- Industry: Library & information science
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Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks. It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The ...
A general name given in the Middle Ages to salamanders, undines, sylphs, and gnomes, spirits superstitiously believed to have dominion respectively over, as well as to have had their dwelling in, the four elements—fire, water, air, and earth.
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Originally the four forms of matter so deemed—fire, air, earth, and water, and afterwards the name for those substances that cannot be resolved by chemical analysis, and which are now found to amount to sixty-seven.
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A genus of mammals, of which there are two species, the Indian and the African; the latter attains a greater size, and is hunted for the sake of its tusks, which may weigh as much as 70 lbs.; the former is more intelligent, and easily capable of being domesticated; the white elephant is a variety of this species.
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An island 6 m. in circuit in Bombay harbour, so called from its colossal figure of an elephant which stood near the landing-place; it contains three temples cut out of solid rock, and covered with sculptures, which, along with the figure at the landing, are rapidly decaying.
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A peculiar skin disease, accompanied with abnormal swelling; so called because the skin becomes hard and stiff like an elephant's hide; attacks the lower limbs and scrotum; is chiefly confined to India and other tropical countries.
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A small island below the first cataract of the Nile; contains interesting monuments and ruins of the ancient Roman and Egyptian civilisations.
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Rites, initiation into which, as religiously conducive to the making of good men and good citizens, was compulsory on every free-born Athenian, celebrated annually at Eleusis in honor of Demeter and Persephone, and which lasted nine days.
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A town in ancient Attica, NW. of Athens, with a temple for the worship of Demeter, the largest in Greece; designed by the architect of the Parthenon.
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Arrow-heads of flint used in hunting and war by the aborigines of the British Isles and of Europe generally, as they still are among savages elsewhere; derived their name from the superstitious belief that they were used by the fairies to kill cattle and sometimes human beings in their mischief-joy; they were sometimes worn as talismans, occasionally set in silver, as a charm against witchcraft.
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