EGER — EGYPT Conger and Anguilla. They believe that these eggs, although free church contains monuments by Flaxman. Within the in the water, remain usually near the bottom at great depths, and parish are the Royal Indian Engineering College on Cooper’s that fertilization takes place under similar conditions. No fish Hill, the hill celebrated in Sir John Denham’s poem, 1642, eacrs of the kind to which reference is here made have yet been the Royal Holloway College for Women, the Holloway sanaobtained on the British coasts, although conger and eels are so torium for the treatment of mental ailments, and a cottage abundant there. Itafl'aele described and figured the larva newly hatched from one of the eggs under consideration, and it is evident hospital; also the field of Runnymede, where King John that this larva is the earliest stage of a Leptocephalus. signed Magna Carta, and (partly in Berkshire) Virginia See “The Eel Question,” Report U.S. Commissioner of Fisheries Water, a large artificial lake in the south of Windsor for 1879. Washington, 1882.—Cunningham, “Reproduction and Great Park. Area of parish (with Englefield), 7786 acres. Development of the Conger,” Journ. Mar. Biol. Assn. vol. ii.— Petersen, Report Dan. Biol. Station, v., 1894.—Grassi, Quart. Population (1881), 8692; (1901), 11,894. Journ. Mic. Sci. vol. xxxix., 1897. (j. t. C.) Egln (Armenian, Agn, “the spring”), an important Egor, the chief town of the government district of town in the Memuret el-Aziz vilayet of Asiatic Turkey the same name in Bohemia; connected by rail with Nurem- (altitude, 3300 feet). It is picturesquely situated in a berg, Prague, Vienna, Ileichenberg, Ac. Population (1890), theatre of lofty, abrupt rocks, on the right bank of the 18,658; (1900), 23,665, almost exclusively German (esti- Western Euphrates, at the point where the Kharputmated at 91 per cent. Koman Catholic, 6 per cent. Pro- Erzingan road crosses the river by a wooden bridge. The testant, and 3 per cent. Jewish). There is a garrison of stone houses stand in terraced gardens and orchards, and 1069 men. Latterly Eger has been very prominent on the streets are mere rock-ladders. The population numbers account of its strong Pan-Germanic sentiment. The town 10,000 (Moslems 6000, Armenians 4000). Egin was is exceptionally interesting from its ancient buildings, settled by Armenians who emigrated from Van in the collection of historical relics of Wallenstein, &c. There is 11th century with Senekherim. On 8th November 1895 a considerable textile industry, together with the manu- many Armenians were massacred. facture of shoes, machinery, brewing, milling, &c. The Egorievsk, a district town of Russia, government inhabitants of the district are still distinguished from the surrounding population by their costumes, language, and 74 miles north-east of Ryazan, connected by a branch line (14 miles) with the Moscow to Ryazan main line. Its manners, and customs. cotton mills (yielding over £500,000 a year) and other Eg ham, a town and railway station in the Chertsey factories give occupation to 6000 persons. It has important parliamentary division of Surrey, England, on the Thames, fairs for trade in grain, hides, Ac., exported. Population, 21 miles west by south of London by rail. The parish 20,000. 686
EG Geography and Statistics. THE salient physical features of Egypt may be grouped as follows, each division having its own characteristic features, due essentially to the geological structure of the country(1) the Delta, (2) the Trough or “ Rift Valleys, (3) the Desert Plateaux, (4) the mountainous region in the east and north-east. The Nile must also be considered separately. The Delta.—The delta of the Nile occupies a triangular area north of Cairo, measuring 100 miles from south to north, and having a width of 155 miles on the shore of the Mediterranean between Alexandria on the west and Port Said on the east. Beyond these two points the low hills of the desert form the coast-line, while between them the low sandy shore of the delta, slowly increasing by the annual deposit of silt by the river, is a barren area of sand hills and salty waste land, except in a few parts where reclamation has already made progress. Southwards the quality of the soil rapidly improves, and becomes the most fertile part of Egypt. This area is watered by the Damietta and the Rosetta branches of the Nile, and by the network of canals which, beginning at Cairo and the Barrage, intersects the whole delta and extends eastwards through the Wadi Tumilat as far as Suez. The soil of the delta is a dark grey fine sandy soil, becoming at times almost a stiff clay by reason of the fineness of its particles, which consist almost wholly of extremely small grains of quartz with a few other minerals, and often numerous flakes of mica. This deposit varies in thickness, as a rule, from 55 to 70 feet, at which depth it is underlain by a. series of coarse and’ fine yellow quartz sands, with occasional pebbles, or even banks of gravel, while here and there. thin beds of clay occur. These sand-beds are sharply distinguished by
PT. their colour from the overlying Nile deposit, and are of considerable thickness. A boring made in 1886 for the Royal Society at Zagazig attained a depth of 375 feet without reaching rock, and another, recently sunk near Lake Abukir (close to Alexandria) by a company, reached a depth of 405 feet with the same result. Numerous other borings to depths of 100 to 200 feet have given similar results, showing the Nile deposit to rest generally on these yellow sands, which provide a constant though not a very large supply of good water; near the northern limits of the delta this cannot, however, be depended on, since the well water at these depths has proved on several occasions to be salt. The surface of the delta is a wide alluvial plain sloping gently towards the sea, and having an altitude of 29 feet above it at its southern extremity. The only inequalities are the mounds, formed of ruined mud-brick dwellings, which mark the site of ancient towns, or on which the present towns and villages stand, occupying often the same site as their predecessors of earlier times. Its limits east and west are determined by the higher ground, of the deserts, to which the silt-laden waters of the Nile in flood time cannot reach. The Valleys.—The valleys, which are a remarkable feature of the country, are those occupied respectively by the Nile, the Gulf of Suez, and the Gulf of Akaba, and each of these is a rift-valley determined by the subsidence of a narrow belt in the neighbourhood of a line of fracture on the earth’s surface. In the Gulf of Suez, certainly, an upward movement is still in progress, as salines along the coast are still being formed as the land rises; but in the Nile Valley north of Assuan this is more difficult to determine, though certain slight local earthquake shocks, which occasionally occur, seem to point to the fact that that movement has not wholly ceased. The trough so
