ELECTRA (i. e. the Bright One), an ocean nymph, the mother of ISIS (q. v.).

ELECTRA, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who, with her brother Orestes, avenged the death of her father on his murderers.

ELECTRIC LIGHT, a brilliant white light due to positive and negative currents rushing together between two points of carbon or (the “incandescent” light) to the intense heat in a solid body, caused by an electric current passing through it.

ELECTRICITY, the name given to a subtle agent called the electric fluid, latent in all bodies, and first evolved by friction, and which may manifest itself, under certain conditions, in brilliant flashes of light, or, when in contact with animals, in nervous shocks more or less violent.  It is of two kinds, negative and positive, and as such exhibits itself in the polarity of the magnet, when it is called MAGNETIC (q. v.), and is excited by chemical action, when it is called VOLTAIC (q. v.).

ELEGY, a song expressive of sustained earnest yearning, or mild sorrow after loss.

ELEMENTAL SPIRITS, a general name given in the Middle Ages to salamanders, undines, sylphs, and gnomes, spirits superstitiously believed to have dominion respectively over, as well as to have had their dwelling in, the four elements—­fire, water, air, and earth.

ELEMENTS, originally the four forms of matter so deemed—­fire, air, earth, and water, and afterwards the name for those substances that cannot be resolved by chemical analysis, and which are now found to amount to sixty-seven.

ELEPHANT, a genus of mammals, of which there are two species, the Indian and the African; the latter attains a greater size, and is hunted for the sake of its tusks, which may weigh as much as 70 lbs.; the former is more intelligent, and easily capable of being domesticated; the white elephant is a variety of this species.

ELEPHANT, ORDER OF THE WHITE, a Danish order of knighthood, restricted to 30 knights, the decoration of which is an elephant supporting a tower; it was instituted by Canute IV., king of Denmark, at the end of the 12th century.

ELEPHANTA, an island 6 m. in circuit in Bombay harbour, so called from its colossal figure of an elephant which stood near the landing-place; it contains three temples cut out of solid rock, and covered with sculptures, which, along with the figure at the landing, are rapidly decaying.

ELEPHANTIASIS, a peculiar skin disease, accompanied with abnormal swelling; so called because the skin becomes hard and stiff like an elephant’s hide; attacks the lower limbs and scrotum; is chiefly confined to India and other tropical countries.

ELEPHANTINE, a small island below the first cataract of the Nile; contains interesting monuments and ruins of the ancient Roman and Egyptian civilisations.

ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, rites, initiation into which, as religiously conducive to the making of good men and good citizens, was compulsory on every free-born Athenian, celebrated annually at Eleusis in honour of Demeter and Persephone, and which lasted nine days.