pnugues/EB7 huggingface dataset:
EBONY, a species of wood, exceedingly hard and heavy, susceptible of a very fine polish, and on that account used in mosaic and inlaid works, toys, and the like. There are different kinds of ebony, but the most usual amongst us are black, red, and green, and almost all of them the product of the island of Madagascar, where the natives call them indifferently hazon mainthi, or black wood. The island of Mauritius likewise furnishes part of the ebonies used in Europe. Authors and travellers give very different accounts of the tree which yields the black ebony. According to some of their descriptions, it would appear to be a sort of palm tree; but according to others, a cytisus. The most authentic of these is that of Falcourt, who resided many years in Madagascar as governor. He assures us that it grows very high and large, its bark being black, and its leaves resembling those of our myrtle, of a deep dusky green colour. Tavernier says that the islanders always take care to bury their trees when cut down, in order to make them blacker, and to prevent their splitting when wrought. Plumier mentions another black ebony tree, discovered by him at St Domingo, which he calls spar-tium portulaca foliis aculeatum ebeni materia.

Pliny and Dioscorides state that the best ebony comes from Ethiopia, and the worst from India; but Theophrastus prefers that of India. Black ebony is much preferred to that of other colours. The best is a jet black, free of veins and rind, very massive, astringent, and of an acrid pungent taste. Its rind, infused in water, is said to purge pituita, and cure venereal disorders; and hence Matthiolus took guaiacum for a sort of ebony. It yields an agreeable perfume when laid on burning coals; when green it readily takes fire from the abundance of its fat. If rubbed against a stone it becomes brown. The Indians make statues to their gods and sceptres for their princes out of this wood. It was first brought to Rome by Pompey after he had subdued Mithridates. It is now much less used amongst us than anciently, since the discovery of so many ways of giving other hard woods a black colour.

As to the green ebony, besides Madagascar and the Mauritius, it grows likewise in the Antilles, and especially in the isle of Tobago. The tree which yields it is very bushy; its leaves are smooth, and of a fine green colour. Beneath its bark there is a white blea, about two inches thick; and all beneath this, to the very heart, is a deep green, approaching towards a black, though sometimes streaked with yellow veins. Its use is not confined to mosaic work; it is likewise employed in dyeing, as yielding a fine green tincture. As to red ebony, called also grenadilla, we know little more of it than the name.
EBRO, a river of Spain. It has its source in the province of Toro, about ten miles west of Reynosa, from out of the two springs of Fontibre, whence it runs south-east, divides Burgos and Soria from Alava and Navarre, passes through Aragon, becomes navigable near Logrono, and, after a course of 362 miles near Amposta, empties itself into the Gulf of Alfaques. Its tributary streams are the Tadorra, the Ega, the Quelles, the Alhama, the Xalon, the Gallega, the Guadalupe, and the Segre.
EBUDAE, or Hebudes, in Ancient Geography, islands off the west coast of Scotland, now called the Western Isles, also Hebrides.
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ECALESIA, ExaλjjΛα, in Antiquity, a festival held in honour of Jupiter, surnamed Hecalus, or Hecalesius, from Hecale, one of the boroughs in Attica.
ECASTOR, in Antiquity, an oath in which Castor was invoked. It was a custom for the men never to swear by Castor, nor the women by Pollux.
ECATAEA, Exarα∕α, in Antiquity, statues erected to the goddess Hecate, for whom the Athenians had a great veneration, believing that she was the overseer of their families, and that she protected their children.
ECATESIA, Exarem, in Antiquity, an anniversary solemnity, observed by the Stratonicensians, in honour of Hecate. The Athenians likewise had a public entertainment or supper every new moon, in honour of the same goddess. The supper was provided at the charge of the more affluent; and it was no sooner brought to the accustomed place than the poor people carried all off, giving out that Hecate had devoured it. For the rest of the ceremonies observed on this occasion, see Potter, Arch. Groec. lib. ii. cap. 20.
ECATOMBAEON, Exaroµĉa/w, in Chronology, the first month of the Athenian year. It consisted of thirty days, and began on the first new moon after the summer solstice, and consequently answered to the latter part of our June and beginning of July. The Boeotians called it Hippodromus, and the Macedonians Lous. The word is a derivation from the Greek ⅞xαroμC<ι, a hecatomb, because of the number of hecatombs sacrificed in it.
ECAVESSADE, in the manege, is a term used for a jerk of the cavesson.
ECCHELLENSIS, Abraham, a learned Maronite, whom the president Le Jai employed in the edition of his Polyglott Bible. Gabriel Sionita, his countryman, brought him to Paris in order to make him his fellow-labourer in publishing that Bible. But they quarrelled, upon which Gabriel complained to the parliament, and cruelly defamed his associate. This dispute made a great noise. The congregation de Propaganda Fide associated him in 1636 with those whom they had employed in making an Arabic translation of the Scriptures; they recalled him from Paris, and he laboured in that translation at Rome in the year 1652. Whilst he was professor of the oriental languages at Rome, he was selected by Duke Ferdinand II. to translate from Arabic into Latin the fifth, sixth, and seventh books of Apollonius’s Conics; a task in which he was assisted by John Alphonso Borelli, who added commentaries to them. He died at Rome in 1644.
ECCLES, one of those large manufacturing towns which within a few years have risen from villages. It is 185 miles frotn London and four from Manchester, in the hundred of Salford, and county of Lancaster. The inhabitants are chiefly occupied in the several branches of the cotton manufacture; and amounted in 1801 to 6197, in 1811 to 12,300, in 1821 to 23,331, and in 1831 to 28,083.

ECCLESAL-Bierlow, a large township of the parish of Sheffield, about three and a half miles from that town. The inhabitants are chiefly occupied in the various branches of the metal manufactures; and amounted in 1801 to 5362, in 1811 to 6569, in 1821 to 9113, and in 1831 to 14,279.
ECCLESFIELD, a large manufacturing parish of the [7:8:396] west riding of Yorkshire, in the wapentake of Strafforth and Tickhill, 167 miles from London and five from Sheffield, with the trade of which place it is very much connected. The population amounted in 1801 to 5114, in 1811 to 5805, in 1821 to 7163, and in 1831 to 7911.
ECCLESHALL, a market-town of the county of Stafford, 148 miles from London. It is in the hundred of Pirehill, on the banks of the river Sow; is a well-built town, in a pleasant district; and was formerly the residence of the bishops of Lichfield. The chief part of the inhabitants are employed in manufactures. The market is held on Thursday. The population amounted in 1801 to 3487, in 1811 to 3901, in 1821 to 4227, and in 1831 to 4471.
ECCLESIASTES, a canonical book of the Old Testament, the design of which is to show the vanity of all sublunary things. It was composed by Solomon, who enumerates the several objects on which men place their happiness, and then shows the insufficiency of all worldly enjoyments. The Talmudists made King Hezekiah the author of this book; while Grotius ascribes it to Zorobabel, and others to Isaiah; but the generality of commentators believe it to be the product of Solomon’s repentance, after having experienced all the follies and pleasures of life.
ECCLESIASTICAL, an appellation given to whatever belongs to the church. Thus we say ecclesiastical polity, jurisdiction, history, and so forth.
ECCLESIASTICUS, an apocryphal book, generally bound up with the Scriptures, and so called from its being read in the church, ecclesia, as a book of piety and instruction, but not of infallible authority. The author of this book was a Jew, called Jesus the son of Sirach. The Greeks call it the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach.
ECCLOO, a city in the province of West Flanders, which contains 6269 inhabitants. It is the capital of the circle of the same name, comprehending three cantons, with a population of 42,484 persons.
ECCOPROTICS, in Medicine, laxative or loosening remedies, which purge gently, by softening the humours and excrements, and fitting them for expulsion. The word is composed of the Greek particle sx, and x<wrgo⅛, faces.
ECDALA, or Akdala, an ancient town and fortress of Bengal, in the district of Dacca, which is frequently mentioned in the histories of Bengal, but of which there are now scarcely any remains. In the year 1353 Ilyas Hajy, the second independent king of Bengal, took refuge here, and defended the place until the setting in of the rains, when the siege was raised. Long. 96. 45. E. Lab 24. 4. N.
ECDICI, Exò/xci, amongst the ancients, patrons of cities, who defended their rights, and took care of the public money. Their office resembled that of the modern syndics.
ECHALLANS, a bailiwick in the canton of Vaud, in Switzerland, containing 6954 inhabitants, whose capital is of the same name, and situated on the river Talent, containing 850 inhabitants.
ECHAPE, in the manege, a horse begotten between a stallion and a mare of different breeds and countries.
ECHAPER, in the manege, a gallicism used in the academies, implying to give a horse head, or to put him to full speed.
ECHINADES, a group of islands off the coast of Acarnania, at the mouth of the river Achelous. They are mentioned by Homer as having sent a detachment of troops to Troy under Meges. The chief island seems to have been Dulichium, which some of the ancients considered as only another name for Cephallenia; but Strabo strenuously maintained that it was the Dolicha of his period, at the mouth of the Achelous. It is curious that Herodotus (xi. 10), tells us that more than half of these islandshad been joined in his time to the mainland by the depositions of the river, and Thucydides (xi. 102), enters into a learned disquisition to prove that they must all ere long be united to the shore. This observation of Thucydides had attracted the attention of the inquisitive Pausanias; and as he found that the prediction had not been verified, he was only able to account for it by supposing that the lands had ceased to be cultivated on its banks, and that thus it was no longer supplied with the same quantity of sediment as before. Strabo states that they were rugged and barren. “At present the Echinades belong to the inhabitants of Ithaca, and produce corn, oil, and a scanty pasture for sheep and goats. The name of the group is Curzolari.” Dodwell’s Classical Tour, v. p. 109. Gell states that several of these islands, now hills in the plain, appear to have ruins. Iliner. of Greece, p. 298.
ECHINATE, or Echinated, an appellation given to whatever is prickly, or resembling the hedgehog.
ECHINITES, the name by which authors call the fossil centronia, frequently found in chalk pits.
ECHINODERMATA, the first class of the fourth great division of the animal kingdom (see vol. iii. p. 179 of this work), commonly called Zoophytes, or radiated animals; it includes, among numerous other species, the star-fish, sea urchins, &c. We shall describe the animals of this class under the term Zoophytes, to which the reader is referred.
ECHINUS. See Zoophytes.
ECHOME - l’ER, among musicians, a kind of scale or rule, with several lines on it, serving to measure the duration and length of sounds, and to determine their intervals and ratios.
ECIJA, a city of Spain, in that division of Andalusia denominated the i 'kingdom of Seville. It is situated on the right bank of the river Xenil, which is here crossed by a neat bridge of modern erection. The surrounding country suffers much from a scarcity of water; but when the summer happens to be rainy, it is abundantly productive in grain of every kind, and in wine, and feeds considerable herds of cattle. It was a considerable city when the Romans ruled the peninsula, and was then called Astigi. Many inscriptions of ancient date are found in the city and its vicinity. It contains six churches, sixteen monasteries, fifteen hospitals, 6000 houses, and 28,176 inhabitants. There are some tanneries here, and a trade in leather is carried on. Cotton is grown in the surrounding country. It is thirty miles from Cordoba. Long. 4. 34. 19. W. Lat. 37. 31. 51. N.
ECKIUS, or Echius, John, an eminent and learned controversialist, professor in the university at Ingolstadt, and remarkable for the opposition he gave to Luther, Melancthon, Carlostadius, and other leading Protestants in Germany, was born in Suabia in 1486. He wrote many polemical tracts; and amongst the rest a Manual of Controversies, printed in 1535, in which he discourses upon most of the heads contested between the Protestants and Roman Catholics. He also wrote a Commentary on Seligenstadt, 1536, Homilies, &c. ; and died in 1543.
ECLECTICS leclectici'), a name given to some ancient philosophers, who, without attaching themselves to any particular sect, took whatever they judged good and solid from each; and hence their denomination. Laertius observes that they were also, for the same reason, denominated analogetici ; but that they call themselves philalethes, or lovers of truth. The chief or founder of the eclectics was Potamon of Alexandria, who lived under Augustus and Tiberius, and who, weary of doubting of all things with the Sceptics and Pyrrhonists, formed the eclectic sect, called by Vossius the eclective.

Towards the close of the second century, a sect arose in the Christian church under the denomination of Eclectics, or modern Platonists, professing to make truth the only object of their inquiry, and to be ready to adopt from all the different systems and sects such tenets as they thought agreeable to it. However, they preferred Plato to the other philosophers, and looked upon his opinions concerning God, the human soul, and things invisible, as conformable to the spirit and genius of the Christian doctrine. One of the principal patrons of this system was Ammonius Saccas, who laid the foundation of that sect afterwards distinguished by the name of the New Platonists in the Alexandrian school.

Eclectics were also a certain sect of physicians among the ancients, of whom Archigenes, who lived under Trajan, was the chief, and selected from the opinions of all [7:8:398]the other sects those which appeared to be best and most rational. Hence they are called eclectics, and their prescriptions medicina eclectica.
ECLIPSE, in Astronomy, the deprivation of the light of the sun, or of some heavenly body, by the interposition of another heavenly body between us and that body. See Astronomy. Eclipse Islands, a cluster of small rocky barren islands in the South Pacific Ocean, near the south-west coast of New Holland.
ECLIPTIC, in Astronomy, a great circle of the sphere, supposed to be drawn through the middle of the zodiac, making an angle with the equinoctial of about 23° 30 ’, which is the sun’s greatest declination; or, more strictly speaking, it is that path or way among the fixed stars, which the earth appears to describe to an eye placed in the sun. (See Astronomy.) Some call it via solis, or the way of the sun, because the sun in his apparent annual motion never deviates from it, as all the other planets do more or less.

Ecliptic, in Geography, a great circle on the terrestrial globe, not only answering to, but railing within, the plane of the celestial ecliptic. See Geography.
ECLODE, a town of Hindustan, in the province ofMal-wah, belonging to the predatory chieftain Meer Khan. Long. 77. 55. E. Lat. 24. 5. N.
ECONOMY, Political. See Political Economy.
ECSTACY. See Extasy.
ECSTATICI, Exmcnxoz, from tζιβτrtμ,ι, I am entranced, in Antiquity, a kind of diviners who were cast into trances or ecstacies, in which they lay like dead men, or persons asleep, deprived of all sense and motion, but who, after some time, recovering their senses, gave strange relations of what they had seen or heard.
ECTHESIS, in Ecclesiastical History, a confession of faith, in the form of an edict, published in the year 639 by the Emperor Heraclius, with a view to allay the troubles occasioned by the Eutychian heresy in the eastern church. However, the same prince revoked it, on being informed that Pope Severinus had condemned it, as favouring the Monothelites; declaring at the same time that Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, was its author.
ECTHLIPSIS, among Latin grammarians, a figure of prosody, by which· the m at the end of a word, when the following word begins with a vowel, is elided, or cut off, together with the vowel preceding it, for the sake of the measure of the verse. Thus they read mult' ille, for multum ille.
EDAM, a small and woody island on the coast of Java, about two miles in circuit, whither criminals are banished. It is nine miles north-north-east from Batavia.
EDAMBAVANUM, a town in the north of India, province of the Carnatic, situated on the western shore of the bay of Bengal. Long. 75. 55. E. Lat. 10. 27. N.
EDDYSTONE, a lighthouse in the British Channel, built on rocks of the same name, which are supposed to have got this appellation from the great variety of contrary sets of the current among them, both upon the tide of flood and the tide of ebb. See Light-Houses.
EDEN, the name of a country, with a garden, in which the progenitors of mankind were settled by God himself. The term denotes pleasure or delight. It would be endless to recount the several opinions which have been entertained concerning its situation, some of them very wild and extravagant. The garden was also called Paradise; a term of Persic original, denoting a garden. See Paradise.
EDER, a town of Hindustan, possessed by independent chiefs, in the province of Gujerat, fifty-three miles northnorth-east from Ahmedabad. Long. 73. 3. E. Lat. 23. 35. N.
EDESSA, also called Aegae, a city of Macedonia, in the district of Emathia, twenty-eight miles west of Pella, which is celebrated in the ancient history of this kingdom as being the point from which the powerful family of the Temenidae commenced their career of conquest, and from which they did not desist till they had subdued the whole of the neighbouring country. (Herodot. viii. 137, 138; Justin, vii. 1.) It continued long the royal residence; and even after it had ceased to be so, it still remained the burial place of the race of Temenus, and, as Diodorus says, the hearth of their empire. Here were interred Philip and Eurydice, king and queen of Macedonia; and it was intended that the body of Alexander, which was interred at Memphis in Egypt, should be placed in these vaults. (Diodor. xix. 52; Pausan. i. 6.) ît was here that Philip was assassinated by Pausanias, at the marriage of his daughter Cleopatra with Alexander king of Epirus. (Diodor. xvi. 92.)

It is supposed to be the modern city of Vodina, on the river Vistritza, where Dr Clarke says there are sepulchres cut in the rock, which the superstitious inhabitants have never plundered, because they are afraid to go near them.
EDGWARE, a town of the county of Middlesex, partly in the parish of that name, and partly in the parish of Whitchurch or Little Stanmore, nine miles from London. Its chief importance is derived from being on the great road to St Albans and to Buckingham, a road constructed by the Romans, called the Watling Street. It formerly was remarkable for the splendid palace of the Duke of Chandos, which was one of the most highly finished and decorated of any of the noble edifices in England. This building has, however, been pulled down, and one of the wings converted into a dwelling for a family of respectability. The population of the parish amounted in 1801 to 412, in 1811 to 543, in 1821 to 551, and in 1831 to 591; but the parish does not include the western part of the town.
EDHILING, Edhilingus, an ancient appellation of the nobility among the Anglo-Saxons. Instead of edhiling,ΑG sometimes meet with atheling, or tethelitig ; which appellation was likewise given to the king’s son, and the presumptive heir of the crown.
EDICT, in matters of polity, an order or instrument, signed and sealed by a prince, to serve as a law to his subjects. We find frequent mention of the edicts of the praetor, or the ordinances of that officer, expounding the principles on which he was to administer the law.
EDMONTON, a parish in the county of Middlesex, seven miles from London, on the great north-east road. It is situated in the hundred of the same name, and contains many of the residences of the more wealthy citizens of London. The new river is conducted through it. The population amounted in 1801 to 5993, in 1811 to 7824, in 1821 to 7900, and in 1831 to 8192.
EDOM, or Idumaea, in √4ncren∕ Geography, a district of Arabia Petraea. A great part also of the south of Judaea was called Idumaea, because it was occupied by the ldu-means, upon the Jewish captivity, as far as Hebron. But the proper Edom or Idumaea appears not to have been very extensive, from the march of the Israelites, in which they compassed it on the south-eastward, till they came to the country of the Moabites. Within this compass lies Mount Hor, where Aaron died, and marching from which the Israelites fought with King Arad the Canaanite, who came down the wilderness against them. This was the extent of the ldumaa Propria to the south of the Dead Sea; but in Solomon’s time it extended to the Red Sea. (1 Kings, ix. 26.)
EDRENOS, a town of Asiatic Turkey, in Natolia, situated on a river of the same name, twenty miles south of Bursa.
EDULCORATION properly signifies the rendering substances more mild. Chemical edulcoration consists almost always in taking away acids and other saline substances; and this is effected by washing the bodies to which they adhere in a large quantity of water. The washing of diaphoretic antimony, powder of algaroth, and the like, until the water comes off quite pure and insipid, are instances of chemical edulcoration.
EDWARD, the name of several kings of England. See England.
EEKEREN, a town of the Netherlands, in the province of Antwerp, about four miles from that city. It has some distilleries and tanneries, and 4740 inhabitants.
EECHAAK, a town of Hindustan, in the province of Bahar, 103 miles south-south-east from Patna. Long. 85. 46. E. Lat. 24. 10. N.
EEL. See Ichthyology.
EETCOORE, a town of Hindustan, in the province of Bahar, and district of Ramgur, 92 miles south from Patna. Long. 85. 17. E. Lat. 24. 18. N.
EFBE, an island in the Eastern Seas, about five or six miles in length, near the south coast of Mysol, with which it forms a harbour. Captain Forrest found two villages on the island, where vessels may procure supplies. Long. 127. E. Lat. 2. 12. S.
EFFEMINATE, womanish, unmanly, voluptuous.

Effeminate {effeminati), according to the vulgate, are mentioned in several places of Scripture. The word is there used to signify such as were consecrated to some profane god, and prostituted themselves in honour of him. The Hebrew word hadesh, translated effeminatus, properly signifies consecrated ; and hence it was applied to those of either sex, who publicly prostituted themselves in honour of Baal and Astarte. Moses expressly forbids these irregularities among the Israelites; but the history of the Jews shows that they were notwithstanding frequently practised.
EFFENDI, in the Turkish language, signifies master, and accordingly is a title very extensively applied, as to the mufti and emirs, to the priests of mosques, to men of learning, and of the law. The grand chancellor of the empire is called rets effendi.