ks the summer
solstice, and that of Capricorn the winter. The name Zodiac is derived
from the Greek _zoon_, an animal, and has been given to the belt because
the majority of the signs are named after animals.

ZODIACAL LIGHT, a track of light of triangular figure with its base
on the horizon, which in low latitudes is seen within the sun's
equatorial plane before sunrise in the E. or after sunset in the W., and
which is presumed to be due to a glow proceeding from some illuminated
matter surrounding the sun.

ZOHAR, a Jewish book of cabalistic commentaries on the Old
Testament.

ZOILUS, a Greek rhetorician who flourished in the 3rd century B.C.;
was distinguished for the bitterness with which he criticised Homer, and
whose name has in consequence become a synonym for a malignant critic,
hence the saying, "Every great poet has his Zoilus."

ZOLA, EMILE, a noted French novelist of the realistic school, or of
what he prefers to call the naturalist school, born in Paris, of Italian
descent; began literature as a journalist, specially in the critical
department, but soon gave himself up to novel-writing, ultimately on
realistic lines, and an undue catering, as some think, to a morbid
interest on the seamy side of life, to which he addressed himself with
great vigour and not a little graphic power, but in an entire
misconception of his proper functions as an artist and a man of letters,
though, it may be pleaded, he has done so from a strong conviction on his
part that his duty lay the other way, and that it was high time
literature should, regardless of merely dilettante aestheticism, address
itself to exposing, by depicting it, the extent to which the evil genius
is gnawing at and corroding the vitals of society; and it is not for a
moment to be supposed he has done so from any pleasure he takes in
gloating over the doings of the ghoul, or that he is in sympathy with
those who do; of his works suffice it to mention here some recent ones,
as the story of "Lourdes," published in 1894, "Rome" in 1896, and "Paris"
in 1897; he has recently distinguished himself by his courage in
connection with the Dreyfus affair and his bold condemnation of the
sentence under which Dreyfus was condemned; _b_. 1840.

ZOLAISM, name given to an excessive realism in depicting the worst
side of human life and society. See ZOLA.

ZOLLVEREIN (Customs Union), a union of the German States under
Prussia in 1827, and extended in 1867, t