Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/686

 674 EOTVOS EPACT EOTVOS, J6sef, baron, a Hungarian author and statesman, born in Buda, Sept. 3, 1813, died in Pesth, Feb. 2, 1871. His education was completed at the university of Pesth, and at the age of 17 he commenced his literary career by a translation of Goethe's Q-otz von Ber- licJiingen. This was followed by two original comedies and a tragedy. In 1836 he travelled through Germany, Switzerland, France, and Great Britain. In 1838 he became the editor of the Budapesti drmzMnyv, a work in which the most eminent Hungarian men of letters took a part. He contributed to it a novel en- titled " The Carthusian," which made him at once the favorite of the Hungarian public. A pamphlet issued by him on prison reform pro- duced a deep impression. His eloquent defence of the "Emancipation of the Jews" was still more remarkable. In the great controversy about Kossuth's Pesti Hirlap, Eotv,6s espoused his cause, and published a pamphlet in 1841 de- fending him against the conservative leader Sz6chenyi. As one of the leaders of the oppo- sition in the upper house of the Hungarian diet, Eotvos achieved a distinguished position. But whatever may have been his merit as an orator and a politician, it was eclipsed by his fame as a novelist. His novel A falu jegyzoje (" The Village Notary," 3 vols., 1844-'6), in which he boldly exposed the abuses connected with the rule of the nobles in the counties, had a marvellous success, and was translated into German and English. In 1847 he produced a new novel on the revolt of the peasant- ry in 1514, entitled Magyarorszdg 1514-fo/i ("Hungary in 1514"). During this time he also exerted great influence through the newspaper press. His articles in the Pesti Hirlap, now edited by his friend Szalay, espe- cially on centralization, of which he became the champion, while Kossuth defended the autonomy of the counties, were collected in 1846 in a volume at Leipsic under the title of " Reform." After the outbreak of 1848 Eot- vos was appointed minister of worship and public instruction under the Batthyanyi ad- ministration. He brought forward a compre- hensive measure for the improvement of edu- cation, which was strenuously opposed on sectarian grounds, but was warmly supported by Kossuth and adopted by the diet. Eotvos, however, withdrew from the cabinet on the assassination of Count Lamberg, and retired to Munich, but returned to his native country in 1851. During the period of the suspension of the Hungarian constitution he published his work on " The Influence of the Leading Ideas of the 19th Century on the State " (2 vols., 1851 and 1854, Hungarian and German by the author), and several political pamphlets. In 1856 he was elected vice president and in 1866 president of the Hungarian academy. In 1861 he became a member of the lower house of the Hungarian diet as representative of the city of Buda, from which time he actively cooperated with Deak for the restoration of the consti- tution ; and on the creation of the Andrassy cabinet in 1867 he entered it as minister of worship and education. This office he held till his death. EOZOON (Gr. %&$, dawn, and wov, animal), a name given to certain forms found in the Laurentian rocks of Canada, Massachusetts, and other primordial regions, under the belief that they are the impressions of the earliest animal organisms which appeared on the earth. The serpentine rock in which they are found is far older than the lower Silurian, in the azoic series of authors ; if these are of organic origin, they carry back the first appearance of animal life to a period much earlier than geologists have usually admitted. Dr. Carpen- ter, Dr. Dawson, and others regard the so- called eozoon Canadense as a protozoan, of the rhizopod or foraminiferous division, a jelly-like living mass, spreading over the bottom of the sea, secreting calcareous partitions, and thus forming small chambers or cells, the interior of which has been filled with serpentine de- posited from the waters of the ocean.. Dr. Dawson believes that it had several foramini- feral successors in these early periods. On the other hand, excellent microscopists and min- eralogists deny its animal origin, and maintain that these are only imitative forms of inorganic material, the result of infiltration of waters and chemical agency. Specimens have been found in the limestone or serpentine of New- bury and Chelmsford, Mass., in semi-crystalline vein-like deposits in granitic gneiss, in isolated masses, and not in stratified deposits accessible to fossils. High authorities are enlisted on each side, but the evidence seems to prepon- derate on the side of its animal origin. The term eopJiyton has in like manner been applied to what appear like the remains of a terrestrial flora found in Swedish rocks of eozoonal age ; they seem like stems and long parallel-veined leaves of monocotyledonous plants allied to the present rushes ; they apparently grew on the margin of shallow waters, where they were buried in sand or silt. The E. Linnceanum of authors probably contains several species. This may also be a dendritic or imitative form, of inorganic material. It stands by the side of eozoon ; the one being, in the present state of our knowledge, perhaps the earliest land plant, the other the earliest animal organism. EPACT (Gr. kiranrdg, added, inserted, exces- sive), a word formerly employed to denote the difference in time obtained by comparing any two periods, as the 11 days by which the solar exceeds the lunar year. Now it denotes gene- rally the number of days between the last new moon and the first day of the next year. These epacts are counted in Koman figures from I. to XXVIII. When a new moon falls on the first of January, then the epact is 0, that of the next year XL, and that of the third XXII. But in continuing this calculation, 30 is sub- tracted from every number exceeding 30. The epact for the fourth year is therefore reduced