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acteristic of worms. The nervous system consists of a mass of gray nervous matter in the head, united by strands around the throat to a long cord of nervous matter running along the under surface of the body. The nerve-trunks are connected with this central cord, those of the head-end uniting with the brain, those from the rest of the body with the ventral cord. The earthworms have no eyes, but the entire fore end of the body is sensitive to light. They feed mostly at night, crawling from their burrows, and their places may be discovered by tubular castings of earth. There are many other worms composed, like the earthworms, of a series of rings. It is probable that the parentage of vertebrated animals was from simple animals somewhat like these ringed worms. No one thinks that the worms of to-day represent the ancestors of vertebrates, but it is generally believed by naturalists that the vertebrated animal came from very simple forms many thousand or million years ago, and those early remote parents were probably in structure somewhat like the living ringed worms. See Darwin: Formation of Vegetable Mould.

Easter (moved).

Eastern Empire.  See  and.

Eastern Townships. This name is applied to a large portion of southern and eastern, lying between the American frontier and the older French settlements on the St. Lawrence River. It was populated by United Empire Loyalists after their expulsion and voluntary exile from the United States upon the conclusion of peace with the mother-country in 1783, and forms a distinctively English element in the French province.

East India Company. The East India trade dates from the time when the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, having effected the eastern passage to India by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, cast anchor off the city of Calicut, May 20, 1498. Though the Portuguese did not start a formal trading-company, they held sway in the seas they had opened during the whole of the 16th century. In the next century their place was rapidly taken by the Dutch, whose first vessel had rounded the Cape in 1596 and whose East India Company was founded in 1602. But the earliest incorporated East India Company was the English, to which Queen Elizabeth granted a charter on the last day of the 16th century. Several later English companies, after a brief period of rivalry, were united with the original company under the title of The United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies. In the 17th century the Dutch crowded the English out of the islands where all the European powers had gained their first footing, and so settlements were founded by the English on the coasts of the Indian peninsula. , and  were founded one after the other. Properly speaking, the company were only merchants exchanging the products of the east and west, but soon they were drawn into the quarrels among the native princes, which resulted in the establishment by England of sovereign powers over vast regions. The charter of this Company was renewed again and again, but a feeling against the monopoly gradually grew up in England. In 1833 the company’s exclusive trading-privileges were taken away, and from that time the government took a constantly increasing part both in trading and in governing the Indian dominion, though it was nominally done by the company. In 1858, after the Sepoy rebellion, the company was forced after great resistance to yield its powers to the crown; and Indian affairs are now managed by a secretary of state for India. French and Danish East India Companies have existed for short periods. See ; and India under British Rule, by J. T. Wheeler.

East Indies, as distinguished from, include the two great peninsulas of southern and all the neighboring islands from the delta of the Indus to the northern extremity of the Philippines. See and, for the Dutch East Indies,.

East′lake, Sir Charles Lock, a celebrated English artist, president of the Royal Academy, was born at Plymouth in 1793, and studied in London and Paris. lie lived for some time at Rome, where he painted several pictures which attracted attention in England. In 1841 his great work, Christ Weeping over Jerusalem, was painted. He was elected president of the Royal Academy, and was knighted in 1850.