Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/718

696 study of the chronicles of the northmen Laving awakened in him the desire to visit the colony of northmen in Green land, and to convert them to Christianity, he resigned his charge in 1717 ; and having, after great difficulty, obtained the sanction and help of the Danish Government in his enterprise, he set sail with three ships from Bergen on the 3d May 1721, accompanied by his wife and children. He landed on the west coast of Greenland on the 3d July, but found to his dismay that the northmen were entirely superseded by the Esquimaux, in whom he had no particular interest, and whose language he would be able to master, if at all, only after years of study. But, though compelled to endure for some years great privations, and at one time to see the result of his labours almost annihilated by the ravages of small-pox, he remained resolutely at his post. He soon gained the affections of the people, and succeeded gradually in converting many of them to Christianity, and in establishing a considerable commerce with Denmark. Ill-health compelling him to return home in 1734, he was made principal of the seminary at Copenhagen, in which workers were trained for the Greenland mission; and from 1740 to 1747 he was superintendent of the mission. He died in 1758. He is the author of a book on the natural history of Greenland.  EGEDE, (1708-1789), son of the preceding, accompanied his father to Greenland, assisted him in his labours there, and acted as his successor from 1734 to 1740. On his return to Denmark he became professor of theology in the mission seminary, and afterwards was superintendent of the Greenland mission. He published a Greenland-Danish-Latin Dictonary (1750), Greenland Grammar (1760), and Greenland Catechism (1756). In 1766 he completed the translation, begun by his father, of the New Testament into the Greenland tongue; and in 1787 he translated Thomas h, Kempis. In 1789 he pub lished a journal of his life in Greenland.  EGER, the chief town of a circle in the kingdom of Bohemia, is situated on the river Eger, and lies at the foot of one of the spurs of the Fichtelgebirge. It possesses an upper gymnasium and a real-school. In the townhouse, which at that time was the burgomaster s house, Wallen- fitein was murdered, 25th February 1634. His sword and writing table are exhibited in the town. Among the industries of Eger are the manufacture of cloth of various sorts, hats, and shoes. Population in 1869, 13,390.

1em  EGG, the name given to the body formed in the female reproductive organs, which, when impregnated by the male element, gives origin to the young of animals. Although differing widely among themselves in form and structure, the eggs of all animals are found to consist of the same essential parts, viz., the germ cell, the yolk, and the yolk membrane, one chief difference between them consisting in the relative quantity of the yolk element present, this apparently depending on the degree of development which the young attain before leaving the egg. Thus birds, which leave the shell in a highly developed state, have in their eggs a large quantity of yolk, besides the albumen or &quot; white,&quot; which is added to the egg before it receives the outer calcaieous covering and which, along with the yolk, serves as a storehouse of food for the young chick during the process of incubation. In insects, on the other hand, which leave the egg in the immature condition of larvae, the yolk is comparatively small, as it is also in mammals, whose eggs or ova are exceedingly minute, and which owe the high development they attain before birth to nourishment drawn directly from the parent. The majority of animals are oviparous, that is, the eggs leave the body of the female and are hatched outside; a few are ovo-viviparous, the eggs being retained in the oviduct until the young are ready to leave ; while mammals are viviparous, the young, after leaving the egg, attaining considerable development before birth, in the womb of the female. In oviparous animals the egg, within certain limits, is proportional in size to that of the adult form to which it gives origin ; the larger the bird, for example, the larger, as a rule, is the egg. This, however, is not without exceptions; thus the egg of the guillemot is as large as that of the eagle, and ten times larger than that of the raven, although guillemot and raven are of nearly equal size. Owing to the fluid nature of the contents of eggs, they are generally roundish in form, although in this respect they also offer considerable variety ; thus the eggs of owls and of turtles are nearly spherical, those of ducks, crocodiles, and snakes oval, and those of most sea-fowl pear-shaped. The external covering is generally more or less smooth, as in the eggs of birds, but in the case of insects they exhibit the most varied markings, being covered with spines, tubercles, and pits, often symmetrically arranged. Con siderable diversity also exists in the composition of the outer covering of the egg in oviparous animals ; in snakes and lizards it consists of a parchment-like membrane not unlike the inner coating of a lien s egg; in birds, turtles, and crocodiles, there is a hard calcareous shell; in cartilaginous fishes, as sharks and rays, the egg in passing through the oviduct is imbedded in a four-sided horny case, from the corners of which tendrils are given off, by which the egg-capsule is moored to floating sea-weed. These, after the escape of the young fish, are often cast upon the shore, where they are familiarly known as &quot; mermaids purses.&quot; The external covering of the eggs of osseous fishes, as salmon and trout, is exceedingly tough and elastic, &quot;rebounding,&quot; says Mr Frank Buckland, &quot;from the floor like an india-rubber ball;&quot; and this no doubt prevents them from being crushed in the gravelly beds of the running streams in which they are deposited. The eggs of frogs and toads are surrounded with a tough layer of albuminous substance, which expands in water into a transparent jelly. The eggs of the frog occur in great masses, piled together like miniature cannon balls, while those of the toad are con nected together so as to resemble strings of beads. Among many molluscous animals the eggs are provided with an additional covering or nidus, consisting of a leathery pouch or cup, containing a large number of eggs. These capsules are either attached singly, by little stalks, to the rocks aa in the common purpura (Purpura lapillus), or are extruded in a compound mass as in the whelk (Buccinium undatum). Those of the latter were named by Ellis &quot; sea wash balls,&quot; from being used by the sailors instead of soap to wash their hands, and are common objects on the sea-shore. The greatest variety exists in the number of eggs produced by different animals, and even among forms allied to each other. Thus the common snail produces only from thirty to fifty eggs at a time, while other mollusks, as the whelk, deposit their spawn in tens of thousands. Among insects, the white ant is pre-eminently prolific, the queen being said to lay about sixty eggs in a minute, or upwards of 80,000 in a day, and as this probably continues for two years, it is estimated that the total number of her eggs amounts to fifty millions. Among mollusks the spawn or 