researches, publishing De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Ebraeorum in 1640. He was not elected to the Short Parliament of 1640; but to the Long Parliament, summoned in the autumn, he was returned without opposition for the university of Oxford. He opposed the resolution against episcopacy which led to the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords, and printed an answer to the arguments used by Sir Harbottle Grimston on that occasion. He joined in the protestation of the Commons for the maintenance of the Protestant religion according to the doctrines of the Church of England, the authority of the crown, and the liberty of the subject. He was equally opposed to the court on the question of the commissions of lieutenancy of array and to the parliament on the question of the militia ordinance. In 1643 he participated in the discussions of the assembly of divines at Westminster, and was appointed shortly afterwards keeper of the rolls and records in the Tower. In 1645 he was named one of the parliamentary commissioners of the admiralty, and was elected master of Trinity Hall in Cambridge—an office he declined to accept. In 1646 he subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant, and in 1647 was voted £5000 by the parliament as compensation for his sufferings in the evil days of the monarchy. He had not, however, relaxed his literary exertions during these years. He published in 1642 Privileges of the Baronage of England when they sit in Parliament and Discourse concerning the Rights and Privileges of the Subject; in 1644, Dissertatio de anno civili et calendario reipublicae Judaicae; in 1646 his treatise on marriage and divorce among the Jews entitled U xor Ebraica; and in 1647 the earliest printed edition of the old English law-book Fleta. In 1650 Selden passed the first part of De synedriis et prefectures juridic is veterum Ebraeorum through the press, the second and third parts being severally published in 1653 and 1655, and in 1652 he wrote a preface and collated some of the manuscripts for Sir Roger Twysden's Historiae Anglicae scriptores decem. His last publication was a vindication of himself from certain charges advanced against him and his Mare clausum in 1653 by Theodore Graswinckel, a Dutch jurist.
After the death of the earl of Kent in 1639 Selden lived permanently under the same roof with his widow. It is believed that he was married to her, although their marriage does not seem to have ever been publicly acknowledged. He died at Friary House in Whitefriars on the 30th of November 1654, and was buried in the Temple Church, London. In 1880 a brass tablet was erected to his memory by the benchers of the Inner Temple in the parish church of West Tarring.
Several of Selden's minor productions were printed for the first time after his death, 'and a collective edition of his writings was published by Archdeacon Wilkins in 3 vols. folio in 1725, and again in 1726. His Table Talk, by which he is perhaps best known, did not appear until 1689. It was edited by his amanuensis, Richard Milward, who affirms that “the sense and notion is wholly Selden's," and that “most of the words" are his also. Its genuineness has sometimes been questioned, although on insufficient grounds.
See Wood's Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss (London; 1817, 4 vols.); Aikin, Lives of John Selden and Archbishop Usher (London, 1812); Johnson, Memoirs of John Selden, &c. (London, 1835); Singer, Table Talk of John Selden (London, 1847); and Wilkins, Johannis Seldeni opera omnia, &c. (London, 1725).
SELĒNĒ, in Greek mythology, the divine personification of the moon, daughter of Hyperion and Theia, sister of Helios and Eos. By Zeus she was said to have been the mother of Pandia (the all-bright), who was worshipped with her father at the festival named after her Pandia.[1] She was also wooed by Pan in the form of a white ram, or she had selected a white ram from his flock as the price of her favours. The most famous of her amours was with Endymion (q.v.). Selene was represented as a beautiful young woman with wings and a golden diadem, sometimes riding in a chariot drawn by two white, sometimes winged, horses (or cows, symbolizing the moon's crescent, or bulls), or herself mounted on a horse, a bull, a mule or a ram. At Elis there was a statue of Selene, her head surmounted by a crescent. Later, she was identified with Artemis, and as such called Phoebe, the sister of Phoebus Apollo. She was worshipped on the days of the new and the full moon. Another name for Selene was Mēnē, in reference to the monthly changes of the moon. The existence of a male moon-god (Mēn), whose cult probably came to Attica from Asia Minor, is attested by inscriptions. The Roman goddess of the moon was Luna, who possessed sanctuaries on the Aventine and Palatine hills. In the former she was worshipped on the last day of March (the first month of the old Roman year); in the latter as Noctiluca (giving light by night), her sanctuary being illuminated on such occasions.
See W. H. Roscher, Über Selene und Verwandtes (1890), with Nachträge (1895); Preller, Griechische Mythologie (4th ed., I894), pp. 443–446; A. Legrand, s.v. “ Luna ” in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des antiquités.
SELENGA-ORKHON, a river of Central Asia, which rises in two principal head-streams, the Selenga and the Orkhon, on the plateau of N.W. Mongolia, not far apart in 101° E. Both flow generally E.N.E. as far as their conliuence near Kiakhta, on the frontier of Mongolia and Siberia, at the eastern extremity of the Sayan Mountains. Beyond Kiakhta the river flows generally N. nearly as far as 52° N., when it turns W. and enters Lake Baikal on the S.W., forming a delta. It is navigable from Kiakhta downwards, a distance of 210 m., its total length being 750 m. From the left it receives the Eghin-gol and the Jida, and from the right the Tala, Kharagoy, Chikoy, Khilok and Uda, streams each 150 to 300 m. in length. Near the upper Orkhon was the permanent camp of Karakorum, from the 8th century down to the end of the 13th the centre of the Mongol power, especially under the sway of Jenghiz Khan and his son Ogotai or Ogdai in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Several remarkable inscriptions were discovered here in the end of the 19th century, and were interpreted by Professor V. Thomsen of Copenhagen Inscriptions de l'Orkhon (Helsingfors, 1900).
SELENIUM [symbol Se, atomic weight 79.2 (O= 16)], a nonmetallic chemical element, discovered in 1817 by J. J. Berzelius, who called it selenium (Gr. σελήνη, the moon) on account of its close analogy with tellurium (Lat. tellus, the earth). It is occasionally found in the native condition, but more frequently in combination with metals in the form of selenides, the more important seleniferous minerals being euchairite, crookesite, clausthalite, naumannite and zorgite. It is also found as a constituent of various pyrites and galenas, and in some specimens of native sulphur. The element is usually obtained from the flue dust or chamber deposits of sulphuric-acid works in which a seleniferous pyrites is burned. In this process, the residues are boiled with a dilute sulphuric acid to which nitric acid and potassium chlorate are added in order to transform the element into selenic acid, H2SeO4, which is then reduced to selenious acid, H2SeO3, by boiling with hydrochloric acid, and finally to selenium by sulphur dioxide. L. F. Nilson (Ber., 1874, 7, p. 1719) digests the well-washed chamber mud with a moderately concentrated solution of potassium cyanide, whereby the element goes into solution in the form of potassium selenocyanide, KSe(CN), from which it is precipitated by hydrochloric acid. As alternative methods, F. Wöhler (Ann., 1859, 109, p. 375) heats the well-washed chamber residues with potassium nitrate and carbonate in order to obtain an alkaline selenate, which is then boiled with hydrochloric acid, yielding selenious acid, from which the element is obtained as above; whilst H. Rose (Pogg. Ann., 1828, 90, p. 471) by the action of chlorine obtains selenium tetrachloride, which is converted into selenious acid by water, and theacid so prepared is inally reduced to selenium by treatment with sodium sulphite (see also G. Magnus, Pogg. Ann., 1830, 96, p. 165; O. Pettersson, Ber., 1873, 6, p. 1477; H. Koch, German Patent 167457, 1903). It is obtained from zorgite by heating the mineral with aqua regia; the excess of acid is evaporated, and the resulting syrupy liquid diluted, filtered and decomposed by sulphur dioxide, when the selenium is precipitated (Billandot, Ency. chimique, 1883, 5, p. 198).
- ↑ The connexion of Selene or Pandia with this festival is denied by Wilamowitz-Möllendorff (Aus Kydathen, p. 133).
