’s works. In reality we do not know what those assumptions were; we only know what assumptions we should make in order to reach the same conclusions, and they may be very different from “the mind of Ricardo.” Ricardo’s works, in fact, do not explain a theoretical system, but contain the matured reflections, more or less closely reasoned, of a man of great mental power looking out on the world as it appeared to a business man experienced in affairs. The conclusions of such a work are of wider significance than the assumptions we attribute to the author would warrant. They are not expressed in terms which satisfy our canons of scientific accuracy. Dissected sentence by sentence, the book may be shown to be a mass of inconsistencies. If it has the misfortune to be systematized by an enthusiastic but dull and incompetent disciple, it may appear even absurd. But after all the misinterpretation of contemporaries and the destructive criticism of later times, the book as a whole leaves upon us an impression of peculiar strength and charm, and imparts a sense of the relations of things truer, because less mechanical, than the laboured reasoning of smaller men. Such is the character of much of the work of Ricardo and some of his contemporaries. We think that the decay of interest in these writers involves a real loss, and that students of modern problems may do worse than read Ricardo and his school. Some of the criticism of their works, necessary and useful as it has been, will probably be corrected later on by that breadth of view and sense of proportion which has enabled us to appreciate justly the achievements of lesser men in more remote times. But rehabilitation in accordance with the canons of historical justice will not restore the lost influence of the Ricardian school. Their achievements in the 19th century will be fully acknowledged, but the relevance of their work to the problems of the 20th century will be admitted less than at the present time.

In a subject like economics it must always be very difficult to decide how far a departure from the traditional form and expression of its main doctrines is necessary or desirable. No one who is really experienced in economic Economics a conservative science. investigation cares to emphasize the originality, still less the revolutionary character of his own work. It is much more likely than not that some principle which for the moment seems new, some distinction which we may flatter ourselves has not been observed before, has been pointed out over and over again by previous writers, although, owing to special circumstances, it may not have received the notice it deserved. Economics is therefore, on the whole, an intensely conservative science, in which new truths are cautiously admitted or incorporated merely as extensions or qualifications of those enunciated by previous writers. This procedure has its advantages, but it may easily become dangerous by destroying the influence of the science it is meant to preserve. It is not unlike the procedure of the canonists and casuists of the middle ages with regard to the doctrine of usury, by which the doctrine was to all appearances preserved intact while in reality it was stripped of all its 907 original meaning by innumerable distinctions “over-curious and precise.” In the same way the doctrines of the classical economists may be adapted by interpretation clauses and qualifications the exact force of which cannot be tested or explained, so that we do not know whether the original proposition is to be considered substantially correct or not. The result will be that while the doctrines are apparently being brought into closer correspondence with the facts of life, they will in reality be made quite useless for practical purposes or economic investigation. It is easier to point out the danger than to suggest how it should be met. The position we have described is no doubt partly due to the unsettlement of economic opinion and the hostile criticism of old-established doctrines which has characterized the last generation. Or it may be the result of economic agnosticism, combined with unwillingness to cut adrift from old moorings. Whatever the cause, the complete restatement of economic theory, which some heroic persons demand, is clearly impossible, except on conditions not likely to be realized in the immediate future. The span of life is limited; the work requires an extensive knowledge of the economic literature of several countries and the general features of all the important departments of modern economic activity. In general theory special studies by other men cannot play the same part as they do in historical and statistical work. In historical and statistical investigation, or in special studies of particular subjects, it is possible, given the pecuniary means, to organize a whole army of skilled assistants, and with ordinary care to combine the results of their separate efforts. In general theory the inverse rule seems to prevail. There the unity of conception and aim, the firm grip of all the different lines of argument and their relation to each other, which are required, can only be given by a single brain. But no one individual can do original work over the whole field. He is lucky if he can throw new light on a few old propositions. For the rest, he can only, with the utmost caution, adopt the suggestions of other minds as qualifications of old doctrines, never feeling quite sure that he is right in doing so. A complete restatement could only be undertaken by a group of men, trained in much the same conditions, accustomed to think and work together, each one engaged on a special department, but all acting under the control of one master-mind. This is largely a question of the organization of economic studies, and it is of the greatest importance that, if possible, such an effort should be made to present in a connected form the best results of modern criticism and analysis.

Economics is unlike many other sciences in the fact that its claim to recognition must be based upon its practical utility, on its relevance to the actual life of the economic world, on its ability to unravel the social and economic Some recent developments of economic theory. difficulties of each generation, and to contribute to the progress of nations. The very effectiveness of modern criticism and analysis, which has brought great gains in almost all branches of economic theory, has made the science more difficult as a subject of ordinary study. The extensions, the changes or the qualifications, of old doctrines, which at any rate in the works of responsible writers are rarely made without good if not always sufficient reason, have modified very considerably the whole science, and weakened the confidence of ordinary educated men in its conclusions. In the case of many subjects this would matter very little, but in that of economics, which touches the ordinary life of the community at so many points, it is of great importance, especially at a time like the present, when economic questions determine the policy of great nations. The “economic man” of the earlier writers, with his aversion from labour and his desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences, has been abandoned by their successors, with the result that in the opinion of many good people altruistic sentiment may be allowed to run wild over the whole domain of economics. The “economic man” has, on the other hand, been succeeded by another creation almost as monstrous, if his lineaments are to be supposed to be those of the ordinary individual—a man, that is, who regulates his life in accordance with Gossen’s Law of Satiety, and whose main passion is to discover a money measure of his motives. It is extremely important to consider how far the economic conceptions based upon this view of the action of men in the ordinary business of life—such, for example, as the doctrine of marginal utility—depend for their truth and relevance on the fact that in economics we are dealing with large aggregates. The earlier writers generally assumed perfect mobility of labour and capital. No economist would deliberately make that assumption now unless he were dealing with some purely theoretical problem, for the solution of which it was legitimate at some stage in the reasoning. Many of the questions of the greatest practical importance at the present time, such as the competition between old and new methods of manufacturing commodities substantially the same in kind, and equally useful to the great body of consumers, arise largely from the immobility of capital or labour, or both of them. But it is obvious that if the assumption of perfect mobility is invalid, there is scarcely any economic doctrine identified with the earlier writers which may not require modification, in what degree it is impossible to say without very careful investigation. Much suggestive work on this subject of a general character is incorporated in economic books of the present day, but there is room for a whole series of careful monographs on a question of such fundamental importance. The same may be said of another subject, too frequently neglected by earlier writers, to which due significance has been given in the best recent work, namely, time in relation to value. It would perhaps be too much to say that the full consideration of this point has revolutionized the theory of value, but it has certainly created what seems almost a new science in close contact with the actual life of the modern world.

Some doctrines of the earlier economists, such as the Wages Fund Theory, are now practically abandoned, though it may be said that they contained a certain amount of truth. Others, which were considered of fundamental importance, owe their position in modern economics and the form in which they are stated to the “tradition of the elders.” If they could, by some happy chance, have been left for discovery by modern economists, they would without doubt have received different treatment, to the great advantage of economic science. Such a doctrine is the so-called Law of Diminishing Returns, which Mill considered “the most important proposition in Political Economy.” “Unless this one matter,” he says, “be thoroughly understood, it is to no purpose proceeding any further in our inquiry.” “Were the law different, nearly all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are.” On the other hand, Thorold Rogers, not to speak of earlier objectors, described the law as a “dismal and absurd theorem.” The opinions of present-day economists appear to fluctuate between these two extremes. The law may apparently be “a general rule” or “a tendency” which is liable to be “checked,” or a particular case of the law of the conservation of energy. If we go to Mill to discover what it is, we find that “it is not pretended that the law of diminishing return was operative from the beginning of society; and though some political economists may have believed it to come into operation earlier than it does, it begins quite early enough to support the conclusions they founded on it.” “It comes into operation at a certain and not very advanced stage in the progress of agriculture.” But this very important stage in the history of a nation is not defined or clearly illustrated. We are told that we can see “the law at work underneath the more superficial agencies on which attention fixes itself”; it “undergoes temporary suspension,” which may last indefinitely; and “there is another agency, in habitual antagonism” to it, namely, “the progress of civilization,” which may include every kind of human improvement. Mill apparently is not content with the confusion between “law” and “agency” or “force,” but opposes the one to the other. He is constantly speaking in terms which imply the conquering of one law by another, a habit from which his successors have not freed themselves; and the theory of natural processes which appears to have satisfied him, was that when two forces come into operation there is a partial or complete suspension of one by the 908 other. In modern economics “fertility” has no very definite meaning. It may mean what is ordinarily understood by the word—climate, rainfall, railway rates or anything else except “indestructible powers of the soil.” To speak of “additional labour and capital” without reference to the kind and quality of the labour and capital, and the manner in which they are employed, organized and directed, throws very little light on agriculture. Every improvement involves, from a quantitative point of view, more or less of capital or of labour, so that it is the “antagonizing” influences, which are nearly all qualitative, which appear to be really important. It is therefore extraordinarily difficult at present to know what happens, or rather what would happen if it were not prevented, when a country reaches “the stage of diminishing returns”; what precisely it is which comes into operation, for obviously the diminishing returns are the results, not the cause; or how commodities “obey” a law which is always “suspended.” Possibly the present generation of English industrial history will furnish many illustrations of the law of diminishing returns. We can only say that it requires investigation and restatement.

Closely related to the law of diminishing returns is the Theory of Rent. No economic doctrine so well illustrates the achievements and the defects of modern economic analysis. Ricardo’s statement of the theory left upon the world an impression, not wholly just, of singular clearness. He employed the theory with wonderful success in unravelling the problems of his time. Its importance has not been seriously, or at any rate successfully, called in question. Treated at first as a doctrine peculiarly applicable to land, with a certain controverted relevance to other natural agents, it has been so extended that there is scarcely any subject of economic study in which we may not expect to find adaptations or analogies, so that Ricardo seemed to have discovered the key of economic knowledge. But it was discovered that there were no “indestructible powers of the soil”; that the fertility of land in a country like England is almost entirely the result of improvement at some time or other; that “advantage of situation” includes very much more than the words in their literal sense imply; that both “fertility” and “advantage of situation” include many kinds of differential advantage; that in some circumstances rent does not enter into the price of agricultural and other produce, and that in others it does. Moreover, the study of the theory of rent has had a very great influence on all branches of economics by destroying the notion that it is possible to draw sharp lines of distinction, or deal with economic conceptions as though they were entirely independent categories. That modern economic analysis is incomparably more accurate than that of earlier times there can be no question. But the net result of the development of the doctrine of rent is that all problems in which this factor appears, and they embrace the whole range of economic theory, must apparently be treated on their merits. In its modern form the doctrine is far too general to be serviceable without the closest scrutiny of all the facts relating to the particular case to which it is applied. To deal adequately with the numerous extensions or qualifications of these and other doctrines in the hands of modern economists would involve us in an attempt to do what we have already said is impossible except on conditions not at present realized. It is clear that in the interests of general economic theory we require a vast number of special studies before an adequate restatement can be undertaken.

It must be clearly recognized that the functions of economic science in the present requirements of the world cannot possibly; be discharged by treatises on economic theory. The relations between general theory and special studies Relations between general economics and special studies. conducted on the lines we have indicated have completely changed. General theory never has been, and in the nature of things never can be, the actual reflex of the life and movement of the economic world. It never has been, and never can be, more than an indication of the kind of thing which might be expected in a purely hypothetical world. When the aim of the man of affairs and the hypothesis of the economist was unrestricted competition, and measures were being adopted to realize it, general theory such as the classical economists provided was perhaps a sufficiently trustworthy guide for practical statesmen and men of business. If only people can be got to believe in them, a few abstract principles are quite enough to destroy an institution which it has taken centuries to create. But a new institution cannot be made on the same terms. The modern industrial system has brought with it an immense variety of practical problems which nations must solve on pain of industrial and commercial ruin. For these problems we want, not a few old-established general principles which no one seriously calls in question, but genuine constructive and organizing capacity, aided by scientific and detailed knowledge of particular institutions, industries and classes. Just as the historical school grew up along with the greatest constructive achievement of the 19th century, namely, the consolidation of Germany, so the application to modern problems of the methods of that school has been called forth by the constructive needs of the present generation. We have already shown how these methods, in their turn, require the aid of general theory, but not of a general theory which tries to do their work. In fact, every attempt to make it do so must inevitably fail. How can such a huge mass of general propositions as are necessarily included in a system of economics ever be thoroughly tested by an appeal to facts? If they are not so tested, the general theory will remain a general theory, of no practical use in itself, until the end of time. It they are to be tested, an indefinitely large number of special studies must be made, for which the original materials must be collected and examined. That is, original investigation of special problems has to be carried out on a more gigantic scale than any economist of the historical school ever dreamt of or the world requires, with the certain knowledge that at the end of it all the general theory will not correspond with the facts of life. For there is all the difference in the world between using a body of general theory as an indication of the factors to be considered in the study of a special problem, and undertaking special studies with a view to testing the general theory. If the necessary limitations of general economic theory are recognized, most of the difficulties we have noticed disappear. Now that the “industrial revolution” has extended practically all over the world, so that we have several countries carrying on production by modern methods, it is easily possible to sketch the main features of industrial and commercial organization at the present time, to describe the banking and currency systems of the principal nations, their means of transport and communication, their systems of commercial law and finance, and their commercial policy. It is true that at present very little work of this kind has been done in England, but innumerable books, many of them about England, have been written by thoroughly competent economists, in French, German and other languages. So that no great amount of original work is required for a reliable account of those general features of the modern system which should form the introduction to economics. The general theory which we require should be sketched in firm and clear outline, leaving the detailed qualifications of broad principles to special studies, where they can be dealt with if it is necessary or desirable, and examined by statistical and other tests. For such a general theory there is ample material in the economic literature of all civilized countries. It is of the utmost importance that the economic terms, which are also, though in many cases with an entirely different meaning, the terms of business and commerce, should as far as possible be used in their common and ordinary English sense: that they should correspond in meaning with the same words when used in description, in law, accountancy and ordinary business. This is no doubt a difficult matter. But some change in this direction is necessary both in the interests of the science itself and of its practical utility. All the materials for investigation, all the facts and figures from which illustrations are drawn, all methods of keeping accounts in England, assume the ordinary English tongue. There are few if any conceptions in economics which cannot be expressed in it without depleting the ordinary vocabulary. At present the language of economics is for the ordinary Englishman 909 like a foreign language of exceptional difficulty, because he is constantly meeting with words which suggest to his mind a whole world of associations quite different from those with which economic theory has clothed them. The refinements of economic analysis, as distinguished from its broader achievements, should be reserved for special studies, in which a technical scientific terminology, specially devised, can be used without danger of misconception. But in a subject like economics obscurity and an awkward terminology are not marks of scientific merit.

Economic studies should be as relevant to existing needs as those of engineering and other applied sciences. The scientific study of practical problems and difficulties is (generally speaking, and with honourable exceptions) far more advanced in almost every civilized country than it is in England, where the limited scale upon which such work is carried on, the indifference of statesmen, officials and business men, and the incapacity of the public to understand the close relation between scientific study and practical success, contrast very unfavourably with the state of affairs in Germany or the United States. The backwardness of economic science has been an index of the danger threatening the industrial and commercial supremacy of the United Kingdom. There are very few questions of public or commercial importance upon which the best and most recent investigations are to be found amongst English works. This would matter very little, perhaps, if Englishmen had a firm belief, established by actual experience, in the soundness of their policy, the present security of their position, and the sufficiency of their methods to strengthen or maintain it. But this is very far from being the case. If we take, for example, the corner-stone of the British commercial system in the 19th century, namely, the policy of “free trade” (q.v.), the public do not now read the economic works which supplied the theoretical basis of that policy, and, indeed, would Economic problems in Great Britain. not be convinced by them. The great men of the period, Cobden and Bright, are merely historical figures. Long before his death, Bright’s references in public speeches to the achievements of the Anti-Corn Law League were received with respectful impatience, and Peel’s famous speech on the repeal of the corn laws would not convince the German Reichstag or a modern House of Commons. The result is that free trade had become by the end of the 19th century in the main an old habit, for which the ordinary English manufacturer could give no very reasonable explanation, whatever may be its influence in commerce and public affairs. The doctrine of free trade only prevailed in so far as it could be restated in terms which had a direct relevance to the existing position of England and existing conditions of international trade. And it was directly challenged by the representatives of Mr Chamberlain’s school of Imperialist thought (see Chamberlain, Joseph). It thus became the work of economic science ruthlessly to analyse the existing situation, explain the issues involved in the commercial policy of different countries, and point out the alternative methods of dealing with present difficulties, with their probable results.

The commercial policy of a state is merely the reflex of its system of public finance (see e.g. English Finance). The absence of conviction in regard to British commercial policy naturally had its counterpart in the attitude of many men to the financial system of the country. The eulogies showered upon it in the past were no longer considered adequate. The great increase in recent years in British military and naval expenditure, made necessary by the exceptional demands of a state of war and the great development of foreign powers, was partly responsible for the new difficulties; partly it was due to the great extension of the functions of the state during the latter part of the 19th century. The former causes may be considered partly permanent, partly temporary; but those of a permanent character are likely to increase in force, and those of a temporary character will leave Commerce and finance. a deposit in the shape of an addition to the normal expenditure of the central government. The extension of government functions appeared much more likely to continue than to be checked. Normal expenditure might therefore be calculated to rise rather than fall. In spite of the vast increase in national wealth, it was found a matter of increasing difficulty to meet a comparatively slight strain without recourse to measures of a highly controversial character; and the search for new sources of revenue (as in 1909) at once raised, in an acute form, questions of national commercial policy and the relations between the United Kingdom and the colonies.

The development of the powers of the central government has been less than that of the functions of local governing authorities. This, again, is a movement much more likely to extend than to be checked. Local governing authorities now discharge economic functions of enormous importance and complexity, involving sums of money larger than sufficed to run important states a generation ago. The scientific study of the economics of local administration is, however, in its infancy, and requires to be taken up in earnest by economists. These questions of commercial policy and local government are closely bound up with the scientific study of the transport system. Although the British Empire contains within itself every known species of railway enterprise, the study of railways and other means of transport, and their relation to the business, the commerce and the social life of the country, is deplorably backward. It is obvious that no inquiry into commercial policy, or into such social questions as the housing of the poor, can be effective unless this deficiency is remedied.

The whole social and political fabric of the British Empire depends upon the efficiency of its industrial system. On this subject many monographs and larger works have been published in recent years, but dealing rather with such questions as trade unionism, co-operation and factory legislation, than the structure and organization of particular industries, or the causes and the results of the formation of the great combinations, peculiarly characteristic of the United States, but not wanting in England, which are amongst the most striking economic phenomena of modern times.

These are some of the questions which must absorb the energies of the rising generation of economists. The claim of economics for recognition as a science and as a subject of study must be based on its relevance to the actual life of the economic world, on its ability to unravel the practical difficulties of each generation, and so contribute to the progress of nations.

ECONOMY, a township and a village of Beaver county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Ohio river, 17 m. N.W. of Pittsburg. Pop. of township (1900) 1062; (1910) 860. The village is served by the Pennsylvania system. It was owned until 1904, when it was sold to a land company, by the Harmony Society (see Communism), commonly called the Economites, Harmonists or Rappists. The founder, George Rapp, after living with his would-be primitive Christian followers at Harmony, Butler county, Pennsylvania, in 1803-1814, and in 1815-1824 in New Harmony (q.v.), Indiana, which he then sold to Robert Owen, settled here in 1824 and rapidly built up a village, in which each family received a house and garden. The culture of silk, flax, grapes (for wine-making) and fruits and cereals in general, and the manufacture of flour and of woollen, flannel and cotton fabrics, were carried on under a rule requiring every adult to labour 12 or 14 hours each day in field or mill. Celibacy had been adopted in 1807 as the rule of the community. New members were received after a half-year’s probation, and members who left received their original investment. Three hundred thus separated from Rapp in 1833, with $105,000 as their share of the communal property, to build the millennial kingdom of New Jerusalem at Phillipsburg (now Monaca), Beaver county, Pennsylvania, under the lead of Bernhard Müller, who had come to Economy in 1831 as a fellow religionist, and was called Count Maximilian de Leon (or Proli); in 1833 Leon went, with his followers, to Louisiana, and established a religious colony 6 m. from Natchitoches. After his death his wife until 1871 was head of a similar community at Germantown in Webster parish. The Harmonists at Economy flourished under the rule of a tradesman, R.L. Baker, or Romelius Langenbacher, after the death of Rapp in 1847, and during the Civil War had about $500,000 buried away. Their numbers were for a time kept up by the addition of fresh converts, but the employés who were not Harmonists soon greatly outnumbered the members of the community, the basis of which was always religious. Baker died in 1868, and his successor, John Henrici, in 1892, when John S. Duss became first trustee. In 1907 there were only two or three members in the society. In 1851 the township of Harmony was set apart from Economy.

ECONOMY, a word ranging in application from the careful thrift of an individual to the systematic arrangement of an organization. It is derived from the Gr. οἰκονομία, the management (νέμειν, to control) of an οἶκος or house, extended in meaning to the administration of a state. Of its original sense, the art or science of managing a household, the expression “domestic economy” survives, but the principal use in this sense is confined to the thrifty management of the financial resources of a household or of an individual. It is thus used as equivalent to “saving,” not only of money, but of time, labour or effort, and, generally, of the least expenditure of means to attain a required end. It is on the principle of “economy” that many phonetic changes occur in the development of languages, and, in aesthetics, the name has been applied to a principle or law that effects are pleasant in proportion to the smallness of the effort made, and of the means taken to produce the result. The phrase “economy of truth” is due to an invidious application of the use, in patristic theology, of the word οἰκονομία for the careful presentation of such doctrine as would be applicable to the hearer (see J.H. Newman, History of the Arians of the 4th Century). “Economy” is also used in theology in such expressions as “Mosaic” or “Christian economy” as a synonym of “dispensation,” for the administration of the world by God at particular times or for particular races. From the meaning of organization or administration of a house or state the word is applied more widely to the ordered arrangement of any organized body, and is equivalent almost to “system”; thus the “economy” of nature or of animal or plant life may be spoken of. The most common use, however, of the word is that of “political economy,” the science dealing with the production, distribution and consumption of wealth (see Economics).

ECSTASY (Gr. ἔκστασις, from ἐξίστημι, put out of its place, alter), a term applied to a morbid mental condition, in which the mind is entirely absorbed in the contemplation of one dominant idea or object, and loses for the time its normal self-control. With this there is commonly associated the prevalence of some strong emotion, which manifests itself in various ways, and with varying degrees of intensity. This state resembles in many points that of catalepsy (q.v.), but differs from it sufficiently to constitute it a separate affection. The patient in ecstasy may lie in a fixed position like the cataleptic, apparently quite unconscious, yet, on awaking, there is a distinct recollection of visions perceived during this period. More frequently there is violent emotional excitement which may find expression in impassioned utterances, and in extravagant bodily movements and gesticulations. Ecstasy usually presents itself as a kind of temporary religious insanity, and has frequently appeared as an epidemic. It is well illustrated in the celebrated examples of the dancing epidemics of Germany and Italy in the middle ages, and the Convulsionnaires of St Medard at the grave of the Abbé Paris in the early part of the 18th century, and in more recent times has been witnessed during periods of religious revivalism. (See also Insanity and Neuropathology.)

ECTOSPORA, a homogeneous and natural division of Protozoan parasites included under the Sporozoa; they comprise the three orders, Gregarines, Coccidia and Haemosporidia. The defining character of the Ectospora is that the spore-mother-cells (sporoblasts) are formed at the periphery of the parent-individual (sporont); we may, however, go further, and say that the formation of all the different reproductive elements is uniformly peripheral or exogenous. Two other very general features are (a) that the individual trophozoite is uninuclear, and (b) that growth and trophic activity are finished before the multiplicative or reproductive phase sets in.

There is now little doubt that the Ectospora possess a flagellate ancestry. The principal facts in favour of this view are as follows: the actual ontogenetic connexion known to exist between certain Haemoflagellates and certain Haemosporidia (see Trypanosomes); the possession by many Coccidia of biflagellar microgametes (male elements), whose general structure greatly resembles that of a Heteromastigine Flagellate; the possession by various parasitic Flagellates (e.g. Herpetomonas) of an attached, resting phase, when the parasites become gregariniform, which strongly suggests the attached phase of many young, growing Gregarines; the typical gregarinoid and euglenoid movements of Gregarines and of the germs or other stages of Coccidia and Haemosporidia, which are quite comparable with the contractile and metabolic movements of Flagellates; and, lastly, the exogenous type of reproduction, which is easily derivable from the multiple division of certain Haemoflagellates, and this, in turn, from the typical binary longitudinal fission of a Flagellate.

ECUADOR (officially La Republica del Ecuador), a republic of South America, bounded N. and N.E. by Colombia, S.E. and S. by Peru, and W. by the Pacific Ocean. Its boundary lines with Colombia and Peru were in 1909 still unsettled, Boundaries. large areas of territory being claimed by all three republics. Under an agreement of the 15th of December 1894, the disputes were to be decided by the Spanish sovereign as arbitrator, but nothing was accomplished. On the 5th of November 1904, Colombia and Ecuador agreed to submit their dispute to the German emperor, and a convention of the 12th of September 1905 between Colombia and Peru established a modus vivendi for the settlement of their conflicting claims, in which Ecuador is likewise interested. The maps of Ecuador, which are very defective, usually describe its territory as 911 extending eastward to the Brazilian frontier, but as Peru is in actual occupation of the region east of Huiririma-chico, on the Napo river, 3½ degrees west of that frontier, those maps cannot be considered correct. The Trans-Andine territory occupied by Ecuador is a wedge-shaped area between the Coca and Napo, the provisional boundary line with Colombia, and a line running nearly west-south-west from Huiririma-chico (about lat. 2° 50′ S., long. 73° 20′ W.) to a point on the Santiago river in about lat. 4° 12′ S., long. 78° W., which forms the provisional boundary with Peru. The eastern part of this territory is also claimed by Peru, which would have the effect, if allowed, of restricting Ecuador to a comparatively small area covered by the Andes and western Cordillera and the narrow plain on the Pacific coast. From the Santiago river, a western affluent of the Marañon, the boundary line runs south-west and west across the Andes to the head waters of the Macara, down that stream to the Chira, or Achira, whose channel marks the frontier down to about 80° 17′ W., where a small stream (the Rio Alamo) enters from the north. The line then runs almost due north to the south shore of the Gulf of Guayaquil, following the western water parting of the lower Tumbez valley. A small district in the valley of the Chira is claimed by Peru. The northern boundary line is described elsewhere (see Colombia). A small section of this line terminating on the Pacific coast is also in dispute, Ecuador claiming the main channel of the Mira as the dividing line, and Colombia claiming a small district south of that channel, the line running due west from the mouth of the most southern outlet of the Mira opening into Panguapi Bay, to a point of intersection with that river.

Population.—The indigenous population of Ecuador was originally composed of two distinct races—the Quitus and Caras, the former being the older, and the latter presumably of Quichua origin. The Caras, according to tradition, entered the country from the coast, and had thoroughly established themselves there long before the conquest by the Inca rulers Tupac-Yupanqui and his son Huayna-Capac. This conquest was comparatively easy because the Caras spoke a dialect of the same language, and were not greatly unlike their conquerors in manners and customs. The present Indian population of Ecuador, excepting those of the trans-Andean region, may be considered as descendants of these two races. They are subjected to incredible abuses under Spanish colonial rule, their numbers being reduced to a fraction of the former population, and even yet they are subjected to a kind of debt-bondage which is slavery in all but the name. Notwithstanding all this they still represent from two-thirds to three-fourths of the actual population of Ecuador. East of the Andes the forests are inhabited by tribes of what are termed “aucas” or “infieles” (infidels)—Indians who are independent of both church and political control. Missions have been established among some of the tribes, but their influence reaches only a small part of the wild inhabitants of this extensive region.

The principal tribes are the Quijos or Canelos, who are settled about the headwaters of the Napo, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, and are in great part grouped about the missions; the Jivaros who inhabit the valley of the Pastaza; the Zaparos who occupy the forest region between the Pastaza and Napo; the Piojes of the middle Napo, and eastward to the Putumayo; and the Iquitos and Mazanes of the lower Napo and Tigre, chiefly in territory occupied by Peru. The Jivaros are the best known of these tribes because of their successful resistance to the Spanish invaders. They are still independent of political control, live in permanent settlements, till the soil (producing Indian corn, beans, yucca and plantains), and have developed some rude manufactures. The Zaparos are less homogeneous, some of their hordes living in a state of complete savagery. They are classified with the Guaranis of Brazil, whom they resemble in many particulars. The Piojes live in permanent communities and cultivate the soil. The total number of “aucas” or uncivilized Indians in the republic has been estimated at about 200,000, but this estimate covered a larger area than Ecuador actually occupies and is evidently too high. Their settlements are usually small and very much scattered, and their aggregate number is evidently much under the earlier estimates. An official estimate given to Mr Whymper in 1880, however, places the population of Oriente (the eastern territory) at 80,000, which is probably more nearly correct.

No general census has ever been taken in Ecuador, and estimates are little better than vague conjectures. One of these estimates, that published by P.F. Cevallos for 1889, which has been generally accepted, gave the total population as 1,272,161, and these figures have been used with but slight changes for various later estimates. A later official estimate appeared in 1900 in La République de l’Équateur et sa participation à l’Exposition Universelle de 1900, which gives for the provinces practically the same figures as those of Cevallos, and at the same time assumes the total for the whole republic to be 1,500,000. The white population is estimated at 100,000 to 120,000, which probably includes many of mixed ancestry, and the mixed bloods at 300,000 to 450,000. The tendency is for the mestizo who dwells in Indian communities to revert to the Indian type, and it is probable that the larger estimate is nearer the truth. On the other hand mestizos who live among the whites and form new alliances with them eventually class themselves as whites wherever their social condition has been improved. As a rule, the mestizos of Ecuador are ignorant, indolent and non-progressive. As in Colombia they are the artizans and small traders and the Indians are the farm labourers. The land is held by a few proprietors, and caste sentiment is strong among those who claim unmixed European descent; consequently the mestizos have limited opportunities to improve their condition.

The whites form an exclusive governing caste, as in Chile. The territory of the republic is divided among a very few of them, and its government is in their hands.

In the hot seaboard districts there are a small number of negroes, and a somewhat larger number of their crosses with the other two races. The majority of these are to be found in the northern provinces. There are comparatively few negroes and mulattoes on the colder plateaus. Villavicencio estimated their numbers at 7831 pure negroes and 36,592 mixed bloods, which is probably not far from the correct totals.

The foreign population is small, the total being estimated at about 6000, of which 5000 are natives of the neighbouring Latin republics, 700 Europeans and Americans, and 300 Chinese.

Territorial Divisions and Towns.—The republic is divided into 15 provinces and one territory. The Galapagos Islands were declared a dependency of the province of Guayas in 1885, but are practically independent and constitute a second territory under the administration of jefe territorial appointed by the national executive.

Government.—Constitutionally, the government of Ecuador is that of a centralized republic, whose powers are defined by a written constitution and whose chief organs are an executive consisting of a president and vice-president, and a national congress consisting of two houses, a senate and a chamber of deputies. Revolutionary changes, however, have been very frequent in Ecuador, and no less than eleven constitutions were adopted between 1830 and 1909.

History.—The territory of the republic of Ecuador, when first it becomes dimly visible in the grey dawn of American history, appears to be inhabited by upwards of fifty independent tribes, among which the Quitus seem to hold the most important position. About A.D. 280 a foreign tribe is said to have forced their way inland up the valley of the Esmeraldas; and the kingdom which they founded at Quito lasted for about 1200 years, and was gradually extended, both by war and alliance, over many of the neighbouring dominions. In 1460, during the reign of the fourteenth Caran Shyri, or king of the Cara nation, Hualcopo Duchisela, the conquest of Quito was undertaken by Tupac Yupanqui, the Inca of Peru; and his ambitious schemes were, not long after his death, successfully carried out by his son Huayna-Capac, who inflicted a decisive defeat on the Quitonians in the battle of Hatuntaqui, and secured his position by marrying Pacha, the daughter of the late Shyri. By his will the conqueror left the kingdom of Quito to Atahuallpa, his son by this alliance; while the Peruvian throne was assigned to Huascar, an elder son by his Peruvian consort. War soon broke out between the two kingdoms, owing to Huascar’s pretensions to supremacy over his brother; but it ended in the defeat and imprisonment of the usurper, and the establishment of Atahuallpa as master both of Quito and Cuzco. The fortunate monarch, however, had not long to enjoy his success; for Pizarro and his Spaniards were already at the door, and by 1533 the fate of the country was sealed. As soon as the confusions and rivalries of the first occupation were suppressed, the recent kingdom of Quito was made a presidency of the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru, and no change of importance took place till 1710. In that year it was attached to the viceroyalty of Santa Fé; but it was restored to Peru in 1722. When, towards the close of the century, the desire for independence began to manifest itself throughout the Spanish colonies of South America, Quito did not remain altogether indifferent. The Quitonian doctor Eugenio Espejo, and his fellow-citizen Don Juan Pio Montufar, entered into hearty co-operation with Nariño and Zea, the leaders of the revolutionary movement at Santa Fé; and it was at Espejo’s suggestion that the political association called the Escuela de Concordia was instituted at Quito. It was not till 1809, however, that the Quitonians made a real attempt to throw off the Spanish yoke; and both on that occasion and in 1812 the royal general succeeded in crushing the insurrection. In 1820 the people of Guayaquil took up the cry of liberty; and in spite of several defeats they continued the contest, till at length, under Antonio José de Sucré, who had been sent to their assistance by Bolivar, and reinforced by a Peruvian contingent under Andres de Santa Cruz, they gained a complete victory on May 22, 1822, in a battle fought on the side of Mount Pichincha, at a height of 10,200 ft. above the sea. Two days after, the Spanish president of Quito, Don Melchor de Aymeric, capitulated, and the independence of the country was secured. A political union was at once effected with New Granada and Venezuela on the basis of the republican constitution instituted at Cucuta in July 1821—the triple confederation taking the name of Colombia.

A disagreement with Peru in 1828 resulted in the invasion of Ecuador and the temporary occupation of Cuenca and Guayaquil by Peruvian forces; but peace was restored in the following year after the Ecuadorian victory at Tarqui. In the early part of 1830 a separation was effected from the Colombian federation, and the country was proclaimed an independent republic. General Juan José Flores was the first president, and in spite of many difficulties, both domestic and foreign, he managed to maintain a powerful position in the state for about 15 years. Succeeded in 1835 by Vicente Rocafuerte, he regained the presidency in 1839, and was elected for the third time in 1843; but shortly afterwards he accepted the title of generalissimo and a sum of 20,000 pesos, and left the country to his rivals. One of the most important measures of his second presidency was the establishment of peace and friendship with Spain. Roca, who next attained to power, effected a temporary settlement with Colombia, concluded a convention with England against the slave trade, and made a commercial treaty with Belgium. Diego Noboa, elected in 1850 after a period of great confusion, recalled the Jesuits, produced a rupture with New Granada by receiving conservative refugees, and thus brought about his own deposition and exile. The democratic Urbina now became practically dictator, and as the attempt of Flores to reinstate Noboa proved a total failure, he was quickly succeeded in 1856 by General Francisco Robles, who, among other progressive measures, secured the adoption of the French system of coinage, weights and measures. He abdicated in 1859 and left the country, after refusing to ratify the treaty with Peru, by which the defender of Guayaquil had obtained the raising of the siege. Dr Gabriel Garcia Moreno, professor of chemistry, the recognized leader of the conservative party at Quito, was ultimately elected by the national convention of 1861. Distrust in his policy, however, was excited by the publication of some of his private correspondence, in which he spoke favourably of a French protectorate, and the army which he sent under Flores to resist the encroachments of Mosquera, the president of New Granada, was completely routed. His first resignation in 1864 was refused; but the despotic acts by which he sought to establish a dictatorship only embittered his opponents, and in September 1865 he retired from office. While he had endeavoured to develop the material resources of the country, he had at the same time introduced retrograde measures in regard to religion and education. The principal event in the short presidency of his successor, Gerónimo Carrion (May 1865-Nov. 1867), was the alliance with Chile and Peru against Spain, and the banishment of all Spanish subjects. Several important changes were made by congress in the period between his resignation and the election of Xavier Espinosa, January 1868: the power of the president to imprison persons regarded as dangerous to public order was annulled; and the immediate naturalization of Bolivians, Chilians, Peruvians and Colombians was authorized. Espinosa had hardly entered on his office when, in August 1868, the country was visited by an earthquake, in which 30,000 people are said to have perished throughout South America. The public buildings of Quito were laid in ruins; and Ibarra, Otavalo, Cotacachi and several other towns were completely destroyed. Next year a revolution at Quito, under Moreno, brought Espinosa’s presidency to a close; and though the national convention appointed Carvajal to the vacant office, Moreno succeeded in securing his own election in 1870 for a term of six years. His policy had undergone no alteration since 1865: the same persistent endeavour was made to establish a religious despotism, in which the supremacy of the president should be subordinate only to the higher supremacy of the clergy.

President Moreno was eventually assassinated at Quito, in August 1875, and Dr Borrero was elected to the presidency, but his tenure of power was short. A revolution headed by General Veintemilla, the Radical leader, then military commandant at Guayaquil, broke out in 1876, and on the 14th of December of that year the government forces under General Aparicio were completely routed at Galte. Veintemilla was proclaimed president, and in 1877 was duly elected by the cortes. He altered the constitution in a more Liberal direction, and struck various blows at the Clerical party, among other things abolishing the concordat with Rome. In 1878 Veintemilla caused himself to be declared elected as president for a term of four years. At the expiration of this period the president assumed dictatorial powers and remained in office as chief of the executive. This action on the part of General Veintemilla led to a union between the Clericals and Moderate Liberals, and resulted in a popular rising throughout the republic, ending in his defeat and overthrow. His power was first restricted to Guayaquil and Esmeraldas, and finally General Rinaldo Flores drove him from Guayaquil, and Veintemilla fled (July 1883) to Peru. Dr Placido Caamaño was then called upon to take charge temporarily, and on the 17th of 920 February 1884 was definitely elected for the presidential period terminating in 1888. Several revolutionary outbreaks occurred during the Caamaño administration, but were successfully suppressed. In 1888 Dr Antonio Flores succeeded Caamaño, the four years following being passed in peaceful conditions. In 1892 Dr Luis Cordero was elected, his administration again plunging the country into an epoch of internal disturbance.

The cause of the troubles under President Cordero was the assistance lent by Ecuador to Chile in the matter of the sale of the cruiser Esmeralda to the Japanese government in 1894, in the middle of the Japanese-Chinese War. The government of Chile arranged the sale of the Esmeralda, but wished to be free from all danger of international complications in the affair. To this end the transfer of the vessel was made to Ecuador, and she proceeded to Ecuadorian waters. On arriving at the Galapagos Islands the flag of Ecuador was replaced by that of Japan and the vessel handed over to the representatives of that nation sent for the purpose. When the part played by President Cordero in this transaction became known, an outburst of popular indignation occurred. An insurrection, headed by General Eloy Alfaro, followed; and after desultory skirmishing extending over a period of nearly a year the government forces were finally routed, President Cordero abandoning his office and escaping from the country.

General Alfaro then assumed dictatorial powers as supreme chief of the nation, continuing in this capacity until the 6th of February 1897, on which date he was declared to be elected president of the republic. A series of revolutionary movements against the administration of President Alfaro occurred in the course of the next few years. Many of these risings were due to the intrigues of the Church party, and in view of these circumstances President Alfaro curtailed the influence of the clergy in several directions. On the 31st of August 1901 General Alfaro peacefully handed over the presidency to his elected successor, General Leonidas Plaza.

General Plaza continued the anticlerical policy of his predecessor. Civil marriage and divorce were introduced, and in 1904 all religions were placed on a position of equality in the eye of the law, and the foundation of new monasteries and convents was forbidden. The final year of Plaza’s tenure of office was marked by a still stronger measure, all the property of the church being declared to be national property, and let to the highest bidders. In 1905 the Opposition made an effort to effect a change of policy, and were successful in obtaining the election of Lizaro Garcia, a well-to-do merchant and a director of the Banco commercial y Agricola. General Alfaro, however, appealed to arms, ejected Garcia from office, and made himself ruler with practically dictatorial powers.

The more recent history of Ecuador would not be complete without a reference to the work of Mr Archer Harman (b. 1860), an American railway builder and financier whose connexion with the construction of the Guayaquil and Quito railway began in 1897. To his personal energy and enterprise, as manager of the railway company, was largely due the continued prosecution of this difficult engineering undertaking, in connexion with which he was responsible for a thorough reconstruction of Ecuador finance. He thus came to exercise a powerful influence on the internal progress of the country.

ECZEMA (Gr. ἔκζεμα, a cutaneous eruption), one of the most common and important of all skin diseases, consisting of a catarrhal inflammation of the skin originating without visible external irritation, and characterized in some stage of its evolution by a serous exudation. This definition excludes all those forms of inflammation of the skin (dermatitis), which though they may be identical in course and manifestation are yet caused by chemical or mechanical irritants. For an attack of eczema two conditions are necessary: a predisposition or special irritability of the skin, and a directly exciting cause. The first of these conditions is usually inherited or depends on some underlying constitutional state. Thus any organic lesion which may produce oedema and malnutrition of the cutis and epidermis as in kidney diseases, any condition of imperfect metabolism as in dyspepsia or malnutrition, or seborrhoea, may be the predisposing cause. Another influence that has received increasing attention from skin specialists is that of any nervous shock or prolonged mental strain. A “chill” is followed in most people by an ordinary cold, but in some by an attack of eczema. Again, it may be caused by reflex nervous irritation from the uterus, stomach, &c. In some women it always accompanies menstruation, and in others pregnancy. It is of common occurrence in infancy, being attributed by some specialists to dentition, but by others to seborrhoea. Also there is an undoubted relationship between eczema and certain forms of functional neurosis, of which perhaps asthma is the most striking illustration, some physicians considering the latter trouble to be eczema of the bronchial tubes. Sufferers from rheumatism and gout are also specially prone to eczema, though the exact relationship is a much disputed point. There are yet other cases that are undoubtedly microbic, but the micro-organism cannot produce the lesion unless the soil is suitable. As a rule it is not contagious, though when complicated by micro-organisms it may be auto-inoculable, or more rarely inoculable from one patient to another. Except between the ages of ten and twenty years when menstruation is becoming established, and again at the menopause, males are more liable to be attacked than females. In old age the sex influence is lost.

An attack of eczema is usually described as acute or chronic, but the only distinction lies in the greater or less intensity of the inflammation at the time of description: it has nothing to do with the length of time that the disease has lasted. The illness usually begins with a feeling of itching and burning at the site of the lesion. The skin becomes covered with an erythematous blush, on which numerous tiny vesicles form. Swelling, heat, redness and tension are all present. The vesicles grow larger, run together, and either burst or are broken by the patient’s scratching, a clear fluid exuding which stiffens linen. The discharge does not dry up at once, but continues to exude—hence the name of “weeping eczema” when this is a prominent symptom. In mild cases the symptoms begin to subside in a few days, the exudation growing less and scales and scabs forming, under which new skin is formed. But where the attack is more acute fresh crops of vesicles spring up and the process repeats itself. In some cases papules are the predominant lesions, but in others, especially when the face is attacked, the erythematous condition is more marked. A severe attack of eczema is usually accompanied by some slight constitutional disturbance, but the general health seldom suffers appreciably, unless, as occasionally, the itching is so bad as to make sleep impossible. The irritation and local heat may be out of all proportion to visible changes in the skin, and in neurotic patients the nervous excitement may be extreme. The attack may centre itself on any part of the body, but there are certain places where it more usually begins, such as the bends of the elbows, the backs of the knees and the groins; the groove behind the ears, the scalp, the palms or the soles, and the breasts of women. According to its position the form of the eczema is somewhat modified. On the front of the legs and arms, from the uniform redness it exhibits in these positions, it is known as eczema rubrum. On the scalp it is generally of the seborrhoeic type, and in children, especially when pediculi are present, it will become pustular from microbic infection. On the palms and soles it brings about a thickening 921 of the epidermis which leads to the formation of cracks, and is hence called eczema rimosum.

The disease can best be treated by a combination of internal and external remedies. Internally, when the inflammation is acute, nothing is so good as antimony, since this relieves the arterial tension and thus reduces the local inflammation. But this must never be given when the patient is suffering from depression. In other cases, especially for babies and children, small doses of calomel are very beneficial; strychnine, phosphorus and ergot are all useful at times. When nervous excitement is marked it must be treated with sedatives. Arsenic and iron are both contra-indicated in this disease, since they increase blood formation and hence stimulate the eczematous process. Internal treatment is always best when combined with local treatment, but as a preliminary to this all crusts and scales must first be removed to allow the remedy free access to the disease. Locally the aim is (1) to overcome any source of irritation, (2) to protect the inflamed surface from the air and from microbic infection, and (3) to relieve the itching. The diet should be simple but nourishing, and all hygienic precautions must be taken.

EDAM, a town of Holland in the province of North Holland, close to the Zuider Zee, about 13 m. N.N.E. of Amsterdam by steam tramway. It is connected with the Zuider Zee by a fine canal protected by a large sea-lock (1828), and has regular steam-boat communication in various directions. Pop. (1900) 6444. The many quaint old brick houses form the chief feature of interest in the town. The façades are frequently adorned with carvings and inscriptions, one of which records the legend of the capture of a siren in 1403, who lived for some time among the people of Edam, but escaped again to the sea. The Great Church of St Nicholas, probably founded in the 14th century, was largely rebuilt after a fire in 1602, which, originating in the church, destroyed nearly the whole town. It contains some fine stained glass and carved woodwork of this period. The Little Church (15th century) was demolished in 1883, except for a portion of the nave and the old tower and steeple, from which the bells curiously project. The town hall dates from 1737, and there is a museum founded in 1895. Edam has some trade in timber, while shipbuilding, rope-spinning and salt-boiling are also carried on. It gives its name to the description of “sweet-milk cheese” (zoetemelks kaas) made throughout North Holland, which is familiar on account of its round shape and red rind.

Edam took its name and origin from the dam built on the little river Ye which joined the great Purmer lake close by. Free access to the Zuider Zee was obtained by the construction of a new dock in 1357, in which year the town also received civic rights from William V. of Bavaria, count of Holland. Owing to the danger of the extension of the Purmer and Beemster lakes, Philip II. of Spain caused a sluice to be built into the dock in 1567. In the next century Edam was a great shipbuilding centre, and nearly the whole of Admiral de Ruyter’s fleet was built here; but in the same century the harbour began to get blocked up, and the importance and industrial activity of the city slowly waned.

EDDA, the title given to two very remarkable collections of old Icelandic literature. Of these only one bears that title from antiquity; the other is called Edda by a comparatively modern misnomer. The word is unknown to any ancient northern language, and is first met with in Rigspula, a fragmentary poem at the end of Codex Wormianus, dated about 1200, where it is introduced as the name or title of a great-grandmother. From the 14th to the 17th century, this word—but no one has formed a reasonable conjecture why—was used to signify the technical laws of Icelandic court metre, Eddu regla, and “Never to have seen Edda” was a modest apology for ignorance of the highest poetic art. The only work known by this name to the ancients was the miscellaneous group of writings put together by Snorri Sturlason (q.v.; 1178-1241), the greatest name in old Scandinavian literature. It is believed that the Edda, as he left it, was completed about 1222. Whether he gave this name to the work is doubtful; the title first occurs in the Upsala Codex, transcribed about fifty years after his death. The collection of Snorri is now known as the Prose or Younger Edda, the title of the Elder Edda being given to a book of ancient mythological poems, discovered by the Icelandic bishop of Skálaholt, Brynjulf Sveinsson, in 1643, and erroneously named by him the Edda of Saemund.

1. The Prose Edda, properly known as Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, was arranged and modified by Snorri, but actually composed, as has been conjectured, between the years 1140 and 1160. It is divided into five parts, the Preface or Formáli, Gylfaginning, Bragaraeður, Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal. The preface bears a very modern character, and simply gives a history of the world from Adam and Eve, in accordance with the Christian tradition. Gylfaginning, or the Delusion of Gylfi, on the other hand, is the most precious compendium which we possess of the mythological system of the ancient inhabitants of Scandinavia. Commencing with the adventures of a mythical king Gylfi and the giantess Gefion, and the miraculous formation of the island of Zealand, it tells us that the Aesir, led by Odin, invaded Svithjod or Sweden, the land of Gylfi, and settled there. It is from the Ynglingasaga and from the Gylfaginning that we gain all the information we possess about the conquering deities or heroes who set their stamp upon the religion of the North. Advancing from the Black Sea northwards through Russia, and westward through Esthonia, the Aesir seem to have overrun the south lands of Scandinavia, not as a horde but as an immigrant aristocracy. The Eddaic version, however, of the history of the gods is not so circumstantial as that in the Ynglingasaga; it is, on the other hand, distinguished by an exquisite simplicity and archaic force of style, which give an entirely classical character to its mythical legends of Odin and of Loki. The Gylfaginning is written in prose, with brief poetic insertions. The Bragaraeður, or sayings of Bragi, are further legends of the deities, attributed to Bragi, the god of poetry, or to a poet of the same name. The Skáldskaparmál, or Art of Poetry, commonly called Skálda, contains the instructions given by Bragi to Aegir, and consists of the rules and theories of ancient verse, exemplified in copious extracts from Eyvindr Skáldaspillir and other eminent Icelandic poets. The word Skáldskapr refers to the form rather than the substance of verse, and this treatise is almost solely technical in character. It is by far the largest of the sections of the Edda of Snorri, and comprises not only extracts but some long poems, notably the Thorsdrapa of Eilifr Guðrúnarson and the Haustlaung of Thjóðólfr. The fifth section of the Edda, the Háttatal, or Number of Metres, is a running technical commentary on the text of Snorri’s three poems written in honour of Haakon, king of Norway. Affixed to some MS. of the Younger Edda are a list of poets, and a number of philological treatises and grammatical studies. These belong, however, to a later period than the life of Snorri Sturlason.

2. The Elder Edda, Poetic Edda or Saemundar Edda hins froða was entirely unknown until about 1643, when it came into the hands of Brynjulf Sveinsson, who, puzzled to classify it, gave it the title of Edda Saemundi multiscii. Saemund Sigfusson, who was thus credited with the collection of these poems, was a scion of the royal house of Norway, and lived from about 1055 to 1132 in Iceland. The poems themselves date in all probability from the 10th and 11th centuries, and are many of them only fragments of longer heroic chants now otherwise entirely lost. They treat of mythical and religious legends of an early Scandinavian civilization, and are composed in the simplest and most archaic forms of Icelandic verse. The author of no one of them is mentioned. It is evident that they were collected from oral tradition; and the fact that the same story is occasionally 922 repeated, in varied form, and that some of the poems themselves bear internal evidence of being more ancient than others, proves that the present collection is only a gathering made early in the middle ages, long after the composition of the pieces, and in no critical spirit. Sophus Bugge, indeed, one of the greatest authorities, absolutely rejects the name of Saemund, and is of opinion that the poetic Edda, as we at present hold it, dates from about 1240. There is no doubt that it was collected in Iceland, and by an Icelander.

The most remarkable and the most ancient of the poems in this priceless collection is that with which it commences, the Völuspá, or prophecy of the Völva or Sibyl. In this chant we listen to an inspired prophetess, “seated on her high seat, and addressing Odin, while the gods listen to her words.”

She sings of the world before the gods were made, of the coming and the meeting of the Aesir, of the origin of the giants, dwarfs and men, of the happy beginning of all things, and the sad ending that shall be in the chaos of Ragnarök. The latter part of the poem is understood to be a kind of necromancy—according to Vigfusson, “the raising of a dead völva”; but the mystical language of the whole, its abrupt transitions and terse condensations, and above all the extinct and mysterious cosmology, an acquaintance with which it presupposes, make the exact interpretation of the Völuspá extremely difficult. The charm and solemn beauty of the style, however, are irresistible, and we are constrained to listen and revere as if we were the auditors of some fugual music devised in honour of a primal and long-buried deity. The melodies of this earliest Icelandic verse, elaborate in their extreme and severe simplicity, are wholly rhythmical and alliterative, and return upon themselves like a solemn incantation. Hávamál, the Lesson of the High One, or Odin, follows next; this contains proverbs and wise saws, and a series of stories, some of them comical, told by Odin against himself. The Vafprúðnismál, or Lesson of Vafprúðnir, is written in the same mystical vein as Völuspá; in it the giant who gives his name to the poem is visited by Odin in disguise, and is questioned by him about the cosmogony and chronology of the Norse religion. Grimnismál, or the Sayings of The Hooded One, which is partly in prose, is a story of Odin’s imprisonment and torture by King Geirrōd. För Skirnis, or the Journey of Skirnir, Harbarðslióð, or the Lay of Hoarbeard, Hymiskviða, or the Song of Hymir, and Aegisdrekka, or the Brewing of Aegir, are poems, frequently composed as dialogue, containing legends of the gods, some of which are so ludicrous that it has been suggested that they were intentionally burlesque. Thrymskviða, or the Song of Thrym, possesses far more poetic interest; it recounts in language of singular force and directness how Thor lost his hammer, stolen by Thrym the giant, how the latter refused to give it up unless the goddess Freyia was given him in marriage, and how Thor, dressed in women’s raiment, personated Freyia, and, slaying Thrym, recovered his hammer. Alvíssmál, or the Wisdom of Allwise, is actually a philological exercise under the semblance of a dialogue between Thor and Alvis the dwarf. In Vegtamskviða, or the Song of Vegtam, Odin questions a völva with regard to the meaning of the sinister dreams of Balder. Rígsmál, or more properly Rígspula, records how the god Heimdall, disguised as a man called Rig, wandered by the sea-shore, where he met the original dwarf pair, Ai and Edda, to whom he gave the power of child-bearing, and thence sprung the whole race of thralls; then he went on and met with Afi and Amma, and made them the parents of the race of churls; then he proceeded until he came to Faðir and Moðir, to whom he gave Jarl, the first of free men, whom he himself brought up, teaching him to shoot and snare, and to use the sword and runes. It is much to be lamented that of this most characteristic and picturesque poem we possess only a fragment. In Hyndluljóð, the Lay of Hyndla, the goddess Freyia rides to question the völva Hyndla with regard to the ancestry of her young paramour Ottar; a very fine quarrel ensues between the prophetess and her visitor. With this poem, the first or wholly mythological portion of the collection closes. What follows is heroic and pseudo-historic. The Völundarkviða, or Song of Völundr, is engaged with the adventures of Völundr, the smith-king, during his stay with Nidud, king of Sweden. Völundr, identical with the Anglo-Saxon Wêland and the German Wieland (O.H.G. Wiolant), is sometimes confused with Odin, the master-smith. This poem contains the beautiful figure of Svanhvít, the swan-maiden, who stays seven winters with Völundr, and then, yearning for her fatherland, flies away home through the dark forest. Helgakviða, Hiörvarðs sonar, the Song of Helgi, the Son of Hiörvarð, which is largely in prose, celebrates the wooing by Helgi of Svava, who, like Atalanta, ends by loving the man with whom she has fought in battle. Two Songs of Helgi the Hunding’s Bane, Helgakviða Hundingsbana, open the long and very important series of lays relating to the two heroic families of the Völsungs and the Niblungs. Including the poems just mentioned, there are about twenty distinct pieces in the poetic Edda which deal more or less directly with this chain of stories. It is hardly necessary to give the titles of these poems here in detail, especially as they are, in their present form, manifestly only fragments of a great poetic saga, possibly the earliest coherent form of the story so universal among the Teutonic peoples. We happily possess a somewhat later prose version of this lost poem in the Völsungasaga, where the story is completely worked out. In many places the prose of the Völsungasaga follows the verse of the Eddaic fragments with the greatest precision, often making use of the very same expressions. At the same time there are poems in the Edda which the author of the saga does not seem to have seen. But if we compare the central portions of the myth, namely Sigurd’s conversation with Fafnir, the death of Regin, the speech of the birds and the meeting with the Valkyrje, we are struck with the extreme fidelity of the prose romancer to his poetic precursors in the Sigurðarkviða Fafnisbana; in passing on to the death of Sigurd, we perceive that the version in the Völsungasaga must be based upon a poem now entirely lost. Of the origin of the myth and its independent development in medieval Germany, this is not the place for discussion (see Nibelungenlied). Suffice to say that in no modernized or Germanized form does the legend attain such an exquisite colouring of heroic poetry as in these earliest fragments of Icelandic song. A very curious poem, in some MSS. attributed directly to Saemund, is the Song of the Sun, Sólarlióð, which forms a kind of appendix to the poetic Edda. In this the spirit of a dead father addresses his living son, and exhorts him, with maxims that resemble those of Hávamál, to righteousness of life. The tone of the poem is strangely confused between Christianity and Paganism, and it has been assumed to be the composition of a writer in the act of transition between the old creed and the new. It may, however, not impossibly, be altogether spurious as a poem of great antiquity, and may merely be the production of some Icelandic monk, anxious to imitate the Eddaic form and spirit. Finally Forspjallsljóð, or the Preamble, formerly known as the Song of Odin’s Raven, is an extremely obscure fragment, of which little is understood, although infinite scholarship has been expended on it. With this the poetic Edda closes.

923

EDDIUS (Aeddi), a Kentish choirmaster, summoned by Wilfrid (c. 634-709), bishop of York, to help in organizing church services in Northumbria. He wrote the Life of his patron, and this biography of St Wilfrid is the earliest extant historical work compiled by an Anglo-Saxon author. He is a strong partisan and very credulous, but the Vita Wilfridi is nevertheless invaluable for the period it treats. Its date is little after the first decade of the 8th century, and it was used by Bede in compiling his Historia.

EDELINCK, GERARD (1649-1707), Flemish copper-plate engraver, was born at Antwerp. The rudiments of the art, which he was to carry to a higher pitch of excellence than it had previously reached, he acquired in his native town under the engraver Cornelisz Galle. But he was not long in reaching the limits of his master’s attainments; and then he went to Paris to improve himself under the teaching of De Poilly. This master likewise had soon done all he could to help him onwards, and Edelinck ultimately took the first rank among line engravers. His excellence was generally acknowledged; and having become known to Louis XIV. he was appointed, on the recommendation of Le Brun, teacher at the academy established at the Gobelins for the training of workers in tapestry. He was also entrusted with the execution of several important works. In 1677 he was admitted member of the Paris Academy of Painting and Sculpture. The work of this great engraver constitutes an epoch in the art. His prints number more than four hundred.

Edelinck stands above and apart from his predecessors and contemporaries in that he excelled, not in some one respect, but in all respects,—that while one engraver attained excellence in correct form, and another in rendering light and shade, and others in giving colour to their prints and the texture of surfaces, he, as supreme master of the burin, possessed and displayed all these separate qualities, in so complete a harmony that the eye is not attracted by any one of them in particular, but rests in the satisfying whole. Edelinck was the first to break through the custom of making prints square, and to execute them in the lozenge shape. Among his most famous works are a “Holy Family,” after Raphael; a “Penitent Magdalene,” after Charles le Brun; “Alexander at the Tent of Darius,” after Le Brun; a “Combat of Four Knights,” after Leonardo da Vinci; “Christ surrounded with Angels”; “St Louis praying”; and “St Charles Borromeo before a crucifix,”—the last three after Le Brun. Edelinck was especially good as an engraver of portraits, and executed prints of many of the most eminent persons of his time. Among these are those of Le Brun, Rigaud, Philippe de Champagne (which the engraver thought his best), Santeuil, La Fontaine, Colbert, John Dryden, Descartes, &c. He died at Paris in 1707. His younger brother John, and his son Nicholas, were also engravers, but did not attain to his excellence.

EDELWEISS, known botanically as Leontopodium alpinum, a member of the family Compositae, a native of the Alps of Central Europe. It is a small herb reaching about 6 in. high, with narrow white woolly leaves, and terminal flower-heads enveloped in woolly bracts. The woolly covering enables the plant to thrive in the exposed situations in which it is found, by protecting it from cold and from drying up through excessive loss of moisture. It is grown in Britain as a rock-plant.

EDEN, SIR ASHLEY (1831-1887), Anglo-Indian official and diplomatist, third son of Robert John Eden, third Lord Auckland and bishop of Bath and Wells, was born on the 13th of November 1831, and was educated at Rugby, Winchester and the East India Company’s college at Haileybury, entering the Indian civil service in 1852. In 1855 he gained distinction as assistant to the special commissioner for the suppression of the Santal rising, and in 1860 was appointed secretary to the Bengal government with an ex officio seat on the legislative council, a position he held for eleven years. In 1861 he negotiated, as political agent, a treaty with the raja of Sikkim. His success led to his being sent on a similar mission to Bhutan in 1863; but, being unaccompanied by any armed force, his demands were rejected and he was forced under circumstances of personal insult to come to an arrangement highly favourable to the Bhutias. The result was the repudiation of the treaty by the Indian government and the declaration of war against Bhutan. In 1871 Eden became the first civilian governor of British Burma, which post he held until his appointment in 1877 as lieutenant-governor of Bengal. In 1878 he was made a K.C.S.I., and in 1882 resigned the lieutenant-governorship and returned to England on his appointment to the council of the secretary of state for India, of which he remained a member till his death on the 8th of July 1887. The success of his administration of Bengal was attested by the statue erected in his honour at Calcutta after his retirement.

EDEN, the name of the region in which, according to the Hebrew paradise-tradition in its present form, God planted a garden (or park), wherein he put the man whom he had formed (Gen. ii. 8). Research into primitive beliefs, guided by the comparative method, leads to the view that the “garden” was originally a celestial locality (see Paradise), and we cannot therefore be surprised if, now that paradise has been brought down to earth, the geographical details given in the Bible are rather difficult to work into a consistent picture. The fantastic geography of the (Indian) Vishnu Purana and the (Iranian) Bundahish will, in this case, be a striking parallel.

Let us now take the details of Eden as they occur. In Gen. ii. 8 we read that the garden lay “in Eden eastward,” where “eastward” is generally taken to mean “in the east of the earth.” This, however, seems inconsistent with Isa. xiv. 13, where the “mountain of God,” which corresponds (see Ezek. xxviii. 13, 14 and the article Adam) to the “garden in Eden,” is said to have been “in the uttermost parts of the north” (so R.V.). The former statement (“eastward”) suits Babylonia, where Friedrich Delitzsch1 places Eden; the latter does not. We are further told (v. 10) that “a river went out from Eden to water the garden,” and that “from thence it parted itself (?), and became four heads (?),” which is commonly understood to mean that the river was so large that, soon after leaving the garden (“from thence” is all that the text says), it could still supply four considerable streams (the text says, not “streams,” but “heads,” i.e. perhaps “beginnings” or “starting-points”). In vv. 11-14 the names of four rivers are given, but in spite of the descriptive supplements attached to three of them, only that one which has no supplement can be identified with much probability. In fact, Pĕrāth may without any obvious difficulty be “Euphrates,” except in Jer. xiii., where a more southerly stream seems indicated, but to the identification of “Hiddekel” with “Tigris” (Babylonian Diglat) the presence of the initial Hi in the Hebrew is an objection. Now as to “Pishon” and “Gihon.” If a moderately early tradition may be trusted, the “Gihon” is another name for the “Shihor,” which was either in or beside “Mizraim” (= Egypt) or Mizrim (= the North Arabian Muṣri), and indeed according to most scholars means the Nile in Jer. ii. 18, where the Septuagint substitutes for it Gēōn, i.e. Gihon. For “Pishon” few plausible suggestions have been made; it is not, however, a hopeless problem from the point of view which recognizes Eden in Arabia.

For details of the interesting descriptive supplements of the names Pishon, Giḥon, and Ḥiddeḳel, on which there is much difference of opinion, it must suffice to refer to the Encyclopaedia Biblica and Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible. We must, however, mention a widely held explanation of the name Eden. Plausible as it is to interpret this name as “delight”—indeed, the Septuagint translates in Gen. iii. 23 f. ὁ παράδεισος τῆς τρυφῆς—this cannot have been the original meaning. Hence Delitzsch (Wo lag das Paradies? p. 79) suggested that “Eden” might be a Hebraized form of the Babylonian ēdinu, “field, plain, desert.” But whereas Delitzsch takes “Eden” to be the entire plain of 924 Babylonia, Hommel thinks that it is rather the plain about the sacred city of Eridu. It is the latter scholar to whom the “Arabian theory” of Paradise in its best-known form is due. The rivers (apart from Pĕrāth, “Euphrates”) he locates in northern and central Arabia, the “Cush” and “Asshur” of Genesis being, according to him, central Arabia and Edom respectively (Ancient Hebrew Traditions, pp. 314-316; Aufsätze u. Abhandlungen, iii. 281-284, 335-339). These rivers, in short, become Arabian wadis, on which see Hast. D.B. i. 132a (foot). Cheyne, on the other hand, rejects the Babylonian explanation of Eden as = “field, plain,” on the ground that “Eden” was originally regarded as a mountainous tract.

EDENBRIDGE, a market town in the south-western parliamentary division of Kent, England, 26 m. S.S.E. of London, on the South-Eastern & Chatham, and the London, Brighton & South Coast railways. Pop. (1901) 2546. It is pleasantly situated on the river Eden, an affluent of the Medway, in a valley between the Ragstone Hills and the Forest Ridges. The church of St Peter and St Paul is principally Perpendicular. The town, which has considerable agricultural trade, possesses a chalybeate spring, but this is little used. Two miles from the town is Hever Castle, a beautiful moated mansion dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, but occupying the site of an earlier structure. This was rebuilt by Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, whose grandson, Sir Thomas, was father of Anne, second wife of Henry VIII., who here spent much of her life before her marriage, and was visited several times by the king. There is a chapel of her family in the fine parish church of Hever. Not far distant is the modern Chiddingstone Castle, on an ancient site. A block of sandstone in the park is called the “chiding stone,” tradition asserting it to be a prehistoric seat of judgment.

EDEN HALL, LUCK OF, an old painted drinking goblet preserved at Eden Hall, Cumberland, the seat of the Musgrave family. It is of enamelled or painted glass and is believed to date from the 10th century. It is of fair size and has the letters I.H.S. on the top. Round the vase is the famous verse given below. A legend involving the fortunes of the Musgraves attaches to this cup. In the grounds of Eden Hall is a spring called St Cuthbert’s Well, and the story is that one of the earliest of the Musgraves surprised the fairies feasting and making merry round the well. He snatched at the goblet from which the Fairy King was drinking and made off with it. The fairies pursued him to his castle, but failed to catch him. The Fairy King acknowledged his defeat and gave the cup as a prize to Musgrave, but warned him that the gift carried with it a condition:—

There are variants of this legend, but substantially they agree. Possessed of the lucky cup the knight of Musgrave is said to have at once prospered in a love-suit which had till then gone against him. There is a curious poem on the cup called “The Drinking Match at Eden Hall,” by Philip, duke of Wharton, a parody on the ballad of Chevy Chase. This is reprinted in full in Edward Walford’s Tales of Great Families (1877, vol. 11), under the heading, “The witty Duke of Wharton.” In Longfellow’s famous poem the goblet is represented as having been broken.

EDENKOBEN, a town of Germany, in the Bavarian Palatinate, 6 m. N. from Landau, on the railway to Weissenburg. Pop. 5300. It has a Roman Catholic and a Protestant church, several high-grade schools and a sulphur-spring. Its industries comprise linen- and damask-weaving, ironworks, and the manufacture of machinery, furniture and cigars. It has also a considerable trade in wine.

EDENTATA, the name assigned by Cuvier to an order of placental mammals apparently typified by the South American anteater, but likewise including the sloths and armadillos of the same country, and the Old World aard-varks and pangolins. Only the anteaters and pangolins are absolutely without teeth (Lat. e, out, dens, tooth), and the name is strictly applicable only to those two groups; but in all the existing representatives of the order teeth are absent from the front of the jaws, while the cheek-teeth are devoid of roots and of enamel, and only very exceptionally have deciduous predecessors. Practically this is all the definition that can be given to the assemblage, which is possibly an artificial one. It may be mentioned, however, that there is not unfrequently a separate coracoid bone.

Edentates may be divided into three distinct sections or suborders, firstly the Xenarthra, or Edentata Vera, of America, secondly the Tubulidenta, represented by the African aard-varks, and thirdly the Pholidota, which includes only the pangolins common to Africa and Asia. The Xenarthra are essentially a South and Central American group, some of the members of which have effected an entrance into North America. The three families by which they are now represented are widely sundered, both as regards habits and structure; but two of them—the sloths and the anteaters—are intimately connected by means of the extinct ground-sloths. As regards the presumed relationship of the Old World to the New World types, it is noteworthy that in the early Tertiary deposits of France and Germany are found certain fossil remains apparently referable to armadillos, aard-varks and pangolins, some of the armadillos coming very close to South American forms. This assemblage of three groups of edentates in the countries fringing northern Africa is suggestive that the latter continent may have been the original home of the group, which reached South America by means of a direct land connexion.

Xenarthra.—The typical American edentates, or Xenarthra, are characterized by the circumstance that the last dorsal and all the lumbar vertebrae carry additional articular facets, or abnormal articulations (xenarthral). Teeth may be absent or present, and when developed either all similar (homaeodont) or to some extent differentiated. The bodily covering may take the form either of coarse hairs, or of bony plates, with a larger or smaller intermixture of hairs.

Of the three existing families of this group, the first is that of the Bradypodidae, or sloths, characterized by the presence of five pairs of upper and four of lower teeth, the normally-formed tongue and the rudimentary tail. The species are arboreal and feed on leaves; all being confined to the forests of tropical America. Externally sloths are clothed with long coarse, crisp hair; the head is short and rounded, and the external ears inconspicuous. The teeth are subcylindrical, of persistent growth, consisting of a central axis of vasodentine, with a thin investment of hard dentine, and a thick outer coating of cement; without any succession. Fore-limbs greatly longer than the hind-limbs; the extremities terminating in narrow, curved feet; with the digits never exceeding three in number, and encased for nearly their whole length in a common integument, and armed with long, strong claws. Stomach complex. No caecum. Placenta deciduate and dome-like, composed of an aggregation of numerous discoidal lobes.

A remarkable feature connected with sloths is the development of a green colour in their hair, due to the growth of an alga. 925 According to Dr W.G. Ridewood, in the three-toed sloth the hair is invested with a thick extra-cortical layer. “The hair has a tendency to crack in a transverse direction, and in the cracks there come to lodge unicellular algae, to which Kühn has given the name Pleurococcus bradypi. The moisture of the climate in which Bradypus lives enables the alga to live and propagate in this curious position, and the sloth acquires a general green tint which must render it very difficult to distinguish as it hangs among the green foliage.” In the two-toed sloth, on the other hand, the bulk of the hair is composed of an outer coat, or cortex, which is longitudinally fluted or grooved, the grooves being filled with strands of extra-cortex in which flourishes an alga (Pleurococcus choloepi) distinct from the one infesting the hairs of the three-toed species. Of quite a different type are the hairs of the extinct ground-sloths (see Mylodon), which are smooth and solid, Dr Ridewood rejecting the idea that they were originally coated with a cortex that has disappeared.

The typical genus Bradypus is represented by the various species of ai, or three-toed sloth, in which none of the teeth project greatly beyond the others; the first in the upper jaw is much smaller than any of the others, while the first in the lower jaw is broad and compressed, and the grinding surfaces of all are much cupped. Vertebrae: C 9, D and L 20 (of which 15 to 17 bear ribs), S 6, Ca 11. All the species present the peculiarity of possessing nine cervical vertebrae; but the ninth, and sometimes the eighth, bears a pair of short movable ribs. The fore-limbs are considerably longer than the hind-legs, and the bones of the fore-arm are complete, free and capable of pronation and supination. The fore-feet are long, very narrow, habitually curved and terminate in three pointed curved claws, in close apposition to each other; they are, in fact, incapable of being divaricated, so that the foot is reduced to the condition of a triple hook, fit only for the function of suspension from the boughs of trees. The hind-foot closely resembles the fore-foot in general structure and mode of use, and has the sole habitually turned inwards so that it cannot be applied to the ground in walking. The tongue is short and soft, and the stomach large and complex, bearing some resemblance to that of ruminants. The windpipe or trachea has the remarkable peculiarity—not unfrequent among birds and reptiles—of being folded on itself before it reaches the lungs. The two teats are pectoral in position. The premaxilla is rudimentary and loosely attached to the maxilla. Except in B. torquatus, there is no perforation in the lower end of the humerus. Some of the species are covered uniformly with a grey or greyish-brown coat; others have a dark collar of elongated hairs around the shoulders (B. torquatus); some have the hair of the face shorter than that of the rest of the head and neck; and others have a remarkable-looking patch of soft, short hair on the back between the shoulders, consisting, when best marked, of a median stripe of glossy black, bordered on each side by bright orange, yellow or white. There are also structural differences in the skulls, as in the amount of inflation of the pterygoid bones. The habits of all are apparently alike. They are natives of Guiana, Brazil and Peru, and two species (B. infuscatus and B. castaneiceps) extend north of the Isthmus of Panama as far as Nicaragua. Of the former of these a specimen in captivity uttered a shrill sound like a monkey when forcibly pulled away from the tree to which it was holding.

In the species of unau, or two-toed sloths, Choloepus, the front tooth in both jaws is separated by an interval from the others, and is large and caniniform, wearing to a sharp bevelled edge against the opposing tooth, the upper shutting in front of the lower when the mouth is closed, unlike true canines. Vertebrae: C 6 or 7, D 23-24, L 3, S 7-8, Ca 4-6. One species (C. didactylus) has the ordinary number of vertebrae in the neck; but an otherwise closely allied form (C. hoffmanni) has but six. The tail is very rudimentary. The fore-feet generally resemble those of Bradypus, but there are only two functional digits, with claws; these answering to the second and third of the typical five-toed limb. The structure of the hind-limb generally resembles that of Bradypus, the appellation “two-toed” referring only to the anterior limb, for in the foot the three middle toes are functionally developed and of nearly equal size. The premaxilla is well developed, and firmly attached to the maxilla; and there is always a perforation, or foramen, on the inner side of the lower end of the humerus. C. didactylus, which has been longest known, and is commonly called by the native name of unau, inhabits the forests of Brazil. C. hoffmanni has a more northern geographical range, extending from Ecuador through Panama to Costa Rica. Its voice, which is seldom heard, is like the bleat of a sheep, and if the animal is seized it snorts violently. Both species are very variable in external coloration (see Sloth).

The second family is that of the anteaters, Myrmecophagidae, distinguished from the last by the absence of teeth, the elongated tongue and the long tail. The long and slender head has a tubular mouth, with a small terminal aperture through which the worm-like tongue, covered with the sticky secretion of the enormous submaxillary salivary glands, is rapidly protruded in feeding, and withdrawn again with the adhering particles of food which are then sucked into the gullet. In the foot the third toe is greatly developed, and has a long sickle-like claw; the others are reduced or suppressed. The hind-foot has four or five subequal digits with claws. The long tail is sometimes prehensile. Placenta dome-like or discoidal. Externally the body is covered with hair. Anteaters feed exclusively on animal substances, mostly insects. One species is terrestrial, the others arboreal; none burrow in the ground. They are all inhabitants of tropical America. In the typical genus Myrmecophaga the skull is remarkably elongated and narrow, with its upper surface smooth and cylindriform. Anteriorly the face is produced into a long tubular rostrum, rounded above and flattened below, with terminal nostrils, and composed of the mesethmoid (ossified for more than half its length), the vomer, the maxillae, and the long and narrow nasal bones, the premaxillae being extremely short and confined to the margin of the nostrils. The zygomatic arch is incomplete, the rod-like jugal only articulating with the maxilla in front, and not reaching the short zygomatic process of the squamosal. The lachrymal foramen is in front of the margin of the orbit. There are no post-orbital processes to the frontals or any other demarcation between the orbits and the temporal fossae. Palate extremely elongated, and produced backwards as far as the level of the external auditory meatus by the meeting in the middle line of the largely developed pterygoids. The glenoid fossa for the lower jaw, a shallow oval facet, with its long diameter from before backwards. Lower jaw long and slender, with an exceedingly short symphysis, no distinct coronoid process, and a slightly elevated, elongated, flattened, condylar articular surface. Vertebrae: C 7, D 15-16, L 3-2, S 6, Ca 31. Clavicles rudimentary. In the fore-foot the first digit is very slender, the second also slender, with compressed phalanges of nearly equal length, but the third is immensely developed, though its first phalanx is extremely short, while the terminal one is so long that the entire length of the digit exceeds that of the second. The fourth has a long and rather slender metacarpal, and three phalanges diminishing in size, the terminal phalange being very small. The fifth has the metacarpal nearly as long, but not so stout as the fourth, and followed by two small phalanges, the last rudimentary and conical. Claws are developed upon all but the fifth. In walking the toes are kept bent, with their points turned upwards and inwards, the weight being supported on a pad over the end of the fifth digit, and the upper surfaces of the third and fourth digits. The hind feet are short and rather broad, with five subequal claws, the fourth rather longest, the first shortest; the whole sole is placed on the ground in walking. Body rather compressed, clothed with long, coarse hair. Tail about as long as the body, and covered with very long hair; not prehensile. Ears small, oval, erect. Eyes very small. Stomach consisting of a sub-globular, thin-walled, cardiac portion, and a muscular pyloric gizzard with dense epithelial lining. No ileocolic valve; but a short, wide, ill-defined caecum. The two teats are pectoral.

The tamandua anteaters (Tamandua, or Uroleptes), of which several species (or races) are now recognized, are smaller animals than the last, in which the head is much less elongated, the fur 926 short and bristly, and the tail, tapering, prehensile, with the under side throughout, and the whole of the terminal portion naked and scaly. The stomach is similar to that of Myrmecophaga, but with the muscular pyloric gizzard less strongly developed. There is a distinct ileocolic valve and short globular caecum. The fore-foot has a very large claw on the third toe, moderate-sized claws on the second and fourth, a minute one on the first, and none on the fifth, which is entirely concealed within the skin. The hind-foot has five subequal claws. Vertebrae: C 7, D 17, L 2, S 5, Ca 37. There are very rudimentary clavicles.

The last representative of the family is the tiny golden-haired pigmy or two-toed anteater, Cyclopes (or Cycloturus) didactylus, in which the skull is much shorter even than in the preceding genus, and arched considerably in the longitudinal direction. It differs from that of the other members of the family mainly in the long canal for the posterior nostrils not being closed by bone below, as the greater part of the palatines and the pterygoids do not meet in the middle line. The lower jaw has a prominent, narrow, recurved coronoid, and a well-developed angular process, and is strongly decurved in front. Vertebrae: C 7, D 16, L 2, S 4, Ca 40. Ribs remarkably broad and flat. Clavicles well developed. Fore-foot remarkably modified, having the third digit greatly developed at the expense of all the others; it has a short stout metacarpal and but two phalanges, of which the terminal one is large, compressed, pointed and much curved, with a strong hook-like claw. The second digit has the same number of phalanges, and bears a claw, but is much more slender than the third. The fourth is represented only by the metacarpal, and one nailless phalange, the first and fifth only by rudimentary metacarpals. The hind-foot is also modified into a climbing organ, the first toe being rudimentary and consisting of a metatarsal and one phalange concealed beneath the skin, but the other four toes subequal and much curved, with long, pointed, compressed claws. The tuberosity of the heel-bone or calcaneum is directed towards the sole, and parallel with it and extending to about double its length is a greatly elongated sesamoid ossicle. These together support a prominent cushion to which the nails are opposed in climbing. Stomach pyriform, with muscular walls, but no distinct gizzard-like portion. The commencement of the colon provided with two small caeca, narrow at the base, but rather dilated at their terminal blind ends, and communicating with the general cavity by very minute apertures. Tail longer than the body, tapering, bare on the under surface and prehensile. Fur soft and silky.

The third and last existing family of the Xenarthra is that of the armadillos, or Dasypodidae, in which there are at least seven pairs of teeth in each jaw, while the tongue is normal, the tail generally long, and the body covered with an armour of bony plates overlain by horny scales. All the species are terrestrial, and insectivorous or more or less omnivorous.

The union of the numerous polygonal bony shields on the back and sides forms a hard shield, usually consisting of an anterior (scapular) and posterior (pelvic) solid portion (which overhang on each side the parts of the body they respectively cover, forming chambers into which the limbs are withdrawn), and a variable number of rings between, connected by soft flexible skin so as to allow of curvature of the body. The top of the head has also a similar shield, and the tail is usually encased in bony rings or plates. The outer or exposed surfaces of the limbs are protected by irregular bony plates, not united at their margins; but the skin of the inner surface of the limbs and under side of the body is soft and more or less clothed with hair. Hairs also in many species project through apertures between the bony plates of the back. The bony plates are covered by a layer of horny epidermis. Teeth numerous, simple, of persistent growth and usually without milk predecessors. Zygomatic arch of skull complete. Cervical vertebrae with extremely short, broad and depressed bodies; the first free, but the second and third, and often several of the others united together both by their bodies and arches. Clavicles well developed. A third trochanter on the femur. Tibia and fibula united at their lower extremities. Fore-feet with strongly developed, curved claws, adapted for digging and scratching, three, four or five in number. Hind-feet plantigrade, with five toes, all provided with nails. Tongue long, pointed and extensile, though to a less degree than in the anteaters. Submaxillary glands largely developed. Stomach simple. Placenta discoidal and deciduate.

The typical genus Dasypus, with several others, represents the subfamily Dasypodinae, which usually have all five toes developed and with nails, though the first and fifth may be suppressed. The first and second are long and slender, with the normal number and relative length of phalanges, the others stout, with short broad metacarpals, and the phalanges reduced in length and generally in number by coalescence; the terminal phalange of the third being large, that of the others gradually diminishing to the fifth. Dasypus has the most normal form of fore-foot, but the modifications developed in all the others (culminating in Tolypeutes) are foreshadowed. Ears wide apart. Teats, one pair, pectoral. In Dasypus the teeth are 9⁄10 or 8⁄9, of which the first in the upper jaw is usually implanted in the premaxillary bone. The series extends posteriorly some distance behind the anterior root of the zygoma, almost level with the hind edge of the palate. The teeth are large, subcylindrical, slightly compressed, diminishing in size towards each end of the series; the anterior two in the lower jaw smaller and more compressed than the others. Cranial portion of the skull broad and depressed, facial portion triangular, broad in front and depressed. Auditory bulla completely ossified, perforated on the inner side by the carotid canal, and continued externally into an elongated bony meatus auditorius, with its aperture directed upwards and backwards. (In all the other genera of Dasypodinae the tympanic bone is a mere half-ring, loosely attached to the cranium.) Lower jaw with a high ascending branch, broad transversely placed condyle, and high slender coronoid process. Vertebrae: C 7, D 11-12, L 3, S 8, Ca 17-18. Head broad and flat above, with the muzzle obtusely pointed. Ears of moderate size or rather small, placed laterally far apart. Body broad and depressed. Armour with six or seven movable bands between the scapular and pelvic shields. Tail shorter than the body, tapering, covered with plates forming distinct rings near the base. Fore-feet with five toes; the first much more slender than the others, and with a smaller ungual phalange and nail; the second, though the longest, also slender. The third, fourth and fifth gradually diminishing in length, all armed with strong, slightly curved compressed claws, sloping from an elevated, rounded inner border to a sharp, outer and inferior edge. The hind-foot is rather short, and has all five toes armed with stout, compressed, slightly curved, obtusely pointed claws—the third the longest, the second nearly equal to it, the fourth the next, the first and fifth shorter and nearly equal.

To this genus belongs one of the best-known species of the group, the six-banded armadillo or encoubert (D. sexcinctus) of Brazil and Paraguay; a very similar species, D. villosus, the hairy armadillo, replacing it south of the Rio Plata. There are also two small species, D. vellerosus and D. minutus, from the Argentine Republic and North Patagonia; the latter, which differs from the other three in having no tooth implanted in the 927 premaxillary bone and is often referred to a genus apart, as Zäedius.

In Tatoua (Cabassous or Lysiurus) the teeth are 9⁄9 or 8⁄8, of moderate size and subcylindrical: the most posterior placed a little way behind the anterior root of the zygoma, but far from the hinder margin of the palate. Skull somewhat elongated, much constricted behind the orbits, and immediately in front of the constriction considerably dilated. Lower jaw slender, with the coronoid process small and sharp pointed, sometimes obsolete. Vertebrae: C 7, D 12-13, L 5, S 10, Ca 18. Head broad behind. Ears rather large and rounded, wide apart. Movable bands of armour 12-13. Tail considerably shorter than the body, and slender, covered with nearly naked skin, with a few small, scattered, bony plates, chiefly on the under surface and near the apex. On the fore-feet the first and second toes are long and slender, with small claws and the normal number of phalanges. The other toes have but two phalanges; the third has an immense sickle-like claw; the fourth and fifth similar but smaller claws. The hind-feet are comparatively small, with five toes, and small, triangular, blunt nails; the third longest, the first shortest. The best-known species of this genus, the tatouay or cabassou, T. unicinctus, is, after Priodon gigas, the largest of the group. It is found, though not abundantly, in Surinam, Brazil and Paraguay. Others, such as T. hispidus and T. lugubris, have been described.

In the giant armadillo (Priodon gigas) the teeth are variable in number, and generally differ on the two sides of each jaw, being usually from 20 to 25 on each side above and below, so that as many as a hundred may be present altogether; but as life advances the anterior teeth fall out, and all traces of their sockets disappear. The series extends as far back as the hinder edge of the anterior root of the zygoma. They are all very small, in the anterior half of each series strongly compressed, with flat sides and a straight free edge, but posteriorly more cylindrical, with flat, truncated, free surfaces. Vertebrae: C 7, D 12, L 3, S 10, Ca 23. Head small, elongated, conical. Ears moderate, ovate. Armour with 12-13 movable bands. Tail nearly equal to the body in length, gradually tapering, closely covered with quadrangular scales, arranged in a quincunx pattern. Fore-feet with five toes, formed on the same plan as those of Tatoua, but with the claw of the third of still greater size, and that of the others, especially the fifth, proportionally reduced. Hind-foot short and rounded, with five very short toes, and short, broad, flat obtuse nails. The giant armadillo is by far the largest existing member of the family, measuring rather more than 3 ft. from the tip of the nose to the root of the tail, the tail being about 20 in. long. It inhabits the forest of Surinam and Brazil. The powerful claws of its fore-feet enable it to dig with great facility; and its food consists chiefly of termites and other insects, although it is said to attack and uproot newly-made graves for the purpose of devouring the flesh of the bodies contained in them.

The apar (Tolypeutes tricinctus) typifies a genus in which the teeth are 9⁄9 or 8⁄9, and are rather large in proportion to the size of the skull, with the hinder end of the series reaching nearly to the posterior margin of the palate. Vertebrae: C 7, D 11, L 3, S 12, Ca 13. Ears placed low on the sides of the head, rather large, broadly ovate. Armour with its scapular and pelvic shields very free at the sides of the body, forming large chambers into which the limbs can be readily withdrawn, and only three movable bands. Tail short, conical, covered with large bony tubercles. The fore-feet formed on the same type as in the last genus, but the peculiarities carried to a still greater extent. The claw of the third toe is very long, while those of the first and fifth are greatly reduced and sometimes wanting. On the hind-foot the three middle toes have broad, flat, subequal nails, forming together a kind of tripartite hoof; the first and fifth much shorter, with more compressed nails.

The armadillos of this genus have the power of rolling themselves up into a ball, the shield on the top of the head and the tuberculated dorsal surface of the tail exactly fitting into and filling up the apertures left by the notches at either end of the body-armour. This appears to be their usual means of defence when frightened or surprised, as they do not burrow like the other species. They run very quickly, with a very peculiar gait, only the tips of the claws of the fore-feet touching the ground. In addition to the apar, there are the Argentine and Bolivian T. conurus, and T. muriei from Argentina or Patagonia.

The last group of existing armadillos forms the genus Tatusia and the subfamily Tatusiinae; the subfamily rank being based on the fact that of the seven or eight pairs of small subcylindrical teeth, all but the last, which is considerably smaller than the rest, are preceded by milk-teeth not changed until the animal has nearly attained full size. Vertebrae: C 7, D 9-11, L 5, S 8, Ca 20-27. Head narrow, with a long, narrow, subcylindrical obliquely truncated snout. Ears rather large, ovate and erect, placed close together on the occiput. Armour with seven to nine distinct movable bands. Body generally elongated and narrow. Tail moderate, or long, gradually tapering; its plates forming distinct rings for the greater part of its length. Fore-feet with four visible toes, and a concealed clawless rudiment of the fifth; the claws long, slightly curved, and slender, the third and fourth subequal and alike, the first and fourth much shorter. Hind-feet with five toes, armed with strong, slightly curved, conical, obtusely pointed nails, and the third longest, then the second and fourth, and the first and fifth much shorter than the others. This genus differs from all the other armadillos in having a pair of inguinal teats in addition to the usual pectoral pair, and in producing a large number (4 to 10) of young at a birth, all the others having usually but one or two. The peba armadillo, T. septemcincta, is a well-known species, having an extensive range from Texas to Paraguay. It is replaced in the more southern regions of South America by a smaller species, with shorter tail, the mulita (T. hybrida) so called from the resemblance of its head and ears to those of a mule. T. kappleri is a large species from Guiana.

Finally we have the pichiciago, or fairy armadillo, Chlamydophorus truncatus, typifying the subfamily Chlamydophorinae. In most anatomical characters, especially the structure of the fore-foot, this group resembles the Dasypodinae, but it differs remarkably from all other known armadillos, living or extinct, in the peculiar modification of the armour.

The teeth, which number 8⁄8-9, are subcylindrical, somewhat compressed, moderate in size, and smaller at each end (especially in front) than at the middle of the series. Skull broad and rounded behind, pointed in front. Muzzle subcylindrical and depressed. A conspicuous rounded rough prominence on the frontal bone, just before each orbit. Tympanic prolonged into a tubular auditory meatus, curving upwards round the base of the zygoma. Vertebrae: C 7, D 11, L 3, S 10, Ca 15. Upper part of head and trunk covered with four-sided horny plates (with small thin ossifications beneath), forming a shield, free and overhanging the sides of the trunk, and attached only along the middle line of the back. The plates are arranged in a series of distinct transverse bands, about twenty in number between the occiput and the posterior truncated end, and not divided into solid scapular and pelvic shields with movable bands between. The hinder end of the body is abruptly truncated and covered by a vertically placed, strong, solid, bony shield, of an oval (transversely extended) form, covered by thin horny plates. This shield is firmly welded by five bony processes to the hinder part of the pelvis. Through a notch in the middle of its lower border the tail passes out. The latter is rather short, cylindrical in its proximal half, and expanded and depressed or spatulate in its terminal portion, and covered with horny plates. The dorsal surfaces of the fore and hind-feet are also covered with horny plates. The remainder of the limbs and under surface and sides of the body beneath the overlapping lateral parts of the back shield are clothed with rather long, soft silky hair. Eyes and ears very small, and concealed by the hair. Extremities short. Feet large, each with five well-developed claws, those on the fore-feet very long, stout and subcompressed, the structure of the digits being essentially the same as those of Tatoua and Priodon. Teats two, pectoral. Visceral anatomy closely 928 resembling that of Dasypus, the caecum being broad, short and bifid. The pichiciago, a burrowing animal, about 5 in. long, inhabits the sandy plains of western Argentina, especially the vicinity of Mendoza. Its horny covering is pinkish, and its silky hair white. A second species, C. retusus, from Bolivia is rather larger and has the dorsal shield attached to the skin of the back as far as its edge, instead of only along the median line. (See Armadillo.)

Tubulidentata.—The second suborder of edentates, namely the Tubulidentata, is represented at the present day only by the aard-varks, or ant-bears, of Africa, constituting the family Orycteropodidae and the genus Orycteropus. Together with the following group, they differ from the Xenarthra in the absence of additional articular facets to the lumbar vertebrae; for which reason the term Nomarthra has been proposed for the Tubulidentata and Pholidota as collectively distinct from the Xenarthra. In the present group the external surface is scantily covered with bristle-like hairs. The teeth are numerous, and traversed by a number of parallel vertical pulp-canals. Femur with a third trochanter. Fore-feet without the first toe, but all the other digits well developed, with strong moderate-sized nails, suited to digging, the plantar surfaces of which rest on the ground in walking. Hind-feet with five subequal toes. Placenta broadly zonular. The brain is very like that of the Ungulata; and there are two pairs of teats, one abdominal, and the other inguinal. Aard-varks feed on animal substances; and are terrestrial and fossorial in habits. The total number of teeth is from eight to ten in each side of the upper, and eight in the lower jaw; but they are never all in place at one time, as the small anterior ones are shed before the series is completed behind. In the adult they number usually five on each side above and below, of which the first two are simple and compressed, the next two larger and longitudinally grooved at the sides, the most posterior simple and cylindrical. Their summits are rounded before they are worn; their bases do not taper to a root, but are evenly truncated and continually growing. Each tooth is made up of an aggregation of parallel dental systems, having a slender pulp cavity in the centre, from which the dentinal tubes radiate outwards, and being closely packed together each system assumes a polygonal outline as seen in transverse section. A series of milk-teeth is developed. Skull moderately elongated with the facial portion subcylindrical and slightly tapering, and the zygoma complete and slender. The palate ends posteriorly in the thickened transverse border of the palatines, and is not continued back by the pterygoids. The tympanic is annular, and not welded to the surrounding bones. The lower jaw is slender anteriorly, but rises high posteriorly, with a slender recurved coronoid, and an ascending pointed process on the hinder edge below the condyle, which is small, oval, and looks forward as much as upwards. Vertebrae: C 7, D 13, L 8, S 6, Ca 25. The large number of lumbar vertebrae is peculiar among Edentates. The tongue is less worm-like than in Myrmecophaga, being thick and fleshy at the base and gradually tapering to the apex. The salivary apparatus is developed much in the same manner as in that genus, but the duct of the submaxillary gland has no reservoir. The stomach consists of a large subglobular cardaic portion, with a thick, soft, and corrugated lining membrane, and a smaller muscular, pyloric part, with a comparatively thin and smooth lining. There is a distinct ileocaecal valve and a considerable sized caecum; also a gall-bladder. Head elongated, with a tubular snout, terminal nostrils and small mouth-opening. Ears large, pointed, erect. Tall nearly as long as the body, cylindrical, thick at the base, tapering to the extremity.

According to the researches of Dr E. Lönnberg, the teeth of the aard-varks correspond only to the roots of those of other mammals, the crowns being unrepresented, except to a very small degree when the teeth first cut the gum. This explanation renders the peculiar internal structure of these teeth much less difficult to understand than if they represented both crown and root. In Dr Lönnberg’s opinion, the teeth indicate the descent of the aard-vark from an ungulate stock,—a view in harmony with the evidence of the brain. If this idea prove well founded, and if the aard-varks are rightly classed with the Edentata, the whole order must apparently be regarded as an offshoot from primitive Ungulata. The fact of the frequent distinctness of the coracoid bone requires, however, explanation in connexion with such a descent (see Aard-Vark).

Pholidota.—The Pholidota, constituting the third and last group of the Edentata, are represented by the pangolins, or scaly anteaters, of Asia and Africa, all of which are included in the family Manidae and the genus Manis. Pangolins differ from all other mammals by the armour of overlapping horny scales (often with hairs growing between them) which invests the whole animal, with the exception of the under surface of the body, and sometimes a small patch near the tip of the under side of the tail. There are no teeth; and although the tongue is long and worm-like, it is not extensile. The scaphoid and lunar bones of the carpus are united. The uterus is bicornuate, and the placenta diffused and non-deciduate. The skull has somewhat the form of an elongated cone, with the small end turned forwards, and is smooth and free from crests and ridges. No distinction between the orbits and temporal fossae. The zygomatic arch usually incomplete, owing to the absence of the jugal bone; no distinct lacrymal bone; and the palate long and narrow. The pterygoids extend backwards as far as the tympanics, but do not meet in the middle line below. Tympanic welded to the surrounding bones, and more or less bladder-like, but not produced into a tubular auditory meatus. Two halves of lower jaw very slender and straight, without any angle or coronoid process, on the anterior extremity of the upper edge a sharp, conical, tooth-like process projecting upwards and outwards. No clavicles. No third trochanter to the femur. Terminal phalanges cleft at the tip. Caudal vertebrae with very long transverse processes and numerous chevron-bones. Stomach with thick muscular walls and lining membrane, and a special gland near the middle of the great curvature, consisting of a mass of complex secreting follicles, the ducts of which terminate in a common orifice. No caecum, but a gall-bladder. Head small, depressed, narrow, and pointed in front, with a very small mouth-opening. Eyes and ears very small. Body elongated, narrow. Tail more or less elongated, convex above, flat underneath. Limbs short, and in walking the surface and outer sides of the phalanges of the two outer digits of the front feet alone rest on the ground, with the points of the nails turning upwards and inwards. The third toe the longest, with a powerful compressed curved claw, the second and fourth with similar but smaller claws, but that of the first toe often almost rudimentary. Hind-feet plantigrade with the first toe very short, and the four other toes subequal, and carrying moderate, curved, compressed nails. Pangolins are of small or moderate size, terrestrial and burrowing, and feed mainly on termites or white ants; some of the species being more or less arboreal. They can roll themselves up in a ball when in danger. Their peculiar elongated form, short limbs, long tapering tail, and scaly covering give them on a superficial inspection more the appearance of reptiles than of mammals. The species are not numerous and may be divided into two sections, one comprising the Asiatic species, such as M. javanica, M. aurita of China, and the Indian M. pentadactyla, and the other the African, as represented by the large M. gigantea, M. temminchi, the long-tailed M. macrura, and the small arboreal M. tricuspis. In the Asiatic group the middle series of scales continues to the tip of the tail; but in the African forms this row splits into two a few inches from the tail-tip. The latter have also no hairs between the scales and no external ears. The climbing species have a small bare patch on the under side of the tail near the tip (see Pangolin).

Extinct Edentates.

Beyond remains of species closely allied to or identical with the existing forms, the sloths and anteaters appear to be unknown in a fossil state. On the other hand the extinct family of ground sloths, or Megatheriidae, which includes the largest of all edentates, is an exceedingly large one, and extends in South America from 929 the Miocene to the Pleistocene, and was also represented during the latter epoch in North America. It serves to connect the Bradypodidae with Myrmecophagidae. The alleged occurrence of an allied form in Madagascar is somewhat doubtful (see Megatherium and Mylodon).

Of Dasypodidae numerous representatives occur in the South American Tertiaries. From the higher beds many of the species are referable to existing genera, such as Dasypus and Tatusia, although some are much larger than any living forms, the skull in one case being nearly a foot in length. In other instances, when lower formations are reached, the genera are also distinct, Eutatus having the whole armour divided into movable bands, and the allied Stegotherium representing the group in the Santa Cruz formation of Patagonia. Even in the Argentine Pleistocene there is an extinct genus, Chlamydotherium, represented by a species of the size of a rhinoceros, with grooved teeth approximating to those of the glyptodonts. The latter represent a family (Glyptodontidae) by themselves, and typically may be described as giant solid-shelled armadillos, although some of their smaller Santa Cruz representatives (Propalaeohoplophorus) approximate in some degree to true armadillos (see Glyptodon).

A very remarkable Santa Cruz armadillo, Peltephilus, has an altogether peculiar type of head-shield, developed into horns in front of the eyes; and, what is still more noteworthy, teeth in the front of the jaws, thereby rendering the ordinary definition of the order Edentata incorrect. It has been made the type of a distinct family, Peltephilidae.

The past history of the armadillo group does not, however, by any means end here. True armadillos, it should be observed, are known in North America as far north as Texas, from the Pleistocene onwards; but in formations of middle Tertiary age are unrepresented. Recent discoveries apparently indicate, however, the occurrence of armadillos of a primitive type in the lower Tertiary or Eocene formations of Wyoming. The first evidence of these Eocene armadillos was afforded by portions of the jaws, which, together with a leg-bone of a totally different animal, were believed to indicate creatures nearly allied to the aye-aye (Chiromys) of Madagascar, and for which the name Metachiromys was consequently proposed. According to modern usage, this name, in spite of its inappropriate nature, is retained for the armadillos, although in the writer’s opinion it ought to be replaced. According to Professor H.F. Osborn, by whom their remains have been described, the North American fossil armadillos were closely related to the existing members of the group, from which they differ chiefly by the armour, or shield, having probably been formed of tough leathery skin instead of bony plates, by the presence of a single pair of large enamel-capped tusk-like teeth in each jaw, and by the degeneration of the other teeth. If these determinations are trustworthy, the question arises whether we should regard the armadillos of South America as the descendants of North American forms which migrated southwards before that separation of the two continents was established, which lasted for a large portion of the Tertiary period, or whether a migration took place at the same early epoch in the opposite direction.

More interesting still is the occurrence of remains of reputed armadillos (Necrodasypus) from the Oligocene of France and Germany. In the opinion of Dr F. Ameghino these Oligocene armadillos, which had bony shields on both the head and body, were near akin to some of the modern South American forms.

Passing on to the aard-varks (Orycteropodidae), we find these represented by a species closely allied to the existing ones in the Lower Pliocene formations of Spain, France, Hungary, Samos and Asia Minor. A single tibia from the French Oligocene is identified by Dr Ameghino with the present family, and the genus Archaeorycteropus established for its reception; this genus, in its founder’s opinion, being also represented in the Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia. As regards the pangolins, the only fossils referred to this group (apart from a few discovered in a cave in India) appear to be certain limb-bones from the Oligocene of France and Germany, for which the names Necromanis and Teutomanis have been proposed. The occurrence of the characteristic cleft terminal toe-bones among these remains seems to leave little doubt as to the correctness of the determination.

The alleged occurrence of remains of giant pangolins in the upper Tertiary of Europe is due to misidentification (see Ancylopoda). By some authorities the Eocene group of Ganodonta has been affiliated to the Edentata, but this reference is not accepted by Prof. W.B. Scott.

EDENTON, a town and the county-seat of Chowan county, North Carolina, U.S.A., on Edenton Bay, an estuary of Albemarle sound, near the mouth of Chowan river, in the N.E. part of the state. Pop. (1890) 2205; (1900) 3046 (2090 negroes); (1910) 2789. It is served by the Norfolk & Southern railway, and by the Albemarle Steam Navigation Co. In 1907 the former projected a great bridge across Albemarle sound near the city. Edenton is an old and interesting town, has a number of fine old homesteads, and has broad and well-shaded streets. Lumbering and the shad and herring fisheries are the most important industrial interests, and the town is a shipping point for fish, truck and other farm products, cotton and peanuts. There is a Fish Cultural Station here, established by the Federal government. The court-house was built about 1750.

Edenton was settled about 1658, and was for some time known as the “Towne on Queen Anne’s Creek” or the “Port of Roanoke”; in 1722 the present name was adopted in honour of Governor Charles Eden (1673-1722), whose grave is in St Paul’s churchyard here. Throughout the 18th century Edenton was a place of considerable social and political importance; the legislative assembly of North Carolina met here occasionally, and here lived the royal governors and various well-known citizens of the province, among them: Joseph Hewes (1730-1779), a signer of the Declaration of Independence; James Iredell, Sr. (1750-1799), a Federalist leader and after 1790 a justice of the United States Supreme Court, and his son James Iredell, Jr. (1788-1853), a prominent lawyer, for many years a member of the state legislature, governor of North Carolina in 1827-1828, and a member of the United States Senate in 1828-1831. Near Edenton lived Samuel Johnston (1733-1816), a prominent leader of the American Whigs preceding and during the War of American Independence, a member of the Continental Congress in 1780-1782, governor of North Carolina in 1787-1789, and a Federalist member of the United States Senate in 1790-1793. In 1907 the Hewes, Iredell and Johnston homesteads were still standing. In a house facing the court-house green the famous “Edenton Tea Party” of fifty-one ladies met on the 24th of October 1774 and signed resolutions that they would not conform “to that Pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea” and would not “promote the wear of any manufacture from England” until the tax on tea should be repealed. Near Edenton the Confederate ram “Albemarle,” on emerging from the Roanoke river, was met by the Union “double-enders,” “Sassacus,” “Mattabesett,” and “Miami,” on the 5th of May 1864; the battle, which resulted in favour of the Confederates, was a duel between the Confederate ironclad and the Union wooden side-wheeler, the “Sassacus,” which rammed the “Albemarle” and had her bows, fitted with a three-ton bronze beak, twisted off and carried away.

EDESSA (mod. Vodena), the ancient capital of Macedonia, previously known as Aegae, situated 46 m. W. of Thessalonica 930 on the banks of a beautiful stream in the very centre of the kingdom, and at the head of a defile commanding the approaches from the coast to the interior. It was the original residence of the Macedonian kings; and even after the seat of government was removed by Philip II. to the more accessible Pella, it continued to be the burial-place of the royal family. At the celebration of his daughter’s marriage here, Philip II. was murdered by Pausanias in 336 B.C. His son Alexander was buried at Memphis through the contrivance of Ptolemy; but the bodies of his granddaughter Eurydice and her husband Arrhidaeus were removed by Cassander to the ancestral sepulchre. On the occupation of the town by Pyrrhus the royal tombs were plundered by the Gallic mercenaries. Owing to its position commanding the Via Egnatia, the town retained its importance during the Roman and Byzantine periods. For its present condition, see Vodena.

EDESSA, the Greek name of an ancient city of N.W. Mesopotamia (in 37° 21′ N. lat. and 39° 6′ E. long.), suggested perhaps by a comparison of its site, or its water supply,1 with that of its Macedonian namesake. It still bears its earlier name, modified since the 15th century (by the Turks?) to Urfa.

History: Pre-Hellenistic.—Until excavation gives us more definite data we can only infer from its position on one of the main thoroughfares between the Mediterranean and the East (see Mesopotamia) that Urhāi-Edessa, possibly bearing some other name, was already a town of some importance in the early Babylonian-Assyrian age. Whatever may have been the ethnographical type of the early inhabitants, it must by the beginning of the second last millennium B.C. have included Hittites in the large sense of the term, probably Aryans, and certainly Semites of some of the types characteristic of early Assyrian history. Most probably its people belonged to the domain of the then more famous Ḥarrān-Carrhae, between which and Samosata (on the Euphrates) Urhāi lies midway (some 25-30 m. distant from each) in the district watered by the Balīh. Although at Edessa itself no cuneiform documents have yet been found, a little more than four hours journey eastwards, at Anaz (= Gullāb?) = Dūr of Tiglath-pileser IV. was found in 1901 a slab with a bas-relief and an inscription; and 15-20 min. W. of Eski-Ḥarrān, in 1906 a very interesting 6th-century Assyrian inscription (see Mesopotamia).

In the later Assyrian empire the population was largely Aramaic-speaking; but S. Schiffer’s theory (Beiheft I. zur Orientalistischen Litteratur-Zeitung) finds contemporary evidence of Israelites settled in the neighbourhood of Edessa in the second half of the 7th century B.C. At the fall of Nineveh many towns in Mesopotamia suffered severely at the hands of the Medes. The period remains dark, notwithstanding the obscure light that has been thrown on it lately (Pognon, Inscriptions). When Aramaic began to take the place of Assyrian in written documents is not known; but just across the Euphrates the change had occurred as early as the 8th century B.C. (Zengīrli, Hamath; see also Pognon). Certain it is that the earliest documents that have survived in Syriac, or Edessene Aramaic, do not represent an experimental stage. Moreover, although the Syriac of the Story of Aḥīqār is of a late type, the sources of the story, traces of which are to be found in the Hebrew Tobit (q.v.), go back to the pre-Hellenistic period.

Graeco-Roman Times.—According to a credible tradition found in Eusebius (Excerpta, 179), the Syriac Chronicle ascribed to Dionysius of Tell-maḥrē (Tullberg, 61), and elsewhere, Urhāi was renovated, like other Mesopotamian sites, in 304 B.C. by Seleucus I. Nicator, who gave it its Greek name.12 It would share in the Hellenistic culture of Syria, although the language of the common people would continue to be Aramaic (E.R. Bevan, House of Seleucus, i. 227 f. with reff.). With the decay of the Seleucid power, weakened by Rome and Parthia, the old influx from the desert would recommence, and an Arabic element begin to show. Von Gutschmid (Untersuch., cf. Duval, ch. iii. end) argues plausibly that it was in 132 B.C., in the reign of Antiochus VII. Sidetes, that Edessa became the seat of a dynasty of some thirty local kings, whose succession has been preserved in native sources. The name of the first king, however, appears in different forms (cf. above), and one (Osroës-Orhai) is so like that of the town that Ed. Meyer suspects the historicity of the first reign, of five years. The names of the other kings—Abgar, Ma’nu, Bekr, &c.—are for the most part Arabic, as the people (in whose inscriptions the same mixture of names occurs) are called by classical authors; but the rulers, among whom an occasional Iranian name betrays the influence of the dominant Parthians,13 would hardly maintain their distinctness from the Aramaic populace. This state which lasted for three centuries and a half, naturally varied in extent.14 Bounded on the W. and the N. by the Euphrates, it reached at its widest as far as the Tigris. At such times, therefore, it included such towns as Ḥarrān (Carrhae), Nisibis, Sarūg, Zeugma-Birejik, Resaena, Singara, Tigranocerta, Samosāta, Melitene. Its position “on the dangerous verge of two contending empires,” Parthia and 931 Rome, determined its changeful fortunes. Parthian predominance yielded for a time to Armenian (Tigranes, 88-86 B.C.). Then, at the time of the expeditions of Lucullus, Pompey and Crassus, Edessa was an ally of Rome, though Abgar II. Ariamnes (68-53) played an ambiguous part. In A.D. 114 Abgar VII. entertained Trajan on his way back to Syria (Dio Cass. xviii. 21); but in 116, in consequence of a general rising, his consul L. Quietus sacked the city, Abgar perhaps dying in the flames, and made the state tributary. Hadrian, however, abandoning Trajan’s forward policy in favour of a Euphrates boundary, restored it as a dependency of Rome. When L. Verus (163-165) recovered Mesopotamia from Parthia, it was not Edessa but Ḥarrān that was chosen as the site of a Roman colony, and made the metropolis by Marcus Aurelius (172).

To one of the native kings doubtless is to be ascribed the Syriac inscription15 on one of the pair of pillars, 50 ft. high, which stood, no doubt, in front of a temple connected with some local cult. Trustworthy data for determining its nature are lacking. One or both of the pools below the citadel containing sacred fish may have been sacred to Atargatis (q.v.), an Ishtar-Venus deity; and according to the Doctrine of Addai, alongside of Venus were worshipped the sun and the moon.16 Nergal and Sin were known as “twins,” and connected with the sign Gemini, under the name ellamme, “the youths” (cf. Zimmern, K.A.T. 363). This makes more plausible than it otherwise would be the suggestion of J. Rendel Harris that the great twin pillars were connected with the cult of the Dioscuri, and that in the Acts of Thomas is to be seen a later attempt to substitute other “twins,” viz. Jesus and Judas-Thomas (Addai), whom legend buried “in Britio Edessenorum” (explained by Harnack as the Edessan citadel: Aram. birtha).17

Whether it was at Edessa that a Jewish translation of the Old Testament into Syriac was made,18 under the encouragement perhaps of the favour of the royal house of Adiabene (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 19. 4), or whether that work was done in Adiabene,19 cannot be discussed here. That the translation did not share the fate of the other non-Christian Syriac writings, which did not survive the 13th century (see Syriac Literature), is due to the fact that it was adopted (after being revised) by the Christians, and thus rescued. Although the beginnings of Christianity at Edessa are enshrouded in the mists of legend, and the first mention of Christian communities in Osrhoëne and the towns there is connected with the part they played in the paschal controversy (c. A.D. 192), it has been reasonably urged that the legends imply a fact, namely that Christianity began in the Jewish colony, perhaps by the middle of the 2nd century, although the earliest seat of the Syrian church may have been farther east, in Adiabene.20 Parts of the New Testament were certainly translated into Syriac in the 2nd century, although whether the “Old Syriac” (so e.g. Hjelt) or the Diatessaron (so Burkitt) came first is uncertain. About the end of the 2nd century Edessene Christianity seems to have made a fresh beginning: the ordination of Palūṭ by Serapion of Antioch may mean that things ecclesiastical took a westward trend, and it is possible (so Burkitt) that the “Old Syriac” New Testament version was now introduced. A strong man offered himself in Bardaiṣān (q.v.; Bardesanes), to whom perhaps we owe the finest Syriac poem extant, the “Hymn of the Soul,” though orthodoxy rejected him. He was a contemporary of Abgar IX., at whose court Julius Africanus stayed for a while. A Syrian official record from this reign, preserved in the Edessene Chronicle, gives a somewhat detailed account of a violent flood (autumn, 201) of the Daiṣān river which did much damage, destroying amongst other things “the palace of Abgar the Great,” rebuilt as a summer palace by Abgar IX., and “the temple of the church of the Christians.” The form of this last statement shows that at the time of writing (206) the rulers had not adopted Christianity themselves. Abgar IX. is now commonly supposed to be the ruler to whom the famous legend was first attached (see Abgar); but though he visited Rome there is no proof that he ever became a Christian (Gomperz, in Archäologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen aus Österreich-Ungarn, xix. 154-157). It was at Edessa that Caracalla, who made it a military colony under the style of Colonia Marcia Edessenorum, spent the winter of 216-217, and near there that he was murdered. The religious philosophical treatise preserved under the title of Book of the Laws of the Lands was probably produced at this time by a pupil of Bardesanes, and the Acts of Thomas in its original form may have followed not long after.

Sassanian Period.—In 226 the Parthian empire gave place to the new kingdom of the Sassanidae, whose claim to the ancient Achaemenian empire led to constant struggle with Rome in which Edessa naturally suffered. The native state was restored by Gordian in 242; but in 244 it became again directly subject to Rome. The Edessan martyrs Sharbēl and Barsamyā, whose “Acts” in legendary form have come down to us, may have perished in the Decian persecution. In 260 the city was besieged by the Persians under Shapur I., and Valerian was defeated and made prisoner by its gates. Odaenathus of Palmyra (d. 267), however, wrested Mesopotamia from the Persians; but Aurelian defeated his successor Zenobia at Emesa (273), and Carus, who died in 283 in an expedition against the Persians, and Galerius (297) carried the frontier again to the Tigris. Diocletian’s persecution secured the martyr’s crown for the Edessenes Shamōna, Guria (297), and Ḥabbīb (309), and shortly thereafter Lucian “the martyr,” who though born at Samosata received his training at Edessa; but the bishop Qōna, who laid the foundations of “the great church” by the sacred pool, somehow escaped. Edessa can claim no share in “the Persian Sage” Aphrahaṭ or Afrahaṭ (Aphraates); but Ephraem, after bewailing in Nisibis the sufferings of the great Persian war under Constantius and Julian, when Jovian in 363 ceded most of Mesopotamia to Shapur II., the persecutor of the Christians, settled in Edessa, which as the seat of his famous school (called “the Persian”) grew greatly in importance, and attracted scholars from all directions. He taught and wrote vigorously against the Arians and other heretics, and although just after his death (373) the emperor Valens banished the orthodox from Edessa, they returned on the emperor’s death in 378. Under Zenobius, disciple of Ephraem, studied the voluminous writer, Isaac of Antioch (d. circ. 460). Rabbūla perhaps owed his elevation to the see of Edessa (411-435), in the year which produced the oldest dated Syriac MS., to his asceticism, and it was to his time that the sojourn there of the “Man of God” (Alexis) was assigned; but he won from the Nestorians the title of the Tyrant of Edessa. In particular he exerted himself to stamp out the use of the Diatessaron in favour of the four Gospels, the Syriac version of which probably now took the form known as the Peshitta. When the popular Nestorianism of the Syrians was condemned at Ephesus (431) it began to gravitate eastwards, Nisibis becoming its eventual headquarters; but Edessa and the western Syrians refused to bow to the Council of Chalcedon (451) when it condemned Monophysitism. In and around Edessa the theological strife raged hotly.21 When, however, Zeno’s edict (489) ordered the closing of the school of the Persians at Edessa, East and West drifted apart more and more; the ecclesiastical writer Narsai, “the Harp of the Holy Spirit,” fled to Nisibis about 489. Till about this time Syriac influence was strong in Armenia, and some Syriac works have survived only in Armenian translations. In the opening years of the 6th century the Persian-Roman War (502-506) found a chronicler in the anonymous Edessene history known till recently as the Chronicle of Joshua Stylites. Whether Edessa received 932 from the emperor Justin I. the additional name of Justinopolis may be uncertain (see Hallier, op. cit. p. 128); but it seems to have been renewed and fortified after the “fourth” flood in 525 (Procop. Pers. ii. 27; De aedific. ii. 7). About this time, according to Nöldeke, an anonymous Edessene wrote the Romance of Julian the Apostate, which so many Arab writers use as a history. Chosroes I. Anushirwān succeeded in 540, according to the last entry in the Edessene Chronicle, in exacting a large tribute from Edessa; but in 544 he besieged it in vain. A few years later Jacob Baradaeus, with Edessa as centre of his bishopric, was carrying on the propaganda of Monophysitism which won for the adherents of that creed the name of Jacobites (q.v.). The valuable Syriac Chronicle just referred to probably was compiled in the latter half of this century.

Islam.—In the first decade of the next century Edessa was taken by Chosroes II., and a large part of the population transported to eastern Persia. Within a score of years it was recovered by the emperor Heraclius, who reviewed a large army under its walls. The prophet of Islam was now, however, building up his power in Arabia, and although Heraclius paid no heed to the letter demanding his adhesion which he received from Medina (628), and the deputation of fifteen Rahāwiyīn who paid homage in 630 were not Edessenes but South Arabians, a few years later (636?) Heraclius’s attempts, from Edessa as a centre, to effect an organized opposition to the victorious Arabs were defeated by Sa’d, and he fell back on Samosāta. The terms on which Edessa definitely passed into the hands of the Moslems (638) under Riyād are not certain (Balādhurī). As it now ceased to be a frontier city it lost in importance. In 668 occurred another destructive flood (Theophanes, p. 537), and in 678 an earthquake which destroyed part of the “old church,” which the caliph Mo‘āwiya I. is said to have repaired. To the latter part of the century belongs the activity of Edessa’s bishop Jacob, whose chronicle is unfortunately lost. It may have been the impulse given by the final supremacy of the caliphate to the long process which eventually substituted a new branch of Semitic speech for the Aramaic (which had now prevailed for a millennium and a half), that led Jacob to adopt the Greek vowel signs for use in Syriac. A century later Theophilus of Edessa (d. 785), author of a lost history, translated into Syriac “the two books of the poet Homer on the Conquest of the city of Ilion.” When the Bagdād caliphs lost control of their dominions, Edessa shared the fortunes of western Mesopotamia, changing with the rise and fall of Egyptian dynasties and Arab chieftains. In the 10th century al-Mas’ūdī, writing in the very year in which it happened, tells how the Mahommedan ruler of Edessa, with the permission of the caliph, purchased peace of the emperor Romanus Lecapenus by surrendering to him the napkin of Jesus of Nazareth, wherewith he had dried himself after his baptism. The translation of the Holy Icon of Christ from Edessa is commemorated on the 16th of August (Cal. Byzant). A few years later Ibn Ḥauḳal (978) estimates the number of churches in the city at more than 300, and al-Moḳaddasī (985) describes its cathedral, with vaulted ceiling covered with mosaics, as one of the four wonders of the world. In 1031 the emperor recovered Edessa; but in 1040 it fell into the hands of the Seljuks, whose progress had added a large element of Armenian refugees to the population of Osrhoëne. There is no reason, therefore, to discredit Maqrīzī’s statement that it was three brother architects from Edessa that the Armenian minister Badr al-Gamāli employed to build three of the fine city gates of Cairo (1087-1091). The empire soon recovered Edessa, but the resident made himself independent. Thoros applied for help to Baldwin, brother and successor of Godfrey of Bouillon in the First Crusade, who in 1098 took possession of the town and made it the capital of a Burgundian countship, which included Samosata and Sarūg’, and was for half a century the eastern bulwark of the kingdom of Jerusalem.22 The local Armenian historian, however, Matthew of Edessa, tells of oppression, decrease of population, ruin of churches, neglect of agriculture. With the campaign of Maudud in 1110 fortune began to favour the Moslems. Edessa had to endure siege after siege. Finally, in 1144 it was stormed, Matthew being among the slain, by ‘Imād ud-Dīn Zengī, ruler of Mosul, under Joscelin II., an achievement celebrated as “the conquest of conquests,” for laying the responsibility of which not on God but on the absence of the Frankish troops, an Edessan monk, John, bishop of Ḥarrān (d. 1165), brought down upon himself the whole bench of bishops. Edessa suffered still more in 1146 after an attempt to recover it. Churches were now turned into mosques. The consternation produced in Europe by the news of its fate led to “the Second Crusade.” In 1182 it fell to Saladin, whose nephew recovered it when it had temporarily passed (1234) to the sultan of Rūm; but the “Eye of Mesopotamia” never recovered the brilliance of earlier days. The names it contributed to Arabic literature are unimportant. By timely surrender (1268) it escaped the sufferings inflicted by Hūlākū and his Monguls on Sarū’g (Barhebraeus, Chron. Arab., Beirūt ed., 486). Mostaufī describes a great cupola of finely worked stone still standing by a court over a hundred yards square (1340). Ali b. Yazd in his account of the campaigns of Tīmūr, who reduced Mesopotamia in 1393, still calls the city (1425) Ruhā. In 1637, when Amurath IV. conquered Bagdād and annexed Mesopotamia, it passed finally into the hands of the Turks, by whom it is called Urfa.

The Modern Town.—Urfa lies north-east of the Nimrud Dagh. It is surrounded by a wall, strengthened by square towers at distances of 18-20 steps, probably dating in its present condition from medieval Mahommedan times. On a height in a corner towards the west, overtopping the town by 100-200 ft., are the remains of the old citadel, and the two famous Corinthian columns23 known as “the Throne of Nimrūd.” In the hollow between this height and the town rise two springs which form ponds, the farther removed of which from the citadel is known as Birket al-Khalīl, doubtless the Callirrhoe of the classical writers, and contains the sacred fish, estimated by J.S. Buckingham at 20,000, and the nearer as ‘Ain Zalkha (i.e. Zuleikha, the wife of Potiphar). On the north edge of the Birket al-Khalīl (see plan in Sachau, p. 197) is the great mosque of Abraham, the interior of which is described by J.S. Buckingham (Travels, pp. 108-110). Diagonally opposite the mosque is a house with a square tower, which is locally believed to occupy the place of the famous ancient school. The waters of the two pools make their way in a single stream southwards out of the town. The once dangerous stream Daiṣān (Σκιρτός) no longer flows southwards through the town, but encircles it on the north and east in the channel of the old moat. This stream, now called Kara Kuyun, and the other are exhausted in the irrigation of the gardens lying south-east of the town, except when fuller than usual, when they reach the Balīh. Not far east of the sacred pool is the largest building in the town, the recent Armenian Gregorian cathedral, whose American bells were first heard during Sachau’s visit in 1879. About the middle of the town is the largest mosque, Ulu ’Gamī (parts of it probably pre-Islamic), which probably occupies the site of the Christian church reckoned by the early Mahommedan writers as one of the wonders of the world. In the bazaar, which lies between the chief mosque and the sacred pool, and contains several streets, are displayed not only the native woollen stuffs, pottery and silver work, but also a considerable variety of European goods, especially cloth stuffs. The principal manufactures are fine cotton stuffs and yellow leather. The streets are of course narrow and winding; but the houses are well built of stone. The outskirts are occupied by melon gardens, vineyards and mulberry plantations. The fertile plain south of the town is noted for its wheat and fine pasture. The climate is healthy except in summer; the “Aleppo button” (see Bagdad, vilayet), a painful boil, is common. The rocky heights south and west of the town, whence the building material is largely obtained, are full of natural and artificial caverns, once used as dwellings, cloisters and graves, where are most of the 933 inscriptions published by Sachau, who also visited and describes (pp. 204-206) the Dēr Ya‘qūb, nearly two hours distant.

Urfa is the capital of a sanjak of the same name, in the vilāyet of Aleppo. The population was estimated by Olivier in 1796 at 20,000 to 24,000, by Buckingham at 50,000, by Chernik in 1873 at 40,000, by Sachau in 1879 at 50,000, in Baedeker’s Handbook in 1906 at 30,000. Vice-Consul Fitzmaurice said that before December 1895 it was close on 65,000, of whom about 20,000 were Armenian, 3000 or 4000 Jacobites, Syrian-Catholic, Greek-Catholic, Maronites and Jews, and the remaining 40,000 Turkish, Kurdian and Arab Mahommedans. Two barbarous massacres occurred on the 28th and 29th of October and the 28th and 29th of December 1895; 126 Armenian families were absolutely wiped out. He believes that 8000 Armenians perished in the second massacre. The Deutsche Orient-Mission has its chief seat in Urfa, and there have for years been American and French missions. The Germans have an orphanage with 300 Armenian children, a carpet factory and a medical station. The American school had some years ago 250 pupils.

EDFU, in Coptic Atbō, a town of Upper Egypt, 484 m. S.S.E. of Cairo by rail, on the W. bank of the Nile, the railway station being on the opposite side of the river. Pop. (1907) 19,262. The inhabitants manufacture earthenware, which finds ready sale all through Egypt. The ancient Atbō (Apollinopolis Magna) was capital of the second nome of Upper Egypt. The great sandstone temple is practically complete (see Architecture: Egypt). It was built on the site of an earlier structure entirely in the time of the Ptolemies. The central part of the building, begun by Ptolemy III. Euergetes in 237 B.C., was finished by his successor in 212; the portico, court, pylons and surrounding wall were added by Ptolemy Euergetes II., Soter II. and Alexander I.; but the decoration was not finished till 57 B.C. in the reign of Ptolemy XIII. Neos Dionysus. The god of Atbō was a form of Horus (Apollo) as the sun-god; his most characteristic representation is as the disk of the sun with outspread wings, so often seen over the doors of shrines, at the top of stelae, &c. In the temple, where he is often figured as a falcon-headed man, he is associated with Hathor of Dendera and the child Harsemteus.

EDGAR (Eadgar), king of the English (944-975), was the younger son of Edmund the Magnificent and Ælfgifu. As early as 955 he signed a charter of his uncle Eadred, and in 957 the Mercian nobles, discontented with the rule of his elder brother Eadwig, made him king of England north of the Thames. On the death of his brother in October 959 Edgar became king of a united England. Immediately on his accession to the throne of Mercia Edgar recalled St Dunstan from exile and bestowed on him first the bishopric of Worcester, and then that of London. In 961 Dunstan was translated to Canterbury, and throughout Edgar’s reign he was his chief adviser, and to him must be attributed much of the peace and prosperity of this time.

The reign of Edgar was somewhat uneventful, but two things stand out clearly: his ecclesiastical policy and his imperial position in Britain. Edgar and Dunstan were alike determined to reform the great monastic houses, and to secure that they should be restored once more to their true owners and not remain in the hands of the secular priests or canonici, whose life and discipline alike seem to have been extremely lax. In this reform Edgar was helped not only by St Dunstan but also by Oswald of Worcester and Æthelwold of Winchester. The priests of the old and new monasteries at Winchester, at Chertsey and at Milton Abbas were replaced by monks, and in monastic discipline the old rule of St Benedict was restored in all its strictness.