Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/714

692 Western Britons, defeated and slew him at the battle of Heathfield.

1em  EDWY,, or, surnamed the Fair, an Anglo-Saxon king, was the son of Edmund I., and succeeded his uncle, Edred, on the throne in , being then from 16 to 18 of age. His immediate rule was limited to Wessex, his younger brother Edgar reigning over Mercia with the title of sub-king. On account of the relation in which Edwy stood to Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury, it is impossible, from the narratives that have been transmitted to us, to arrive at any certainty as to the inter pretation to be given to his character, and to the main facts of his reign. It is said that on the day of his coronation he retired early from the banquet to the apartment of Elgiva, whom he undoubtedly recognized as his wife, but who, according to the monks, was related to him within the prohibited degrees ; and that Duustan, abbot of Glaston- bury, enraged at the affront thus put upon the church, followed him, and not without violence dragged him back to the banqueting hall. Either for this particular mani festation of authority, or because the king was opposed to his policy of substituting monks for secular canons and was unable to restrain his domineering spirit, Dunstan was de prived of his offices and banished from the kingdom. The Mercians, however, revolted, and, proclaiming Edgar sole king, recalled Dunstan to their dominions. It is said also that Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, instigated a plot for separating Elgiva from Edwin, that she was sent to Ireland where her face was disfigured with hot searing irons, and that on her escape to England she was again seized and put to death by torture at Gloucester ; but the monks affirm that the lady who was subjected to this treatment was not Elgiva, but her mother Ethelgiva, who was also the mistress of the king. Edwy died in.  EECKHOUT, (1621-1674), a painter, born at Amsterdam on the 19th of August 1621, entered early into the studio of Rembrandt. Though a companion pupil to F. Bol and Govaert Flinck, he was inferior to both in skill and in the extent of his practice; yet at an early period he assumed Rembrandt s manner with such success that his pictures were confounded with those OL his master ; and, even in our day, the Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus, in the Berlin Museum, and the Presentation in the Temple, in the Gallery of Dresden, have been held to represent worthily the style of Rembrandt. As evidence of the fidelity of Eeckhout s imitation we may cite his Presentation in the Temple, at Berlin, which is executed after Rembrandt s print of 1630, and his Tobit with the Angel, at Brunswick, which is com posed on the same background as Rembrandt s &quot;Philosopher in Thought.&quot; Eeckhout not merely copies the subjects: he also takes the shapes, the figures, the Jewish dress, and the pictorial effects of his master. It is difficult to form an exact judgment of Eeckhout s qualities at the outset of his career. His earliest pieces are probably those in which he more faithfully reproduced Rembrandt s peculiarities. Exclusively his is a tinge of green in shadows marring the harmony of the work, a certain gaudiuess of jarring tints, uniform surface, and a touch more quick than subtle. Besides the pictures already mentioned we should class amongst early productions on this account, the Woman taken in Adultery, in the Museum of Amsterdam ; Anna presenting her Sou to the High Priest, at the Louvre; the Epiphany, at Turin; and the Circumcision, at Cassel. Eeckhout matriculated early in the Guild of Amsterdam. A likeness of a lady at a dressing table with a string of beads, in possession of Mr Von Stummer, at Vienna, bears the date of 1643, and proves that the master at this time possessed more imitative skill than genuine mastery over nature. As he grew older he succeeded best in portraits, a very fair example of which is the historian Dappers (1669), in the Stadel collection. Eeckhout occasionally varied his style so as to recall in later years the &quot;small masters&quot; of the Dutch school. Waagen justly draws attention to his following of Terburg in Gambling Soldiers, at Stafford House, and a Soldiers Merrymaking, in the collection of the Marquis of Bute. A Sportsman with Hounds, probably executed in 1670, now in the Vander Hoo gallery, and a Group of Children with Goats (1671), in the Hermitage at St Petersburg, hardly exhibit a trace of the artist s first education. Amongst the best of Eeckhout s works Christ in the Temple (1662), at Munich, and the Haman and Mordecai of 1665, at Lutou House, occupy a good place. Eeckhout died at Amsterdam on the 22nd of October, 1674.  EECLOO, the head town of a district in the province of East Flanders, Belgium, is situated near the Lieve, 11 miles N. W. of Ghent. It is a neat, clean, and weil-built town, and possesses a variety of industries, among which are woollen and linen mills, manufactories of tobacco, chocolate, soap, and starch, breweries, and distilleries. It has also a considerable timber, grain, and cattle trade. Population in 1874, 10,200.  EEL. a name applied more or less generally to all the species of Muraenidoe, a family of soft-filmed apodal fishes, but more specially applicable to the species belonging to the sub-family Angaillina. The body throughout the family of eels is greatly elongated and of snake-like form. The ventral fins are awanting in all the species, while iu certain forms, as the Mursena, the pectoral fius are also absent. The skin is thick aud soft, and is covered over with a glutinous secretion which gives the eel its proverbial slippefiuess. It is also sufficiently tough to enable it to be stripped entire from the body, and in some countries the skin is thus used as a bag or purse. Scales, disposed iu groups, are present in the eels belonging to the genus AnguiUoL, but they are so buried beneath the outer layer or scarf skin as not to be apparent, while in such forms as the conger they are altogether awanting. The bronchial openings are small, and lead into a sac, from which another sac is given off. The gills are thus exposed but slightly to the drying influence of the atmosphere, and it is owing to this, and to the slimy condition of the skin, that eels can exist for a considerable time out of water. According to Dr Giinther, the Murcenidce comprise 26 genera and 230 species, inhabiting the seas and fresh waters of temperate and tropical regions. Of these only the true eels, Anguilla, inhabit fresh water, although most of the latter are likewise marine. Although abounding in almost every river, lake, and estuary in Europe, little was known until recently of the life-history of the fresh-water eels. With regard to their origin Aristotle believed that tbey sprang from the mud, Pliny that tbey took their rise from portions of the skin scraped off the parent body, while horse hairs and M ay-dew have both been regarded as fertile sources of eels. Until quite recently, they were regarded by naturalists as viviparous, a mistake which probably arose from the fre quent presence of parasitic worms, supposed to be the young, in their bodies, and the absence of anything exactly resembling milt and roe as usually found. Like all other Teleostean fishes they are oviparous, the milt and roe occur ring in the same position, but differing considerably in appearance from those elements in other fishes. The spawn of the eel is generally deposited in sand and mud at the mouths of rivers, aud in harbours where the water is brackish. To reach these spawning grounds, eels migrate iu . autumn down the river channels, aud at those times they 