a village and watering-place of Fifeshire, Scotland, on the shore of the Firth of Forth. Pop. 687. It is to m. due S. of St Andrews, but 20 m. distant by the North British railway, which makes a great bend by following the coast. Though it retains some old houses, and the parish church dates from 1639, Elie is, as a whole, quite modern and is one of the most popular resorts in the county on account of its fine golf links and excellent bathing. The royal burgh of Earlsferry (pop. 317) is situated in the parish of Elie, which it adjoins on the west. Its charter, granted by Malcolm Canmore, having been burned, it was renewed by James VI. The chief structure is the town hall, which is modern but has an ancient steeple. The place derived its name from its use by the earls of Fife as a ferry to the opposite shore of Haddington, 8 m. distant. Macduff's cave near Kincraig Point is believed traditionally to have been that in which the thane took refuge from Macbeth. Two and a half miles north is Balcarres House, belonging to the earl of Crawford, where Lady Anne Barnard (1750-1825) was born.

Elie De Beaumont, Jean Baptiste Armand Louis Leonce (1798-1874), French geologist, was born at Canon, in Calvados, on the 25th of September 1798. He was educated at the Lycee Henri IV. where he took the first prize in mathematics and physics; at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he stood first at the exit examination in 1819; and at the Ecole des Mines (1819-1822), where he began to show a decided preference for the science with which his name is associated. In 1823 he was selected along with Dufrenoy by Brochant de Villiers, the professor of geology in the Ecole des Mines, to accompany him on a scientific tour to England and Scotland, in order to inspect the mining and metallurgical establishments of the country, and to study the principles on which Greenough's geological map of England (1820) had been prepared, with a view to the construction of a similar map of France. In 1835 he was appointed professor of geology at the Ecole des Mines, in succession to Brochant de Villiers, whose assistant he had been in the duties of the chair since 1827. He held the office of engineer-inchief of mines in France from 1833 until 1847, when he was appointed inspector-general; and in 1861 he became vicepresident of the Conseil-General des Mines and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour. His growing scientific reputation secured his election to the membership of the Academy of Berlin, of the Academy of Sciences of France and of the Royal Society of London. By a decree of the president he was made a senator of France in 1852, and on the death of Arago (1853) he was chosen perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Elie de Beaumont's name is widely known to geologists in connexion with his theory of the origin of mountain ranges, first propounded in a paper read to the Academy of Sciences in 1829, and afterwards elaborated in his Notice sur le systeme des montagnes (3 vols., 1852). According to his view, all mountain ranges parallel to the same great circle of the earth are of strictly contemporaneous origin, and between the great circles a relation of symmetry exists in the form of a pentagonal reseau. An elaborate statement and criticism of the theory was given in his anniversary address to the Geological Society of London in 1853 by William Hopkins (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.). The theory has not found general acceptance, but it proved of great value to geological science, owing to the extensive additions to the knowledge of the structure of mountain ranges which its author made in endeavouring to find facts to support it. Probably, however, the best service Elie de Beaumont rendered to science was in connexion with the geological map of France, in the preparation of which he had the leading share. During this period Elie de Beaumont published many important memoirs on the geology of the country. After his superannuation at the Ecole des Mines he continued to superintend the issue of the detailed maps almost until his death, which occurred at Canon on the 21st of September 1874. His academic lectures for 1843-1844 were published in 2 vols., 1845-1849, under the title Legons de geologie pratique. A list of his works was published in the Ann. des Mines, vol. vii. 18 75, p. 259.

Bibliography Information
Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Elie'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/e/elie.html. 1910.

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1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Elie