Cymothoa. _b_, Clusters of simple eyes.]
EDRIOPHTHAL'MATA, one of the great divisions of the Crustacea, including
all those genera which have their eyes sessile, or embedded in the head,
and not fixed on a peduncle or stalk as in the crabs, lobsters, &c. It is
divided into two orders. (1) Amphipoda, laterally flattened, as in the
marine sandhopper (Talitrus), and the fresh-water shrimp (Gammarus). (2)
Isopoda, flattened from above downwards. Sea-slaters or wood-lice (Ligia
and Idothea); fish parasites (Cymothoa); fresh-water wood-lice (Asellus);
land wood-lice (Oniscus, Porcellio, Armadillidium, which can roll up).
EDRI'SI, Abu-Abdallah Mohammed, a famous Arabian geographer, a descendant
of the ancient princely family of the Edrisites, born about A.D. 1100, died
about 1180. He studied at the Moorish university of Cordova, after which he
travelled through various countries. At the request of King Roger II of
Sicily he constructed a globe with a map of the earth, which represented
all the geographical knowledge of the age. He accompanied this with a
descriptive treatise completed about 1154, and still extant. The work was
published at Rome in Arabic (1592), and in 1619 a Latin translation of it,
under the title of _Geographia Nubiensis_, appeared in Paris.
EDUCATION is the name applied to the systematic instruction given by each
succeeding generation to the young of the race to fit them for the work of
life. The word itself is derived from the Latin verb _educare_, which means
to rear, to nourish, to bring up, and also to educate. Long before the dawn
of civilization men saw that the young had to be prepared for the battle of
life; had to learn how to make and how to use the offensive and defensive
weapons employed against their enemies; how to form or build shelters to
protect themselves against the weather and against their foes; how to make
traps or snares for the wild things on which they fed; how, in fact, to use
their powers of mind and body in such a way as to secure for themselves the
fullest and most satisfactory life possible under the circumstances in
which they found themselves.
While education thus understood would be the story of man on the earth, an
account of his more or less satisfactory, but always continuous, efforts to
perfect the relations between his desires and his environment, it would
have to embrace also an account of the conflict between the demands of
communities and the rights of individuals. Education, however, as we
understand it, is more limited in its scope. It is the instrument employed
by the State for the training of its citizens.
The Greeks were the first Europeans to treat education as a science. The
results they obtained were good, and have to a certain extent determined
the course taken by European education ever since. Plato defined the aim of
the education of which he gives us an account in the _Republic_, to be the
"development in the body and in the soul of all the perfection which it is
possible for them to attain". This was the Greek ideal of what education
should aim at; a high ideal indeed; but one that omits an element of
immense importance which we find introduced in Milton's definition of the
'end of learning', that is, the aim of education. Milton boldly declares
this to be: "To repair the ruin of our first parents by regaining to know
God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, as we may the nearest by
possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly
grace of faith makes up the highest perfection". Perfection is the end
sought in both cases, and which seems the nobler it is unnecessary to say.
This impression is deepened when he proceeds to declare that as "Our
understanding cannot ... arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and
things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior
creatures, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet
teaching".
By Aristotle the order of education was: first, education of the body, the
just and proportionate development of its powers. The instrument employed
for this purpose was gymnastics; not the gymnastics employed in training
professional athletes, but more moderate exercises; for, as the philosopher
insists, too strenuous bodily exertion is apt to spoil the child, because
body and mind must not be hard worked at the same time. Music, according to
him, had various aims: education proper, the training of the affections,
and the occupation of leisure. Drawing was taught as a branch of music for
the purpose of developing the child's sense of beauty, mathematics were
taught to cultivate his intellect, and dialectic (logic and philosophy) to
prepare the pupil for a scientific training.
To the idealistic philosopher Plato, the whole life of man, at least the
whole of what we may call the active life, was educative. Education was
State-controlled, and at the end of the first six years, spent by the child
in the seclusion of family life, the State took charge. The aim of the
education proposed by Plato was to develop in the child the cardinal
virtues--honour to parents, love of fellow-citizens, courage, truthfulness,
and self-control. From the seventh to the tenth year the training was
mainly in gymnastics; from the tenth to the thirteenth the child learned to
read and to write; from the thirteenth to the sixteenth his affections and
his sense of the beautiful were cultivated through learning poetry and
studying music; from the seventeenth to the twentieth year he applied
himself mainly to athletics, so that he might be qualified to take his
share in the defence of the State. At twenty men were called upon to choose
their occupation; to turn their minds to the study of the sciences; and to
shape by practical military and other services to the State that character
which it was the aim of education to form. From thirty to thirty-five Plato
supposes the citizens of his ideal republic to devote themselves to the
study of _Dialectics_, the method of purely intellectual knowledge, by
which reason, using hypothesis, arrives at the first principles of things.
From thirty-five to fifty the life of the citizen was to be given up to
public service, that is, to the promotion in the position for which he was
best fitted of the general well-being.
The training set forth by the Greek philosophers was the training thought
necessary to fit a man to be a ruler. As the Greek city states were slave
states, and most of the manual work was performed by slaves, that necessary
part of the training of the youth of the community is ignored. This fact
has had, undoubtedly, an enormous influence on the ideas of education put
forward since. The preliminary training demanded by the Greeks included,
besides gymnastics, grammar and music. At a later time these were
understood to include the seven arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic
(_Trivium_), and Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy (_Quadrivium_).
To the Greeks, myths were the instruments of the earliest education, the
aim of which was the development of a character in the citizen which would
lead him to give his best and most loyal services to the State.
The aim of Greek education was the formation of the philosophic thinker,
the man fitted by nature and training to guide and direct the energies of
the man of action. Roman education, on the other hand, directed its efforts
mainly to the moulding of the man of action himself. The Romans adopted the
form rather than the spirit of Greek education. The aim of Roman education
was to make a man who could do things; a practical man, a man full of
energy, who was ever ready to sacrifice himself in the interests of the
State; a man who knew the laws and who regulated his conduct by them; who
reverenced his father and his country's gods; and found his chief pleasure
in the complete overthrow and utter destruction of his country's foes. He
could discourse eloquently and not unphilosophically; and he spared neither
himself nor others in his effort to maintain the freedom of his country,
and to bring destruction on the enemies of Rome. Roman education began in
the home, and during the earlier years was largely directed by the mother.
Later the preparation of the boy for life was taken over by the father; but
it is probable that, from very early times many, if not most, Romans boys
were sent to school, where, under the _magister literarius_ (elementary
teacher), the _grammaticus_ (advanced teacher), and the _rhetor_
(professor), they acquired the knowledge and accomplishments it was needful
for them to obtain.
The Roman schools, elementary and secondary, seem to have been conducted in
a verandah, and boys and girls seem to have been taught in the same school.
The chief Roman writers on education are Cicero, Seneca, and Quintilian.
Quintilian tells us that Cato also wrote a treatise on the subject, but
that that work had been lost. The oratorical training of which Quintilian
was the expositor seems to have been largely out of connection with real
life; and, though he claims that the orator must be a widely cultured,
wise, and honourable man, seems to have developed a tendency to the
bombastic abuse of ornate and stilted speech. The practical effects, too,
of the corruption of family education were far from satisfactory. Moral
degradation followed, and humanity seems to have been rescued only by the
introduction of a new ideal of life, which substituted for the pagan
self-reliance, self-control, moderation, and proportion, self-denial,
self-forgetfulness, and humility; which made the last, indeed, the chief
virtue, and looked on pride and self-confidence as spiritual sins.
The introduction of Christianity was followed by the inroads into the Roman
Empire of barbarous tribes from the north and east. Before these attacks
the Western Roman Empire collapsed, and with it to a greater or less extent
the educational system of the time.
It must be remembered that between three and four hundred years elapsed
between the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and the beginnings of the
Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne. Classical or pagan culture, as profane
learning, was at a discount, and the aim of the monasticism which grew out
of the introduction of Christianity was mystic absorption in the
contemplation of God.
This interval was followed by the efforts of Charlemagne to revive Roman
culture, and to establish schools throughout Western Europe. In this he was
aided by Alcuin and other scholars from England, where in the comparative
quiet that followed the conquest of Britain there had grown up a system of
education. Throughout his dominions three classes of schools were
established by Charlemagne, the Palace School, the Bishop's School, and the
Monastery School. These were intended to take the place of the splendid
system of public schools that had grown up under the Roman Empire. The
course of studies established in these mediaeval schools, following the
practice of Greece and Rome, was divided into two parts: the _Trivium_,
including Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric; and the _Quadrivium_, which
embraced Geometry, Arithmetic, Music, and Astronomy. Education in the
palace or castle schools had a different aim. It sought to develop the
bodily powers, and to awake in the pupils that respect for the weak which
was shown in the worship of women, and that love of justice, and belief in
its supremacy, which characterized the _chivalry_ of the Middle Ages.
The scholastic education of this time laid special stress on formal logic
and metaphysics. Latin was taught, was, indeed, the universal language of
the period. Questions about the nature of the unseen and the spiritual
occupied much of men's minds; while their time was taken up in discussing
the character of universals, the true realities which lay behind the
individual manifestations of experience. As a rule, the physical world was
ignored, and human intelligence disregarded; but there were notable
exceptions, among which the teachings of Bishop Grosseteste (died 1253) and
of Roger Bacon (1214 to 1294) take a prominent place.
It was during the period of scholasticism that universities, in imitation
of the trade guilds of the time, sprung up in different parts of Europe,
particularly in Spain, Italy, France, and England. To the famous schools
both in England and on the Continent scholars flocked from all parts, and
their instruction presented little difficulty, as Latin, the language in
which the instruction was given, was the common language of scholars in
Western Europe. The establishment of universities in different countries
was a sign rather than a cause or result of that intellectual and spiritual
awakening which, after nearly a thousand years of almost complete
stagnation, manifested itself among the peoples of Europe.
It is usual to date the Renaissance from 1453, the fall of Constantinople;
but it must not be forgotten that owing to the clash between East and West,
the struggle between Christianity and Mohammedanism (the Crusades, as these
religious wars were called), there had from the end of the eleventh century
been a considerable change of outlook among the nations of Western Europe.
This was specially the case in Italy, where city states, not unlike those
of Greece in their character, had sprung up, and where, as in Greece in the
time of Pericles, there had been the great outburst of literary activity
which is associated with the names of Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch. In
Northern and Western Europe the intelligence stimulated by the new learning
was directed towards the improvement of the method of study. All study was
linguistic. Latin was the instrument of common intercourse; Greek and
Hebrew were sacred as the tongues in which the Scriptures had been
conveyed; it was no wonder, therefore, that the humanistic education was
almost entirely confined to the study of languages. Sturm (1507 to 1589)
drew up a scheme of studies which had long a great influence on the school
courses of instruction throughout Europe.
The reaction against authority which marked the Reformation period was
specially noted for the reaction against the purely verbal education given
to the young, whose education, as we learn from Locke, was calculated to
teach them "not to believe, but to dispute", and to fit them "for the
university, not for the world". On the Continent Rabelais (1483 to 1533)
led this realistic movement, which was continued by Montaigne (1533 to
1592) in France, and under the influence of Bacon by Brinsley and Hoole in
England, and Ratke and Comenius on the Continent. Up to this time the chief
English writers on the subject of education had been Sir Thomas Elyot in
his _Governour_, Roger Ascham in his _Scholemaster_, and Richard Mulcaster
in his _Positions_.
The intellectual activity which marked in England the closing decades of
the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth century saw the issue
of Milton's _Tractate_, one of the most famous books on education ever
produced. The _Tractate_ discusses only the kind of education that should
be given to gentlemen's sons between the ages of twelve and twenty-one, so
that it is strictly limited in its application, as it does not deal with
the education of the people, nor with the education of women. The ideal
which Milton put before him as the aim of "a complete and generous
education" was "to fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, and
magnanimously all the offices both private and public of peace and war".
Milton in his _Tractate_ discusses studies, exercise, and diet, showing
that he clearly understood that education was concerned with the body as
well as the mind and spirit.
Towards the close of the seventeenth century Locke, an English physician
and philosopher, published (1693) his _Thoughts concerning Education_, a
book which influenced immensely the character and direction of future
educational studies. As he informs his readers in his letter to Edward
Clarke, he counsels everyone "after having well examined and distinguished
what fancy, custom, or reason advises in the case ... to promote everywhere
that way of training up youth ... which is the easiest, shortest, and
likeliest to produce virtuous, useful, and able men in their distinct
callings". He begins his essay with the statement, "A sound mind in a sound
body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world", and
the suggestions he makes as to the physical, moral, and intellectual
training of the young are for the most part sound. He decried a too severe
discipline, maintaining that "If the mind be curbed and humbled too much in
children, ... they lose all their vigour and industry". On the other hand,
he held that if you "Remove hope and fear, there is an end of all
discipline"; and he held that, as far as possible, "Childish actions are to
be left perfectly free and unrestrained". He applied the science of
psychology to the study of child nature, and of the methods to be employed
in training it; and so prepared the way for the modern methods of
education. "Interest is the secret of Herbart", according to one of his
devoted admirers. Locke seems to have anticipated this when he declares
that "None of the things they are to learn should ever be made a burden to
them, or imposed on them as a task".
Though his attitude towards the universe was utterly opposed to the
attitude of Locke, Rousseau drew almost all that was practical in his
scheme for the education of the young from the English writer. Rousseau's
work, though largely inspired by Locke, was essentially of a revolutionary
kind. It held that man is the great corrupter; that "Everything is good as
it comes from the hands of the Creator; and that man's handling makes
everything worse". In effect he said, leave the child as much as possible
alone. An attempt constantly to direct him can only result in stupefying
him. It is true we receive our education from nature, from men, and from
things; but nature must be our guide in determining the use of the other
two. As few restraints as possible must be imposed on the child, and the
use of books should be prohibited. For the child there should be "no other
book but the world", and "no other instruction but facts". The child's
education he divides into four stages, infancy, childhood, boyhood, and
youth. The first two stages last till the beginning of the thirteenth year,
when the boy is supposed to be fit for instruction. From such instruction
the teaching of words must disappear, and the teaching of things must take
its place. The subjects most suitable for instruction were, Rousseau
declared, measuring, drawing, geometry, speaking, and singing. Books, he
declares, are useless, are, indeed, altogether harmful. The method he
advocates is the method of self-teaching and the use of the senses, which
Rousseau held would work to the profit of the intelligence. The child's
knowledge should rest on his own observation, and not on belief in
authority, and each child should be taught a manual trade.
At fifteen, according to Rousseau, real education begins; and it is the
duty of the teacher to study the subject he has to act upon, in other
words, to discover the nature of the pupil, which must in all cases
determine the means and the method employed in his education. Two things
must be taught. These are the true relations, racial and individual, that
exist among men; and how to direct and control the emotions aroused by the
environment so that the best results may arise. Here he finds occasion for
the use of moral teaching and for instruction in religion. The facts of
history must be placed before him; but he must be left to form his own
judgment. He is now to be taught religion as a help to the regulation of
the passions; but not the religion of any particular sect. His time is to
be given up largely to reading and to the acquirement of taste; to the
study of history and eloquence; and to attendance at the theatre.
The revolutionary doctrines preached by Rousseau in his _['E]mile_ and in
his other educational works had an immense effect on the Continent, and
particularly on the work of one of his most ardent admirers, the Swiss
farmer and schoolmaster Pestalozzi, an eccentric, dubbed by his
schoolfellows "Harry Oddity of Fools-town". Thinking the education demanded
for ['E]mile by Rousseau vastly superior to that which he himself received,
he very early became an ardent admirer of the system advocated by the
French philosopher, and an eager reformer. _['E]mile_ and the _Contrat
Social_ were condemned by the magistrates of Zurich, and Pestalozzi and
some of his fellow-students were imprisoned for the _Memorial_ in which
they defended these works. Later Pestalozzi determined to be a farmer. He
was married at the age of twenty-three, and started growing madder and
vegetables on some poor land near Zurich. On the land he built for himself
a house, the _Neuhof_.
In the winter of 1774 he hit upon the expedient of taking into his house
some twenty poor children of the neighbourhood, whom he treated as his own.
They worked with him in summer in the fields, and in winter in the house.
Improved health for the children, increased intelligence, and a manifest
devotion to their benefactor were some of the results speedily displayed,
and the experiment drew much attention to itself. Urged on by his love for
the children, Pestalozzi took in a larger number, and in a very short time
found himself bankrupt. In this period of seeming disaster Pestalozzi
turned author. The books which he produced were greedily read on the
Continent, and aroused the greatest interest. After some work at Stanz and
at Burgdorf, Pestalozzi settled to work in the castle of Yverdun on Lake
Neuch[^a]tel, which became in the early years of the nineteenth century a
place of pilgrimage for European students and lovers of education. Forced
to leave Yverdun in 1815, he continued his work at Clindy till 1824.
Friedrich Froebel spent the years 1807 to 1809 at Yverdun, and so fitted
himself to carry on the work Pestalozzi had to some extent made popular.
His name, however, is specially associated with the schools for very young
children to which he gave the name of _Kindergarten_, that is, 'gardens of
children', places where young children, like young plants, were properly
watched and tended. For the children in these schools their employment was
to be play, play from which and by which they acquired clear notions
regarding themselves and their environment. "Education", he asserted,
"should lead and guide man to clearness concerning himself and in himself,
to peace with nature, and to unity with God." He held that powers were
developed by exercise; that failure to use any part of the body or mind led
to the shrinkage of the part, and sometimes even to its complete loss. He
held that if we wish to develop the body we must exercise the body, and
that, similarly, if we wish to develop the intellect or the emotions they
must be exercised. He insists that teachers must be careful to interfere as
little as possible; must remember at all times that the aim of teaching is
"to bring ever more and more out of man rather than to put more and more
into him". He based his system on action; agreed with Montaigne that
"children's games were their most serious occupations"; and with Locke that
"All the plays and diversions of children should be directed towards good
and useful habits". Froebel was not the founder of infant schools. These
were first established on the Continent and in Britain with the object of
helping mothers. In Britain their establishment is associated with the
names of the educational enthusiasts James Buchanan and Samuel Wilderspin.
Nearly ten years before Froebel's stay with Pestalozzi at Yverdun, Herbart,
next to Kant and Hegel the most influential of German philosophers, visited
the inspired educationist at Burgdorf, and found him employing methods
based on the principles which he himself had worked out in his psychology.
To both it was clear that there is a definite order in which subjects
should be taught to the children, and that this order is determined, not
merely by the relation of the subjects to each other, but by their power of
satisfying the growing wants and capacities of the child. Pestalozzi had
arrived intuitively at a method, and had practically applied it, which
Herbart had scientifically worked out as applicable to the whole
educational field. Three years later Herbart published pamphlets on
Pestalozzi's best-known book, _How Gertrude teaches her Children_, and on
_The A.B.C. of Sense-perception_, and in these showed what weight he
attached to observation as an instrument of education. Two years later he
published one of his most notable works on education, _The Aesthetic
Revelation of the World_, and in 1806 _General Pedagogy_. In 1809 he was
appointed professor of philosophy at K[:o]nigsberg, where he remained till
1833, and where his services to the cause of education, both by his
writings and by his establishment of normal schools and experimental
schools, cannot be exaggerated. He warns teachers not to educate too much;
to be careful not to destroy the individuality of the child, such
individuality being that which characterizes individuals of the same class.
He lays the greatest stress on the importance to the teacher of child
study, maintaining that he will be unable to teach unless he knows the
child as he is. For Herbart the aim of education is summed up in morality,
"the highest aim of humanity and consequently of education", itself. "I
have no conception", he writes, "of education without instruction, just as
I do not acknowledge any instruction that does not educate." "Instruction",
he says elsewhere, "will form the circle of thought, and education the
character; the last is nothing without the first." A great deal, according
to Herbart, depends upon the pupil himself, who "grasps rightly what is
natural to him", and who must be saved from the tendency to one-sidedness
in which following his bent would result, by the cultivation in him of
many-sidedness. This cultivation involves the control of the pupil's mental
activity, and the instrument for this control is interest, which causes the
pupil's complete absorption in its object. For the attainment of this
Herbart proposes certain formal steps of instruction. These steps are
usually set forth as (1) Preparation, (2) Presentation, (3) Comparison, (4)
Generalization, (5) Application.
The nineteenth century was a period of continuously increasing interest in
education, and of a generally growing belief in its utility. It was taken
up by the Governments of the different countries, and ordered and regulated
almost out of existence. Seven years before the death of Pestalozzi the
first public grant for education was made by the British Parliament, and
from that time up to the present the Government has continued to extend its
power over the education of the country. For a long time the Government in
Britain was satisfied to subsidize elementary education; but later it
insisted on hard-and-fast lines of instruction. So thoroughly were these
regulated in most countries that a French Minister of Education could boast
he was able to say what work every child in France was engaged in at that
particular moment.
In Britain it was only bit by bit, and with very considerable reluctance,
that the Government took upon itself the responsibility for the education
of the country. In Scotland a national system of general education,
constituted in 1560, remained in force until reconstructed by the
_Education Act_ of 1872. (See _Scotland_.) Compulsory education was
introduced into England in 1870, together with what was described as
payment by results; and, for some time, the aim which the teacher had to
keep before him was the production at the annual examination of the largest
number of pupils who could satisfy the tests in Reading, Writing, and
Arithmetic, or, as they were called, the 'three R's', and so earn the
Government grant. For between thirty and forty years this unnatural and
mechanical system remained in force. From 1864 onwards Commission after
Commission sought to reduce English secondary education to order. The most
notable of these was The Bryce Commission of Enquiry into Secondary
Education, 1894-5, whose recommendations have since been put into force by
legislation. One of the results of the increasing interest in education
throughout England was the founding, early in the latter half of last
century, of great day schools, like the City of London, St. Paul's, and
Merchant Taylors, in London and other large cities; and, after the passing
of the Education Act of 1902, the establishment everywhere of Council
Secondary Schools.
Of the immense number of works on education issued during the last half of
the nineteenth century, perhaps the best known are those of Herbert Spencer
and of Professor Bain. The former seeks to explain education from the
Darwinian standpoint, and the latter to determine from psychology the
intellectual value of the various subjects taught in school, and the
average age at which they should be taught to children. Of practical
English educators during the nineteenth century, the most outstanding names
are undoubtedly those of Arnold of Rugby, Thring of Uppingham, and Abbott
of the City of London School.
In recent times the advances made in the theoretical and practical studies
of the sciences of anthropology, physiology, and psychology have exercised
an enormous influence on educational theories and practices. Careful
observations of young children by scientific observers like Darwin,
Dearborn, and Preyer have added greatly to our knowledge of child-nature;
and helped to suggest new methods of studying it and developing it. The
result has been the promulgation within the present century of a number of
educational methods, some of which, in contrast to the older practices,
must seem almost revolutionary. Among these must be remembered the
'Heuristic Method' of teaching science put forward by Professor H. E.
Armstrong. The object of the method is to put the student as completely as
may be in the position of an original investigator; and it has been classed
by writers on education as being, like so many other modern methods, a
'play method'. Froebel in his kindergarten was one of the first to
introduce successfully the play method in education, and the 'gifts' by
which the plan was carried through were of his own devising; but such
cannot be said of Dr. Montessori, whose method of education engrosses so
much attention at the present time. The Montessori apparatus was originally
devised by Dr. Seguin for the instruction of mental defectives. Dr.
Montessori used the apparatus first for the training of young children; but
the cardinal feature of the Montessori system is the determined effort to
make the child entirely responsible for his own education, and to interfere
as little as possible with his development. The apparatus is so contrived
that it can only be used in one way if the problem is to be solved; so the
child is forced to attend to the differences in size and shape and
carefully to compare the different pieces. In addition, the Montessori
system attempts to cultivate the social virtues; teaches the children to
live and to work and play with others, and so to learn to be well-mannered.
The teacher in this system retires into the background, and the children
are left to go their own way, to choose their own tasks, and to be their
own critics. Great attention is also given to the physical development of
the children.
Experimental education has been attempted both in Germany, where the need
for it was first put forward by Kant, and in England; but it is in the
United States of America that the chief advances in this direction have
been made. There the Binet attempt to measure the intelligence of the
child, to fix in fact a metric scale of intelligence, has been elaborated,
and the Binet-Simon system of tests devised, and later modified by L. M.
Terman. There, too, schools have been established which have tried the
working out of what may be described as the non-interference with the pupil
principle. Among these may be mentioned the 'George Junior Republic' and
the Gary Schools. The latter, we are told by their founder, were "not
instituted to turn out good workers for the steel company, but for the
educational value of the work they involved". To this must be added the
'Dalton Laboratory Plan', tried lately as an experiment by Miss Helen
Parkhurst in a public secondary day school in Dalton. By this plan, the
time-table is abolished, the child undertakes to get up a certain amount of
work each month in each particular subject, and is left free to distribute
his time as he chooses, so that he can devote more time to those subjects
in which he is backward. The school is divided into departments
(laboratories) each under a specialist who gives the help needed, but
leaves the pupil to himself as much as possible.--BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bartley,
_The Schools for the People_; Norwood and Hope, _Higher Education of Boys
in England_; Quick, _Essays on Educational Reformers_; Browning, _An
Introduction to the History of Education Theories_; Sleight, _Educational
Values and Methods_; Nunn, _Education: Its Data and First Principles_;
Wilton, _What do we mean by Education?_ _The New Teaching_, edited by
Adams; Kerr, _Scottish Education_; Morrison, _Education Authorities'
Handbook_; Dewey, _Schools of To-morrow_; Rusk, _Introduction to
Experimental Education_; Montessori, _The Montessori Method_ and _The
Advanced Montessori Method_.
EDUCATION ACT, the name given to several Acts dealing with education in
Great Britain. Among the principal Education Acts are: (1) that of 1870,
which introduced compulsory education; (2) that of 1891, which reduced, or
in some cases abolished, school fees; (3) that of 1902, which authorized
the levying of an education rate; and (4) that of 1918, which raised the
age for leaving school, and made education compulsory up to the age of
eighteen by means of continuation schools. Pupils must attend these schools
for 320 hours each year.
EDWARD, known as _the Elder_, King of England, son of Alfred the Great,
born about 870, died in 925. He succeeded his father in 901, and his reign
was distinguished by successes over the Danes. He fortified many inland
towns, acquired dominion over Northumbria and East Anglia, and subdued
several of the Welsh tribes.
EDWARD, surnamed _the Martyr_, King of England, succeeded his father,
Edgar, at the age of fifteen, in 975. His reign of four years was chiefly
distinguished by ecclesiastical disputes. He was treacherously slain in 979
by a servant of his stepmother, at her residence, Corfe Castle. The pity
caused by his innocence and misfortune induced the people to regard him as
a martyr.
EDWARD, King of England, surnamed _the Confessor_, was the son of Ethelred
II, and was born at Islip, in Oxfordshire, about 1004. On the death of his
maternal brother, Hardicanute the Dane, in 1041, he was called to the
throne, and thus renewed the Saxon line. Edward was a weak and
superstitious, but well-intentioned prince, who acquired the love of his
subjects by his monkish sanctity and care in the administration of justice.
His queen was the daughter of Godwin, Earl of Kent. He died in 1066, and
was succeeded by Harold, the son of Godwin. Edward caused a body of laws to
be compiled from those of Ethelbert, Ina, and Alfred, to which the nation
was long fondly attached. He was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1161.
EDWARD, Prince of Wales, surnamed _the Black Prince_, born 15th June, 1330,
the eldest son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault. In 1346 he commanded
part of the forces at the battle of Cr['e]cy, and earned the praise of his
warlike father. It was on this occasion that he adopted the motto _Ich
dien_ (I serve), used by all succeeding Princes of Wales. In 1355 he
commanded the army which invaded France from Gascony, and distinguished
himself the following year at the great battle of Poitiers. By the Peace of
Br['e]tigny the provinces of Poictou, Saintonge, P['e]rigord, and Limousin
were annexed to Guienne and formed into a sovereignty for the prince under
the title of the Principality of Aquitaine. A campaign in Castile, on
behalf of Pedro the Cruel, and the heavy taxes laid on Aquitaine to meet
the expenses, caused a rebellion, and ultimately involved him in a war with
the French king. His own health did not allow him to take the field, and
having seen his generals defeated he withdrew into England, and after
lingering some time died (1376), leaving an only son, afterwards Richard
II.
EDWARD I (of the Norman line), King of England, son of Henry III, was born
at Winchester in 1239, died 7th July, 1307. The contests between his father
and the barons called him early into active life, and he finally quelled
all resistance to the royal authority by the decisive defeat of Leicester
at the battle of Evesham, in 1265. He then proceeded to Palestine, where he
showed signal proofs of valour, although no conquest of any importance was
achieved. His father's death in 1272 gave him the crown. On his return home
he showed great vigour as well as a degree of severity in his
administration. He commenced a war with Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, which
ended in the annexation of that Principality to the English Crown in 1283.
Edward's ambition was to gain possession of Scotland, but the death of
Margaret, the Maid of Norway, who was to have been married to Edward's son,
for a time frustrated the king's designs. But on 26th Dec., 1292, John
Baliol was induced to do homage for his crown to Edward at Newcastle.
Baliol was forced by the indignation of the Scottish people into war with
England. Edward entered Scotland in 1296, devastated it with fire and
sword, and placed the administration of the country in the hands of
officers of his own. Next summer a new rising took place under William
Wallace. Wallace's successes recalled Edward to Scotland with an army of
100,000 men. Wallace was at length betrayed into his hands and executed as
a traitor. All Edward's efforts, however, to reduce the country to
obedience were unavailing, and with the flight of Robert Bruce, Earl of
Carrick, to Scotland, the banner of Scottish independence was again
unfurled. Edward assembled another army and marched against Bruce, but only
lived to reach Burgh-on-Sands, a village near Carlisle, where he died.
Edward I was wise in council and vigorous in action. During his reign great
progress was made in the establishment of law and order throughout the
land.
EDWARD II, King of England, born at Carnarvon Castle in 1284, and the first
English Prince of Wales, succeeded his father, Edward I, in 1307. He was of
an agreeable figure and mild disposition, but indolent and fond of
pleasure. After marching as far as Cumnock, in Ayrshire, with the army
collected by his father, he returned, dismissed his troops, and abandoned
himself entirely to amusements. His weakness for a clever but dissolute
young Gascon, Piers Gaveston, on whom he heaped honours without limit,
roused the nobles to rebellion. Gaveston was captured in Scarborough
Castle, and executed as a public enemy on 19th June, 1312. Two years after
this, Edward assembled an immense army to check the progress of Robert
Bruce, but was completely defeated at Bannockburn. In 1322 he made another
expedition against Scotland, but without achieving anything important. The
king's fondness for another favourite, Hugh le Despenser, had made a number
of malcontents, and Queen Isabella, making a visit to France, entered into
a correspondence with the exiles there, and formed an association of all
hostile to the king. Aided by a force from the Count of Hainault, she
landed in Suffolk in 1326. Her army was completely successful. The
Despensers, father and son, were captured and executed, and the king was
taken prisoner and confined in Kenilworth, and ultimately in Berkeley
Castle, where he was murdered 21st Sept., 1327.
EDWARD III, King of England, son of Edward II by Isabella of France, was
born in 1312, died 21st June, 1377. On his father's deposition in 1327 he
was proclaimed king under a council of regency, while his mother's lover,
Mortimer, really possessed the principal power in the State. The pride and
oppression of Mortimer led to a general confederacy against him, and to his
seizure and execution (10th Oct., 1330). Edward now turned his attention to
Scotland, and, having levied a well-appointed army, defeated the regent,
Douglas, at Halidon Hill, in July, 1333. This victory produced the
restoration of Edward Baliol, who was, however, again expelled, and again
restored, until the ambition of the English king was diverted by the
prospect of succeeding to the throne of France. Collecting an army and
accompanied by the Black Prince, he crossed over to France. The memorable
battle of Cr['e]cy followed, 25th Aug., 1346, which was succeeded by the
siege of Calais. In the meantime David II, having recovered the throne of
Scotland, invaded England with a large army, but was defeated and taken
prisoner by a much inferior force under Lord Percy. In 1348 a truce was
concluded with France; but on the death of King Philip, in 1350, Edward
again invaded France, plundering and devastating. Recalled home by a
Scottish inroad, he retaliated by carrying fire and sword from Berwick to
Edinburgh. In the meantime the Black Prince had penetrated from Guienne to
the heart of France, fought the famous battle of Poitiers, and taken King
John prisoner. A truce was then made, at the expiration of which (1359)
Edward again crossed over to France and laid waste the provinces of Picardy
and Champagne, but at length consented to a peace. This confirmed him in
the possession of several provinces and districts of France which were
entrusted to the Prince of Wales (the Black Prince), but gradually all the
English possessions in France, with the exception of Bordeaux, Bayonne, and
Calais, were lost.
EDWARD IV, King of England, was born in 1442, died in April, 1483. His
father, Richard, Duke of York, was grandson of Edmund, Earl of Cambridge
and Duke of York, fourth son of Edward III, while the rival line of
Lancaster descended from John of Gaunt, the third son. The York line had
intermarried with the female descendants of Lionel, the second son, which
gave it the preferable right to the Crown. Edward, on the defeat and death
of his father at the battle of Wakefield, assumed his title, and, having
entered London after his splendid victory over the troops of Henry VI and
Queen Margaret at Mortimer's Cross, in Feb. 1461, was declared king by
acclamation. The victory of Towton, soon after his accession, confirmed his
title, and three years after this, on 4th May, 1464, the battle of Hexham
completely overthrew the party of Henry VI. The king now made an imprudent
marriage with Elizabeth, widow of Sir John Grey, at the very time when he
had dispatched the Earl of Warwick to negotiate a marriage for him with the
sister of the French king. He thus alienated powerful friends, and Warwick,
passing over to the Lancastrian cause, gathered a large army, and compelled
Edward to fly (in Sept. 1470). Henry's title was once more recognized by
Parliament. But in 1471 Edward, at the head of a small force given him by
the Duke of Burgundy, landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, and his army, being
quickly increased by partisans, marched swiftly on London and took the
unfortunate Henry prisoner. Warwick now advanced with an army to Barnet,
where a battle was fought, 4th April, 1471, which ended in the death of
Warwick and a decisive victory for Edward. Shortly afterwards Edward also
met and defeated a Lancastrian army, headed by Queen Margaret and her son
Edward, at Tewkesbury. The prince was murdered, and the queen was thrown
into the Tower, where Henry VI soon after died. Edward was preparing for an
expedition against France when he died.
EDWARD V, King of England, the eldest son of Edward IV, was in his
thirteenth year when he succeeded his father in 1483. His uncle, the Duke
of Gloucester, soon made himself king as Richard III, and caused the young
king and his brother to be sent to the Tower, where he had them smothered
by ruffians.
EDWARD VI, King of England, son of Henry VIII by Jane Seymour, was born in
1537, died in July, 1553. At his father's death he was only nine years of
age. His education was entrusted to men of the first character for
learning, under whose training he made great progress, and grew up with a
rooted zeal for the doctrines of the Reformation. His reign was, on the
whole, tumultuous and unsettled. In Oct., 1551, the Protector Somerset, who
had hitherto governed the kingdom with energy and ability, was deposed by
the intrigues of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who became all-powerful.
He induced the dying Edward to set aside the succession of his sisters,
Mary and Elizabeth, and settle the crown upon Lady Jane Grey, to whom he
had married his son Lord Guildford Dudley. Edward VI restored many of the
grammar schools suppressed by Henry VIII, and these schools are still known
as King Edward's schools.
EDWARD VII, King of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, eldest
son of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, was born at Buckingham Palace
on 9th Nov., 1841, died 6th May, 1910. In Dec., 1841, he was created Prince
of Wales. He was educated under private tutors and at Edinburgh, Oxford,
and Cambridge; visited Canada and the United States in 1860; and underwent
military training at the Curragh camp in 1861. Promoted to the rank of
general in 1862, he visited Palestine and the East, and next year took his
seat in the House of Lords. On 10th March, 1863, he was married in St.
George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, to Princess Alexandra, eldest daughter of
Christian IX of Denmark, and from this time onwards he discharged many
public ceremonial functions. Attacked by typhoid fever in the winter of
1871, his life was for a time despaired of, but he recovered early in 1872,
his recovery being made the occasion of a thanksgiving service in St.
Paul's Cathedral. During 1875 and 1876 he visited India. He was a member of
the Poor Law Commission of 1893. He promoted the establishment of the
Imperial Institute as a memorial of Queen Victoria's jubilee (1887), and he
commemorated her diamond jubilee (1897) by founding the Prince of Wales's
(now King's) Hospital Fund for the better financial support of the London
hospitals. On the death of Queen Victoria on 22nd Jan., 1901, he succeeded
to the throne, and was crowned on 9th Aug., 1902. King Edward did much to
promote friendly relations with foreign powers, especially with France and
the United States. It was through his personal influence that the Entente
Cordiale with France was brought about. To him and Queen Alexandra were
born: Albert Victor Christian Edward, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, born
1864, died 1892; George Frederick Ernest Albert, who succeeded his father
as George V, born 1865, married 1893, to Princess Victoria Mary of Teck;
Princess Louise, now Princess Royal, born 1867, married 1889, to the Duke
of Fife, who died 29th Jan., 1912; Princess Victoria, born 1868; and
Princess Maud, born 1869, married 1896, to Prince Charles of Denmark, now
King of Norway as Haakon VII.--BIBLIOGRAPHY: _Life of the King_, by 'One of
His Majesty's Servants'; Holt-White, _The People's King_; E. Legge, _King
Edward in his true Colours_; J. P. Brodhurst, _The Life and Times of Edward
VII_; W. H. Wilkins, _Edward the Peacemaker_.
EDWARD, Thomas, a Scottish naturalist, born 1814, died 1886. The son of
poor parents, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker and worked at his trade
till nearly the end of his life, but succeeded in acquiring much knowledge
of natural history and some fame as a naturalist. An interesting biography
of Edward (_Life of a Scottish Naturalist_), written by Samuel Smiles,
appeared in 1876, and a pension of L50 a year was shortly afterwards
conferred on him by Queen Victoria.
EDWARDS, Amelia Blandford, English novelist and Egyptologist, born in
London in 1831, died in 1892. She gave early evidence of great literary
ability by her contributions to periodicals, and attracted attention by her
novel _My Brother's Wife_ (1855). Among her best-known novels are: _Hand
and Glove_ (1859), _Barbara's History_ (1864), _Half a Million of Money_
(1865), _Debenham's Vow_ (1870), and _Lord Brackenbury_ (1880). Miss
Edwards wrote also ballads and books of travel, and in 1882 founded the
Egypt Exploration Fund and devoted herself to Egyptology, leaving funds to
found a chair of Egyptology in University College, London.
EDWARDS, Bryan, English writer, born in Wiltshire in 1743, died in 1800. He
inherited a large fortune from an uncle in Jamaica, where he long resided.
His _History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West
Indies_ appeared in 1793.
EDWARDS, John Passmore, British philanthropist and journalist, born at
Blackwater, Cornwall, in March, 1823, died on 22nd April, 1911. Trained as
a journalist, he became representative of the paper _The Sentinel_, and was
opposed to the Corn Laws. In 1862 he bought _The Building News_, and in
1876 the London _Echo_, of which he was director for twenty years. Although
somewhat unpopular on account of his opposition to the Boer War, he is
remembered as a public benefactor, having founded numerous Passmore Edwards
institutions, public libraries, and settlements, and contributed largely to
hospitals. He was a delegate to the peace congresses at Brussels, Paris,
and Frankfort (1848-50), and twice refused a knighthood.
EDWARDS, Jonathan, American theologian and metaphysician, born 5th Oct.,
1703, died 22nd March, 1758. He entered Yale College in 1716, and studied
till 1722, when he received a licence as preacher. In 1723 he was elected a
tutor in Yale College, but resigned in 1726 to be ordained as minister at
Northampton (Mass.). After more than twenty-three years of zealous service
here, he was dismissed by the congregation owing to the severity with which
he sought to exercise church discipline. He then went as a missionary among
the Indians at Stockbridge, in Massachusetts. Here he composed his famous
work on the _Freedom of the Will_, which appeared in 1754. In 1757 he was
chosen president of the college at Princeton, New Jersey, but died shortly
afterwards.
EDWY, King of England, son of Edmund I, succeeded his uncle Edred in 955.
Taking part with the secular clergy against the monks, he incurred the
confirmed enmity of the latter. The Papal party, headed by Dunstan, was
strong enough to excite a rebellion, by which Edwy was driven from the
throne to make way for his brother Edgar. He died in 959, being probably
not more than eighteen or nineteen years old.
EECLOO ([=a]k-l[=o]'), a town, Belgium, province of East Flanders, 11 miles
north-west of Ghent, the seat of textile manufactures. Pop. 13,536.
[Illustration: Eel-bucks on the Thames]
EEL, the popular name of fishes belonging to the teleostean sub-order
Apodes. The common eel (_Anguilla vulgaris_) is the type of a special
family (Anguillidae) and has a very wide distribution in the fresh waters
of the globe. It is snake-shaped, devoid of ventral fins, and the minute
scales are embedded in the slimy skin. When five or six years old it
migrates to the deep sea for spawning, after which it probably dies.
Curious flattened larvae (Leptocephalus) hatch out from the floating eggs,
and undergo a metamorphosis to become young eels or elvers, which when a
year old ascend rivers in vast numbers as 'eel fare'. Eels are esteemed as
an article of food, and even elvers are compressed into a sort of cake. In
England river eels are caught in great numbers by means of eel-bucks or
eelpots, traps consisting of a kind of basket with a funnel-shaped entrance
composed of willow rods converging towards a point, so that the eels can
easily force their way in but cannot return. A stocking or tube of coarse
cloth hanging from an aperture of a box down into the interior is also
used. In England a kind of trident called an _eel-spear_ is used also for
taking them. A fisherman wades to the shallows, and, as he strikes his
spear in the mud in every direction around him, the eels reposing on the
bottom are caught between the prongs. They are also taken by hooks and
lines and in other ways. See _Conger-eel_; _Muraena_. Electric eels belong
to another group. See _Electrical Fishes_.
EFFEN'DI, a Turkish title which signifies lord or master. It is
particularly applied to the civil, as _aga_ is to the military officers of
the Sultan. Thus the Sultan's first physician is called _Hakim effendi_,
and the priest in the seraglio _Imam effendi_.
EFFERVES'CENCE, the rapid escape of a gas from a liquid, producing a
turbulent motion in it, and causing it to boil up. It, is produced by the
actual formation of a gas in the liquid, as in fermentation, or by the
liberation of a gas which has been forced into it, as in aerated beverages.
EFFICIENCY, in mechanics and engineering, the ratio of the useful energy
given out by a machine to the energy supplied to it. Energy cannot be
created or destroyed, but it may assume various forms, and, within limits,
can be changed from any one of these forms to any other. A machine or
engine is an apparatus for converting energy in some given form into energy
in another assigned form. In practice it is found impossible to convert the
whole of the given energy into the form wanted, there being always a
residue which is not of the right kind, and is, therefore, counted as
useless. The smaller the residue, the more efficient is the machine. In the
machines of elementary mechanics, such as the lever or the screw, the
energy supplied is work done by the power or effort, and the energy wanted
is work done on the load. If E is the effort, and W the load, then if there
were no friction we would have E = Wr, where r is the velocity ratio, or
ratio of the velocities of the points of application of load and effort.
The relation found by experiment, however, is usually of the type E = Wr +
C, where C is a constant. The efficiency is the fraction Wr/E or 1 - C/E,
so that it increases with the load. In _heat engines_, energy in the form
of heat is converted into mechanical energy. Heat is taken in at the
source, part of it is changed into mechanical energy, and the remainder is
rejected to the condenser. According to the second law of thermodynamics,
the efficiency of such an engine has a definite upper limit which it cannot
exceed, this being the ratio of the difference of the temperatures of the
source and the condenser to the temperature of the source, these
temperatures being measured on the absolute scale, that is, from -273deg C.
reckoned as the zero. The efficiency of a steam-engine is usually compared
with that of an ideal engine working between the same temperatures, and
going through a definite periodic set of operations called the Rankine
cycle. If the thermal efficiency of an actual engine is 27 per cent, and
that of an ideal engine working on the Rankine cycle is 30 per cent,
obviously the important figure is the ratio of 27 to 30, or 90 per cent.
The performance of a steam-engine depends, not only on its _thermal
efficiency_, but also on its _boiler efficiency_ and its _mechanical
efficiency_. The boiler efficiency is the percentage of the heat obtainable
from the fuel consumed which is actually used in the engine; in a good
boiler it may be 75 per cent. The mechanical efficiency is the ratio of the
work given out at the crank-shaft to the work done on the piston; in other
words, it is the ratio of brake horse-power to indicated horse-power. It
may perhaps be 80 per cent. To arrive at the over-all efficiency, the
various partial or component efficiencies must be multiplied together. In
comparing one type of engine with another, what is important is obviously
this over-all efficiency, or ratio of energy output to the theoretical
energy value of the fuel employed. Thus, to take the case of marine
engines, the Diesel oil-engine is inferior to the turbine and to the
reciprocator in point both of thermal and of mechanical efficiency. But
when the efficiency of the boilers is taken into account, the Diesel comes
out very decidedly ahead of the others. Taking coal at 10,000 British
thermal units per pound, and Diesel oil at 18,000 British thermal units per
pound, Mr. T. R. Wollaston has given the following figures for the number
of British thermal units consumed per brake horse-power hour: steam-engine
19,000; steam turbine 21,000; gas-engine 15,000; Diesel engine 9000.
Electrical plant in general reaches a high standard of efficiency. Some
figures are: transmission lines 85 to 95 per cent; motors and generators at
full load 70 to 80 per cent from 1 to 5 h.p., 80 to 90 per cent from 5 to
50 h.p., and 95 per cent for large sizes. Electrical transformers are the
most efficient of all machines. Their efficiency ranges from about 90 per
cent in small sizes, up to perhaps 98.5 per cent for large machines at full
load. See _Energy_; _Internal-combustion Engines_; _Steam-engines_;
_Thermodynamics_.
EFFLORES'CENCE, the property which certain hydrated salts have of losing
water when exposed to air. Thus washing-soda, Na_2CO_3, 10H_2O, if left in
air becomes opaque, loses its crystalline appearance, and finally falls to
a powder by loss of water. The term is also applied in botany to the
process of flowering.
EFFLUENTS, a general term applying to liquids, on being discharged, after
undergoing some form of treatment. The term is more particularly applied to
the purified liquid discharged into rivers and streams from sewage-works,
the crude sewage having been freed of the grosser solids, and rendered
clear and innocuous to animal and vegetable life.
EFFODIEN'TIA, the name proposed for a new order of mammals to include
pangolins and aard-varks. See _Edentata_.
['E]GALIT['E], Philippe. See _Orleans, Louis Philippe Joseph_.
EGBERT, considered the first king of all England, was of the royal family
of Wessex. He succeeded Brihtric in 802 as King of Wessex. He reduced the
other kingdoms and rendered them dependent on him in 829, thus becoming
their overlord. He died in 839.
EGEDE, Hans ([=a]'ge-d[=a]), the apostle of Greenland, born in 1686 in
Norway, died in 1758. In 1721 Egede set sail for Greenland with the
intention of converting the natives to Christianity, and for fifteen years
performed the most arduous duties as missionary, winning by his persevering
kindness the confidence of the natives. In 1736 he returned to Copenhagen,
where he was made a bishop and director of the Greenland Missions.
EGER ([=a]'g[.e]r), a town of Bohemia, Czecho-Slovakia, on a rocky eminence
above the Eger, 91 miles west of Prague; once an important fortress, though
now quite dismantled. It has manufactures of woollens, cottons, leather,
and soap. Wallenstein was assassinated there (1634). Pop. 26,620.
EGE'RIA, a nymph who received divine honours among the Romans. Numa is said
to have received from her the laws which he gave to the Romans.
EGERSUND ([=a]'g[.e]r-s[u:]nd), a seaport on the south-west coast of
Norway, some distance south of Stavanger, and connected with it by railway,
has a large pottery-work, fishing and shipping trade. Pop. 3500.
EGERTON, Francis. See _Bridgewater, Duke of_.
[Illustration: Section of Hen's Egg
A, White or albumen. B, Vitelline membrane. C, Chalaza. D, White yolk. E,
Germinal disc. F, Shell. G, Air space. H, Shell membrane. K, Yellow yolk.]
EGG, (1) in the narrower sense, the female reproductive or germ-cell, which
after impregnation or fertilization by a male germ-cell (spermatozoon or
sperm) develops into an embryo. (See _Ovum_.) (2) The term is applied, more
broadly, to a more complicated reproductive body that consists of an ovum
together with supplementary parts. The egg of a bird, for example, includes
the fertilized and developing ovum (yolk), nutritive white (albumen), and
protective double egg membrane covered by a porous calcareous shell. The
eggs of animals lower than the birds have usually only three parts, viz.
the germinal spot or dot, the germinal vesicle, and the vitellus or yolk;
the first being contained in the vesicle, and that again in the yolk. The
common domestic fowl, the turkey, the pea-hen, and the common duck produce
the eggs which are commonest in the market. The eggs of the green plover
(_Vanellus cristatus_) are esteemed as a delicacy. The hard roes of fishes
are the ovaries, containing innumerable eggs (over nine millions in the
cod). The salted hard roes of the sturgeon are known as caviare. A hen's
egg of good size weighs about 1000 grams, of which the white constitutes
600, the yolk 300, and the shell 100. When the white of an egg is warmed it
coagulates to a firm opaque mass. Eggs form an important article in British
commerce; the number imported in 1919 amounted to the value of L8,613,000,
mainly from Russia, Denmark, Austria, France, and Italy.
EGG, an island of Scotland. See _Eigg_.
EGGA, a town of N. Nigeria, on the right bank of the Niger, about 70 miles
above the junction of the Binue. Pop. 10,000.
EGGAR, or EGGER, a name given to moths of the family Lasiocampidae.
_Lasiocampa trifolii_, a well-known British moth, is called the
grass-egger, and the _L. quercus_ the oak-egger, from the food of their
caterpillars.
EGG-BIRD, or SOOTY TERN (_Sterna fuliginosa_), a bird of considerable
commercial importance in the West Indies, as its eggs, in common with those
of two other species of tern, form an object of profitable adventure to the
crews of numerous small vessels.
EGGLESTON, Edward, American novelist and miscellaneous writer, born in
1837, died in 1902. He entered the ministry of the Methodist Church, was
engaged in pastoral work for some years, afterwards as pastor of an
independent church founded by himself. He wrote and edited much, among his
books being: _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_ (1871), which first appeared in
_Hearth and Home_; _The End of the World_: _A Love Story_; _Roxy_, a highly
popular novel (1878); _The Hoosier Schoolboy_; _The Graysons_; _Household
History of the United States_; _The Faith Doctor_. His novels are marked by
abundance of incident, skilful handling of dialect, and realistic
portraiture.
EGG-PLANT, or BRINJAL (_Sol[=a]num melong[)e]na_), nat. ord. Solanaceae, an
herbaceous plant, from 1 foot to 18 inches high, with large white or
purplish flowers. The fruit is about the size of a goose's egg, and
generally yellow, white, or violet, and when boiled or stewed is used as an
article of food. It is cultivated in India, the United States, &c., and in
European hothouses. There are several other species of egg-plants, as _S.
indicum_ and _S. sodomeum_.
EGHAM, an urban district of England, county of Surrey, on the Thames
opposite Staines, about 21 miles from London, with the Royal Holloway
College for women, and the Holloway Sanatorium. Near it is Runnymede, where
King John signed Magna Charta.
EGIL SKALLAGRIM, an Icelandic bard or poet of the tenth century, who
distinguished himself by his warlike exploits in predatory invasions of
Scotland and Northumberland. Having fallen into the hands of a hostile
Norwegian prince, he procured his freedom by the composition and recitation
of a poem called _Egil's Ransom_, which is still extant.
EGINHARD, or EINHARD, friend and biographer of Charles the Great
(Charlemagne), born in Maingau (East Franconia) about 770, died in 840. He
was educated in the monastery at Fulda, and his capacity attracted the
attention of Charles, who made him superintendent of public buildings, and
of whom he became the constant companion. He also enjoyed the favour of his
son Louis the Pious. His later years were passed at
M[:u]hlheim-on-the-Main, where he founded a monastery. His _Vita Caroli
Magni_ is a work of great value, and his letters are also important.
EG'LANTINE, one of the names of the sweetbrier (_Rosa rubiginosa_), a kind
of wild rose. The name has sometimes been erroneously used for other
species of the rose and for the honeysuckle.
EG'MONT, Lamoral, Count, Prince of Gavre, was born in 1522, of an
illustrious family of Holland. He adopted a military career, accompanied
Charles V in his African expeditions, and distinguished himself under
Philip II in the battles of St. Quentin (1557) and Gravelines (1558).
Philip having gone to Spain, Egmont soon became involved in the political
and religious disputes which arose between the Netherlands and their
Spanish rulers. He tried to adjust the difficulties between both parties,
and in 1565 went to Spain to arrange matters with Philip. He was well
received, sent back with honour, but quite deceived as to the king's real
intentions. In 1567 the Duke of Alva was sent with an army to the
Netherlands to reduce the insurgents. One of his first measures was to
seize Count Egmont and Count Horn. After a trial before a tribunal
instituted by Alva himself they were executed at Brussels 5th June, 1568. A
well-known drama of Goethe's is founded on the story of Egmont.
E'GOISM, as a philosophical doctrine, the view that the elements of all
knowledge and the reality of the things known are dependent on the personal
existence of the knower. This theory is also called Subjective Idealism or
Solipsism. It maintains that his individual ego is the only being that a
man can logically assert to exist. As an ethical theory (practical egoism)
it is the opposite of altruism. It maintains that the governing principle
of conduct for the individual is his own good on the whole, and that
self-interest is the basis of morality. Egoism is to be distinguished from
egotism, which denotes the practice of putting forward or dwelling upon
oneself, of thinking, talking, or writing about oneself.
EGREMONT, a town of England, in Cumberland, in the valley of the Ehen, 3
miles from the sea, giving name to a parliamentary division. It has ruins
of an ancient (twelfth century) castle associated with a legend that served
Wordsworth as the subject of a poem. Iron-ore and limestone are worked.
Pop. 6300.
[Illustration: Little Egret (_Ard[)e]a garzetta_)]
EG'RET, a name given to those species of white herons which have the
feathers of the lower part of the back elongated and their webs disunited,
reaching to the tail or beyond it at certain seasons of the year. Their
forms are more graceful than those of common herons. The American egret
(_Ard[)e]a egretta_) is about 37 inches long to the end of the tail;
plumage soft and blended; head not crested; wings moderate; the tail short,
of twelve weak feathers. The European egret (_A. alba_) is about 40 inches
long, of a pure white plumage; the bill is black or dark brown, yellow at
the base and about the nostrils, and the legs are almost black. The little
egret (_A. garzetta_) is about 22 inches long from bill to end of tail, the
plumage is white. The term egret is used in the feather trade for a bunch
of the loose plumes, valued as an ornament.
[Illustration: Diagrammatic Section across Egypt from Farafra Oasis to
Sinai]
EGYPT (from Gr. _Aiguptos_) is, as Herodotus has said, "the gift of the
Nile". This great river, about 4000 miles in length, rises as the White
Nile, three degrees south of the equator, drawing its waters from the
Central African lakes. To the south of Khartoum, and 1350 miles from the
sea, it is joined by the Blue Nile, which rises in the mountains of
Abyssinia, and about 140 miles farther on it is fed by the Atbara, its last
tributary. On the tableland of Nubian sandstone between Khartoum and
Elephantine the river forms two great loops, and is intercepted by shallows
or cataracts, of which there are six in all. The 'first cataract'--the last
on the journey northward--is at Assouan, where a ridge of intercepting
granite crops up. At Edfu, about 68 miles farther north, the limestone
formation is entered, and the Nile then flows uninterrupted between
flanking hills that here and there attain the height of 1000 feet. Egypt
proper extends from Assouan to the Mediterranean. At a distance of about
100 miles from the sea the Nile divides into the branches forming the
Delta. To the south of Cairo it sends out the Bahr Yusuf, a branch about
200 miles long, which flows into the fertile Fayum. The narrow valley, the
average breadth of which is 10 miles, is 'the land of Egypt'. Its
cultivable area is not so large as Belgium, being under 10,000 sq. miles in
extent. Rain falls to the north of Cairo, but in Upper Egypt there are
showers only once in every three or four years. The fertility of the
country is due to the Nile. Each year the great river rises in flood when
the equatorial lakes are suddenly swollen by heavy tropical rains and the
snow melts in the Abyssinian mountains. The mean summer heat is 83deg F. in
the Delta and 122deg F. in the valley. It is a dry heat, not so oppressive
as that of India, and malaria is practically unknown. The most trying part
of the year is during the period of 'Low Nile'. Before the surplus waters
were stored in the Assouan Dam, the river shrank so low that its flow
seemed uncertain. For about two months the hot and blistering 'hanseen' (or
'sand-wind') keeps blowing. A new season is ushered in by the cool north
wind--the Etesian wind of the Greeks--which clears the accumulated dust
from vegetation. It is lauded in ancient texts by priestly poets and
Pharaohs. About the same time the conspicuous star Sirius makes its
appearance. It was anciently regarded as a form of the Mother Goddess. On
the 'Night of the Drop', in June, a fertilizing tear was supposed to fall
from this star, and thereafter the 'new Nile' was born. For about four days
(before the Assouan Dam was constructed) the rising river flowed green, the
slimy matter on the marshes of Upper Egypt being pushed forward by the 'new
water'. This was the 'Green Nile'. Then the Nile turned blood-red with
Abyssinian clay. This was the 'Red Nile'. As soon as the fertilizing 'new
water' touched the parched sands, Egypt awoke to new life. Countless
insects appeared, new grass and flowers sprang up, and trees and shrubs
broke into brilliant blossoms that filled the air with sweet perfume.
Bursting over its banks, the steadily rising river flooded the valley
generously and refreshingly. According to the Coptic Calendar, the
inundation season lasted from June till September, the seed-time from
October till January, and the harvest began in February.
[Illustration: Part of the Hieroglyphic Legend of Heru-Behutet and the
Winged Disk, cut on the Walls of the Temple of Edf[^u] in Upper Egypt
Translation: In the three hundred and sixty-third year of R[=a]-Heru-Khuti,
who liveth for ever and for ever, His Majesty was in TA-KENS, and his
soldiers were with him; (the enemy) did not conspire (auu) against their
lord, and the land (is called) UAUATET unto this day. And R[=a] set out on
an expedition in his boat, and his followers were with him, and he arrived
at UTHES-HERU, (which lay to) the west of this nome, and to the east of the
canal PAKHENNU, which is called ( ... to this day). And Heru-Behutet was in
the boat of R[=a], and he said unto his father R[=a]-Heru-Khuti (i.e.
R[=a]-Harmachis), "I see that the enemies are conspiring against their
lord; let thy fiery serpent gain the mastery ... over them."--Reproduced by
permission from Vol. XXXII of _Books on Egypt and Chaldaea_, by Sir E. A.
Wallis Budge.]
_Early Religion and Civilization._--In its earliest phases the religion of
ancient Egypt reflected the natural phenomena of the Nile Valley in their
relation to the needs, experiences, and achievements of mankind. The flood
was an annual 'miracle of mercy', and the early people tried to account for
it. They concluded it was a gift of the gods. It ensured the food-supply;
it brought health and relief from the oppressive heat endured when the
sand-wind prevailed and the river was low. The new water was 'the water of
life'; it fertilized the parched soil and caused barley and millet (which
grew wild in the Delta) to spring up, trees to yield fruit, and curative
herbs to appear on the river banks. In the prehistoric period the Nile was
identified with Osiris, who, according to the traditions of the Delta
people, once reigned as their king, and introduced the agricultural mode of
life which made it possible for large and growing communities to dwell in
the narrow valley. In the Pyramid Texts (_c._ 2700 B.C.) Osiris is the
controller of the Nile, the principle of life in the Nile, and the Nile
itself. In one of his phases the god is the 'Green One'--the Green Nile. A
Pyramid Text reads: "Horus comes! He beholds his father in thee, Green One,
in thy name of Water of Greenness". The soul-substance (literally 'the
seed') of Osiris was the vital principle in the green or new water. Osiris
was the serpent-soul in the water, and the serpent (leviathan) of the ocean
which 'encircled the netherworld'. The god is addressed in a Pyramid Text:
"Thou art great, thou art green in thy name of Great Green" (Mediterranean
Sea). Osiris was slain by Set, and his life-blood was the Red Nile, which
entered the soil and vegetation. Osiris was not regarded as the Green One
because vegetation is green; the ancient Egyptians appear to have
attributed the greenness of vegetation to the Green Nile, the
soul-substance of Osiris. The sap of shrubs and trees was 'Blood'--the
blood of the god. Osiris continued to live after death. On earth he was in
barley, fruit, &c., and in the fertilized soil. He was in the other world
Judge and King of the Dead. In his underworld Paradise the souls of the
dead grew corn and cultivated fruit-trees--the 'food of life'. The Osirian
cult had origin in the Delta of Lower Egypt. In Upper Egypt a solar cult
exalted Horus, the falcon god, as chief deity. Their heaven was beyond the
sky 'to the east'. In the Pyramid Texts there is clear evidence that the
solar cult believed the souls of the dead went eastward, while the Osirian
cult believed they went westward. Osiris was called 'First of the
Westerners'. The 'Easterners' of the south (Upper Egypt) conquered the
'Westerners' of the north (Lower Egypt), and Egypt was united into a single
kingdom by the traditional King Mena, with whom begins the dynastic history
of Egypt. This conquest appears to have been due to the introduction of
copper weapons.
The idea that the Horites were invaders from Arabia or Mesopotamia has been
abandoned. Copper was anciently found in the wadis of Upper Egypt and on
the shores of the Red Sea. After boat-building and navigation were well
advanced copper was mined in Sinai. According to Egyptian evidence, Edfu
was the centre of the early copper industry and of the Horus cult. As
Egyptian copper is naturally hard, it required no amalgam. Egypt,
therefore, never had a Bronze Age, nor had it a Neolithic Age. The copper
artifacts were imitations of Palaeolithic forms of the Solutrian type.
After the conquest there occurred fusions of religious cults. Local
pantheons reflected local politics. But although the sun-cult of Heliopolis
exalted Ra [Illustration: Painted inner wooden coffin of
Pen-Amen-Neb-Nest-Taui, a prophet of the God Amen and of the Goddess Bast
at Thebes.] [Illustration: Types of Columns from Egyptian Temples.] (or Re)
as King of the Gods, the belief that all that existed originated in water
persisted till the end. The water-mother was Hathor, who gave birth to
Osiris. As the Nile was supposed to come from heaven, she was the
sky-goddess; her animal was the primeval cow of a pre-dynastic cult, and
she was the shell-spirit of water as well--the Egyptian Aphrodite. The
shell, pearl, cow, sky, sun, moon, and stars were connected with Hathor as
Nut. Ra, the sun-god, was, like Osiris, regarded as her son. Her attributes
were in time absorbed by Isis. At the dawn of the Dynastic Age the
religious beliefs of the Egyptian peoples were already well developed, the
agricultural mode of life was established in the Nile Valley and in the
Delta area, the calendar had been introduced, while copper weapons and
implements were in use. The subsequent history of the official religion has
a political aspect. Local cults rose into prominence as a city-state or
ruling family achieved political ascendancy. Memphite theology and the
Memphite god Ptah (the god of artisans) assumed importance when the city of
Memphis became the capital of the united kingdom. Heliopolis ('the city of
the sun') was the northern centre of the solar cult, which, during the
fourth and fifth dynasties (_c._ 2900-2625 B.C.), became influential enough
to impose its theology on the court. The popular Osirian faith was
absorbed. Pharaohs were 'Sons of Ra', the sun-god, and Ra supplanted the
southern sun-god Horus. Before the Pyramid Age the Osirian and Horite cults
had been blended, and Horus became the son of Osiris. Although the living
Pharaoh, however, was the son of Ra, he was also a Horus; after death he
became an Osiris. The culture-blending process introduced many
complexities. During the twelfth dynasty (2000-1788 B.C.) the name of the
Theban god Amon entered into royal names. But the permanent political
ascendancy of Amon of Thebes really followed upon the expulsion of the
Hyksos military aristocracy about 1580 B.C. By this time the northern sun
cult's influence had become sufficiently strong to have Ra blended with the
Theban deity who was subsequently known as Amon-Ra. Before the close of the
eighteenth dynasty (_c._ 1350 B.C.) a royal sun cult, promoted by Pharaoh
Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV), exalted Aton, the sun-disc, as sole god of Egypt
and the rest of the world. The Amon-Ra cult regained its political
ascendancy with the rise of the nineteenth dynasty. In later times the
chief gods of the reigning families were blended forms of Amon, Ra, Ptah,
and Osiris. Not only the gods, but the rival Paradises, were blended.
Osiris's under-world Paradise was transferred to the mythical other world
beyond the horizon, and the sun-barque of the sun-god, which carried the
soul of the Pharaoh, was supposed to touch at 'the port of Paradise'. It
went westward and passed through the under-world, and emerged again next
morning at dawn in the east. The contradictions in the Egyptian religious
texts are believed to be mainly due to the blending of beliefs regarding
the fate of man which were originally fundamentally different. Local
deities were embraced in the official theology, but at their centres
remained prominent and influential. But these, too, were in time so
strongly influenced by the solar and Osirian faiths that they suffered in
no small degree loss of identity except in name. The religious beliefs of
Egypt as a whole were never completely systematized. There were no heresies
because there were no orthodox beliefs. Any religious cult was tolerated,
so long as it acknowledged the supremacy of the god or pantheon of the
ruling family. In the later period the cult of Serapis (Asar Hapi), the
bull form of Osiris, was popular.
[Illustration: Egyptian Pottery-making