VOLUME XVI SLICE II Lamennais, Robert de to Latini, Brunetto (continued 8)

With the recent introduction of electricity in diamond cutting there has been a revolution in that industry. Whereas formerly wheels were made to revolve by steam, they are now placed in direct connexion with electric motors, although there is not a motor to each machine. The saws for slitting the diamond can thus be made to revolve much more rapidly, and there is a cleanliness and a speed about the work never before attained.

(G. F. K.)

1 The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure for 1749 states that diamond dust, “well ground and diluted with water and vinegar, is used in the sawing of diamonds, which is done with an iron or brass wire, as fine as a hair.”—Ed.

LAPILLI (pl. of Ital. lapillo, from Lat. lapillus, dim. of lapis, a stone), a name applied to small fragments of lava ejected from a volcano. They are generally subangular in shape and vesicular in structure, varying in size from a pea to a walnut. In the Neapolitan dialect the word becomes rapilli—a form sometimes used by English writers on volcanoes. (See Volcanoes.)

LAPIS LAZULI, or azure stone,1 a mineral substance valued for decorative purposes in consequence of the fine blue colour which it usually presents. It appears to have been the sapphire of ancient writers: thus Theophrastus describes the σάπφειρος as being spotted with gold-dust, a description quite inappropriate to modern sapphire, but fully applicable to lapis lazuli, for this stone frequently contains disseminated particles of iron-pyrites of gold-like appearance. Pliny, too, refers to the sapphirus as a stone sprinkled with specks of gold; and possibly an allusion to the same character may be found in Job xxviii. 6. The Hebrew sappir, denoting a stone in the High Priest’s breastplate, was probably lapis lazuli, as acknowledged in the Revised Version of the Bible. With the ancient Egyptians lapis lazuli was a favourite stone for amulets and ornaments such as scarabs; it was also used to a limited extent by the Assyrians and Babylonians for cylinder seals. It has been suggested that the Egyptians obtained it from Persia in exchange for their emeralds. When the lapis lazuli contains pyrites, the brilliant spots in the deep blue matrix invite comparison with the stars in the firmament. The stone seems to have been sometimes called by ancient writers κύανος. It was a favourite material with the Italians of the Cinquecento for vases, small busts and other ornaments. Magnificent examples of the decorative use of lapis lazuli are to be seen in St Petersburg, notably in the columns of St Isaac’s cathedral. The beautiful blue colour of lapis lazuli led to its employment, when ground and levigated, as a valuable pigment known as ultramarine (q.v.), a substance now practically displaced by a chemical product (artificial ultramarine).

Lapis lazuli occurs usually in compact masses, with a finely granular structure; and occasionally, but only as a great rarity, it presents the form of the rhombic dodecahedron. Its specific gravity is 2.38 to 2.45, and its hardness about 5.5, so that being comparatively soft it tends, when polished, to lose its lustre rather readily. The colour is generally a fine azure or rich Berlin blue, but some varieties exhibit green, violet and even red tints, or may be altogether colourless. The colour is sometimes improved by heating the stone. Under artificial illumination the dark-blue stones may appear almost black. The mineral is opaque, with only slight translucency at thin edges.

Analyses of lapis lazuli show considerable variation in composition, and this led long ago to doubt as to its homogeneity. This doubt was confirmed by the microscopic studies of L. H. Fischer, F. Zirkel and H. P. J. Vogelsang, who found that sections showed bluish particles in a white matrix; but it was reserved for Professor W. C. Brögger and H. Bäckström, of Christiania, to separate the several constituents and subject them to analysis, thus demonstrating the true constitution of lapis lazuli, and proving that it is a rock rather than a definite mineral species. The essential part of most lapis lazuli is a blue mineral allied to sodalite and crystallized in the cubic system, which Brögger distinguishes as lazurite, but this is intimately associated with a closely related mineral which has long been known as haüyne, or haüynite. The lazurite, sometimes regarded as true lapis lazuli, is a sulphur-bearing sodium and aluminium silicate, having the formula: Na4(NaS3Al) Al2(SiO4)3. As the lazurite and the haüynite seem to occur in molecular intermixture, various kinds of lapis lazuli are formed; and it has been proposed to distinguish some of them as lazurite-lapis and haüyne-lapis, according as one or the other mineral prevails. The lazurite of lapis lazuli is to be carefully distinguished from lazulite, an aluminium-magnesium phosphate, related to turquoise. In addition to the blue cubic minerals in lapis lazuli, the following minerals have also been found: a non-ferriferous diopside, an amphibole called, from the Russian mineralogist, koksharovite, orthoclase, plagioclase, a muscovite-like mica, apatite, titanite, zircon, calcite and pyrite. The calcite seems to form in some cases a great part of the lapis; and the pyrite, which may occur in patches, is often altered to limonite.

Lapis lazuli usually occurs in crystalline limestone, and seems to be a product of contact metamorphism. It is recorded from Persia, Tartary, Tibet and China, but many of the localities are vague and some doubtful. The best known and probably the most important locality is in Badakshan. There it occurs in limestone, in the valley of the river Kokcha, a tributary to the Oxus, south of Firgamu. The mines were visited by Marco Polo in 1271, by J. B. Fraser in 1825, and by Captain John Wood in 1837-1838. The rock is split by aid of fire. Three varieties of the lapis lazuli are recognized by the miners: nili of indigo-blue colour, asmani sky-blue, and sabzi of green tint. Another locality for lapis lazuli is in Siberia near the western extremity of Lake Baikal, where it occurs in limestone at its contact with granite. Fine masses of lapis lazuli occur in the Andes, in the vicinity of Ovalle, Chile. In Europe lapis lazuli is found as a rarity in the peperino of Latium, near Rome, and in the ejected blocks of Monte Somma, Vesuvius.

(F. W. R.*)

1 The Med. Gr. λαζούριον, Med. Lat. lazurius or lazulus, as the names of this mineral substance, were adaptations of the Arab. al-lazward, Pers. lājward, blue colour, lapis lazuli. The same word appears in Med. Lat. as azura, whence O.F. azur, Eng. “azure,” blue, particularly used of that colour in heraldry (q.v.) and represented conventionally in black and white by horizontal lines.

LAPITHAE, a mythical race, whose home was in Thessaly in the valley of the Peneus. The genealogies make them a kindred race with the Centaurs, their king Peirithoüs being the son, and the Centaurs the grandchildren (or sons) of Ixion. The best-known legends with which they are connected are those of Ixion (q.v.) and the battle with the Centaurs (q.v.). A well-known Lapith was Caeneus, said to have been originally a girl named Caenis, the favourite of Poseidon, who changed her into a man and made her invulnerable (Ovid, Metam. xii. 146 ff). In the Centaur battle, having been crushed by rocks and trunks of trees, he was changed into a bird; or he disappeared into the depths of the earth unharmed. According to some, the Lapithae are representatives of the giants of fable, or spirits of the storm; according to others, they are a semi-legendary; semi-historical race, like the Myrmidons and other Thessalian tribes. The Greek sculptors of the school of Pheidias conceived of the battle of the Lapithae and Centaurs as a struggle between mankind and mischievous monsters, and symbolical of the great conflict between the Greeks and Persians. Sidney Colvin (Journ. Hellen. Stud. i. 64) explains it as a contest of the physical powers of nature, and the mythical expression of the terrible effects of swollen waters.

LA PLACE (Lat. Placaeus), JOSUÉ DE (1606?-1665), French Protestant divine, was born in Brittany. He studied and afterwards taught philosophy at Saumur. In 1625 he became pastor of the Reformed Church at Nantes, and in 1632 was appointed professor of theology at Saumur, where he had as his colleagues, appointed at the same time, Moses Amyraut and Louis Cappell. In 1640 he published a work, Theses theologicae de statu hominis lapsi ante gratiam, which was looked upon with some suspicion as containing liberal ideas about the doctrine of original sin. The view that the original sin of Adam was not imputed to his descendants was condemned at the synod of Charenton (1645), without special reference being made to La Place, whose position perhaps was not quite clear. As a matter of fact La Place distinguished between a direct and indirect imputation, and after his death his views, as well as those of Amyraut, were rejected in the Formula consensus of 1675. He died on the 17th of August 1665.

La Place’s defence was published with the title Disputationes academicae (3 vols., 1649-1651; and again in 1665); his work De imputatione primi peccati Adami in 1655. A collected edition of his works appeared at Franeker in 1699, and at Aubencit in 1702.

LAPLACE, PIERRE SIMON, Marquis de (1749-1827), French mathematician and astronomer, was born at Beaumont-en-Auge in Normandy, on the 28th of March 1749. His father was a small farmer, and he owed his education to the interest excited by his lively parts in some persons of position. His first distinctions are said to have been gained in theological controversy, but at an early age he became mathematical teacher in the military school of Beaumont, the classes of which he had attended as an extern. He was not more than eighteen when, armed with letters of recommendation, he approached J. B. d’Alembert, then at the height of his fame, in the hope of finding a career in Paris. The letters remained unnoticed, but Laplace was not crushed by the rebuff. He wrote to the great geometer a letter on the principles of mechanics, which evoked an immediate and enthusiastic response. “You,” said d’Alembert to him, “needed no introduction; you have recommended yourself; my support is your due.” He accordingly obtained for him an appointment as professor of mathematics in the École Militaire of Paris, and continued zealously to forward his interests.

Laplace had not yet completed his twenty-fourth year when he entered upon the course of discovery which earned him the title of “the Newton of France.” Having in his first published paper1 shown his mastery of analysis, he proceeded to apply its resources to the great outstanding problems in celestial mechanics. Of these the most conspicuous was offered by the opposite inequalities of Jupiter and Saturn, which the emulous efforts of L. Euler and J. L. Lagrange had failed to bring within the bounds of theory. The discordance of their results incited Laplace to a searching examination of the whole subject of planetary perturbations, and his maiden effort was rewarded with a discovery which constituted, when developed and completely demonstrated by his own further labours and those of his illustrious rival Lagrange, the most important advance made in physical astronomy since the time of Newton. In a paper read before the Academy of Sciences, on the 10th of February 1773 (Mém. présentés par divers savans, tom, vii., 1776), Laplace announced his celebrated conclusion of the invariability of planetary mean motions, carrying the proof as far as the cubes of the eccentricities and inclinations. This was the first and most important step in the establishment of the stability of the solar system. It was followed by a series of profound investigations, in which Lagrange and Laplace alternately surpassed and supplemented each other in assigning limits of variation to the several elements of the planetary orbits. The analytical tournament closed with the communication to the Academy by Laplace, in 1787, of an entire group of remarkable discoveries. It would be difficult, in the whole range of scientific literature, to point to a memoir of equal brilliancy with that published (divided into three parts) in the volumes of the Academy for 1784, 1785 and 1786. The long-sought cause of the “great inequality” of Jupiter and Saturn was found in the near approach to commensurability of their mean motions; it was demonstrated in two elegant theorems, independently of any except the most general considerations as to mass, that the mutual action of the planets could never largely affect the eccentricities and inclinations of their orbits; and the singular peculiarities detected by him in the Jovian system were expressed in the so-called “laws of Laplace.” He completed the theory of these bodies in a treatise published among the Paris Memoirs for 1788 and 1789; and the striking superiority of the tables computed by J. B. J. Delambre from the data there supplied marked the profit derived from the investigation by practical astronomy. The year 1787 was rendered further memorable by Laplace’s announcement on the 19th of November (Memoirs, 1786), of the dependence of lunar acceleration upon the secular changes in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit. The last apparent anomaly, and the last threat of instability, thus disappeared from the solar system.

With these brilliant performances the first period of Laplace’s scientific career may be said to have closed. If he ceased to make striking discoveries in celestial mechanics, it was rather their subject-matter than his powers that failed. The general working of the great machine was now laid bare, and it needed a further advance of knowledge to bring a fresh set of problems within reach of investigation. The time had come when the results obtained in the development and application of the law of gravitation by three generations of illustrious mathematicians might be presented from a single point of view. To this task the second period of Laplace’s activity was devoted. As a monument of mathematical genius applied to the celestial revolutions, the Mécanique céleste ranks second only to the Principia of Newton.

The declared aim of the author2 was to offer a complete solution of the great mechanical problem presented by the solar system, and to bring theory to coincide so closely with observation that empirical equations should no longer find a place in astronomical tables. His success in both respects fell little short of his lofty ideal. The first part of the work (2 vols. 4to, Paris, 1799) contains methods for calculating the movements of translation and rotation of the heavenly bodies, for determining their figures, and resolving tidal problems; the second, especially dedicated to the improvement of tables, exhibits in the third and fourth volumes (1802 and 1805) the application of these formulae; while a fifth volume, published in three instalments, 1823-1825, comprises the results of Laplace’s latest researches, together with a valuable history of progress in each separate branch of his subject. In the delicate task of apportioning his own large share of merit, he certainly does not err on the side of modesty; but it would perhaps be as difficult to produce an instance of injustice, as of generosity in his estimate of others. Far more serious blame attaches to his all but total suppression in the body of the work—and the fault pervades the whole of his writings—of the names of his predecessors and contemporaries. Theorems and formulae are appropriated wholesale without acknowledgment, and a production which may be described as the organized result of a century of patient toil presents itself to the world as the offspring of a single brain. The Mécanique céleste is, even to those most conversant with analytical methods, by no means easy reading. J. B. Biot, who assisted in the correction of its proof sheets, remarked that it would have extended, had the demonstrations been fully developed, to eight or ten instead of five volumes; and he saw at times the author himself obliged to devote an hour’s labour to recovering the dropped links in the chain of reasoning covered by the recurring formula. “Il est aisé à voir.”3

The Exposition du système du monde (Paris, 1796) has been styled by Arago “the Mécanique céleste disembarrassed of its analytical paraphernalia.” Conclusions are not merely stated in it, but the methods pursued for their attainment are indicated. It has the strength of an analytical treatise, the charm of a popular dissertation. The style is lucid and masterly, and the summary of astronomical history with which it terminates has been reckoned one of the masterpieces of the language. To this linguistic excellence the writer owed the place accorded to him in 1816 in the Academy, of which institution he became president in the following year. The famous “nebular hypothesis” of Laplace made its appearance in the Système du monde. Although relegated to a note (vii.), and propounded “Avec la défiance que doit inspirer tout ce qui n’est point un résultat de l’observation ou du calcul,” it is plain, from the complacency with which he recurred to it4 at a later date, that he regarded the speculation with considerable interest. That it formed the starting-point, and largely prescribed the course of thought on the subject of planetary origin is due to the simplicity of its assumptions, and the clearness of the mechanical principles involved, rather than to any cogent evidence of its truth. It is curious that Laplace, while bestowing more attention than they deserved on the crude conjectures of Buffon, seems to have been unaware that he had been, to some extent, anticipated by Kant, who had put forward in 1755, in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, a true though defective nebular cosmogony.

The career of Laplace was one of scarcely interrupted prosperity. Admitted to the Academy of Sciences as an associate in 1773, he became a member in 1785, having, about a year previously, succeeded E. Bezout as examiner to the royal artillery. During an access of revolutionary suspicion, he was removed from the commission of weights and measures; but the slight was quickly effaced by new honours. He was one of the first members, and became president of the Bureau of Longitudes, took a prominent place at the Institute (founded in 1796), professed analysis at the École Normale, and aided in the organization of the decimal system. The publication of the Mécanique céleste gained him world-wide celebrity, and his name appeared on the lists of the principal scientific associations of Europe, including the Royal Society. But scientific distinctions by no means satisfied his ambition. He aspired to the rôle of a politician, and has left a memorable example of genius degraded to servility for the sake of a riband and a title. The ardour of his republican principles gave place, after the 18th Brumaire, to devotion towards the first consul, a sentiment promptly rewarded with the post of minister of the interior. His incapacity for affairs was, however, so flagrant that it became necessary to supersede him at the end of six weeks, when Lucien Bonaparte became his successor. “He brought into the administration,” said Napoleon, “the spirit of the infinitesimals.” His failure was consoled by elevation to the senate, of which body he became chancellor in September 1803. He was at the same time named grand officer of the Legion of Honour, and obtained in 1813 the same rank in the new order of Reunion. The title of count he had acquired on the creation of the empire. Nevertheless he cheerfully gave his voice in 1814 for the dethronement of his patron, and his “suppleness” merited a seat in the chamber of peers, and, in 1817, the dignity of a marquisate. The memory of these tergiversations is perpetuated in his writings. The first edition of the Système du monde was inscribed to the Council of Five Hundred; to the third volume of the Mécanique céleste (1802) was prefixed the declaration that, of all the truths contained in the work, that most precious to the author was the expression of his gratitude and devotion towards the “pacificator of Europe”; upon which noteworthy protestation the suppression in the editions of the Théorie des probabilités subsequent to the restoration, of the original dedication to the emperor formed a fitting commentary.

During the later years of his life, Laplace lived much at Arcueil, where he had a country-place adjoining that of his friend C. L. Berthollet. With his co-operation the Société d’Arcueil was formed, and he occasionally contributed to its Memoirs. In this peaceful retirement he pursued his studies with unabated ardour, and received with uniform courtesy distinguished visitors from all parts of the world. Here, too, he died, attended by his physician, Dr Majendie, and his mathematical coadjutor, Alexis Bouvard, on the 5th of March 1827. His last words were: “Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose, ce que nous ignorons est immense.”

Expressions occur in Laplace’s private letters inconsistent with the atheistical opinions he is commonly believed to have held. His character, notwithstanding the egotism by which it was disfigured, had an amiable and engaging side. Young men of science found in him an active benefactor. His relations with these “adopted children of his thought” possessed a singular charm of affectionate simplicity; their intellectual progress and material interests were objects of equal solicitude to him, and he demanded in return only diligence in the pursuit of knowledge. Biot relates that, when he himself was beginning his career, Laplace introduced him at the Institute for the purpose of explaining his supposed discovery of equations of mixed differences, and afterwards showed him, under a strict pledge of secrecy, the papers, then yellow with age, in which he had long before obtained the same results. This instance of abnegation is the more worthy of record that it formed a marked exception to Laplace’s usual course. Between him and A. M. Legendre there was a feeling of “more than coldness,” owing to his appropriation, with scant acknowledgment, of the fruits of the other’s labours; and Dr Thomas Young counted himself, rightly or wrongly, amongst the number of those similarly aggrieved by him. With Lagrange, on the other hand, he always remained on the best of terms. Laplace left a son, Charles Emile Pierre Joseph Laplace (1789-1874), who succeeded to his title, and rose to the rank of general in the artillery.

It might be said that Laplace was a great mathematician by the original structure of his mind, and became a great discoverer through the sentiment which animated it. The regulated enthusiasm with which he regarded the system of nature was with him from first to last. It can be traced in his earliest essay, and it dictated the ravings of his final illness. By it his extraordinary analytical powers became strictly subordinated to physical investigations. To this lofty quality of intellect he added a rare sagacity in perceiving analogies, and in detecting the new truths that lay concealed in his formulae, and a tenacity of mental grip, by which problems, once seized, were held fast, year after year, until they yielded up their solutions. In every branch of physical astronomy, accordingly, deep traces of his work are visible. “He would have completed the science of the skies,” Baron Fourier remarked, “had the science been capable of completion.”

It may be added that he first examined the conditions of stability of the system formed by Saturn’s rings, pointed out the necessity for their rotation, and fixed for it a period (10h 33m) virtually identical with that established by the observations of Herschel; that he detected the existence in the solar system of an invariable plane such that the sum of the products of the planetary masses by the projections upon it of the areas described by their radii vectores in a given time is a maximum; and made notable advances in the theory of astronomical refraction (Méc. cél. tom. iv. p. 258), besides constructing satisfactory formulae for the barometrical determination of heights (Méc. cél. tom. iv. p. 324). His removal of the considerable discrepancy between the actual and Newtonian velocities of sound,5 by taking into account the increase of elasticity due to the heat of compression, would alone have sufficed to illustrate a lesser name. Molecular physics also attracted his notice, and he announced in 1824 his purpose of treating the subject in a separate work. With A. Lavoisier he made an important series of experiments on specific heat (1782-1784), in the course of which the “ice calorimeter” was invented; and they contributed jointly to the Memoirs of the Academy (1781) a paper on the development of electricity by evaporation. Laplace was, moreover, the first to offer a complete analysis of capillary action based upon a definite hypothesis—that of forces “sensible only at insensible distances”; and he made strenuous but unsuccessful efforts to explain the phenomena of light on an identical principle. It was a favourite idea of his that chemical affinity and capillary attraction would eventually be included under the same law, and it was perhaps because of its recalcitrance to this cherished generalization that the undulatory theory of light was distasteful to him.

The investigation of the figure of equilibrium of a rotating fluid mass engaged the persistent attention of Laplace. His first memoir was communicated to the Academy in 1773, when he was only twenty-four, his last in 1817, when he was sixty-eight. The results of his many papers on this subject—characterized by him as “un des points les plus intéressans du système du monde”—are embodied in the Mécanique céleste, and furnish one of the most remarkable proofs of his analytical genius. C. Maclaurin, Legendre and d’Alembert had furnished partial solutions of the problem, confining their attention to the possible figures which would satisfy the conditions of equilibrium. Laplace treated the subject from the point of view of the gradual aggregation and cooling of a mass of matter, and demonstrated that the form which such a mass would ultimately assume must be an ellipsoid of revolution whose equator was determined by the primitive plane of maximum areas.

The related subject of the attraction of spheroids was also signally promoted by him. Legendre, in 1783, extended Maclaurin’s theorem concerning ellipsoids of revolution to the case of any spheroid of revolution where the attracted point, instead of being limited to the axis or equator, occupied any position in space; and Laplace, in his treatise Théorie du mouvement et de la figure elliptique des planètes (published in 1784), effected a still further generalization by proving, what had been suspected by Legendre, that the theorem was equally true for any confocal ellipsoids. Finally, in a celebrated memoir, Théorie des attractions des sphéroides et de la figure des planètes, published in 1785 among the Paris Memoirs for the year 1782, although written after the treatise of 1784, Laplace treated exhaustively the general problem of the attraction of any spheroid upon a particle situated outside or upon its surface.

These researches derive additional importance from having introduced two powerful engines of analysis for the treatment of physical problems, Laplace’s coefficients and the potential function. By his discovery that the attracting force in any direction of a mass upon a particle could be obtained by the direct process of differentiating a single function, Laplace laid the foundations of the mathematical sciences of heat, electricity and magnetism. The expressions designated by Dr Whewell, Laplace’s coefficients (see Spherical Harmonics) were definitely introduced in the memoir of 1785 on attractions above referred to. In the figure of the earth, the theory of attractions, and the sciences of electricity and magnetism this powerful calculus occupies a prominent place. C. F. Gauss in particular employed it in the calculation of the magnetic potential of the earth, and it received new light from Clerk Maxwell’s interpretation of harmonics with reference to poles on the sphere.

Laplace nowhere displayed the massiveness of his genius more conspicuously than in the theory of probabilities. The science which B. Pascal and P. de Fermat had initiated he brought very nearly to perfection; but the demonstrations are so involved, and the omissions in the chain of reasoning so frequent, that the Théorie analytique (1812) is to the best mathematicians a work requiring most arduous study. The theory of probabilities, which Laplace described as common sense expressed in mathematical language, engaged his attention from its importance in physics and astronomy; and he applied his theory, not only to the ordinary problems of chances, but also to the inquiry into the causes of phenomena, vital statistics and future events.

The device known as the method of least squares, for reducing numerous equations of condition to the number of unknown quantities to be determined, had been adopted as a practically convenient rule by Gauss and Legendre; but Laplace first treated it as a problem in probabilities, and proved by an intricate and difficult course of reasoning that it was also the most advantageous, the mean of the probabilities of error in the determination of the elements being thereby reduced to a minimum.

Laplace published in 1779 the method of generating functions, the foundation of his theory of probabilities, and the first part of his Théorie analytique is devoted to the exposition of its principles, which in their simplest form consist in treating the successive values of any function as the coefficients in the expansion of another function with reference to a different variable. The latter is therefore called the generating function of the former. A direct and an inverse calculus is thus created, the object of the former being to determine the coefficients from the generating function, of the latter to discover the generating function from the coefficients. The one is a problem of interpolation, the other a step towards the solution of an equation in finite differences. The method, however, is now obsolete owing to the more extended facilities afforded by the calculus of operations.

The first formal proof of Lagrange’s theorem for the development in a series of an implicit function was furnished by Laplace, who gave to it an extended generality. He also showed that every equation of an even degree must have at least one real quadratic factor, reduced the solution of linear differential equations to definite integrals, and furnished an elegant method by which the linear partial differential equation of the second order might be solved. He was also the first to consider the difficult problems involved in equations of mixed differences, and to prove that an equation in finite differences of the first degree and the second order might always be converted into a continued fraction.

In 1842, the works of Laplace being nearly out of print, his widow was about to sell a farm to procure funds for a new impression, when the government of Louis Philippe took the matter in hand. A grant of 40,000 francs having been obtained from the chamber, a national edition was issued in seven 4to vols., bearing the title Œuvres de Laplace (1843-1847). The Mécanique céleste with its four supplements occupies the first 5 vols., the 6th contains the Système du monde, and the 7th the Th. des probabilités, to which the more popular Essai philosophique forms an introduction. Of the four supplements added by the author (1816-1825) he tells us that the problems in the last were contributed by his son. An enumeration of Laplace’s memoirs and papers (about one hundred in number) is rendered superfluous by their embodiment in his principal works. The Th. des prob. was first published in 1812, the Essai in 1814; and both works as well as the Système du monde went through repeated editions. An English version of the Essai appeared in New York in 1902. Laplace’s first separate work, Théorie du mouvement et de la figure elliptique des planètes (1784), was published at the expense of President Bochard de Saron. The Précis de l’histoire de l’astronomie (1821), formed the fifth book of the 5th edition of the Système du monde. An English translation, with copious elucidatory notes, of the first 4 vols. of the Mécanique céleste, by N. Bowditch, was published at Boston, U.S. (1829-1839), in 4 vols. 4to.; a compendium of certain portions of the same work by Mrs Somerville appeared in 1831, and a German version of the first 2 vols. by Burckhardt at Berlin in 1801. English translations of the Système du monde by J. Pond and H. H. Harte were published, the first in 1809, the second in 1830. An edition entitled Les Œuvres complètes de Laplace (1878), &c., which is to include all his memoirs as well as his separate works, is in course of publication under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences. The thirteenth 4to volume was issued in 1904. Some of Laplace’s results in the theory of probabilities are simplified in S. F. Lacroix’s Traité élémentaire du calcul des probabilités and De Morgan’s Essay, published in Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia. For the history of the subject see A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability, by Isaac Todhunter (1865). Laplace’s treatise on specific heat was published in German in 1892 as No. 40 of W. Ostwald’s Klassiker der exacten Wissenschaften.

Authorities.—Baron Fourier’s Éloge, Mémoires de l’institut, x. lxxxi. (1831); Revue encyclopédique, xliii. (1829); S. D. Poisson’s Funeral Oration (Conn. des Temps, 1830, p. 19); F. X. von Zach, Allg. geographische Ephemeriden, iv. 70 (1799); F. Arago, Annuaire du Bureau des Long. 1844, p. 271, translated among Arago’s Biographies of Distinguished Men (1857); J. S. Bailly, Hist. de l’astr. moderne, t. iii.; R. Grant, Hist. of Phys. Astr. p. 50, &c.; A. Berry, Short Hist. of Astr. p. 306; Max Marie, Hist. des sciences t. x. pp. 69-98; R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie; J. Mädler, Gesch. der Himmelskunde, i. 17; W. Whewell, Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, ii. passim; J. C. Poggendorff, Biog-lit. Handwörterbuch.

(A. M. C.)

1 “Recherches sur le calcul intégral,” Mélanges de la Soc. Roy. de Turin (1766-1769).

2 “Plan de l’Ouvrage,” Œuvres, tom. i. p 1.

3 Journal des savants (1850).

4 Méc. cél., tom. v. p. 346.

5 Annales de chimie et de physique (1816), tom. iii. p. 238.

LAPLAND, or Lappland, a name used to indicate the region of northern Europe inhabited by the Lapps, though not applied to any administrative district. It covers in Norway the division (amter) of Finmarken and the higher inland parts of Tromsö and Nordland; in Russian territory the western part of the government of Archangel as far as the White Sea and the northern part of the Finnish district of Uleåborg; and in Sweden the inland and northern parts of the old province of Norrland, roughly coincident with the districts (län) of Norbotten and Vesterbotten, and divided into five divisions—Torne Lappmark, Lule Lappmark, Pite Lappmark, Lycksele Lappmark and Åsele Lappmark. The Norwegian portion is thus insignificant; of the Russian only a little lies south of the Arctic circle, and the whole is less accessible and more sparsely populated than the Swedish, the southern boundary of which may be taken arbitrarily at about 64° N., though scattered families of Lapps occur much farther south, even in the Hardanger Fjeld in Norway.

The Scandinavian portion of Lapland presents the usual characteristics of the mountain plateau of that peninsula—on the west side the bold headlands and fjords, deeply-grooved valleys and glaciers of Norway, on the east the long mountain lakes and great lake-fed rivers of Sweden. Russian Lapland is broadly similar to the lower-lying parts of Swedish Lapland, but the great lakes are more generally distributed, and the valleys are less direct. The country is low and gently undulating, broken by detached hills and ridges not exceeding in elevation 2500 ft. In the uplands of Swedish Lapland, and to some extent in Russian Lapland, the lakes afford the principal means of communication; it is almost impossible to cross the forests from valley to valley without a native guide. In Sweden the few farms of the Swedes who inhabit the region are on the lake shores, and the traveller must be rowed from one to another in the typical boats of the district, pointed at bow and stern, unusually low amidships, and propelled by short sculls or paddles. Sailing is hardly ever practised, and squalls on the lakes are often dangerous to the rowing-boats. On a few of the lakes wood-fired steam-launches are used in connexion with the timber trade, which is considerable, as practically the whole region is forested. Between the lakes all journeying is made on foot. The heads of the Swedish valleys are connected with the Norwegian fjords by passes generally traversed only by tracks; though from the head of the Ume a driving road crosses to Mo on Ranen Fjord. Each principal valley has a considerable village at or near the tail of the lake-chain, up to which a road runs along the valley. The village consists of wooden cottages with an inn (gästgifvaregård), a church, and frequently a collection of huts without windows, closed in summer, but inhabited by the Lapps when they come down from the mountains to the winter fairs. Sometimes there is another church and small settlement in the upper valley, to which, once or twice in a summer, the Lapps come from great distances to attend service. To these, too, they sometimes bring their dead for burial, bearing them if necessary on a journey of many days. Though Lapland gives little scope for husbandry, a bad summer being commonly followed by a winter famine, it is richly furnished with much that is serviceable to man. There are copper-mines at the mountain of Sulitelma, and the iron deposits in Norrland are among the most extensive in the world. Their working is facilitated by the railway from Stockholm to Gellivara, Kirunavara and Narvik on the Norwegian coast, which also connects them with the port of Luleå on the Gulf of Bothnia. The supply of timber (pine, fir, spruce and birch) is unlimited. Though fruit-trees will not bear there is an abundance of edible berries; the rivers and lakes abound with trout, perch, pike and other fish, and in the lower waters with salmon; and the cod, herring, halibut and Greenland shark in the northern seas attract numerous Norwegian and Russian fishermen.

The climate is thoroughly Arctic. In the northern parts unbroken daylight in summer and darkness in winter last from two to three months each; and through the greater part of the country the sun does not rise at mid-winter or set at midsummer. In December and January in the far north there is little more daylight than a cold glimmer of dawn; by February, however, there are some hours of daylight; in March the heat of the sun is beginning to modify the cold, and now and in April the birds of passage begin to appear. In April the snow is melting from the branches; spring comes in May; spring flowers are in blossom, and grain is sown. At the end of this month or in June the ice is breaking up on the lakes, woods rush into leaf, and the unbroken daylight of the northern summer soon sets in. July is quite warm; the great rivers come down full from the melting snows in the mountains. August is a rainy month, the time of harvest; night-frosts may begin already about the middle of the month. All preparations for winter are made during September and October, and full winter has set in by November.

The Lapps.—The Lapps (Swed. Lappar; Russian Lopari; Norw. Finner) call their country Sabme or Same, and themselves Samelats—names almost identical with those employed by the Finns for their country and race, and probably connected with a root signifying “dark.” Lapp is almost certainly a nickname imposed by foreigners, although some of the Lapps apply it contemptuously to those of their countrymen whom they think to be less civilized than themselves.1

In Sweden and Finland the Lapps are usually divided into fisher, mountain and forest Lapps. In Sweden the first class includes many impoverished mountain Lapps. As described by Laestadius (1827-1832), their condition was very miserable; but since his time matters have improved. The principal colony has its summer quarters on the Stora-Lule Lake, possesses good boats and nets, and, besides catching and drying fish, makes money by the shooting of wild fowl and the gathering of eggs. When he has acquired a little means it is not unusual for the fisher to settle down and reclaim a bit of land. The mountain and forest Lapps are the true representatives of the race. In the wandering life of the mountain Lapp his autumn residence, on the borders of the forest district, may be considered as the central point; it is there that he erects his njalla, a small wooden storehouse raised high above the ground by one or more piles. About the beginning of November he begins to wander south or east into the forest land, and in the winter he may visit, not only such places as Jokkmokk and Arjepluog, but even Gefle, Upsala or Stockholm. About the beginning of May he is back at his njalla, but as soon as the weather grows warm he pushes up to the mountains, and there throughout the summer pastures his herds and prepares his store of cheese. By autumn or October he is busy at his njalla killing the surplus reindeer bulls and curing meat for the winter. From the mountain Lapp the forest (or, as he used to be called, the spruce-fir) Lapp is mainly distinguished by the narrower limits within which he pursues his nomadic life. He never wanders outside of a certain district, in which he possesses hereditary rights, and maintains a series of camping-grounds which he visits in regular rotation. In May or April he lets his reindeer loose, to wander as they please; but immediately after midsummer, when the mosquitoes become troublesome, he goes to collect them. Catching a single deer and belling it, he drives it through the wood; the other deer, whose instinct leads them to gather into herds for mutual protection against the mosquitoes, are attracted by the sound. Should the summer be very cool and the mosquitoes few, the Lapp finds it next to impossible to bring the creatures together. About the end of August they are again let loose, but they are once more collected in October, the forest Lapp during winter pursuing the same course of life as the mountain Lapp.

In Norway there are three classes—the sea Lapps, the river Lapps and the mountain Lapps, the first two settled, the third nomadic. The mountain Lapps have a rather ruder and harder life than the same class in Sweden. About Christmas those of Kautokeino and Karasjok are usually settled in the neighbourhood of the churches; in summer they visit the coast, and in autumn they return inland. Previous to 1852, when they were forbidden by imperial decree, they were wont in winter to move south across the Russian frontiers. It is seldom possible for them to remain more than three or four days in one spot. Flesh is their favourite, in winter almost their only food, though they also use reindeer milk, cheese and rye or barley cakes. The sea Lapps are in some respects hardly to be distinguished from the other coast dwellers of Finmark. Their food consists mainly of cooked fish. The river Lapps, many of whom, however, are descendants of Finns proper, breed cattle, attempt a little tillage and entrust their reindeer to the care of mountain Lapps.

In Finland there are comparatively few Laplanders, and the great bulk of them belong to the fisher class. Many are settled in the neighbourhood of the Enare Lake. In the spring they go down to the Norwegian coast and take part in the sea fisheries, returning to the lake about midsummer. Formerly they found the capture of wild reindeer a profitable occupation, using for this purpose a palisaded avenue gradually narrowing towards a pitfall.

The Russian Lapps are also for the most part fishers, as is natural in a district with such an extent of coast and such a number of lakes, not to mention the advantage which the fisher has over the reindeer keeper in connexion with the many fasts of the Greek Church. They maintain a half nomadic life, very few having become settlers in the Russian villages. It is usual to distinguish them according to the district of the coast which they frequent, as Murman (Murmanski) and Terian (Terski) Lapps. A separate tribe, the Filmans, i.e. Finnmans, wander about the Pazyets, Motov and Pechenga tundras, and retain the peculiar dialect and the Lutheran creed which they owe to a former connexion with Sweden. They were formerly known as the “twice and thrice tributary” Lapps, because they paid to two or even three states—Russia, Denmark and Sweden.

The Lapps within the historical period have considerably recruited themselves from neighbouring races. Shortness of stature2 is their most obvious characteristic, though in regard to this much exaggeration has prevailed. Düben found an average of 4.9 ft. for males and a little less for females; Mantegazza, who made a number of anthropological observations in Norway in 1879, gives 5 ft. and 4.75 ft., respectively (Archivio per l’antrop., 1880). Individuals much above or much below the average are rare. The body is usually of fair proportions, but the legs are rather short, and in many cases somewhat bandy. Dark, swarthy, yellow, copper-coloured are all adjectives employed to describe their complexion—the truth being that their habits of life do not conduce either to the preservation or display of the natural colour of their skin, and that some of them are really fair, and others, perhaps the majority, really dark. The colour of the hair ranges from blonde and reddish to a bluish or greyish black; the eyes are black, hazel, blue or grey. The shape of the skull is the most striking peculiarity of the Lapp. He is the most brachycephalous type of man in Europe, perhaps in the world.3 According to Virchow, the women in width of face are more Mongolian in type than the men, but neither in men nor women does the opening of the eye show any true obliquity. In children the eye is large, open and round. The nose is always low and broad, more markedly retroussé among the females than the males. Wrinkled and puckered by exposure to the weather, the faces even of the younger Lapps assume an appearance of old age. The muscular system is usually well developed, but there is deficiency of fatty tissue, which affects the features (particularly by giving relative prominence to the eyes) and the general character of the skin. The thinness of the skin, indeed, can but rarely be paralleled among other Europeans. Among the Lapps, as among other lower races, the index is shorter than the ring finger.

The Lapps are a quiet, inoffensive people. Crimes of violence are almost unknown, and the only common breach of law is the killing of tame reindeer belonging to other owners. In Russia, however, they have a bad reputation for lying and general untrustworthiness, and drunkenness is well-nigh a universal vice. In Scandinavia laws have been directed against the importation of intoxicating liquors into the Lapp country since 1723.

Superficially at least the great bulk of the Lapps have been Christianized—those of the Scandinavian countries being Protestants, those of Russia members of the Greek Church. Although the first attempt to convert the Lapps to Christianity seems to have been made in the 11th century, the worship of heathen idols was carried on openly in Swedish Lappmark as late as 1687, and secretly in Norway down to the first quarter of the 18th century, while the practices of heathen rites survived into the 19th century, if indeed they are extinct even yet. Lapp graves, prepared in the heathen manner, have been discovered in upper Namdal (Norway), belonging to the years 1820 and 1826. In education the Scandinavian Lapps are far ahead of their Russian brethren, to whom reading and writing are arts as unfamiliar as they were to their pagan ancestors. The general manner of life is patriarchal. The father of the family has complete authority over all its affairs; and on his death this authority passes to the eldest son. Parents are free to disinherit their children; and, if a son separates from the family without his father’s permission, he receives no share of the property except a gun and his wife’s dowry.4

The Lapps are of necessity conservative in most of their habits, many of which can hardly have altered since the first taming of the reindeer. But the strong current of mercantile enterprise has carried a few important products of southern civilization into their huts. The lines in which James Thomson describes their simple life—

The reindeer form their riches: these their tents, Their robes, their beds, and all their homely wealth Supply; their wholesome fare and cheerful cups—

are still applicable in the main to the mountain Lapps; but even they have learned to use coffee as an ordinary beverage and to wear stout Norwegian cloth (vadmal).

Linguistically the Lapps belong to the Finno-Ugrian group (q.v.); the similarity of their speech to Finnish is evident though the phonetics are different and more complicated. It is broken up into very distinct and even mutually unintelligible dialects, the origin of several of which is, however, easily found in the political and social dismemberment of the people. Düben distinguishes four leading dialects; but a much greater number are recognizable. In Russian Lapland alone there are three, due to the influence of Norwegian, Karelian and Russian (Lönnrot, Acta Soc. Sci. Fennicae, vol. iv.). “The Lapps,” says Castren, “have had the misfortune to come into close contact with foreign races while their language was yet in its tenderest infancy, and consequently it has not only adopted an endless number of foreign words, but in many grammatical aspects fashioned itself after foreign models.” That it began at a very early period to enrich itself with Scandinavian words is shown by the use it still makes of forms belonging to a Language. linguistic stage older even than that of Icelandic. Düben has subjected the vocabulary to a very interesting analysis for the purpose of discovering what stage of culture the people had reached before their contact with the Norse. Agricultural terms, the names of the metals and the word for smith are all of Scandinavian origin, and the words for “taming” and “milk” would suggest that the southern strangers taught the Lapps how to turn the reindeer to full account. The important place, however, which this creature must always have held in their estimation is evident from the existence of more than three hundred native words in connexion with reindeer.

The Lapp tongue was long ago reduced to writing by the missionaries; but very little has been printed in it except school-books and religious works. A number of popular tales and songs, indeed, have been taken down from the lips of the people. The songs are similar to those of the Finns, and a process of mutual borrowing seems to have gone on. In one of the saga-like pieces—Pishan-Peshan’s son—there seems to be a mention of the Baikal Lake, and possibly also of the Altai Mountains. The story of Njavvisena, daughter of the Sun, is full of quaint folk-lore about the taming of the reindeer. Giants, as well as a blind or one-eyed monster, are frequently introduced, and the Aesopic fable is not without its representatives. Many of the Lapps are able to speak one or even two of the neighbouring tongues.

The reputation of the Laplanders for skill in magic and divination is of very early date, and in Finland is not yet extinct. When Erik Blood-axe, son of Harold Haarfager, visited Bjarmaland in 922, he found Gunhild, daughter of Asur Tote, living among the Lapps, to whom she had been sent by her father for the purpose of being trained in witchcraft; and Ivan the Terrible of Russia sent for magicians from Lapland to explain the cause of the appearance of a comet. One of the powers with which they were formerly credited was that of raising winds. “They tye three knottes,” says old Richard Eden, “on a strynge hangyng at a whyp. When they lose one of these they rayse tollerable wynds. When they lose an other the wynde is more vehement; but by losing the thyrd they rayse playne tempestes as in old tyme they were accustomed to rayse thunder and lyghtnyng” (Hist. of Trauayle, 1577). Though we are familiar in English with allusions to “Lapland witches,” it appears that the art, according to native custom, was in the hands of the men. During his divination the wizard fell into a state of trance or Witchcraft. ecstasy, his soul being held to run at large to pursue its inquiries. Great use was made of a curious divining-drum, oval in shape and made of wood, 1 to 4 ft. in length. Over the upper surface was stretched a white-dressed reindeer skin, and at the corners (so to speak) hung a variety of charms—tufts of wool, bones, teeth, claws, &c. The area was divided into several spaces, often into three, one for the celestial gods, one for the terrestrial and one for man. A variety of figures and conventional signs were drawn in the several compartments: the sun, for instance, is frequently represented by a square and a stroke from each corner, Thor by two hammers placed crosswise; and in the more modern specimens symbols for Christ, the Virgin, and the Holy Ghost are introduced. An arpa or divining-rod was laid on a definite spot, the drum beaten by a hammer, and conclusions drawn from the position taken up by the arpa. Any Lapp who had attained to manhood could in ordinary circumstances consult the drum for himself, but in matters of unusual moment the professional wizard (naid, noide or noaide) had to be called in.

History.—The Lapps have a dim tradition that their ancestors lived in a far eastern land, and they tell rude stories of conflicts with Norsemen and Karelians. But no answer can be obtained from them in regard to their early distribution and movements. It has been maintained that they were formerly spread over the whole of the Scandinavian peninsula, and they have even been considered the remnants of that primeval race of cave-dwellers which hunted the reindeer over the snow-fields of central and western Europe. But much of the evidence adduced for these theories is highly questionable. The contents of the so-called Lapps’ graves found in various parts of Scandinavia are often sufficient in themselves to show that the appellation must be a misnomer, and the syllable Lap or Lapp found in many names of places can often be proved to have no connexion with the Lapps.5 They occupied their present territory when they are first mentioned in history. According to Düben the name first occurs in the 13th century—in the Fundinn Noregr, composed about 1200, in Saxo Grammaticus, and in a papal bull of date 1230; but the people are probably to be identified with those Finns of Tacitus whom he describes as wild hunters with skins for clothing and rude huts as only means of shelter, and certainly with the Skrithiphinoi of Procopius (Goth. ii. 15), the Scritobini of Paulus Warnefridus, and the Scridifinni of the geographer of Ravenna. Some of the details given by Procopius, in regard for instance to the treatment of infants, show that his informant was acquainted with certain characteristic customs of the Lapps.

In the 9th century the Norsemen from Norway began to treat their feeble northern neighbours as a subject race. The wealth of Ottar, “northmost of the northmen,” whose narrative has been preserved by King Alfred, consisted mainly of six hundred of those “deer they call hrenas” and in tribute paid by the natives; and the Eigils saga tells how Brynjulf Bjargulfson had his right to collect contributions from the Finns (i.e. the Lapps) recognized by Harold Haarfager. So much value was attached to this source of wealth that as early as 1050 strangers were excluded from the fur-trade of Finmark, and a kind of coast-guard prevented their intrusion. Meantime the Karelians were pressing on the eastern Lapps, and in the course of the 11th century the rulers of Novgorod began to treat them as the Norsemen had treated their western brethren. The ground-swell of the Tatar invasion drove the Karelians westward in the 13th century, and for many years even Finmark was so unsettled that the Norsemen received no tribute from the Lapps. At length in 1326 a treaty was concluded between Norway and Russia by which the supremacy of the Norwegians over the Lapps was recognized as far east as Voljo beyond Kandalax on the White Sea, and the supremacy of the Russians over the Karelians as far as Lyngen and the Målself. The relations of the Lapps to their more powerful neighbours were complicated by the rivalry of the different Scandinavian kingdoms. After the disruption of the Calmar Union (1523) Sweden began to assert its rights with vigour, and in 1595 the treaty of Teusina between Sweden and Russia decreed “that the Lapps who dwell in the woods between eastern Bothnia and Varanger shall pay their dues to the king of Sweden.” It was in vain that Christian IV. of Denmark visited Kola and exacted homage in 1599, and every year sent messengers to protest against the collection of his tribute by the Swedes (a custom which continued down to 1806). Charles of Sweden took the title of “king of the Kajans and Lapps,” and left no means untried to establish his power over all Scandinavian Lapland. By the peace of Knäröd (1613) Gustavus Adolphus gave up the Swedish claim to Finmark; and in 1751 mutual renunciations brought the relations of Swedish and Norwegian (Danish) Lapland to their present position. Meanwhile Russian influence had been spreading westward; and in 1809, when Alexander I. finally obtained the cession of Finland, he also added to his dominions the whole of Finnish Lapland to the east of the Muonio and the Köngämä. It may be interesting to mention that Lapps, armed with bows and arrows, were attached to certain regiments of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War.

The Lapps have had the ordinary fate of a subject and defenceless people; they have been utilized with little regard to their own interest or inclinations. The example set by the early Norwegians was followed by the Swedes: a peculiar class of adventurers known as the Birkarlians (from Bjark or Birk, “trade”) began in the 13th century to farm the Lapps, and, receiving very extensive privileges from the kings, grew to great wealth and influence. In 1606 there were twenty-two Birkarlians in Tornio, seventeen in Lule, sixteen in Pite, and sixty-six in Ume Lappmark. They are regularly spoken of as having or owning Lapps, whom they dispose of as any other piece of property. In Russian Lapland matters followed much the same course. The very institutions of the Solovets monastery, intended by St Tryphon for the benefit of the poor neglected pagans, turned out the occasion of much injustice towards them. By a charter of Ivan Vasilivitch (November 1556), the monks are declared masters of the Lapps of the Motoff and Petchenga districts, and they soon sought to extend their control over those not legally assigned to them (Ephimenko). Other monasteries were gifted with similar proprietary rights; and the supplication of the patriarch Nikon to Alexis Mikhaelovitch, for example, shows clearly the oppression to which the Lapps were subjected.

It is long, however, since these abuses were abolished; and in Scandinavia more especially the Lapps of the present day enjoy the advantages resulting from a large amount of philanthropic legislation on the part of their rulers. There seems to be no fear of their becoming extinct, except it may be by gradual amalgamation with their more powerful neighbours. In Norway the total number of Lapps was 20,786 in 1891, and in Sweden in 1904 it was officially estimated that there were 7000. Add to these some 3000 for Russian Lapland, and the total Lapp population approximates to 30,000. In Sweden the Lapps are gradually abandoning their nomadic habits and becoming merged in the Swedish population. The majority of the Norwegian Lapps lead a semi-nomadic existence; but the number of inveterate nomads can scarcely reach 1500 at the present day. In Sweden there are about 3500 nomads.

Authorities.—G. von Düben, Om Lappland och Lapparne (Stockholm, 1873), with list of over 200 authorities; C. Rabot, “La Laponie suédoise d’après les récentes explorations de MM. Svenonius et Hamberg,” La Géographie, Soc. Géog. de Paris VII. (1903); S. Passarge, Fahrten in Schweden, besonders in Nordschweden und Lappland (Berlin, 1897); Bayard Taylor, Northern Travel (London, 1858); E. Rae, The White Sea Peninsula (London, 1882), and Land of the North Wind (London, 1875); P. B. du Chaillu, Land of the Midnight Sun (London, 1881); S. Tromholt, Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis (London, 1885); Y. Nielsen, Det Norske geogr. Selskabs Aarbog (1891); H. H. Reusch, Folk og natur i Finmarken (1895); K. B. Wicklund, De Svenska nomadlapparnas flyttningar till Norge i älore och nyare tid (Upsala, 1908); see also Sweden. Among older works may be mentioned Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankfurt, 1673, English trans. Oxford, 1674); Regnard, Voyage de Laponie, English version in Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. i.; Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper (Copenhagen, 1767), in Danish and Latin; see also Pinkerton, loc. cit.; Sir A. de C. Brooke, A Winter in Lapland (London, 1827); Laestadius, Journal (1831).

As to the language, J. A. Friis, professor of Lapp in the university of Christiania, has published Lappiske Sprogprover: en samling lapp. eventyr, ordsprog, og gåder (Christiania, 1856), and Lappisk mythologi eventyr og folkesagn (Christiania, 1871). See also G. Donner, Lieder der Lappen (Helsingfors, 1876); Poestion, Lappländische Märchen, &c. (Vienna, 1885). Grammars of the Lapp tongue have been published by Fjellström (1738), Leem (1748), Rask (1832), Stockfleth (1840); lexicons by Fjellström (1703), Leem (1768-1781), Lindahl (1780), Stockfleth (1852). Among more recent works may be mentioned a dictionary (1885), by J. A. Friis; a reader, with German translations (1888), by J. Qvigstad; a dictionary (1890) and two grammars (1891 and 1897) of the Luleå dialect, and a chrestomathy of Norwegian Lappish (1894), by K. B. Wiklund; a dictionary of Russian Lappish, or the Kola dialect (1891), by A. Genetz; readers of different dialects (1885-1896), by J. Halász; and a grammar of Norwegian Lappish (1882), by S. Nielsen; further, a comparative study of Lappish and Finnish by Qvigstad in the Acts of the Finnish Academy of Science, vol. xii., 1883; the same author’s Nordische Lehnwörter im Lappischen (1893); Wiklund, Entwurf einer urlappischen Lautlehre (1896); see also various articles by these writers, Paasonen and others in the Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne and the Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen; Qvigstad and Wiklund, Bibliographie der lappischen Literatur (1900).

The older literature on the Lapps received a notable addition by the discovery in 1896, among the letters of Linnaeus preserved in the British Museum, of a MS. diary of a journey made in 1695 to the north of Swedish Lappmark by Olof Rudbeck the younger. On missionary work see Stockfleth, Dagbog over mine missions Reiser (1860); E. Haller, Svenska Kyrkans mission i Lappmarken (1896). It was not until 1840 that the New Testament was translated into Norwegian Lappish, and not until 1895 that the entire Bible was printed in the same dialect. In the Russian dialect of Lappish there exist only two versions of St Matthew’s gospel.

1 The most probable etymology is the Finnish lappu, and in this case the meaning would be the “land’s end folk.”

2 Hence they have been supposed by many to be the originals of the “little folk” of Scandinavian legend.

3 Bertillon found in one instance a cephalic index of 94. The average obtained by Pruner Bey was 84.7, by Virchow 82.5.

4 A valuable paper by Ephimenko, on “The Legal Customs of the Lapps, especially in Russian Lapland,” appeared in vol. viii. of the Mem. of Russ. Geog. Soc., Ethnog. Section, 1878.

5 The view that the Lapps at one time occupied the whole of the Scandinavian peninsula, and have during the course of centuries been driven back by the Swedes and Norwegians is disproved by the recent investigations of Yngvar Nielsen, K. B. Wiklund and others. The fact is, the Lapps are increasing in numbers, as well as pushing their way farther and farther south. In the beginning of the 16th century their southern border-line in Norway ran on the upper side of 64° N. In 1890 they forced their way to the head of the Hardanger Fjord in 60° N. In Sweden the presence of Lapps as far south as Jämtland (or Jemtland) is first mentioned in 1564. In 1881 they pushed on into the north of Dalecarlia, about 61° 45′ N.

LA PLATA, a city of Argentina and capital of the province of Buenos Aires, 5 m. inland from the port of Ensenada, or La Plata, and about 31 m. S.E. of the city of Buenos Aires, with which it is connected by rail. Pop. (1895) 45,609; (1907, estimate) 84,000. La Plata was founded in 1882, two years after Buenos Aires had been constituted a federal district and made the national capital. This necessitated the selection of another provincial capital, which resulted in the choice of an open plain near the former port of Ensenada de Barragán, on which a city was laid out after the plan of Washington. The streets are so wide that they seem out of proportion to the low brick buildings. The principal public buildings, constructed of brick and stucco, are the government-house, assembly building, treasury, municipal hall, cathedral, courts of justice, police headquarters, provincial museum and railway station. The museum, originally presented by Dr Moreno, has become one of the most important in South America, its palaeontological and anthropological collections being unique. There are also a university, national college, public library, astronomical observatory, several churches, two hospitals and two theatres. A noteworthy public park is formed by a large plantation of eucalyptus trees, which have grown to a great height and present an imposing appearance on the level, treeless plain. Electricity is in general use for public and private lighting, and tramways are laid down in the principal streets and extend eastward to the port. The harbour of the port of La Plata consists of a large artificial basin, 1450 yds. long by 150 yds. wide, with approaches, in addition to the old port of Ensenada, which are capable of receiving the largest vessels that can navigate the La Plata estuary. Up to the opening of the new port works of Buenos Aires a large part of the ocean-going traffic of Buenos Aires passed through the port of La Plata. It has good railway connexions with the interior, and exports cattle and agricultural produce.

LAPORTE, ROLAND (1675-1704), Camisard leader, better known as “Roland,” was born at Mas Soubeyran (Gard) in a cottage which has become the property of the Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme français, and which contains relics of the hero. He was a nephew of Laporte, the Camisard leader who was hunted down and shot in October 1702, and he himself became the leader of a band of a thousand men which he formed into a disciplined army with magazines, arsenals and hospitals. For daring in action and rapidity of movement he was second only to Cavalier. These two leaders in 1702 secured entrance to the town of Sauve under the pretence of being royal officers, burnt the church and carried off provisions and ammunition for their forces. Roland, who called himself “general of the children of God,” terrorized the country between Nîmes and Alais, burning churches and houses, and slaying those suspected of hostility against the Huguenots, though without personally taking any part of the spoil. Cavalier was already in negotiation with Marshal Villars when Roland cut to pieces a Catholic regiment at Fontmorte in May 1704. He refused to lay down his arms without definite assurance of the restoration of the privileges accorded by the Edict of Nantes. Villars then sought to negotiate, offering Roland the command of a regiment on foreign service and liberty of conscience, though not the free exercise of their religion, for his co-religionists. This parley had no results, but Roland was betrayed to his enemies, and on the 14th of August 1704 was shot while defending himself against his captors. The five officers who were with him surrendered, and were broken on the wheel at Nîmes. Roland’s death put an end to the effective resistance of the Cévenols.

See A. Court, Histoire des troubles des Cévennes (Villefranche, 1760); H. M. Baird, The Huguenots and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (2 vols., London, 1895), and other literature dealing with the Camisards.

LA PORTE, a city and the county seat of La Porte county, Indiana, U.S.A., 12 m. S. of Lake Michigan and about 60 m. S.E. of Chicago. Pop. (1890) 7126; (1900) 7113 (1403 foreign-born); (1910) 10,525. It is served by the Lake Erie & Western, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the Père Marquette, the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana (electric), and the Chicago-New York Electric Air Line railways. La Porte lies in the midst of a fertile agricultural region, and the shipment of farm and orchard products is one of its chief industries. There are also numerous manufactures. La Porte’s situation in the heart of a region of beautiful lakes (including Clear, Pine and Stone lakes) has given it a considerable reputation as a summer resort. The lakes furnish a large supply of clear ice, which is shipped to the Chicago markets. La Porte was settled in 1830, laid out in 1833, incorporated as a town in 1835, and first chartered as a city in 1852.

LAPPA, an island directly opposite the inner harbour of Macao, the distance across being from 1 to 1½ m. It is a station of the Chinese imperial maritime customs which collects duties on vessels trading between China and the Portuguese colony of Macao. The arrangement is altogether abnormal, and was consented to by the Portuguese government in 1887 to assist the Chinese authorities in the suppression of opium smuggling. A similar arrangement prevails at the British colony of Hong-Kong, where the Chinese customs station is Kowloon. In both cases the customs stations levy duties on vessels entering and leaving the foreign port in lieu of levying them, as ought to be done, on entering or leaving a Chinese port.

LAPPARENT, ALBERT AUGUSTE COCHON DE (1839-1908), French geologist, was born at Bourges on the 30th of December 1839. After studying at the École Polytechnique from 1858 to 1860 he became ingénieur au corps des mines, and took part in drawing up the geological map of France; and in 1875 he was appointed professor of geology and mineralogy at the Catholic Institute, Paris. In 1879 he prepared an important memoir for the geological survey of France on Le Pays de Bray, a subject on which he had already published several memoirs, and in 1880 he served as president of the French Geological Society. In 1881-1883 he published his Traité de géologie (5th ed., 1905), the best European text-book of stratigraphical geology. His other works include Cours de minéralogie (1884, 3rd ed., 1899), La Formation des combustibles minéraux (1886), Le Niveau de la mer et ses variations (1886), Les Tremblements de terre (1887), La Géologie en chemin de fer (1888), Précis de minéralogie (1888), Le Siècle du fer (1890), Les Anciens Glaciers (1893), Leçons de géographie physique (1896), Notions générales sur l’écorce terrestre (1897), Le Globe terrestre (1899), and Science et apologétique (1905). With Achille Delesse he was for many years editor of the Révue de géologie and contributed to the Extraits de géologie, and he joined with A. Potier in the geological surveys undertaken in connexion with the Channel Tunnel proposals. He died in Paris on the 5th of May 1908.

LAPPENBERG, JOHANN MARTIN (1794-1865), German historian, was born on the 30th of July 1794 at Hamburg, where his father, Valentin Anton Lappenberg (1759-1819), held an official position. He studied medicine, and afterwards history, at Edinburgh. He continued to study history in London, and at Berlin and Göttingen, graduating as doctor of laws at Göttingen in 1816. In 1820 he was sent by the Hamburg senate as resident minister to the Prussian court. In 1823 he became keeper of the Hamburg archives; an office in which he had the fullest opportunities for the laborious and critical research work upon which his reputation as an historian rests. He retained this post until 1863, when a serious affection of the eyes compelled him to resign. In 1850 he represented Hamburg in the German parliament at Frankfort, and bis death took place at Hamburg on the 28th of November 1865. Lappenberg’s most important work is his Geschichte von England, which deals with the history of England from the earliest times to 1154, and was published in two volumes at Hamburg in 1834-1837. It has been translated into English by B. Thorpe as History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (London 1845, and again 1881), and History of England under the Norman Kings (Oxford, 1857), and has been continued in three additional volumes from 1154 to 1509 by R. Pauli. His other works deal mainly with the history of Hamburg, and include Hamburgische Chroniken in Niedersächsischer Sprache (Hamburg, 1852-1861); Geschichtsquellen des Erzstiftes und der Stadt Bremen (Bremen, 1841); Hamburgisches Urkundenbuch (Hamburg, 1842); Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes zu London (Hamburg, 1851); Hamburgische Rechtsalterthümer (Hamburg, 1845); and Urkundliche Geschichte des Ursprunges der deutschen Hanse (Hamburg, 1830), a continuation of the work of G. F. Sartorius. For the Monumenta Germaniae historica he edited the Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg, the Gesta Hammenburgensis ecclesiae pontificum of Adam of Bremen and the Chronica Slavorum of Helmold, with its continuation by Arnold of Lübeck. Lappenberg, who was a member of numerous learned societies in Europe, wrote many other historical works.

See E. H. Meyer, Johann Martin Lappenberg (Hamburg, 1867); and R. Pauli in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, Band xvii. (Leipzig, 1883).

LAPRADE, PIERRE MARTIN VICTOR RICHARD DE (1812-1883), known as Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic, was born on the 13th of January 1812 at Montbrison, in the department of the Loire. He came of a modest provincial family. After completing his studies at Lyons, he produced in 1839 a small volume of religious verse, Les Parfums de Madeleine. This was followed in 1840 by La Colère de Jésus, in 1841 by the religious fantasy of Psyché, and in 1844 by Odes et poèmes. In 1845 Laprade visited Italy on a mission of literary research, and in 1847 he was appointed professor of French literature at Lyons. The French Academy, by a single vote, preferred Émile Augier at the election in 1857, but in the following year Laprade was chosen to fill the chair of Alfred de Musset. In 1861 he was removed from his post at Lyons owing to the publication of a political satire in verse (Les Muses d’État), and in 1871 took his seat in the National Assembly on the benches of the Right. He died on the 13th of December 1883. A statue has been raised by his fellow-townsmen at Montbrison. Besides those named above, Laprade’s poetical works include Poèmes évangéliques (1852), Idylles héroïques (1858), Les Voix de silence (1864), Pernette (1868), Poèmes civiles (1873), Le Livre d’un père (1877), Varia and Livre des adieux (1878-1879). In prose he published, in 1840, Des habitudes intellectuelles de l’avocat. Questions d’art et de morale appeared in 1861, succeeded by Le Sentiment de la nature, avant le Christianisme in 1866, and Chez les modernes in 1868, Éducation libérale in 1873. The material for these books had in some cases been printed earlier, after delivery as a lecture. He also contributed articles to the Revue des deux mondes and the Revue de Paris. No writer represents more perfectly than Laprade the admirable genius of French provincial life, its homely simplicity, its culture, its piety and its sober patriotism. As a poet he belongs to the school of Chateaubriand and Lamartine. Devoted to the best classical models, inspired by a sense of the ideal, and by worship of nature as revealing the divine—gifted, too, with a full faculty of expression—he lacked only fire and passion in the equipment of a romantic poet. But the want of these, and the pressure of a certain chilly facility and of a too conscious philosophizing have prevented him from reaching the first rank, or from even attaining the popularity due to his high place in the second. Only in his patriotic verse did he shake himself clear from these trammels. Speaking generally, he possessed some of the qualities, and many of the defects, of the English Lake School. Laprade’s prose criticisms must be ranked high. Apart from his classical and metaphysical studies, he was widely read in the literatures of Europe, and built upon the groundwork of a naturally correct taste. His dislike of irony and scepticism probably led him to underrate the product of the 18th century, and there are signs of a too fastidious dread of Philistinism. But a constant love of the best, a joy in nature and a lofty patriotism are not less evident than in his poetry. Few writers of any nation have fixed their minds so steadily on whatsoever things are pure, and lovely and of good report.

See also Edmond Biré, Victor de Laprade, sa vie et ses œuvres.

(C.)

LAPSE (Lat. lapsus, a slip or departure), in law, a term used in several senses. (1) In ecclesiastical law, when a patron has neglected to present to a void benefice within six months next after the avoidance, the right of presentation is said to lapse. In such case the patronage or right of presentation devolves from the neglectful patron to the bishop as ordinary, to the metropolitan as superior and to the sovereign as patron paramount. (2) The failure of a testamentary disposition in favour of any person, by reason of the decease of its object in the testator’s lifetime, is termed a lapse. See Legacy, Will.

LAPWING (O.Eng. hleápewince = “one who turns about in running or flight”),1 a bird, the Tringa vanellus of Linnaeus and the Vanellus vulgaris or V. cristatus of modern ornithologists. In the temperate parts of the Old World this species is perhaps the most abundant of the plovers, Charadriidae, breeding in almost every suitable place from Ireland to Japan—the majority migrating towards winter to southern countries, as the Punjab, Egypt and Barbary—though in the British Islands some are always found at that season. As a straggler it has occurred within the Arctic Circle (as on the Varanger Fjord in Norway), as well as in Iceland and even Greenland; while it not unfrequently appears in Madeira and the Azores. Conspicuous as the strongly contrasted colours of its plumage and its very peculiar flight make it, it is remarkable that it maintains its ground when so many of its allies have been almost exterminated, for the lapwing is the object perhaps of greater persecution than any other European bird that is not a plunderer. Its eggs are the well-known “plovers’ eggs” of commerce,2 and the bird, wary and wild at other times of the year, in the breeding-season becomes easily approachable, and is shot to be sold in the markets for “golden plover.” Its growing scarcity in Great Britain was very perceptible until the various acts for the protection of wild birds were passed. It is now abundant and is of service both for the market and to agriculture. What seems to be the secret of the lapwing holding its position is the adaptability of its nature to various kinds of localities. It will find sustenance equally on the driest of soils as on the fattest pastures; upland and fen, arable and moorland, are alike to it, provided only the ground be open enough. The wailing cry3 and the frantic gestures of the cock bird in the breeding-season will tell any passer-by that a nest or brood is near; but, unless he knows how to look for it, nothing save mere chance will enable him to find it. The nest is a slight hollow in the ground, wonderfully inconspicuous even when deepened, as is usually the case, by incubation, and the black-spotted olive eggs (four in number) are almost invisible to the careless or untrained eye. The young when first hatched are clothed with mottled down, so as closely to resemble a stone, and to be overlooked as they squat motionless on the approach of danger. At a distance the plumage of the adult appears to be white and black in about equal proportions, the latter predominating above; but on closer examination nearly all the seeming black is found to be a bottle-green gleaming with purple and copper; the tail-coverts, both above and below, are of a bright bay colour, seldom visible in flight. The crest consists of six or eight narrow and elongated feathers, turned slightly upwards at the end, and is usually carried in a horizontal position, extending in the cock beyond the middle of the back; but it is capable of being erected so as to become nearly vertical. Frequenting parts of the open country so very divergent in character, and as remarkable for the peculiarity of its flight as for that of its cry, the lapwing is far more often observed in nearly all parts of the British Islands than any other of the group Limicolae. The peculiarity of its flight seems due to the wide and rounded wings it possesses, the steady and ordinarily somewhat slow flapping of which impels the body at each stroke with a manifest though easy jerk. Yet on occasion, as when performing its migrations, or even its almost daily transits from one feeding-ground to another, and still more when being pursued by a falcon, the speed with which it moves through the air is very considerable. On the ground this bird runs nimbly, and is nearly always engaged in searching for its food, which is wholly animal.

Allied to the lapwing are several forms that have been placed by ornithologists in the genera Hoplopterus, Chettusia, Lobivanellus, Defilippia. In some of them the hind toe, which has already ceased to have any function in the lapwing, is wholly wanting. In others the wings are armed with a tubercle or even a sharp spur on the carpus. Few have any occipital crest, but several have the face ornamented by the outgrowth of a fleshy lobe or lobes. With the exception of North America, they are found in most parts of the world, but perhaps the greater number in Africa. Europe has three species—Hoplopterus spinosus, the spur-winged plover, and Chettusia gregaria and C. leucura; but the first and last are only stragglers from Africa and Asia.

(A. N.)

1 Skeat, Etym. Dict. (1898), s.v. Caxton in 1481 has “lapwynches” (Reynard the Fox, cap. 27). The first part of the word is from hleápan, to leap; the second part is “wink” (O.H.G. winchan, Ger. wanken, to waver). Popular etymology has given the word its present form, as if it meant “wing-flapper,” from “lap,” a fold or flap of a garment.

2 There is a prevalent belief that many of the eggs sold as “plovers’” are those of rooks, but no notion can be more absurd, since the appearance of the two is wholly unlike. Those of the redshank, of the golden plover (to a small extent), and enormous numbers of those of the black-headed gull, and in certain places of some of the terns are, however, sold as lapwings’, having a certain similarity of shell to the latter, and a difference of flavour only to be detected by a fine palate.

3 This sounds like pee-weet, with some variety of intonation. Hence the names peewit, peaseweep and teuchit, commonly applied in some parts of Britain to this bird—though the first is that by which one of the smaller gulls, Larus ridibundus (see Gull), is known in the districts it frequents. In Sweden Vipa, in Germany Kiebitz, in Holland Kiewiet, and in France Dixhuit, are names of the lapwing, given to it from its usual cry. Other English names are green plover and hornpie—the latter from its long hornlike crest and pied plumage. The lapwing’s conspicuous crest seems to have been the cause of a common blunder among English writers of the middle ages, who translated the Latin word Upupa, property hoopoe, by lapwing, as being the crested bird with which they were best acquainted. In like manner other writers of the same or an earlier period latinized lapwing by Egrettides (plural), and rendered that again into English as egrets—the tuft of feathers misleading them also. The word Vanellus is from vannus, the fan used for winnowing corn, and refers to the audible beating of the bird’s wings.

LAPWORTH, CHARLES (1842- ), English geologist, was born at Faringdon in Berkshire on the 30th of September 1842. He was educated partly in the village of Buckland in the same county, and afterwards in the training college at Culham, near Oxford (1862-1864). He was then appointed master in a school connected with the Episcopal church at Galashiels, where he remained eleven years. Geology came to absorb all his leisure time, and he commenced to investigate the Silurian rocks of the Southern Uplands, and to study the graptolites and other fossils which mark horizons in the great series of Lower Palaeozoic rocks. His first paper on the Lower Silurian rocks of Galashiels was published in 1870, and from that date onwards he continued to enrich our knowledge of the southern uplands of Scotland until the publication by the Geological Society of his masterly papers on The Moffat Series (1878) and The Girvan Succession (1882). Meanwhile in 1875 he became an assistant master in the Madras College, St Andrews, and in 1881 professor of geology and mineralogy (afterwards geology and physiography) in the Mason College, now University of Birmingham. In 1882 he started work in the Durness-Eriboll district of the Scottish Highlands, and made out the true succession of the rocks, and interpreted the complicated structure which had baffled most of the previous observers. His results were published in “The Secret of the Highlands” (Geol. Mag., 1883). His subsequent work includes papers on the Cambrian rocks of Nuneaton and the Ordovician rocks of Shropshire. The term Ordovician was introduced by him in 1879 for the strata between the base of the Lower Llandovery formation and that of the Lower Arenig; and it was intended to settle the confusion arising from the use by some writers of Lower Silurian and by others of Upper Cambrian for the same set of rocks. The term Ordovician is now generally adopted. Professor Lapworth was elected F.R.S. in 1888, he received a royal medal in 1891, and was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society in 1899. He was president of the Geological Society, 1902-1904. His Intermediate Text-book of Geology was published in 1899.

See article, with portrait and bibliography, in Geol. Mag. (July 1901).

LAR, a city of Persia, capital of Laristan, in 27° 30′ N., 53° 58′ E., 180 m. from Shiraz and 75 from the coast at Bander Lingah. It stands at the foot of a mountain range in an extensive plain covered with palm trees, and was once a flourishing place, but a large portion is in ruins, and the population which early in the 18th century numbered 50,000 is reduced to 8000. There are still some good buildings, of which the most prominent are the old bazaar consisting of four arcades each 180 ft. long, 14 broad and 22 high, radiating from a domed centre 30 ft. high, an old stone mosque and many cisterns. The crest of a steep limestone hill immediately behind the town and rising 150 ft. above the plain is crowned by the ruins of a castle formerly deemed impregnable. Just below the castle is a well sunk 200 ft. in the rock. The tower-flanked mud wall which surrounds the town is for the most part in ruins.

LARA, western state of Venezuela, lying in the angle formed by the parting of the N. and N.E. ranges of the Cordillera de Mérida and extending N.E. with converging frontiers to the Caribbean. Pop. (1905 estimate) 272,252. The greater part of its surface is mountainous, with elevated fertile valleys which have a temperate climate. The Tocuyo river rises in the S.W. angle of the state and flows N.E. to the Caribbean with a total length of 287 m. A narrow-gauge railway, the “South-western,” owned by British capitalists, runs from the port of Tucacas 55 m. S.W. to Barquisimeto by way of the Aroa copper-mining district. Lara produces wheat and other cereals, coffee, sugar, tobacco, neat cattle, sheep and various mineral ores, including silver, copper, iron, lead, bismuth and antimony. The capital, Barquisimeto, is one of the largest and most progressive of the inland cities of Venezuela. Carora is also prominent as a commercial centre. Tocuyo (pop. in 1891, 15,383), 40 m. S.W. of Barquisimeto, is an important commercial and mining town, over 2000 ft. above sea-level, in the midst of a rich agricultural and pastoral region. Yaritagua (pop. about 12,000), 20 m. E. of Barquisimeto, and 1026 ft. above the sea, is known for its cigar manufactories.

LARAISH (El Araish), a port in northern Morocco on the Atlantic coast in 35° 13′ N., 6° 9′ W., 43 m. by sea S. by W. of Tangier, picturesquely situated on the left bank of the estuary of the Wad Lekkus. Pop. 6000 to 7000. The river, being fairly deep inside the bar, made this a favourite port for the Salli rovers to winter in, but the quantity of alluvial soil brought down threatens to close the port. The town is well situated for defence, its walls are in fair condition, and it has ten forts, all supplied with old-fashioned guns. Traces of the Spanish occupation from 1610-1689 are to be seen in the towers whose names are given by Tissot as those of St Stephen, St James and that of the Jews, with the Castle of Our Lady of Europe, now the kasbah or citadel. The most remarkable feature of Laraish is its fine large market-place inside the town with a low colonnade in front of very small shops. The streets, though narrow and steep, are generally paved. Its chief exports are oranges, millet, dra and other cereals, goat-hair and skins, sheepskins, wool and fullers’ earth. The wool goes chiefly to Marseilles. The annual value of the trade is from £400,000 to £500,000.

In 1780 all the Europeans in Laraish were expelled by Mohammed XVI., although in 1786 the monopoly of its trade had been granted to Holland, even its export of wheat. In 1787 the Moors were still building pirate vessels here, the timber for which came from the neighbouring forest of M’amora. Not far from the town are the remains of what is believed to be a Phoenician city, Shammish, mentioned by Idrisi, who makes no allusion to Laraish. It is not, however, improbable from a passage in Scylax that the site of the present town was occupied by a Libyan settlement. Tradition also connects Laraish with the garden of the Hesperides, ‘Arāsi being the Arabic for “pleasure-gardens,” and the “golden apples” perhaps the familiar oranges.

LARAMIE, a city and the county-seat of Albany county, Wyoming, U.S.A., on the Laramie river, 57 m. by rail N.W. of Cheyenne. Pop. (1900) 8207, of whom 1280 were foreign-born; (1905) 7601; (1910) 8237. It is served by the Union Pacific and the Laramie, Hahn’s Peak & Pacific railways, the latter extending from Laramie to Centennial (30 m.). The city is situated on the Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7165 ft., and is hemmed in on three sides by picturesque mountains. It has a public library, a United States Government building and hospitals, and is the seat of the university of Wyoming and of a Protestant Episcopal missionary bishopric. There is a state fish hatchery in the vicinity. The university (part of the public school system of the state) was founded in 1886, was opened in 1887, and embraces a College of Liberal Arts and Graduate School, a Normal School, a College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, an Agricultural Experiment Station (established by a Federal appropriation), a College of Engineering, a School of Music, a Preparatory School and a Summer School. Laramie is a supply and distributing centre for a live-stock raising and mining region—particularly coal mining, though gold, silver, copper and iron are also found. The Union Pacific Railroad Company has machine shops, repair shops and rolling mills at Laramie, and, a short distance S. of the city, ice-houses and a tie-preserving plant. The manufactures include glass, leather, flour, plaster and pressed brick, the brick being made from shale obtained in the vicinity. The municipality owns and operates the water-works; the water is obtained from large springs about 2½ m. distant. Laramie was settled in 1868, by people largely from New England, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, and was named in honour of Jacques Laramie, a French fur trader. It was first chartered as a city in 1868 by the legislature of Dakota, and was rechartered by the legislature of Wyoming in 1873.

LARBERT, a parish and town of Stirlingshire, Scotland. Pop. of parish (1901) 6500, of town, 1442. The town is situated on the Carron, 8 m. S. by E. of Stirling by the North British and Caledonian railways, the junction being an important station for traffic from the south by the West Coast route. Coal-mining is the chief industry. The principal buildings are the church, finely placed overlooking the river, the Stirling district asylum and the Scottish National Institution for imbecile children. In the churchyard is a monument to James Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, who was born and died at Kinnaird House, 2½ m. N.E. Two m. N. by W. are the ruins of Torwood Castle and the remains of Torwood forest, to which Sir William Wallace retired after his defeat at Falkirk (1298). Near “Wallace’s oak,” in which the patriot concealed himself, Donald Cargill (1619-1681), the Covenanter, excommunicated Charles II. and James, duke of York, in 1680. The fragment of an old round building is said to be the relic of one of the very few “brochs,” or round towers, found in the Lowlands.

LARCENY (an adaptation of Fr. larcin, O. Fr. larrecin, from Lat. latrocinium, theft, latio, robber), the unlawful taking and carrying away of things personal, with intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same. The term theft, sometimes used as a synonym of larceny, is in reality a broader term, applying to all cases of depriving another of his property whether by removing or withholding it, and includes larceny, robbery, cheating, embezzlement, breach of trust, &c.

Larceny is, in modern legal systems, universally treated as a crime, but the conception of it as a crime is not one belonging to the earliest stage of law. To its latest period Roman law regarded larceny or theft (furtum) as a delict prima facie pursued by a civil remedy—the actio furti for a penalty, the vindicatio or condictio for the stolen property itself or its value. In later times, a criminal remedy to meet the graver crimes gradually grew up by the side of the civil, and in the time of Justinian the criminal remedy, where it existed, took precedence of the civil (Cod. iii. 8. 4). But to the last criminal proceedings could only be taken in serious cases, e.g. against stealers of cattle (abigei) or the clothes of bathers (balnearii). The punishment was death, banishment, or labour in the mines or on public works. In the main the Roman law coincides with the English law. The definition as given in the Institutes (iv. 1. 1) is “furtum est contrectatio rei fraudulosa, vel ipsius rei, vel etiam ejus usus possessionisve,” to which the Digest (xlvii. 2. 1, 3) adds “lucri faciendi gratia.” The earliest English definition, that of Bracton (150b), runs thus: “furtum est secundum leges contrectatio rei alienae fraudulenta cum animo furandi invito illo domino cujus res illa fuerit.” Bracton omits the “lucri faciendi gratia” of the Roman definition, because in English law the motive is immaterial,1 and the “usus ejus possessionisve,” because the definition includes an intent to deprive the owner of his property permanently. The “animo furandi” and “invito domino” of Bracton’s definition are expansions for the sake of greater clearness. They seem to have been implied in Roman law. Furtum is on the whole a more comprehensive term than larceny. This difference no doubt arises from the tendency to extend the bounds of a delict and to limit the bounds of a crime. Thus it was furtum (but it would not be theft at English common law) to use a deposit of pledge contrary to the wishes of the owner, to retain goods found, or to steal a human being, such as a slave or filius familias (a special form of furtum called plagium). The latter would be in English law an abduction under certain circumstances but not a theft. One of two married persons could not commit furtum as against the other, but larceny may be so committed in England since the Married Women’s Property Act 1882. As a furtum was merely a delict, the obligatio ex delicto could be extinguished by agreement between the parties; this cannot be done in England. In another direction English law is more considerate of the rights of third parties than was Roman. The thief can give a good title to stolen goods; in Roman law he could not do so, except in the single case of a hereditas acquired by usucapio. The development of the law of furtum at Rome is historically interesting, for even in its latest period is found a relic of one of the most primitive theories of law adopted by courts of justice: “They took as their guide the measure of vengeance likely to be exacted by an aggrieved person under the circumstances of the case” (Maine, Ancient Law, ch. x.). This explains the reason of the division of furtum into manifestum and nec manifestum. The manifest thief was one taken red-handed—“taken with the manner,” in the language of old English law. The Twelve Tables denounced the punishment of death against the manifest thief, for that would be the penalty demanded by the indignant owner in whose place the judge stood. The severity of this penalty was afterwards mitigated by the praetor, who substituted for it the payment of quadruple the value of the thing stolen. The same penalty was also given by the praetor in case of theft from a fire or a wreck, or of prevention of search. The Twelve Tables mulcted the non-manifest thief in double the value of the thing stolen. The actions for penalties were in addition to the action for the stolen goods themselves or their value. The quadruple and double penalties still remain in the legislation of Justinian. The search for stolen goods, as it existed in the time of Gaius, was a survival of a period when the injured person was, as in the case of summons (in jus vocatio), his own executive officer. Such a search, by the Twelve Tables, might be conducted in the house of the supposed thief by the owner in person, naked except for a cincture, and carrying a platter in his hand, safeguards apparently against any possibility of his making a false charge by depositing some of his own property on his neighbour’s premises. This mode of search became obsolete before the time of Justinian. Robbery (bona vi rapta) was violence added to furtum. By the actio vi bonorum raptorum quadruple the value could be recovered if the action were brought within a year, only the value if brought after the expiration of a year. The quadruple value included the stolen thing itself, so that the penalty was in effect only a triple one. It was inclusive, and not cumulative, as in furtum.