ERMINE STREET 



2965 



EROS 



Ermine Street. Early English 

 name for an ancient British high- 

 way from London to Lincoln, and 

 thence to York. Incorporated in 

 part into the Romano -British road 

 system, it passes through London 

 along Kingsland and Stoke New- 

 ington to Royston, thence through 

 Godmanchester, Castor, Ancaster 

 to Lincoln. It appears in the laws 

 of Edward the Confessor as one 

 of four royal roads. See Britain. 



Ernakulum. Town of India, 

 the capital of Cochin state. It is 

 the terminus of the Cochin State 

 Rly., which connects the state with 

 the main line of the Madras Rly. 

 The Raja's College here accom- 

 modates 700 students. Pop. 21, 195, 

 53 p.c. Hindus, 40 p.c. Christians. 



Erne OR SEA EAGLE. Name given 

 to the white-tailed sea eagle, the 

 only member of its group still 

 found in Great Britain. It is of 

 brownish colour, has a white tail, 

 and is about 3 ft. in length. It 

 still breeds in the Hebrides, but is 

 becoming very rare. See Eagle. 



Erne. River of Ireland. It 

 issues from Lough Gownagh, in co. 

 Longford, and flows mainly N. 

 through Lough Oughter and both 

 upper and lower Lough Erne until 

 it falls into Donegal Bay near Bally- 

 shannon. Its main feature is the 

 Balleck Falls on the lower river. Its 

 length is 70 m. Enniskillen is the 

 chief town on its banks, and after 

 leaving Longford it passes through 

 counties Cavan and Fermanagh. 



Erne. Name of two loughs or 

 lakes of Ireland. The upper lake 

 is 13 m. long, and in one place 4 m. 

 wide ; the lower lake is 18 m. long, 

 and from 2 to 5 m. broad. The river 

 Erne passes through them, the 

 distance between the two being 10 

 m. The lakes occupy hollows in 

 the limestone, and have a very 

 irregular shape ; the upper portion 

 is merely a collection of narrow 

 ponds abutting on the river. In 

 both, but especially in the upper 

 lake, are numerous islands. 



Erne, EARL OF. Irish title borne 

 since 1789 by the family of Crich- 

 ton. In 1788 Abraham Creighton, 

 an Irish landowner, was made 

 Baron Erne. His son John (d. 

 1828) was made a viscount and 

 an earl, and John the 3rd earl 

 (1802-85) changed the spelling of 

 the name to Crichton. He was made 

 a British peer as Baron Fermanagh 

 in 1872, and from him the present 

 earl is descended. The family es- 

 tates are mainly in counties Fer- 

 managh and Mayo, and the resi- 

 dence is Crom Castle, Fermanagh. 

 The earl's eldest son is known as 

 Viscount Crichton. Pron. Cryton. 



Ernest. Masculine Christian 

 name, probably derived from the 

 German ernst, serious. The French 



form is Ernest; Ital. and Span. 

 Ernesto. Its comparatively recent 

 introduction into Britain is largely 

 due to the fact that the fifth son of 

 George III was Ernest Augustus, 

 whilst the father and brother of 

 the Prince Consort were named 

 Ernest. The feminine form of the 

 name is Ernestine. 



Ernest Augustus (1771-1851). 

 King of Hanover. The fifth son of 

 George III of England, he was born 

 at Kew, June 5, 1771. He entered 

 the Hanoverian army and distin- 

 guished himself during the Napo- 

 leonic wars. In 1799 he was made 

 duke of Cumberland and Teviot- 

 dale, and in the House of Lords he 

 acted with the more extreme Tories 

 in opposing all kinds of reform, 

 especially Roman Catholic eman- 

 cipation and the great measure of 

 1832. In 1810 some excitement 

 was caused by a murderous attack 

 made on the duke by his valet ; the 

 latter was afterwards found dead, 

 and some went so far as to accuse 

 Ernest of his murder. 



At one time it seemed likely that 

 Ernest would inherit the English 

 throne, but by the operation of the 

 Salic law he succeeded to Hanover 

 in 1837. There he reigned for 

 fourteen years. He would not 

 hear of anything in the nature of 

 constitutional reform, but in spite 

 of troubles caused by this unyield- 

 ing attitude he appears to have 

 been popular with his subjects. He 

 died Nov. 18, 1851, and was suc- 

 ceeded by his son George. His wife 

 was Frederica, daughter of Charles, 

 duke of Mecklenburg -Strelitz. See 

 photo, p. 2399. 



Ernie, ROWLAND EDMUND PRO- 

 THERO, BARON (b. 1852). British 

 politician and writer. Born Sept. 6, 

 1852, a younger 

 son of the Rev. 

 G. Prothero, 

 canon of West- 

 minster, he was 

 educated at 

 Marlborough 

 and Balliol Col- 

 lege, Oxford, 

 becoming 

 fellow of All Baron Ernie, 

 Souls in 1875. British politician 

 He was ad- Eiuott & fry 



mitted to the bar, did literary work 

 for some years, and in 1894 was 

 made editor of The Quarterly 

 Review. An authority on agricul- 

 ture, he was appointed agent-in- 

 chief to the duke of Bedford in 1899. 



In 1914 Oxford University chose 

 Prothero as one of its members, 

 and in 1916 he was included in the 

 Coalition Government as president 

 of the board of agriculture. He 

 continued in office after the 

 general election of 1918, but was 

 made a peer as Baron Ernie, 



the name being that of a 

 Wiltshire family with which his 

 mother was connected. He wrote 

 The Pioneers and Progress of Eng- 

 lish Farming, 1888 ; English Farm- 

 ing, Past and Present, .1912 ; but 

 his most popular works are Life 

 and Correspondence of Dean 

 Stanley, 1893 (with G. G. Brad- 

 ley) ; and The Psalms in Human 

 Life, 1903. His only son was 

 killed during the Great War. 



Ernulf OR ARNTJLF (1040-1124). 

 English ecclesiastic. He was born 

 in France and educated at Bee, 

 under Lanfranc, on whose advice 

 he came to England. Made prior of 

 Canterbury by Anselm, he was 

 abbot of Peterborough from 1107- 

 14, when he became bishop of 

 Rochester. He was a great autho- 

 rity on canon law, and the author 

 of the Textus Roffensis, preserved 

 in the library of Rochester Cathe- 

 dral, which comprises records of 

 the cathedral, and other historical, 

 ecclesiastical, and legal documents. 

 This collection contains the form 

 of excommunication entitled The 

 Pope's Dreadful Curse, quoted by 

 Sterne in Tristram Shandy to show 

 his veneration for the pious bishop 

 who had ready for use " fit forms 

 of swearing suitable to all cases." 



Erode. Town of Madras, India. 

 It is in the Coimbatore district, and 

 was at one time a place of some 

 importance. It suffered during 

 successive invasions of the country 

 in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

 The town, which is the head- 

 quarters of the divisional officer, 

 contains two old temples. Pop. 

 16,701, five-sixths Hindus. 



Eros. In classical mythology, 

 the Greek name for Cupid (q.v.). 



Eros. Nearest of the minor 

 planets, discovered in 1898. The 

 importance of the discovery lay 

 in the fact that it had then ap- 

 proached nearer to the earth than 

 Mars. The asteroid's subsequent 

 nearest approach to the earth was 

 in 1901, when many of the great 

 telescopes of the world, then en- 

 gaged on the Great Star map, were 

 turned on Eros with a view to deter- 

 mining its nearness. Another near 

 approach is due in 1931. 



The task of coordinating the 

 observations of Eros was under- 

 taken by A. R. Hinks, of Cam- 

 bridge University observatory. By 

 1909 Hinks was able to announce a 

 most satisfactory result for the 

 distance of the planet, and by im- 

 plication for that of the sun and of 

 the other members of the solar 

 system. The value of 92,830,000 

 m. was obtained for the sun's 

 distance, and it was estimated 

 that this result was probably 

 within 30,000 miles of the actual 

 distance. See Asteroids ; Parallax. 



