EICHSTAEDT-EISENACH. Eichstaedt is distinguished for the elegance, force and ease of his Latin style. EIDER DUCK (anas mollissima, Lin., Wilson; fuligula, Bon.) This valuable bird is found from 45° north to the highest latitudes yet visited, both in Europe and America. Its favorite haunts are solitary rocky shores and islands. In Greenland and Iceland, they occur in great quantities. In particular spots, their nests are so abundant, that a person can scarcely walk without treading on them. The eider duck is about twice the size of the common duck. Their nests are usually formed of drift grass, dry sea-weed, lined with a large quantity of down, which the female plucks from her own breast. In this soft bed she lays five eggs, which she covers over with a layer of down; then the natives, who watch her operations, take away both the eggs and the down: the duck lays a second time, and again has recourse to the feathers of her body to protect her offspring even this, with the eggs, is generally taken away; and it is said, that, in this extremity, her own stock being exhausted, the drake furnishes the third quantity of down: if the robbery should be repeated, however, they abandon the place. One female generally furnishes about half a pound of down, which is worth about two dollars. This down, from its superior warmth, lightness and elasticity, is preferred by the luxurious, to every other article for beds and coverlets; and, from the great demand for it, those districts in Norway and Iceland, where these birds abound, are regarded as the most valuable property, and are guarded with the greatest vigilance. Each proprietor endeavors, by every means in his power, to draw those birds from his neighbor's ground to his own, and when they settle in an island off the shore, the cattle and herdsmen are removed to allow them to breed undisturbed. Very little of the eider down remains in the countries where it is collected. As found in commerce, this down is in balls of the size of a man's fist, and weighing from three to four pounds. It is so fine and elastic, that when a ball is opened, and the down cautiously held over hot coals to expand, it will completely fill a quilt five feet square. The down from dead birds is little esteemed, having lost its elasticity. The length of this duck is two feet three inches, extent of the wings three feet, weight from six to seven pounds: the head is large, and the bill of singular structure, being three inches in length, forked in a remarkable manner, running high up in the forehead, between which 431 the plumage descends nearly to the nostrils: the whole of the bill is of a dull yellowish hom color, somewhat dusky in the middle. The male The male is black, head and back white, with a black crown. The female is wholly reddish drab, spotted with black, with two white bands across the wings. The young of both sexes are the same, being covered with a kind of hairy down, throat and breast whitish, and a cinereous line from the bill through the eyes to the hind head. These birds associate in flocks, generally in deep water, diving to great depths for shell fish, which constitute their principal food. They frequently retire to the rocky shores to rest, particularly on the appearance of an approaching storm. Their flesh is eaten by the Greenlanders, but tastes strongly of fish. The eggs, however, are esteemed. These and the down are both frequently obtained at the hazard of life by people let down by ropes from craggy steeps. With five pounds of the est eider down, a whole bed may be well filled. The Greenlanders likewise use the skin, taken off, feathers and all, for their under dresses. The down is divided into two sorts; sea-weed down, and grass down. The former kind is the heaviest; but the labor of cleaning is greater. Much of the down is lost in cleaning. Iceland furnishes annually from 200 to 300 pounds cleaned, and from 1500 to 2000 pounds impure. EIFEL; a district rich in monuments of the Romans, and of the middle ages, lying between the Moselle, the Rhine and the Roer. Schannat's Eiflia illustrata was published by Barsch in Latin, with annotations (Cologne, 1824, 2 vols.). EISENACH (anciently Isenacum); a town in Germany, and capital of a principality of the same name, belonging to the grandduchy of Saxe-Weimar, on the Nesse; 26 miles west Erfurt, 40 west Weimar; lon. 10° 20′ E.; lat. 50° 59′ N; population, 7845. It is a well built town, and contains five churches, a gymnasium with a library, and has some_manufactures, chiefly of coarse woollen. It is most agreeably situated, near the mountains of Thuringia. Half a league from this town lies the Wartburg, an ancient mountain castle, to which the elector, Frederic the Wise, of Saxony, ordered Luther to be carried, after the latter had been placed under the bann of the empire, by the diet at Worms. Luther lived here as the chevalier George, from May 4, 1521, to March 6, 1522, and labored zealously in the translation of the Bible. The view from this cest'e over an ocean of leaves is charming. In 1817, 432 EISENACH-EJECTMENT. many German students assembled here, and celebrated the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic (Oct. 18, 1813). The zeal which they evinced for the union of their divided and lacerated country, together with the burning of various books, the political character of which was offensive to them, displeased the German governments, and gave rise to the prosecution of many students supposed to be disaffected. The War on the Wartburg is an ancient German poem, of great interest in the history of German literature. Mr. Zeune published it in 1818. EJECTMENT, in law, is an action by which a person ousted from the possession of an estate for years, in lands or tenements, may recover that possession. But though the action is intended only for the recovery of a term for years, it is, in fact, used, in England and the state of New York, to try the title to an estate of inheritance or for life. In the early periods of the English law, the tenant, or person dispossessed of his estate for years, could not recover the possession of it, in this action, in the courts of law; he could only recover damages for the injury sustained by being driven from the possession; but the dispossessor kept possession of the term, just as is the case at present in the action of trover and conversion, in respect to a chattel, in which the owner does not recover the chattel itself, but damages for being deprived of it. But the court of equity, in this case, as in many others, led the way in ameliorating the law, and enlarged the remedy, so that the plaintiff might recover the term itself; and the courts of law, following those of equity, as early as Edward IV, adopted the same remedy, and awarded execution for putting the plaintiff into repossession of his estate, though no such thing was warranted by the writ, or prayed for by the declaration. After taking this step, the next one was to adopt the same form of action for trying the title to the lands. This application of the action of ejectment was made as early as the time of Henry VII. To do this, the person who claimed an estate of inheritance, of which another was in possession, entered upon it, and then made a lease, and the lessee took possession, and remained upon the land in virtue of the lease, until the person claiming under an adverse title put him out; or, if no such person appeared to expel him from the land, he pretended to be driven off by the first person who happened to pass that way, and who was thence called the casual ejector, who was, in fact, no ejector at all. Being thus ejected in fact, or by fiction, he brought his action of ejectment, or the party claiming the title brought it in his name, and in this suit the title was necessarily brought into question; for, in order to get possession, he must prove that he had a good and valid lease, which he would endeavor to do by showing that the lessor had the right to make such a lease, that is, that he had the title and right of possession. Besides proving the title of his lessor, le must also prove the lease, his entry under it, and his ouster, or being driven out of possession. When the object was to try the title, the lease, entry and ouster were a mere ceremony, and might as well be supposed or imagined as actually to take place. The courts, accordingly, allowed a fiction of the lease, entry and ouster; the plaintiff stated them to have taken place, though there had, in fact, been no such thing, nor was there any such person as the one named as being the lessee, who, in England, is always John Doe, and in New York, Jackson. Thus the action of Doe or Jackson ex dem. [demisso]Johnson, against Sampson, means the action of Doe or Jackson, the lessee of Johnson, against Sampson. If the nominal plaintiff, Doe or Jackson, were liable to be called upon to show himself to the court, there would be an end of the suit, as there would be no such person to be found. Nor would the demandant succeed any better, were he called upon to prove that there had been any such lease, entry or ouster; as all this is a fiction. Formerly, the defendant also, the casual ejector, as well as the plaintiff, was a man of straw, or little better; for he was frequently a person who accidentally came in sight at the time of making the lease, if there was any in fact made, and who would not be disposed to trouble himself to prevent the demandant from getting possession of land, in which he himself had no interest or concern; or he might be a friend of the demandant, who had come upon the land at his request, to act as ejector, and would be very willing that the demandant should recover it. The tenant, therefore, who is in actual possession of the estate, unless his right is defended by some other person than the indifferent defendant whose name appears on the docket of the court, is likely to lose his inheritance. To prevent this, the court allows him to appear himself, and defend against the claim and the court: always requires that notice shall be served upon him, to give him an opportunity to appear. But before the court will permit him to appear for this purpose, they re EJECTMENT-ELASTICITY. quire of him to admit all these fictions of a lease to John Doe, his entry and ouster, which he is willing to do rather than lose his land. These being admitted by him, he may then proceed to defend the action, and try the question, whether he has a better right to continue in possession, than this supposed John Doe has to recover the possession, upon his supposed lease. The titles of the demandant and tenant are thus brought into comparison, and decided upon. But when the object is, in fact, to recover a term for years, of which the deInandant has been dispossessed, the lease, entry and ouster are of importance, and must be proved. EL, or AL; the only article of the Arabian language. It is contained in many geographical names; for instance, Aldjezair (Algiers), the islands; El-Arisch, the cradle. This syllable has remained in many names of places in Spain and Portugal, as Alcantara, the bridge; Alcazar, the palace; Algarve, the west. ELAIN; the oily principle of fat, obtained by submitting fat to the action of boiling alcohol, allowing the stearin to crystallize, and then evaporating the alcoholic solution; or, by the simple process of pressing any oily or fatty substance between folds of bibulous paper, the oily matter or elain is absorbed, while the stearin remains. The paper being then soaked in water, and pressed, yields up the elain. It possesses much the appearance and properties of vegetable oil, is liquid at the temperature of 60° Falır., and has an odor derived from the solid fats from which it has been extracted. It is readily soluble in alcohol, and forms soaps with alkalies; in doing which, however, it undergoes decomposition, and is converted, according to Chevreul, into a peculiar acid, called by him oleic acid, which combines with the alkali employed. This acid is obtained by submitting the soap formed by the action of potash on hog's lard to the action of boiling water; the solution, on cooling, deposites a sediment, consisting of the inargarate of potash, while the oleate of potash remains in solution. The oleate of potash is decomposed by tartaric acid, again combined with potash, and again decomposed by tartaric acid, when the oleic acid rises to the top in the condition of an oily-like fluid. It is insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol, reddens litmus, and combines with the different salifiable bases, forming compounds somewhat analogous to soaps. At a temperature of 35° Fahr., it congeals into crystalline needles. ELASTIC GUM. (See Caoutchouc.) 37 VOL. IV. 433 ELALIA; a town of Africa, in Tunis, near the eastern coast, in a large extent of ruins, on the borders of a fertile plain; 90 S. S. E. Tunis; lon. 11° 2′ E.; lat. 35° 6/ N. Besides such ruins as it has in common with other places, there are several cisterns with large paved areas built over them, in order to receive the rain water, that, in the rainy season, is to fill and replenish them. Several conveniences of the like nature are dispersed all over this dry country. Elalia seems to be the Acolla or Acilla of the ancients. ELASTICITY; the peculiar property of bodies, by virtue of which, the particles of which they are composed, when moved out of their positions by an external force, or pressed into a narrower space, tend to return to their former position, as soon as the external force ceases to act. A bow, bent by the tension of the string, recovers its previous form when the tension is relaxed. Let an ivory ball fall upon a plate of marble, it is partially flattened by the impulse, but becomes immediately round again as soon as the force of the blow is destroyed. Here we see the cause of its rebounding from the hard surface. Feathers are in a high degree elastic. This property of elasticity is particularly observable in atmospheric air. If it is enclosed in a vessel, and pressed with a piston, as soon as the force is removed from the piston, the air throws it up violently. This is the principle of the air-gun. There is an important difference between the elasticity of solids and fluids; the former tend to recover their previous form; the latter to expand into a greater space, whence the term expansibility is applied to them. For the sake of distinction, the elasticity of solid bodies may be termed attractive, and that of fluids, expansive. The degree of it is very different in different bodies, and in many it is increased by art. Those bodies in which it cannot be perceived at all are called unelastic. The elasticity of a solid body is greater the more its particles are expanded. If all the particles of a body are so far expanded that their elasticity is just equal to the expansive power, the expansion can be carried no further without separating the particles. The weights, necessary to produce a given degree of extension, must be proportionate to the extension already existing. If three cords, of the same size and substance, stretched in proportion to the numbers 1, 2, 3, are to receive cach a given amount of additional extension, the weights necessary to produce this extension are as 1,2,3. The laws of elasticity in fluids are different from those in solids. In heavy elastic fluids, the inferior layers support the weight of the superior; in a cylindrical vessel,therefore,the bottom suffers the pressure of the whole mass of elastic fluid, and the lower strata are sensibly denser than the upper. A difference is made, too, between absolute and specific elasticity. By the former is understood the peculiar property of bodies to repel a pressing force, in itself, and without regard to temperature and density. This must be always equal to the pressing force. But as different kinds of matter may press with equal force under unequal densities and temperatures, that is called specifically most elastic, which with a less density presses with a force equally strong, and with an equal density stronger. In all elastic fluids, the specific elasticity increases with the temperature; it is likewise augmented by greater density: if air is confined, and made more dense, its specific elasticity is greater in proportion to its increase of density. ELATER; the name of an insect remarkable for a singular apparatus between the thorax and abdomen, by which it is enabled to throw itself to a considerable height in the air, when placed on its back. It thus regains its proper position when accidentally overturned. The arrangement by which this is effected is so curious, that we cannot suppose it intended solely for this purpose, and deem it most probable that other and more valuable services are rendered to the insect by it. A spine is produced from the centre of the breast or sternum, and enters a socket in the ante-pectus or breast. The force and elasticity with which the spine enters its appropriate receptacle, aided by the form of the thorax, produces a jar or concussion sufficient to throw the insect several inches into the air. When alarmed, the elater draws its limbs close to the body, and, falling to the earth quite motionless, counterfeits death. Flowers, grass, and decaying wood, are the proper habitations of these animals, which are almost always found singly, and not in numbers collected together, as in the case of many other beetles. One species is accused of depredations on the roots of wheat-the E. striatus of Fabricius, an inhabitant of Europe. The elater noctilucus possesses luminous properties, which are unlike those of the glowworm, &c., being seated near the head. In South America, where they abound, the natives term them cucuyos, and the Spanish residents, cucujo. Color, dark brown, with an ash-colored down; tho rax on each side, with a convex round spot, from which the light is emitted; elytra with lines of impressed punctures. The light emitted by several of these insects, enclosed in a glass vase, is sufficient to read by without much difficulty. As ornaments for the hair and evening dresses of the Spanish ladies, they are said to be in great request; but it is probable that the feeble light which they produce would be entirely eclipsed by the glare of artificial light. It has been asserted, that the luminous quality of the cucujo is not confined to the spots upon the thorax, but that the whole interior of the animal possesses the property of affording light. This is considered doubtful. Some years since, numbers of this insect were taken in Philadelphia, having been imported in vessels from South America. In confinement, they were beautifully luminous, and the character of the light was observed to be similar to that of the glow-worm. They survived but a short time in captivity, for want of proper nourishment. The luminous phenomena exhibited by certain insects are exceedingly curious and beautiful. Every one is acquainted with the lightning-bug, so common in this country, and the female lampyis, or glow-worm. (q. v.) The light is a pale, greenish-yellow, phosphorescent emanation, subject to the will of the animal, who kindles or extinguishes it at pleasure. In day-light, the luminous organs are simply yellow. ELBA (anciently Ilva); a small island in the Mediterranean, near the coast of Tuscany, to which, at present, it belongs, and from which it is separated by the channel of Piombino. The island is about eight miles in length, and two in breadth; was known to the Greeks by the name of Aithalai, and to the Romans by that of Ilva, or Elva, and has been renowned for its mines from a period beyond the reach of history. Pliny gives it a circuit of 100 miles; late geographers allow only 60 to its circuit. The difference might be accounted for by the encroachments of the sea, and by the tumbling in of rocks, which are in many places of a mouldering contexture. Being extremely mountainous, Elba affords but scanty room for cultivation, and produces little more than six months' provision of corn for its inhabitants. The climate is much milder than that of the adjacent continent. Elba contains two grand ports-Porto Ferraio, with 3000 inhabitants, and Porto Longone, with 1500 inhabitants, both defended by fortifications and garrisons. Lon. 10° 26 E.; lat. 42° ELBA-ELDER. 53′ N.; population, 13,750; square miles, 153. It produces annually near 36000 cwt. of iron ore, which yield, at least, 50 per cent. of metal. It is rich in silver, marble and loadstone; 600,000 bags of salt are annually produced. In 1814, Elba was granted to Napoleon, with all the rights of sovereignty. He took possession of it May 4, and left it February 26, 1815, to undertake his memorable march to Paris. ELBE (anciently Albis); one of the largest rivers of Germany, which rises in the Riesengebirge mountains, about 4260 feet above the level of the sea; takes a southerly course through a part of Bohemia to Pardubitz, where it turns towards the W. and N. W. At Melneck, having received the Moldau, it becomes navigable; after which it enters Saxony, passes by Königstein, Pirnau, Dresden, Meissen, Belgern, enters Prussia, and passes Torgau, Wittenberg, Coswick, Dessau, Barby, Magdeburg, Tangermunde, runs between Mecklenburg and Hanover, passes Lauenburg, Hamburg, Glückstadt, &c., and runs into the German ocean, about lon. 8° E., lat. 54° 3′ N., near Cuxhaven, after a course of more than 500 miles. In a military point of view, the Elbe is of the highest importance, and has always been a line of operation. In regard to commerce, it gives to Hamburg its command of the navigation far into the interior, which is sur passed only by the situation of New York. The circumstance, however, that this noble river passes through so many kingdoms, dukedoms, and petty states, has rendered the navigation of it a point of much contest, which, in spite of the promise of the congress of Vienna to make the navigation of all the German rivers free, has not yet been settled. ELBÉE, Gigot d', generalissimo of the Vendean royalists, a man of distinguished courage and character, was born at Dresden, 1752. He served in the electoral army of Saxony, and entered the French army as lieutenant of cavalry. At the beginning of the revolution, he retired to his estate in Anjou, where the insurgent peasants of La Vendée, in 1793, chose him their leader. He alternately conquered and was conquered; and was at last wounded and taken prisoner, in the island of Noirmoutier, brought before a courtrnartial, and shot, January 2, 1794. ELBERFELD; a commercial city, and capital of the district of Dusseldorf, in the Prussian province of Cleves-Berg, containing 1941 houses, and 24,500 inhabitants. Two centuries ago, the population was scarcely 800. The pure mountain stream 435 of the Wüpper, particularly adapted to ELBEUF, or ELBOEUF ; a town in France, important for its cloth manufactories, in the department of the Lower Seine, four leagues S. S. W. of Rouen.It has 9090 inhabitants; 7000 of whom manufacture annually from 28 to 30,000 pieces of cloth, most of which is consumed in France; the rest is sent to Spain, Italy, and the Levant. ELBING; a town in West Prussia, on the river Elbing, near its entrance into the Frische-Haff; 30 miles S. E. of Dantzic; lon. 19° 22′ E.; lat. 54° 8' N; population, 19,434; houses, 2040. It is divided into the old and new towns, exclusive of the suburbs, and contains five Lutheran churches, one Reformed, one Catholic, and one Mennonist, five hospitals, and a gymnasium. In former times, it was an important commercial place for the exportation of grain, but it has since sunk very much. ELDER; a name given to the different species of the genus sambucus. These are small trees or shrubs, with opposite_and pinnated leaves, bearing small white flowers, in large and conspicuous corymbs.The berries are small, and of a black or red color. The leaves are bitter and nauseous to the taste, and possess purgative and emetic properties. The bark, flowers and berries are sometimes used in medi |