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28 EXHAUSTION EXMOUTH about the year 1100. Its entire length is 408 ft. ; it has two Norman towers 130 ft. in height, ten chapels or oratories, and a chapter house. One of the towers contains an immense bell weigh- ing 12,500 Ibs., and the other has a chime of 11 bells. Among the numerous schools is a free grammar school founded by the citizens in the reign of Charles L, in which the sons of freemen are instructed gratuitously, and which has 18 exhibitions to either of the uni- versities. Exeter has a theatre and various literary and charitable institutions. Its com- merce is much less now than formerly, but it has some internal trade, and is an important corn and provision market. The river Exe is navigable for vessels of large burden to Top- sham, 4 m. below Exeter ; and by means of a canal built in 1563, subsequently much en- larged, and one of the oldest in England, ves- sels of 400 tons burden can come up to the quay near the walls of the town. Serges and other woollen goods were formerly manufac- tured in this city and the neighboring towns to a large extent, and shipped to the continent and the East Indies ; but the introduction of machinery 'and the lower price of fuel in the north of England have very much diminished this trade. This city is of unknown antiquity, and is supposed to be the Caer-Isc of the Brit- ons, and the Isca Damnoniorum of the Romans. It was the capital of the West Saxons, and in the reign of Alfred in 876 it was surprised by the Danes. It was besieged and taken by Wil- liam the Conqueror. In the civil war it es- Exeter Cathedral. poused the royal cause, was taken by the par- liamentarians, was retaken by Prince Maurice, became the headquarters of the royalists in the west and the residence of Charles's queen, and in 1646 surrendered after a blockade to Fairfax. EXHAUSTION (Lat. exhaurire, to draw out), a method of the ancient geometry, applied with success by Archimedes and Euclid, by which the value of an incommensurable quantity was sought by obtaining approximations alternately greater and less than the truth, until two ap- proximations differed so little from each other that either might be taken as the exact state- ment. Thus the length of a circumference was sought by calculating the length of inscribed and circumscribed polygons, and increasing the number of sides until the lengths of the outer and inner polygon were sensibly the same, when that of the circumference could not differ sen- sibly from either. By this method the space between the polygons and the curve was ex- hausted, as it were, and hence the term. Ex- haustion is now interesting chiefly because it was one of the methods which led, in the 17th century, to the invention of the differential calculus. EXMOFTH, a town of Devonshire, England, 10 m. S. E. of Exeter; pop. about 6,000. It is a celebrated sea-bathing place, and is beauti- fully situated on the E. side of the entrance to the estuary of the Exe, in an opening of the cliffs which surround the shore. The modern part of the town consists of detached villas and. ter- races surmounted by neat houses, and there are many pleasant promenades. A gradually sloping sandy beach below the town is the principal resort of bathers. There is a hand- some parish church with a tower more than 100 ft. high. Fisheries constitute the princi- pal occupation ; and many of the women are engaged in lace making. EXMOUTH, Edward Pellew, viscount, an Eng- lish admiral, born at Dover, April 19, 1757,