In India the ware known as Lahore lacquer is made in many parts of the Peninsula, but that of Lahore is thought to be more varied in color and more artistic. A material closely resembling sealing-wax is the substance employed, and, as lac in the proper sense of the word is prepared in many parts of India, it is probable that the decorative lacquers are of the same material. It has no relation at all to the ware of China and Japan. Much of the so-called lacquer is, like that of Persia, nothing more elaborate than a highly varnished painting on paper. The ground of this ware, both in Northern India and in Persia, is generally paper; that is to say, a stiff paper board, not unlike papier-maché. In Burma a very beautiful lacquer is made, celebrated for its elasticity, but it has no pretension to such artistic dignity or artistic range as the Japanese ware. The attempt which was made in eighteenth-century furniture to imitate the exquisite polish of the Japanese lacquer-work was not entirely successful. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Consult Kurokana, "The Development of Gold Lacquer Work in Japan," in The Far East for November 29, 1897; Audsley, Ornamental Arts of Japan (London, 1885), contains an interesting detailed description of Japanese lacquer-work. tion, and interested himself specially in education. His principal works are a volume of verse, entitled Les cloches (1841); Dona Carmen (1844); Nocturnes (1846); Contes de la méridienne (1859); La poste aux chevaux (1861); Lamartine et ses amis (1878); and the three-act play Fais ce que dois (1856), in collaboration with M. Decourcelle, which was produced at the Théâtre Français. He was the friend of Lamartine and the promoter of the George Sand Memorial (1876). LACRETELLE, PIERRE LOUIS DE, called l'Aîné (1751-1824). A French lawyer, politician, and publicist, born in Metz. He studied law at Nancy, and later he came to Paris, where his journalistic writings attracted the attention and friendship of such men as D'Alembert, Condorcet, Turgot, Malesherbes, and others. His essays Eloge de Montausier (1781) and Discours sur le préjugé des peines infamantes (1784) were widely discussed. During the Revolution he was a member of the Assembly, and was one of the chief advocates of the Constitution of 1791. He took little part in politics under Napoleon's administration, but after the Restoration joined the party of opposition, and was part editor, with Constant, of the Minerve Française, later suppressed. His works include: De l'établissement des connaissances humaines et de l'instruction publique dans la constitution française (1791); Idée sommaire d'un grand travail sur la nécessité, l'objet et les avantages de l'instruction (1800); Mélanges de philosophie et de littérature (1802-07); and Fragments politiques et littéraires (1817). LACRETELLE, lå'kr'-těl', JEAN CHARLES DOMINIQUE DE, called le Jeune (1766-1855). A French historian and publicist, born in Metz, the brother of Pierre Louis de Lacretelle. He was educated for the bar at Nancy, and went to Paris in 1787, where he wrote for the Encyclopédie méthodique and the Journal des Débats, for which he reported the sessions of the AssemLACROIX, lå'krwä', FRANÇOIS, Viscount bly. In 1790 he became secretary to the Duke (1774-1842). A French general, born at Aymarof La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, whom he assisted ques and educated at Montpellier. He saw active in promoting the King's attempted escape. Af service when very young, won a victory over the terwards he joined the army, and was one of Austrians at Friedberg (1796), and was a brigathe most prominent of the 'Jeunesse dorée' (q.v.). dier-general when but twenty-seven years old. On account of his Royalist sympathies he was Since he could look for no promotion under imprisoned for about two years (1797-99). Bonaparte, who bore him enmity as a friend During this term he completed Rabaut Saint- of Macdonald and Moreau, Lacroix sailed for Etienne's Précis de l'histoire de la Révolution Santo Domingo (1802), where he upheld the (1801-06). In 1809 he was made professor of French standard, was created major-general, and history at the University of Paris, a post he won the good will of the negroes, who helped held until 1848. He was twice censor of the him in his strife with the revolutionaries under press-in 1810 under Napoleon and in 1814 under Christophe. On his return to Europe he took Louis XVIII-and was made a member of the part in the Belgian campaign during the Hundred Academy in 1811. As an historian he is not suf- Days, and in 1820 received command of the ficiently critical or impartial, but his works con- division which arrested the Grenoble insurrectain much that is interesting, from the personal tion, while in 1823 he joined the Spanish expedipart he played in the events he describes. They tion, but retired the following year. He published cover the period of the Revolution very thor- an important work, Mémoires pour servir à l'hisoughly, and include the following: Histoire de toire de la révolution de Saint Dominique (2 France pendant le XVIIIième siècle (1808); His vols., 1810-20). toire de France pendant les guerres de religion (1814-16); L'histoire de l'assemblée constituante (1821); L'assemblée législative (1824); La convention nationale (1824-25); Histoire de France depuis la Restauration (1829-35); Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire (1846); Dix années d'épreuves pendant la Révolution (1842); and Testament philosophique et littéraire (1840). LACROIX, JEAN BAPTISTE MARIE ALBERT (1834-). A Belgian author and editor, born in Brussels. He took a law course at the university of that city, and became known through his prize essay, Influence de Shakespeare sur le In order to publish théâtre français (1855). the works of his friends, socialist refugees from France, he set up a small printing establishLACRETELLE, HENRI DE (1815-). A ment, and it was his enterprise that started the French politician and writer, son of the preced- international library of Brussels, forerunner of ing, born in Paris. He was elected Deputy those in Paris, Leipzig, and Louvain. He pubfor Saône-et-Loire in the National Assemblies lished editions of Les misérables (1862) and of 1871, 1876, 1877, and every succeeding other works of Victor Hugo, of Quinet, Louis four years up to 1893; belonged to the Blanc, Michelet, and Charras. He got himLeft Radical Party, opposed the Broglio fac- self into trouble in Paris for his production of ed. 1816); Traité élémentaire du calcul des probabilités (1816; 4th ed. 1864; German ed. 1818); Cours des mathématiques (9 vols., 17971816). proscribed literature, and Bougeart's Marat brought him one month's imprisonment, while Proudhoun's Evangiles caused his confinement for a year (1866). He rendered important service to French-speaking Europeans by his editions of Gervinus, Mommsen, Grote, Prescott, Bancroft, Washington Irving, and others, while with Jot-seat of La Crosse County, Wis., 198 miles by rail trand he translated Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic. LACROIX, JULES (1809-87). A French author and dramatist, brother of Paul Lacroix, born in Paris. He wrote a number of novels, including Fleur à vendre (1835), and Un grand d'Espagne (1845); Pervenches (1834), sonnets; translations of Juvenal and Horace; and plays, which include Le testament de César (1849); Valéria (1851), with Maquet; La Fronde (1855), an opera with Maquet, music by Niedermayer; Macbeth (1863) and King Lear (1888), translations; La jeunesse de Louis XI. (1859); and Edipe roi (1858), translated from Sophocles, which was crowned by the Academy, and still keeps its place on the French stage. LACROIX, PAUL (1806-84). A French author, known by his nom-de-plume, 'Bibliophile Jacob.' He was born in Paris, was educated there in the Bourbon College, and at the age of eighteen brought out an edition of Clément Marot's Œuvres complètes, in three volumes. This was the beginning of his tremendous literary activity, exhibited in the improvement of public libraries, the making of catalogues, and the production of such works as: Costumes historiques de la France (10 vols., 1852); Les arts au moyen âge et à l'époque de la renaissance (1868); Mœurs, usages tumes au moyen âge (1871); and La vie militaire et la vie religieuse au moyen âge (1872). et COS In 1854 he became editor of the Revue Universelle des Arts, and the following year was made also curator of the Arsenal Library. Famous as an historical romancer and specialist in the lore of the Middle Ages, Lacroix was likewise a noted translator, bibliographer, editor, and collaborator with Henri Martin in the history of France and his Histoire de Soissons (1837-38), and with Ferdinand Séré in Le moyen âge et la renaissance (1847-52). An edition of his essays was published in 1867, in three volumes, called respectively Enigmes et découvertes, Mélanges, and Dissertations bibliographiques. (1765 LACROIX, SYLVESTRE FRANÇOIS 1843). A French mathematician, born in Paris. At the age of sixteen he was teacher of mathematics at the naval school at Rochefort; he was afterwards teacher in the military school at Paris (1787), professor in the artillery school at Besançon (1788), and examiner of the artillery officers (1793). He was made adjunct professor of descriptive geometry in the Ecole Normale in 1794, and later became professor of mathematics at the Ecole Centrale des QuatreNations. He held the chair of analysis in the Polytechnic School (1799), going from there to the Sorbonne and the Collège de France (1815). He was not a discoverer, but he composed some excellent text-books. His chief works are: Traité du calcul différentiel et du calcul intégral (2 vols., 1797; 7th ed. 1867; German ed., 3 vols., 1830-31); Traité des différences et des séries (3 vols., 1800; 2d ed. 1810-19); Essais sur l'enseignement en général et sur mathématiques en particulier (2d LA CROSSE, là kros'. A city and the countyof the La Crosse and Black rivers with the Miswest-northwest of Milwaukee; at the confluence sissippi, and on the Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul, the Chicago and Northwestern, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, and the Green Bay, and Western railroads (Map: Wisconsin, B 5). It is the centre of a great dairy region, is an important tobacco market, and has a large wholesale trade; and is noted for its manufactures, which include sash, doors and blinds, boots and shoes, plows and other agricultural implements, boilers and heavy machinery, stoves, threshing-machines, carriages, rubber goods, crackers, knit goods, candies, flour, woolen goods, tanned leather, beer and ale, cooperage products, bed-springs, mattresses, brooms, cigars, etc. The lumber mills, formerly very extensive, had all closed by 1906. The city ships also considerable quantities of seeds. La Crosse has a public library with over 20,000 volumes, a fine city hall, court-house, post-office, high school, State normal school, hotel, county jail, opera-house, wagon bridge across the Mississippi River, and Lake and Pettibone parks, the latter on an island in the Mississippi River. First permanently settled in 1841, La Crosse was incorporated as a city in 1856, its present government being administered, under a revised charter of 1891, by a mayor, elected every two years, and a unicameral council, which elects the health officer, board of education, weighmaster, city attorney, and assessors. Other officials are chosen by popular elecThe city owns and operates its waterworks. Population, 1900, 28,895; 1905, 29,079. LACROSSE. An American outdoor game played with a small ball and a hooked stick fitted with a loose net. It undoubtedly originated among the North American Indians, and was widely played by them. It was frequently of a ceremonial nature, in the preparation of the young men of a tribe for the war-path. The general character of the game was the same among all the tribes, with various minor differences, especially in the size and shape of the stick, or crosse. The original ball was of hide stuffed with hair, of bark, or of the knot of a tree. The goals were often any convenient rocks or trees; but at grand matches a single pole or two-pole goal was used, situated from 500 yards to half a mile or more apart, the ball to pass the line, strike the pole, or pass between two poles, according to local custom. The Choctaws (according to Catlin) used two poles 25 feet high and 6 feet apart, with a cross-bar, suggestive of the football goal. tion. hours. Games lasted for The players, who were put through a long course of training, were as a rule almost nude, and often decorated with paint and feathers, old medicine men usually acting as umpires. Catlin saw the game played by from 600 to 1000 at a time, and described the Olympic beauty of the contest as beyond all praise. The night before an important game a ceremonial dance occurred. MODERN LACROSSE. The name lacrosse was given to the game by the French explorers, from the crosse or crooked stick with which it is played. It was taken up by white men about 1840, when a club in Montreal was formed. About 1860 the game became popular in Canada, and in 1861 a notable game between the Montreal and Beaver clubs, and the Caughnawága and Saint Regis Indians-twenty-five players a side was played before King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales. In 1867 practical rules were formulated by Dr. W. G. Beers, the father of modern lacrosse, and in the same year the National Lacrosse Association of Canada was formed. A club was formed in Glasgow, Scotland (1867), by a Canadian player, and an Indian team was taken to England and France, where exhibition games were played. A second club was formed in London. Lacrosse was for a long time not much played in England, but it is now very popular there. There are five lacrosse associations in Canada, and the game has been developed by club and college players to a high point of excellence. Lacrosse was introduced into the United States in the early seventies. The Crescent Athletic Club of New York is the only team of worth in the United States outside of the colleges, many of which have teams. THE GAME. The crosse is a light stick 5 or 6 feet long, crooked at the end so as to allow a loose network of cat-gut or deerskin to be stretched across-not so tightly as in a tennis racquet, nor so loosely as to form a bag. The ball, 2% inches in diameter, is now made of india-rubber. The fundamental principle of the game is to drive the ball through the opponent's goal, while defending one's own goal from a similar attack. There are usually twelve players on each side, and the ball is put in play by being placed on the exact centre of the field, after which the two centres stoop down and place the backs of their crosses on either side of the ball, and at the word 'play' the crosses are drawn in toward the holders of them. The ball comes to one or the other. The players of the opposing teams at once begin a struggle for the mastery of the ball. When scooped up from the ground it is carried horizontally on the crosse, the player running toward one of the goals and endeavoring to elude his antagonists, being helped on by his own team. If it seems prudent, he pitches the ball off his crosse toward a colleague who may be in a better position to convey it toward the goal. The ball is not touched by the hand. The player with the ball, skillfully dodging his opponents, may succeed in shooting it between the goal-posts, thus scoring a goal; or the ball thus thrown may be intercepted and returned by the goalkeeper, when the play continues as before. The game is divided into two halves of half an hour, but the teams change sides after each goal is made, the ball being again put in play in the centre of the field. The side scoring the most goals during the game is the winner. Lacrosse is essentially a game of combination. Individual or 'star' play is usually fatal to success, and among the best clubs a selfish player is regarded as preferable only to a blind one. Consult: Beers, Lacrosse, the National Game of Canada (New York, 1869); Lacrosse, in Spaulding's "Library of Sports" (New York); Sachs, Lacrosse for Beginners (London); Melland, Hints on Lacrosse (Manchester, England). LACTANTIUS, lăk-tăn'shi-us. In several MSS. designated LUCIUS CELIUS, or CECILIUS FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS, an eminent Christian author, who flourished in the third and fourth centuries. He was perhaps of Italian descent, but studied at Sicca, in Africa, under the rhetorician Arnobius, and in A.D. 301 settled as a teacher of rhetoric in Nicomedia. He was invited to Gaul by Constantine the Great (A.D. 312-18), to act as tutor to his son Crispus, and is supposed to have died at Treves about 325 or 330. Lactantius's principal work is his Divinarum Institutionum Libri VII., a production of both a polemical and an apologetic character. He was an ardent Christian, and a bitter opponent of the paganism in which he had been brought up; but his tendencies were toward Manicheism and certain views held as unorthodox by the Church. Among his other writings are treatises, De Ira Dei and De Mortibus Persecutorum. Some elegies have also been ascribed to him, but erroneously. His style is remarkable, and has deservedly earned for him the title of the Christian Cicero. He was, besides, a man of very considerable learning, but as he appears not to have become a Christian till he was advanced in years, his religious opinions are often very crude and singular. Lactantius was a great favorite during the Middle Ages. The editio princeps of this writer is one of the oldest extant speciHis of typography (Subiaco, 1465). works are published in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vols. vi. and vii. (Paris, 1844), and Laubmann and Brandt, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna, 1890). There is an English translation by Fletcher in the series of the AnteNicene Fathers (1896), vol. vii. mens LACTATES. See LACTIC ACID. lac, Gk. yáλa, gala, milk), or LACTEAL (from Lat. lacteus, milky, from CHYLIFEROUS the small intestine, which absorb or take up the VESSEL. One of the lymphatic (q.v.) vessels of chyle. They were discovered in 1622 by Aselli (q.v.), and received their name from conveying the milk-like product of digestion, the chyle (q.v.), during the digestive process, to the thoracic duct (q.v.), by which it is transmitted to the blood. These vessels commence in the intestinal villi, and, passing between the layers of the mesentery (q.v.), enter the mesenteric glands and finally unite to form two or three large trunks, which terminate in the thoracic duct. LACTIC (from Lat. lac, milk) ACID. A name applied to several organic acids having the composition corresponding to the formula (1) Ordinary lactic acid, or ethylidene lactic acid, CH,CH (OH) COOH, is a characteristic constituent of sour milk, in which it was discovered by Scheele in 1780. It is formed, in general, whenever sugar or starch undergoes lactic fermentation in the presence of decaying nitrogenous matter, or when sugar is heated with alkalies. It is found in the stomach and intestines, as well as in the brain and in muscles. It may be readily prepared by keeping a mixture of cane-sugar solution and sour milk to which a little decaying cheese and some chalk have been added, for two weeks at a temperature of about 40° C. (104° F.). The transformation is caused by the activity of the so-called lactic ferment (Bacillus lacticus Hueppe), and > |