hornblende. Pink or brownish garnets are common and may be an inch or two in diameter. The iron oxides, originally ilmenite, are usually altered to sphene. Biotite, if present, is brown; epidote is yellow or colourless; rutile, apatite and quartz all occur with some frequency. The essential minerals, hornblende and felspar, rarely show crystalline outlines, and this is generally true also of the others. The rocks may be fine grained, so that their constituents are hardly visible to the unaided eye; or may show crystals of hornblende an inch in length. Their prevalent colour is dark green and they weather with brown surfaces. In many parts of the world epidiorites and the quartz veins which sometimes occur in them have proved to be auriferous. As they are tough, hard rocks, when fresh, they are well suited for use as road-mending stones. (J. S. F.)
EPIDOSITE, in petrology, a typical member of a family of
metamorphic rocks composed mainly of epidote and quartz.
In colour they are pale yellow or greenish yellow, and they are
hard and somewhat brittle. They may occur in more than one
way and are derived from several kinds of rock. Some have been
epidotic grits and sandstones; others are limestones which
have undergone contact-alteration; probably the majority,
however, are allied to epidiorite and amphibolite, and are
local modifications of rocks which were primarily basic intrusions
or lavas. The sedimentary epidosites occur with mica-schists,
sheared grits and granulitic gneisses; they often show, on
minute examination, the remains of clastic structures. The
epidosites derived from limestones may contain a great variety
of minerals such as calcite, augite, garnet, scapolite, &c., but
their source may usually be inferred from their close association
with calc-silicate rocks in the field. The third group of epidosites
may form bands, veins, or irregular streaks and nodules in masses
of epidiorite and hornblende-schist. In microscopic section
they are often merely a granular mosaic of quartz and epidote
with some iron oxides and chlorite, but in other cases they retain
much of the structure of the original rock though there has been
a complete replacement of the former minerals by new ones.
Epidosites when streaked and variegated have been cut and
polished as ornamental stones. They are translucent and hard,
and hence serve for brooch stones, and the simpler kinds of
jewelry. These rocks occasionally carry gold in visible yellow
specks.
(J. S. F.)
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EPIDOTE, a mineral species consisting of basic calcium, aluminium and iron orthosilicate, Ca2(AlOH)(Al, Fe)2(SiO4)3, crystallizing in the monoclinic system. Well-developed crystals are of frequent occurrence: they are commonly prismatic in habit, the direction of elongation being perpendicular to the single plane of symmetry. The faces lettered M, T and r in the figure are often deeply striated in the same direction: M is a direction of perfect cleavage, and T of imperfect cleavage: crystals are often twinned on the face T. Many of the characters of the mineral vary with the amount of iron present (Fe2O3, 5-17%), for instance, the colour, the optical constants, and the specific gravity (3.3-3.5). The hardness is 6½. The colour is green, grey, brown or nearly black, but usually a characteristic shade of yellowish-green or pistachio-green. The pleochroism is strong, the pleochroic colours being usually green, yellow and brown. The names thallite (from θαλλός, “a young shoot”) and pistacite (from πιστάκια, “pistachio nut”) have reference to the colour. The name epidote is one of R. J. Haüy’s crystallographic names, and is derived from ἐπίδοσις, “increase,” because the base of the primitive prism has one side longer than the other. Several other names (achmatite, bucklandite, escherite, puschkinite, &c.) have been applied to this species. Withamite is a carmine-red to straw-yellow, strongly pleochroic variety from Glencoe in Scotland. Fouqueite and clinozoisite are white or pale rose-red varieties containing very little iron, thus having the same chemical composition as the orthorhombic mineral zoisite (q.v.).
Epidote is an abundant rock-forming mineral, but one of secondary origin. It occurs in crystalline limestones and schistose rocks of metamorphic origin; and is also a product of weathering of various minerals (felspars, micas, pyroxenes, amphiboles, garnets, &c.) composing igneous rocks. A rock composed of quartz and epidote is known as epidosite. Well-developed crystals are found at many localities, of which the following may be specially mentioned: Knappenwand, near the Gross-Venediger in the Untersulzbachthal in Salzburg, as magnificent, dark green crystals of long prismatic habit in cavities in epidote-schist, with asbestos, adularia, calcite, and apatite; the Ala valley and Traversella in Piedmont; Arendal in Norway (arendalite); Le Bourg d’Oisans in Dauphiné (oisanite and delphinite); Haddam in Connecticut; Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, here as large, dark green, tabular crystals with copper ores in metamorphosed limestone.
The perfectly transparent, dark green crystals from the Knappenwand and from Brazil have occasionally been cut as gem-stones.
Belonging to the same isomorphous group with epidote are the species piedmontite and allanite, which may be described as manganese and cerium epidotes respectively.
Piedmontite has the composition Ca2(AlOH)(Fe, Mn)2(SiO4)3; it occurs as small, reddish-black, monoclinic crystals in the manganese mines at San Marcel, near Ivrea in Piedmont, and in crystalline schists at several places in Japan. The purple colour of the Egyptian porfido rosso antico is due to the presence of this mineral.
Allanite has the same general formula R2″(R‴OH)R2‴(SiO4)3, where R″ represents calcium and ferrous iron, and R‴ aluminium, ferric iron and metals of the cerium group. In external appearance it differs widely from epidote, being black or dark brown in colour, pitchy in lustre, and opaque in the mass; further, there is little or no cleavage, and well-developed crystals are rarely met with. The crystallographic and optical characters are similar to those of epidote; the pleochroism is strong with reddish-, yellowish-, and greenish-brown colours. Although not a common mineral, allanite is of fairly wide distribution as a primary accessory constituent of many crystalline rocks, e.g. gneiss, granite, syenite, rhyolite, andesite, &c. It was first found in the granite of east Greenland and described by Thomas Allan in 1808, after whom the species was named. Allanite is a mineral readily altered by hydration, becoming optically isotropic and amorphous: for this reason several varieties have been distinguished, and many different names applied. Orthite, from ὀρθός, “straight,” was the name given by J. J. Berzelius in 1818 to a hydrated form found as slender prismatic crystals, sometimes a foot in length, at Finbo, near Falun in Sweden. (L. J. S.)
EPIGONI (“descendants”), in Greek legend, the sons of the
seven heroes who fought against Thebes (see Adrastus). Ten
years later, to avenge their fathers, the Epigoni undertook a
second expedition, which was completely successful. Thebes
was forced to surrender and razed to the ground. In early
times the war of the Epigoni was a favourite subject of epic
poetry. The term is also applied to the descendants of the
Diadochi, the successors of Alexander the Great.
EPIGONION (Gr. ἐπιγόνειον), an ancient stringed instrument
mentioned in Athenaeus 183 C, probably a psaltery. The
epigonion was invented, or at least introduced into Greece, by
Epigonus, a Greek musician of Ambracia in Epirus, who was
admitted to citizenship at Sicyon as a recognition of his great
musical ability and of his having been the first to pluck the strings
with his fingers, instead of using the plectrum.[1] The instrument,
which Epigonus named after himself, had forty strings.[2] It was
undoubtedly a kind of harp or psaltery, since in an instrument
of so many strings some must have been of different lengths, for
tension and thickness only could hardly have produced forty
different sounds, or even twenty, supposing that they were
arranged in pairs of unisons. Strings of varying lengths require
