EMERIC-DAVID, TOUSSAINT-BERNARD (1755-1839), French archaeologist and
writer on art, was born at Aix, in Provence, on the 20th of August 1755.
He was destined for the legal profession, and having gone in 1775 to
Paris to complete his legal education, he acquired there a taste for art
which influenced his whole future career, and he went to Italy, where he
continued his art studies. He soon returned, however, to his native
village, and followed for some time the profession of an advocate; but
in 1787 he succeeded his uncle Antoine David as printer to the
parlement. He was elected mayor of Aix in 1791; and although he speedily
resigned his office, he was in 1793 threatened with arrest, and had for
some time to adopt a vagrant life. When danger was past he returned to
Aix, sold his printing business, and engaged in general commercial
pursuits; but he was not long in renouncing these also, in order to
devote himself exclusively to literature and art. From 1809 to 1814,
under the Empire, he represented his department in the Lower House
(_Corps legislatif_); in 1814 he voted for the downfall of Napoleon; in
1815 he retired into private life, and in 1816 he was elected a member
of the Institute. He died in Paris on the 2nd of April 1839.
Emeric-David was placed in 1825 on the commission appointed to continue
_L'Histoire litteraire de la France._ His principal works are
_Recherches sur l'art statuaire, considere chez les anciens et les
modernes_ (Paris, 1805), a work which obtained the prize of the
Institute; _Suite d'etudes calquees et dessinees d'apres cinq tableaux
de Raphael_ (Paris, 1818-1821), in 6 vols. fol.; _Jupiter, ou recherches
sur ce dieu, sur son culte_, &c. (Paris, 1833), 2 vols. 8vo,
illustrated; and _Vulcain_ (Paris, 1837).
EMERITUS (Lat. from _emereri_, to serve out one's time, to earn
thoroughly), a term used of Roman soldiers and public officials who had
earned their discharge from the service, a veteran, and hence applied,
in modern times, to a university professor (_professor emeritus_) who
has vacated his chair, on account of long service, age or infirmity,
and, in the Presbyterian church, to a minister who has for like reason
given up his charge.
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (1803-1882), American poet and essayist, was born
in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 25th of May 1803. Seven of his
ancestors were ministers of New England churches. Among them were some
of those men of mark who made the backbone of the American character:
the sturdy Puritan, Peter Bulkeley, sometime rector of Odell in
Bedfordshire, and afterward pastor of the church in the wilderness at
Concord, New Hampshire; the zealous evangelist, Father Samuel Moody of
Agamenticus in Maine, who pursued graceless sinners even into the
alehouse; Joseph Emerson of Malden, "a heroic scholar," who prayed every
night that no descendant of his might ever be rich; and William Emerson
of Concord, Mass., the patriot preacher, who died while serving in the
army of the Revolution. Sprung from such stock, Emerson inherited
qualities of self-reliance, love of liberty, strenuous virtue,
sincerity, sobriety and fearless loyalty to ideals. The form of his
ideals was modified by the metamorphic glow of Transcendentalism which
passed through the region of Boston in the second quarter of the 19th
century. But the spirit in which Emerson conceived the laws of life,
reverenced them and lived them out, was the Puritan spirit, elevated,
enlarged and beautified by the poetic temperament.
His father was the Rev. William Emerson, minister of the First Church
(Unitarian) in Boston. Ralph Waldo was the fourth child in a family of
eight, of whom at least three gave evidence of extraordinary mental
powers. He was brought up in an atmosphere of hard work, of moral
discipline, and (after his father's death in 1811) of that wholesome
self-sacrifice which is a condition of life for those who are poor in
money and rich in spirit. His aunt, Miss Mary Moody Emerson, a brilliant
old maid, an eccentric saint, was a potent factor in his education.
Loving him, believing in his powers, passionately desiring for him a
successful career, but clinging with both hands to the old forms of
faith from which he floated away, this solitary, intense woman did as
much as any one to form, by action and reaction, the mind and character
of the young Emerson. In 1817 he entered Harvard College, and graduated
in 1821. In scholarship he ranked about the middle of his class. In
literature and oratory he was more distinguished, receiving a Boylston
prize for declamation, and two Bowdoin prizes for dissertations, the
first essay being on "The Character of Socrates" and the second on "The
Present State of Ethical Philosophy"--both rather dull, formal, didactic
productions. He was fond of reading and of writing verse, and was chosen
as the poet for class-day. His cheerful serenity of manner, his tranquil
mirthfulness, and the steady charm of his personality made him a
favourite with his fellows, in spite of a certain reserve. His literary
taste was conventional, including the standard British writers, with a
preference for Shakespeare among the poets, Berkeley among the
philosophers, and Montaigne (in Cotton's translation) among the
essayists. His particular admiration among the college professors was
the stately rhetorician, Edward Everett; and this predilection had much
to do with his early ambition to be a professor of rhetoric and
elocution.
Immediately after graduation he became an assistant in his brother
William's school for young ladies in Boston, and continued teaching,
with much inward reluctance and discomfort, for three years. The routine
was distasteful; he despised the superficial details which claimed so
much of his time. The bonds of conventionalism were silently dissolving
in the rising glow of his poetic nature. Independence, sincerity,
reality, grew more and more necessary to him. His aunt urged him to seek
retirement, self-reliance, friendship with nature; to be no longer "the
nursling of surrounding circumstances," but to prepare a celestial abode
for the muse. The passion for spiritual leadership stirred within him.
The ministry seemed to offer the fairest field for its satisfaction. In
1825 he entered the divinity school at Cambridge, to prepare himself for
the Unitarian pulpit. His course was much interrupted by ill-health. His
studies were irregular, and far more philosophical and literary than
theological.
In October 1826 he was "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex
Association of Ministers. The same year a threatened consumption
compelled him to take a long journey in the south. Returning in 1827, he
continued his studies, preached as a candidate in various churches, and
improved in health. In 1829 he married a beautiful but delicate young
woman, Miss Ellen Tucker of Concord, and was installed as associate
minister of the Second Church (Unitarian) in Boston. The retirement of
his senior colleague soon left him the sole pastor. Emerson's early
sermons were simple, direct, unconventional. He dealt freely with the
things of the spirit. There was a homely elevation in his discourses, a
natural freshness in his piety, a quiet enthusiasm in his manner, that
charmed thoughtful hearers. Early in 1832 he lost his wife, a sorrow
that deeply depressed him in health and spirits. Following his passion
for independence and sincerity, he arrived at the conviction that the
Lord's Supper was not intended by Christ to be a permanent sacrament. To
him, at least, it had become an outgrown form. He was willing to
continue the service only if the use of the elements should be dropped
and the rite made simply an act of spiritual remembrance. Setting forth
these views, candidly and calmly, in a sermon, he found his
congregation, not unnaturally, reluctant to agree with him, and
therefore retired, not without some disappointment, from the pastoral
office. He never again took charge of a parish; but he continued to
preach, as opportunity offered, until 1847. In fact, he was always a
preacher, though of a singular order. His supreme task was to befriend
and guide the inner life of man.
The strongest influences in his development about this time were the
liberating philosophy of Coleridge, the mystical visions of Swedenborg,
the intimate poetry of Wordsworth, and the stimulating essays of
Carlyle. On Christmas Day 1832 he took passage in a sailing vessel for
the Mediterranean. He travelled through Italy, visited Paris, spent two
months in Scotland and England, and saw the four men whom he most
desired to see--Landor, Coleridge, Carlyle and Wordsworth. "The comfort
of meeting such men of genius as these," he wrote, "is that they talk
sincerely." But he adds that he found all four of them, in different
degrees, deficient in insight into religious truth. His visit to
Carlyle, in the lonely farm-house at Craigenputtock, was the memorable
beginning of a lifelong friendship. Emerson published Carlyle's first
books in America. Carlyle introduced Emerson's Essays into England. The
two men were bound together by a mutual respect deeper than a sympathy
of tastes, and a community of spirit stronger than a similarity of
opinions. Emerson was a sweet-tempered Carlyle, living in the sunshine.
Carlyle was a militant Emerson, moving amid thunderclouds. The things
that each most admired in the other were self-reliance, directness,
moral courage. A passage in Emerson's Diary, written on his homeward
voyage, strikes the keynote of his remaining life. "A man contains all
that is needful to his government within himself.... All real good or
evil that can befall him must be from himself.... There is a
correspondence between the human soul and everything that exists in the
world; more properly, everything that is known to man. Instead of
studying things without, the principles of them all may be penetrated
into within him.... The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint man with
himself.... The highest revelation is that God is in every man." Here is
the essence of that intuitional philosophy, commonly called
Transcendentalism. Emerson disclaimed allegiance to that philosophy. He
called it "the saturnalia, or excess of faith." His practical common
sense recoiled from the amazing conclusions which were drawn from it by
many of its more eccentric advocates. His independence revolted against
being bound to any scheme or system of doctrine, however nebulous. He
said: "I wish to say what I feel and think to-day, with the proviso that
to-morrow perhaps I shall contradict it all." But this very wish commits
him to the doctrine of the inner light. All through his life he
navigated the Transcendental sea, piloted by a clear moral sense, warned
off the rocks by the saving grace of humour, and kept from capsizing by
a good ballast of New England prudence.
After his return from England in 1833 he went to live with his mother at
the old manse in Concord, Mass., and began his career as a lecturer in
Boston. His first discourses were delivered before the Society of
Natural History and the Mechanics' Institute. They were chiefly on
scientific subjects, approached in a poetic spirit. In the autumn of
1835 he married Miss Lydia Jackson of Plymouth, having previously
purchased a spacious old house and garden at Concord. There he spent the
remainder of his life, a devoted husband, a wise and tender father, a
careful house-holder, a virtuous villager, a friendly neighbour, and,
spite of all his disclaimers, the central and luminous figure among the
Transcendentalists. The doctrine which in others seemed to produce all
sorts of extravagances--communistic experiments at Brook Farm and
Fruitlands, weird schemes of political reform, long hair on men and
short hair on women--in his sane, well-balanced nature served only to
lend an ideal charm to the familiar outline of a plain, orderly New
England life. Some mild departures from established routine he
tranquilly tested and as tranquilly abandoned. He tried vegetarianism
for a while, but gave it up when he found that it did him no particular
good. An attempt to illustrate household equality by having the servants
sit at table with the rest of the family was frustrated by the dislike
of his two sensible domestics for such an inconvenient arrangement. His
theory that manual labour should form part of the scholar's life was
checked by the personal discovery that hard labour in the fields meant
poor work in the study. "The writer shall not dig," was his practical
conclusion. Intellectual independence was what he chiefly desired; and
this, he found, could be attained in a manner of living not outwardly
different from that of the average college professor or country
minister. And yet it was to this property-holding, debt-paying,
law-abiding, well-dressed, courteous-mannered citizen of Concord that
the ardent and enthusiastic turned as the prophet of the new idealism.
The influence of other Transcendental teachers, Dr Hedge, Dr Ripley,
Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller,
Henry Thoreau, Jones Very, was narrow and parochial compared with that
of Emerson. Something in his imperturbable, kindly presence, his angelic
look, his musical voice, his commanding style of thought and speech,
announced him as the possessor of the great secret which many were
seeking--the secret of a freer, deeper, more harmonious life. More and
more, as his fame spread, those who "would live in the spirit" came to
listen to the voice, and to sit at the feet, of the Sage of Concord.
It was on the lecture-platform that he found his power and won his fame.
The courses of lectures that he delivered at the Masonic Temple in
Boston, during the winters of 1835 and 1836, on "Great Men," "English
Literature," and "The Philosophy of History," were well attended and
admired. They were followed by two discourses which commanded for him
immediate recognition, part friendly and part hostile, as a new and
potent personality. His Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard College in
August 1837, on "The American Scholar," was an eloquent appeal for
independence, sincerity, realism, in the intellectual life of America.
His address before the graduating class of the divinity school at
Cambridge, in 1838, was an impassioned protest against what he called
"the defects of historical Christianity" (its undue reliance upon the
personal authority of Jesus, and its failure to explore the moral nature
of man as the fountain of established teaching), and a daring plea for
absolute self-reliance and a new inspiration of religion. "In the soul,"
he said, "let redemption be sought. Wherever a man comes, there comes
revolution. The old is for slaves. Go alone. Refuse the good models,
even those which are sacred in the imagination of men. Cast conformity
behind you, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity." In this address
Emerson laid his hand on the sensitive point of Unitarianism, which
rejected the divinity of Jesus, but held fast to his supreme authority.
A blaze of controversy sprang up at once. Conservatives attacked him;
Radicals defended him. Emerson made no reply. But amid this somewhat
fierce illumination he went forward steadily as a public lecturer. It
was not his negations that made him popular; it was the eloquence with
which he presented the positive side of his doctrine. Whatever the
titles of his discourses, "Literary Ethics," "Man the Reformer," "The
Present Age," "The Method of Nature," "Representative Men," "The Conduct
of Life," their theme was always the same, namely, "the infinitude of
the private man." Those who thought him astray on the subject of
religion listened to him with delight when he poetized the commonplaces
of art, politics, literature or the household. His utterance was
Delphic, inspirational. There was magic in his elocution. The simplicity
and symmetry of his sentences, the modulations of his thrilling voice,
the radiance of his fine face, even his slight hesitations and pauses
over his manuscript, lent a strange charm to his speech. For more than a
generation he went about the country lecturing in cities, towns and
villages, before learned societies, rustic lyceums and colleges; and
there was no man on the platform in America who excelled him in
distinction, in authority, or in stimulating eloquence.
In 1847 Emerson visited Great Britain for the second time, was welcomed
by Carlyle, lectured to appreciative audiences in Manchester, Liverpool,
Edinburgh and London, made many new friends among the best English
people, paid a brief visit to Paris, and returned home in July 1848. "I
leave England," he wrote, "with increased respect for the Englishman.
His stuff or substance seems to be the best in the world. I forgive him
all his pride. My respect is the more generous that I have no sympathy
with him, only an admiration." The impressions of this journey were
embodied in a book called _English Traits_, published in 1856. It might
be called "English Traits and American Confessions," for nowhere does
Emerson's Americanism come out more strongly. But the America that he
loved and admired was the ideal, the potential America. For the actual
conditions of social and political life in his own time he had a fine
scorn. He was an intellectual Brahmin. His principles were democratic,
his tastes aristocratic. He did not like crowds, streets, hotels--"the
people who fill them oppress me with their excessive civility." Humanity
was his hero. He loved man, but be was not fond of men. He had grave
doubts about universal suffrage. He took a sincere interest in social
and political reform, but towards specific "reforms" his attitude was
somewhat remote and visionary. On the subject of temperance he held
aloof from the intemperate methods of the violent prohibitionists. He
was a believer in woman's rights, but he was lukewarm towards
conventions in favour of woman suffrage. Even in regard to slavery he
had serious hesitations about the ways of the abolitionists, and for a
long time refused to be identified with them. But as the irrepressible
conflict drew to a head Emerson's hesitation vanished. He said in 1856,
"I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom."
With the outbreak of the Civil War he became an ardent and powerful
advocate of the cause of the Union. James Russell Lowell said, "To him
more than to all other causes did the young martyrs of our Civil War owe
the sustaining strength of thoughtful heroism that is so touching in
every record of their lives."
Emerson the essayist was a condensation of Emerson the lecturer. His
prose works, with the exception of the slender volume entitled _Nature_
(1836), were collected and arranged from the manuscripts of his
lectures. His method of writing was characteristic. He planted a subject
in his mind, and waited for thoughts and illustrations to come to it, as
birds or insects to a plant or flower. When an idea appeared, he
followed it, "as a boy might hunt a butterfly"; when it was captured he
pinned it in his "Thought-book". The writings of other men he used more
for stimulus than for guidance. He said that books were for the
scholar's idle times. "I value them," he said, "to make my top spin."
His favourite reading was poetry and mystical philosophy: Shakespeare,
Dante, George Herbert, Goethe, Berkeley, Coleridge, Swedenborg, Jakob
Boehme, Plato, the new Platonists, and the religious books of the East
(in translation). Next to these he valued books of biography and
anecdote: Plutarch, Grimm, St Simon, Varnhagen von Ense. He had some odd
dislikes, and could find nothing in Aristophanes, Cervantes, Shelley,
Scott, Miss Austen, Dickens. Novels he seldom read. He was a follower of
none, an original borrower from all. His illustrations were drawn from
near and far. The zodiac of Denderah; the Savoyards who carved their
pine-forests into toys; the naked Derar, horsed on an idea, charging a
troop of Roman cavalry; the long, austere Pythagorean lustrum of
silence; Napoleon on the deck of the "Bellerophon," observing the drill
of the English soldiers; the Egyptian doctrine that every man has two
pairs of eyes; Empedocles and his shoe; the horizontal stratification of
the earth; a soft mushroom pushing its way through the hard
ground,--all these allusions and a thousand more are found in the same
volume. On his pages, close beside the Parthenon, the Sphinx, St Paul's,
Etna and Vesuvius, you will find the White Mountains, Monadnock,
Agiocochook, Katahdin, the pickerel-weed in bloom, the wild geese
honking through the sky, the chick-a-dee braving the snow, Wall Street
and State Street, cotton-mills, railroads and Quincy granite. For an
abstract thinker he was strangely in love with the concrete facts of
life. Idealism in him assumed the form of a vivid illumination of the
real. From the pages of his teeming note-books he took the material for
his lectures, arranging and rearranging it under such titles as Nature,
School, Home, Genius, Beauty and Manners, Self-Possession, Duty, The
Superlative, Truth, The Anglo-Saxon, The Young American. When the
lectures had served their purpose he rearranged the material in essays
and published them. Thus appeared in succession the following volumes:
_Essays_ (First Series) (1841); _Essays_ (Second Series) (1844);
_Representative Men_ (1850); _English Traits_ (1856); _The Conduct of
Life_ (1860); _Society and Solitude_ (1870); _Letters and Social Aims_
(1876). Besides these, many other lectures were printed in separate form
and in various combinations.
Emerson's style is brilliant, epigrammatic, gem-like; clear in
sentences, obscure in paragraphs. He was a sporadic observer. He saw by
flashes. He said, "I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any
expression of a thought." The coherence of his writing lies in his
personality. His work is fused by a steady glow of optimism. Yet he
states this optimism moderately. "The genius which preserves and guides
the human race indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small
balance in brute facts always favourable to the side of reason."
His verse, though in form inferior to his prose, was perhaps a truer
expression of his genius. He said, "I am born a poet"; and again,
writing to Carlyle, he called himself "half a bard." He had "the
vision," but not "the faculty divine" which translates the vision into
music. In his two volumes of verse (_Poems_, 1846; _May Day and other
Pieces_, 1867) there are many passages of beautiful insight and profound
feeling, some lines of surprising splendour, and a few poems, like "The
Rhodora," "The Snowstorm," "Ode to Beauty," "Terminus," "The Concord
Ode," and the marvellous "Threnody" on the death of his first-born boy,
of beauty unmarred and penetrating truth. But the total value of his
poetical work is discounted by the imperfection of metrical form, the
presence of incongruous images, the predominance of the intellectual
over the emotional element, and the lack of flow. It is the material of
poetry not thoroughly worked out. But the genius from which it came--the
swift faculty of perception, the lofty imagination, the idealizing
spirit enamoured of reality--was the secret source of all Emerson's
greatness as a speaker and as a writer. Whatever verdict time may pass
upon the bulk of his poetry, Emerson himself must be recognized as an
original and true poet of a high order.
His latter years were passed in peaceful honour at Concord. In 1866
Harvard College conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and in 1867 he
was elected an overseer. In 1870 he delivered a course of lectures
before the university on "The Natural History of the Intellect." In 1872
his house was burned down, and was rebuilt by popular subscription. In
the same year he went on his third foreign journey, going as far as
Egypt. About this time began a failure in his powers, especially in his
memory. But his character remained serene and unshaken in dignity.
Steadily, tranquilly, cheerfully, he finished the voyage of life.
"I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
'Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near.
And every wave is charmed.'"
Emerson died on the 27th of April 1882, and his body was laid to rest in
the peaceful cemetery of Sleepy Hollow, in a grove on the edge of the
village of Concord.
AUTHORITIES.--_Emerson's Complete Works_, Riverside edition, edited by
J.E. Cabot (11 vols., Boston, 1883-1884); another edition (London, 5
vols., 1906), by G. Sampson, in Bohn's "Libraries"; _The
Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson_, edited by
Charles Eliot Norton (Boston, 1883); George Willis Cooke, _Ralph Waldo
Emerson: His Life, Writings and Philosophy_ (Boston, 1881); Alexander
Ireland, _Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Life, Genius and Writings_ (London,
1882); A. Bronson Alcott, _Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and Seer_
(Boston, 1882); Moncure Daniel Conway, _Emerson at Home and Abroad_
(Boston, 1882); Joel Benton, _Emerson as a Poet_ (New York, 1883);
F.B. Sanborn (editor), _The Genius and Character of Emerson: Lectures
at the Concord School of Philosophy_ (Boston, 1885); Oliver Wendell
Holmes, _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ ("American Men of Letters" series)
(Boston, 1885); James Elliott Cabot, _A Memoir of Ralph Waldo
Emerson_, 2 vols. (the authorized biography) (Boston, 1887); Edward
Waldo Emerson, _Emerson in Concord_ (Boston, 1889); Richard Garnett,
_Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson_ (London, 1888); G.E. Woodberry, _Ralph
Waldo Emerson_ (1907). Critical estimates are also to be found in
Matthew Arnold's _Discourses in America_, John Morley's _Critical
Miscellanies_, Henry James's _Partial Portraits_, Lowell's _My Study
Windows_, Birrell's _Obiter Dicta_ (2nd series), Stedman's _Poets of
America_, Whipple's _American Literature_, &c. There is a
_Bibliography of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, by G.W. Cooke (Boston, 1908).
(H. van D.)
EMERSON, WILLIAM (1701-1782), English mathematician, was born on the
14th of May 1701 at Hurworth, near Darlington, where his father, Dudley
Emerson, also a mathematician, taught a school. Unsuccessful as a
teacher he devoted himself entirely to studious retirement, and
published many works which are singularly free from errata. In mechanics
he never advanced a proposition which he had not previously tested in
practice, nor published an invention without first proving its effects
by a model. He was skilled in the science of music, the theory of
sounds, and the ancient and modern scales; but he never attained any
excellence as a performer. He died on the 20th of May 1782 at his native
village. Emerson was eccentric and indeed clownish, but he possessed
remarkable independence of character and intellectual energy. The
boldness with which he expressed his opinions on religious subjects led
to his being charged with scepticism, but for this there was no
foundation.
Emerson's works include _The Doctrine of Fluxions_ (1748); _The
Projection of the Sphere, Orthographic, Stereographic and Gnomical_
(1749); _The Elements of Trigonometry_ (1749); _The Principles of
Mechanics_ (1754); _A Treatise of Navigation_ (1755); _A Treatise of
Algebra_, in two books (1765); _The Arithmetic of Infinites, and the
Differential Method, illustrated by Examples_ (1767); _Mechanics, or
the Doctrine of Motion_ (1769); _The Elements of Optics_, in four
books (1768); _A System of Astronomy_ (1769); _The Laws of Centripetal
and Centrifugal Force_ (1769); _The Mathematical Principles of
Geography_ (1770); _Tracts_ (1770); _Cyclomathesis, or an Easy
Introduction to the several branches of the Mathematics_ (1770), in
ten vols.; _A Short Comment on Sir Isaac Newton's Principia_; to which
is added, _A Defence of Sir Isaac against the objections that have
been made to several parts of his works_ (1770); _A Miscellaneous
Treatise containing several Mathematical Subjects_ (1776).
EMERY (Ger. _Smirgel_), an impure variety of corundum, much used as an
abrasive agent. It was known to the Greeks under the name of [Greek:
smyris] or [Greek: smiris], which is defined by Dioscorides as a stone
used in gem-engraving. The Hebrew word _shamir_ (related to the Egyptian
_asmir_), where translated in our versions of the Old Testament
"adamant" and "diamond," probably signified the emery-stone or corundum.
Emery occurs as a granular or massive, dark-coloured, dense substance,
having much the appearance of an iron-ore. Its specific gravity varies
with its composition from 3.7 to 4.3. Under the microscope, it is seen
to be a mechanical aggregate of corundum, usually in grains or minute
crystals of a bluish colour, with magnetite, which also is granular and
crystalline. Other iron oxides, like haematite and limonite, may be
present as alteration-products of the magnetite. Some of the alumina and
iron oxide may occasionally be chemically combined, so as to form an
iron spinel, or hercynite. In addition to these minerals emery sometimes
contains quartz, mica, tourmaline, cassiterite, &c. Indeed emery may be
regarded as a rock rather than a definite mineral species.
The hardness of emery is about 8, whereas that of pure corundum is 9.
The "abrasive power," or "effective hardness," of emery is by no means
proportional to the amount of alumina which it contains, but seems
rather to depend on its physical condition. Thus, taking the effective
hardness of sapphire as 100, Dr J. Lawrence Smith found that the emery
of Samos with 70.10% of alumina had a corresponding hardness of 56; that
of Naxos, with 68.53 of Al2O3, a hardness of 46; and that of Gumach with
77.82 of Al2O3, a hardness of 47.
Emery has been worked from a very remote period in the Isle of Naxos,
one of the Cyclades, whence the stone was called _naxium_ by Pliny and
other Roman writers. The mineral occurs as loose blocks and as
lenticular masses or irregular beds in granular limestone, associated
with crystalline schists. The Naxos emery has been described by
Professor G. Tschermak. From a chemical analysis of a sample it has been
calculated that the emery contained 52.4% of corundum, 32.1 of
magnetite, 11.5 of tourmaline, 2 of muscovite and 2 of margarite.
Important deposits of corundum were discovered in Asia Minor by J.
Lawrence Smith, when investigating Turkish mineral resources about 1847.
The chief sources of emery there are Gumach Dagh, a mountain about 12 m.
E. of Ephesus; Kula, near Ala-shehr; and the mines in the hills between
Thyra and Cosbonnar, south of Smyrna. The occurrence is similar to that
in Naxos. The emery is found as detached blocks in a reddish soil, and
as rounded masses embedded in a crystalline limestone associated with
mica-schist, gneiss and granite. The proportion of corundum in this
emery is said to vary from 37 to 57%. Emery is worked at several
localities in the United States, especially near Chester, in Hampden
county, Mass., where it is associated with peridotites. The corundum and
magnetite are regarded by Dr J.H. Pratt as basic segregations from an
igneous magma. The deposits were discovered by H.S. Lucas in 1864.
The hardness and toughness of emery render it difficult to work, but it
may be extracted from the rock by blasting in holes bored with diamond
drills. In the East fire-setting is employed. The emery after being
broken up is carefully picked by hand, and then ground or stamped, and
separated into grades by wire sieves. The higher grades are prepared by
washing and eleutriation, the finest being known as "flour of emery." A
very fine emery dust is collected in the stamping room, where it is
deposited after floating in the air. The fine powder is used by
lapidaries and plate-glass manufacturers. Emery-wheels are made by
consolidating the powdered mineral with an agglutinating medium like
shellac or silicate of soda or vulcanized india-rubber. Such wheels are
not only used by dentists and lapidaries but are employed on a large
scale in mechanical workshops for grinding, shaping and polishing steel.
Emery-sticks, emery-cloth and emery-paper are made by coating the
several materials with powdered emery mixed with glue, or other adhesive
media. (See CORUNDUM.) (F. W. R.*)
EMETICS (from Gr. [Greek: emetikos], causing vomit), the term given to
substances which are administered for the purpose of producing vomiting.
It is customary to divide emetics into two classes, those which produce
their effect by acting on the vomiting centre in the medulla, and those
which act directly on the stomach itself. There is considerable
confusion in the nomenclature of these two divisions, but all are agreed
in calling the former class central emetics, and the latter gastric. The
gastric emetics in common use are alum, ammonium carbonate, zinc
sulphate, sodium chloride (common salt), mustard and warm water. Copper
sulphate has been purposely omitted from this list, since unless it
produces vomiting very shortly after administration, being itself a
violent gastro-intestinal irritant, some other emetic must promptly be
administered. The central emetics are apomorphine, tartar emetic,
ipecacuanha, senega and squill. Of these tartar emetic and ipecacuanha
come under both heads: when taken by the mouth they act as gastric
emetics before absorption into the blood, and later produce a further
and more vigorous effect by stimulation of the medullary centre. It must
be remembered, however, that, valuable though these drugs are, their
action is accompanied by so much depression, they should never be
administered except under medical advice.
Emetics have two main uses: that of emptying the stomach, especially in
cases of poisoning, and that of expelling the contents of the air
passages, more especially in children before they have learnt or have
the strength to expectorate. Where a physician is in attendance, the
first of these uses is nearly always replaced by lavage of the stomach,
whereby any subsequent depression is avoided. Emetics still have their
place, however, in the treatment of bronchitis, laryngitis and
diphtheria in children, as they aid in the expulsion of the morbid
products. Occasionally also they are administered when a foreign body
has got into the larynx. Their use is contra-indicated in the case of
anyone suffering from aneurism, hernia or arterio-sclerosis, or where
there is any tendency to haemorrhage.
EMEU, evidently from the Port. _Ema_,[1] a name which has in turn been
applied to each of the earlier-known forms of Ratite birds, but has
finally settled upon that which inhabits Australia, though, up to the
close of the 18th century, it was given by most authors to the bird now
commonly called cassowary--this last word being a corrupted form of the
Malayan _Suwari_ (see Crawfurd, _Gramm. and Dict. Malay Language_, ii.
pp. 178 and 25), apparently first printed as _Casoaris_ by Bontius in
1658 (_Hist. nat. et med. Ind. Orient._ p. 71).
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Ceram Cassowary.[2]]
The cassowaries (_Casuariidae_) and emeus (_Dromaeidae_)--as the latter
name is now used--have much structural resemblance, and form the order
_Megistanes_,[3] which is peculiar to the Australian Region. Huxley
showed (_Proc. Zool. Soc._, 1867, pp. 422, 423,) that they agree in
differing from the other _Ratitae_ in many important characters; one of
the most obvious of them is that each contour-feather appears to be
double, its _hyporachis_, or aftershaft, being as long as the main
shaft--a feature noticed in the case of either form so soon as examples
were brought to Europe. The external distinctions of the two families
are, however, equally plain. The cassowaries, when adult, bear a horny
helmet on their head; they have some part of the neck bare, generally
more or less ornamented with caruncles, and the claw of the inner toe is
remarkably elongated. The emeus have no helmet, their head is feathered,
their neck has no caruncles, and their inner toes bear a claw of no
singular character.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Emeu.]
The type of the _Casuariidae_ is the species named by Linnaeus _Struthio
casuarius_ and by John Latham _Casuarius emeu_. Vieillot subsequently
called it _C. galeatus_, and his epithet has been very commonly adopted
by writers, to the exclusion of the older specific appellation. It seems
to be peculiar to the island of Ceram, and was made known to
naturalists, as we learn from Clusius, in 1597, by the first Dutch
expedition to the East Indies, when an example was brought from Banda,
whither it had doubtless been conveyed from its native island. It was
said to have been called by the inhabitants "Emeu," or "Ema," but this
name they must have had from the earlier Portuguese navigators.[4] Since
that time examples have been continually imported into Europe, so that
it has become one of the best-known members of the subclass _Ratitae_.
For a long time its glossy, but coarse and hair-like, black plumage, its
lofty helmet, the gaudily-coloured caruncles of its neck, and the four
or five barbless quills which represent its wing-feathers, made it
appear unique among birds. But in 1857 Dr George Bennett certified the
existence of a second and perfectly distinct species of cassowary, an
inhabitant of New Britain, where it was known to the natives as the
_Mooruk_, and in his honour it was named by John Gould _C. bennetti_.
Several examples were soon after received in England, and these
confirmed the view of it already taken. A considerable number of other
species of the genus have since been described from various localities
in the same subregion. Conspicuous among them from its large size and
lofty helmet is the _C. australis_, from the northern parts of
Australia. Its existence indeed had been ascertained, by T.S. Wall, in
1854, but the specimen obtained by that unfortunate explorer was lost,
and it was not until 1867 that an example was submitted to competent
naturalists.
Not much seems to be known of the habits of any of the cassowaries in a
state of nature. Though the old species occurs rather plentifully over
the whole of the interior of Ceram, A.R. Wallace was unable to obtain or
even to see an example. They all appear to bear captivity well, and the
hens in confinement frequently lay their dark-green and rough-shelled
eggs, which, according to the custom of the _Ratitae_, are incubated by
the cocks. The nestling plumage is mottled (_Proc. Zool. Soc._, 1863,
pl. xlii.), and when about half-grown they are clothed in dishevelled
feathers of a deep tawny colour.
Of the emeus (as the word is now restricted) the best known is the
_Casuarius novae-hollandiae_ of John Latham, made by Vieillot the type
of his genus _Dromaeus_,[5] whence the name of the family (_Dromaeidae_)
is taken. This bird immediately after the colonization of New South
Wales (in 1788) was found to inhabit the south-eastern portion of
Australia, where, according to John Hunter (_Hist. Journ._, &c., pp.
409, 413), the natives call it _Maracry_, _Marryang_ or _Maroang_; but
it has now been so hunted down that not an example remains at large in
the districts that have been fully settled. It is said to have existed
also on the islands of Bass Straits and in Tasmania, but it has been
exterminated in both, without, so far as is known, any ornithologist
having had the opportunity of determining whether the race inhabiting
those localities was specifically identical with that of the mainland or
distinct. Next to the ostrich the largest of existing birds, the common
emeu is an inhabitant of the more open country, feeding on fruits, roots
and herbage, and generally keeping in small companies. The nest is a
shallow pit scraped in the ground, and from nine to thirteen eggs, in
colour varying from a bluish-green to a dark bottle-green, are laid
therein. These are hatched by the cock-bird, the period of incubation
lasting from 70 to 80 days. The young at birth are striped
longitudinally with dark markings on a light ground. A remarkable
structure in _Dromaeus_ is a singular opening in the front of the
windpipe, communicating with a tracheal pouch. This has attracted the
attention of several anatomists, and has been well described by Dr Murie
(_Proc. Zool. Soc._, 1867, pp. 405-415). Various conjectures have been
made as to its function, the most probable of which seems to be that it
is an organ of sound in the breeding-season, at which time the hen-bird
has long been known to utter a remarkably loud booming note. Due
convenience being afforded to it, the emeu thrives well, and readily
propagates its kind in Europe. Like other Ratite birds it will take to
the water, and examples have been seen voluntarily swimming a wide
river. (A. N.)