1Tusser, in his verse for the month of March, writes:—“Now leckes are in season, for pottage ful good,And spareth the milck cow, and purgeth the blood,These hauving with peason, for pottage in Lent,Thou spareth both otemel and bread to be spent.”
1Tusser, in his verse for the month of March, writes:—
“Now leckes are in season, for pottage ful good,And spareth the milck cow, and purgeth the blood,These hauving with peason, for pottage in Lent,Thou spareth both otemel and bread to be spent.”
“Now leckes are in season, for pottage ful good,
And spareth the milck cow, and purgeth the blood,
These hauving with peason, for pottage in Lent,
Thou spareth both otemel and bread to be spent.”
LEER,a town and river port in the Prussian province of Hanover, lying in a fertile plain on the right bank of the Leda near its confluence with the Ems, and at the junction of railways to Bremen, Emden and Münster. Pop. (1905) 12,347. The streets are broad, well paved, and adorned with many elegant buildings, among which are Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist churches, and a new town hall with a tower 165 ft. high. Among its educational establishments are a classical school and a school of navigation. Linen and woollen fabrics, hosiery, paper, cigars, soap, vinegar and earthenware are manufactured, and there are iron-foundries, distilleries, tanneries and shipbuilding yards. Many markets for horses and cattle are held. The transit trade from the regions traversed by the Westphalian and Oldenburg railways is considerable. The principal exports are cattle, horses, cheese, butter, honey, wax, flour, paper, hardware and Westphalian coal. Leer is one of the principal ports for steamboat communication with the North Sea watering-places of Borkum and Norderney. Leer is a very old place, although it only obtained municipal privileges in 1823. Near the town is the Plitenberg, formerly a heathen place of sacrifice.
LEEUWARDEN,the capital of the province of Friesland, Holland, on the canal between Harlingen and Groningen, 33 m. by rail W. of Groningen. Pop (1901) 32,203. It is one of the most prosperous towns in the country. To the name of the Frisian Hague, it is entitled as well by similarity of history as by similarity of appearance. As the Hague grew up round the court of the counts of Holland, so Leeuwarden round thecourt of the Frisian stadtholders; and, like the Hague, it is an exceptionally clean and attractive town, with parks, pleasure grounds, and drives. The old gates have been somewhat ruthlessly cleared away, and the site of the town walls on the north and west competes with the park called the Prince’s Garden as a public pleasure ground. The Prince’s Garden was originally laid out by William Frederick of Nassau in 1648, and was presented to the town by King William I. in 1819. The royal palace, which was the seat of the Frisian court from 1603 to 1747, is now the residence of the royal commissioner for Friesland. It was restored in 1816 and contains a portrait gallery of the Frisian stadtholders. The fine mansion called the Kanselary was begun in 1502 as a residence for the chancellor of George of Saxony (1539), governor of Friesland, but was only completed in 1571 and served as a court house until 1811. It was restored at the end of the 19th century to contain the important provincial library and national archives. Other noteworthy buildings are the picturesque weigh-house (1595), the town hall (1715), the provincial courts (1850), and the great church of St Jacob, once the church of the Jacobins, and the largest monastic church in the Netherlands. The splendid tombs of the Frisian stadtholders buried here (Louis of Nassau, Anne of Orange, and others) were destroyed in the revolution 1795. The unfinished tower of Oldehove dates from 1529-1532. The museum of the Frisian Society is of modern foundation and contains a collection of provincial antiquities, including two rooms from Hindeloopen, an ancient village of Friesland, some 16th- and 17th-century portraits, some Frisian works in silver of the 17th and 18th centuries, and a collection of porcelain and faience.
Leeuwarden is the centre of a flourishing trade, being easily accessible from all parts of the province by road, rail and canal. The chief business is in stock of every kind, dairy and agricultural produce and fresh-water fish, a large quantity of which is exported to France. The industries include boat-building and timber yards, iron-foundries, copper and lead works, furniture, organ, tobacco and other factories, and the manufacture of gold and silver wares. The town is first mentioned in documents of the 13th century.
LEEUWENHOEK,orLeuwenhoek,ANTHONY VAN(1632-1723), Dutch microscopist, was born at Delft on the 24th of October 1632. For a short time he was in a merchant’s office in Amsterdam, but early devoted himself to the manufacture of microscopes and to the study of the minute structure of organized bodies by their aid. He appears soon to have found that single lenses of very short focus were preferable to the compound microscopes then in use; and it is clear from the discoveries he made with these that they must have been of very excellent quality. His discoveries were for the most part made public in thePhilosophical Transactionsof the Royal Society, to the notice of which body he was introduced by R. de Graaf in 1673, and of which he was elected a fellow in 1680. He was chosen a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1697. He died at his native place on the 26th of August 1723. Though his researches were not conducted on any definite scientific plan, his powers of careful observation enabled him to make many interesting discoveries in the minute anatomy of man, the higher animals and insects. He confirmed and extended M. Malpighi’s demonstration of the blood capillaries in 1668, and six years later he gave the first accurate description of the red blood corpuscles, which he found to be circular in man but oval in frogs and fishes. In 1677 he described and illustrated the spermatozoa in dogs and other animals, though in this discovery Stephen Hamm had anticipated him by a few months; and he investigated the structure of the teeth, crystalline lens, muscle, &c. In 1680 he noticed that yeast consists of minute globular particles, and he described the different structure of the stem in monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants.
His researches in the life-history of various of the lower forms of animal life were in opposition to the doctrine that they could be “produced spontaneously, or bred from corruption.” Thus he showed that the weevils of granaries, in his time commonly supposed to be bredfromwheat, as well asinit, are grubs hatched from eggs deposited by winged insects. His chapter on the flea, in which he not only describes its structure, but traces out the whole history of its metamorphoses from its first emergence from the egg, is full of interest—not so much for the exactness of his observations, as for its incidental revelation of the extraordinary ignorance then prevalent in regard to the origin and propagation of “this minute and despised creature,” which some asserted to be produced from sand, others from dust, others from the dung of pigeons, and others from urine, but which he showed to be “endowed with as great perfection in its kind as any large animal,” and proved to breed in the regular way of winged insects. He even noted the fact that the pupa of the flea is sometimes attacked and fed upon by a mite—an observation which suggested the well known lines of Swift. His attention having been drawn to the blighting of the young shoots of fruit-trees, which was commonly attributed to the ants found upon them, he was the first to find theAphidesthat really do the mischief; and, upon searching into the history of their generation, he observed the young within the bodies of their parents. He carefully studied also the history of the ant and was the first to show that what had been commonly reputed to be “ants’ eggs” are really their pupae, containing the perfect insect nearly ready for emersion, whilst the true eggs are far smaller, and give origin to “maggots” or larvae. Of the sea-mussel, again, and other shell-fish, he argued (in reply to a then recent defence of Aristotle’s doctrine by F. Buonanni, a learned Jesuit of Rome) that they are not generated out of the mud or sand found on the seashore or the beds of rivers at low water, but from spawn, by the regular course of generation; and he maintained the same to be true of the fresh-water mussel (Unio), whose ova he examined so carefully that he saw in them the rotation of the embryo, a phenomenon supposed to have been first discovered long afterwards. In the same spirit he investigated the generation of eels, which were at that time supposed, not only by the ignorant vulgar, but by “respectable and learned men,” to be produced from dew without the ordinary process of generation. Not only was he the first discoverer of the rotifers, but he showed “how wonderfully nature has provided for the preservation of their species,” by their tolerance of the drying-up of the water they inhabit, and the resistance afforded to the evaporation of the fluids of their bodies by the impermeability of the casing in which they then become enclosed. “We can now easily conceive,” he says, “that in all rain-water which is collected from gutters in cisterns, and in all waters exposed to the air, animalcules may be found; for they may be carried thither by the particles of dust blown about by the winds.”Leeuwenhoek’s contributions to thePhilosophical Transactionsamounted to one hundred and twelve; he also published twenty-six papers in theMemoirs of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Two collections of his works appeared during his life, one in Dutch (Leiden and Delft, 1685-1718), and the other in Latin (Opera omnia s. Arcana naturae ope exactissimorum microscopiorum selecta, Leiden, 1715-1722); and a selection from them was translated by S. Hoole and published in English (London,1781-1798).
His researches in the life-history of various of the lower forms of animal life were in opposition to the doctrine that they could be “produced spontaneously, or bred from corruption.” Thus he showed that the weevils of granaries, in his time commonly supposed to be bredfromwheat, as well asinit, are grubs hatched from eggs deposited by winged insects. His chapter on the flea, in which he not only describes its structure, but traces out the whole history of its metamorphoses from its first emergence from the egg, is full of interest—not so much for the exactness of his observations, as for its incidental revelation of the extraordinary ignorance then prevalent in regard to the origin and propagation of “this minute and despised creature,” which some asserted to be produced from sand, others from dust, others from the dung of pigeons, and others from urine, but which he showed to be “endowed with as great perfection in its kind as any large animal,” and proved to breed in the regular way of winged insects. He even noted the fact that the pupa of the flea is sometimes attacked and fed upon by a mite—an observation which suggested the well known lines of Swift. His attention having been drawn to the blighting of the young shoots of fruit-trees, which was commonly attributed to the ants found upon them, he was the first to find theAphidesthat really do the mischief; and, upon searching into the history of their generation, he observed the young within the bodies of their parents. He carefully studied also the history of the ant and was the first to show that what had been commonly reputed to be “ants’ eggs” are really their pupae, containing the perfect insect nearly ready for emersion, whilst the true eggs are far smaller, and give origin to “maggots” or larvae. Of the sea-mussel, again, and other shell-fish, he argued (in reply to a then recent defence of Aristotle’s doctrine by F. Buonanni, a learned Jesuit of Rome) that they are not generated out of the mud or sand found on the seashore or the beds of rivers at low water, but from spawn, by the regular course of generation; and he maintained the same to be true of the fresh-water mussel (Unio), whose ova he examined so carefully that he saw in them the rotation of the embryo, a phenomenon supposed to have been first discovered long afterwards. In the same spirit he investigated the generation of eels, which were at that time supposed, not only by the ignorant vulgar, but by “respectable and learned men,” to be produced from dew without the ordinary process of generation. Not only was he the first discoverer of the rotifers, but he showed “how wonderfully nature has provided for the preservation of their species,” by their tolerance of the drying-up of the water they inhabit, and the resistance afforded to the evaporation of the fluids of their bodies by the impermeability of the casing in which they then become enclosed. “We can now easily conceive,” he says, “that in all rain-water which is collected from gutters in cisterns, and in all waters exposed to the air, animalcules may be found; for they may be carried thither by the particles of dust blown about by the winds.”
Leeuwenhoek’s contributions to thePhilosophical Transactionsamounted to one hundred and twelve; he also published twenty-six papers in theMemoirs of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Two collections of his works appeared during his life, one in Dutch (Leiden and Delft, 1685-1718), and the other in Latin (Opera omnia s. Arcana naturae ope exactissimorum microscopiorum selecta, Leiden, 1715-1722); and a selection from them was translated by S. Hoole and published in English (London,1781-1798).
LEEWARD ISLANDS,a group in the West Indies. They derive their name from being less exposed to the prevailing N.E. trade wind than the adjacent Windward Islands. They are the most northerly of the Lesser Antilles, and form a curved chain stretching S.W. from Puerto Rico to meet St Lucia, the most northerly of the Windward Islands. They consist of the Virgin Islands, with St Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique and their various dependencies. The Virgin Islands are owned by Great Britain and Denmark, Holland having St Eustatius, with Saba, and part of St Martin. France possesses Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Bartholomew and the remainder of St Martin. The rest of the islands are British, and (with the exception of Sombrero, a small island used only as a lighthouse-station) form, under one governor, a colony divided into five presidencies, namely: Antigua (with Barbuda and Redonda), St Kitts (with Nevis and Anguilla), Dominica, Montserrat and the Virgin Islands. Total pop. (1901) 127,536. There is one federal executive council nominated by the crown, and one federal legislative council—ten nominated and ten elected members. Of the latter, four are chosen by the unofficial members of the local legislative council of Antigua, two by those of Dominica, and four by the non-official members of the local legislative council of St Kitts-Nevis. The federal legislative council meets once annually, usually at St John, Antigua.
LE FANU, JOSEPH SHERIDAN(1814-1873), Irish journalist and author, was born of an old Huguenot family at Dublin on the 28th of August 1814. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1833. At an early age he had given proof of literary talent, and in 1837 he joined the staff of theDublin University Magazine, of which he became later editor and proprietor. In 1837 he produced the Irish balladPhaudhrig Croohore, which wasshortly afterwards followed by a second,Shamus O’Brien, successfully recited in the United States by Samuel Lover. In 1839 he became proprietor of theWarder, a Dublin newspaper, and, after purchasing theEvening Packetand a large interest in theDublin Evening Mail, he combined the three papers under the title theEvening Mail, a weekly reprint from which was issued as theWarder. After the death of his wife in 1858 he lived in retirement, and his best work was produced at this period of his life. He wrote some clever novels, of a sensational order, in which his vigorous imagination and his Irish love of the supernatural have full play. He died in Dublin on the 7th of February 1873. His best-known novels areThe House by the Churchyard(1863) andUncle Silas, a Tale of Bartram Haugh(1864).The Purcell Papers, Irish stories dating from his college days, were edited with a memoir of the author by A. P. Graves in 1880.
LEFEBVRE, PIERRE FRANÇOIS JOSEPH,duke of Danzig (1755-1820), marshal of France, was born at Rouffach in Alsace on the 20th of October 1755. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was a sergeant in the Gardes françaises, and with many of his comrades of this regiment took the popular side. He distinguished himself by bravery and humanity in many of the street fights in Paris, and becoming an officer and again distinguishing himself—this time against foreign invaders—he was made a general of division in 1794. He took part in the Revolutionary Wars from Fleurus to Stokach, always resolute, strictly obedient and calm. At Stokach (1799) he received a severe wound and had to return to France, where he assisted Napoleon during thecoup d’étatof 18 Brumaire. He was one of the first generals of division to be made marshal at the beginning of the First Empire. He commanded the guard infantry at Jena, conducted the siege of Danzig 1806-1807 (from which town he received his title in 1808), commanded a corps in the emperor’s campaign of 1808-1809 in Spain, and in 1809 was given the difficult task of commanding the Bavarian contingent, which he led in the containing engagements of Abensberg and Rohr and at the battle of Eckmühl. He commanded the Imperial Guard in Russia, 1812, fought through the last campaign of the Empire, and won fresh glory at Montmirail, Areis-sur-Aube and Champaubert. He was made a peer of France by Louis XVIII. but joined Napoleon during the Hundred Days, and was only amnestied and permitted to resume his seat in the upper chamber in 1819. He died at Paris on the 14th of September 1820. Marshal Lefebvre was a simple soldier, whose qualifications for high rank, great as they were, came from experience and not from native genius. He was incapable of exercising a supreme command, even of leading an important detachment, but he was absolutely trustworthy as a subordinate, as brave as he was experienced, and intensely loyal to his chief. He maintained to the end of his life a rustic simplicity of speech and demeanour. Of his wife (formerly ablanchisseuseto the Gardes Françaises) many stories have been told, but in so far as they are to her discredit they seem to be false, she being, like the marshal, a plain “child of the people.”