ERGOT 



2069 



ERIE 



seeds, is situated in Prussian Saxony. In the 

 fifteenth century its woolen and linen manu- 

 factures raised it to the position of the most 

 important commercial town of Central Ger- . 

 many. It is now noted principally for the fact 

 that there are more flower seeds grown in 

 and around Erfurt than near any other city in 

 the world; this alone gives it an extensive 

 trade. An area of about 2,000 acres, growing 

 nearly 9,000 varieties of flowers, are under 

 cultivation; 750 acres of this area are under 

 glass. Nearly all the floral novelties of merit, 

 except the Burbank varieties, which are offered 

 to the world can be traced back to Erfurt. 



Erfurt boasts of several fine churches, chiefly 

 of Gothic architecture. The town has had a 

 stormy history, being either the source of dis- 

 turbances between the electors of Mainz and 

 Saxony or the object of attack by foreign in- 

 vaders. From 1378 to 1816 it was a university 

 center, of which the Academy of Sciences and 

 the library of about 60,000 volumes and 1,000 

 manuscripts alone remain. The monastery, 

 now an orphanage, is famous as having been 

 once the residence of Martin Luther. The 

 manufactures are varied, including cloth of 

 various kinds, machinery, shoes, lamps and 

 chemicals. Population in 1910, 111,461. 



ERGOT, ur' got, a name given to hard, pur- 

 plish bodies, replacing grain in heads of rye. 

 They are caused by a growth of fungus, are 

 usually much larger than the seeds they re- 

 place, and they contain an oily fluid. The 

 principal supply is derived from the grain- 

 growing districts of Russia. Ergot is poisonous, 

 but it is largely used in medicine ; it is danger- 

 ous in its action on the heart, and never should 

 be taken except under the direction of a physi- 

 cian. 



ERICSSON, cr'ikson, JOHN (1803-1889), an 

 inventor and engineer, who revolutionized 

 naval warfare. Except for him history would 

 not have recorded the critical battle between 

 the Monitor and the Merrimac during the 

 War of Secession. He was born at Wermland, 

 Sweden, July 31, 1803. In 1828 he made the 

 first application to navigation of the principle 

 of condensing steam and returning the water to 

 the boiler. He also invented a self-acting gun- 

 lock, by means of which naval cannon could be 

 discharged automatically at an elevation with- 

 out regard to the rolling of the ship. His chief 

 inventions are his caloric engine, the screw 

 propeller, which revolutionized navigation, 

 ;md his turret ships. He moved to the 

 United States in 1839 and two years later 



built the warship Princeton for the govern- 

 ment. This was the forerunner of the steam 

 fighting ships of the world. 



The achieve- 

 ment which made 

 him most famous 

 was the construc- 

 tion of the iron- 

 clad turret ship 

 Monitor in 1861, 

 which arrived in 

 Hampton Roads 

 on March 9, 1862, 

 just in time to 

 defeat the Con- 

 federate ironclad 



Merrimac: In his JOHN ERICSSON 



Builder of the famous 



later years Monitor, one of the first iron- 

 clad fl & htin s vessels. 



Ericsson at- 

 tempted to perfect the solar engine. The cen- 

 tenary of his birth was observed in 1903 in New 

 York by the unveiling of a bronze statue of the 

 inventor in Battery Park; another fine statue 

 was erected at the same time in Worcester, 

 Mass. See MONITOR AND MERRIMAC. 



ERIC, er'ik, THE RED (9507-1000), a Norse 

 explorer and the colonizer of Greenland, was 

 born in Norway, from which country he . was 

 compelled to flee to escape a charge of mur- 

 der. He settled on the west coast of Iceland 

 where, in 984, he was again accused of murder. 

 He then sought refuge in an island which had 

 been discovered a century before, but not set- 

 tled. In 985 he returned to Norway to secure 

 colonists and supplies for the new settlement, 

 which he called Greenland. This colony did 

 not long survive on the inhospitable shores. 

 His son, Leif Ericson, introduced Christianity 

 into the island, and is credited by some with 

 the discovery of the continent of North 

 America, which he called Vinland. See GREEN- 

 LAND. 



ERIE, e'ri, LAKE, the southernmost of the 

 five great North American lakes drained by the 

 Saint Lawrence River. It receives the waters 

 of Lake Huron through the Saint Clair River, 

 Lake Saint Clair and the Detroit River, and 

 discharges through the Niagara River into Lake 

 Ontario. It is 240 miles long and forty miles 

 broad, and covers an area of 9,960 square miles, 

 about that of the state of Vermont. Its surface 

 is over eight feet lower than that of Lake 

 Huron and twenty-nine feet lower than that of 

 Lake Superior (for diagram showing elevations, 

 see GREAT LAKES). Owing to the shallowness 

 of its waters, nowhere more than 200 feet deep, 



