THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME IX SLICE I
Edwardes to Ehrenbreitstein

Articles in This Slice

EDWARDES, SIR HERBERT BENJAMIN (1819-1868), English soldier-statesman in India, was born at Frodesley in Shropshire on the 12th of November 1819. His father was Benjamin Edwardes, rector of Frodesley, and his grandfather Sir John Edwardes, baronet, eighth holder of a title conferred on one of his ancestors by Charles I. in 1644. He was educated at a private school and at King’s College, London. Through the influence of his uncle, Sir Henry Edwardes, he was nominated in 1840 to a cadetship in the East India Company; and on his arrival in India, at the beginning of 1841, he was posted as ensign in the 1st Bengal Fusiliers. He remained with this regiment about five years, during which time he mastered the lessons of his profession, obtained a good knowledge of Hindustani, Hindi and Persian, and attracted attention by the political and literary ability displayed in a series of letters which appeared in the Delhi Gazette.

In November 1845, on the breaking out of the first Sikh War, Edwardes was appointed aide-de-camp to Sir Hugh (afterwards Viscount) Gough, then commander-in-chief in India. On the 18th of December he was severely wounded at the battle of Mudki. He soon recovered, however, and fought by the side of his chief at the decisive battle of Sobraon (February 10, 1846). He was soon afterwards appointed third assistant to the commissioners of the trans-Sutlej territory; and in January 1847 was named first assistant to Sir Henry Lawrence, the resident at Lahore. Lawrence became his great exemplar and in later years he was accustomed to attribute to the influence of this “father of his public life” whatever of great or good he had himself achieved. He took part with Lawrence in the suppression of a religious disturbance at Lahore in the spring of 1846, and soon afterwards assisted him in reducing, by a rapid movement to Jammu, the conspirator Imam-ud-din. In the following year a more difficult task was assigned him—the conduct of an expedition to Bannu, a district on the Waziri frontier, in which the people would not tolerate the presence of a collector, and the revenue had consequently fallen into arrear. By his rare tact and fertility of resource, Edwardes succeeded in completely conquering the wild tribes of the valley without firing a shot, a victory which he afterwards looked back upon with more satisfaction than upon others which brought him more renown. His fiscal arrangements were such as to obviate all difficulty of collection for the future. In the spring of 1848, in consequence of the murder of Mr vans Agnew and Lieutenant Anderson at Multan, by order of the diwan Mulraj, and of the raising of the standard of revolt by the latter, Lieutenant Edwardes was authorized to march against him. He set out immediately with a small force, occupied Leiah on the left bank of the Indus, was joined by Colonel van Cortlandt, and, although he could not attack Multan, held the enemy at bay and gave a check at the critical moment to their projects. He won a great victory over a greatly superior Sikh force at Kinyeri (June 18), and received in acknowledgment of his services the local rank of major. In the course of the operations which followed near Multan, Edwardes lost his right hand by the explosion of a pistol in his belt. On the arrival of a large force under General Whish the siege of Multan was begun, but was suspended for several months in consequence of the desertion of Shere Singh with his army and artillery. Edwardes distinguished himself by the part he took in the final operations, begun in December, which ended with the capture of the city on the 4th of January 1849. For his services he received the thanks of both houses of parliament, was promoted major by brevet, and created C.B. by special statute of the order. The directors of the East India Company conferred on him a gold medal and a good service pension of £100 per annum.

After the conclusion of peace Major Edwardes returned to England for the benefit of his health, married during his stay there, and wrote and published his fascinating account of the scenes in which he had been engaged, under the title of A Year on the Punjab Frontier in 1848-1849. His countrymen gave him fitting welcome, and the university of Oxford conferred on him the degree of D.C.L. In 1851 he returned to India and resumed his civil duties in the Punjab under Sir Henry Lawrence. In November 1853 he was entrusted with the responsible post of commissioner of the Peshawar frontier, and this he held when the Mutiny of 1857 broke out. It was a position of enormous difficulty, and momentous consequences were involved in the way the crisis might be met. Edwardes rose to the height of the occasion. He saw as if by inspiration the facts and the needs, and by the prompt measures which he adopted he rendered a service of incalculable importance, by effecting a reconciliation with Afghanistan, and securing the neutrality of the amir and the frontier tribes during the war. So effective was his procedure for the safety of the border that he was able to raise a large force in the Punjab and send it to co-operate in the siege and capture of Delhi. In 1859 Edwardes once more went to England, his health so greatly impaired by the continual strain of arduous work that it was doubtful whether he could ever return to India. During his stay he was created K.C.B., with the rank of brevet colonel; and the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by the university of Cambridge. Early in 1862 he again sailed for India, and was appointed commissioner of Umballa and agent for the Cis-Sutlej states. He had been offered the governorship of the Punjab, but on the ground of failing health had declined it. In February 1865 he was compelled to finally resign his post and return to England. A second good service pension was at once conferred on him; in May 1866 he was created K.C. of the Star of India; and early in 1868 was promoted major-general in the East Indian Army. He had been for some time engaged on a life of Sir Henry Lawrence, and high expectations were formed of the work; but he did not live to complete it, and after his death it was put into the hands of Mr Herman Merivale. He died in London on the 23rd of December 1868. Great in council and great in war, he was singularly beloved by his friends, generous and unselfish to a high degree, and a man of deep religious convictions.

See Memorials of the Life and Letters of Sir Herbert Benjamin Edwardes, by his wife (2 vols., London, 1886); T. R. E. Holmes, Four Soldiers (London, 1889); J. Ruskin, Bibl. pastorum, iv. “A Knight’s Faith” (1885), passages from the life of Edwardes.

EDWARDS, AMELIA ANN BLANDFORD (1831-1892), English author and Egyptologist, the daughter of one of Wellington’s officers, was born in London on the 7th of June 1831. At a very early age she displayed considerable literary and artistic talent. She became a contributor to various magazines and newspapers, and besides many miscellaneous works she wrote eight novels, the most successful of which were Debenham’s Vow (1870) and Lord Brackenbury (1880). In the winter of 1873-1874 she visited Egypt, and was profoundly impressed by the new openings for archaeological research. She learnt the hieroglyphic characters, and made a considerable collection of Egyptian antiquities. In 1877 she published A Thousand Miles up the Nile, with illustrations by herself. Convinced that only by proper scientific investigations could the wholesale destruction of Egyptian antiquities be avoided, she devoted herself to arousing public opinion on the subject, and ultimately, in 1882, was largely instrumental in founding the Egypt Exploration Fund, of which she became joint honorary secretary with Reginald Stuart Poole. For the business of this Fund she abandoned her other literary work, writing only on Egyptology. In 1889-1890 she went on a lecturing tour in the United States. The substance of her lectures was published in volume form in 1891 as Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers. She died at Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, on the 15th of April 1892, bequeathing her valuable collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College, London, together with a sum to found a chair of Egyptology. Miss Edwards received, shortly before her death, a civil list pension from the British government.

EDWARDS, BELA BATES (1802-1852), American man of letters, was born at Southampton, Massachusetts, on the 4th of July 1802. He graduated at Amherst College in 1824, was a tutor there in 1827-1828, graduated at Andover Theological Seminary in 1830, and was licensed to preach. From 1828 to 1833 he was assistant secretary of the American Education Society (organized in Boston in 1815 to assist students for the ministry), and from 1828 to 1842 was editor of the society’s organ, which after 1831 was called the American Quarterly Register. He also founded (in 1833) and edited the American Quarterly Observer; in 1836-1841 edited the Biblical Repository (after 1837 called the American Biblical Repository) with which the Observer was merged in 1835; and was editor-in-chief of the Bibliotheca Sacra from 1844 to 1851. In 1837 he became professor of Hebrew at Andover, and from 1848 until his death was associate professor of sacred literature there. He died at Athens, Georgia, on the 20th of April 1852. Among his numerous publications were A Missionary Gazetteer (1832), A Biography of Self Taught Men (1832), a once widely known Eclectic Reader (1835), a translation, with Samuel Harvey Taylor (1807-1871), of Kuhner’s Schulgrammatik der Griechischen Sprache and Classical Studies (1844), essays in ancient literature and art written in collaboration with Barnas Sears and C. C. Felton.

Edwards’ Addresses and Sermons, with a memoir by Rev. Edwards A. Park, were published in two volumes at Boston in 1853.

EDWARDS, BRYAN (1743-1800), English politician and historian, was born at Westbury, Wiltshire, on the 21st of May 1743. His father died in 1756, when his maintenance and education were undertaken by his maternal uncle, Zachary Bayly, a wealthy merchant of Jamaica. About 1759 Bryan went to Jamaica, and joined his uncle, who engaged a private tutor to complete his education, and when Bayly died his nephew inherited his wealth, succeeding also in 1773 to the estate of another Jamaica resident named Hume. Edwards soon became a leading member of the colonial assembly of Jamaica, but in a few years he returned to England, and in 1782 failed to secure a seat in parliament as member for Chichester. He was again in Jamaica from 1787 to 1792, when he settled in England as a West India merchant, making in 1795 another futile attempt to enter parliament, on this occasion as the representative of Southampton. In 1796, however, he became member of parliament for Grampound, retaining his seat until his death at Southampton on the 15th or 16th of July 1800. In general Edwards was a supporter of the slave trade, and was described by William Wilberforce as a powerful opponent. By his wife, Martha, daughter of Thomas Phipps of Westbury, he left an only son, Hume.

In 1784 Edwards wrote Thoughts on the late Proceedings of Government respecting the Trade of the West India Islands with the United States of America, in which he attacked the restrictions placed by the government upon trade with the United States. In 1793 he published in two volumes his great work, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, and in 1797 published his Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St Domingo. In 1801 a new edition of both these works with certain additions was published in three volumes under the title of History of the British Colonies in the West Indies. This has been translated into German and parts of it into French and Spanish, and a fifth edition was issued in 1819. When Mungo Park returned in 1796 from his celebrated journey in Africa, Edwards, who was secretary of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, drew up from Park’s narrative an account of his travels, which was published by the association in their Proceedings, and when Park wrote an account of his journeys he availed himself of Edwards’ assistance. Edwards also wrote some poems and some other works relating to the history of the West Indies.

He left a short sketch of his life which was prefixed to the edition of the History of the West Indies, published in 1801.

EDWARDS, GEORGE (1693-1773), English naturalist, was born at Stratford, Essex, on the 3rd of April 1693. In his early years he travelled extensively over Europe, studying natural history, and gained some reputation for his coloured drawings of animals, especially birds. In 1733, on the recommendation of Sir Hans Sloane, he was appointed librarian to the Royal College of Physicians in London. In 1743 he published the first volume of his History of Birds, the fourth volume of which appeared in 1751, and three supplementary volumes, under the title Gleanings of Natural History, were issued in 1758, 1760 and 1764. The two works contain engravings and descriptions of more than 600 subjects in natural history not before described or delineated. He likewise added a general index in French and English, which was afterwards supplied with Linnaean names by Linnaeus himself, with whom he frequently corresponded. About 1764 he retired to Plaistow, Essex, where he died on the 23rd of July 1773. He also wrote Essays of Natural History (1770) and Elements of Fossilogy (1776).

EDWARDS, HENRY THOMAS (1837-1884), Welsh divine, was born on the 6th of September 1837 at Llan ym Mawddwy, Merioneth, where his father was vicar. He was educated at Westminster and at Jesus College, Oxford (B.A., 1860), and after teaching for two years at Llandovery went to Llangollen as his father’s curate. He became vicar of Aberdare in 1866 and of Carnarvon in 1869. Here he began his lifelong controversy with Nonconformity, especially as represented by the Rev. Evan Jones (Calvinistic Methodist) and Rev. E. Herber Evans (Congregationalist). In 1870 he fought in vain for the principle of all-round denominationalism in the national education system, and in the same year addressed a famous letter to Mr Gladstone on “The Church of the Cymry,” pointing out that the success of Nonconformity in Wales was largely due to “the withering effect of an alien episcopate.” One immediate result of this was the appointment of the Welshman Joshua Hughes (1807-1889) to the vacant see of St Asaph. Edwards became dean of Bangor in 1876 and at once set about restoring the cathedral, and he promoted a clerical education society for supplying the diocese with educated Welsh-speaking clergy. He was a popular preacher and an earnest patriot; his chief defect was a lack of appreciation of the theological attainments of Nonconformity, and a Welsh commentary on St Matthew, which he had worked at for many years and published in two volumes in 1882, was severely handled by a Bangor Calvinistic Methodist minister. Edwards suffered from overwork and insomnia and a Mediterranean cruise in 1883 failed to restore his health; and he died by his own hand on the 24th of May 1884 at Ruabon.

See V. Morgan, Welsh Religious Leaders in the Victorian Era.

EDWARDS, JONATHAN (1703-1758), American theologian and philosopher, was born on the 5th of October 1703 at East (now South) Windsor, Connecticut. His earliest known ancestor was Richard Edwards, Welsh by birth, a London clergyman in Elizabeth’s reign. His father Timothy Edwards (1669-1758), son of a prosperous merchant of Hartford, had graduated at Harvard, was minister at East Windsor, and eked out his salary by tutoring boys for college. His mother, a daughter of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Mass., seems to have been a woman of unusual mental gifts and independence of character. Jonathan, the only son, was the fifth of eleven children. The boy was trained for college by his father and by his elder sisters, who all received an excellent education. When ten years old he wrote a semi-humorous tract on the immateriality of the soul; he was interested in natural history, and at the age of twelve wrote a remarkable essay on the habits of the “flying spider.” He entered Yale College in 1716, and in the following year became acquainted with Locke’s Essay, which influenced him profoundly. During his college course he kept note books labelled “The Mind,” “Natural Science” (containing a discussion of the atomic theory, &c.), “The Scriptures” and “Miscellanies,” had a grand plan for a work on natural and mental philosophy, and drew up for himself rules for its composition. Even before his graduation in September 1720 as valedictorian and head of his class, he seems to have had a well formulated philosophy. The two years after his graduation he spent in New Haven studying theology. In 1722-1723 he was for eight months stated supply of a small Presbyterian church in New York city, which invited him to remain, but he declined the call, spent two months in study at home, and then in 1724-1726 was one of the two tutors at Yale, earning for himself the name of a “pillar tutor” by his steadfast loyalty to the college and its orthodox teaching at the time when Yale’s rector (Cutler) and one of her tutors had gone over to the Episcopal Church.

The years 1720 to 1726 are partially recorded in his diary and in the resolutions for his own conduct which he drew up at this time. He had long been an eager seeker after salvation and was not fully satisfied as to his own “conversion” until an experience in his last year in college, when he lost his feeling that the election of some to salvation and of others to eternal damnation was “a horrible doctrine,” and reckoned it “exceedingly pleasant, bright and sweet.” He now took a great and new joy in the beauties of nature, and delighted in the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon. Balancing these mystic joys is the stern tone of his Resolutions, in which he is almost ascetic in his eagerness to live earnestly and soberly, to waste no time, to maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking. On the 15th of February 1727 he was ordained minister at Northampton and assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. He was a student minister, not a visiting pastor, his rule being thirteen hours of study a day. In the same year he married Sarah Pierrepont, then aged seventeen, daughter of James Pierrepont (1659-1714), a founder of Yale, and through her mother great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker. Of her piety and almost nun-like love of God and belief in His personal love for her, Edwards had known when she was only thirteen, and had written of it with spiritual enthusiasm; she was of a bright and cheerful disposition, a practical housekeeper, a model wife and the mother of his twelve children. Solomon Stoddard died on the 11th of February 1729, leaving to his grandson the difficult task of the sole ministerial charge of one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the colony, and one proud of its morality, its culture and its reputation.

In 1731 Edwards preached at Boston the “Public Lecture” afterwards published under the title God Glorified in Man’s Dependence. This was his first public attack on Arminianism. The leading thought was God’s absolute sovereignty in the work of redemption: that while it behoved God to create man holy, it was of His “good pleasure” and “mere and arbitrary grace” that any man was now made holy, and that God might deny this grace without any disparagement to any of His perfections. In 1733 a revival of religion began in Northampton, and reached such intensity in the winter of 1734 and the following spring as to threaten the business of the town. In six months nearly three hundred were admitted to the church. The revival gave Edwards an opportunity of studying the process of conversion in all its phases and varieties, and he recorded his observations with psychological minuteness and discrimination in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton (1737). A year later he published Discourses on Various Important Subjects, the five sermons which had proved most effective in the revival, and of these none, he tells us, was so immediately effective as that on the Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners, from the text, “That every mouth may be stopped.” Another sermon, published in 1734, on the Reality of Spiritual Light set forth what he regarded as the inner, moving principle of the revival, the doctrine of a “special” grace in the immediate and supernatural divine illumination of the soul. In the spring of 1735 the movement began to subside and a reaction set in. But the relapse was brief, and the Northampton revival, which had spread through the Connecticut valley and whose fame had reached England and Scotland, was followed in 1739-1740 by the Great Awakening, distinctively under the leadership of Edwards. The movement met with no sympathy from the orthodox leaders of the church. In 1741 Edwards published in its defence The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, dealing particularly with the phenomena most criticized, the swoonings, outcries and convulsions. These “bodily effects,” he insisted, were not “distinguishing marks” of the work of the Spirit of God; but so bitter was the feeling against the revival in the more strictly Puritan churches that in 1742 he was forced to write a second apology, Thoughts on the Revival in New England, his main argument being the great moral improvement of the country. In the same pamphlet he defends an appeal to the emotions, and advocates preaching terror when necessary, even to children, who in God’s sight “are young vipers ... if not Christ’s.” He considers “bodily effects” incidentals to the real work of God, but his own mystic devotion and the experiences of his wife during the Awakening (which he gives in detail) make him think that the divine visitation usually overpowers the body, a view in support of which he quotes Scripture. In reply to Edwards, Charles Chauncy anonymously wrote The Late Religious Commotions in New England Considered (1743), urging conduct as the sole test of conversion; and the general convention of Congregational ministers in the Province of Massachusetts Bay protested “against disorders in practice which have of late obtained in various parts of the land.” In spite of Edwards’s able pamphlet, the impression had become widespread that “bodily effects” were recognized by the promoters of the Great Awakening as the true tests of conversion. To offset this feeling Edwards[1] preached at Northampton during the years 1742 and 1743 a series of sermons published under the title of Religious Affections (1746), a restatement in a more philosophical and general tone of his ideas as to “distinguishing marks.” In 1747 he joined the movement started in Scotland called the “concert in prayer,” and in the same year published An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth. In 1749 he published a memoir of David Brainerd; the latter had lived in his family for several months, had been constantly attended by Edwards’s daughter Jerusha, to whom he had been engaged to be married, and had died at Northampton on the 7th of October 1747; and he had been a case in point for the theories of conversion held by Edwards, who had made elaborate notes of Brainerd’s conversations and confessions.

In 1748 there had come a crisis in his relations with his congregation. The Half-Way Covenant adopted by the synods of 1657 and 1662 had made baptism alone the condition to the civil privileges of church membership, but not of participation in the sacrament of the Supper. Edwards’s grandfather and predecessor, Solomon Stoddard, had been even more liberal, holding that the Supper was a converting ordinance and that baptism was a sufficient title to all the privileges of the church. As early as 1744 Edwards, in his sermons on the Religious Affections, had plainly intimated his dislike of this practice. In the same year he had published in a church meeting the names of certain young people, members of the church, who were suspected of reading improper books,[2] and also the names of those who were to be called as witnesses in the case. But witnesses and accused were not distinguished on this list, and the congregation was in an uproar. A great many, fearing a scandal, now opposed an investigation which all had previously favoured. Edwards’s preaching became unpopular; for four years no candidate presented himself for admission to the church; and when one did in 1748, and was met with Edwards’s formal but mild and gentle tests, as expressed in the Distinguishing Marks and later in Qualifications for Full Communion (1749) the candidate refused to submit to them; the church backed him and the break was complete. Even permission to discuss his views in the pulpit was refused him. The ecclesiastical council voted by 10 to 9 that the pastoral relation be dissolved. The church by a vote of more than 200 to 23 ratified the action of the council, and finally a town meeting voted that Edwards should not be allowed to occupy the Northampton pulpit, though he did this on occasion as late as May 1755. He evinced no rancour or spite; his “Farewell Sermon” was dignified and temperate; nor is it to be ascribed to chagrin that in a letter to Scotland after his dismissal he expresses his preference for Presbyterian to Congregational church government. His position at the time was not unpopular throughout New England, and it is needless to say that his doctrine that the Lord’s Supper is not a cause of regeneration and that communicants should be professing Christians has since (very largely through the efforts of his pupil Joseph Bellamy) become a standard of New England Congregationalism.

Edwards with his large family was now thrown upon the world, but offers of aid quickly came to him. A parish in Scotland could have been procured, and he was called to a Virginia church. He declined both, to become in 1750 pastor of the church in Stockbridge and a missionary to the Housatonic Indians. To the Indians he preached through an interpreter, and their interests he boldly and successfully defended by attacking the whites who were using their official position among them to increase their private fortunes. In Stockbridge he wrote the Humble Relation, also called Reply to Williams (1752), which was an answer to Solomon Williams (1700-1776), a relative and a bitter opponent of Edwards as to the qualifications for full communion; and he there composed the treatises on which his reputation as a philosophical theologian chiefly rests, the essay on Original Sin, the Dissertation concerning the Nature of True Virtue, the Dissertation concerning the End for which God created the World, and the great work on the Will, written in four months and a half, and published in 1754 under the title, An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions Respecting that Freedom of the Will which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency.

In 1757, on the death of President Burr, who five years before had married Edwards’s daughter Esther, he reluctantly accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he was installed on the 16th of February 1758. Almost immediately afterwards he was inoculated for smallpox, which was raging in Princeton and vicinity, and, always feeble, he died of the inoculation on the 28th of March 1758. He was buried in the old cemetery at Princeton. He was slender and fully six feet tall, and with his oval, gentle, almost feminine face looked the scholar and the mystic.

The Edwardean System.—It is difficult to separate Edwards’s philosophy from his theology, except as the former is contained in the early notes on the Mind, where he says that matter exists only in idea; that space is God; that minds only are real; that in metaphysical strictness there is no being but God; that entity is the greatest and only good; and that God as infinite entity, wherein the agreement of being with being is absolute, is the supreme excellency, the supreme good. It seems certain that these conclusions were independent of Berkeley and Malebranche, and were not drawn from Arthur Collier’s Clavis universalis (1713), with which they have much in common, but were suggested, in part at least, by Locke’s doctrine of ideas, Newton’s theory of colours, and Cudworth’s Platonism, with all of which Edwards was early familiar. But they were never developed systematically, and the conception of the material universe here contended for does not again explicitly reappear in any of his writings. The fundamental metaphysical postulate that being and God are ultimately identical remained, however, the philosophical basis of all his thinking, and reverence for this being as the supreme good remained the fundamental disposition of his mind. That he did not interpret this idea in a Spinozistic sense was due to his more spiritual conception of “being” and to the reaction on his philosophy of his theology. The theological interest, indeed, came in the end to predominate, and philosophy to appear as an instrument for the defence of Calvinism. Perhaps the best criticism of Edwards’s philosophy as a whole is that, instead of being elaborated on purely rational principles, it is mixed up with a system of theological conceptions with which it is never thoroughly combined, and that it is exposed to all the disturbing effects of theological controversy. Moreover, of one of his most central convictions, that of the sovereignty of God in election, he confesses that he could give no account.

Edwards’s reputation as a thinker is chiefly associated with his treatise on the Will, which is still sometimes called “the one large contribution that America has made to the deeper philosophic thought of the world.” The aim of this treatise was to refute the doctrine of free-will, since he considered it the logical, as distinguished from the sentimental, ground of most of the Arminian objections to Calvinism. He defines the will as that by which the “mind chooses anything.” To act voluntarily, he says, is to act electively. So far he and his opponents are agreed. But choice, he holds, is not arbitrary; it is determined in every case by “that motive which as it stands in the view of the mind is the strongest,” and that motive is strongest which presents in the immediate object of volition the “greatest apparent good,” that is, the greatest degree of agreeableness or pleasure. What this is in a given case depends on a multitude of circumstances, external and internal, all contributing to form the “cause” of which the voluntary act and its consequences are the “effect.” Edwards contends that the connexion between cause and effect here is as “sure and perfect” as in the realm of physical nature and constitutes a “moral necessity.” He reduces the opposite doctrine to three assumptions, all of which he shows to be untenable: (1) “a self-determining power in the will”; (2) “indifference,... that the mind previous to the act of volition (is) in equilibrio”; (3) “contingence ... as opposed to ... any fixed and certain connexion (of the volition) with some previous ground or reason for its existence.” Although he denies liberty to the will in this sense—indeed, strictly speaking, neither liberty nor necessity, he says, is properly applied to the will, “for the will itself is not an agent that has a will”—he nevertheless insists that the subject willing is a free moral agent, and argues that without the determinate connexion between volition and motive which he asserts and the libertarians deny, moral agency would be impossible. Liberty, he holds, is simply freedom from constraint, “the power ... that any one has to do as he pleases.” This power man possesses. And that the right or wrong of choice depends not on the cause of choice but on its nature, he illustrates by the example of Christ, whose acts were necessarily holy, yet truly virtuous, praiseworthy and rewardable. Even God Himself, Edwards here maintains, has no other liberty than this, to carry out without constraint His will, wisdom and inclination.

There is no necessary connexion between Edwards’s doctrine of the motivation of choice and the system of Calvinism with which it is congruent. Similar doctrines have more frequently perhaps been associated with theological scepticism. But for him the alternative was between Calvinism and Arminianism, simply because of the historical situation, and in the refutation of Arminianism on the assumptions common to both sides of the controversy, he must be considered completely successful. As a general argument his account of the determination of the will is defective, notably in his abstract conception of the will and in his inadequate, but suggestive, treatment of causation, in regard to which he anticipates in important respects the doctrine of Hume. Instead of making the motive to choice a factor within the concrete process of volition, he regards it as a cause antecedent to the exercise of a special mental faculty. Yet his conception of this faculty as functioning only in and through motive and character, inclination and desire, certainly carries us a long way beyond the abstraction in which his opponents stuck, that of a bare faculty without any assignable content. Modern psychology has strengthened the contention for a fixed connexion between motive and act by reference to subconscious and unconscious processes of which Edwards, who thought that nothing could affect the mind which was unperceived, little dreamed; at the same time, at least in some of its developments, especially in its freer use of genetic and organic conceptions, it has rendered much in the older forms of statement obsolete, and has given a new meaning to the idea of self-determination, which, as applied to an abstract power, Edwards rightly rejected as absurd.

Edwards’s controversy with the Arminians was continued in the essay on Original Sin, which was in the press at the time of his death. He here breaks with Augustine and the Westminster Confession by arguing, consistently with his theory of the Will, that Adam had no more freedom of will than we have, but had a special endowment, a supernatural gift of grace, which by rebellion against God was lost, and that this gift was withdrawn from his descendants, not because of any fictitious imputation of guilt, but because of their real participation in his guilt by actual identity with him in his transgression.

The Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue, posthumously published, is justly regarded as one of the most original works on ethics of the 18th century, and is the more remarkable as reproducing, with no essential modification, ideas on the subject written in the author’s youth in the notes on the Mind. Virtue is conceived as the beauty of moral qualities. Now beauty, in Edwards’s view, always consists in a harmonious relation in the elements involved, an agreement of being with being. He conceives, therefore, of virtue, or moral beauty, as consisting in the cordial agreement or consent to intelligent being. He defines it as benevolence (good-will), or rather as a disposition to benevolence, towards being in general. This disposition, he argues, has no regard primarily to beauty in the object, nor is it primarily based on gratitude. Its first object is being, “simply considered,” and it is accordingly proportioned, other things being equal, to the object’s “degree of existence.” He admits, however, benevolent being as a second object, on the ground that such an object, having a like virtuous propensity, “is, as it were, enlarged, extends to, and in some sort comprehends being in general.” In brief, since God is the “being of beings” and comprehends, in the fullest extent, benevolent consent to being in general, true virtue consists essentially in a supreme love to God. Thus the principle of virtue—Edwards has nothing to say of “morality”—is identical with the principle of religion. From this standpoint Edwards combats every lower view. He will not admit that there is any evidence of true virtue in the approbation of virtue and hatred of vice, in the workings of conscience or in the exercises of the natural affections; he thinks that these may all spring from self-love and the association of ideas, from “instinct” or from a “moral sense of a secondary kind” entirely different from “a sense or relish of the essential beauty of true virtue.” Nor does he recognize the possibility of a natural development of true virtue out of the sentiments directed on the “private systems”; on the contrary, he sets the love of particular being, when not subordinated to being in general, in opposition to the latter and as equivalent to treating it with the greatest contempt. All that he allows is that the perception of natural beauty may, by its resemblance to the primary spiritual beauty, quicken the disposition to divine love in those who are already under the influence of a truly virtuous temper.

Closely connected with the essay on Virtue is the boldly speculative Dissertation on the End for which God Created the World. As, according to the doctrine of virtue, God’s virtue consists primarily in love to Himself, so His final end in creation is conceived to be, not as the Arminians held, the happiness of His creatures, but His own glory. Edwards supposes in the nature of God an original disposition to an “emanation” of His being, and it is the excellency of this divine being, particularly in the elect, which is, in his view, the final cause and motive of the world.

Edwards makes no attempt to reconcile the pantheistic element in his philosophy with the individuality implied in moral government. He seems to waver between the opinion that finite individuals have no independent being and the opinion that they have it in an infinitesimal degree; and the conception of “degrees of existence” in the essay on Virtue is not developed to elucidate the point. His theological conception of God, at any rate, was not abstractly pantheistic, in spite of the abstractness of his language about “being,” but frankly theistic and trinitarian. He held the doctrine of the trinitarian distinctions indeed to be a necessity of reason. His Essay on the Trinity, first printed in 1903, was long supposed to have been withheld from publication because of its containing Arian or Sabellian tendencies. It contains in fact nothing more questionable than an attempted deduction of the orthodox Nicene doctrine, unpalatable, however, to Edwards’s immediate disciples, who were too little speculative to appreciate his statement of the subordination of the “persons” in the divine “oeconomy,” and who openly derided the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son as “eternal nonsense”; and this perhaps was the original reason why the essay was not published.

Though so typically a scholar and abstract thinker on the one hand and on the other a mystic, Edwards is best known to the present generation as a preacher of hell fire. The particular reason for this seems to lie in a single sermon preached at Enfield, Connecticut, in July 1741 from the text, “Their foot shall slide in due time,” and commonly known from its title, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The occasion of this sermon is usually overlooked. It was preached to a congregation who were careless and loose in their lives at a time when “the neighbouring towns were in great distress for their souls.” A contemporary account of it says that in spite of Edwards’s academic style of preaching, the assembly was “deeply impressed and bowed down, with an awful conviction of their sin and danger. There was such a breathing of distress and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard.” Edwards preached other sermons of this type, but this one was the most extreme. The style of the imprecatory sermon, however, was no more peculiar to him than to his period. He was not a great preacher in the ordinary meaning of the word. His gestures were scanty, his voice was not powerful, but he was desperately in earnest, and he held his audience whether his sermon contained a picturesque and detailed description of the torments of the damned, or, as was often the case, spoke of the love and peace of God in the heart of man. He was an earnest, devout Christian, and a man of blameless life. His insight into the spiritual life was profound. Certainly the most able metaphysician and the most influential religious thinker of America, he must rank in theology, dialectics, mysticism and philosophy with Calvin and Fénelon, Augustine and Aquinas, Spinoza and Novalis; with Berkeley and Hume as the great English philosophers of the 18th century; and with Hamilton and Franklin as the three American thinkers of the same century of more than provincial importance.

Edwards’s main aim had been to revivify Calvinism, modifying it for the needs of the time, and to promote a warm and vital Christian piety. The tendency of his successors was—to state the matter roughly—to take some one of his theories and develop it to an extreme. Of his immediate followers Joseph Bellamy is distinctly Edwardean in the keen logic and in the spirit of his True Religion Delineated, but he breaks with his master in his theory of general (not limited) atonement. Samuel Hopkins laid even greater stress than Edwards on the theorem that virtue consists in disinterested benevolence; but he went counter to Edwards in holding that unconditional resignation to God’s decrees, or more concretely, willingness to be damned for the glory of God, was the test of true regeneration; for Edwards, though often quoted as holding this doctrine, protested against it in the strongest terms. Hopkins, moreover, denied Edwards’s identity theory of original sin, saying that our sin was a result of Adam’s and not identical with it; and he went much further than Edwards in his objection to “means of grace,” claiming that the unregenerate were more and more guilty for continual rejection of the gospel if they were outwardly righteous and availed themselves of the means of grace. Stephen West (1735-1819), too, out-Edwardsed Edwards in his defence of the treatise on the Freedom of the Will, and John Smalley (1734-1820) developed the idea of a natural (not moral) inability on the part of man to obey God. Emmons, like Hopkins, considered both sin and holiness “exercises” of the will. Timothy Dwight (1752-1847) urged the use of the means of grace, thought Hopkins and Emmons pantheistic, and boldly disagreed with their theory of “exercises,” reckoning virtue and sin as the result of moral choice or disposition, a position that was also upheld by Asa Burton (1752-1836), who thought that on regeneration the disposition of man got a new relish or “taste.”

Jonathan Edwards[3] the younger (1745-1801), second son of the philosopher, born at Northampton, Massachusetts, on the 26th of May 1745, also takes an important place among his followers. He lived in Stockbridge in 1751-1755 and spoke the language of the Housatonic Indians with ease, for six months studied among the Oneidas, graduated at Princeton in 1765, studied theology at Bethlehem, Connecticut, under Joseph Bellamy, was licensed to preach in 1766, was a tutor at Princeton in 1766-1769, and was pastor of the White Haven Church, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1769-1795, being then dismissed for the nominal reason that the church could not support him, but actually because of his opposition to the Half-Way Covenant as well as to slavery and the slave trade. He preached at Colebrook, Connecticut, in 1796-1799 and then became president of Union College, Schenectady, New York, where he died on the 1st of August 1801. His studies of the Indian dialects were scholarly and valuable. He edited his father’s incomplete History of the Work of Redemption, wrote in answer to Stephen West, A Dissertation Concerning Liberty and Necessity (1797), which defended his father’s work on the Will by a rather strained interpretation, and in answer to Chauncy on universal salvation formulated what is known as the “Edwardean,” New England or Governmental theory of the atonement in The Necessity of the Atonement and its Consistency with Free Grace in Forgiveness (1785). His collected works were edited by his grandson Tryon Edwards in two volumes, with memoir (Andover, 1842). His place in the Edwardean theology is principally due to his defence against the Universalists of his father’s doctrine of the atonement, namely, that Christ’s death, being the equivalent of the eternal punishment of sinners, upheld the authority of the divine law, but did not pay any debt, and made the pardon of all men a possibility with God, but not a necessity.

Bibliography.—There have been various editions of Edwards’s works. His pupil, Samuel Hopkins, in 1765 published two volumes from manuscript containing eighteen sermons and a memoir; the younger Jonathan Edwards with Dr Erskine published an edition in 4 volumes (1744 sqq.), and Samuel Austin in 1808 edited an edition in 8 volumes. In 1829 Sereno E. Dwight, a great-grandson of Edwards, published the Life and Works in 10 volumes, the first volume containing the memoir, which is still the most complete and was the standard until the publication (Boston, 1889) of Jonathan Edwards, by A. V. G. Allen, who attempts to “distinguish what he (Edwards) meant to affirm from what he actually teaches.” In 1865 the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart edited from original manuscripts Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Edwards of America (Edinburgh, 1865, printed for private circulation). This was the only part of a complete edition planned by Grosart that ever appeared. It contained the important Treatise on Grace, Annotations on the Bible, Directions for Judging of Persons’ Experiences, and Sermons, the last for the most part merely in outline. E. C. Smyth published from a copy Observations Concerning the Scripture Oeconomy of the Trinity and Covenant of Redemption (New York, 1880), a careful edition from the manuscript of the essay on the Flying Spider (in the Andover Review, January 1890) and “Some Early Writings of Jonathan Edwards,” with specimens from the manuscripts (in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, October, 1895). In 1900 on the death of Prof. Edwards A. Park, the entire collection of Edwards’s manuscripts loaned to him by Tryon Edwards was transferred to Yale University. Professor Park, like Mr Grosart before him, had been unable to accomplish the great task of editing this mass of manuscript. “A Study of the Manuscripts of Jonathan Edwards” was published by F. B. Dexter in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, series 2, vol. xv. (Boston, 1902), and in the same volume of the Proceedings appeared “A Study of the Shorthand Writings of Jonathan Edwards,” by W. P. Upham. The long sought for essay on the Trinity was edited (New York, 1903) with valuable introduction and appendices by G. P. Fisher under the title, An Unpublished Essay of Edwards’s on the Trinity. The only other edition of Edwards (in whole or in part) of any importance is Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1904), edited by H. N. Gardiner, with brief biographical sketch and annotations on seven sermons, one of which had not previously been published.

For estimates of Edwards consult: The Volume of the Edwards Family Meeting at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, September 6-7, a.d. 1870 (Boston, 1871); Jonathan Edwards, a Retrospect, Being the Addresses Delivered in Connecticut with the Unveiling of a Memorial in the First Church of Christ in Northampton, Massachusetts, on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of his Dismissal from the Pastorate of that Church, edited by H. N. Gardiner (Boston, 1901); Exercises Commemorating the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Jonathan Edwards, held at Andover Theological Seminary, October 4-5, 1903 (Andover, 1904); and among the addresses delivered at Stockbridge in October 1903, John De Witt, “Jonathan Edwards: A Study,” in the Princeton Theological Review (January, 1904). Also H. C. King, “Edwards as Philosopher and Theologian,” in Hartford Theological Seminary Record, vol. xiv. (1903), pp. 23-57; H. N. Gardiner, “The Early Idealism of Jonathan Edwards,” in the Philosophical Review, vol. ix. (1900), pp. 573-596; E. C. Smyth, American Journal of Theology, vol. i. (1897), pp. 960-964; Samuel P. Hayes, “An Historical Study of the Edwardean Revivals,” in American Journal of Psychology, vol. xiii. (1902), pp. 550 ff.; J. H. MacCracken, “Philosophical Idealism of Edwards” in Philosophical Review, vol. xi. (1902), pp. 26-42, suggesting that Edwards did not know Berkeley, but Collier, and the same author’s Jonathan Edwards’ Idealismus (Halle, 1899); F. J. E. Woodbridge, “Jonathan Edwards,” in Philosophical Review, vol. xiii. (1904), pp. 393-408; W. H. Squires, Jonathan Edwards und seine Willenslehre (Leipzig, 1901); Samuel Simpson, “Jonathan Edwards, A Historical Review,” in Hartford Seminary Record, vol. xiv. (1903), pp. 3-22; and The Edwardean, a Quarterly Devoted to the History of Thought in America (Clinton, New York, 1903-1904), edited by W. H. Squires, of which only four parts appeared, all devoted to Edwards and all written by Squires.

(H. N. G.; R. We.)

[1] Edwards recognized the abuse of impulses and impressions, opposed itinerant and lay preachers, and defended a well-ordered and well-educated clergy.

[2] These were probably not fiction like Pamela, as Sir Leslie Stephen suggested, for Edwards listed several of Richardson’s novels for his own reading, and considered Sir Charles Grandison a very moral and excellent work.

[3] Besides the younger Jonathan many of Edwards’s descendants were great, brilliant or versatile men. Among them were: his son Pierrepont (1750-1826), a brilliant but erratic member of the Connecticut bar, tolerant in religious matters and bitterly hated by stern Calvinists, a man whose personal morality resembled greatly that of Aaron Burr; his grandsons, William Edwards (1770-1851), an inventor of important leather rolling machinery; Aaron Burr the son of Esther Edwards; Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), son of Mary Edwards, and his brother Theodore Dwight, a Federalist politician, a member, the secretary and the historian of the Hartford Convention; his great-grandsons, Tryon Edwards (1809-1894) and Sereno Edwards Dwight, theologian, educationalist and author; and his great-great-grandsons, Theodore William Dwight, the jurist, and Timothy Dwight, second of that name to be president of Yale.

EDWARDS, LEWIS (1809-1887), Welsh Nonconformist divine, was born in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr, Cardiganshire, on the 27th of October 1809. He was educated at Aberystwyth and at Llangeitho, and then himself kept school in both these places. He had already begun to preach for the Calvinistic Methodists when, in December 1830, he went to London to take advantage of the newly-opened university. In 1832 he settled as minister at Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, and the following year went to Edinburgh, where a special resolution of the senate allowed him to graduate at the end of his third session. He was now better able to further his plans for providing a trained ministry for his church. Previously, the success of the Methodist preachers had been due mainly to their natural gifts. Edwards made his home at Bala, and there, in 1837, with David Charles, his brother-in-law, he opened a school, which ultimately became the denominational college for north Wales. He died on the 19th of July 1887.

Edwards may fairly be called one of the makers of modern Wales. Through his hands there passed generation after generation of preachers, who carried his influence to every corner of the principality. By fostering competitive meetings and by his writings, especially in Y Traethodydd (“The Essayist”), a quarterly magazine which he founded in 1845 and edited for ten years, he did much to inform and educate his countrymen on literary and theological subjects. A new college was built at Bala in 1867, for which he raised £10,000. His chief publication was a noteworthy book on The Doctrine of the Atonement, cast in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil; the treatment is forensic, and emphasis is laid on merit. It was due to him that the North and South Wales Calvinistic Methodist Associations united to form an annual General Assembly; he was its moderator in 1866 and again in 1876. He was successful in bringing the various churches of the Presbyterian order into closer touch with each other, and unwearying in his efforts to promote education for his countrymen.

See Bywyd a Llythyrau y Parch, (i.e. Life and Letters of the Rev.) Lewis Edwards, D.D., by his son T. C. Edwards.

EDWARDS, RICHARD (c. 1523-1566), English musician and playwright, was born in Somersetshire, became a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1540, and took his M.A. degree in 1547. He was appointed in 1561 a gentleman of the chapel royal and master of the children, and entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1564, where at Christmas in that year he produced a play which was acted by his choir boys. On the 3rd of September 1566 his play, Palamon and Arcite, was performed before Queen Elizabeth in the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford. Another play, Damon and Pithias, tragic in subject but with scenes of vulgar farce, entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1567-8, appeared in 1571 and was reprinted in 1582; it may be found in Dodsley’s Old Plays, vol. i., and Ancient British Drama, vol. i. It is written in rhymed lines of rude construction, varying in length and neglecting the caesura. A number of the author’s shorter pieces are preserved in the Paradise of Dainty Devices, first published in 1575, and reprinted in the British Bibliographer, vol. iii.; the best known are the lines on May, the Amantium Irae, and the Commendation of Music, which has the honour of furnishing a stanza to Romeo and Juliet. The Historie of Damocles and Dionise is assigned to him in the 1578 edition of the Paradise. Sir John Hawkins credited him with the part song “In going to my lonely bed”; the words are certainly his, and probably the music. In his own day Edwards was highly esteemed. The fine poem, “The Soul’s Knell,” is supposed to have been written by him when dying.

See Grove’s Dict. of Music (new edition); the Shakespeare Soc. Papers, vol. ii. art. vi.; Ward, English Dram. Literature, vol. i.

EDWARDS, THOMAS CHARLES (1837-1900), Welsh Nonconformist divine and educationist, was born at Bala, Merioneth, on the 22nd of September 1837, the son of Lewis Edwards (q.v.). His resolve to become a minister was deepened by the revival of 1858-1859. After taking his degrees at London (B.A. 1861, M.A. 1862), he matriculated at St Alban Hall, Oxford, in October 1862, the university having just been opened to dissenters. He obtained a scholarship at Lincoln College in 1864, and took a first class in the school of Literae Humaniores in 1866. He was especially influenced by Mark Pattison and Jowett, who counselled him to be true to the church of his father, in which he had already been ordained. Early in 1867 he became minister at Windsor Street, Liverpool, but left it to become first principal of the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, which had been established through the efforts of Sir Hugh Owen and other enthusiasts. The college was opened with a staff of three professors and twenty-five students in October 1872, and for some years its career was chequered enough. Edwards, however, proved a skilful pilot, and his hold on the affection of the Welsh people enabled him to raise the college to a high level of efficiency. When it was destroyed by fire in 1885 he collected £25,000 to rebuild it; the remainder of the necessary £40,000 being given by the government (£10,000) and by the people of Aberystwyth (£5000). In 1891 he gave up what had been the main work of his life to accept an undertaking that was even nearer his heart, the principalship of the theological college at Bala. A stroke of paralysis in 1894 fatally weakened him, but he continued at work till his death on the 22nd of March 1900. The Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales bestowed on him every honour in their possession, and he received the degree of D.D. from the universities of Edinburgh (1887) and Wales (1898). His chief works were a Commentary on 1 Corinthians (1885), the Epistle to the Hebrews (“Expositor’s Bible” series, 1888), and The God-Man (“Davies Lecture,” 1895).

EDWARDSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Madison county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the south-western part of the state, on Cahokia Creek, about 18 m. N.E. of St Louis. Pop. (1890) 3561; (1900) 4157 (573 foreign-born); (1910) 5014. Edwardsville is served by the Toledo, St Louis & Western, the Wabash, the Litchfield & Madison, and the Illinois Terminal railways, and is connected with St Louis by three electric lines. It has a Carnegie library. The city’s principal manufactures are carriages, ploughs, brick, machinery, sanitary ware and plumber’s goods. Bituminous coal is extensively mined in the vicinity. Adjoining Edwardsville is the co-operative village Leclaire (unincorporated), with the factory of the N.O. Nelson Manufacturing Co., makers of plumber’s supplies, brass goods, sanitary fixtures, &c.; the village was founded in 1890 by Nelson O. Nelson (b. 1844), and nearly all of the residents are employed by the company of which he is the head; they share to a certain extent in its profits, and are encouraged to own their own homes. The company supports a school, Leclaire Academy, and has built a club-house, bowling alleys, tennis-courts, base-ball grounds, &c. The first settlement on the site of Edwardsville was made in 1812, and in 1815 the town was laid out and named in honour of Ninian Edwards (1775-1833), the governor of the Illinois Territory (1809-1818), and later United States senator (1818-1824) and governor of the state of Illinois (1826-1830). Edwardsville was incorporated in 1819 and received its present charter in 1872.

EDWARDSVILLE, a borough of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the north branch of the Susquehanna river, adjoining Kingston and close to the north-western limits of Wilkes-Barre (on the opposite side of the river), in the north-eastern part of the state; the official name of the post office is Edwardsdale. Pop. (1890), 3284; (1900), 5165, of whom 2645 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 8407. It is served by the electric line of the Wilkes-Barre & Wyoming Valley Traction Co. Coal mining and brewing are the chief industries. Edwardsville was incorporated in 1884.

EDWIN, Aeduini or Edwine (585-633), king of Northumbria, was the son of Ella of Deira. On the seizure of Deira by Æthelfrith of Bernicia (probably 605), Edwin was expelled and is said to have taken refuge with Cadfan, king of Gwynedd. After the battle of Chester, in which Æthelfrith defeated the Welsh, Edwin fled to Rœdwald, the powerful king of East Anglia, who after some wavering espoused his cause and defeated and slew Æthelfrith at the river Idle in 617. Edwin thereupon succeeded to the Northumbrian throne, driving out the sons of Æthelfrith. There is little evidence of external activity on the part of Edwin before 625. It is probable that the conquest of the Celtic kingdom of Elmet, a district in the neighbourhood of the modern Leeds, ruled over by a king named Cerdic (Ceredig) is to be referred to this period, and this may have led to the later quarrel with Cadwallon, king of Gwynedd. Edwin seems also to have annexed Lindsey to his kingdom by 625. In this year he entered upon negotiations with Eadbald of Kent for a marriage with his sister Æthelberg. It was made a condition that Christianity should be tolerated in Northumbria, and accordingly Paulinus was consecrated bishop by Justus in 625, and was sent to Northumbria with Æthelberg. According to Bede, Edwin was favourably disposed towards Christianity owing to a vision he had seen at the court of Rœdwald, and in 626 he allowed Eanfled, his daughter by Æthelberg, to be baptized. On the day of the birth of his daughter, the king’s life had been attempted by Eomer, an emissary of Cwichelm, king of Wessex. Preserved by the devotion of his thegn Lilla, Edwin vowed to become a Christian if victorious over his treacherous enemy. He was successful in the ensuing campaign, and abstained from the worship of the gods of his race. A letter of Pope Boniface helped to decide him, and after consulting his friends and counsellors, of whom the priest Coifi afterwards took a prominent part in destroying the temple at Goodmanham, he was baptized with his people and nobles at York, at Easter 627. In this town he granted Paulinus a see, built a wooden church and began one of stone. Besides York, Yeavering and Maelmin in Bernicia, and Catterick in Deira, were the chief scenes of the work of Paulinus. It was the influence of Edwin which led to the conversion of Eorpwald of East Anglia. Bede notices the peaceful state of Britain at this time, and relates that Edwin was preceded on his progresses by a kind of standard like that borne before the Roman emperors. In 633 Cadwallon of North Wales and Penda of Mercia rose against Edwin and slew him at Hatfield near Doncaster. His kinsman Osric succeeded in Deira, and Eanfrith the son of Æthelfrith in Bernicia. Bede tells us that Edwin had subdued the islands of Anglesey and Man, and the Annales Cambriae record that he besieged Cadwallon (perhaps in 632) in the island of Glannauc (Puffin Island). He was definitely recognized as overlord by all the other Anglo-Saxon kings of his day except Eadbald of Kent.

See Bede, Hist. Eccl. (ed. Plummer, Oxford, 1896), ii. 5, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20; Nennius (ed. San Marte, 1844), § 63; Vita S. Oswaldi, ix. Simeon of Durham (ed. Arnold, London, 1882-1885, vol. i. R.S.).

(F. G. M. B.)

EDWIN, JOHN (1749-1790), English actor, was born in London on the 10th of August 1749, the son of a watchmaker. As a youth, he appeared in the provinces, in minor parts; and at Bath in 1768 he formed a connexion with a Mrs Walmsley, a milliner, who bore him a son, but whom he afterwards deserted. His first London appearance was at the Haymarket in 1776 as Flaw in Samuel Foote’s The Cozeners, but when George Colman took over the theatre he was given better parts and became its leading actor. In 1779 he was at Covent Garden, and played there or at the Haymarket until his death on the 31st of October 1790. Ascribed to him are The Last Legacy of John Edwin, 1780; Edwin’s Jests and Edwin’s Pills to Purge Melancholy.

His son, John Edwin (1768-1805), made a first appearance on the stage at the Haymarket as Hengo in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Bonduca in 1778, and from that time acted frequently with his father, and managed the private theatricals organized by his intimate friend Lord Barrymore at Wargrave, Berks. In 1791 he married Elizabeth Rebecca Richards, an actress already well known in juvenile parts, and played at the Haymarket and elsewhere thereafter with her. He died in Dublin on the 22nd of February 1805. His widow joined the Drury Lane company (then playing, on account of the fire of 1809, at the Lyceum), and took all the leading characters in the comedies of the day. She died on the 3rd of August 1854.

EDWY (Eadwig), ”The Fair” (c. 940-959), king of the English, was the eldest son of King Edmund and Ælfgifu, and succeeded his uncle Eadred in 955, when he was little more than fifteen years old. He was crowned at Kingston by Archbishop Odo, and his troubles began at the coronation feast. He had retired to enjoy the company of the ladies Æthelgifu (perhaps his foster-mother) and her daughter Ælfgifu, whom the king intended to marry. The nobles resented the king’s withdrawal, and he was induced by Dunstan and Cynesige, bishop of Lichfield, to return to the feast. Edwy naturally resented this interference, and in 957 Dunstan was driven into exile. By the year 956 Ælfgifu had become the king’s wife, but in 958 Archbishop Odo of Canterbury secured their separation on the ground of their being too closely akin. Edwy, to judge from the disproportionately large numbers of charters issued during his reign, seems to have been weakly lavish in the granting of privileges, and soon the chief men of Mercia and Northumbria were disgusted by his partiality for Wessex. The result was that in the year 957 his brother, the Ætheling Edgar, was chosen as king by the Mercians and Northumbrians. It is probable that no actual conflict took place, and in 959, on Edwy’s death, Edgar acceded peaceably to the combined kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria.

Authorities.—Saxon Chronicle (ed. Earle and Plummer, Oxford), sub ann.; Memorials of St Dunstan (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series); William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series); Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, vol. ii. Nos. 932-1046; Florence of Worcester.

EECKHOUT, GERBRAND VAN DEN (1621-1674), Dutch painter, born at Amsterdam on the 19th of August 1621, entered early into the studio of Rembrandt. Though a companion pupil to F. Bol and Govaert Flinck, he was inferior to both in skill and in the extent of his practice; yet at an early period he assumed Rembrandt’s manner with such success that his pictures were confounded with those of his master; and, even in modern days, the “Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus,” in the Berlin museum, and the “Presentation in the Temple,” in the Dresden gallery, have been held to represent worthily the style of Rembrandt. As evidence of the fidelity of Eeckhout’s imitation we may cite his “Presentation in the Temple,” at Berlin, which is executed after Rembrandt’s print of 1630, and his “Tobit with the Angel,” at Brunswick, which is composed on the same background as Rembrandt’s “Philosopher in Thought.” Eeckhout not merely copies the subjects; he also takes the shapes, the figures, the Jewish dress and the pictorial effects of his master. It is difficult to form an exact judgment of Eeckhout’s qualities at the outset of his career. His earliest pieces are probably those in which he more faithfully reproduced Rembrandt’s peculiarities. Exclusively his is a tinge of green in shadows marring the harmony of the work, a certain gaudiness of jarring tints, uniform surface and a touch more quick than subtle. Besides the pictures already mentioned we should class amongst early productions on this account the “Woman taken in Adultery,” at Amsterdam; “Anna presenting her Son to the High Priest,” in the Louvre; the “Epiphany,” at Turin; and the “Circumcision,” at Cassel. Eeckhout matriculated early in the Gild of Amsterdam. A likeness of a lady at a dressing-table with a string of beads, at Vienna, bears the date of 1643, and proves that the master at this time possessed more imitative skill than genuine mastery over nature. As he grew older he succeeded best in portraits, a very fair example of which is that of the historian Dappers (1669), in the Städel collection. Eeckhout occasionally varied his style so as to recall in later years the “small masters” of the Dutch school. Waagen justly draws attention to his following of Terburg in “Gambling Soldiers,” at Stafford House, and a “Soldiers’ Merrymaking,” in the collection of the marquess of Bute. A “Sportsman with Hounds,” probably executed in 1670, now in the Vander Hoo gallery, and a “Group of Children with Goats” (1671), in the Hermitage, hardly exhibit a trace of the artist’s first education. Amongst the best of Eeckhout’s works “Christ in the Temple” (1662), at Munich, and the “Haman and Mordecai” of 1665, at Luton House, occupy a good place. Eeckhout died at Amsterdam on the 22nd of October 1674.

EEL. The common freshwater eel (Lat. anguilla; O. Eng. œl) belongs to a group of soft-rayed fishes distinguished by the presence of an opening to the air-bladder and the absence of the pelvic fins. With its nearest relatives it forms the family Muraenidae, all of which are of elongated cylindrical form. The peculiarities of the eel are the rudimentary scales buried in the skin, the well-developed pectoral fins, the rounded tail fin continuous with the dorsal and ventral fins. Only one other species of the family occurs in British waters, namely, the conger, which is usually much larger and lives in the sea. In the conger the eyes are larger than in the eel, and the upper jaw overlaps the lower, whereas in the eel the lower jaw projects beyond the upper. Both species are voracious and predatory, and feed on almost any animal food they can obtain, living or dead. The conger is especially fond of squid or other Cephalopods, while the eel greedily devours carrion. The common eel occurs in all the rivers and fresh waters of Europe, except those draining towards the Arctic Ocean, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. It also occurs on the Atlantic side of North America. The conger has a wider range, extending from the western and southern shores of Britain and Ireland to the East Indian Archipelago and Japan. It is common in the Mediterranean.

The ovaries of the eel resemble somewhat those of the salmon in structure, not forming closed sacs, as in the majority of Teleostei, but consisting of laminae exposed to the body cavity. The laminae in which the eggs are produced are very numerous, and are attached transversely by their inner edges to a membranous band running nearly the whole length of the body-cavity. The majority of the eels captured for market are females with the ovaries in an immature condition. The male eel was first discovered in 1873 by Syrski at Trieste, the testis being described by him as a lobed elongated organ, in the same relative position as the ovary in the female, surrounded by a smooth surface without laminae. He did not find ripe spermatozoa. He discovered the male by examining small specimens, all the larger being female. L. Jacoby, a later observer, found no males exceeding 19 in. in length, while the female may reach a length of 39 in. or more. Dr C. G. J. Petersen, in a paper published in 1896, states that in Denmark two kinds of eels are distinguished by the fishermen, namely, yellow eels and silver eels. The silver eels are further distinguished by the shape of the snout and the size of the eyes. The snout in front of the eyes is not flat, as in the yellow eels, but high and compressed, and therefore appears more pointed, while the eyes are much larger and directed outwards. In both kinds there are males and females, but Petersen shows that the yellow eels change into silver eels when they migrate to the sea. The sexual organs in the silver eels are more developed than in the yellow eels, and the former have almost or entirely ceased to take food. The male silver eels are from 11½ to 19 in. in length, the females from 16½ to about 39 in. It is evident, therefore, that if eels only spawn once, they do not all reach the same size when they become sexually mature. The male conger was first described in 1879 by Hermes, who obtained a ripe specimen in the Berlin Aquarium. This specimen was not quite 2½ ft. in length, and of the numerous males which have been identified at the Plymouth Laboratory, none exceeded this length. The large numbers of conger above this size caught for the market are all immature females. Female conger of 5 or 6 ft. in length and weighing from 30 to 50 ℔ are common enough, and occasionally they exceed these limits. The largest recorded was 8 ft. 3 in. long, and weighed 128 ℔.

There is every reason to believe that eels and conger spawn but once in their lives, and die soon after they have discharged their generative products. When kept in aquaria, both male and female conger are vigorous and voracious. The males sooner or later cease to feed, and attain to the sexually mature condition, emitting ripe milt when handled and gently squeezed. They live in this condition five or six months, taking no food and showing gradual wasting and disease of the bodily organs. The eyes and skin become ulcerated, the sight is entirely lost, and the bones become soft through loss of lime. The females also after a time cease to feed, and live in a fasting condition for five or six months, during which time the ovaries develop and reach great size and weight, while the bones become soft and the teeth disappear. The female, however, always dies in confinement before the ova are perfectly ripe and before they are liberated from the ovarian tissue. The absence of some necessary condition, perhaps merely of the pressure which exists at the bottom of the sea, evidently prevents the complete development of the ovary. The invariable death of the fish in the same almost ripe condition leads to the conclusion that under normal conditions the fish dies after the mature ova have been discharged. G. B. Grassi states that he obtained ripe male eels, and ripe specimens of Muraena, another genus of the family, in the whirlpools of the Strait of Messina. A ripe female Muraena has also been described at Zanzibar. Gravid female eels, i.e. specimens with ovaries greatly enlarged, have been occasionally obtained in fresh water, but there is no doubt that, normally, sexual maturity is attained only in the sea.

Until recent years nothing was known from direct observation concerning the reproduction of the common eel or any species of the family. It was a well-known fact that large eels migrated towards the sea in autumn, and that in the spring small transparent eels of 2 in. in length and upwards were common on the shore under stones, and ascended rivers and streams in vast swarms. It was reasonable, therefore, to infer that the mature eels spawned in the sea, and that there the young were developed.

A group of peculiar small fishes were, however, known which were called Leptocephali, from the small proportional size of the head. The first of these described was captured in 1763 near Holyhead, and became the type of L. Morrisii, other specimens of which have been taken either near the shore or at the surface of the sea. Other forms placed in the same genus had been taken by surface fishing in the Mediterranean and in tropical ocean currents. The chief peculiarities of Leptocephali, in addition to the smallness of the head, are their ribbon-like shape and their glassy transparency during life. The body is flattened from side to side, and broad from the dorsal to the ventral edge. Like the eels, they are destitute of pelvic fins and no generative organs have been observed in them (see fig.).

In 1864 the American naturalist, T. N. Gill, published the conclusion that L. Morrisii was the young or larva of the conger, and Leptocephali generally the young stages of species of Muraenidae. In 1886 this conclusion was confirmed from direct observation by Yves Delage, who kept alive in a tank at Roscoff a specimen of L. Morrisii, and saw it gradually transformed into a young conger. From 1887 to 1892 Professor Grassi and Dr Calandruccio carried on careful and successful researches into the development of the Leptocephali at Catania, in Sicily. The specimens were captured in considerable numbers in the harbour, and the transformation of L. Morrisii into young conger, and of various other forms of Leptocephalus into other genera of Muraenidae, such as Muraena, Congromuraena and Ophichthys, was observed. In 1894 the same authors published the announcement that another species of Leptocephalus, namely, L. brevirostris, was the larva of the common eel. This larval form was captured in numbers with other Leptocephali in the strong currents of the Strait of Messina. In the metamorphosis of all Leptocephali a great reduction in size occurs. The L. brevirostris reaches a length of 8 cm., or a little more than 2½ in., while the perfectly-formed young eel is 2 in. long or a little more.

The Italian naturalists have also satisfied themselves that certain pelagic fish eggs originally described by Raffaele at Naples are the eggs of Muraenidae, and that among them are the eggs of Conger and Anguilla. They believe that these eggs, although free in the water, remain usually near the bottom at great depths, and that fertilization takes place under similar conditions. No fish eggs of the kind to which reference is here made have yet been obtained on the British coasts, although conger and eels are so abundant there. Raffaele described and figured the larva newly hatched from one of the eggs under consideration, and it is evident that this larva is the earliest stage of a Leptocephalus.

Although young eels, some of them more or less flat and transparent, are common enough on the coasts of Great Britain and north-western Europe in spring, neither eggs nor specimens of Leptocephalus brevirostris have yet been taken in the North Sea, English Channel or other shallow waters in the neighbourhood of the British Islands, or in the Baltic. Marked eels have been proved to migrate from the inmost part of the Baltic to the Kattegat. Recently, however, search has been made for the larvae in the more distant and deeper portions of the Atlantic Ocean. In May 1904 a true larval specimen was taken at the surface south-west of the Faeroe Islands, and another was taken 40 m. north by west of Achill Head, Ireland. In 1905 numbers were taken in deep water in the Atlantic. The evidence at present available indicates that the spawning of mature eels takes place beyond the 100 fathom line, and that the young eels which reach the coast are already a year old. As eels, both young and old, are able to live for a long time out of water and have the habit of travelling at night over land in wet grass and in damp weather, there is no difficulty in explaining their presence in wells, ponds or other isolated bodies of fresh water at any distance from the sea.

See “The Eel Question,” Report U.S. Commissioner of Fisheries for 1879 (Washington, 1882); J. T. Cunningham, “Reproduction and Development of the Conger,” Journ. Mar. Biol. Assn. vol. ii.; C. G. J. Petersen, Report Dan. Biol. Station, v. (1894); G. B. Grassi, Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci. vol. xxxix. (1897).

(J. T. C.)

EFFENDI (a Turkish word, corrupted from the Gr. αὐθέντης, a lord or master), a title of respect, equivalent to the English “sir,” in the Turkish empire and some other eastern countries. It follows the personal name, when that is used, and is generally given to members of the learned professions, and to government officials who have no higher rank, such as Bey, Pasha, &c. It may also indicate a definite office, as Hakim effendi, chief physician to the sultan. The possessive form effendim (my master) is used by servants and in formal intercourse.

EFFIGIES, MONUMENTAL. An “effigy” (Lat. effigies, from effingere, to fashion) is, in general, a material image or likeness of a person; and the practice of hanging or burning people “in effigy,” i.e. their semblance only, preserves the more general sense of the word. Such representations may be portraits, caricatures or models. But, apart from general usages of the term (see e.g. [Wax Figures]), it is more particularly applied in the history of art to a particular class of sculptured figures, in the flat or the round, associated with Christian sepulchral monuments, dating from the 12th century. The earliest of these attempts at commemorative portraiture were executed in low relief upon coffin-lids of stone or purbeck marble, some portions of the designs for the most part being executed by means of incised lines, cut upon the raised figure. Gradually, with the increased size and the greater architectural dignity of monumental structures, effigies attained to a high rank as works of art, so that before the close of the 13th century very noble examples of figures of this order are found to have been executed in full relief; and, about the same period, similar figures also began to be engraved, either upon monumental slabs of stone or marble, or upon plates of metal, which were affixed to the surfaces of slabs that were laid in the pavements of churches.

Engraved plates of this class, known as “Brasses” (see [Brasses, Monumental]), continued in favour until the era of the Reformation, and in recent times their use has been revived. It seems probable that the introduction and the prevalence of flat engraved memorials, in place of commemorative effigies in relief, was due, in the first instance, to the inconvenience resulting from increasing numbers of raised stones on the pavement of churches; while the comparatively small cost of engraved plates, their high artistic capabilities, and their durability, combined to secure for them the popularity they unquestionably enjoyed. If considerably less numerous than contemporary incised slabs and engraved brasses, effigies sculptured in relief—with some exceptions in full relief—continued for centuries to constitute the most important features in many medieval monuments. In the 13th century, their origin being apparently derived from the endeavour to combine a monumental effigy with a monumental cross upon the same sepulchral stone (whether in sculpture or by incised lines), parts only of the human figure sometimes were represented, such as the head or bust, and occasionally also the feet; in some of the early examples of this curious class the cross symbol was not introduced, and after awhile half-length figures became common.

Except in very rare instances, that most important element, genuine face-portraiture, is not to be looked for, in even the finest sculptured effigies, earlier than about the middle of the 15th century. In works of the highest order of art, indeed, the memorials of personages of the most exalted rank, effigies from an early period in their existence may be considered occasionally to have been portraits properly so called; and yet even in such works as these an approximately correct general resemblance but too frequently appears to have been all that was contemplated or desired. At the same time, in the earliest monumental effigies we possess contemporary examples of vestments, costume,[1] armour, weapons, royal and knightly insignia, and other personal appointments and accessories, in all of which accurate fidelity has been certainly observed with scrupulous care and minute exactness. Thus, since the monumental effigies of England are second to none in artistic merit, while they have been preserved in far greater numbers, and generally in better condition than those in other countries, they represent in unbroken continuity an unrivalled series of original personal representations of successive generations, very many of them being, in the most significant acceptation of that term, veritable contemporaneous portraits.

Once esteemed to be simply objects of antiquarian curiosity, and either altogether disregarded or too often subjected to injurious indignity, the monumental effigies in England long awaited the formation of a just estimate of their true character and their consequent worth in their capacity as authorities for face-portraiture. In the original contract for the construction of the monument at Warwick to Richard Beauchamp, the fifth earl, who died in 1439, it is provided that an effigy of the deceased noble should be executed in bronze gilt, with all possible care, by the most skilful and experienced artists of the time; and the details of the armour and the ornaments of the figure are specified with minute precision. It is remarkable, however, that the effigy itself is described only in the general and indefinite terms—“an image of a man armed.” There is no provision that the effigy should be “an image” of the earl; and much less is anything said as to its being such a “counterfeit presentment” of the features and person of the living man, as the contemporaries of Shakespeare had learned to expect in what they would accept as true portraiture. The effigy, almost as perfect as when it left the sculptor’s hands, still bears witness, as well to the conscientious care with which the conditions of the contract were fulfilled, as to the eminent ability of the artists employed. So complete is the representation of the armour, that this effigy might be considered actually to have been equipped in the earl’s own favourite suit of the finest Milan steel. The cast of the figure also was evidently studied from what the earl had been when in life, and the countenance is sufficiently marked and endowed with the unmistakable attributes of personal character. Possibly such a resemblance may have been the highest aim in the image-making of the period, somewhat before the middle of the 15th century. Three-quarters of a century later, a decided step towards fidelity in true portraiture is shown to have been taken, when, in his will (1510 a.d.), Henry VII. spoke of the effigies of himself and of his late queen, Elizabeth of York, to be executed for their monument, as “an image of our figure and another of hers.” The existing effigies in the Beauchamp chapel and in Henry VII.’s chapel, with the passages just quoted from the contract made by the executors of the Lancastrian earl, strikingly illustrate the gradual development of the idea of true personal portraiture in monumental effigies, during the course of the 15th and at the commencement of the 16th century in England.

Study of the royal effigies still preserved must commence in Worcester Cathedral with that of King John. This earliest example of a series of effigies of which the historical value has never yet been duly appreciated is rude as a work of art, and yet there is on it the impress of such individuality as demonstrates that the sculptor did his best to represent the king. Singularly fine as achievements of the sculptor’s art are the effigies of Henry III., Queen Eleanor of Castile, and her ill-fated son Edward II., the two former in Westminster Abbey, the last in Gloucester cathedral; and of their fidelity also as portraits no doubt can be entertained. In like manner the effigies of Edward III. and his queen Philippa, and those of their grandson Richard II. and his first consort, Anne of Bohemia (all at Westminster), and of their other grandson, Henry of Lancaster, with his second consort, Joan of Navarre, at Canterbury—all convince us that they are true portraits. Next follow the effigies of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York,—to be succeeded, and the royal series to be completed, by the effigies of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, all of them in Westminster Abbey. Very instructive would be a close comparison between the two last-named works and the painted portraits of the rival queens, especially in the case of Mary, the pictures of whom differ so remarkably from one another.

As the 15th century advanced, the rank of the personage represented and the character of the art that distinguishes any effigy goes far to determine its portrait qualities. Still later, when more exact face-portraiture had become a recognized element, sculptors must be supposed to have aimed at the production of such resemblance as their art would enable them to give to their works; and accordingly, when we compare effigies with painted portraits of the same personages, we find that they corroborate one another. The prevalence of portraiture in the effigies of the 16th and 17th centuries, when their art generally underwent a palpable decline, by no means raises all works of this class, or indeed the majority of them, to the dignity of true portraits; on the contrary, in these effigies, as in those of earlier periods, it is the character of the art in each particular example that affects its merit, value and authority as a portrait. In judging of these latter effigies, however, we must estimate them by the standard of art of their own era; and, as a general rule, the effigies that are the best as works of art in their own class are the best also and the most faithful in their portraiture. The earlier effigies, usually produced without any express aim at exact portraiture, as we now employ that expression, have nevertheless strong claims upon our veneration. Often their sculpture is very noble; and even when they are rudest as works of art, there is rarely lacking a rough grandeur about them, as exhibited in the fine bold figure of Fair Rosamond’s son, Earl William of the Long Sword, which reposes in such dignified serenity in his own cathedral at Salisbury. These effigies may not bring us closely face to face with remote generations, but they do place before us true images of what the men and women of those generations were.

Observant students of monumental effigies will not fail to appreciate the singular felicity with which the medieval sculptors adjusted their compositions to the recumbent position in which their “images” necessarily had to be placed. Equally worthy of notice is the manner in which many monumental effigies, particularly those of comparatively early date, are found to have assumed an aspect neither living nor lifeless, and yet impressively life-like. The sound judgment also, and the good taste of those early sculptors, were signally exemplified in their excluding, almost without exception, the more extravagant fashions in the costume of their era from their monumental sculpture, and introducing only the simpler but not less characteristic styles of dress and appointments. Monumental effigies, as commonly understood, represent recumbent figures, and the accessories of the effigies themselves have been adjusted to that position. With the exceptions when they appear on one side resting on the elbow (as in the case of Thomas Owen (d. 1598) and Sir Thomas Heskett (d. 1605), both in Westminster Abbey), these effigies lie on their backs, and as a general rule (except in the case of episcopal figures represented in the act of benediction, or of princes and warriors who sometimes hold a sceptre or a sword) their hands are uplifted and conjoined as in supplication. The crossed-legged attitude of numerous armed effigies of the era of mail-armour has been supposed to imply the personages so represented to have been crusaders or Knights of the Temple; but in either case the supposition is unfounded and inconsistent with unquestionable facts. Much beautiful feeling is conveyed by figures of ministering angels being introduced as in the act of supporting and smoothing the pillows or cushions that are placed in very many instances to give support to the heads of the recumbent effigies. The animals at the feet of these effigies, which frequently have an heraldic significance, enabled the sculptors, with equal propriety and effectiveness, to overcome one of the special difficulties inseparable from the recumbent position. In general, monumental effigies were carved in stone or marble, or cast in bronze, but occasionally they were of wood: such is the effigy of Robert Curthose, son of William I. (d. 1135), whose altar tomb in Gloucester cathedral was probably set up about 1320.

In addition to recumbent statues, upright figures must receive notice here, especially those set in wall-monuments in churches mainly. These usually consisted in half-length figures, seen full-face, placed in a recess within an architectural setting more or less elaborate. They belong mainly to the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the many examples in old St Paul’s cathedral (destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666) were those of Dean Colet (d. 1519), William Aubrey (1595) and Alexander Nowell (d. 1601). In St Giles’s, Cripplegate, is the similarly designed effigy of John Speed (d. 1629); while that of John Stow (d. 1605) is a full-length, seated figure. This, like the figure of Thomas Owen, is in alabaster, but since its erection has always been described as terra-cotta—a material which came into considerable favour for the purpose of busts and half-lengths towards the end of the 16th century, imported, of course, from abroad. Sometimes the stone monuments were painted to resemble life, as in the monuments to Shakespeare and John Combe (the latter now over-painted white), in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon.

Bibliography.—Among the more noteworthy publications are the following: Monumental Effigies in Great Britain (Norman Conquest to Henry VIII.), by C. A. Stothard, folio (London, 1876); The Recumbent Monumental Effigies in Northamptonshire, by A. Hartshorne (4to, London, 1867-1876); Sepulchral Memorials (Northamptonshire), by W. H. Hyett (folio, London, 1817); Ancient Sepulchral Effigies and Monumental Sculpture of Devon, by W. H. H. Rogers (4to, Exeter, 1877); The Ancient Sepulchral Monuments of Essex, ed. by C. M. Carlton (4to, Chelmsford, 1890); and other works dealing with the subject according to counties. Of particular value is the Report of the Sepulchral Monuments Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, laboriously compiled at the request of the Office of Works, arranged (1) personally and chronologically, and (2) locally (1872).

(C. B.; M. H. S.)

[1] It is well known that the costume of effigies nearly always represented what was actually worn by the remains of the person commemorated, when prepared for interment and when lying in state; and, in like manner, the aspect of the lifeless countenance, even if not designedly reproduced by medieval “image” makers, may long have exercised a powerful influence upon their ideas of consistent monumental portraiture.

EGAN, PIERCE (1772-1849), English sporting writer, was born in London in 1772. He began life as sporting reporter for the newspapers, and was soon recognized as the best of his day. In 1814 he wrote, set and printed a book about the relations of the prince regent (afterwards George IV.) and Miss Robinson, called The Mistress of Royalty, or the Loves of Florizel and Perdita. But his best-known work is Life in London, or Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne and his Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom (1821), a book describing the amusements of sporting men, with illustrations by Cruikshank. This book took the popular fancy and was one of Thackeray’s early favourites (see his Roundabout Papers). It was repeatedly imitated, and several dramatic versions were produced in London. A sequel containing more of country sports and misadventures probably suggested Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. In 1824 Pierce Egan’s Life in London and Sporting Guide was started, a weekly newspaper afterwards incorporated with Bell’s Life. Among his numerous other books are Boxiana (1818), Life of an Actor (1824), Book of Sports (1832), and the Pilgrims of the Thames (1838). Egan died at Pentonville on the 3rd of August 1849.

His son, Pierce Egan (1814-1880), illustrated his own and his father’s books, and wrote a score of novels of varying merit, of which The Snake in the Grass (1858) is perhaps the best.

EGBO, a secret society flourishing chiefly among the Efiks of the Calabar district, West Africa. Egbo or Ekpé is a mysterious spirit who lives in the jungle and is supposed to preside at the ceremonies of the society. Only males can join, boys being initiated about the age of puberty. Members are bound by oath of secrecy, and fees on entrance are payable. The Egbo-men are ranked in seven or nine grades, for promotion to each of which fresh initiation ceremonies, fees and oaths are necessary. The society combines a kind of freemasonry with political and law-enforcing aims. For instance any member wronged in an Egbo district, that is one dominated by the society, has only to address an Egbo-man or beat the Egbo drum in the Egbo-house, or “blow Egbo” as it is called, i.e. sound the Egbo horn before the hut of the wrong-doer, and the whole machinery of the society is put in force to see justice done. Formerly the society earned as bad a name as most secret sects, from the barbarous customs mingled with its rites; but the British authorities have been able to make use of it in enforcing order and helping on civilization. The Egbo-house, an oblong building like the nave of a church, usually stands in the middle of the villages. The walls are of clay elaborately painted inside and ornamented with clay figures in relief. Inside are wooden images, sometimes of an obscene nature, to which reverence is paid. Much social importance attaches to the highest ranks of Egbo-men, and it is said that very large sums, sometimes more than a thousand pounds, are paid to attain these dignities. At certain festivals in the year the Egbo-men wear black wooden masks with horns which it is death for any woman to look on.

See Mary H. Kingsley, West African Studies (1901); Rev. Robt. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa (1904); C. Partridge, Cross River Natives (1905).

EGEDE, HANS (1686-1758), Norwegian missionary, was born in the vogtship of Senjen, Norway, on the 31st of January 1686. He studied at the university of Copenhagen, and in 1706 became pastor at Vaagen in the Lofoten islands, but the study of the chronicles of the northmen having awakened in him the desire to visit the colony of Northmen in Greenland, and to convert them to Christianity, he resigned his charge in 1717; and having, after great difficulty, obtained the sanction and help of the Danish government in his enterprise, he set sail with three ships from Bergen on the 3rd of May 1721, accompanied by his wife and children. He landed on the west coast of Greenland on the 3rd of July, but found to his dismay that the Northmen were entirely superseded by the Eskimo, in whom he had no particular interest, and whose language he would be able to master, if at all, only after years of study. But, though compelled to endure for some years great privations, and at one time to see the result of his labours almost annihilated by the ravages of small-pox, he remained resolutely at his post. He founded the colony of Godthaab, and soon gained the affections of the people. He converted many of them to Christianity, and established a considerable commerce with Denmark. Ill-health compelling him to return home in 1736, he was made principal of a seminary at Copenhagen, in which workers were trained for the Greenland mission; and from 1740 to 1747 he was superintendent of the mission. He died on the 5th of November 1758. He is the author of a book on the natural history of Greenland.

His work in Greenland was continued, on his retirement, by his son Paul Egede (1708-1789), who afterwards returned to Denmark and succeeded his father as superintendent of the Greenland mission. Paul Egede also became professor of theology in the mission seminary. He published a Greenland-Danish-Latin dictionary (1750), Greenland grammar (1760) and Greenland catechism (1756). In 1766 he completed the translation begun by his father of the New Testament into the Greenland tongue; and in 1787 he translated Thomas à Kempis. In 1789 he published a journal of his life in Greenland.

EGER, AQIBA (1761-1837), Jewish scholar, was for the last twenty-five years of his life rabbi of Posen. He was a rigorous casuist of the old school, and his chief works were legal notes on the Talmud and the code of Qaro (q.v.). He believed that religious education was enough, and thus opposed the party which favoured secular schools. He was a determined foe of the reform movement, which began to make itself felt in his time.

EGER (Czech, Cheb), a town of Bohemia, Austria, 148 m. W.N.W. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 23,665. It is situated on the river Eger, at the foot of one of the spurs of the Fichtelgebirge, and lies in the centre of a German district of about 40,000 inhabitants, who are distinguished from the surrounding population by their costumes, language, manners and customs. On the rock, to the N.W. of the town, lies the Burg or Castle, built probably in the 12th century, and now in ruins. It possesses a massive black tower, built of blocks of lava, and in the courtyard is an interesting chapel, in Romanesque style with fantastic ornamentations, which was finished in the 13th century. In the banquet-room of this castle Wallenstein’s officers Terzky, Kinsky, Illo and Neumann were assassinated a few hours before Wallenstein himself was murdered by Captain Devereux. The murder took place on the 25th of February 1634 in the town-house, which was at that time the burgomaster’s house. The rooms occupied by Wallenstein have been transformed since 1872 into a museum, which contains many historical relics and antiquities of the town of Eger. The handsome and imposing St Nicholas church was built in the 13th century and restored in 1892. There is a considerable textile industry, together with the manufacture of shoes, machinery and milling. Eger was the birthplace of the novelist and playwright Braun von Braunthal (1802-1866). About 3 m. N.W. of Eger is the well-known watering place of Franzensbad (q.v.).

The district of Eger was in 870 included in the new margraviate of East Franconia, which belonged at first to the Babenbergs, but from 906 to the counts of Vohburg, who took the title of margraves of Eger. By the marriage, in 1149, of Adela of Vohburg with the emperor Frederick I., Eger came into the possession of the house of Swabia, and remained in the hands of the emperors until the 13th century. In 1265 it was taken by Ottakar II. of Bohemia, who retained it for eleven years. After being repeatedly transferred from the one power to the other, according to the preponderance of Bohemia or the empire, the town and territory were finally incorporated with Bohemia in 1350, after the Bohemian king became the emperor Charles IV. Several imperial privileges, however, continued to be enjoyed by the town till 1849. It suffered severely during the Hussite war, during the Swedish invasion in 1631 and 1647, and in the War of the Austrian Succession in 1742.

See Drivok, Ältere Geschichte der deutschen Reichstadt Eger und des Reichsgebietes Egerland (Leipzig, 1875).

EGER (Ger. Erlau, Med. Lat. Agria), a town of Hungary, capital of the county of Heves, 90 m. E.N.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900) 24,650. It is beautifully situated in the valley of the river Eger, an affluent of the Theiss, and on the eastern outskirts of the Mátra mountains. Eger is the see of an archbishopric, and owing to its numerous ecclesiastical buildings has received the name of “the Hungarian Rome.” Amongst the principal buildings are the beautiful cathedral in the Italian style, with a handsome dome 130 ft. high, erected in 1831-1834 by the archbishop Ladislaus Pyrker (1772-1847); the church of the Brothers of Mercy, opposite which is a handsome minaret, 115 ft. high, the remains of a mosque dating from the Turkish occupation, other Roman Catholic churches, and an imposing Greek church. The archiepiscopal palace; the lyceum, with a good library and an astronomical observatory; the seminary for Roman priests; and the town-hall are all noteworthy. On an eminence N.E. of the town, laid out as a park, are the ruins of the old fortress, and a monument of Stephen Dobó, the heroic defender of the town against the assaults of the Turks in 1552. The chief occupation of the inhabitants is the cultivation of the vineyards of the surrounding hills, which produce the red Erlauer wine, one of the best in Hungary. To the S.W. of Eger, in the same county of Heves, is situated the town of Gyöngyös (pop. 15,878). It lies on the south-western outskirts of the Mátra mountains, and carries on a brisk trade in the Erlauer wine, which is produced throughout the district. The Hungarians defeated the Austrians at Gyöngyös on the 3rd of April 1849. To the S.W. of Gyöngyös is situated the old town of Hatvan (pop. 9698), which is now a busy railway junction, and possesses several industrial establishments.

Eger is an old town, and owes its importance to the bishopric created by King Stephen in 1010, which was one of the richest in the whole of Hungary. In 1552 Eger resisted the repeated assaults of a large Turkish force; in 1596, however, it was given up to the Turks by the Austrian party in the garrison, and remained in their possession until 1687. It was created an archbishopric in 1814. During the revolution of 1848-1849, Eger was remarkable for the patriotic spirit displayed by its inhabitants; and it was here that the principal campaigns against the Austrians were organized.

EGERIA, an ancient Italian goddess of springs. Two distinct localities were regarded as sacred to her,—the grove of Diana Nemorensis at Aricia, and a spring in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome at the Porta Capena. She derives her chief importance from her legendary connexion with King Numa, who had frequent interviews with her and consulted her in regard to his religious legislation (Livy i. 19; Juvenal iii. 12). These meetings took place on the spot where the sacred shield had fallen from heaven, and here Numa dedicated a grove to the Camenae, like Egeria deities of springs. After the death of Numa, Egeria was said to have fled into the grove of Aricia, where she was changed into a spring for having interrupted the rites of Diana by her lamentations (Ovid, Metam. xv. 479). At Aricia there was also a Manius Egerius, a male counterpart of Egeria. Her connexion with Diana Nemorensis, herself a birth goddess, is confirmed by the fact that her aid was invoked by pregnant women. She also possessed the gift of prophecy; and the statement (Dion. Halic. ii. 60) that she was one of the Muses is due to her connexion with the Camenae, whose worship was displaced by them.

EGERTON, SIR PHILIP DE MALPAS GREY, Bart. (1806-1881), English palaeontologist, was born on the 13th of November 1806, the son of the 9th baronet. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1828. While at college his interest in geology was aroused by the lectures of W. Buckland, and by his acquaintance with W.D. Conybeare. Subsequently when travelling in Switzerland with Lord Cole (afterwards 3rd earl of Enniskillen) they were introduced to Prof. L. Agassiz at Neufchatel, and determined to make a special study of fossil fishes. During the course of fifty years they gradually gathered together two of the largest and finest of private collections—that of Sir Philip Grey Egerton being at Oulton Park, Tarporley, Cheshire. He described the structure and affinities of numerous species in the publications of the Geological Society of London, the Geological Magazine and the Decades of the Geological Survey; and in recognition of his services the Wollaston medal was awarded to him in 1873 by the Geological Society. He was elected F.R.S. in 1831, and was a trustee of the British Museum. As a member of Parliament he represented the city of Chester in 1830, the southern division of Cheshire from 1835 until 1868, and the western division from 1868 to 1881. He died in London on the 6th of April 1881. His collection of fossil fishes is now in the British Museum.

EGG, AUGUSTUS LEOPOLD (1816-1863), English painter, was born on the 2nd of May 1816 in London, where his father carried on business as a gun-maker. He had some schooling at Bexley, and was not at first intended for the artistic profession; but, developing a faculty in this line, he entered in 1834 the drawing class of Mr Sass, and in 1836 the school of the Royal Academy. His first exhibited picture appeared in 1837 at the Suffolk Street gallery. In 1838 he began exhibiting in the Academy, his subject being a “Spanish Girl”; altogether he sent twenty-seven works to this institution. In 1848 he became an associate and in 1860 a full member of the Academy: he had considerable means, apart from his profession. In 1857 he took a leading part in selecting and arranging the modern paintings in the Art-Treasures Exhibition in Manchester. His constitution being naturally frail, he went in 1853, with Dickens and Wilkie Collins, to Italy for a short trip, and in 1863 he visited Algeria. Here he benefited so far as his chronic lung-disease was concerned; but exposure to a cold wind while out riding brought on an attack of asthma, from which he died on the 26th of March 1863 at Algiers, near which city his remains were buried.

Egg was a gifted and well-trained painter of genre, chiefly in the way of historical anecdote, or of compositions from the poets and novelists. Among his principal pictures may be named: 1843, the “Introduction of Sir Piercie Shafton and Halbert Glendinning” (from Scott’s Monastery); 1846, “Buckingham Rebuffed”; 1848, “Queen Elizabeth discovers she is no longer young”; 1850, “Peter the Great sees Catharine for the first time”; 1854, “Charles I. raising the Standard at Nottingham” (a study); 1855, the “Life and Death of Buckingham”; 1857 and 1858, two subjects from Thackeray’s Esmond; 1858, “Past and Present, a triple picture of a faithless wife”; 1859, the “Night before Naseby”; 1860, his last exhibited work, the Dinner Scene from The Taming of the Shrew. The Tate Gallery contains one of his earlier pictures, Patricio entertaining two Ladies, from the Diable boiteux; it was painted in 1844.

Egg was rather below the middle height, with dark hair and a handsome well-formed face; the head of Peter the Great (in the picture of Peter and Catharine, which may be regarded as his best work, along with the Life and Death of Buckingham) was studied, but of course considerably modified, from his own countenance. He was manly, kind-hearted, pleasant, and very genial and serviceable among brother-artists; social and companionable, but holding mainly aloof from fashionable circles. As an actor he had uncommon talent. He appeared among Dickens’s company of amateurs in 1852 in Lord Lytton’s comedy Not so Bad as we Seem, and afterwards in Wilkie Collins’s Frozen Deep, playing the humorous part of Job Want.

EGG (O.E. aeg, cf. Ger. Ei, Swed. aegg, and prob. Gr. ὠόν, Lat. ovum), the female reproductive cell or ovum of animals, which gives rise generally only after fertilization to the young. The largest eggs are those of birds; and this because, to the minute essential portion of the egg, or germ, from which the young bird grows, there is added a large store of food-material—the yolk and white of the egg—destined to nourish the growing embryo while the whole is enclosed within a hard shell.

The relative sizes of eggs depend entirely on the amount of the food-yolk thus enclosed with the germ; while the form and texture of the outer envelope are determined by the nature of the environment to which the egg is exposed. Where the food material is infinitesimal in quantity the egg is either not extruded—the embryo being nourished by the maternal tissues,—or it passes out of the parental body and gives rise at once to a free-living organism or “larva” (see [Larval Forms]), as in the case of many lowly freshwater and marine animals. In such cases no “egg” in the usual sense of the term is produced.

The number of eggs periodically produced by any given individual depends on the risks of destruction to which they, and the young to which they give rise, are exposed: not more than a single egg being annually laid by some species, while with others the number may amount to millions.

Birds’ Eggs.—The egg of the bird affords, for general purposes, the readiest example of the modifications imposed on eggs by the external environment. Since it must be incubated by the warmth of the parent’s body, the outer envelope has taken the form of a hard shell for the protection of the growing chick from pressure, while the dyes which commonly colour the surface of this shell serve as a screen to hide it from egg-eating animals.

Carbonate of lime forms the principal constituent of this shell; but in addition phosphate of lime and magnesia are also present. In section, this shell will be found to be made up of three more or less distinct crystalline layers, traversed by vertical canals, whereby the shell is made porous so as to admit air to the developing chick.

The outermost, or third, layer of this shell often takes the form of a glaze, as of porcelain, as for example in the burnished egg of the ostrich: or it may assume the character of a thick, chalky layer as in some cuckoos (Guira, Crotophaga ani), cormorants, grebes and flamingoes: while in some birds as in the auks, gulls and tinamous, this outer layer is wanting; yet the tinamous have the most highly glazed eggs of all birds, the second layer of the shell developing a surface even more perfectly burnished than that formed by the outermost, third layer in the ostrich.

While the eggs of some birds have the shell so thin as to be translucent, e.g. kingfisher, others display considerable thickness, the maximum being reached in the egg of the extinct Aepyornis.

Though in shape differing but little from that of the familiar hen’s egg, certain well-marked modifications of form are yet to be met with. Thus the eggs of the plover are pear-shaped, of the sand-grouse more or less cylindrical, of the owls and titmice spherical and of the grebes biconical.

In the matter of coloration the eggs of birds present a remarkable range. The pigments to which this coloration is due have been shown, by means of their absorption spectra (Sorby, Proc. Zool. Soc., 1875), to be seven in number. The first of these, oorhodeine, is brown-red in tone, and rarely absent: the second and third, oocyanin, and banded oocyanin, are of a beautiful blue, and though differing spectroscopically give rise to the same product when oxidized: the fourth and fifth are yellow, and rufous ooxanthine, the former combining with oocyanin gives rise to the wonderful malachite green of the emu’s egg, while the latter occurs only in the eggs of tinamous: the sixth is lichenoxanthine, a pigment not yet thoroughly known but present in the shells of all eggs having a peculiar brick-red colour. Still less is known of the seventh pigment which is, as yet, nameless. It is a substance giving a banded absorption spectrum, and which, mixed with other pigments, imparts an abnormally browner tint. The origin of these pigments is yet uncertain, but it is probable that they are derived from the haemoglobin or red colouring matter of the blood. This being so, then the pigments of the egg-shell differ entirely in their nature from those which colour the yolk or the feathers.

While many eggs are either colourless or of one uniform tint, the majority have the surface broken up by spots or lines, or a combination of both, of varying tints: the pigment being deposited as the egg passes down the lower portion of the oviduct. That the egg during this passage turns slowly on its long axis is shown by the fact that the spots and lines have commonly a spiral direction; though some of the markings are made during periods of rest, as is shown by their sharp outlines, movement giving a blurred effect. Where the egg is pyriform, the large end makes way for the smaller. Many eggs display, in addition to the strongly marked spots, more or fewer fainter spots embedded in a deeper layer of the shell, and hence such eggs are said to be “double-spotted,” e.g. rails and plovers.

Among some species, as in birds of prey, the intensity of this coloration is said to increase with age up to a certain point, when it as gradually decreases. Frequently, especially where but two eggs are laid (Newton), all the dye will be deposited, sometimes on the first, sometimes on the last laid, leaving the other colourless. But although of a number of eggs in a “clutch”—as the full complement of eggs in a nest is called—no two are exactly alike, they commonly bear a very close resemblance. Among certain species, however, which lay several eggs, one of the number invariably differs markedly from the rest, as for example in the eggs of the house-sparrow or in those of the sparrow-hawk, where, of a clutch of six, two generally differ conspicuously from the rest. Differing though these eggs do from the rest of the clutch, all yet present the characters common to the species. But the eggs of some birds, such as the Australian swamp quail, Synoecus australis, present a remarkably wide range of variation in the matter of coloration, no two clutches being alike, the extremes ranging from pure white to eggs having a greenish ground colour and rufous spots or blotches. But a still more interesting illustration of variation equally marked is furnished by the chikor partridge (Caccabis chukar), since here the variation appears to be correlated with the geographical distribution of the species. Thus eggs taken in Greece are for the most part cream-coloured and unspotted; those from the Grecian Archipelago are generally spotted and blotched; while more to the eastward spots are invariably present, and the blotches attain their maximum development.

But in variability the eggs of the guillemot (Lomvia troile) exceed all others: both in the hue of the ground colour and in the form of the superimposed markings, these eggs exhibit a wonderful range for which no adequate explanation has yet been given.

Individual peculiarities of coloration are commonly reproduced, not only with this species but also in others, year after year.

The coloration of the egg bears no sort of relation to the coloration of the bird which lays it; but it bears on the other hand a more or less direct relation to the nature of the Significance of colour. environment during incubation.

White eggs may generally be regarded as representing the primitive type of egg, since they agree in this particular with the eggs of reptiles. And it will generally be found that eggs of this hue are deposited in holes or in domed nests. So long indeed as nesting-places of this kind are used will the eggs be white. And this because coloured eggs would be invisible in dimly lighted chambers of this description, and therefore constantly exposed to the risk of being broken by the sitting bird, or rolling out of reach where the chamber was large enough to admit of this, whereas white eggs are visible so long as they can be reached by the faintest rays of light. Pigeons invariably lay white eggs; and while some deposit them in holes others build an open nest, a mere platform of sticks. These exceptions to the rule show that the depredations of egg-eating animals are sufficiently guarded against by the overhanging foliage, as well as by the great distance from the ground at which the nest is built. Birds which have reverted to the more ancient custom of nesting in holes after having developed pigmented eggs, have adopted the device of covering the shell with a layer of chalky matter (e.g. puffins), or, to put the case more correctly, they have been enabled to maintain survival after their return to the more ancient mode of nidification, because this reversion was accompanied by the tendency to cover the pigmented surface of the shell with this light-reflecting chalky incrustation.

Eggs which are deposited on the bare ground, or in other exposed situations, are usually protectively coloured: that is to say, the hue of the shell more or less completely harmonizes with the ground on which the egg is placed. The eggs of the plover tribe afford the most striking examples of this fact.

But the majority of birds deposit their eggs in a more or less elaborately constructed nest, and in such cases the egg, so far from being protectively coloured, often displays tints that would appear calculated rather to attract the attention of egg-stealing animals; bright blue or blue spotted with black being commonly met with. It may be, however, that coloration of this kind is less conspicuous than is generally supposed, but in any case the safety of the egg depends not so much on its coloration as on the character of the nest, which, where protective devices are necessary, must harmonize sufficiently with its surroundings to escape observation from prowling egg-stealers of all kinds.

The size of the egg depends partly on the number produced and partly on the conditions determining the state of the young bird at hatching: hence there is a great disparity in the relative sizes of the eggs of different birds. Thus it will be found that young birds which emerge in the world blind, naked and helpless are the product of relatively small eggs, while on the contrary young hatched from relatively large eggs are down-clad and active from birth.

The fact that the eggs must be brooded by the parent is also a controlling factor in so far as number is concerned, for no more can be hatched than can be covered by the sitting bird. Other factors, however, less understood, also exercise a controlling influence in this matter. Thus the ostrich lays from 12 to 16, the teal 15, the partridge 12-20, while among many other species the number is strictly limited, as in the case of the hornbills and guillemots, which lay but a single egg; the apteryx, divers, petrels and pigeons never lay more than 2, while the gulls and plovers never exceed 4. Tropical species are said to lay fewer eggs than their representatives in temperate regions, and further immature birds lay more and smaller eggs than when fully adult.

Partly owing to the uniformity of shape, size and texture of the shell, the eggs of birds are by no means easy to distinguish, except in so far as their family resemblances are concerned: that is to say, except in particular cases, they cannot be specifically distinguished, and hence they are of but little or no value for the purposes of classification.

Save only among the megapodes, all birds brood their eggs, the period of incubation varying from 13 days, as in small passerine birds, to 8 weeks, as in the cassowary, though eggs of the rhea and of Struthio hatch in from 5 to 6 weeks. But the megapodes deposit their eggs in mounds of decaying vegetable matter or in sand in the neighbourhood of hot springs, and there without further apparent care leave them. Where the nestling is active from the moment of hatching the eggs have a relatively longer incubation period than in cases where the nestlings are for a long while helpless.

Eggs of Mammals.—Only in the spiny ant-eater, or Echidna, and the duck-billed platypus, or Ornithorhynchus, among the Mammalia, are the eggs provided with a large store of yolk, enclosed within a shell, and extruded to undergo development apart from the maternal tissues. In the case of the echidna the eggs, two in number, are about as large as those of a sparrow, similar in shape, and have a white, parchment-like shell. After expulsion they are transferred by the beak of the mother to a pouch resembling that of the marsupial kangaroos, and there they undergo development. The Ornithorhynchus, on the other hand, lays from two to four eggs, which in size and general appearance resemble those of the echidna. They are, however, deposited in a loosely constructed nest at the end of a long burrow and there brooded. In Marsupials, the eggs are smaller than those of Echidna and Ornithorhynchus, and they contain a larger proportion of yolk than occurs in higher mammals.

Eggs of Reptiles.—The eggs of reptiles are invariably provided with a large amount of food yolk and enclosed with a firm test or shell, which though generally parchment-like in texture may be calcareous as in birds, as, for example, in many of the tortoises and turtles and in the crocodiles.

Among reptiles the egg is always white or yellowish, while the number laid often far exceeds that in the case of birds. The tuatara of New Zealand, however, lays but ten—white hard-shelled, long and oval—at intervals between November and January. The long intervals between the appearance of the successive eggs is a characteristic feature of the reptiles, but is met with among the birds only in the megapodes, which, like the reptiles, do not “brood” their eggs.

Among the Chelonia the number of eggs varies from two to four in some of the tortoises, to 200 in some of the turtles: while in the crocodiles between 20 and 30 are produced, hard-shelled and white.

The eggs of the lizards are always white or yellowish, and generally soft-shelled; but the geckos and the green lizard lay hard-shelled eggs. Many of the soft-shelled eggs are remarkable for the fact that they increase in size after extrusion, owing to the stretching of the membranous shell by the growing embryo. In the matter of number lizards are less prolific than many of the Chelonia, a dozen eggs being the general number, though as many as thirty may be produced at a time, as in the case of the common chameleon.

While as a general rule the eggs of lizards are laid in burrows or buried, some are retained within the body of the parent until the young are ready to emerge; or they may even hatch within the oviduct. This occurs with some chameleons and some lizards, e.g. the slow-worm. The common English lizard is also viviparous. Normally the young leaves the egg immediately after its extrusion, but if by any chance this extrusion is delayed they escape while yet in the oviduct.

The majority of the snakes lay eggs, but most of the vipers and the aquatic snakes are viviparous, as also are a few terrestrial species. The shell of the egg is always soft and parchment-like. As a rule the number of eggs produced among the snakes is not large, twenty or thirty being common, but some species of python lay as many as a hundred. Generally, among the oviparous snakes the eggs are buried, but some species of boas jealously guard them, enclosing them within the coils of the body.

Eggs of Amphibia.—Among the amphibia a greater variety obtains in the matter of the investment of the egg, as well as in the number, size and method of their disposal. The outer covering is formed by a toughening of the surface of a thick gelatinous coat which surrounds the essential parts of the egg. This coat in many species of salamander—using this name in the wide sense—is produced into threads which serve either to anchor the eggs singly or to bind them together in bunches.

Viviparity occurs both among the limbless and the tailed Amphibia, the eggs hatching before they leave the oviduct or immediately after extrusion. The number of young so produced is generally not large, but the common salamander (Salamandra maculosa) may produce as many as fifty at a birth, though fifteen is the more normal figure. When the higher number is reached the young are relatively small and weak.

As a rule among the Amphibia the young leave the egg in the form of larvae, generally known as “tadpoles”; but many species produce eggs containing a sufficient amount of food material to enable the whole of the larval phase to be completed before hatching.

Among the tailless Amphibia (frogs and toads) there are wide differences in the number of eggs produced, while the methods by which these eggs are disposed of present a marvellous variety.

As a rule vast quantities of eggs are shed by the female into the water in the form of “spawn.” In the common toad as many as 7000 eggs may be extruded at a time. These leave the body in the form of two long strings—one from each oviduct—of translucent globules, gelatinous in texture, and enclosing a central sphere of yolk, the upper pole of which is black. The spawn of the common frog differs from that of the toad in that the eggs all adhere to form a huge jelly-like mass. But in many species the number of eggs produced are few; and these may be sufficiently stored with food-yolk to allow of the tadpole stage being passed before hatching, as in frogs of the genus Hylodes. In many cases the eggs are deposited out of the water and often in quite remarkable ways.

Eggs of Fishes.—The eggs of fishes present an extremely wide range of form, and a no less extensive range in the matter of number. Both among the cartilaginous and bony fishes viviparity occurs. Most of the sharks and rays are viviparous, but in the oviparous species the eggs present some interesting and peculiar forms. Large in size, the outer coat or “shell” is in all cases horn-like and flexible, but differs greatly in shape. Thus in the egg of the larger spotted dog-fish it is oblong in shape, flattened from side to side, and has the angles produced into long, slender tendrils. As the egg is laid the lower tendrils project from the vent, and the mother rubs herself against some fixed body. The tendrils soon catch fast in some slight projection, when the egg is dragged forth there to remain till hatching takes place. A couple of narrow slits at each corner of the upper end serve to admit fresh water to the imprisoned embryo during the later stages of development; when development is complete escape is made through the end of the shell. In the rays or “skates,” long spines take the place of tendrils, the egg simply resting at the bottom of the sea. The empty egg-cases of the rays are often found on the seashore, and are known as “Mermaids’ purses.” The egg of the Port Jackson shark (Cestracion) is of enormous size, pear-shaped, and provided with a spiral flange extending along the whole length of the capsule. In the Chimaera the egg is long, more or less spindle-shaped, and produced on each side into a broad flange having a fringed edge, so that the whole bears a close resemblance to a long leaf, broad and notched at one end, pointed at the other. This likeness to the seaweed among which it rests is doubtless a protective device, akin to that of protectively coloured birds’ eggs.

Among the bony fishes the eggs generally take the form of small spheres, enclosed within a tough membrane or capsule. But they present many important differences, being in some fishes heavy and remaining at the bottom of the water, in other light and floating on the surface. While in some species they are distributed separately, in others they adhere together in masses. The eggs of the salmon, for example, are heavy, hard and smooth, and deposited separately in a trough dug by the parent and afterwards covered to prevent them from being carried away by the stream. In the perch they are adhesive and form long band-like masses of spawn adhering to water-plants. In the gobies the egg is spindle-shaped, and attached by one end by means of a network of fibres, resembling rootlets; while in the smelt the egg is loosely suspended by a membrane formed by the peeling off of a part of the outer sheath of the capsule. The eggs of the garfish (Belone vulgaris) and of the flying-fish of the genus Exocoetus, attach themselves to foreign objects, or to one another, by means of threads or cords developed at opposite poles of the egg.

Among a number of fishes the eggs float at the surface of the sea, often in enormous masses, when they are carried about at the mercy of tides and currents. An idea of the size which such masses attain may be gathered from the fact that the spawn of the angler-fish, Lophius piscatorius, takes the form of a sheet from 2 to 3 ft. wide, and 30 ft. long. Another remarkable feature of these floating eggs is their transparency, inasmuch as they are extremely difficult to see, and hence they probably escape the rapacious maws of spawn-eating animals. The cod tribe and flat-fishes lay floating eggs of this description.

The maximum number of eggs laid by fishes varies greatly, some species laying relatively few, others an enormous number. But in all cases the number increases with the weight and age of the fish. Thus it has been calculated that the number laid by the salmon is roughly about 1000 to every pound weight of the fish, a 15 ℔ salmon laying 15,000 eggs. The sturgeon lays about 7,000,000; the herring 50,000; the turbot 14,311,000; the sole 134,000; the perch 280,000. Briefly, the number is greatest where the risks of destruction are greatest.

The eggs of the degenerate fishes known as the lampreys and hag-fishes are remarkable for the fact that in the latter they are large in size, cylindrical in shape, and provided at each end with hooklets whereby they adhere one to another; while in the lampreys they are extremely small and embedded in a jelly.

Molluscs.—Among the Mollusca, Crustacea and Insecta yolk-stored eggs of very remarkable forms are commonly produced.

In variety, in this connexion, the Mollusca must perhaps be given the first place. This diversity, indeed, is strikingly illustrated by the eggs of the Cephalopoda. In the squids (Loligo), for example, the eggs are enclosed in long cylindrical cases, of which there are several hundreds, attached by one end to a common centre; the whole series looking strangely like a rough mop-head. Each case, in such a cluster, contains about 250 eggs, or about 40,000 in all. By way of contrast the eggs of the true cuttle-fish (Sepia) are deposited separately, each enclosed in a tough, black, pear-shaped capsule which is fastened by a stalk to fronds of sea-weed or other object. They appear to be extruded at short intervals, till the full complement is laid, the whole forming a cluster looking like a bunch of grapes. The octopus differs yet again in this matter, its eggs being very small, berry-like, and attached to a stalk which runs through the centre of the mass.

The eggs of the univalve Mollusca are hardly less varied in the shapes they take. In the common British Purpura lapillus they resemble delicate pink grains of rice set on stalks; in Busycon they are disk-shaped, and attached to a band nearly 3 ft. long. The eggs of the shell-bearing slugs (Testacella) are large, and have the outer coat so elastic that if dropped on a stone floor they will rebound several inches; while some of the snails (Bulimus) lay eggs having a white calcareous and slightly iridescent shell, in size and shape closely resembling the egg of the pigeon. Some are even larger than the egg of the wood-pigeon. The beautiful violet-snail (Ianthina)—a marine species—carries its eggs on the under side of a gelatinous raft. No less remarkable are the eggs of the whelk; since, like those of the squids, they are not laid separately but enveloped in capsules, and these to the number of many hundreds form the large, ball-like masses so commonly met with on the seashore. When the eggs in these capsules hatch, the crowd of embryos proceed to establish an internecine warfare, devouring one another till only the strongest survives!

With the Mollusca, as with other groups of animals, where the eggs are exposed to great risks they are small, produced in great numbers, and give rise to larvae. This is well illustrated by the common oyster which annually disperses about 60,000,000 eggs. But where the risk of destruction is slight, the eggs are large and produce young differing from the parent only in size, as in the case of the pigeon-like eggs of Bulimus.

Crustaceans.—Among the higher Crustacea, as a rule, the eggs are carried by the female, attached to special appendages on the under side of the body. But in some—Squillas—they are deposited in burrows. Generally they are relatively small so that the young which emerge therefrom differ markedly in appearance from the parents, but in deep-sea and freshwater species the eggs are large, when the young, on emerging, differ but little from the adults in appearance.

Insects, &c.—The eggs of insects though minute, are also remarkable for the great variety of form which they present, while they are frequently objects of great beauty owing to the sculptured markings of the shell. They are generally laid in clusters, either on the ground, on the leaves of plants, or in the water. Some of the gnats (Culex) lay them on the water. Cylindrical in shape they are packed closely together, set on end, the whole mass forming a kind of floating raft. Frequently, as in the case of the stick and leaf insect, the eggs are enclosed in capsules of very elaborate shapes and highly ornamented.

As to the rest of the Invertebrata—above the Protozoa the eggs are laid in water, or in damp places. In the former case they are as a rule small, and give rise to larvae; while eggs hatched on land are sometimes enclosed in capsules, “cocoons,” as in the case of the earthworm, where this capsule is filled with a milky white fluid, of a highly nutritious character, on which the embryos feed.

Among some invertebrates two different kinds of eggs are laid by the same individual. The water-flea, Daphnia (a crustacean), lays two kinds of eggs known as “summer” and “winter” eggs. The summer eggs are carried by the female in a “brood-pouch” on the back. The “winter” eggs, produced at the approach of winter, differ markedly in appearance from the summer eggs, being larger, darker in colour, thicker shelled, and enclosed in a capsule formed from the shell or carapace, of the parent’s body. “Winter eggs,” however, may be produced in the height of summer. While the “summer eggs” are unfertilized, the winter eggs are fertilized by the male, and possess the remarkable power of lying dormant for months or even years before they develop. The production of these two kinds of eggs is a device to overcome the cold of winter, or the drying up of the pools in which the species lives, during the heat of the summer. The power of resistance which such eggs possess may be seen in the fact that a sample of mud which had been kept dry for ten years still contained living eggs. In deep water where neither drought nor winter cold can seriously affect the Daphnias, they propagate all the year round by unfertilized “summer” eggs.

Bibliography.—For further details on this subject the following authors should be consulted:—Mammals: F. E. Beddard, “Remarks on the Ovary of Echidna,” Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. Edin. vol. viii. (1885); W. H. Caldwell, “The Embryology of Monotremata and Marsupialia,” Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. vol. 178 (1887); E. B. Poulton, “The Structures connected with the Ovarian Ovum of the Marsupialia and Monotremata,” Quart. Journ. Micros. Sci. vol. xxiv. (1884). Birds, Systematic:—H. Seebohm, Coloured Figures of the Eggs of British Birds (1896); A. Newton, Ootheca Wooleyana (1907); E. Oates, Cat. Birds’ Eggs Brit. Mus. (appearing), vols. i.-iv. published. General:—A. Newton, Dictionary of Birds (1896). Colouring matter:—Newbegin, Colour in Nature (1898). Reptiles and Amphibia:—H. Gadow, “Reptiles,” Camb. Nat. Hist. (1901); G. A. Boulenger, “The Tailless Batrachians of Europe,” Ray Soc. (1896). Fishes:—Bridge and Boulenger, “Fishes, Ascidians, &c.,” Camb. Nat. Hist. (1904); B. Dean, Fishes Living and Fossil (1895); J. T. Cunningham, Marketable Marine Fishes (1896). Invertebrate:—G. H. Carpenter, Insects. Their Structure and Life (1899); L. C. Miall, A History of Aquatic Insects (1895); T. R. R. Stebbing, Crustacea, Internat. Sci. series (1893); M. C. Cooke, “Mollusca,” Camb. Nat. Hist. (1906). For further references to the above and other Invertebrate groups see various text-books on Entomology, Zoology.

(W. P. P.)

EGGENBERG, HANS ULRICH VON, Prince (1568-1634), Austrian statesman, was a son of Siegfried von Eggenberg (d. 1594), and began life as a soldier in the Spanish service, becoming about 1596 a trusted servant of the archduke of Styria, afterwards the emperor Ferdinand II. Having become a Roman Catholic, he was soon the chancellor and chief adviser of Ferdinand, whose election as emperor he helped to secure in 1619. He directed the imperial policy during the earlier part of the Thirty Years’ War, and was in general a friend and supporter of Wallenstein, and an opponent of Maximilian I., duke of Bavaria, and of Spain. He was largely responsible for Wallenstein’s return to the imperial service early in 1632, and retired from public life just after the general’s murder in February 1634, dying at Laibach, on the 18th of October 1634. Eggenberg’s influence with Ferdinand was so marked that it was commonly said that Austria rested upon three hills (Berge): Eggenberg, Questenberg and Werdenberg. He was richly rewarded for his services to the emperor. Having received many valuable estates in Bohemia and elsewhere, he was made a prince of the Empire in 1623, and duke of Krumau in 1625.

See H. von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst, Hans Ulrich, Fürst von Eggenberg (Vienna, 1880); and F. Mares, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Beziehungen des Fürsten J. U. von Eggenberg zu Kaiser Ferdinand II und zu Waldstein (Prague, 1893).

EGGER, ÉMILE (1813-1885), French scholar, was born in Paris on the 18th of July 1813. From 1840 till 1855 he was assistant professor, and from 1855 till his death professor of Greek literature in the Faculté; des Lettres at Paris University. In 1854 he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions and in 1873 of the Conseil supérieur de l’instruction publique. He was a voluminous writer, a sound and discerning scholar, and his influence was largely responsible for the revival of the study of classical philology in France. His most important works were Essai sur l’histoire de la critique chez les Grecs (1849), Notions élémentaires de grammaire comparée (1852), Apollonius Dyscole, essai sur l’histoire des théories grammalicales dans l’antiquité (1854), Mémoires de littérature ancienne (1862), Mémoires d’histoire ancienne et de philologie (1863), Les Papyrus grecs du Musée du Louvre et de la Biblioth&èque Impériale (1865), Études sur les traités publics chez les Grecs et les Romains (1866), L’Hellénisme en France (1869), La Littérature grecque (1890). He was also the author of Observations et réflexions sur le développement de l’intelligence et du langage chez les enfants (1879). Egger died in Paris on the 1st of September 1885.

EGGLESTON, EDWARD (1837-1902), American novelist and historian, was born in Vevay, Indiana, on the 10th of December 1837, of Virginia stock. Delicate health, by which he was more or less handicapped throughout his life, prevented his going to college, but he was naturally a diligent student. He was a Methodist circuit rider and pastor in Indiana and Minnesota (1857-1866); associate editor (1866-1867) of The Little Corporal, Chicago; editor of The National Sunday School Teacher, Chicago (1867-1870); literary editor and later editor-in-chief of The Independent, New York (1870-1871); and editor of Hearth and Home in 1871-1872. He was pastor of the church of Christian Endeavour, Brooklyn, in 1874-1879. From 1880 until his death on the 2nd of September 1902, at his home on Lake George, New York, he devoted himself to literary work. His fiction includes Mr Blake’s Walking Stick (1869), for children; The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871); The End of the World (1872); The Mystery of Metropolisville (1873); The Circuit Rider (1874); Roxy (1878); The Hoosier Schoolboy (1883); The Book of Queer Stories (1884), for children; The Graysons (1888), an excellent novel; The Faith Doctor (1891); and Duffels (1893), short stories. Most of his stories portray the pioneer manners and dialect of the Central West, and the Hoosier Schoolmaster was one of the first examples of American local realistic fiction; it was very popular, and was translated into French, German and Danish. During the last third of his life Eggleston laboured on a History of Life in the United States, but he lived to finish only two volumes—The Beginners of a Nation (1896) and The Transit of Civilization (1900). In addition he wrote several popular compendiums of American history for schools and homes.

See G. C. Eggleston, The First of the Hoosiers (Philadelphia, 1903), and Meredith Nicholson, The Hoosiers (1900).

His brother George Cary Eggleston (1839- ), American journalist and author, served in the Confederate army; was managing editor and later editor-in-chief of Hearth and Home (1871-1874); was literary editor of the New York Evening Post (1875-1881), literary editor and afterwards editor-in-chief of the New York Commercial Advertiser (1884-1889), and editorial writer for The World (New York) from 1889 to 1900. Most of his books are stories for boys; others, and his best, are romances dealing with life in the South especially in the Virginias and the Carolinas—before and during the Civil War. Among his publications may be mentioned: A Rebel’s Recollections (1874); The Last of the Flatboats (1900); Camp Venture (1900); A Carolina Cavalier (1901); Dorothy South (1902); The Master of Warlock (1903); Evelyn Byrd (1904); A Daughter of the South (1905); Blind Alleys (1906); Love is the Sum of it all (1907); History of the Confederate War (1910); and Recollections of a Varied Life (1910).

EGHAM, a town in the Chertsey parliamentary division of Surrey, England, on the Thames, 21 m. W.S.W. of London by the London & South Western railway. Pop. (1901) 11,895. The church of St John the Baptist is a reconstruction of 1817; it contains monuments by John Flaxman. Above the right bank of the river a low elevation, Cooper’s Hill, commands fine views over the valley, and over Windsor Great Park to the west. On the hill was the Royal Indian Civil Engineering College, commonly called Cooper’s Hill College, of which Sir George Tomkyns Chesney was the originator and first president (1871). It educated men for the public works, accounts, railways and telegraph departments of India, and included a school of forestry; but it was decided, in the face of some opposition, to close it in 1906, on the theory that it was unnecessary for a college with such a specialized object to be maintained by the government, in view of the readiness with which servants for these departments could be recruited elsewhere. Part of the organization, including the school of forestry, was transferred to Oxford University. Cooper’s Hill gives name to a famous poem of Sir John Denham (1642). A large and handsome building houses the Royal Holloway College for Women (1886), founded by Thomas Holloway; in the neighbourhood is the sanatorium of the same founder (1885) for the treatment of mental ailments, accommodating about 250 patients. The college for women, surrounded by extensive grounds, commands a wide view from the wooded slope on which it stands. The recreation hall, with its fine art collection, is the most notable room in this handsome building, which can receive 250 students. Within the parish, bordering the river, is the field of Runnymede, which, with Magna Charta Island lying off it, is famous in connexion with the signature of the charter by King John. Virginia Water, a large and picturesque artificial lake to the south of Windsor Great Park, is much frequented by visitors. It was formed under the direction of the duke of Cumberland, about 1750, and was the work of the brothers Thomas and Paul Sandby.

EGIN (Armenian Agn, “the spring”), an important town in the Mamuret el-Aziz vilayet of Asiatic Turkey (altitude 3300 ft.). Pop. about 20,000, fairly equally divided between Armenian Christians and Moslems. It is picturesquely situated in a theatre of lofty, abrupt rocks, on the right bank of the western Euphrates, which is crossed by a wooden bridge. The stone houses stand in terraced gardens and orchards, and the streets are mere rock ladders. Egin was settled by Armenians who emigrated from Van in the 11th century with Senekherim. On the 8th of November 1895 and in the summer of 1896 many Armenians were massacred here.

(D. G. H.)

EGLANTINE (E. Frisian, egeltiere; Fr. aiglantier), a plant-name of which Dr R. C. A. Prior (Popular Names of British Plants, p. 70) says that it “has been the subject of much discussion, both as to its exact meaning and as to the shrub to which it properly belongs.” The eglantine of the herbalists was the sweet-brier, Rosa rubiginosa. The signification of the word seems to be thorn-tree or thorn-bush, the first two syllables probably representing the Anglo-Saxon egla, egle, a prick or thorn, while the termination is the Dutch tere, taere, a tree. Eglantine is frequently alluded to in the writings of English poets, from Chaucer downwards. Milton, in L‘Allegro, is thought by the term “twisted eglantine” to denote the honeysuckle, Lonicera Periclymenum, which is still known as eglantine in north-east Yorkshire.

EGLINTON, EARLS OF. The title of earl of Eglinton has been held by the famous Scottish family of Montgomerie since 1508. The attempts made to trace the descent of this house to Roger of Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury (d. 1094), one of William the Conqueror’s followers, will not bear examination, and the sure pedigree of the family only begins with Sir John Montgomerie, lord of Eaglesham, who fought at the battle of Otterbourne in 1388 and died about 1398. His grandson, Sir Alexander Montgomerie (d. c. 1460), was made a lord of the Scottish parliament about 1445 as Lord Montgomerie, and Sir Alexander’s great-grandson Hugh, the 3rd lord (c. 1460-1545), was created earl of Eglinton, or Eglintoun, in 1508. Hugh, who was a person of importance during the minority of James V., was succeeded by his grandson Hugh (d. 1546), and then by the latter’s son Hugh (c. 1531-1585), who became 3rd earl of Eglinton. This nobleman was a firm supporter of Mary queen of Scots, for whom he fought at Langside, and of the Roman Catholic Church; his son and successor, Hugh, was murdered in April 1586 by the Cunninghams, a family with which his own had an hereditary blood feud. In 1612, by the death of Hugh, the 5th earl, the male line of the Montgomeries became extinct.

Having no children Earl Hugh had settled his title and estates on his cousin, Sir Alexander Seton of Foulstruther (1588-1661), a younger son of Robert Seton, 1st earl of Wintoun (c. 1550-1603), and his wife Margaret, daughter of the 3rd earl of Eglinton. Alexander, who thus became the 6th earl of Eglinton and took the name of Montgomerie, was commonly called Greysteel; he was a prominent Covenanter and fought against Charles I. at Marston Moor. Later, however, he supported the cause of Charles II., and fell into the hands of Cromwell, who imprisoned him. His fifth son, Robert Montgomerie (d. 1684), a soldier of distinction, fought against Cromwell at Dunbar and at Worcester, afterwards escaping from the Tower of London and serving in Denmark. Robert’s elder brother, Hugh, 7th earl of Eglinton (1613-1669), who also fought against Cromwell, was the grandfather of Alexander, the 9th earl (c. 1660-1729), who married, for his third wife, Susannah (1689-1780), daughter of Sir Archibald Kennedy, Bart., of Culzean, a lady celebrated for her wit and beauty. Alexander, the 10th earl (1723-1769), a son of the 9th earl, was one of the first of the Scottish landowners to carry out improvements on his estates. He was shot near Ardrossan by an excise officer named Mungo Campbell on the 24th of October 1769. His brother and successor, Archibald, the 11th earl (1726-1796), raised a regiment of Highlanders with which he served in America during the Seven Years’ War. As he left no male issue he was succeeded in the earldom by his kinsman Hugh Montgomerie (1739-1819), a descendant of the 6th earl, who was created a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Ardrossan in 1806. Before succeeding to the earldom Hugh had served in the American war and had been a member of parliament; after this event he began to rebuild Eglinton castle on a magnificent scale and to construct a harbour at Ardrossan.

This earl’s successor was his grandson, Archibald William, the 13th earl (1812-1861), who was born at Palermo on the 29th of September 1812. His father was Archibald, Lord Montgomerie (1773-1814), the eldest son of the 12th earl, and his mother was Mary (d. 1848), a daughter of the 11th earl. Educated at Eton, the young earl’s main object of interest for some years was the turf; he kept a large racing stud and won success and reputation in the sporting world. In 1839 his name became more widely known in connexion with the famous tournament which took place at Eglinton castle and is said to have cost him £30,000 or £40,000. This was made the subject of much ridicule and was partly spoiled by the unfavourable weather, the rain falling in torrents. Yet it was a real tournament and the “knights” broke their spears in the orthodox way. Prince Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III.) took part in it, and Lady Seymour, a daughter of Thomas Sheridan and the wife of Lord Seymour, afterwards 12th duke of Somerset, was the queen of beauty. A list of the challengers with an account of the jousts and the melée will be found in the volume on the tournament written by John Richardson, with drawings by J. H. Nixon. It is also described by Disraeli in Endymion. Eglinton was a staunch Tory, and in February 1852 he became lord-lieutenant of Ireland under the earl of Derby. He retired with the ministry in the following December, having by his princely hospitality made himself one of the most popular of Irish viceroys. When Derby returned to office in February 1858 he was again appointed lord-lieutenant, and he discharged the duties of this post until June 1859. In this year he was created earl of Winton, an earldom which had been held by his kinsfolk, the Setons, from 1600 until 1716, when George Seton, the 5th earl (c. 1678-1749), was deprived of his honours for high treason. The earl died on the 4th of October 1861, and was succeeded by his eldest son Archibald William (1841-1892). When this earl died in 1892 his younger brother George Arnulph (b. 1848) became 15th earl of Eglinton and 3rd earl of Winton.

See Sir W. Fraser, Memorials of the Montgomeries, earls of Eglinton (1859).

EGMONT, EARLS OF. John Perceval, 1st earl of Egmont (1683-1748), Irish politician, and partner with J. E. Oglethorpe in founding the American colony of Georgia, was created earl in 1733. He claimed descent from the Egmonts of Flanders, but his title was taken from the place in County Cork where the family residence stood. Its name of Burton House, and that of Burton manor which formed part of the family estates, were a reminiscence of Burton in Somerset, where was the earlier English family property of his great-great-grandfather Richard Perceval (1550-1620), Burghley’s secret agent, and author of a Spanish dictionary published in 1591, whose son Sir Philip Perceval (1605-1647) acquired the Irish estates by judicious use of his opportunities as commissioner for land titles and of his interest at court. Sir Philip’s son John, grandfather of the 1st earl, was made a baronet in 1661. The first earl of Egmont (who had been made Baron Perceval in 1715, and Viscount Perceval in 1723) is chiefly important for his connexion with the colonization of Georgia, and for his voluminous letters and writings on biography and genealogy.

John Perceval, 2nd earl of Egmont (1711-1770), his eldest son, was an active politician, first lord of the admiralty (1763-1766), and political pamphleteer, and like his father an ardent genealogist. He was twice married, and had eight sons and eight daughters. One of his younger sons was Spencer Perceval, prime minister of England. His eldest son succeeded as 3rd earl, and the eldest by his second marriage (with Catherine Compton, baroness of Arden in Ireland) was in 1802 created Baron Arden of the United Kingdom, a title which subsequently became merged in the Egmont earldom.

EGMONT (Egmond), LAMORAL, Count of, prince of Gavre (1522-1568), was born in Hainaut in 1522. He was the younger of the two sons of John IV., count of Egmont, by his wife Françoise of Luxemburg, princess of Gavre. On the death of his elder brother Charles, about 1541, he succeeded to his titles and estates. In this year he served his apprenticeship as a soldier in the expedition of the emperor Charles V. to Algiers, distinguishing himself in the command of a body of cavalry. In 1544 he married Sabina, sister of the elector palatine Frederick III., and the wedding was celebrated at Spires with great pomp in the presence of the emperor and his brother Ferdinand, afterwards emperor. Created knight of the Golden Fleece in 1546, he accompanied Philip of Spain in his tour through the Netherland towns, and in 1554 he went to England at the head of a special embassy to ask the hand of Mary of England for Philip, and was afterwards present at the wedding ceremony at Winchester. In the summer of 1557 Egmont was appointed commander of the Flemish cavalry in the war between Spain and France; and it was by his vehement persuasion that the battle of St Quentin was fought. The victory was determined by the brilliant charge that he led against the French. The reputation which he won at St Quentin was raised still higher in 1558, when he encountered the French army under de Thermes at Gravelines, on its march homewards after the invasion of Flanders, totally defeated it, and took Marshal de Thermes prisoner. The battle was fought against the advice of the duke of Alva, and the victory made Alva Egmont’s enemy. But the count now became the idol of his countrymen, who looked upon him as the saviour of Flanders from the devastations of the French. He was nominated by Philip stadtholder of Flanders and Artois. At the conclusion of the war by the treaty of Cateau Cambrésis, Egmont was one of the four hostages selected by the king of France as pledges for its execution.

The attempt made by King Philip to convert the Netherlands into a Spanish dependency and to govern it by Spanish ministers excited the resentment of Egmont and other leading members of the Netherlands aristocracy. Between him and Cardinal Granvella, the all-powerful minister of the regent Margaret of Parma, there was no love lost. As a member of the council of state Egmont joined the prince of Orange in a vigorous protest addressed to Philip (1561) against the autocratic proceedings of the minister; and two years later he again protested in conjunction with the prince of Orange and Count Horn. In the spring of 1564 Granvella left the Netherlands, and the malcontent nobles once more took their places in the council of state. The resolve, however, of Philip to enforce the decrees of the council of Trent throughout the Netherlands once more aroused their resentment. Although himself a good Catholic, Egmont had no wish to see the Spanish Inquisition established in his native country. Orange, Egmont and others were convinced that the enforcement of the decrees in the Netherlands was impossible, and, in January 1665, Egmont accepted a special mission to Spain to make known to Philip the state of affairs and the disposition of the people. At Madrid the king gave him an ostentatiously cordial reception, and all the courtiers vied with one another in lavishing professions of respect upon him. They knew his vain and somewhat unstable character, and hoped to win him over without conceding anything to the wishes of the Netherlanders. The king gave him plenty of flatteries and promises, but steadily evaded any serious discussion of the object of his mission, and Egmont finally returned home without having accomplished anything. At the same time Philip sent further instructions to the regent to abate nothing of the severity of the persecution.

Egmont was naturally indignant at the treatment he had received, while the terrors of the Inquisition were steadily rousing the people to a state of frenzied excitement. In 1566 a confederacy of the lesser nobility was formed (Les Gueux) whose principles were set out in a document known as the Compromise. From this league Egmont held aloof; he declined to take any step savouring of actual disloyalty to his sovereign. He withdrew to his government of Flanders, and as stadtholder took active measures for the persecution of heretics. But in the eyes of Philip he had long been a marked man. The Spanish king had temporized only until the moment arrived when he could crush opposition by force. In the summer of 1567 the duke of Alva was despatched to the Netherlands at the head of an army of veterans to supersede the regent Margaret and restore order in the discontented provinces. Orange fled to Germany after having vainly warned Egmont and Horn of the dangers that threatened them. Alva was at pains to lull their suspicions, and then suddenly seized them both and threw them in the castle of Ghent. Their trial was a farce, for their fate had already been determined before Alva left Spain. After some months of imprisonment they were removed to Brussels, where sentence was pronounced upon them (June 4) by the infamous Council of Blood erected by Alva. They were condemned to death for high treason. It was in vain that the most earnest intercessions were made in behalf of Egmont by the emperor Maximilian, by the knights of the order of the Golden Fleece, by the states of Brabant, and by several of the German princes. Vain, too, was the pathetic pleading of his wife, who with her eleven children was reduced to want, and had taken refuge in a convent. Egmont was beheaded at Brussels in the square before the town hall on the day after his sentence had been publicly pronounced (June 5, 1568). He met his fate with calm resignation; and in the storm of terror and exasperation to which this tragedy gave rise Egmont’s failings were forgotten, and he and his fellow-victim to Spanish tyranny were glorified in the popular imagination as martyrs of Flemish freedom. From this memorable event, which Goethe made the theme of his play Egmont (1788), is usually dated the beginning of the famous revolt of the Netherlands. In 1865 a monument to Counts Egmont and Horn, by Fraiken, was erected on the spot where they were beheaded.

Bibliography.—T. Juste, Le Comte d’Egmont et le comte de Hornes (Brussels, 1862), Les Pays-Bas sous Philippe II, 1555-1565 (2 vols., Brussels, 1855); J. L. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1584 (3 vols., London, 1856); J. P. Blok, History of the People of the Netherlands (tr. from Dutch), vol. iii. (New York, 1900); R. Fruin, Het voorspel van den tastigjarigen oorlag (Amsterdam, 1866); E. Marx, Studien zur Geschichte des niederländischen Aufstandes (Leipzig, 1902).

(G. E.)

EGOISM (from Gr. and Lat. ego, I, the 1st personal pronoun), a modern philosophical term used generally, in opposition to “Altruism,” for any ethical system in which the happiness or the good of the individual is the main criterion of moral action. Another form of the word, “Egotism,” is really interchangeable, though in ordinary language it is often used specially (and similarly “egoism,” as in George Meredith’s Egoist) to describe the habit of magnifying one’s self and one’s achievements, or regarding all things from a selfish point of view. Both these ideas derive from the original meaning of ego, myself, as opposed to everything which is outside myself. This antithesis of ego and non-ego, self and not-self, may be understood in several senses according to the connexion in which it is used. Thus the self may be held to include one’s family, property, business, and an indefinitely wider range of persons or objects in which the individual’s interest is for the moment centred, i.e. everything which I can call “mine.” In this, its widest, sense “a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his” (Wm. James, Principles of Psychology, chap x.). This self may be divided up in many ways according to the various forms in which it may be expressed. Thus James (ibid.) classifies the various “selves” as the material, the spiritual, the social and the “pure.” Or again the self may be narrowed down to a man’s own person, consisting of an individual mind and body. In the true philosophical sense, however, the conception of the ego is still further narrowed down to the individual consciousness as opposed to all that is outside it, i.e. can be its object. This conception of the self belongs mainly to metaphysics and involves the whole problem of the relation between subject and object, the nature of reality, and the possibility of knowledge of self and of object. The ordinary idea of the self as a physical entity, obviously separate from others, takes no account of the problem as to how and in what sense the individual is conscious of himself; what is the relation between subject and object in the phenomenon of self-consciousness, in which the mind reflects upon itself both past and present? The mind is in this case both subject and object, or, as William James puts it, both “I” and “me.” The phenomenon has been described in various ways by different thinkers. Thus Kant distinguished the two selves as rational and empirical, just as he distinguished the two egos as the noumenal or real and the phenomenal from the metaphysical standpoint. A similar distinction is made by Herbart. Others have held that the self has a complex content, the subject self being, as it were, a fuller expression of the object-self (so Bradley); or again the subject self is the active content of the mind, and the object self the passive content which for the moment is exciting the attention. The most satisfactory and also the most general view is that consciousness is complex and unanalysable.

The relation of the self to the not-self need not to be treated here (see [Metaphysics]). It may, however, be pointed out that in so far as an object is cognized by the mind, it becomes in a sense part of the complex self-content. In this sense the individual is in himself his own universe, his whole existence being, in other words, the sum total of his psychic relations, and nothing else being for him in existence at all. A similar idea is prominent in many philosophico-religious systems wherein the idea of God or the Infinite is, as it were, the union of the ego and the non-ego, of subject and object. The self of man is regarded as having limitations, whereas the Godhead is infinite and all-inclusive. In many mystical Oriental religions the perfection of the human self is absorption in the infinite, as a ripple dies away on the surface of water. The problems of the self may be summed up as follows. The psychologist investigates the ideal construction of the self, i.e. the way in which the conception of the self arises, the different aspects or contents of the self and the relation of the subject to the object self. At this point the epistemologist takes up the question of empirical knowledge and considers the kind of validity, if any, which it can possess. What existence has the known object for the knowing subject? The result of this inquiry is generally intellectual scepticism in a greater or less degree, namely, that the object has no existence for the knower except a relative one, i.e. in so far as it is “known” (see [Relativity of Knowledge]). Finally the metaphysician, and in another sphere the theologian, consider the nature of the pure or transcendental self apart from its relations, i.e. the absolute self.

In ethics, egoistic doctrines disregard the ultimate problems of selfhood, and assume the self to consist of a man’s person and those things in which he is or ought to be directly interested. The general statement that such doctrines refer all moral action to criteria of the individual’s happiness, preservation, moral perfection, raises an obvious difficulty. Egoism merely asserts that the self is all-important in the application of moral principles, and does not in any way supply the material of these principles. It is a purely formal direction, and as such merely an adjunct to a substantive ethical criterion. A practical theory of ethics seeks to establish a particular moral ideal; if it is an absolute criterion, then the altruist would place first the attainment of that ideal by others, while the egoist would seek it for himself. The same is true of ethical theories which may be described as material. Of the second type are those, e.g. of Hobbes and Spinoza, which advocate self-preservation as the ideal, as contrasted with modern evolutionist moralists who advocate race-preservation. Again, we may contrast the early Greek hedonists, who bade each man seek the greatest happiness (of whatever kind), with modern utilitarian and social hedonists, who prefer the greatest good or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. It is with hedonistic and other empirical theories that egoism is generally associated. As a matter of fact, however, egoism has been no less prominent in intuitional ethics. Thus the man who seeks only or primarily his own moral perfection is an egoist par excellence. Such are ascetics, hermits and the like, whose whole object is the realization of their highest selves.

The distinction of egoistical and altruistic action is further complicated by two facts. In the first place, many systems combine the two. Thus Christian ethics may be said to insist equally on duty to self and duty to others, while crudely egoistic systems become unworkable if a man renders himself obnoxious to his fellows. On the other hand, every deliberate action based on an avowedly altruistic principle necessarily has a reference to the agent; if it is right that A should do a certain action for the benefit of B, then it tends to the moral self-realization of A that he should do it. Upon whatsoever principle the rightness of an action depends, its performance is right for the agent. The self-reference is inevitable in every action in so far as it is regarded as voluntary and chosen as being of a particular moral quality.

It is this latter fact which has led many students of human character to state that men do in fact aim at the gratification of their personal desires and impulses. The laws of the state and the various rules of conduct laid down by religion or morality are merely devices adopted for general convenience. The most remarkable statement of this point of view is that of Friedrich Nietzsche, who went so far as to denounce all forms of self-denial as cowardice:—let every one who is strong seek to make himself dominant at the expense of the weak.

EGORIEVSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Ryazañ, 70 m. by rail E.S.E. of Moscow, by a branch line (15 m.) connecting with the Moscow to Ryazañ main line. The cotton mills and other factories give occupation to 6000 persons. Egorievsk has important fairs for grain, hides, &c., which are exported. Pop. (1897) 23,932.

EGREMONT, EARLS OF. In 1749 Algernon Seymour, 7th duke of Somerset, was created earl of Egremont, and on his childless death in February 1750 this title passed by special remainder to his nephew, Sir Charles Wyndham or Windham, Bart. (1710-1763), a son of Sir William Wyndham of Orchard Wyndham, Somerset. Charles, who had succeeded to his father’s baronetcy in 1740, inherited Somerset’s estates in Cumberland and Sussex. He was a member of parliament from 1734 to 1750, and in October 1761 he was appointed secretary of state for the southern department in succession to William Pitt. His term of office, during which he acted in concert with his brother-in-law, George Grenville, was mainly occupied with the declaration of war on Spain and with the negotiations for peace with France and Spain, a peace the terms of which the earl seems to have disliked. He was also to the fore during the proceedings against Wilkes, and he died on the 21st of August 1763. Horace Walpole perhaps rates Egremont’s talents too low when he says he “had neither knowledge of business, nor the smallest share of parliamentary abilities.”

The 2nd earl’s son and successor, George O’Brien Wyndham (1751-1837), was more famous as a patron of art and an agriculturist than as a politician, although he was not entirely indifferent to politics. For some time the painter Turner lived at his Sussex residence, Petworth House, and in addition to Turner, the painter Leslie, the sculptor Flaxman and other talented artists received commissions from Egremont, who filled his house with valuable works of art. Generous and hospitable, blunt and eccentric, the earl was in his day a very prominent figure in English society. Charles Greville says, “he was immensely rich and his munificence was equal to his wealth”; and again that in his time Petworth was “like a great inn.” The earl died unmarried on the 11th of November 1837, and on the death of his nephew and successor, George Francis Wyndham, the 4th earl (1785-1845), the earldom of Egremont became extinct. Petworth, however, and the large estates had already passed to George Wyndham (1787-1869), a natural son of the 3rd earl, who was created Baron Leconfield in 1859.

EGREMONT, a market town in the Egremont parliamentary division of Cumberland, England, 5 m. S.S.E. of Whitehaven, on a joint line of the London & North Western and Furness railways. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5761. It is pleasantly situated in the valley of the Ehen. Ruins of a castle command the town from an eminence. It was founded c. 1120 by William de Meschines; it is moated, and retains a Norman doorway and some of the original masonry, as well as fragments of later date. The church of St Mary is a modern reconstruction embodying some of the Norman features of the old church. Iron ore and limestone are raised in the neighbourhood.

It seems impossible to find any history for Egremont until after the Norman Conquest, when Henry I. gave the barony of Coupland to William de Meschines, who erected a castle at Egremont around which the town grew into importance. The barony afterwards passed by marriage to the families of Lucy and Multon, and finally came to the Percys, earls of Northumberland, from whom are descended the present lords of the manor of Egremont. The earliest evidence that Egremont was a borough occurs in a charter, granted by Richard de Lucy in the reign of King John, which gave the burgesses right to choose their reeve, and set out the customs owing to the lord of the manor, among which was that of providing twelve armed men at his castle in the time of war. The borough was represented by two members in the parliament of 1295, but in the following year was disfranchised, on the petition of the burgesses, on account of the expense of sending members. In 1267 Henry III. granted Thomas de Multon a market every Wednesday at Egremont, and a fair every year on the eve, day and morrow of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. In the Quo Warranto rolls he is found to have claimed by prescription another weekly market on Saturday. The market rights were purchased from Lord Leconfield in 1885, and the market on Saturday is still held. Richard de Lucy’s charter shows that dyeing, weaving and fulling were carried on in the town in his time.

EGRESS (Lat. egressus, going out), in astronomy, the end of the apparent transit of a small body over the disk of a larger one; especially of a transit of a satellite of Jupiter over the disk of that planet. It designates the moment at which the smaller body is seen to leave the limb of the other.

EGYPT, a country forming the N.E. extremity of Africa.[1] In the following account a division is made into (I.) Modern Egypt, and (II.) Ancient Egypt; but the history from the earliest times is given as a separate section (III.).

Section I. includes Geography, Economics, Government, Inhabitants, Finance and Army. Section II. is subdivided into:—(A) Exploration and Research; (B) The Country in Ancient Times; (C) Religion; (D) Language and Writing; (E) Art and Archaeology; (F) Chronology. Section III. is divided into three main periods:—(1) Ancient History; (2) the Mahommedan Period; (3) Modern History (from Mehemet Ali).

I. Modern Egypt

Boundaries and Areas.—Egypt is bounded N. by the Mediterranean, S. by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, N.E. by Palestine, E. by the Red Sea, W. by Tripoli and the Sahara. The western frontier is ill-defined. The boundary line between Tripoli and Egypt is usually taken to start from a point in the Gulf of Sollum and to run S. by E. so as to leave the oasis of Siwa to Egypt. South of Siwa the frontier, according to the Turkish firman of 1841, bends eastward, approaching the cultivated Nile-land near Wadi Halfa, i.e. the southern frontier. This southern frontier is fixed by agreement between Great Britain and Egypt at the 22° N. The N.E. frontier is an almost direct line drawn from Taba, near the head of the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern of the two gulfs into which the Red Sea divides, to the Mediterranean at Rafa in 34° 15′ E. The peninsula of Sinai, geographically part of Asia, is thus included in the Egyptian dominions. The total area of the country is about 400,000 sq. m., or more than three times the size of the British Isles. Of this area 14⁄15ths is desert. Canals, roads, date plantations, &c., cover 1900 sq. m.; 2850 sq. m. are comprised in the surface of the Nile, marshes, lakes, &c. A line corresponding with the 30° N., drawn just S. of Cairo, divides the country into Lower and Upper Egypt, natural designations in common use, Lower Egypt being the Delta and Upper Egypt the Nile valley. By the Arabs Lower Egypt is called Er-Rif, the cultivated or fertile; Upper Egypt Es Sa’id, the happy or fortunate. Another division of the country is into Lower, Middle and Upper Egypt, Middle Egypt in this classification being the district between Cairo and Assiut.

General Character.—The distinguishing features of Egypt are the Nile and the desert. But for the river there would be nothing to differentiate the country from other parts of the Sahara. The Nile, however, has transformed the land through which it passes. Piercing the desert, and at its annual overflow depositing rich sediment brought from the Abyssinian highlands, the river has created the Delta and the fertile strip in Upper Egypt. This cultivable land is Egypt proper; to it alone is applicable the ancient name—“the black land.” The Misr of the Arabs is restricted to the same territory. Beyond the Nile valley east and west stretch great deserts, containing here and there fertile oases. The general appearance of the country is remarkably uniform. The Delta is a level plain, richly cultivated, and varied alone by the lofty dark-brown mounds of ancient cities, and the villages set in groves of palm-trees, standing on mounds often, if not always, ancient. Groves of palm-trees are occasionally seen besides those around the villages, but other trees are rare. In Upper Egypt the Nile valley is very narrow and is bounded by mountains of no great height. They form the edge of the desert on either side of the valley, of which the bottom is level rock. The mountains rarely take the form of peaks. Sometimes they approach the river in bold promontories, and at others are divided by the dry beds of ancient watercourses. The bright green of the fields, the reddish-brown or dull green of the great river, contrasting with the bare yellow rocks, seen beneath a brilliant sun and a deep-blue sky, present views of great beauty. In form the landscape varies little and is not remarkable; in colour its qualities are always splendid, and under a general uniformity show a continual variety.

The Coast Region.—Egypt has a coast-line of over 600 m. on the Mediterranean and about 1200 m. on the Red Sea. The Mediterranean coast extends from the Gulf of Sollum on the west to Rafa on the east. From the gulf to the beginning of the Delta the coast is rock-bound, but slightly indented, and possesses no good harbourage. The cliffs attain in places a height of 1000 ft. They are the termination of a stony plateau, containing several small oases, which southward joins the more arid and uninhabitable wastes of the Libyan Desert. The Delta coast-line, composed of sandhills and, occasionally, limestone rocks, is low, with cape-like projections at the Nile mouths formed by the river silt. Two bays are thus formed, the western being the famous Bay of Aboukir. It is bounded W. by a point near the ancient Canopic mouth, eastward by the Rosetta mouth. Beyond the Delta eastward the coast is again barren and without harbours. It rises gradually southward, merging into the plateau of the Sinai peninsula. The Red Sea coast is everywhere mountainous. The mountains are the northern continuation of the Abyssinian table-land, and some of the peaks are over 6000 ft. above the sea. The highest peaks, going from north to south, are Jebels Gharib, Dukhan, Es Shayib, Fatira, Abu Tiur, Zubara and Hammada (Hamata). The coast has a general N.N.W. and S.S.E. trend, and, save for the two gulfs into which it is divided by the massif of Sinai, is not deeply indented. Where the frontier between Egypt and the Sudan reaches the sea is Ras Elba (see further [Red Sea]).

The Nile Valley (see also [Nile]).—Entering Egypt proper, a little north of the Second Cataract, the Nile flows through a valley in sandstone beds of Cretaceous age as far as 25° N., and throughout this part of its course the valley is extremely narrow, rarely exceeding 2 m. in width. At two points, namely, Kalabsha—the valley here being only 170 yds. wide and the river over 100 ft. deep—and Assuan (First Cataract), the course of the river is interrupted by outcrops of granites and other crystalline rocks, which have been uncovered by the erosion of the overlying sandstone, and to-day form the mass of islands, with numerous small rapids, which are described not very accurately as cataracts; no good evidence exists in support of the view that they are the remains of a massive barrier, broken down and carried away by some sudden convulsion. From 25° N. northwards for 518 m. the valley is of the “rift-valley” type, a level depression in a limestone plateau, enclosed usually by steep cliffs, except where the tributary valleys drained into the main valley in early times, when there was a larger rainfall, and now carry off the occasional rainstorms that burst on the desert. The cliffs are highest between Esna and Kena, where they reach 1800 ft. above sea-level. The average width of the cultivated land is about 10 m., of which the greater part lies on the left (western) bank of the river; and outside this is a belt, varying from a few hundred yards to 3 or 4 m., of stony and sandy ground, reaching up to the foot of the limestone cliffs, which rise in places to as much as 1000 ft. above the valley. This continues as far as 29° N., after which the hills that close in the valley become lower, and the higher plateaus lie at a distance of 10 or 15 m. back in the desert.

The Fayum.—The fertile province of the Fayum, west of the Nile and separated from it by some 6 m. of desert, seems to owe its existence to movements similar to those which determined the valley itself. Lying in a basin sloping in a series of terraces from an altitude of 65 ft. above sea-level in the east to about 140 ft. below sea-level on the north-west, at the margin of the Birket-el-Kerun, this province is wholly irrigated by a canalized channel, the Bahr Yusuf, which, leaving the Nile at Derut esh Sherif in Upper Egypt, follows the western margin of the cultivation in the Nile valley, and at length enters the Fayum through a gap in the desert hills by the XIIth Dynasty pyramids of Lahun and Hawara (see [Fayum]).

The Delta.—About 30° N., where the city of Cairo stands, the hills which have hitherto run parallel with the Nile turn W.N.W. and E.N.E., and the triangular area between them is wholly deltaic. The Delta measures 100 m. from S. to N., having a width of 155 m. on the shore of the Mediterranean between Alexandria on the west and Port Said on the east. The low sandy shore of the Delta, slowly increasing by the annual deposit of silt by the river, is mostly a barren area of sand-hills and salty waste land. This is the region of the lagoons and marshes immediately behind the coast-line. Southwards the quality of the soil rapidly improves, and becomes the most fertile part of Egypt. This area is watered by the Damietta and the Rosetta branches of the Nile, and by a network of canals. The soil of the Delta is a dark grey fine sandy soil, becoming at times almost a stiff clay by reason of the fineness of its particles, which consist almost wholly of extremely small grains of quartz with a few other minerals, and often numerous flakes of mica. This deposit varies in thickness, as a rule, from 55 to 70 ft., at which depth it is underlain by a series of coarse and fine yellow quartz sands, with occasional pebbles, or even banks of gravel, while here and there thin beds of clay occur. These sand-beds are sharply distinguished by their colour from the overlying Nile deposit, and are of considerable thickness. A boring made in 1886 for the Royal Society at Zagazig attained a depth of 375 ft. without reaching rock, and another, subsequently sunk near Lake Aboukir (close to Alexandria), reached a depth of 405 ft. with the same result. Numerous other borings to depths of 100 to 200 ft. have given similar results, showing the Nile deposit to rest generally on these yellow sands, which provide a constant though not a very large supply of good water; near the northern limits of the Delta this cannot, however, be depended on, since the well water at these depths has proved on several occasions to be salt. The surface of the Delta is a wide alluvial plain sloping gently towards the sea, and having an altitude of 29 ft. above it at its southern extremity. Its limits east and west are determined by the higher ground of the deserts, to which the silt-laden waters of the Nile in flood time cannot reach. This silt consists largely of alumina (about 48%) and calcium carbonate (18%) with smaller quantities of silica, oxide of iron and carbon. Although the Nile water is abundantly charged with alluvium, the annual deposit by the river, except under extraordinary circumstances, is smaller than might be supposed. The mean ordinary rate of the increase of the soil of Egypt is calculated as about 4½ in. in a century.

The Lakes.—The lagoons or lakes of the Delta, going from west to east, are Mareotis (Mariut), Edku, Burlus and Menzala. The land separating them from the Mediterranean is nowhere more than 10 m. wide. East of the Damietta mouth of the Nile this strip is in places not more than 200 yds. broad. All the lakes are shallow and the water in them salt or brackish. Mareotis, which bounds Alexandria on the south side, varies considerably in area according to the rise or fall of the Nile; when the Nile is low there is a wide expanse of marsh, when at its highest the lake covers about 100 sq. m. In ancient times Mareotis was navigable and was joined by various canals to the Nile. The country around was cultivated and produced the famous Mareotic wine. The canals being neglected, the lake decreased in size, though it was still of considerable area in the 15th and 16th centuries, and was then noted for the value of its fisheries. When the French army occupied Egypt in 1798, Mareotis was found to be largely a sandy plain. In April 1801 the British army besieging Alexandria cut through the land between Aboukir and the lake, admitting the waters of the sea into the ancient bed of Mareotis and laying under water a large area then in cultivation. This precedent was twice imitated, first by the Turks in 1803 and a second time by the British in 1807. Mareotis has no outlet, and the water is kept at a uniform level by means of powerful pumps which neutralize the effect of the Nile flood. A western arm has been cut off from the lake by a dyke, and in this arm a thick crust of salt is formed each year after the evaporation of the flood water. Near the shores of the lake wild flowers grow in rich profusion. Like all the Delta lakes, Mareotis abounds in wild-fowl. North-east of Mareotis was Lake Aboukir, a small sheet of water, now dry, lying S.W. of Aboukir Bay. East of this reclaimed marsh and reaching to within 4 m. of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, lies Edku, 22 m. long and in places 16 wide, with an opening, supposed to be the ancient Canopic mouth of the Nile, into Aboukir Bay. Burlus begins a little eastward of the Rosetta channel, and stretches bow-shaped for 64 m. Its greatest width is about 16 m. Adjoining it S.E. is an expanse of sandy marsh. Several canals or canalized channels enter the lake. Opposite the spot where the Bahr-mit Yezir enters is an opening into the Mediterranean. Canal and opening indicate the course of the ancient Sebennytic branch of the Nile. Burlus is noted for its water-melons, which are yellow within and come into season after those grown on the banks of the Nile.

Menzala greatly exceeds the other Delta lakes in size, covering over 780 sq. m. It extends from very near the Damietta branch of the Nile to Port Said. It receives the waters of the canalized channels which were once the Tanitic, Mendesian and Pelusiac branches. The northern shore is separated from the sea by an extremely narrow strip of land, across which, when the Mediterranean is stormy and the lake full, the waters meet. Its average length is about 40 m., and its average breadth about 15. The depth is greater than that of the other lakes, and the water is salt, though mixed with fresh. It contains a large number of islands, and the whole lake abounds in reeds of various kinds. Of the islands Tennīs (anciently Tennesus) contains ruins of the Roman period. The lake supports a considerable population of fishermen, who dwell in villages on the shore and islands and live upon the fish of the lake. The reeds are cover for waterfowl of various kinds, which the traveller sees in great numbers, and wild boars are found in the marshes to the south. The Suez Canal runs in a straight line for 20 m. along the eastern edge of the lake. That part of the lake east of where the canal was excavated is now marshy plain, and the Tanitic and Pelusiac mouths of the Nile are dry. East of Menzala is the site of Serbonis, another dried-up lake, which had the general characteristics of the Delta lagoons. In the Isthmus of Suez are Lake Timsa and the Great and Little Bitter Lakes, occupying part of the ancient bed of the Red Sea. All three were dry or marshy depressions previously to the cutting of the Suez Canal, at which time the waters of the Mediterranean and Red Sea were let into them (see [Suez Canal]).

A chain of natron lakes (seven in number) lies in a valley in the western desert, 70 to 90 m. W.N.W. of Cairo. In the Fayum province farther south is the Birket-el-Kerun, a lake, lying below the level of the Nile, some 30 m. long and 5 wide at its broadest part. Kerun is all that is left of the Lake of Moeris, an ancient artificial sheet of water which played an important part in the irrigation schemes of the Pharaohs. The water of el-Kerun is brackish, though derived from the Nile, which has at all seasons a much higher level. It is bounded on the north by the Libyan Desert, above which rises a bold range of mountains; and it has a strange and picturesque wildness. Near the lake are several sites of ancient towns, and the temple called Kasr-Karun, dating from Roman times, distinguishes the most important of these. South-west of the Fayum is the Wadi Rayan, a large and deep depression, utilizable in modern schemes for re-creating the Lake of Moeris (q.v.).

The Desert Plateaus.—From the southern borders of Egypt to the Delta in the north, the desert plateaus extend on either side of the Nile valley. The eastern region, between the Nile and the Red Sea, varies in width from 90 to 350 m. and is known in its northern part as the Arabian Desert. The western region has no natural barrier for many hundreds of miles; it is part of the vast Sahara. On its eastern edge, a few miles west of Cairo, stand the great pyramids (q.v.) of Gizeh or Giza. North of Assuan it is called the Libyan Desert. In the north the desert plateaus are comparatively low, but from Cairo southwards they rise to 1000 and even 1500 ft. above sea-level. Formed mostly of horizontal strata of varying hardness, they present a series of terraces of minor plateaus, rising one above the other, and intersected by small ravines worn by the occasional rainstorms which burst in their neighbourhood. The weathering of this desert area is probably fairly rapid, and the agents at work are principally the rapid heating and cooling of the rocks by day and night, and the erosive action of sand-laden wind on the softer layers; these, aided by the occasional rain, are ceaselessly at work, and produce the successive plateaus, dotted with small isolated hills and cut up by valleys (wadis) which occasionally become deep ravines, thus forming the principal type of scenery of these deserts. From this it will be seen that the desert in Egypt is mainly a rock desert, where the surface is formed of disintegrated rock, the finer particles of which have been carried away by the wind; and east of the Nile this is almost exclusively the case. Here the desert meets the line of mountains which runs parallel to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez. In the western desert, however, those large sand accumulations which are usually associated with a desert are met with. They occur as lines of dunes formed of rounded grains of quartz, and lie in the direction of the prevalent wind, usually being of small breadth as compared with their length; but in certain areas, such as that lying S.W. and W. of the oases of Farafra and Dakhla, these lines of dunes, lying parallel to each other and about half a mile apart, cover immense areas, rendering them absolutely impassable except in a direction parallel to the lines themselves. East of the oases of Baharia and Farafra is a very striking line of these sand dunes; rarely more than 3 miles wide, it extends almost continuously from Moghara in the north, passing along the west side of Kharga Oasis to a point near the Nile in the neighbourhood of Abu Simbel—having thus a length of nearly 550 m. In the northern part of this desert the dunes lie about N.W.-S.E., but farther south incline more towards the meridian, becoming at last very nearly north and south.

Oases.—In the western desert lie the five large oases of Egypt, namely, Siwa, Baharia, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga or Great Oasis, occupying depressions in the plateau or, in the case of the last three, large indentations in the face of limestone escarpments which form the western versant of the Nile valley hills. Their fertility is due to a plentiful supply of water furnished by a sandstone bed 300 to 500 ft. below the surface, whence the water rises through natural fissures or artificial boreholes to the surface, and sometimes to several feet above it. These oases were known and occupied by the Egyptians as early as 1600 b.c., and Kharga (q.v.) rose to special importance at the time of the Persian occupation. Here, near the town of Kharga, the ancient Hebi, is a temple of Ammon built by Darius I., and in the same oasis are other ruins of the period of the Ptolemies and Caesars. The oasis of Siwa (Jupiter Ammon) is about 150 m. S. of the Mediterranean at the Gulf of Sollum and about 300 m. W. of the Nile (see [Siwa]). The other four oases lie parallel to and distant 100 to 150 m. from the Nile, between 25° and 29° N., Baharia being the most northerly and Kharga the most southerly.

Besides the oases the desert is remarkable for two other valleys. The first is that of the natron lakes already mentioned. It contains four monasteries, the remains of the famous anchorite settlement of Nitriae. South of the Wadi Natron, and parallel to it, is a sterile valley called the Bahr-bela-Ma, or “River without Water.”

The Sinai Peninsula.—The triangular-shaped Sinai peninsula has its base on the Mediterranean, the northern part being an arid plateau, the desert of Tih. The apex is occupied by a massif of crystalline rocks. The principal peaks rise over 8500 ft. Owing to the slight rainfall, and the rapid weathering of the rocks by the great range of temperature, these hills rise steeply from the valleys at their feet as almost bare rock, supporting hardly any vegetation. In some of the valleys wells or rock-pools filled by rain occur, and furnish drinking-water to the few Arabs who wander in these hills (see also [Sinai]).

[Geology.—Just as the Nile valley forms the chief geographical feature of Egypt, so the geology of the country is intimately related to it. The north and south direction of the river has been largely determined by faults, though the geologists of the Egyptian Survey are finding that the influence of faulting in determining physical outline has, in some cases, been overestimated. The oldest rocks, consisting of crystalline schists with numerous intrusions of granite, porphyry and diorite, occupy the eastern portion of the country between the Nile south of Assuan and the Red Sea. The intrusive rocks predominate over the schists in extent of area covered. They furnished the chief material for the ancient monuments. At Assuan (Syene) the well-known syenite of Werner occurs. It is, however, a hornblende granite and does not possess the mineralogical composition of the syenites of modern petrology. Between Thebes and Khartum the western banks of the Nile are composed of Nubian Sandstone, which extends westward from the river to the edge of the great Libyan Desert, where it forms the bed rock. The age of this sandstone has given rise to much dispute. The upper part certainly belongs to the Cretaceous formation; the lower part has been considered to be of Karroo age by some geologists, while others regard the whole formation to be of Cretaceous age. In the Kharga Oasis the upper portion consists of variously coloured unfossiliferous clays with intercalated bands of sandstone containing fossil silicified woods (Nicolia Aegyptiaca and Araucarioxylon Aegypticum). They are conformably overlain by clays and limestones with Exogyra Overwegi belonging to the Lower Danian, and these by clays and white chalk with Ananchytes ovata of the Upper Danian. In many instances the Tertiary formation, which occurs between Esna and Cairo, unconformably overlies the Cretaceous, the Lower Eocene being absent. The fluvio-marine deposits of the Upper Eocene and Oligocene formations contain an interesting mammalian fauna, proving that the African continent formed a centre of radiation for the mammalia in early Tertiary times. Arsinoitherium is the precursor of the horned Ungulata; while Moeritherium and Palaeomastodon undoubtedly include the oldest known elephants. Miocene strata are absent in the southern Tertiary areas, but are present at Moghara and in the north. Marine Pliocene strata occur to the south of the pyramids of Giza and in the Fayum province, where, in addition, some gravel terraces, at a height of 500 ft. above sea-level, are attributed to the Pliocene period. The Lake of Moeris, as a large body of fresh water, appears to have come into existence in Pleistocene times. It is represented now by the brackish-water lake of the Birket-el-Kerun. The superficial sands of the deserts and the Nile mud form the chief recent formations. The Nile deposits its mud over the valley before reaching the sea, and consequently the Delta receives little additional material. At Memphis the alluvial deposits are over 50 ft. thick. The superficial sands of the desert region, derived in large part from the disintegration of the Nubian Sandstone, occupy the most extensive areas in the Libyan Desert. The other desert regions of Egypt are elevated stony plateaus, which are diversified by extensively excavated valleys and oases, and in which sand frequently plays quite a subordinate part. These regions present magnificent examples of dry erosion by wind-borne sand, which acts as a powerful sand blast etching away the rocks and producing most beautiful sculpturing. The rate of denudation in exposed positions is exceedingly rapid; while spots sheltered from the sand blast suffer a minimum of erosion, as shown by the preservation of ancient inscriptions. Many of the Egyptian rocks in the desert areas and at the cataracts are coated with a highly polished film, of almost microscopic thinness, consisting chiefly of oxides of iron and manganese with salts of magnesia and lime. It is supposed to be due to a chemical change within the rock and not to deposition on the surface.]

Minerals.—Egypt possesses considerable mineral wealth. In ancient times gold and precious stones were mined in the Red Sea hills. During the Moslem period mining was abandoned, and it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that renewed efforts were made to develop the mining industry. The salt obtained from Lake Mareotis at Meks, a western suburb of Alexandria, supplies the salt needed for the country, except a small quantity used for curing fish at Lake Menzala; while the lakes in the Wadi Natron, 45 m. N.W. of the pyramids of Giza, furnish carbonate of soda in large quantities. Alum is found in the western oases. Nitrates and phosphates are also found in various parts of the desert and are used as manures. The turquoise mines of Sinai, in the Wadi Maghara, are worked regularly by the Arabs of the peninsula, who sell the stones in Suez; while there are emerald mines at Jebel Zubara, south of Kosseir. Petroleum occurs at Jebel Zeit, on the west shore of the Gulf of Suez. Considerable veins of haematite of good quality occur both in the Red Sea hills and in Sinai. At Jebel ed-Dukhan are porphyry quarries, extensively worked under the Romans, and at Jebel el-Fatira are granite quarries. At El-Hammāmāt, on the old way from Coptos to Philoteras Portus, are the breccia verde quarries, worked from very early times, and having interesting hieroglyphic inscriptions. At the various mines, and on the routes to them and to the Red Sea, are some small temples and stations, ranging from the Pharaonic to the Roman period. The quarries of Syene (Assuan) are famous for extremely hard and durable red granite (syenite), and have been worked since the days of the earliest Pharaohs. Large quantities of this syenite were used in building the Assuan dam (1898-1902). The cliffs bordering the Nile are largely quarried for limestone and sandstone.

Gold-mining recommenced in 1905 at Um Rus, a short distance inland from the Red Sea and some 50 m. S. of Kosseir, where milling operations were started in March of that year. Another mine opened in 1905 was that of Um Garaiat, E.N.E. of Korosko, and 65 m. distant from the Nile.

Climate.—Part of Upper Egypt is within the tropics, but the greater part of the country is north of the Tropic of Cancer. Except a narrow belt on the north along the Mediterranean shore, Egypt lies in an almost rainless area, where the temperature is high by day and sinks quickly at night in consequence of the rapid radiation under the cloudless sky. The mean temperature at Alexandria and Port Said varies between 57° F. in January and 81° F. in July; while at Cairo, where the proximity of the desert begins to be felt, it is 53° F. in January, rising to 84° F. in July. January is the coldest month, when occasionally in the Nile valley, and more frequently in the open desert, the temperature sinks to 32° F., or even a degree or two below. The mean maximum temperatures are 99° F. for Alexandria and 110° F. for Cairo. Farther south the range of temperature becomes greater as pure desert conditions are reached. Thus at Assuan the mean maximum is 118° F., the mean minimum 42° F. At Wadi Halfa the figures in each case are one degree lower.

The relative humidity varies greatly. At Assuan the mean value for the year is only 38%, that for the summer being 29%, and for the winter 51%; while for Wadi Halfa the mean is 32%, and 20% and 42% are the mean values for summer and winter respectively. A white fog, dense and cold, sometimes rises from the Nile in the morning, but it is of short duration and rare occurrence. In Alexandria and on all the Mediterranean coast of Egypt rain falls abundantly in the winter months, amounting to 8 in. in the year; but southwards it rapidly decreases, and south of 31° N. little rain falls.

Records at Cairo show that the rainfall is very irregular, and is furnished by occasional storms rather than by any regular rainy season; still, most falls in the winter months, especially December and January, while, on the other hand, none has been recorded in June and July. The average annual rainfall does not exceed 1.50 in. In the open desert rain falls even more rarely, but it is by no means unknown, and from time to time heavy storms burst, causing sudden floods in the narrow ravines, and drowning both men and animals. These are more common in the mountainous region of the Sinai peninsula, where they are much dreaded by the Arabs. Snow is unknown in the Nile valley, but on the mountains of Sinai and the Red Sea hills it is not uncommon, and a temperature of 18° F. at an altitude of 2000 ft. has been recorded in January.

The atmospheric pressure varies between a maximum in January and a minimum in July, the mean difference being about 0.29 in. In a series of records extending over 14 years the mean pressure varied between 29.84 and 29.90 in.

The most striking meteorological factor in Egypt is the persistence of the north wind throughout the year, without which the climate would be very trying. It is this “Etesian” wind which enables sailing boats constantly to ascend the Nile, against its strong and rapid current. In December, January and February, at Cairo, the north wind slightly predominates, though those from the south and west often nearly equal it, but after this the north blows almost continuously for the rest of the year. In May and June the prevailing direction is north and north-north-east, and for July, August, September and October north and north-west. From the few observations that exist, it seems that farther south the southern winter winds decrease rapidly, becoming westerly, until at Assuan and Wadi Haifa the northerly winds are almost invariable throughout the year. The khamsin, hot sand-laden winds of the spring months, come invariably from the south. They are preceded by a rapid fall of the barometer for about a day, until a gradient from south to north is formed, then the wind commences to blow, at first gently, from the south-east; rapidly increasing in violence, it shifts through south to south-west, finally dropping about sunset. The same thing is repeated on the second and sometimes the third day, by which time the wind has worked round to the north again. During a khamsin the temperature is high and the air extremely dry, while the dust and sand carried by the wind form a thick yellow fog obscuring the sun. Another remarkable phenomenon is the zobaa, a lofty whirlwind of sand resembling a pillar, which moves with great velocity. The southern winds of the summer months which occur in the low latitudes north of the equator are not felt much north of Khartum.

One of the most interesting phenomena of Egypt is the mirage, which is frequently seen both in the desert and in the waste tracts of uncultivated land near the Mediterranean; and it is often so truthful in its appearance that one finds it difficult to admit the illusion.

Flora.—Egypt possesses neither forests nor woods and, as practically the whole of the country which will support vegetation is devoted to agriculture, the flora is limited. The most important tree is the date-palm, which grows all over Egypt and in the oases. The lower branches being regularly cut, this tree grows high and assumes a much more elegant form than in its natural state. The dom-palm is first seen a little north of 26° N., and extends southwards. The vine grows well, and in ancient times was largely cultivated for wine; oranges, lemons and pomegranates also abound. Mulberry trees are common in Lower Egypt. The sunt tree (Acacia nilotica) grows everywhere, as well as the tamarisk and the sycamore. In the deserts halfa grass and several kinds of thorn bushes grow; and wherever rain or springs have moistened the ground, numerous wild flowers thrive. This is especially the case where there is also shade to protect them from the midday sun, as in some of the narrow ravines in the eastern desert and in the palm groves of the oases, where various ferns and flowers grow luxuriantly round the springs. Among many trees which have been imported, the “lebbek” (Albizzia lebbek), a thick-foliaged mimosa, thrives especially, and has been very largely employed. The weeping-willow, myrtle, elm, cypress and eucalyptus are also used in the gardens and plantations.

The most common of the fruits are dates, of which there are nearly thirty varieties, which are sold half-ripe, ripe, dried, and pressed in their fresh moist state in mats or skins. The pressed dates of Siwa are among the most esteemed. The Fayum is celebrated for its grapes, and chiefly supplies the market of Cairo. The most common grape is white, of which there is a small kind far superior to the ordinary sort. The black grapes are large, but comparatively tasteless. The vines are trailed on trelliswork, and form agreeable avenues in the gardens of Cairo. The best-known fruits, besides dates and grapes, are figs, sycamore-figs and pomegranates, apricots and peaches, oranges and citrons, lemons and limes, bananas, which are believed to be of the fruits of Paradise (being always in season), different kinds of melons (including some of aromatic flavour, and the refreshing water-melon), mulberries, Indian figs or prickly pears, the fruit of the lotus and olives. Among the more usual cultivated flowers are the rose (which has ever been a favourite among the Arabs), the jasmine, narcissus, lily, oleander, chrysanthemum, convolvulus, geranium, dahlia, basil, the henna plant (Lawsonia alba, or Egyptian privet, which is said to be a flower of Paradise), the helianthus and the violet. Of wild flowers the most common are yellow daisies, poppies, irises, asphodels and ranunculuses. The Poinsettia pulcherrima is a bushy tree with leaves of brilliant red.

Many kinds of reeds are found in Egypt, though they were formerly much more common. The famous byblus or papyrus no longer exists in the country, but other kinds of cyperi are found. The lotus, greatly prized for its flowers by the ancient inhabitants, is still found in the Delta, though never in the Nile itself. There are two varieties of this water-lily, one with white flowers, the other with blue.

Fauna.—The chief quadrupeds are all domestic animals. Of these the camel and the ass are the most common. The ass, often a tall and handsome creature, is indigenous. When the camel was first introduced into Egypt is uncertain—it is not pictured on the ancient monuments. Neither is the buffalo, which with the sheep is very numerous in Egypt. The horses are of indifferent breed, apparently of a type much inferior to that possessed by the ancient Egyptians. Wild animals are few. The principal are the hyena, jackal and fox. The wild boar is found in the Delta. Wolves are rare. Numerous gazelles inhabit the deserts. The ibex is found in the Sinaitic peninsula and the hills between the Nile and the Red Sea, and the mouflon, or maned sheep, is occasionally seen in the same regions. The desert hare is abundant in parts of the Fayum, and a wild cat, or lynx, frequents the marshy regions of the Delta. The ichneumon (Pharaoh’s rat) is common and often tame; the coney and jerboa are found in the eastern mountains. Bats are very numerous. The crocodile is no longer found in Egypt, nor the hippopotamus, in ancient days a frequenter of the Nile. The common or pariah dog is generally of sandy colour; in Upper Egypt there is a breed of wiry rough-haired black dogs, noted for their fierceness. Among reptiles are several kinds of venomous snakes—the horned viper, the hooded snake and the echis. Lizards of many kinds are found, including the monitor. There are many varieties of beetle, including a number of species representing the scarabaeus of the ancients. Locusts are comparatively rare. The scorpion, whose sting is sometimes fatal, is common. There are many large and poisonous spiders and flies; fleas and mosquitoes abound. Fish are plentiful in the Nile, both scaled and without scales. The scaly fish include members of the carp and perch kind. The bayad, a scaleless fish commonly eaten, reaches sometimes 3½ ft. in length. A somewhat rare fish is the Polypterus, which has thick bony scales and 16 to 18 long dorsal fins. The Tetrodon, or ball fish, is found in the Red Sea, as well as in the Nile.

Some 300 species of birds are found in Egypt, and one of the most striking features of a journey up the Nile is the abundance of bird life. Many of the species are sedentary, others are winter visitants, while others again simply pass through Egypt on their way to or from warmer or colder regions. Birds of prey are very numerous, including several varieties of eagles—the osprey, the spotted, the golden and the imperial. Of vultures the black and white Egyptian variety (Neophron percnopterus) is most common. The griffon and the black vulture are also frequently seen. There are many kinds of kites, falcons and hawks, kestrel being numerous. The long-legged buzzard is found throughout Egypt, as are owls. The so-called Egyptian eagle owl (Bubo ascalaphus) is rather rare, but the barn owl is common. The kingfisher is found beside every watercourse, a black and white species (Ceryle rudis) being much more numerous than the common kingfisher. Pigeons and hoopoes abound in every village. There are various kinds of plovers—the black-headed species (Pluvianus Aegyptius) is most numerous in Upper Egypt; the golden plover and the white-tailed species are found chiefly in the Delta. The spurwing is supposed to be the bird mentioned by Herodotus as eating the parasites covering the inside of the mouth of the crocodile. Of game-birds the most plentiful are sandgrouse, quail (a bird of passage) and snipe. Red-legged and other partridges are found in the eastern desert and the Sinai hills. Of aquatic birds there is a great variety. Three species of pelican exist, including the large Dalmatian pelican. Storks, cranes, herons and spoonbills are common. The sacred ibis is not found in Egypt, but the buff-backed heron, the constant companion of the buffalo, is usually called an ibis. The glossy ibis is occasionally seen. The flamingo, common in the lakes of Lower Egypt, is not found on the Nile. Geese, duck and teal are abundant. The most common goose is the white-fronted variety; the Egyptian goose is more rare. Both varieties are depicted on the ancient monuments; the white-fronted goose being commonly shown. Several birds of gorgeous plumage come north into Egypt in the spring, among others the golden oriole, the sun-bird, the roller and the blue-cheeked bee-eater.

Egypt as a Health Resort.—The country is largely resorted to during the winter months by Europeans in search of health as well as pleasure. Upper Egypt is healthier than Lower Egypt, where, especially near the coast, malarial fevers and diseases of the respiratory organs are not uncommon. The least healthy time of the year is the latter part of autumn, when the inundated soil is drying. In the desert, at a very short distance from the cultivable land, the climate is uniformly dry and unvaryingly healthy. The most suitable places for the residence of invalids are Helwan, where there are natural mineral springs, in the desert, 14 m. S. of Cairo, and Luxor and Assuan in Upper Egypt.

The diseases from which Egyptians suffer are very largely the result of insanitary surroundings. In this respect a great improvement has taken place since the British occupation in 1882. Plague, formerly one of the great scourges of the country, seems to have been stamped out, the last visitation having been in 1844, but cholera epidemics occasionally occur.[2] Cholera rarely extends south of Cairo. In 1848 it is believed that over 200,000 persons died from cholera, but later epidemics have been much less fatal. Smallpox is not uncommon, and skin diseases are numerous, but the two most prevalent diseases among the Egyptians are dysentery and ophthalmia. The objection entertained by many natives to entering hospitals or to altering their traditional methods of “cure” renders these diseases much more malignant and fatal than they would be in other circumstances. The government, however, enforces certain health regulations, and the sanitary service is under the direction of a European official.

Chief Towns.—Cairo (q.v.) the capital, a city of Arab foundation, is built on the east bank of the Nile, about 12 m, above the point where the river divides, and in reference to its situation at the head of the Delta has been called by the Arabs “the diamond stud in the handle of the fan of Egypt.” It has a population (1907) of 654,476 and is the largest city in Africa. Next in importance of the cities of Egypt and the chief seaport is Alexandria (q.v.), pop. (with Ramleh) 370,009, on the shore of the Mediterranean at the western end of the Delta. Port Said (q.v.), pop. 49,884, at the eastern end of the Delta, and at the north entrance to the Suez Canal, is the second seaport. Between Alexandria and Port Said are the towns of Rosetta (q.v.), pop. 16,810, and Damietta (q.v.), pop. 29,354, each built a few miles above the mouth of the branch of the Nile of the same name. In the middle ages, when Alexandria was in decay, these two towns were busy ports; with the revival of Alexandria under Mehemet Ali and the foundation of Port Said (c. 1860), their trade declined. The other ports of Egypt are Suez (q.v.), pop. 18,347, at the south entrance of the canal, Kosseir (794) on the Red Sea, the seat of the trade carried on between Upper Egypt and Arabia, Mersa Matruh, near the Tripolitan frontier, and El-Arish, pop. 5897, on the Mediterranean, near the frontier of Palestine, and a halting-place on the caravan route from Egypt to Syria. In the interior of the Delta are many flourishing towns, the largest being Tanta, pop. 54,437, which occupies a central position. Damanhur (38,752) lies on the railway between Tanta and Alexandria; Mansura (40,279) is on the Damietta branch of the Nile, to the N.E. of Tanta; Zagazig (34,999) is the largest town in the Delta east of the Damietta branch; Bilbeis (13,485) lies N.N.E. of Cairo, on the edge of the desert and in the ancient Land of Goshen. Ismailia (10,373) is situated midway on the Suez Canal. All these towns, which depend largely on the cotton industry, are separately noticed.

Other towns in Lower Egypt are: Mehallet el-Kubra, pop. 47,955, 16 m. by rail N.E. of Tanta, with manufactories of silk and cottons; Salihia (6100), E.N.E. of and terminus of a railway from Zagazig, on the edge of the desert south of Lake Menzala, and the starting-point of the caravans to Syria; Mataria (15,142) on Lake Menzala and headquarters of the fishing industry; Zifta (15,850) on the Damietta branch and the site of a barrage; Samanud (14,408), also on the Damietta branch, noted for its pottery, and Fua (14,515), where large quantities of tarbushes are made, on the Rosetta branch. Shibin el-Kom (21,576), 16 m. S. of Tanta, is a cotton centre, and Menuf (22,316), 8 m. S.W. of Shibin, in the fork between the branches of the Nile, is the chief town of a rich agricultural district. There are many other towns in the Delta with populations between 10,000 and 20,000.

In Upper Egypt the chief towns are nearly all in the narrow valley of the Nile. The exceptions are the towns in the oases comparatively unimportant, and those in the Fayum province. The capital of the Fayum, Medinet el-Fayum, has a population (1907) of 37,320. The chief towns on the Nile, taking them in their order in ascending the river from Cairo, are Beni Suef, Minia, Assiut, Akhmim, Suhag, Girga, Kena, Luxor, Esna, Edfu, Assuan and Korosko. Beni Suef (23,357) is 77 m. from Cairo by rail. It is on the west bank of the river, is the capital of a mudiria and a centre for the manufacture of woollen goods. Minia (27,221) is 77 m. by rail farther south. It is also the capital of a mudiria, has a considerable European colony, possesses a large sugar factory and some cotton mills. It is the starting-point of a road to the Baharia oasis. Assiut (q.v.), pop. 39,442, is 235 m. S. of Cairo by rail, and is the most important commercial centre in Upper Egypt. At this point a barrage is built across the river. Suhag (17,514) is 56 m. by rail S. of Assiut and is the headquarters of Girga mudiria. The ancient and celebrated Coptic monasteries El Abiad (the white) and El Ahmar (the red) are 3 to 4 m. W. and N.W. respectively of Suhag. A few miles above Suhag, on the opposite (east) side of the Nile is Akhmim (q.v.) or Ekhmim (23,795), where silk and cotton goods are made. Girga (q.v.), pop. 19,893, is 22 m. S. by rail of Suhag, and on the same (the west) side of the river. It is noted for its pottery. Kena (q.v.), pop. 20,069, is on the east bank of the Nile, 145 m. by rail from Assiut. It is the chief seat of the manufacture of the porous earthenware water-bottles used all over Egypt. Luxor (q.v.), pop. (with Karnak) 25,229, marks the site of Thebes. It is 418 m. from Cairo, and here the gauge of the railway is altered from broad to narrow. Esna (q.v.), pop. 19,103, is another place where pottery is made in large quantities. It is on the west bank of the Nile, 36 m. by rail S. of Luxor. Edfu (q.v.), pop. 19,262, is also on the west side of the river, 30 m. farther south. It is chiefly famous for its ancient temple. Assuan (q.v.), pop. 12,618, is at the foot of the First Cataract and 551 m. S. of Cairo by rail. Three miles farther south, at Shellal, the Egyptian railway terminates. Korosko, 118 m. by river above Assuan, is a small place notable as the northern terminus of the caravan route from the Sudan across the Nubian desert. Since the building of the railway—which starts 96 m. higher up, at Wadi Halfa—to Khartum, this route is little used, and Korosko has lost what importance it had.

Ancient Cities and Monuments.—Many of the modern cities of Egypt are built on the sites of ancient cities, and they generally contain some monuments of the time of the Pharaohs, Greeks or Romans. The sites of other ancient cities now in complete ruin may be indicated. Memphis, the Pharaonic capital, was on the west bank of the Nile, some 14 m. above Cairo, and Heliopolis lay some 5 m. N.N.E. of Cairo. The pyramids of Giza or Gizeh, on the edge of the desert, 8 m. west of Cairo, are the largest of the many pyramids and other monuments, including the famous Sphinx, built in the neighbourhood of Memphis. The site of Thebes has already been indicated. Syene stood near to where the town of Assuan now is; opposite, on an island in the Nile, are scanty ruins of the city of Elephantine, and a little above, on another island, is the temple of Philae. The ancient Coptos (Keft) is represented by the village of Kuft, between Luxor and Kena. A few miles north of Kena is Dendera, with a famous temple. The ruins of Abydos, one of the oldest places in Egypt, are 8 m. S.W. of Balliana, a small town in Girga mudiria. The ruined temples of Abu Simbel are on the west side of the Nile, 56 m. above Korosko. On the Red Sea, south of Kosseir, are the ruins of Myos Hormos and Berenice. Of the ancient cities in the Delta there are remains, among others, of Sais, Iseum, Tanis, Bubastis, Onion, Sebennytus, Pithom, Pelusium, and of the Greek cities Naucratis and Daphnae. There are, besides the more ancient cities and monuments, a number of Coptic towns, monasteries and churches in almost every part of Egypt, dating from the early centuries of Christianity. The monasteries, or ders, are generally fort-like buildings and are often built in the desert. Tombs of Mahommedan saints are also numerous, and are often placed on the summit of the cliffs overlooking the Nile. The traveller in Egypt thus views, side by side with the activities of the present day, where occident and orient meet and clash, memorials of every race and civilization which has flourished in the valley of the Nile.

Trade Routes and Communications.—Its geographical position gives Egypt command of one of the most important trade routes in the world. It is, as it were, the fort which commands the way from Europe to the East. This has been the case from time immemorial, and the provision, in 1869, of direct maritime communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, by the completion of the Suez Canal, ensured for the Egyptian route the supremacy in sea-borne traffic to Asia, which the discovery of the passage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope had menaced for three and a half centuries. The Suez Canal is 87 m. long, 66 actual canal and 21 lakes. It has sufficient depth to allow vessels drawing 27 ft. of water to pass through. It is administered by a company whose headquarters are in Paris, and no part of its revenue reaches the Egyptian exchequer (see [Suez Canal]). Besides the many steamship lines which use the Suez Canal, other steamers run direct from European ports to Alexandria. There is also a direct mail service between Suez and Port Sudan.

The chief means of internal communication are, in the Delta the railways, in Upper Egypt the railway and the river. The railways are of two kinds: (1) those state-owned and state-worked, (2) agricultural light railways owned and worked by private companies. Railway construction dates from 1852, when the line from Alexandria to Cairo was begun, by order of Abbas I. The state railways, unless otherwise indicated, have a gauge of 4 ft. 8½ in. The main system is extremely simple. Trunk lines from Alexandria (via Damanhur and Tanta) and from Port Said (via Ismailia) traverse the Delta and join at Cairo. From Cairo the railway is continued south up the valley of the Nile and close to the river. At first it follows the west bank, crossing the stream at Nag Hamadi, 354 m. from Cairo, by an iron bridge 437 yds. long. Thence it continues on the east bank to Luxor, where the broad gauge ceases. From Luxor the line continues on the standard African gauge (3 ft. 6 in.) to Shellal, 3 m. above Assuan and 685 m. from Alexandria. This main line service is supplemented by a steamer service on the Nile from Shellal to Wadi Halfa, on the northern frontier of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, whence there is direct railway communication with Khartum and the Red Sea (see [Sudan]).

Branch lines connect Cairo and Alexandria with Suez and with almost every town in the Delta. From Cairo to Suez via Ismailia is a distance of 160 m. Before the Suez Canal was opened passengers and goods were taken to Suez from Cairo by a railway 84 m. long which ran across the desert. This line, now disused, had itself superseded the “overland route” organized by Lieut. Thomas Waghorn, R.N., c. 1830, for the conveyance of passengers and mails to India. In Upper Egypt a line, 40 m. long, runs west from Wasta, a station 56 m. S. of Cairo, to Abuksa in the Fayum mudiria. Another railway goes from Kharga Junction, a station on the main line 24 m. S. of Girga, to the oasis of Kharga. These lines are privately owned.

In the Delta the light railways supplement the ordinary lines and connect the villages with the towns and seaports. There are over 700 m. of these lines. The railway development of Egypt has not been very rapid. In 1880 944 m. of state lines were open; in 1900 the figure was 1393, and in 1905, 1688. For several years before 1904 the administration of the railways was carried on by an international or mixed board for the security of foreign creditors. In the year named the railways came directly under the control of the Egyptian government, which during the next four years spent £E.3,000,000 on improving and developing the lines. In the five years 1902-1906 the capital value of the state railways increased from £E.20,383,000 to £E.23,200,000 and the net earnings from £E.1,059,000 to £E. 1,475,000. The number of passengers carried in the same period rose from 12½ to over 22 millions, and the weight of goods from slightly under 3,000,000 to nearly 6,750,000 tons. In 1906 the light railways carried nearly a million tons of goods and over 6,800,000 passengers.

Westward from Alexandria a railway, begun in 1904 by the khedive, Abbas II., runs parallel with the coast, and is intended to be continued to Tripoli. The line forms the eastern end of the great railway system which will eventually extend from Tangier to Alexandria.

The Nile is navigable throughout its course in Egypt, and is largely used as a means of cheap transit of heavy goods. Lock and bridge tolls were abolished in 1899 and 1901 respectively. As a result, river traffic greatly increased. Above Cairo the Nile is the favourite tourist route, while between Shellal (Assuan) and the Sudan frontier it is the only means of communication. Among the craft using the river the dahabīya is a characteristic native sailing vessel, somewhat resembling a house-boat. From the Nile, caravan routes lead westward to the various oases and eastward to the Red Sea, the shortest (120 m.) and most used of the eastern routes being that from Kena to Kosseir. Roads suitable for wheeled vehicles are found in Lower Egypt, but the majority of the tracks are bridle-paths, goods being conveyed on the backs of donkeys, mules and camels.

Posts and Telegraphs.—The Egyptian postal system is highly organized and efficient, and in striking contrast with its condition in 1870, when there were but nineteen post-offices in the country. All the branches of business transacted in European post-offices are carried on by the Egyptian service, Egypt being a member of the Postal Union. It was the first foreign country to establish a penny postage with Great Britain, the reduction from 2½d. being made in 1905. The inland letters and packages carried yearly exceed 20,000,000 and foreign letters (30% to England) number over 4,000,000. Over £17,000,000 passes yearly through the post. A feature of the service are the travelling post-offices, of which there are some 200.

All the important towns are connected by telegraph, the telegraphs being state-owned and worked by the railway administration. Egypt is also connected by cables and land-lines with the outside world. One land-line connects at El-Arish with the line through Syria and Asia Minor to Constantinople. Another line connects at Wadi Halfa with the Sudan system, affording direct telegraphic communication via Khartum and Gondokoro with Uganda and Mombasa. The Eastern Telegraph Company, by concessions, have telegraph lines across Egypt from Alexandria via Cairo to Suez, and from Port Said to Suez, connecting their cables to Europe and the East. The principal cables are from Alexandria to Malta, Gibraltar and England; from Alexandria to Crete and Brindisi; from Suez to Aden, Bombay, China and Australia.

The telephone is largely used in the big towns, and there is a trunk telephone line connecting Alexandria and Cairo.

Standard Time.—The standard time adopted in Egypt is that of the longitude of Alexandria, 30° E., i.e. two hours earlier than Greenwich time. It thus corresponds with the standard time of British South Africa.

Agriculture and Land Tenure.—The chief industry of Egypt is agriculture. The proportions of the industry depend upon the area of land capable of cultivation. This again depends upon the fertilizing sediment brought down by the Nile and the measure in which lands beyond the natural reach of the flood water can be rendered productive by irrigation. By means of canals, “basins,” dams and barrages, the Nile flood is now utilized to a greater extent than ever before (see [Irrigation]: Egypt). The result has been a great increase in the area of cultivated or cultivable land.

At the time of the French occupation of Egypt in 1798, it was found that the cultivable soil covered 4,429,400 acres, but the quantity actually under cultivation did not exceed 3,520,000 acres, or six-elevenths of the entire surface. Under improved conditions the area of cultivated land, or land in process of reclamation, had risen in 1906 to 5,750,000 acres, while another 500,000 acres of waste land awaited reclamation.

Throughout Egypt the cultivable soil does not present any very great difference, being always the deposit of the river; it contains, however, more sand near the river than at a distance from it. Towards the Mediterranean its quality is injured by the salt with which the air is impregnated, and therefore it is not so favourable to vegetation. Of the cultivated land, some three-fourths is held, theoretically, in life tenancy. The state, as ultimate proprietor, imposes a tax which is the equivalent of rent. These lands are Kharaji lands, in distinction from the Ushuri or tithe-paying lands. The Ushuri lands were originally granted in fee, and are subject to a quit-rent. All tenants are under obligation to guard or repair the banks of the Nile in times of flood, or in any case of sudden emergency. Only to this extent does the corvée now prevail. The land-tax is proportionate, i.e. land under perennial irrigation pays higher taxes than land not so irrigated (see below, Finance). The unit of land is the feddan, which equals 1.03 acre. Out of 1,153,759 proprietors of land in 1905, 1,005,705 owned less than 5 feddans. The number of proprietors owning over 50 feddans was 12,475. The acreage held by the first class was 1,264,084, that by the second class, 2,356,602. Over 1,600,000 feddans were held in holdings of from 5 to 50 feddans. The state domains cover over 240,000 feddans, and about 600,000 feddans are owned by foreigners. The policy of the government is to maintain the small proprietors, and to do nothing tending to oust the native in favour of European landowners.

The kind of crops cultivated depends largely on whether the land is under perennial, flood or “basin” irrigation. Perennial irrigation is possible where there are canals which can be supplied with water all the year round from the Nile. This condition exists throughout the Delta and Middle Egypt, but only in parts of Upper Egypt. Altogether some 4,000,000 acres are under perennial irrigation. In these regions two and sometimes three crops can be harvested yearly. In places where perennial irrigation is impossible, the land is divided by rectangular dikes into “basins.” Into these basins—which vary in area from 600 to 50,000 acres—water is led by shallow canals when the Nile is in flood. The water is let in about the middle of August and the basins are begun to be emptied about the 1st of October. The land under basin irrigation covers about 1,750,000 acres. In the basins only one crop can be grown in the year. This basin system is of immemorial use in Egypt, and it was not until the time of Mehemet Ali (c. 1820) that perennial irrigation began. High land near the banks of the Nile which cannot be reached by canals is irrigated by raising water from the Nile by steam-pumps, water-wheels (sakias) worked by buffaloes, or water-lifts (shadufs) worked by hand. There are several thousand steam-pumps and over 100,000 sakias or shadufs in Egypt. The fellah divides his land into little square plots by ridges of earth, and from the small canal which serves his holding he lets the water into each plot as needed. The same system obtains on large estates (see further [Irrigation]: Egypt). There are three agricultural seasons: (1) summer (sefi), 1st of April to 31st of July, when crops are grown only on land under perennial irrigation; (2) flood (Nili), 1st of August to 30th of November; and (3) winter (shetwi), 1st of December to 31st of March. Cotton, sugar and rice are the chief summer crops; wheat, barley, flax and vegetables are chiefly winter crops; maize, millet and “flood” rice are Nili crops; millet and vegetables are also, but in a less degree, summer crops. The approximate areas under cultivation in the various seasons are, in summer, 2,050,000 acres; in flood, 1,500,000 acres; in winter, 4,300,000 acres. The double-cropped area is over 2,000,000 acres. Although on the large farms iron ploughs, and threshing and grain-cleaning machines, have been introduced, the small cultivator prefers the simple native plough made of wood. Corn is threshed by a norag, a machine resembling a chair, which moves on small iron wheels or thin circular plates fixed to axle-trees, and is drawn in a circle by oxen.

Crops.—Egypt is third among the cotton-producing countries of the world. Its production per acre is the greatest of any country but, owing to the restricted area available, the bulk raised is not more than one-tenth of that of the United States and about half that of India. Some 1,600,000 acres of land, five-sixths being in Lower Egypt, are devoted to cotton growing. The climate of Lower Egypt being very suitable to the growth of the plant, the cotton produced there is of excellent quality. The seed is sown at the end of February or beginning of March and the crop is picked in September and October. The cotton crop increased from 1,700,000 kantars[3] in 1878 to 4,100,000 in 1890, had reached 5,434,000 in 1900, and was 6,750,000 in 1905. Its average value, 1897-1905, was over £14,000,000 a year. The cotton exported was valued in 1907 at £E.23,598,000, in 1908 at £E.17,091,612.

While cotton is grown chiefly in the Delta, the sugar plantations, which cover about 100,000 acres, are mainly in Upper Egypt. The canes are planted in March and are cut in the following January or February. Although since 1884 the production of sugar has largely increased, there has not been a corresponding increase in its value, owing to the low price obtained in the markets of the world. Beetroot is also grown to a limited extent for the manufacture of sugar. The sugar exported varied in annual value in the period 1884-1905 from £400,000 to £765,000.

A coarse and strong tobacco was formerly extensively grown, but its cultivation was prohibited in 1890. Flax and hemp are grown in a few places.

Maize in Lower Egypt and millet (of which there are several varieties) in Upper Egypt are largely grown for home consumption, these grains forming a staple food of the peasantry. The stalk of the maize is also a very useful article. It is used in the building of the houses of the fellahin, as fuel, and, when green, as food for cattle. Wheat and barley are important crops, and some 2,000,000 acres are sown with them yearly. The barley in general is not of good quality, but the desert or “Mariut” barley, grown by the Bedouins in the coast region west of Alexandria, is highly prized for the making of beer. Beans and lentils are extensively sown, and form an important article of export. The annual value of the crops is over £3,000,000. Rice is largely grown in the northern part of the Delta, where the soil is very wet. Two kinds are cultivated: Sultani, a summer crop, and Sabaini, a flood crop. Sabaini is a favourite food of the fellahin, while Sultani rice is largely exported. In the absence of grass, the chief green food for cattle and horses is clover, grown largely in the basin lands of Upper Egypt. To a less extent vetches are grown for the same purpose.

Vegetables and Fruit.—Vegetables grow readily, and their cultivation is an important part of the work of the fellahin. The onion is grown in great quantities along the Nile banks in Upper Egypt, largely for export. Among other vegetables commonly raised are tomatoes (the bulk of which are exported), potatoes (of poor quality), leeks, marrows, cucumbers, cauliflowers, lettuce, asparagus and spinach.

The common fruits are the date, orange, citron, fig, grape, apricot, peach and banana. Olives, melons, mulberries and strawberries are also grown, though not in very large numbers. The olive tree flourishes only in the Fayum and the oases. The Fayum also possesses extensive vineyards. The date is a valuable economic asset. There are some 6,000,000 date-palms in the country, 4,000,000 being in Upper Egypt. The fruit is one of the chief foods of the people. The value of the crop is about £1,500,000 a year.

Roses and Dyes.—There are fields of roses in the Fayum, which supply the market with rose-water. Of plants used for dyeing, the principal are bastard saffron, madder, woad and the indigo plant. The leaves of the henna plant are used to impart a bright red colour to the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, and the nails of both hands and feet, of women and children, the hair of old ladies and the tails of horses. Indigo is very extensively employed to dye the shirts of the natives of the poorer classes; and is, when very dark, the colour of mourning; therefore, women at funerals, and generally after a death, smear themselves with it.

Domestic Animals.—The Egyptians are not particularly a pastoral people, though the wealth of the Bedouin in the Eastern or Arabian Desert consists in their camels, horses, sheep and goats. In the Nile valley the chief domestic animals are the camel, donkey, mule, ox, buffalo, sheep and goat. Horses are comparatively few, and are seldom seen outside the large towns, the camel and donkey being the principal beasts of burden. The cattle are short-horned, rather small and well formed. They are quiet in disposition, and much valued for agricultural labour by the people, who therefore very rarely slaughter them for meat. Buffaloes of an uncouth appearance and of a dark slaty colour, strikingly contrasting with the neat cattle, abound in Egypt. They are very docile, and the little children of the villagers often ride them to or from the river. The buffaloes are largely employed for turning the sakias. Sheep (of which the greater number are black) and goats are abundant, and mutton is the ordinary butcher’s meat. The wool is coarse and short. Swine are very rarely kept, and then almost wholly for the European inhabitants, the Copts generally abstaining from eating their meat. Poultry is plentiful and eggs form a considerable item in the exports. Pigeons are kept in every village and their flesh is a common article of food.

Fishing.—The chief fishing-ground is Lake Menzala, where some 4000 persons are engaged in the industry, but fish abound in the Nile also, and are caught in large quantities along the coast of the Delta. The salting and curing of the fish is done chiefly at Mataria, on Lake Menzala, and at Damietta. Dried and salted fish eggs, called batarekh, command a ready market. The average annual value of the fisheries is about £200,000.

Canals.—The irrigation canals, which are also navigable by small craft, are of especial importance in a country where the rainfall is very slight. The Delta is intersected by numerous canals which derive their supply from four main channels. The Rayya Behera, known in its lower courses first as the Khatatba and afterwards as the Rosetta canal, follows the west bank of the Rosetta branch of the Nile and has numerous offshoots. The most important is the Mahmudia (50 m. long), which connects Alexandria with the Rosetta branch, taking a similar direction to that of the ancient canal which it succeeded. This canal supplies Alexandria with fresh water.

The Rayya Menufia, or Menuf canal, connects the two branches of the Nile and supplies water to the large number of canals in the central part of the Delta. Following the right (eastern) bank of the Damietta branch is the Rayya Tewfiki, known below Benha as the Mansuria, and below Mansura as the Fareskur, canal. This canal has many branches. Farther east are other canals, of which the most remarkable occupy in part the beds of the Tanitic and Pelusiac branches. That following the old Tanitic channel is called the canal of Al-Mo’izz, the first Fatimite caliph who ruled in Egypt, having been dug by his orders, and the latter bears the name of the canal of Abu-l-Muneggi, a Jew who executed this work, under the caliph Al-Amir, in order to water the province called the Sharkia. From this circumstance this canal is also known as the Sharkawia. From a town on its bank it is called in its lower course the Shibini canal. The superfluous water from all the Delta canals is drained off by bahrs (rivers) into the coast lakes. The Ismailia or Fresh-water canal branches from the Nile at Cairo and follows, in the main, the course of the canal which anciently joined the Nile and the Red Sea. It dates from Pharaonic times, having been begun by “Sesostris,” continued by Necho II. and by Darius Hystaspes, and at length finished by Ptolemy Philadelphus. This canal, having fallen into disrepair, was restored in the 7th century a.d. by the Arabs who conquered Egypt, but appears not long afterwards to have again become unserviceable. The existing canal was dug in 1863 to supply fresh water to the towns on the Suez Canal. Although designed for irrigation purposes, the Delta canals are also used for the transport of passengers and goods.

In Upper Egypt the most important canals are the Ibrahimia and the Bahr Yusuf (the River of Joseph). They are both on the west side of the Nile. The Ibrahimia takes its water from the Nile at Assiut, and runs south to below Beni Suef. It now supplies the Bahr Yusuf, which runs parallel with and west of the Ibrahimia, until it diverges to supply the Fayum—a distance of some 350 m. It leaves the Ibrahimia at Derut near its original point of departure from the Nile. Although the Joseph whence it takes its name is the celebrated Saladin, it is related that he merely repaired it, and it is not doubted to be of a much earlier period. Most probably it was executed under the Pharaohs. By some authorities it is believed to be a natural channel canalized. Besides supplying the canals of the Fayum with summer water, it fills many of the “basins” of Upper Egypt with water in flood time.

Manufactures and Native Industries.—Although essentially an agricultural country, Egypt possesses several manufactures. In connexion with the cotton industry there are a few mills where calico is made or oil crushed, and ginning-mills are numerous. In Upper Egypt there are a number of factories for sugar-crushing and refining, and one or two towns of the Delta possess rice mills. Flour mills are found in every part of the country, the maize and other grains being ground for home consumption. Soap-making and leather-tanning are carried on, and there are breweries at Alexandria and Cairo. The manufacture of tobacco into cigarettes, carried on largely at Alexandria and Cairo, is another important industry. Native industries include the weaving of silk, woollen, linen and cotton goods, the hand-woven silk shawls and draperies being often rich and elegant. The silk looms are chiefly at Mehallet el-Kubra, Cairo and Damietta. The Egyptians are noted for the making of pottery of the commoner kinds, especially water-jars. There is at Cairo and in other towns a considerable industry in ornamental wood and metal work, inlaying with ivory and pearl, brass trays, copper vessels, gold and silver ornaments, &c. At Cairo and in the Fayum, attar of roses and other perfumes are manufactured. Boat-building is an important trade.

Commerce.—The trade of Egypt has developed enormously since the British occupation in 1882 ensured to all classes of the community the enjoyment of the profit of their labour. The total value of the exterior trade increased in the 20 years 1882 to 1902 from £19,000,000 to £32,400,000. The wealth of Egypt lying in the cultivation of its soil, almost all the exports are agricultural produce, while the imports are mostly manufactured goods, minerals and hardware. The chief exports in order of importance are: raw cotton, cotton seed, sugar, beans, cigarettes, onions, rice and gum-arabic. The gum is not of native produce, being in transit from the Sudan. Of less importance are the exports of hides and skins, eggs, wheat and other grains, wool, quails, lentils, dates and Sudan produce in transit. The principal articles imported are: cotton goods and other textiles, coal, iron and steel, timber, tobacco, machinery, flour, alcoholic liquors, petroleum, fruits, coffee and live animals. There is an ad valorem duty of 8% on imports and of about 1% on exports. Tobacco and precious stones and metals pay heavier duties. The tobacco is imported chiefly from Turkey and Greece, is made into cigarettes in Egypt, and in this form exported to the value of about £500,000 yearly.

In comparison with cotton, all other exports are of minor account. The cotton exported, of which Great Britain takes more than half, is worth over three-fourths of the total value of goods sent abroad. Next to cotton, sugar is the most important article exported. A large proportion of the sugar manufactured is, however, consumed in the country and does not figure in the trade returns. Of the imports the largest single item is cotton goods, nearly all being sent from England. Woollen goods come chiefly from England, Austria and Germany, silk goods from France. Large quantities of ready-made clothes and fezes are imported from Austria. Iron and steel goods, machinery, locomotives, &c., come chiefly from England, Belgium and Germany, coal from England, live stock from Turkey and the Red Sea ports, coffee from Brazil, timber from Russia, Turkey and Sweden.

A British consular report (No. 3121, annual series), issued in 1904, shows that in the period 1887-1902 the import trade of Egypt nearly doubled. In the same period the proportion of imports from the United Kingdom fell from 39.63 to 36.76%. Though the percentage decreased, the value of imports from Great Britain increased in the same period from £2,500,000 to £4,500,000. In addition to imports from the United Kingdom, British possessions took 6.0% of the import trade. Next to Great Britain, Turkey had the largest share of the import trade, but it had declined in the sixteen years from 19 to 15%. France about 10%, and Austria 6.72%, came next, but their import trade was declining, while that of Germany had risen from less than 1 to over 3%, and Belgium imports from 1.74 to 4.27%.

In the same period (1887-1902) Egyptian exports to Great Britain decreased from 63.25 to 52.30%, Germany and the United States showing each an increase of over 6.0%. Exports to Germany had increased from 0.13 to 6.75%, to the United States from 0.26 to 6.70%. Exports to France had remained practically stationary at 8.0%; those to Austria had dropped from 6.3% to 4.0%, to Russia from 9.11 to 8.43%.

For the quinquennial period 1901-1905, the average annual value of the exterior trade was:—imports £17,787,296; exports £18,811,588; total £36,598,884. In 1907 the total value of the merchandise imported and exported, exclusive of transit, re-exportation and specie, was £E.54,134,000—constituting a record trade return. The value of the imports was £E.26,121,000, of the exports £E.28,013,000.

Shipping.—More than 90% of the external trade passes through the port of Alexandria. Port Said, which in consequence of its position at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal has more frequent and regular communication with Europe, is increasing in importance and is the port where mails and passengers are landed. Over 3000 ships enter and clear harbour at Alexandria every year. The total tonnage entering the port increased in the five years 1901-1905 from 2,555,259 to 3,591,281. In the same period the percentage of British shipping, which before 1900 was nearly 50, varied from 40 to 45. No other nation had more than 12% of the tonnage, Italy, France, Austria and Turkey each having 9 to 12%. The tonnage of German ships increased in the five years mentioned from 3 to 7%. In number of steamships entering the harbour Great Britain is first, with some 800 yearly, or about 50% of all steamers entering. The sailing boats entering the harbour are almost entirely Turkish. They are vessels of small tonnage.