Encyclopædia Britannica.-VOL. VII. PRINCIPAL CONTENT S. DEAD SEA. J. L. PORTER, LL, D., D.D., Professor of Biblical Criticism, Belfast. DEAF AND DUMB. ALFRED LARGE. DECALOGUE. Prof. ROBERTSON SMITH. DEFOE. GEORGE SAINTSBURY. DEISM. D. PATRICK. DELHI. W. W. HUNTER, LL.D. DELUGE. Rev. T. K. CHEYNE. DE MORGAN. W. S. JEVONS, F.R.S., Professor of DENMARK. E. W. Gosse, Translator, H.M. Board of Trade, London. DENTISTRY. Dr. JOHN SMITH. DE QUINCEY. J. R. FINDLAY. DERBY, EARL OF. W. BROWNING SMITI DIAGRAMS. Prof. J. CLERK MAXWELL. DIALLING. H. GODFRAY, late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. DIAMOND. Prof. JAMES NICOL DIATOMACEE. Rev. EUGENE O'MEARA, M. A. DICKENS. WILLIAM MINTO. DICTIONARY. Rev. PONSONBY A. LYONS. DIDEROT. JOHN MORLEY. DIETETICS. Dr. T. K. CHAMBERS, Author of "Manual of Diet." DIFFUSION. Prof. CLERK MAXWELL. DIGESTIVE ORGANS. Prof. WILLIAM TURNER. Prof. DITTMAR and JAMES PATON. DISTRIBUTION. A. R.,WALLACE and W. T. T. DYER. DIVORCE. EDMUND ROBERTSON, Barrister-at-Law. DODO. Prof. ALFRED NEWTON. DOG. JOHN GIDSON. DOGMATIC. J. S. CANDLISH, D.D., Professor of Divinity, Free Church College, Glasgow. DOME. Sir EDMUND BECKETT, Bart., Q.C. DORIANS. Rev. Sir GEORGE W. Cox, Bart. DRAMA. A. W. WARD, Professor of English Literature, DRAUGHTS. HENRY JONES. DRAWING. P. G. HAMERTON, Author of "Thought about Art." DREAM. JAMES SULLY. DREDGE. Prof. Sir WYVILLE THOMSON, Author of "The Voyage of the Challenger." DREDGING. DAVID STEVENSON, C.E. DRUIDISM. JAMES MACDONALD, LL.D. DRUNKENNESS. Dr. GEORGE W. BALFOUR. DRUSES. H. A. WEBSTER. DRYDEN. WILLIAM MINTO. DUBLIN. E. T. LEFROY, Freeman's Journal, Dublin, DUDEVANT. FRANCIS STORR. DUEL. FRANCIS STORR. DUMAS. PERCY FITZGERALD, Author of "Romance of the English Stage." DUNDONALD. W. BROWNING SMITH. DURER. Prof. SIDNEY COLVIN. DURHAM. Rev. J. T. FOWLER, M. A., Hebrew Lecturer DWARF. JOHN DORAN, Ph.D. DYEING. CHARLES O'NEILL, Author of "Chemistry of Calico Printing and Dyeing." DYNAMICS. WM. GARNETT, M. A., St. John's College, Cambridge. EAGLE. Prof. ALFRED NEWTOX. EAR. J. G. M'KENDRICK, Professor of Institutes of Medicine, University of Glasgow. EARTH (FIGURE OF). Lt. Col. A. R. CLARKE, Royal Engineers. EARTHQUAKE. F. W. RUDLER EASTER. Canon VENABLES. ÉCARTÉ. HENRY JONES. ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. DE DEA DE A their ministry in the Latin church in the 6th century. The office was abolished in the Greek church in the 12th century. DEAD SEA, the largest lake in Palestine, and physically, as well as historically, among the most remarkable in the world. It is called in Scripture The Salt Sea (Gen. xiv. 3), The Sea of the Plain, or more correctly of the Arabah (Deut. iii. 17), and The East Sea (Ezek. xlvii. 18). Josephus calls it the Asphaltic Lake (B. J. iii. 10, 17), a name adopted by classic writers in allusion to the bitumen, or asphaltum, which abounds in its basin. Jerome gave it the name Dead Sea because its waters are fatal to animal life, and in the Talmud it is called the Sea of Sodom. Its common name among the inhabitants of Palestine is Baheiret Lût, "The Sea of Lot." EACON (diákovos, minister, servant), the name given to the lowest order of minister in the Christian church. From the appointment of the seven Hellenic deacons (Acts vi.) we learn that their duty under the apostles was simply to distribute alms from the public fund. In the early church, however, they soon came to discharge higher functions. They assisted the bishop and presbyter in the service of the sanctuary; in the administration of the Eucharist they handed the elements to the people; they instructed the catechumens, and in some cases baptized; and the archdeacons came to exercise in the 6th century the judicial power of the bishop over the inferior clergy. In the Church of England the form of ordaining deacons declares that it is their office to assist the priest in the distribution of the holy communion; in which, agreeably to the practice of the ancient church, they are confined to the The sea is 46 miles long, and varies from 5 to 9 in administering of the wine to the communicants. A deacon breadth. Its bed is the lowest part of the great valley of in England is not capable of holding any benefice, yet he the Jordan; and its surface has a depression of no less may officiate as a private chaplain, as curate to a beneficed than 1308 feet beneath the level of the ocean. The Jordan clergyman, or as lecturer in a parish church. He may be valley itself, for a distance of about 80 miles to the northordained at twenty-three years of age, anno currente; but ward and 30 to the southward, is also below the level of it is expressly provided that the bishop shall not ordain the ocean. The general contour of the sea is an elongated the same person a priest and deacon on the same day. In oval, with a number of bold promontories and deep bays Presbyterian churches, as in apostolic times, the deacons along the western shore, and a large, low peninsula on the have charge only of the pecuniary affairs of the congregation. south-east. It is shut in on the east and west by parallel In the Roman Catholic Church it is the deacon's office to ranges of mountains which rise steeply, and in some places incense the officiating priest or prelate; to lay the corporal in precipices of naked rock, from the water. The western on the altar; to receive the paten or cup from the sub-range is the mountain chain of Judah, and is composed of deacon, and present it to the person officiating; to incense white limestone intermixed with yellow and reddish strata. the choir; to receive the pix from the officiating prelate, Its whole eastern slopes are bare, rugged, and desolate, and to carry it to the subdeacon; and at a pontifical forming that wilderness in which David found an asylum, mass, when the archbishop gives the blessing, to put the in which the Baptist preached, and in which our Lord was mitre on his head, and to take off the archiepiscopal pall tempted. The average height of the cliffs along the shore and lay it on the altar. is about 2000 feet; but they are deeply fissured by torrent beds, which are all dry in summer. however, a few fountains in the glens and near the shore, the most celebrated of which is the Biblical Engedi. At the north-west curve of the sea are extensive salt marshes, and at the south-west is a range of hills of rock salt, 7 miles long and 300 feet high, called Khashm Usdom, "The ridge of Sodom." On the south of the sea lies a low marshy plain, partially covered with jungles of reeds, tamarisk, and broom. Deaconess.-This was the title of a ministry to which women were appointed in the early church, whose duty it was to perform certain functions towards female catechumens during the ceremony of baptism by immersion, which could not so well be performed by the deacons. Their age was at first fixed at sixty years, but it was after: wards reduced to forty years, and no married woman was eligible to the office. Abuses gradually became prevalent amongst the deaconesses, which led to the suppression of VII There are, - I the greatest depth of the channel between the peninsula and the western shore being only 13 feet, while no part of the lake south of the peninsula is more than 12 feet, and most of it only 3 or 4 feet deep. The water is intensely salt and bitter, and its density is so great that the human body will not sink in it. The following is an analysis of water lifted by Captain Lynch from a depth of 1110 feet, the specific gravity of which was 1.227: The mountain range along the eastern side of the Dead | to a depth of 1308 feet. The southern section is shallow, Sea is the sustaining wall of the tableland of Moab, which has an elevation of about 2800 feet, and is therefore 4000 feet above the lake. At the southern end the range is composed of red sandstone, a continuation of the "red" mountains of Edom. At the valley of Kerek the sandstone gives place to limestone; but further north it again appears in thick strata below the limestone. The range is intersected by the deep and wild ravines of Kerak (the Kir-Moab of the Bible), Mojeb (the ancient Arnon), and Zerka Main (Maon). A few miles from the mouth of the latter are the warm springs of Callirrhoe, famous in Jewish and Roman times. A copious stream of warm sulphureous water flows into the lake between stupendous cliffs of sandstone. North of Zerka Main the cliffs along the shore are sandstone, but higher up the limestone overlies the sandstone, while dykes and seams of old trap-rock also occur. At the mouth of the ravine of Kerak, on the south-east of the sea, is the peninsula of Lisan, "The Tongue." Its neck is a strip of bare sand about 3 miles broad. In form the peninsula bears some resemblance to the human foot, the toe projecting northward up the centre of the sea. Its length is about 9 miles. It is a post-tertiary deposit of layers of marl, gypsum, and sandy conglomerate; the surface is white and almost destitute of vegetation. The Jordan enters the lake at the centre of its northern end, and has on each bank a low alluvial plain, now a desert, and mostly coated with a white nitrous crust. In fact the whole circuit of the lake is wild, dreary, and desolate. Ridges of drift mark the water-line, which rises a few feet in spring, when the Jordan, fed by the melting snows of Hermon, flows in full stream. The drift is composed of broken canes and willow branches, with trunks of palms, poplars, and other trees, half-imbedded in slimy mud, and covered with incrustations of salt. Lying in a deep cavity, shut in by naked white hills, exposed during the long summer to the burning rays of an unclouded sun, nothing could be expected on the shores of the Dead Sea but sterility. Yet here and there on the low plains to the north and south, and on the eastern and western sides, wherever a little fountain springs up, or a mountain streamlet flows, there are thickets of willow, tamarisk, and acacia, among which the birds 'sing as sweetly as in more genial climes. The Arab also pitches his tent beside them, and sometimes cultivates a few patches of grain and tobacco. The heat causes such excessive evaporation that though the Jordan and other smaller streams fall into the lake the water seems to be gradually decreasing. The marshes along the shore, especially to the north and south, emit pestilential exhalations during summer and autumn which are fatal to strangers, and which make the inhabitants of Jericho, and the few poor tribes who pitch their tents in the surrounding territory, weak and sickly. They are degraded and immoral also, as were their progenitors in the "cities of the plain." The only ruin of note close to the Dead Sea is the fortress of Masada, on a cliff on the western shore, opposite the peninsula of Lisân. It was the scene of the final struggle between the Jews and the Romans after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. At Engedi there are a few ruins; and also at Ain-el-Feshkhah on the north-west, and on a little peninsula near the mouth of the Jordan. The ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah have entirely disappeared. Their site is disputed, for some hold that they stood near the northern end of the lake, while others affirm that they must have been situated at the southern end. The bed of the Dead Sea is divided into two sections; the northern, extending from the north of the Jordan to the peninsula of Lisân, is 33 miles long, and is a regular basinshaped cavity, its sides descending steeply and uniformly Chloride of calcium........ Chloride of magnesium.................. Chloride of sodium... • Chloride of potassium.. Bromide of potassium.... 3.107 14.889 7.855 (658 U'070 6.137 26.416 The presence of so much saline matter is accounted for by the washings of the sait range of Sodom, the numerous brackish springs along the shore, and the great evaporation. The reports of early travellers, however, regarding the Dead Sea were to a great extent fabulous. They represented it as an infernal region, its black and fetid waters always emitting a noisome vapour, which being driven over the adjoining land destroyed all vegetation; they also stated that no birds could fly over it. All this is untrue; the water is as transparent as that of the Mediterranean, and a bath in it is both pleasant and refreshing. The historical notices of the Dead Sea extend back nearly 4000 years. When Lot looked down from the heights of Bethel, he "bebeld all the plain of the Jordan that it was well watered, before the Lord destroyed Sodom, ever as the garden of the Lord" (Gen. xiii. 10). The region is further described as a deep valley" (Emek, Gen. xiv. 3, 8), distinguished by "fertile fields" (Siddim). The aspect now is entirely different. There must have been a lake then as now; but it was smaller, and had a margin of fertile plain, especially on the southern end, "as thou comest unto Zoar." In the narration of the capture of the cities of the plain hy the Eastern kings, it is said that they were situated in the "vale of Siddim," which was full of "bitumen (slime) pits." When the cities were destroyed, "the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;" and Abraham from the mountain ridges "looked toward Sodom, and toward all the land of the plain, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace" (Gen. xix. 24, 28). The sacred writer further asserts regarding the vale of Siddim that it became the Salt Sea, or was submerged; and consequently it now forms part of the bed of the lake. These events entirely changed, as it would seem, both the political and physical condition of the whole region. Upon the plains originally existing round the sea Gentile and Jewish records combine in placing the earliest seat of Phoenician civilization. "The Tyrians," says Justin, "first dwelt by the Syrian lake before they removed to Sidon." Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned as the first cities of the Canaanites; and when Lot went down from Bethel "the cities of the plain " formed a nucleus of civilized life before any city, except Hebron and perhaps Jerusalem, had sprung up in central Palestine. The great catastrophe in the days of Abraham changed the aspect of the country, and gave a death-blow to its prosperity. With the exception of the village of Engedi, and the small town of Jericho, the circuit of the Dead Sea appears to have remained ever afterwards almost without settled inhabitants. Recent researches, especially those of M. Lartet, the Duc de Luynes, and Canon Tristram, have contributed greatly to our knowledge of the physical geography of the Dead Sea basin. It is now shown from the geological |