venomous ants were placed on his naked body. Finally a fire was lit beneath him. All this he had to bear without flinching. In ancient Mexico there were several orders of chivalry, entry into which was only permitted after brutal initiation. The nose of the candidate was pierced with an eagle’s talon or a pointed bone, and he was expected to dig knives into his body. In Peru the young Inca princes had to fast and live for weeks without sleep. Among the North American Indians initiatory rites were universal. The Mandans held a feast at which the young “braves” supported the weight of their bodies on pieces of wood skewered through the muscles of shoulders, breasts and arms. With the Sioux, to become a medicine-man, it was necessary to submit to the ordeal known as “looking at the sun.” The sufferer, nearly naked, was bound on the earth by cords passed through holes made in the pectoral muscles. With bow and arrow in hand, he lay in this position all day gazing at the sun. Around him his friends gathered to applaud his courage.
Religious brotherhoods of antiquity, too, were to be entered only after long and complicated initiation. But here the character of the ordeal is rather moral than physical. Such were the rites of admission to the Mysteries of Isis and Eleusis. Secret societies of all ages have been characterized by more or less elaborate initiation. That of the Femgerichte, the famous medieval German secret tribunal, took place at night in a cave, the neophyte kneeling and making oath of blind obedience. Imitations of such tests are perpetuated to-day in freemasonry; while the Mafia, the Camorra, the Clan-na-Gael, the Molly Maguires, the Ku-Klux Klan, are among more recent secret associations which have maintained the old idea of initiation.
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INJECTOR (from Lat. injicere, to throw in), an appliance for supplying steam-boilers with water, and especially used with locomotive boilers. It was invented by the French engineer H. V. Giffard in 1858, and presents the paradox that by the pressure of the steam in the boiler, or even, as in the case of the exhaust steam injector, by steam at a much lower pressure, water is forced into the boiler against that pressure. A diagrammatic section illustrating its construction is shown in figure. Steam enters at A and blows through the annular orifice C, the size of which can be regulated by a valve not shown in the figure. The feed water flows in at B and meeting the steam at C causes it to condense. Hence a vacuum is produced at C, and consequently the water rushes in with great velocity and streams down the combining cone D, its velocity being augmented by the impact of steam on the back of the column. In the lower part of the nozzle E the stream expands; it therefore loses velocity and, by a well-known hydrodynamic principle, gains pressure, until at the bottom the pressure is so great that it is able to enter the boiler through a check valve which opens only in the direction of the stream. An overflow pipe F, by providing a channel through which steam and water may escape before the stream has acquired sufficient energy to force its way into the boiler, allows the injector to start into action. Means are also provided for regulating the amount of water admitted between D and C. In the exhaust-steam injector, which works with steam from the exhaust of non-condensing engines, the steam orifice is larger in proportion to other parts than in injectors working with boiler steam, and the steam supply more liberal. In self-starting injectors an arrangement is provided which permits free overflow until the injector starts into action, when the openings are automatically adjusted to suit delivery into the boiler.
INJUNCTION (from Lat. injungere, to fasten, or attach to, to lay a burden or charge on, to enjoin), a term-meaning generally a command, and in English law the name for a judicial process whereby a party is required to refrain from doing a particular thing according to the exigency of the writ. Formerly it was a remedy peculiar to the court of chancery, and was one of the instruments by which the jurisdiction of that court was established in cases over which the courts of common law were entitled to exercise control. The court of chancery did not presume to interfere with the action of the courts, but, by directing an injunction to the person whom it wished to restrain from following a particular remedy at common law, it effected the same purpose indirectly. Under the present constitution of the judicature, the injunction is now equally available in all the divisions of the high court of justice, and it can no longer be used to prevent an action in any of them from proceeding in the ordinary course.
Although an injunction is properly a restraining order, there are instances in which, under the form of a prohibition, a positive order to do something is virtually expressed. Thus in a case of nuisance an injunction was obtained to restrain the defendant from preventing water from flowing in such regular quantities as it had ordinarily done before the day on which the nuisance commenced. But generally, if the relief prayed for is to compel something to be done, it cannot be obtained by injunction, although it may be expressed in the form of a prohibition—as in the case in which it was sought to prevent a person from discontinuing to keep a house as an inn. The injunction was used to stay proceedings in other courts “wherever a party by fraud, accident, mistake or otherwise had obtained an advantage in proceeding in a court of ordinary jurisdiction, which must necessarily make that court an instrument of injustice.” As the injunction operates personally on the defendant, it may be used to prevent applications to foreign judicatures; but it is not used to prevent applications to parliament, or to the legislature of any foreign country, unless such applications be in breach of some agreement, and relate to matters of private interest. In so far as an injunction is used to prohibit acts, it may be founded either on an alleged contract or on a right independent of contract. The jurisdiction of the court to prevent breaches of contract has been described as supplemental to its power of compelling specific performance; i.e. if the court has power to compel a person to perform a contract, it will interfere to prevent him from doing anything in violation of it. But even when it is not within the power of the court to compel specific performance, it may interfere by injunction; thus, e.g. in the case of an agreement of a singer to perform at the plaintiff’s theatre and at no other, the court, although it could not compel her to sing, could by injunction prevent her from singing elsewhere in breach of her agreement.
An injunction may as a general rule be obtained to prevent acts which are violations of legal rights, except when the same may be adequately remedied by an action for damages at law. Thus the court will interfere by injunction to prevent waste, or the destruction by a limited owner, such as a tenant for life, of things forming part of the inheritance. Injunctions may also be obtained to prevent the continuance of nuisances, public or private, the infringement of patents, copyrights and trade marks. Trespass might also in certain cases be prevented by injunction. Under the Common Law Procedure Act of 1854, and by other statutes in special cases, a limited power of injunction was conferred on the courts of common law. But the Judicature Act, by which all the superior courts of common law and chancery were consolidated, enacts that an injunction may be granted by an interlocutory order of the court in all cases in which it shall appear to be just or convenient; … and, if an injunction is asked either before or at or after the hearing of any cause or matter, to prevent any threatened or apprehended waste or trespass, such injunction may be granted whether the person against whom it is sought is or is not in possession under any claim of title or otherwise, or if not in possession does or does not claim to do the act sought to be restrained under colour of any title, and whether the estates claimed are legal or equitable.
An injunction obtained on interlocutory application during the progress of an action is superseded by the trial. It may be continued either provisionally or permanently. In the latter case the injunction is said to be perpetual. The distinction
