ELLIOTT 1825 he aided in establishing the medical col- of the state, and was elected one of the Ity, and professor of natural history and botany. He is the author of " The Botany of South Carolina and Georgia" (2 vols. 8vo, Charleston, 1821-'4), in the preparation of which he was assisted by Dr. James McBride, left a number of works in manuscript. His collection in the several departments of natural history was at the time of his death one of the most extensive in the country. The degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by Yale and Harvard colleges. II. Stephen, son of the pre- ceding, bishop of the Protestant Episcopal church for the diocese of Georgia, born at Beaufort, S. C., Nov. 13, 1805, died in Savan- ih, Dec. 21, 1866. He graduated at Harvard )llege in 1824, practised law in Charleston id Beaufort till 1833, and was ordained a Beacon in 1835, and a priest in 1836, soon after which he became professor of sacred literature in the South Carolina college. In 1840 he was elected bishop of Georgia. ELLIOTT, William, an American author and politician, born in Beaufort, S. C., April 27, 1788, died there in February, 1863. He was entered in Harvard college at the age of 18, but ill health compelled him to return home before the completion of his studies. For many years he devoted himself to the manage- ment of his estates, and served in both branch- es of the state legislature. During the nul- lification crisis in South Carolina in 1832 he was a senator in the state legislature, but resigned upon being instructed by his con- stituents to vote to nullify the tariff law. He afterward participated less frequently in pub- lic affairs, his letters against secession signed "Agricola," and published in 1851, being among his latest expressions of opinion on )litical subjects. He contributed largely to 3 periodical press of the south. He publish- " Address before the St. Paul's Agricultural ,~ciety " (1850), " Fiesco," a tragedy (1850),
- Carolina Sports by Land and Water " (1856),
id several occasional poems. ELLIPSE, an oval figure produced from the ion of a cone by a plane which cuts both sides it in an oblique direction. It may also be )btained by letting the shadow of a circle fall a plane ; or it may be drawn by driving two is into a board to mark the foci, putting a loop of inelastic thread over them, and rawing the curve with a pencil placed inside le loop and stretched out as far as the loop will allow. Instruments to describe an ellipse are called ellipsographs or elliptographs. The foci of an ellipse are the given points around which another point is conceived to move in such a manner that the sum of their distances from it is always the same ; the line thus de- scribed is an ellipse. The centre of an ellipse is the point which bisects the straight line be- tween the foci. The distance of either focus from the centre is called the eccentricity. A straight line passing through the centre, and ELLIS 547 terminated both ways by the ellipse, is called a diameter. The diameter which passes through the foci is called the transverse axis, also the greater axis. The ellipse is the projection of a circle ; the curve which is everywhere equally distant from the sum of the foci is an ellipse. Kepler announced the law that planetary or- bits are ellipses, and upon the three simple formulas which he laid down for the solution of this problem is based all that has been done since to determine the movements of the plan- ets. The ellipse, and the ellipsoid, which is a solid figure all plane sections of which are ellipses or circles, enter largely into mechani- cal contrivances. The method given above of describing an ellipse is applied in machines to turn wood and other substances into elliptic forms. An instrument similar to the ellipto- graph is employed for engraving ellipses on metals, and for dividing these ellipses accurate- ly, so as to give the perspective representation of a circle divided into equal parts. ELLIS. I. A N. county of Texas, drained by Trinity river, which forms its E. boundary ; area, 1,000 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 7,514 of whom 1,506 were colored. The surface is oc- cupied by prairies and tracts of hard timber. The prairies are very fertile. The chief pro- ductions in 1870 were 11,943 bushels of wheat, 312,843 of Indian corn, 16,076 of oats, and 2,960 bales of cotton. There were 7,387 horses, 3,892 milch cows, 21,211 other cattle, 3,007 sheep, and 8,171 swine. Capital, Waxa- hachie. II. A W. central county of Kansas, intersected by Smoky Hill and Saline rivers and Big creek ; area, 900 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 1,336. The Kansas Pacific railroad passes through it. Capital, Eome. ELLIS, George, an English author, born in 1745, died in April, 1815. He commenced his literary career as a writer of political sat- ires, and became favorably known as a con- tributor to the " Rolliad," and subsequently to the " Anti- Jacobin." The study of early Eng- lish literature, however, occupied his leisure hours, and in 1790 he produced "Specimens of Ancient English Poetry," of which enlarged editions appeared in 1801 and 1811. A com- panion work, " Specimens of Ancient English Romances," appeared in 1805 (3 vols. 8vo), and has been republished in Bohn's " Anti- quarian Library " (London, 1848). ELLIS, George Edward, D. D., an American clergyman, born in Boston, Aug. 8, 1814. He graduated at Harvard college in 1833, studied theology at the Cambridge divinity school till 1836, and after a year's travel in Europe was ordained in 1840 as pastor of the Harvard church, Charlestown, Mass., and resigned Feb. 22, 1869. From 1857 to 1864 he was professor of doctrinal theology in the Cambridge divin- ity school. In 1864 he delivered a course of Lowell lectures on the evidences of Christiani- ty. He wrote the lives of John Mason, Anne Hutchinson, and William Penn, in Sparks's "American Biography," and in 1857 pub-
