EBULLITION, eh-11-lish'on, the bubbling up or agitation which results from the action of heat on a liquid. The escape of vapor from water depends not merely upon the temperature, but upon the presence of gases and other bodies, upon the vessel, and a variety of circumstances, so that a strict definition is necessary. The usual statement is that ebullition is the conver sion of a liquid into a vapor or gas having the same tension or elastic force as the air. This conversion takes place at different temperatures for different substances, but it is so constant for each substance that the fixity of the boiling point of a fluid is regarded as a very good test of its purity. In determining what that point is, it is of course necessary to ascertain what the atmospheric pressure is, to see that it does not vary during the experiment, and to fix upon some standard pressure for comparison of re sults. The pressure is estimated by the ba rometer. It is possible to heat water 20° above its boiling point without ebullition. Sec
HEAT.
EcA DE QUEIROZ, Jose Maria, Portuguese novelist: b. P6voa do Var zim, 25 Nov. 1845; d. Neuilly, France, Septem ber 1900. At first a journalist, he traveled and was in the consular service at Havana, New castle, Bristol and Paris. He introduced the naturalistic school into Portugal. His powers of observation and description are extensive, and in his novels— 'The Crime of Father Amaro> (1874, rewritten in 1880) ; 'The First Monk of Saint Basil' (1877) ;