Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/329

N E E N E G 315 Aernout van der Neer was living at Amsterdam when he purchased the freedom of the city of Gouda in 1685. He is said to have resided at Rotterdam in 1691. But in 1692 he married a second wife at Gouda ; and so the date usually assigned to his death receives correction. Out of about one hundred and fifty pictures accessible to the public, the choicest selection is in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. In England the largest collector is Sir Kichard Wallace. But there are good specimens in numerous English galleries besides. II. EGLON VAN DER NEER, born at Amsterdam in 1643, died at Diisseldorf on the 3d of May 1703. He was first taught by his father, and then took lessons from Jacob Vanloo, whose chief business then consisted in painting figures in the landscapes of Wynants and Hobbema. When Vanloo went to Paris in 1663 to join the school from which Boucher afterwards came, he was accompanied or followed by Eglon. But, leaving the French capital about 1666, he settled at Rotterdam, where he dwelt for many years. Later on he took up his residence at Brussels, and finally came to Diisseldorf, where he entered the service of the elector-palatine Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz. In each of the places where he stopped Eglon married, and having had three wives became the father of twenty-five children. A modern French critic has observed that the burden of so large a family was as nothing to Eglon s misfortune in having taught the arts to Van der Werff. Eglon van der Neer has painted landscapes imitating those of his father, of Berchem and Adam Elsheimer. He frequently put the figures into the town views of Jan van der Heyden in competition with Berchem and Adrian van de Velde. His best works are portraits, in which he occasionally came near Terburg or Metsu in delicacy of touch, De Hooch in effectiveness of lighting, or Mieris in polish of surface. One of his earliest pieces in which the influence of Terburg is apparent is the Lady with the Book, of 1665, which was sold with the Bredel collection in 1875. A young woman in white and red satin at Rotterdam, of 1669, recalls Mieris, whose style also reappears in Eglon s Cleopatra at Buckingham Palace. Two landscapes with Tobit and the Angel, dated 1685 and 1694, in the museums of Berlin and Amsterdam, illus trate his fashion of setting Scripture scenes in Dutch backgrounds. The most important of his sacred com positions is the Esther and Ahasuerus, of 1696, in the Uffizi at Florence. But he varied his practice also with arrangements of hunting and hawking parties, pastures and fords, and cavalry skirmishes. The latest of his panels is a mountain landscape of 1702 in the gallery of Augsburg. (j. A. c.) NEES VON ESENBECK, CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED (1776-1858), botanist and entomologist, was born at Erbach on February 14, 1776, and was educated at Darmstadt and at Jena, where he took the degree of M.D. He spent some time in medical practice in Frankfort-on- the-Main, but in 1818 was appointed professor of botany in Erlangen. Next year he became professor of natural history in Bonn, and in 1831 he was appointed to the chair of botany in the university of Breslau. He enjoyed a high reputation as a lecturer, but had a strong leaning to the transcendental philosophy of nature so much in vogue in Germany in the earlier part of this century. In 1848 he was elected a member of the German parliament, and became a leader of the party opposed to the Govern ment, to which he made himself so obnoxious that in 1851 he was deprived of his professorship, and in conse quence the latter years of his life were spent in great poverty. He died in 1858. For about forty years lie edited the Nova Acta of the Acad. Leopold.-Carolina," and in this important series of scientific memoirs several of his own papers were published. His earliest memoirs deal with the ichneumons, and for some years he continued to write on these insects. He published a Monographic der Ichneumone in 2 vols. , in 1828 ; and Hymenopterorum Ichneumonibus affinium Monographic, in 2 vols., in 1834. Nees von Esenbeck was a prolific writer in various departments of botany, and published the following separate works: DieAlgen des silssen Wassers nach ihrcn Entwickel- ungsstufcn dargcstellt, 1814; Das System der Pilze und SchwUmnne, 1816; Naturgeschichte der curopdischen Lcbcrmoose, in 4 vols., 1833-38 ; " Agrostologia Brasilieusis, " in the Flora Brasiliensis ; and a Systema Laurincarum, 1836. Besides these he wrote numerous monographs in the series above mentioned, also in Flora, in Linnsea, and in other scientific German magazines, either alone or along with other well-known botanists. His best known works are those that deal with the Fungi, the Hcpaticaz, and the Glumiferse, in all which groups he made valuable additions to knowledge, which have exerted much influence on later investigations. His brother Theodore (1787-1837), inspector of the botanic gardens at Leyden, and afterwards professor of pharmacy at Bonn, also wrote numerous papers on botanical subjects, dealing more particularly with medicinal plants and their products. NEGAPATAM, a town and the chief port of Tanjore district, Madras, India, situated in 10 45 37" N. lat. and 79 53 28" E. long. It forms a single municipality with the adjoining town of Nagiir, the joint population in 1881 being 53,855. The port carries on an active trade with Ceylon, Burmah, and the Straits, the imports consisting chiefly of cotton goods and betel-nuts, and the exports of rice and paddy. Negapatam was one of the earliest settlements of the Portuguese on the Coromandel coast. It was taken by the Dutch in 1660, and by the English in 1781. NEGLIGENCE is in one aspect the correlative of diligence (see DILIGENCE), in another of intention. It is the absence of diligence or the absence of intention. All definitions imply this. Negligence is a term difficult to define for more than one reason. It is used not only to denote a mental state, but the consequences resulting from a mental state. Again, the term bears a somewhat different meaning as applied to civil or criminal liability. "The meaning of negligence, in the common use of language," says Mr Justice Stephen (History of the Criminal Laiv, vol. ii. p. 123), "is very general and indefinite. It is practically synonymous with heedlessness or carelessness, not taking notice of matters relevant to the business in hand, of which notice might and ought to have been taken. This meaning is no doubt included in the legal sense of the word, but in reference to criminal law the word has also the wider meaning of omitting, for whatever reason, to discharge a legal duty, e.g., the omission by a medical man to exercise that skill which it is his duty to exercise." The vagueness of the standard by which negligence is tested is another and more serious practical difficulty. The standard is the average prudent action of the average citizen, and the defendant fails to reach this standard at his peril. This is the standard implied by such definitions as that of the New York Penal Code, "the terms neglect, negligence, negligent, and negligently . . . . import a want of such attention to the nature or probable consequences of the act or omission as a prudent man ordinarily bestows in acting in his own concerns," and that of Sirey (Code Penal, 319), " the omission or forgetfulness of a precaution dictated by prudence." The connexion between negligence and inten tion is illustrated by a passage in the judgment of Baron Alderson in Blyth v. The Birmingham Water Works Company (1856). "The definition of negligence," says that learned judge, "is the omitting to do something that a reasonable man would do, or the doing something that a reasonable man would not do ; and an action may be brought if thereby mischief is caused to a third party not intentionally." The intention is of great importance in criminal law. Thus as a general rule it may be said that what is manslaughter where there is negligence becomes