milch-cows, and a silo is consequently an important adjunct of a modern economical dairy-farm. Care should be taken to give relatively small amounts of silage to dairy-cattle until they become accustomed to it. In composition silage is not materially different from the fresh green corn.
Entomology. See Insects.
En′zymes (often called soluble ferments), substances of unknown but very complex composition produced in plants and animals for digesting insoluble foods or those which cannot be used readily without such change. The changes they produce are of two sorts: (1) the commoner consists in causing the food to take into its composition an additional molecule of water; (2) without any additions it may be split up into two or more compounds. Enzyme itself does not take part in the chemical reaction, but seems to act only by its presence. Consequently a very small amount of an enzyme may digest large quantities of a food. Each enzyme is restricted in its action to a particular substance. Some of the more important enzymes, the substance on which they act and the chief products are shown in the following table:
| ENZYME | SUBS. ON WHICH IT ACTS |
PRODUCT |
| Diastase | Starch | Malt-Sugar |
| Ptyalin | Starch | A sugar |
| Cytase | Cellulose | A sugar |
| Invertase | Cane-Sugar | Grape-Sugar and Fruit-Sugar = “invert sugar” |
| Maltase | Malt-Sugar | Grape-Sugar |
| Imulase | Inulin | Fruit-Sugar |
| Emulsin | Glucosides | Glucose, etc. |
| Pepsin | Proteids | Peptones |
| Trypsia | Proteids | Amides |
| Lipase | Fats | Glycerin, fatty acids |
| Zymase | Sugars | Alcohol, carbon dioxid |
Epaminondas (ē-păm′ĭ-nŏn′dȧs), the greatest of Theban generals and statesmen, was born toward the end of the 5th century B. C. He was descended from an old family which had become poor, and he was unknown till he was 40 years old. He is said to have saved the life of Pelopidas in battle in 385, which was the beginning of one of the most famous friendships of olden times. Thebes had been in the hands of a Spartan garrison, but when they were driven out by a desperate but successful stratagem, Epaminondas stepped forward at once into the ranks of the patriots. He was sent to Sparta in 371 to bring about a treaty of peace between the two countries. Here he displayed as much firmness and dignity as eloquence in the debate which ensued upon the question whether Thebes should sign the treaty in the name of all Bœotia. This would have been a recognition by Sparta of her claim to be supreme over all the Bœotian towns. To this the Spartans objected, and the war went on. Epaminondas was given the chief command, and, along with Pelopidas, with an army of 6,000 men defeated twice that number of the enemy at Leuctra (371). Two years later, with Pelopidas, he marched into the Peloponnesus and persuaded several of the allied tribes to fall away from Sparta. On going back to Thebes, Epaminondas was accused of having broken the laws of his country by keeping the chief power in his hands beyond the time appointed by law, but he made a strong defense and was acquitted. In the spring of 368 the war between Thebes and Sparta was renewed with greater fury than ever. Epaminondas made a second and somewhat unsuccessful invasion into the Peloponnesus. To make up for this unsuccessful undertaking, he marched with 33,000 men into Arcadia, and joined battle with the main body of the enemy near Mantinea in 362 B. C. Epaminondas charged at the head of his men and broke the Spartan phalanx, but was fatally wounded in the breast by a javelin. Being told by the physicians that he would die as soon as the weapon was extracted, he waited till he heard that his Thebans had won the victory, then drew out the javelin with his own hand, saying: “I have lived long enough.” His death was the deathblow to Theban supremacy.
Ephesus (ĕf′ē̇-sus), one of the twelve cites of Asia Minor settled by the Ionian Greeks, was in Lydia, near the mouth of the River Cayster. It was long before Ephesus became of importance, though a sacred city from an early time. Conquered first by the Lydian and next by the Persian kings, it came, after the death of Alexander the Great, under the government of his favorite bodyguard, Lysimachus, by whom it was greatly strengthened. At last it came into the possession of the Romans. In the time of Augustus it was the greatest place of trade of all the cities of Asia west of the Taurus. This was its position when visited by St. Paul, who lived here for three years, and wrote one of his great letters to its Christian church. But the destruction of its great temple by the Goths in 262 A. D. gave it a blow from which it never recovered. In 431 the third great council of the Christian church was held here. Its general history, while a city of the Byzantine empire, was unimportant, and before the days of Tamerlane, it had almost wholly perished. Among the ruins of Ephesus are fragments of a great theatre—alluded to in the account
