ELE 



ELE 



removed, the charge may still remain at 

 the surfaces of the glass ; that is to say, 

 the accumulation on the one surface, and 

 the deficiency on the other, by a want 

 of what would else have naturally re- 

 mained there. And if a circuitous con- 

 ducting communication be made between 

 the two sides, the charge will pass with 

 an explosion. See JAR, electric, and 

 SHOCK. 



These are the principal facts of elec- 

 tricity. For the apparatus, instruments, 

 manipulation, and other results, see MA- 

 CHINE and MACHINERY, electrical. 



ELECTROMETERS, certain instru- 

 ments by which the intensity of an elec- 

 tric state is shewn. They operate either 

 by means of the repulsion between two 

 moveable bodies, or by measuring the 

 distance to which the spark can be com- 

 municated. See MACHINERY, electric. 



ELECTROPHORE, or ELECTROPHO- 

 nus, an instrument contrived by Sig. 

 Volta for taking a small electric charge, 

 by induction, from a resinous plate, and 

 afterwards transferring it as a simple 

 spark. See MACHINERY, electric. 



ELECTUARY. See PHARMACY. 



ELEEMOSINARIUS, in law, the al- 

 moner, who received the eleemosinary 

 rents and gifts, and duly distributed them 

 to pious and charitable uses. 



ELEGIA, in botany, a genus of the 

 Dioecia Triandria class and order. Natu- 

 ral order of Calamarise. Junci, Jussieu. 

 There is but one species, viz. E. juncea. 



ELEGIT, in law, is a writ of execution, 

 either upon a judgment for debt or da- 

 mages, or upon a forfeiture of the re- 

 cognizance taken in the king's court, 

 by which the plaintiff is put in possession 

 of one half the debtor's lands, which he 

 is possessed of at the time, to hold them 

 till his debt is paid out of the profits. By 

 the common law, a man could only have 

 satisfaction of goods, chatties, and the 

 present profits of lands, by the writs of 

 jfieri facias or levari facias ; but not the 

 possession of the lands themselves. The 

 statute 13 Edw. I. c. 18. therefore granted 

 this writ, which is called an elegit, because 

 it is in the election of the plaintiff, whe- 

 ther he will sue out this writ or one of 

 the former. 



ELEGY, a mournful and plaintive kind 

 of poem. As elegy, at its first institution, 

 was intended for tears, it expressed no 

 other sentiments, it breathed no other 

 accents, but those of sorrow. With the 

 negligence natural to affliction, it sought 

 less to please than to move ; and aimed 



at exciting pity, not admiration. By de- 

 grees, however, elegy degenerated from 

 its original intention, and was employed 

 upon all sorts of subjects, gay or sad, and 

 especially upon love. Ovid's book of 

 Love, the poems of Tibulhis and Pro- 

 pertius, notwithstanding they are termed 

 elegies, are sometimes so far from being 

 sad, that they are scarcely serious. The 

 chief subjects, then, to which elegy owes 

 its rise, is death and love. That elegy, 

 therefore, ought to be esteemed the most 

 perfect in its kind, which has somewhat 

 of both at once ; such, for instance, where 

 the poet bewails the death of some youth 

 or damsel falling a martyr to love. 



ELEMENTS, a term used by the ear- 

 lier chemists nearly in the same sense as 

 the moderns use the term first principle. 

 The chief and indeed very essential dif- 

 ference between them is, that the an- 

 cients considered their elements as bodies 

 possessing absolute simplicity, and capa- 

 ble of forming all other bodies in their 

 mutual combination ; whereas the first 

 principles of the moderns are considered 

 as aitnple, merely in respect to the present 

 state of the art of analysing bodies : that 

 is to say, the ancients almost totally over- 

 looked the imperfections of the art in 

 their general deductions ; but the mo- 

 derns pretend to keep it in view. 



The experiments made in the infancy 

 of chemistry had for their object the phe- 

 nomenon of combustion, referred by 

 them to a substance called fire ; the ex- 

 traction of elastic fluid, considered to be 

 of the same nature as the immense mass 

 which composes the atmosphere ; water, 

 neither compoundable nor destructible 

 by any experiments then known or un- 

 derstood; and the substances not vola- 

 tile in the strongest heat of furnaces, con- 

 founded by them, with a few exceptions, 

 under the general term of earth. In this 

 way they obtained four elements, or first 

 principles, fire, air, water, and earth. 



Subsequent experiments and enquiries 

 have multiplied the number of elements, 

 and have alternately shewed the inutility 

 of any exclusive general arrangement of 

 bodies as absolutely simple, because not 

 yet analysed. See CHEMISTRY. 



ELEMI, a resin, commonly called gum 

 elemi, is supposed to be the prdduce of a 

 large tree, called in the Linnacan arrange- 

 ment amyris elemifera, a native of Caro- 

 lina, and the warmer parts of America. 

 The true elemi is supposed to come from 

 Ethiopia. The resin is of a yellowish 

 green ; it comes to us in cylindrical cakes, 



