ELY 



[ 152] 



E M B 



accompanied by the depression of 

 other portions of the earth's crust." 

 M. Elie de Beaumont has discovered 

 probable evidence of no less than 

 twelve periods of elevation, affect- 

 ing the strata of Europe. The Isle 

 of Portland affords us an admirable 

 example of alternate elevations and 

 submersions of strata. 



1. "We have evidence of the rise 

 of Portland stone, till it reached 

 the surface of the sea, wherein it 

 was formed. 



2. This surface became, for a 

 time, dry land, covered by a tem- 

 porary forest, during an interval 

 which is indicated by the thickness 

 of a bed of black mould, called the 

 dirt-bed, and by the rings of 

 annual growth in large petrified 

 trunks of prostrate trees, whose 

 roots had grown in this mould. 



3. "We find this forest to have 

 been gradually submerged, first 

 beneath the waters of a fresh water 

 lake, next of an estuary, and 

 afterwards beneath those of a deep 

 sea, in which cretaceous and ter- 

 tiary strata were deposited. 



4. The whole of these have been 

 elevated by subterranean violence. 

 Prof. BucUand. 



It is now clearly ascertained that 

 the whole country from Prederick- 

 shall, in Sweden, to Abo, in 

 Finland, is slowly and visibly 

 rising, while the coast of Greenland 

 is being gradually depressed. 

 Certain parts of Sweden are being 

 gradually elevated at the rate of 

 two or three feet in a century. 



ELY'TBA. (from eXvrpov, Gr.) The 

 hard cases which cover the wings 

 of coleopterous insects; the wing- 

 sheaths, or upper crustaceous 

 membranes, which cover the true 

 membranous wings of insects of the 

 beetle tribe. 



EL'VAN. The name given to a stone 

 which frequently occurs in the 

 mines of Cornwall : it is various in 

 its appearance and composition as 



well as in its relative situation, 

 and in its apparent effects on 

 metallic veins and lodes. It occurs 

 in Cornwall in inclined strata, 

 which are scarcely sufficiently 

 horizontal to be called beds : the 

 miners call these channels or 

 courses, Elvan courses. 



ELV'AN COTJESE. The Elvans all along 

 the coast of Cornwall occur in beds 

 and veins of every possible thick- 

 ness, from forty feet to half an 

 inch, sometimes overlying, but more 

 frequently traversing the killas in 

 various directions, under such 

 circumstances as are apparently 

 irreconcilable with any other 

 theory, than that which supposes 

 them to be of contemporaneous 

 formation with the rock containing 

 them ; the result of some play of 

 affinities which allowed a part of 

 the mass to assume a crystalline 

 texture, while its coarser and more 

 abundant portions were left to 

 arrange themselves in the slaty or 

 tortuous form which characterizes 

 the killas. 



ELVE'KTTE. Quartziferous porphyry. 



EHA'EGINATE. 



EMA'BGINATED. 



1. In botany, applied to leaves 

 terminating in a small acute notch 

 at the summit. 



2. In conchology, to shells having 

 no margin; or when the edges, 

 instead of being level, are hollowed 

 out. 



3. In mineralogy, to minerals 

 having all the edges of the primi- 

 tive form truncated, each by one 

 face. 



4. In entomology, when the end 

 has an obtuse incision. 



EMAEGIN'ULA. A genus of obliquely 

 conical univalves, the vertex in- 

 clined, and the posterior margin 

 notched. Pound both recent and 

 fossil. 



E'MBEYO. (fyfipvov, Gr. embryon, 

 Lat. embryon, Pr.) 



J" j (emargino, Lat.) 



