and seal-oil-the annual amount being estimated at fully £600,000 sterling. The climate, like that of North America generally, is subject to great vicissitudes. In summer, the thermometer ranges as high as 85° Fabr.; in winter, the temperature, and that in nearly the same latitudes as the British Isles, falls 30° below the freezing-point. L. is a dependency of the United Kingdom, but it has never had a separate government of its own, being considered sometimes as an appendage of Canada, and sometimes as an appendage of Newfoundland. It is at present believed to be in the latter position. LA'BRADORITE, or LABRADOR STONE, a It is cut into snuff-boxes and variety of Felspar (q.v.), common as a constituent LABRADO'R (Port. terra labarador, cultivable land'), the name given by certain Portuguese discoverers to the continental coast of America near Newfoundland; a name as inappropriate as that of Greenland! The name gradually came to be extended from the Strait of Belleisle to Hudson's Strait, being sometimes carried as far westward as the eastern shores of Hudson's Bay. More properly, however, L. embraces only such portions of that vast peninsula as do not fall within the chartered territories of the Hudson's Bay Company (q. v.), by pouring water into Hudson's Strait or Hudson's Bay. In this restricted sense, the country stretches in N. lat. from about 52° to about 60°, and in W. long. from about 55° to upwards of 65°; area, 70,000 square miles; pop. 5000. Of this extensive country the interior is little known; but is understood to be mostly an impenetrable wilderness of swamps and forests. The maritime border, how ever (although its shores are wild and precipitous, reaching a height of from 400 to 600 feet, and on the north from 1000 to 1500 feet), is not without its value. The sea is here far less subject particular directions; the general colour being to fogs than it is in the neighbourhood of New-missionaries in the island of St Paul, on the It was first discovered by the Moravian foundland, where the warm waters of the Florida Stream meet the cold currents from the north; and as it is constantly supplied from the polar ice, its temperature is remarkably favourable both to the quantity and the quality of its fish. Of the entire population of L., 4000 are Esquimaux, who are settled on the gulfs and creeks of the coast, and who subsist chiefly by fishing. Many European establishments also have sprung up on the coast, some of them, such as the Moravian settlements, blending commercial pursuits with missionary labours. The principal missionary stations are Nain (founded 1771), Okak (1776), Hebron (1830), and Hopenthal (1782). The fisheries employ, in the season, nearly 1000 decked vessels, belonging partly to the British Provinces, principally Newfoundland, and partly to the United States. Besides a few furs and feathers, the exports consist of cod and salmon, with cod-oil coast of Labrador. It has been found in meteoric stones. LA'BRIDE, a family of osseous fishes, ranked by Cuvier in the order Acanthopterygii (q. v.), by Müller in his new order, Pharyngognathi (q. v.). They are divided by Müller into two families, Cteno-labrida and Cyclo-labrida, the former having ctenoid, the latter, cycloid scales; the former comparatively a small, the latter, a very numerous family. They are generally oval or oblong, and more or less compressed, with a single dorsal fin, spinous in front, and the jaws covered by fleshy lips. Their colours are generally brilliant. They abound chiefly in tropical seas, but twelve or thirteen species are found on the British coasts, none of them large, nor esteemed for food. The most valuable of the family is the Tautog (q. v.) of North LABRUYERE-LABYRINTH. America. To this family belong the Wrasses and the Parrot-fishes, one of which is the celebrated Scarus of the ancients. LABRUYERE, JEAN DE, a French author of celebrity, particularly noted for his nice and delicate delineations of character. He was born at Dourdan, in Normandy, in 1644 or 1646, was brought to the French court at the recommendation of Bossuet, and became one of the tutors of the Dauphin, whose education Fenelon superintended. He spent the whole remainder of his life at court, in the enjoy ment of a pension, and in the most intimate intercourse with the most accomplished men of his time. The work on which his high reputation rests, Les Caractères de Théophraste, traduits du Grec, avec les Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce Siècle (Par. 1687), has gone through many editions, some of them annotated, and has been translated into several languages. the Egyptian, the Cretan, and the Samian. The first, or Egyptian, of which the others seem to have been imitations, was situated at Crocodilopolis, close to the lake Maris, in the vicinity of the present Pyramid of Biakhmu. According to the classical Petesuchis, Tithoes, Imandes, Ismandes, Maindes, or authors, it was built by an Egyptian monarch named Mendes. The recent discovery of the remains of this building by Lepsius has, however, shewn that the city was founded by Amenemha I., of the twelfth Egyptian dynasty, about 1800 B. C., and that this monarch was probably buried in it, while the pyramid and south temple were erected by Amenemha III. and IV., whose prænomens resemble the name of Moris, and their sister, Sebeknefru or of the twelfth dynasty. Great confusion prevails Scemiophris, appears to have been the last sovereign in the ancient authorities as to the object of the building, which contained twelve palaces under one roof, supposed to have been inhabited by LABUA'N, a member of the Malayan Archi- the Dodecarchy, or twelve kings who conjointly pelago, lies about thirty miles off the north-west reigned over Egypt before Psammetichus I.; while, coast of Borneo. It measures ten miles by five, and according to other authorities, it was the place of the latitude and longitude of its centre are 5° 22′ N., assembly of the governors of the nomes or districts, and 115° 10' E. Small as it is, it is peculiarly twelve in number according to Herodotus, sixteen valuable. Besides possessing a good harbour, it according to Pliny, and twenty-seven according to contains an extensive bed of excellent coal, which is Strabo. It was built of polished stone, with many worked by a recently formed company of British chambers and passages, said to be vaulted, having capitalists; and having become, in 1846, a British a peristyle court with 3000 chambers, half of possession, it bids fair, as well from its political which were under the earth, and the others above connection as from its natural advantages, to be a ground, which formed another story. The upper nucleus of civilisation for the whole of the surround-chambers were decorated with reliefs; the lower ing islands. Already it has been erected into a see of the Church of England. LABURNUM [Cytisus (q. v.) Laburnum], a small tree, a native of the Alps and other mountains of the south of Europe, much planted in shrubberies and pleasure-grounds in Britain, on account of its glossy foliage and its large pendulous racemes of yellow flowers, which are produced in great abundance in May and June. It is often mixed with lilac, and when the latter preponderates, the combination has a fine effect. In favourable circumstances, L. sometimes attains a height of twenty, or even forty feet. It is very hardy, and nowhere flourishes better than in the north of Scotland. It is of rapid growth, yet its wood is hard, fine-grained, and very heavy, of a dark-brown or dark-green colour, and much valued for cabinet-work, inlaying, and turnery, and for making knife-handles, musical instruments, &c. The leaves, bark, &c., and particularly the seeds, are nauseous and poisonous, containing Cytisine, an emetic, purgative, and narcotic principle, which is also found in many allied plants. Accidents from L. seeds are not unfrequent to children; but to hares and rabbits, L. is wholesome food, and they are so fond of it, that the safety of other trees in a young plantation may be insured by introducing L. plants in great number, which spring again from the roots when eaten down.-A fine variety of L., called SCOTCH L., by some botanists regarded as a distinct species (C. Alpinus), is distinguished by broader leaves and darker yellow flowers, which are produced later in the season than those of the common or English laburnum. were plain, and contained, according to tradition, the bodies of the twelve founders of the building, and the mummies of the sacred crocodiles, conferring on the building the character of a mausoleum, probably conjoined with a temple, that of Sebak, the crocodile-god, and so resembling the Serapeium. Herodotus and Strabo both visited this edifice, which was difficult to pass through without the aid of a guide. It stood in the midst of a great square. rather arragonite-and of Syenitic granite pillars; Part was constructed of Parian marble-probably had a staircase of ninety steps, and columns of porphyry; and the opening of the doors echoed like the reverberation of thunder. For a long time, great doubt prevailed whether any remains of the building existed, and it was supposed to have been overwhelmed by the waters of the lake Moris; and although P. Lucas and Letronne thought they had discovered the site, its rediscovery is due to Lepsius, who found part of the foundations or lower chambers close to the site of the old Moris Lake, or modern Birket-el-Keroun. According to Pliny, it was 3600 years old in his days. The second, or next in renown to the Egyptian, was the labyrinth of Crete, supposed to have been built by Daedalus for the Cretan monarch Minos, in which the Minotaur was imprisoned by his orders. Although represented on the Cretan coins of Cnossus sometimes of a square, and at other times of a circular form, no remains of it were to be found even in times of antiquity, and its existence was supposed to be fabulous. The only mode of finding the way out of it was by means of a hank or skein of linen thread, which gave the clue to the dwelling of the Minotaur. The tradition is supposed to have LA'BYRINTH (a word of unknown origin, been based on the existence of certain natural derived by some from Labaris, the name of an caves or grottos, perhaps the remains of quarries, Egyptian monarch of the twelfth dynasty), the and it has been supposed to have existed northname of some celebrated buildings of antiquity, west of the island, near Cnossus, while a kind of consisting of many chambers or passages difficult to natural labyrinth still remains close to Gortyna. pass through without a guide, and the name hence The idea is supposed to have been derived from the applied to a confused mass of constructions. In Egyptian. the hieroglyphics, the word mera signifies a ‘labyrinth.' The principal labyrinths of antiquity were The third of the labyrinths of antiquity was the Samian, constructed by Theodorus and artists of LABYRINTHODON-LAC. his school, in the age of Polycrates (540 B. C.), supposed to be a work of nature embellished by art, having 150 columns erected by a clever mechanical contrivance. Other inferior labyrinths existed at Nauplia, at Sipontum in Italy, at Val d'Ispica in Sicily, and elsewhere; and the name of labyrinth was applied to the subterraneous chambers of the tomb of Porsena, supposed to be that now existing as the Poggio Gazella, near Chiusi. Labyrinths called mazes were at one time fashionable in gardening, being imitations, by hedges or borders, of the Cretan; the best known in modern times being the Maze at Hampton Court. Herodotus, ii. 148; Diodorus, i. 61, 97, iv. 60, 77; Pausanias, i. 27; Strabo, x. 477, xviii. 111; Plutarch, Theseus, 15; Pliny, N. H., xxvi. 19, 3, 83; Isidorus, Orig., xv. 2, 6; Höck, Creta, i. 447; Prokesch, Denkw., i. 606; Duc de Luynes, Annali, 1829, 364; Lepsius, Einleit., p. 268. LABYRINTHODON, a genus of gigantic sauroid batrachians, found in the New Red Sandstone measures of Great Britain and the continent. The remains of several species have been described, but all so fragmentary, that no certain restoration of the genus can yet be made. The head was triangular, Labyrinthodon Pachygnatus. having a crocodilian appearance both in the shape and in the external sculpturing of the cranial bones, but with well marked structural modifications in the vomer, and in the mode of attachment of the head to the atlas, that stamp it with a batrachian character, conspicuous above the more apparent Footprint and Rain-drops. saurian resemblances. The mouth was furnished with a series of remarkable teeth, numerous and small in the lateral rows, and with six great laniary teeth in front. The bases of the teeth were anchylosed to distinct shallow sockets. Externally, they were marked by a series of longitudinal grooves, which correspond to the inflected folds of the cement. The peculiar and characteristic internal structure of the teeth is very remarkable, and to it these fossils owe their generally accepted generic name of Labyrinthodon (labyrinth-tooth). The few and fragmentary bones of the body of the animal exhibit a combination of batrachian and crocodilian characters, leaning, however, on the whole, more to the first type. The restoration exhibited in the wood-cut is that suggested by Owen; it must be considered as to a large extent imaginary, owing to the imperfect materials for such a work. In the same deposits there have been long noticed the prints of feet, which so much resembled the form of the human hand, that Kaup, their original describer, gave the generic name of Cheirotherium to the great unknown animals which produced them. From the fore being much smaller than the hind foot, he considered that they were the impressions of a marsupial; but this relative difference in the feet exists also in the modern batrachians; and the discovery of the remains of so many huge animals belonging to this order, in these very strata, the different sizes of which answer to the different footprints, leave little doubt that the cheirotherian footprints were produced by labyrinthodont reptiles. LAC, in the East Indies, signifies a sum of 100,000 rupees. A lac of Company's Rupees is equal to £9270 sterling; a lac of Sicca Rupees, which in some places are also in very general use, is equal to £9898 sterling. One hundred lacs, or ten millions of rupees, make a Crore. LAC, the general name under which the various products of the lac. insect (Coccus lacca) are known. The curious hemipterous insect which yields these valuable contributions to commerce is in many respects like its congener the Cochineal Insect (Coccus cacti), but it also differs essentially from it: the males alone, and those only in their last stage of development, have wings, therefore the whole life of the creature is spent almost on the same spot. They live upon the twigs of trees, chiefly species of Butea, Ficus, and Croton, and soon entomb themselves in a mass of matter, which oozes from small punctures made in the twigs of the tree, and which thus furnishes them with both food and shelter. It is said that to each male there are at least 5000 females, and the winged males are at least twice as large as the females. When a colony, consisting of a few adult females and one or two males, find their way to a new branch, they attach themselves to the bark, and having pierced it with holes, through which they draw up the resinous juices upon which they feed, they become fixed or glued by the superfluous excretion, and after a time die, forming by their dead bodies little domes or tents over the myriads of minute eggs which they have laid. In a short time, the eggs burst into life, and the young, which are very minute, eat their way through the dead bodies of their parents, and swarm all over the twig or small young branch of the tree in such countless numbers as to give it the appearance of being covered with a blood-red dust. They soon spread to all parts of the tree where the bark is tender enough to afford them food, and generation after generation dwells upon the same twig until it is enveloped in a coating, often half an inch in thickness, of the resinous exudation, which is very cellular throughout, the cells being the casts of the bodies of the dead females. During their lifetime, they secrete a beautiful purple colouring matter, which does not perish with them, but LACCADIVES-LACE. remains shut up in the cells with the other results of decomposition. The small twigs, when well covered, are gathered by the natives, and are placed in hot water, which melts the resinous matter, liberates the pieces of wood and the remains of the insects, and also dissolves the colouring matter. This is facilitated by kneading the melted resin whilst in the hot water; it is then taken out and dried, and is afterwards put into strong and very coarse cotton bags, which are held near enough to charcoal fires to melt the resin without burning the bags. By twisting the bags, the melted resin is then forced through the fabric, and received in thin curtain-like films upon strips of wood. This hardens as its surface becomes acted upon by the air, and being broken off in fragments, constitutes the shell-lac of commerce. The best shell-lac is that which is most completely freed from impurities, and approaches most to a light orange brown colour. If the colouring matter has not been well washed out, the resin is often very dark, consequently, we find the following varieties in commerce-orange, garnet, and liver. Much that is squeezed through the bags falls to the ground without touching the sticks placed to catch it; small quantities falling form button-like drops, which constitute the button-lac; whilst larger ones, from an inch to two or three inches in diameter, constitute the plate-lac of commerce. That known as stick-lac is the twigs as they are gathered, but broken short for the convenience of packing. Below the lac-bearing trees there is always a very considerable quantity of the resin in small particles, which have been detached by the wind shaking and chafing the branches; this also is collected, and constitutes the seed-lac of our merchants. The water in which the stick-lac is first softened contains, as before mentioned, the colouring matter of the dead insect. This is strained and evaporated until the residue is a purple sediment, which, when sufficiently dried, is cut in small cakes, about two inches square, and stamped with certain trademarks, indicating its quality. These are then fully dried, and packed for sale as lac-dye, of which large quantities are used in the production of scarlet cloth, such as that worn by our soldiers; for this purpose, lac-dye is found very suitable. The lac insect is a native of Siam, Assam, Burmah, Bengal, and Malabar; the lacs and lac-dye come chiefly from Bombay, Pegu, and Siam. During the last two or three years, the average imports into Britain have amounted to about 610 tons of the lac-dye, and 1120 tons of lac, including the varieties of shell, stick, and seed lac. As we have no strictly analogous resin from the vegetable kingdom, not even from the lac-bearing trees, it may be assumed that the juices of the trees are somewhat altered by the insects. The best analyses shew that shell-lac contains several peculiar resins. The great value of the lacs is found in their adaptability for the manufacture of varnishes, both in consequence of their easy solubility, and also because of the fine hard coating, susceptible of high polish, which they give when dry. The well-known 'French polish' is little more than shell-lac dissolved in alcohol; and a fine thin varnish made of this material constitutes the lacquer with which brass and other metals are coated, to preserve their polish from atmospheric action. All the varieties of lac are translucent, and some of the finer kinds, which are in flakes not much thicker than writing-paper, are quite transparent, and all, as before stated, are coloured various shades of brown, from orange to liver. Nevertheless, if a quantity of shell-lac be softened by heat, it may, | by continually drawing it out into lengths, and twisting it, be made not only quite white, but also opaque; in this state it has a beautiful silky lustre ; and if melted and mixed with vermilion, or any other colouring matter, it forms some of the fancy kinds of sealing-wax: the more usual kinds are, however, made by merely melting shell-lac with a little turpentine and camphor, and mixing the colouring matter. Shell-lac has the property of being less brittle after the first melting than after subsequent meltings; hence the sealing-wax manufactured in India has always had a high reputation, and hence also the extreme beauty and durability of those Chinese works of art in lac, some of which are very ancient. These are usually chow-chow boxes, tea-basins, or other small objects made in wood or metal, and covered over with a crust of lac, coloured with vermilion, which, whilst soft, is moulded into beautiful patterns. So rare and beautiful are some of these works, that even in China they cost almost fabulous prices. They LA'CCADIVES (called by the natives Lakarain the Arabian Sea, discovered by Vasco de Gama Divh, i. e., the Lakara Islands), a group of islands in 1499, lie about 150 miles to the west of the Malabar coast of the peninsula of Hindustan. extend in N. lat. between 10° and 12°, and in E. long. between 72° and 74°, and are 17 in number. with deep water immediately round them, and are Being of coral formation, they are generally low, therefore all the more dangerous to navigators. sweet potatoes, and cattle of a small breed. The Pop. 7000; chief productions cocoa, rice, betel-nuts, inhabitants, who are called Moplays, are of Arabian origin, and in religion follow a sort of Mohammedanism. They pay tribute, said to be about £1000 a year, to the district of Cananore, in the presidency of Madras. LACE, an ornamental fabric of linen, cotton, or silk thread, made either by the hands, somewhat after the manner of embroidery, or with machinery. The manufacture of lace by hand is an operation of exceeding nicety, and requires both skill and patience of no ordinary kind, and the best productions of this fabric surpass all other applications of textile materials in costliness and beauty. Whether the ancients really had any knowledge of lace-making, excepting gold-lace, which will be mentioned at the end of this article, is not known, nor is it known with any certainty when this art came into practice in Europe; but there is good reason to suppose that point-lace, the oldest variety known, was the work of nuns during the latter half of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries. This point-lace is very characteristic, and is truly an art production. The artistic character of the patterns, and the wonderful patience and labour shewn in carrying them out, places them, as female productions, on a parallel with the decorative works in stone, wood, and metal of the monks. They indicate no tiresome efforts to copy natural objects, but masterly conceptions of graceful forms and tasteful combinations. The actual figures of the pattern were cut out of linen, and over these foundationpieces, as they may be called, the actual lace-work was wrought by the needle, with thread of marvellous fineness, and with such consummate art, that the material of the foundation is quite undiscoverable under the fairy-like web which has been woven over it. These portions of the fabric were then joined together by connecting threads, each of which, like the broader parts, consists of a foundation, and lace-work covering; the former being a mere thread, often of exceedingly fine yarn; the latter being a sort of loop-work like the modern |