when in full flower, and deposited in the silo on the day of its cutting. Maize is cut a few days before it is ripe and is shredded before being elevated into the silo. Fair, dry weather is not essential; but it is found that when moisture, natural and extraneous, exceeds 75% of the whole, good results are not obtained. The material is spread in uniform layers over the floor of the silo, and closely packed and trodden down. If possible, not more than a foot or two should be added daily, so as to allow the mass to settle down closely, and to heat uniformly throughout. When the silo is filled or the stack built, a layer of straw or some other dry porous substance may be spread over the surface. In the silo the pressure of the material, when chaffed, excludes air from all but the top layer; in the case of the stack extra pressure is applied by means of planks or other weighty objects in order to prevent excessive heating.
The closeness with which the fodder is packed determines the nature of the resulting silage by regulating the chemical changes which occur in the stack. When closely packed, the supply of oxygen is limited; and the attendant acid fermentation brings about the decomposition of the carbohydrates present into acetic, butyric and lactic acids. This product is named “sour silage.” If, on the other hand, the fodder be unchaffed and loosely packed, or the silo be built gradually, oxidation proceeds more rapidly and the temperature rises; if the mass be compressed when the temperature is 140°–160° F., the action ceases and “sweet silage” results. The nitrogenous ingredients of the fodder also suffer change: in making sour silage as much as one-third of the albuminoids may be converted into amino and ammonium compounds; while in making “sweet silage” a less proportion is changed, but they become less digestible. In extreme cases, sour silage acquires a most disagreeable odour. On the other hand it keeps better than sweet silage when removed from the silo.
ENSTATITE, a rock-forming mineral belonging to the group of
orthorhombic pyroxenes. It is a magnesium metasilicate,
MgSiO3, often with a little iron replacing the magnesium: as
the iron increases in amount there is a transition to bronzite
(q.v.), and with still more iron to hypersthene (q.v.). Bronzite
and hypersthene were known long before enstatite, which was
first described by G. A. Kenngott in 1855, and named from
ἐνστάτης, “an opponent,” because the mineral is almost infusible
before the blowpipe: the material he described consisted
of imperfect prismatic crystals, previously thought to be scapolite,
from the serpentine of Mount Zdjar near Schönberg in Moravia.
Crystals suitable for goniometric measurement were later found
in the meteorite which fell at Breitenbach in the Erzgebirge,
Bohemia. Large crystals, a foot in length and mostly altered to
steatite, were found in 1874 in the apatite veins traversing
mica-schist and hornblende-schist at the apatite mine of Kjörrestad,
near Brevig in southern Norway. Isolated crystals are
of rare occurrence, the mineral being usually found as an essential
constituent of igneous rocks; either as irregular masses in
plutonic rocks (norite, peridotite, pyroxenite, &c.) and the
serpentines which have resulted by their alteration, or as small
idiomorphic crystals in volcanic rocks (trachyte, andesite). It
is also a common constituent of meteoric stones, forming with
olivine the bulk of the material: here it often forms small
spherical masses, or chondrules, with an internal radiated
structure.
Enstatite and the other orthorhombic pyroxenes are distinguished from those of the monoclinic series by their optical characters, viz. straight extinction, much weaker double refraction and stronger pleochroism: they have prismatic cleavages (with an angle of 88° 16′) as well as planes of parting parallel to the planes of symmetry in the prism-zone. Enstatite is white, greenish or brown in colour; its hardness is 512, and sp. gr. 3.2–3.3. (L. J. S.)
ENTABLATURE (Lat. in, and tabula, a tablet), the architectural
term for the superstructure carried by the columns
in the classic orders (q.v.). It usually consists of three members,
the architrave (the supporting member carried from column to
column, pier or wall); the frieze (the decorative member); and
the cornice (the projecting and protective member). Sometimes
the frieze is omitted, as in the entablature of the portico of the
caryatides of the Erechtheum. There is every reason to believe
that the frieze did not exist in the archaic temple of Diana at
Ephesus; and it is not found in the Lycian tombs, which are
reproductions in the rock of timber structures based on early
Ionian work.
ENTADA, in botany, a woody climber belonging to the family
Leguminosae and common throughout the tropics. The best-known
species is Entada scandens, the sword-bean, so called
from its large woody pod, 2 to 4 ft. in length and 3 to 4 in.
broad, which contains large flat hard polished chestnut-coloured
seeds or “beans.” The seeds are often made into snuff-boxes or
match-boxes, and a preparation from the kernel is used as a drug
by the natives in India. The seeds will float for a long time in
water, and are often thrown up on the north-western coasts of
Europe, having been carried by the Gulf-stream from the West
Indies; they retain their vitality, and under favourable conditions
will germinate. Linnaeus records the germination of a
seed on the coast of Norway.
ENTAIL (from Fr. tailler, to cut; the old derivation from
tales haeredes is now abandoned), in law, a limited form of
succession (q.v.). In architecture, the term “entail” denotes an
ornamental device sunk in the ground of stone or brass, and
subsequently filled in with marble, mosaic or enamel.
ENTASIS (from Gr. ἐντείνειν, to stretch a line or bend a bow),
in architecture, the increment given to the column (q.v.), to
correct the optical illusion which produces an apparent hollowness
in an extended straight line. It was referred to by Vitruvius
(iii. 3), and was first noticed in the columns of the Doric orders
in Greek temples by Allason in 1814, and afterwards measured
and verified by Penrose. It varies in different temples, and is not
found in some: it is most pronounced in the temple of Jupiter
Olympius, most delicate in the Erechtheum. The entasis is
almost invariably introduced in the spires of English churches.
ENTERITIS (Gr. ἔντερον, intestine), a general medical term for
inflammation of the bowels. According to the anatomical part
specially attacked, it is subdivided into duodenitis, jejunitis,
ileitis, typhlitis, appendicitis, colitis, proctitis. The chief
symptom is diarrhoea. The term “enteric fever” has recently
come into use instead of “typhoid” for the latter disease; but
see Typhoid Fever.
ENTHUSIASM, a word originally meaning inspiration by a
divine afflatus or by the presence of a god. The Gr. ἐνθουσιασμός,
from which the word is adapted, is formed from the verb
ἐνθουσιάζειν, to be ἔνθεος, possessed by a god θέος. Applied
by the Greeks to manifestations of divine “possession,” by
Apollo, as in the case of the Pythia, or by Dionysus, as in the
case of the Bacchantes and Maenads, it was also used in a transferred
or figurative sense; thus Socrates speaks of the inspiration
of poets as a form of enthusiasm (Plato, Apol. Soc. 22 C). Its
uses, in a religious sense, are confined to an exaggerated or
wrongful belief in religious inspiration, or to intense religious
fervour or emotion. Thus a Syrian sect of the 4th century was
known as “the Enthusiasts”; they believed that by perpetual
prayer, ascetic practices and contemplation, man could become
inspired by the Holy Spirit, in spite of the ruling evil spirit,
which the fall had given to him. From their belief in the efficacy
of prayer εὐχή, they were also known as Euchites. In ordinary
usage, “enthusiasm” has lost its peculiar religious significance,
and means a whole-hearted devotion to an ideal, cause, study or
pursuit; sometimes, in a depreciatory sense, it implies a devotion
which is partisan and is blind to difficulties and objections.
(See further Inspiration, for a comparison of the religious
meanings of “enthusiasm,” “ecstasy” and “fanaticism.”)
ENTHYMEME (Gr. ἐν, θυμός), in formal logic, the technical
name of a syllogistic argument which is incompletely stated.
Any one of the premises may be omitted, but in general it is
that one which is most obvious or most naturally present to the
mind. In point of fact the full formal statement of a syllogism
is rare, especially in rhetorical language, when the deliberate
omission of one of the premises has a dramatic effect. Thus the
