[1] Tusser, 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."
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 the
court 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, or LEUWENHOEK, 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 the _Philosophical Transactions_ of 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 bred
_from_ wheat, as well as _in_ it, 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 the _Aphides_ that 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 the _Philosophical Transactions_
amounted to one hundred and twelve; he also published twenty-six
papers in the _Memoirs 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 the _Dublin
University Magazine_, of which he became later editor and proprietor. In
1837 he produced the Irish ballad _Phaudhrig Croohore_, which was
shortly afterwards followed by a second, _Shamus O'Brien_, successfully
recited in the United States by Samuel Lover. In 1839 he became
proprietor of the _Warder_, a Dublin newspaper, and, after purchasing
the _Evening Packet_ and a large interest in the _Dublin Evening Mail_,
he combined the three papers under the title the _Evening Mail_, a
weekly reprint from which was issued as the _Warder_. 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 are _The House by the Churchyard_
(1863) and _Uncle 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 the _coup d'état_ of 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 a
_blanchisseuse_ to 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."