Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/477

Rh E P E E P H 457 EPEE, CHARLES-MICHEL, ABB DE L (1712-1789) celebrated for his labours in behalf of the deaf and dumb, was born at Paris 25th November 1712, being the son of the king s architect. He studied for the church, but having declined to sign a religious formula opposed to the doctrines of the Jansenists, he was denied ordination by the bishop of his diocese. He then devoted himself to the study of law ; but about the time of his admission to the bar of Paris, the bishop of Troyes granted him ordination, and offered him a canonry in his cathedral. This bishop died soon after, and the abbe, coming to Paris, was, on account of his relations with Soanen, the famous Jansenist, deprived of his ecclesiastical functions by the archbishop of Beaumont. About the same time it happened that he heard of two deaf mutes whom a priest lately dead had been endeavouring to instruct, and he offered to take his place. The Spaniard Pereira was then in Paris, exhibiting the results he had obtained in the education of deaf mutes ; and it has been affirmed that it was from him that Epee obtained his manual alphabet. The abbe&quot;, how ever, affirmed that he knew nothing of Pereira s method, and whether he did or not, there can be no doubt that he attained far greater success than Pereira or any of his predecessors, and that the whole system now followed in the instruction of deaf mutes virtually owes its origin to his intelligence and devotion. In 1755 he founded, for this beneficent purpose, a school which he supported at his own expense until his death, and which afterwards was succeeded by the &quot;Institution Natiouale des Sourds Muets a Paris,&quot; founded by the National Assembly in 1791. He died 23d December 1789. In 1838 a bronze monument was erected over his grave in the church of Saint lloch. He published various books on his method of instruction, but that published in 1784 virtually supersedes all others. It is entitled La. veritable maniere d utstruire les sourds et muets, confirmee par une longue experience. He also began a Dlctionnaire general des Signes, which was completed by his successor, the Abb6 Sicard. EPERIES, or PRESOVA, in Hungarian EPERJES, a royal free town of Hungary, capital of the varmegye or county of Saros, and situated on the left bank of the River Tarcza, an affluent of the Theiss (48 55 N. Lit, 21&quot; 15 E. long), 143 miles north-east of Pesth. Next to Kaschau, Eperies is the finest town in Upper Hungary, and has considerable manufactures of cloth, wool, table-linen, and earthenware. The principal trade is in wine, linen, cattle, and grain. In the neighbourhood are the royal salt-works and mines of Sovar and the chalybeate springs of Szemete. The town itself is deficient in its supply of pure spring water. Since the year 1807 Eperies has been the seat of a Greek Catholic bishopric ; and it possesses an episcopal library, a Catholic gymnasium, a normal high school, and an evangelical district college. Among the principal buildings Jews synagogue, a town-hall, and a county court-house. The population in the year 1857 was 8916, but in 1870 it had increased to the number of 10,772. Eperies was founded about the middle of the 12th century by a German colony, and was elevated to the rank of a royal free town in 1347 by Louis 1. (the Grea^. It was afterwards fortified, and received special privileges. On August 11, 1685, it was taken from the Turks by the Austrians under General Schulz. In 1687 General Caraffa erected a scaffold in the public square, upon which he de capitated, in a single day, thirty notables of the town. Eperies became in 1768 the head-ijuarters of the confederation of Bar. EPERNAY (the ancient Aqua; Perennes), the chief town of a French arrondissement in the department of the Marne, is situated on the left bank of the Marne, at the extremity of a beautiful and fertile valley on the line of railway between Paris and Strasburg, 20 miles W.N.W. of Cbalons, and 75 miles east of Paris. The town is neatly built, and in its suburbsare many handsome villas, inhabited chiefly by rich wine merchants. It is best known as the principal entrepot of the Champagne wines, which are kept here bottled in extensive vaults in the chalk rock on which the town is built. Among its other industries may be named the spinning and weaving of wool, printing, stock ing-making, tanning, brandy-making, and the manufacture of chemicals. The principal buildings are the town-house, in which is a public library with 15,000 volumes, the palace of justice, the theatre, and the parish church, built in the Italian style, and containing some fine stained glass windows. The population in 1872 was 12,877. Epernay was burned by Francis I. in 1545, to prevent Charles V. obtaining possession of its wine stores. It resisted Henry of Na varre in 1592, and Marshal Biron fell in the attack which preceded its capture. In 1642 it was, along with Chateau-Thierry, erected into a duchy, and assigned to the duke of Bouillon. EPHEMERID^E, a remarkable family of Pseudo- Neuropterous Insects, deriving the name from &amp;lt;/&amp;gt;^po5, in allusion to the very short lives of the winged insects. In some species it is possible that they have scarcely more than one day s existence, but others are far longer lived, though the extreme limit is probably rarely more than a week. The family has very sharply defined characters, which separate its members at once from all other ueurop- terous (or pseudo-neuropterous) groups. These insects are universally aquatic in their preparatory states. The eggs are dropped into the water by the female in large masses, resembling, in some species, bunches of grapes in miniature Probably several months elapse before the young larvse are excluded. The sub-aquatic condition lasts a considerable time : in Cloeon, a genus of small and delicate species, Lubbock proved it to extend over more than six mouths; but in larger and more robust genera (e.g., Palin genia^ there appears reason to believe that the greater part c^ three years is occupied in prepara tory conditions. The larva is elongate. The head is rather large, and is furnished at first with five simple eyes of nearly equal size; but as it increases in size thehomologues of the facetted eyes of the imago become larger, whereas those equivalent to the ocelli remain small. The antennae are long and thread-like, composed at first of few joints, but the number of these latter apparently increase at each moult. The mouth parts are well -developed, consisting of an upper lip, powerful mandibles, ordinarily three-jointed maxillary palpi, a deeply quadrind labium or lower lip, and three-jointed labial palpi. There are three distinct and large thoracic segments, whereof the prothorax is narrower than the others; the legs are much shorter and stouter than in the winged insect, with monomerous tarsi terminated by a single claw. The abdomen consists of ten segments, the tenth furnished with long and slender multi-articulate tails, which appear to be only two in number at firet, but an inter mediate one gradually develops itself (though this latter is often lost in the winged insect). Respiration is effected by means of external gills placed along both sides of the dorsum of the abdomen and hinder segments of the thorax. These vary in form : in some species they are entire plates, in others they are cut up into numerous divisions, in all cases traversed by numerous tracheal ramifications. According to the researches of Lubbock and of the Messrs Joly, the very young larva? have no breathing organs, and respiration is effected through the skin. Lubbock traced at least twenty moults in Cloeon; at about the tenth rudi ments of the wing-cases began to appear. These gradually become larger, and when so the creature may be said to have entered its nymph &quot; stage ; but there is no condition analogous to the pupa-stage of insects with complete meta morphoses. There may be said to be three or four different modes of life in these larva ; some are fossorial, and form VIII. sS
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