ELE 
ELE 
would else have naturally remained there. 
And if a circuitous conducting communica- 
tion be made between the two sides, the 
charge will pass with an explosion. See 
Jar, electric, and Shock. 
These are the principal facts of electri- 
city. For the apparatus, instruments, ma- 
nipulation, and other results, see Machine 
and Machinery, electrical. 
ELECTROMETERS, certaininstruments 
by which the intensity of an electric state 
is shewn. They operate either by means of 
the repulsion between two moveable bo- 
dies, or by measuring the distance to which 
the spark can be communicated. See Ma- 
chinery, electric. 
ELECTROPHORE, or Electropho- 
Rus, an instrument contrived by Sig. Volta 
for taking a small electric charge by induc- 
tion, from a resinous plate, and afterwards 
transferring it as a simple spark. See Ma- 
chinery, electric. 
ELECTUARY. See Pharmacy. 
ELEEMOSINARIUS, in law, tire 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 Calamarias. 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 recog- 
nizance 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, chattels, and the present profits of 
lands, by the writs of fieri 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, w’hether 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 ac- 
cents but those of sorrow. With the neg- 
ligence natural to affliction, it sought less 
to please than to move ; and aimed at ex- 
citing pity, not admiration. By degrees, 
however, elegy degenerated from its origi- 
nal intention, and was employed upon all 
sorts of subjects, gay or sad, and especially 
upon love. Ovid’s book of Love, the po- 
ems of Tibullus and Propertius, notwith- 
standing they are termed elegies, are some- 
times so far from being sad, that they are 
scarcely serious. The chief subjects, then, 
to w'hich 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 earlier 
chemists nearly in the same sense as the 
moderns use the term first principle. The 
chief and indeed very essential difference 
between them is, that the ancients consi- 
dered their elements as bodies possessing 
absolute simplicity, and capable of forming 
all other bodies in their mutual combina- 
tion ; whereas the first principles of the mo- 
derns are considered as simple merely in 
respect to the present state of the art of 
analysing bodies : that is to say, the an- 
cients almost totally overlooked the imper- 
fections of the art in their general deduc- 
tions ; but the moderns pretend to keep it 
in view% 
The experiments made in the infancy of 
chemisti-y had for their object the pheno- 
menon of combustion, referred by them to 
a substance called fire; the extraction of 
elastic fluid, considered to be of the same 
nature as the immense mass which com- 
poses the atmosphere ; water, neither com- 
poundable nor destructible by any experi- 
ments then known or understood; and the 
substances not volatile in the strongest heat- 
of furnaces, confounded 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 bo- 
dies as absolutely simple, because not yet 
analysed. See Chemistry. 
ELEMI, a resin, commonly called gum 
elemi, is supposed to be the produce of a 
large tree, called in the Linnaean arrange- 
ment amyris elemifera, a native of Caro- 
lina, and the wanner 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, covered 
with palm-leaves. When distilled in a 
