Milan, 20½ m. by rail S.E. of that city, on a hill above the right bank
of the Adda, 230 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 19,970 (town), 26,827
(commune). The site of the city is an eminence rising very gradually
from the Lombard plain, and the surrounding country is one of the
richest dairy districts in Italy. The cathedral (1158), with a Gothic
façade and a 16th-century lateral tower, has a restored interior. The
church of the Incoronata was erected by Battaggio (1488) in the
Bramantesque style. It is an elegant octagonal domed structure, and is
decorated with frescoes by the Piazza family, natives of the town, and
four large altar-pieces by Calisto Piazza (died after 1561). There is a
fine organ of 1507. The 13th-century Gothic church of San Francesco,
restored in 1889, with 14th-century paintings, is also noticeable. The
Palazzo Modegnani has a fine gateway in the style of Bramante, and the
hospital a cloistered quadrangle. In the Via Pompeia is an early
Renaissance house with fine decorations in marble and terra-cotta.
Besides an extensive trade in cheese (Lodi producing more Parmesan than
Parma itself) and other dairy produce, there are manufactures of linen,
silk, majolica and chemicals.
The ancient Laus Pompeia lay 3½ m. W. of the present city, and the site
is still occupied by a considerable village, Lodi Vecchio, with the old
cathedral of S. Bassiano, now a brick building, which contains
15th-century frescoes. It was the point where the roads from Mediolanum
to Placentia and Cremona diverged, and there was also a road to Ticinum
turning off from the former, but it is hardly mentioned by classical
writers. It appears to have been a _municipium_. No ruins exist above
ground, but various antiquities have been found here. From which
Pompeius, whether Cn. Pompeius Strabo, who gave citizenship to the
Transpadani, or his son, the more famous Pompey, it took its name is not
certain. In the middle ages Lodi was second to Milan among the cities of
northern Italy. A dispute with the archbishop of Milan about the
investiture of the bishop of Lodi (1024) proved the beginning of a
protracted feud between the two cities. In 1111 the Milanese laid the
whole place in ruins and forbade their rivals to restore what they had
destroyed, and in 1158, when in spite of this prohibition a fairly
flourishing settlement had again been formed, they repeated their work
in a more thorough manner. A number of the Lodigians had settled on
Colle Eghezzone; and their village, the Borgo d'Isella, on the site of a
temple of Hercules, soon grew up under the patronage of Frederick
Barbarossa into a new city of Lodi (1162). At first subservient to the
emperor, Lodi was before long compelled to enter the Lombard League, and
in 1198 it formed alliance offensive and defensive with Milan. The
strife between the Sommariva or aristocratic party and the Overgnaghi or
democratic party was so severe that the city divided into two distinct
communes. The Overgnaghi, expelled in 1236, were restored by Frederick
II. who took the city after three months' siege. Lodi was actively
concerned in the rest of the Guelph and Ghibelline struggle. In 1416 its
ruler, Giovanni Vignati, was treacherously taken prisoner by Filippo
Maria Visconti, and after that time it became dependent on Milan. The
duke of Brunswick captured it in 1625, in the interests of Spain; and it
was occupied by the French (1701), by the Austrians (1706), by the king
of Sardinia (1733), by the Austrians (1736), by the Spaniards (1745),
and again by the Austrians (1746). On the 10th of May 1796 was fought
the battle of Lodi between the Austrians and Napoleon, which made the
latter master of Lombardy.
LODZ (_Lódz_; more correctly _Lodzia_), a town of Russian Poland, in the
government of Piotrków, 82 m. by rail S.W. of Warsaw. It is situated on
the Lodz plateau, which at the beginning of the 19th century was covered
with impenetrable forests. Now it is the centre of a group of industrial
towns--Zgerz, Leczyca, Pabianice, Konstantinov and Aleksandrov. Chiefly
owing to a considerable immigration of German capitalists and workers,
Lodz has grown with American-like rapidity. It consists principally of
one main street, 7 m. long, and is a sort of Polish Manchester,
manufacturing cottons, woollens and mixed stuffs, with chemicals, beer,
machinery and silk. One of the very few educational institutions is a
professional industrial school. The population, which was only 50,000 in
1872, reached 351,570 in 1900; the Poles numbering about 37%, Germans
40% and Jews 22½%.
LOESS (Ger. _Löss_), in geology, a variety of loam. Typical loess is a
soft, porous rock, pale yellowish or buff in colour; one characteristic
property is its capacity to retain vertical, or even over-hanging, walls
in the banks of streams. These vertical walls have been well described
by von Richthofen (_Führer für Forschungsreisende_, Berlin, 1886) in
China, where they stand in some places 500 ft. high and contain
innumerable cave dwellings; ancient roads too have worn their way
vertically downwards deep into the deposit, forming trench-like ways.
This character in the loess of the Mississippi region gave rise to the
name "Bluff formation." A coarse columnar structure is often exhibited
on the vertical weathered faces of the rock. Another characteristic is
the presence throughout the rock of small capillary tubules, which
appear to have been occupied by rootlets; these are often lined with
calcite. Typical loess is usually calcareous; some geologists regard
this as an essential property, and when the rock has become decalcified,
as it frequently is on the surface by weathering, they call it
"loess-loam" (_lösslehm_). In the lower portions of a loess deposit the
calcium carbonate tends to form concretions, which on account of their
mimetic forms have received such names as _lösskindchen_, _lösspuppen_,
_poupées du loess_, "loess dolls." In deposits of this nature in South
America these concretionary masses form distinct beds. Bedding is absent
from typical loess. The mineral composition of loess varies somewhat in
different regions, but the particles are always small; they consist of
angular grains of quartz, fine particles of hydrated silicates of
alumina, mica scales and undecomposed fragments of felspar, hornblende
and other rock-forming silicates.
In Europe and America loess deposits are associated with the margins
of the great ice sheets of the glacial period; thus in Europe they
stretch irregularly through the centre eastwards from the north-west
of France, and are not found north of the 57th parallel. In both
regions loess deposits are found within and upon glacial deposits. For
this reason the loess is very commonly assigned to the Pleistocene
period; but some of the loess deposits of northern Europe have been in
process of formation intermittently from the Miocene period onward,
and in South America the great loess formations known as the Pampean
or Patagonian belong to the Eocene, Oligocene and Pleistocene periods.
Most geologists are agreed that the loess is an aeolian or wind-borne
rock, formed most probably during periods of tundra or steppe
conditions. The capillary tubules are supposed to have been caused by
the roots of grass and herbage which kept growing upon the surface
even while the deposit was slowly increasing. Others contend that
loess is of the nature of alluvial loam; this may be true of certain
deposits classed as loess, but it cannot be true of most of the
typical loess formations, for they lie upon older rocks quite
independently of altitude, from near sea level up to 5000 ft. in
Europe and to 11,500 ft. in China; they are often developed on one
side of a mountain range and not upon the other, and in a series of
approximately parallel valleys the loess is frequently found lying
upon one side and that the same in each case, facts pointing to the
agency of prevalent winds.
The thickness of loess deposits is usually not more than 33 ft., but
in China it reaches 1000 ft. or more; it also attains a great
thickness in South America. Numerous proboscidian and other mammalian
fossils have been found in the loess of Europe; the tapir, mastodon
and giant sloths occur in South America, but the most common fossils
are small land shells and such amphibious pond forms as _Succinea_.
Certain loess deposits in Turkestan have been attributed to rain-wash,
this is the so-called "lake-loess" (_see-löss_); according to Tukowski
the difference between sub-aerial and lake loess is that the former is
porous, dry and pervious, while the latter is laminated, plastic and
impervious. Two types of loess have been recognized in Russia, the
Hill- or Terrace-loess and the Low-level-loess, a product of the
weathering of underlying rocks. In South Germany the following order
has been recognized: (1) an upper unbedded, non-calcareous loess, (2)
the _gehanglöss_, mixed with subsoil rocks, and (3) the sand or
_thal-löss_, with some gravel. The effect of vegetation on the upper
layers of loess is to produce soils of great fertility, such as the
black earth (_Tschernozom_) of southern Russia, the dark _Bordelöss_
of the Magdeburg district, and the black "cotton soil" (_regur_) of
the Deccan.
LOFFT, CAPEL (1751-1824), English miscellaneous writer, was born in
London on the 14th of November 1751. He was educated at Eton, and
Peterhouse, Cambridge, which he left to become a member of Lincoln's
Inn. He was called to the bar in 1775, and left by his father's and
uncle's deaths with a handsome property and the family estates. He was a
prolific writer on a variety of topics, and a vigorous contentious
advocate of parliamentary and other reforms, and carried on a voluminous
correspondence with all the literary men of his time. He became the
patron of Robert Bloomfield, the author of _The Farmer's Boy_, and
secured for him the very successful publication of that work. Byron, in
a note to his _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, ridiculed Lofft as
"the Maecenas of shoemakers and preface-writer general to distressed
versemen; a kind of gratis _accoucheur_ to those who wish to be
delivered of rhyme, but do not know how to bring forth." He died at
Montcalieri, near Turin, on the 26th of May 1824.
His fourth son Capel Lofft, the younger (1806-1873), also a writer on
various topics, inherited his father's liberal ideas and principles, and
carried them in youth to greater extremes. In his old age he abandoned
these theories, which had brought him into the company of some of the
leading political agitators of the day. He died in America, where he had
a Virginia estate.
LOFOTEN AND VESTERAALEN, a large and picturesque group of islands lying
N.E. and S.W. off the N.W. coast of Norway, between 67° 30´ and 69° 20´
N., and between 12° and 16° 35´ E. forming part of the _amt_ (county) of
Nordland. The extreme length of the group from Andenaes, at the north of
Andö, to Röst, is about 150 m.; the aggregate area about 1560 sq. m. It
is separated from the mainland by the Vestfjord, Tjaeldsund and
Vaagsfjord, and is divided into two sections by the Raftsund between
Hindö and Öst-Vaagö. To the W. and S. of the Raftsund lie the Lofoten
Islands proper, of which the most important are Öst-Vaagö, Gimsö,
Vest-Vaagö, Flakstadö, Moskenaesö, Mosken, Värö and Röst; E. and N. of
the Raftsund are the islands of Vesteraalen, the chief being Hindö,
Ulvö, Langö, Skogsö and Andö. The islands, which are all of granite or
metamorphic gneiss, are precipitous and lofty. The highest points and
finest scenery are found on Öst-Vaagö, in the neighbourhood of the
narrow, cliff-bound Raftsund and Troldfjord. The principal peaks are
Higrafstind (3811 ft.), Gjeitgaljartind (3555), Rulten (3483), the
Noldtinder (3467), Svartsundtind (3506). The long line of jagged and
fantastic peaks seen from the Vestfjord forms one of the most striking
prospects on the Norwegian coast, but still finer is the panorama from
the Digermuler (1150 ft.), embracing the islands, the Vestfjord, and the
mountains of the mainland. The channels which separate the islands are
narrow and tortuous, and generally of great depth; they are remarkable
for the strength of their tidal currents, particularly the Raftsund and
the famous Maelström or Moskenström between Moskenaes and Mosken. The
violent tempests which sweep over the Vestfjord, which is exposed to the
S.W., are graphically described in Jonas Lie's _Den Fremsynte_ (1870)
and in H. Schultze's _Udvalgte Skrifter_ (1883), as the Maelström is
imaginatively by Edgar Allan Poe. Though situated wholly within the
Arctic circle, the climate of the Lofoten and Vesteraalen group is not
rigorous when compared with that of the rest of Norway. The isothermal
line which marks a mean January temperature of 32° F. runs south from
the Lofotens, passing a little to the east of Bergen onward to
Gothenburg and Copenhagen. The prevailing winds are from the S. and W.,
the mean temperature for the year is 38.5° F., and the annual rainfall
is 43.34 in. In summer the hills have only patches of snow, the snow
limit being about 3000 ft. The natural pasture produced in favourable
localities permits the rearing of cattle to some extent; but the growth
of cereals (chiefly barley, which here matures in ninety days) is
insignificant. The islands yield no wood. The characteristic industry,
and an important source of the national wealth, is the cod fishery
carried on along the east coast of the Lofotens in the Vestfjord in
spring. This employs about 40,000 men during the season from all parts
of Norway, the population being then about doubled, and the surplus
accommodated in temporary huts. The average yield is valued at about
£35,000. The fish are taken in nets let down during the night, or on
lines upwards of a mile in length, or on ordinary hand-lines. The
fishermen are paid in cash, and large sums of money are sent to the
islands by the Norwegian banks each February. Great loss of life is
frequent during the sudden local storms. The fish, which is dried during
early summer, is exported to Spain (where it is known as _bacalao_),
Holland, Great Britain, Belgium, &c. Industries arising out of the
fishery are the manufacture of cod-liver oil and of artificial manure.
The summer cod fisheries and the lobster fishery are also valuable. The
herring is taken in large quantities off the west coasts of Vesteraalen,
but is a somewhat capricious visitant. The islands contain no towns
properly so called, but Kabelvaag on Öst-Vaagö and Svolvaer on a few
rocky islets off that island are considerable centres of trade and (in
the fishing season) of population; Lödingen also, at the head of the
Vestfjord on Hindö, is much frequented as a port of call. A church
existed at Vaagen (Kabelvaag) in the 12th century, and here Hans Egede,
the missionary of Greenland, was pastor. There are factories for fish
guano at Henningvaer (Öst-Vaagö), Kabelvaag, Svolvaer, Lödingen, and at
Bretesnäs on Store Molla. Regular means of communication are afforded by
the steamers which trade between Hamburg or Christiania and Hammerfest,
and also by local vessels; less accessible spots can be visited by small
boats, in the management of which the natives are adepts. There are some
roads on Hindö, Langö, and Andö. The largest island in the group, and
indeed in Norway, is Hindö, with an area of 860 sq. m. The south-eastern
portion of it belongs to the _amt_ of Tromsö. In the island of Andö
there is a bed of coal at the mouth of Ramsaa.
LOFT (connected with "lift," i.e. raised in the air; O. Eng. _lyft_; cf.
Ger. _Luft_; the French term is _grenier_ and Ger. _Boden_), the term
given in architecture to an upper room in the roof, sometimes called
"cockloft"; when applied over stabling it is known as a hay-loft; the
gallery over a chancel screen, carrying a cross, is called a rood-loft
(see ROOD). The term is also given to a gallery provided in the
choir-aisle of a cathedral or church, and used as a watching-loft at
night.
LOFTUS, ADAM (c. 1533-1605), archbishop of Armagh and Dublin, and lord
chancellor of Ireland, the son of a Yorkshire gentleman, was educated at
Cambridge. He accompanied the earl of Sussex to Ireland as his chaplain
in 1560, and three years later was consecrated archbishop of Armagh by
Hugh Curwen, archbishop of Dublin. In 1565 Queen Elizabeth, to
supplement the meagre income derivable from the archiepiscopal see owing
to the disturbed state of the country, appointed Loftus temporarily to
the deanery of St Patrick's; and in the same year he became president of
the new commission for ecclesiastical causes. In 1567 he was translated
to the archbishopric of Dublin, where the queen looked to him to carry
out reforms in the Church. On several occasions he temporarily executed
the functions of lord keeper, and in August 1581 he was appointed lord
chancellor of Ireland. Loftus was constantly occupied in attempts to
improve his financial position by obtaining additional preferment. He
had been obliged to resign the deanery of St Patrick's in 1567, and
twenty years later he quarrelled violently with Sir John Perrot, the
lord deputy, over the proposal to appropriate the revenues of the
cathedral to the foundation of a university. Loftus, however, favoured
the project of founding a university in Dublin, though on lines
different from Perrot's proposal, and it was largely through his
influence that the corporation of Dublin granted the lands of the priory
of All Hallows as a beginning of the endowment of Trinity College, of
which he was named first provost in the charter creating the foundation
in 1591. Loftus, who had an important share in the administration of
Ireland under successive lords deputy, and whose zeal and efficiency
were commended by James I. on his accession, died in Dublin on the 5th
of April 1605. By his wife, Jane Purdon, he had twenty children.
His brother Robert was father of ADAM LOFTUS (c. 1568-1643), who became
lord chancellor of Ireland in 1619, and in 1622 was created Viscount
Loftus of Ely, King's county, in the peerage of Ireland. Lord Loftus
came into violent conflict with the lord deputy, Viscount Falkland, in
1624; and at a later date his quarrel with Strafford was still more
fierce. One of the articles in Strafford's impeachment was based on his
dealings with Loftus. The title, which became extinct on the death of
his grandson, the 3rd viscount, in 1725 (when the family estate of
Monasterevan, re-named Moore Abbey, passed to his daughter's son Henry,
4th earl of Drogheda), was re-granted in 1756 to his cousin Nicholas
Loftus, a lineal descendant of the archbishop. It again became extinct
more than once afterwards, but was on each occasion revived in favour of
a descendant through the female line; and it is now held by the marquis
of Ely in conjunction with other family titles.
See Richard Mant, _History of the Church of Ireland_ (2 vols., London,
1840); J. R. O'Flanagan, _Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland_ (2
vols., London, 1870); John D'Alton, _Memoirs of the Archbishops of
Dublin_ (Dublin, 1838); Henry Cotton, _Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae_ (5
vols., Dublin, 1848-1878); William Monck Mason, _History and
Antiquities of the College and Cathedral Church of St Patrick, near
Dublin_ (Dublin, 1819); G. E. C., _Complete Peerage_ vol. iii., sub.
"Ely" (London, 1890).
LOG (a word of uncertain etymological origin, possibly onomatopoeic; the
_New English Dictionary_ rejects the derivation from Norwegian _lág_, a
fallen tree), a large piece of generally unhewn, wood. The word is also
used in various figurative senses, and more particularly for the
"nautical log," an apparatus for ascertaining the speed of ships. Its
employment in this sense depends on the fact that a piece of wood
attached to a line was thrown overboard to lie like a log in a fixed
position, motionless, the vessel's speed being calculated by observing
what length of line ran out in a given time ("common log"); and the word
has been retained for the modern "patent" or "continuous" log, though it
works in an entirely different manner.
The origin of the "common log" is obscure, but the beginnings of the
"continuous log" may be traced back to the 16th century. By an invention
probably due to Humfray Cole and published in 1578 by William Bourne in
his _Inventions and Devices_, it was proposed to register a ship's speed
by means of a "little small close boat," with a wheel, or wheels, and an
axle-tree to turn clockwork in the little boat, with dials and pointers
indicating fathoms, leagues, scores of leagues and hundreds of leagues.
About 1668 Dr R. Hooke showed some members of the Royal Society an
instrument for the same purpose, depending on a vane or fly which
rotated as the vessel progressed (Birch, _History of the Royal Society_,
iv. 231), and Sir Isaac Newton in 1715 reported unfavourably on the
"marine surveyor" of Henry de Saumarez, which also depended on a
rotator. Conradus Mel in his _Antiquarius Sacer_ (1719) described a
"pantometron nauticum" which he claimed would show without calculation
the distance sailed by the ship; and J. Smeaton in 1754 published
improvements on the apparatus of Saumarez. William Foxon of Deptford in
1772, James Guerimand of Middlesex in 1776 (by his "marine
perambulator"), and R. H. Gower in 1772, practically demonstrated the
registration of a vessel's speed by mechanical means. Viscount de Vaux
in 1807 made use of water-pressure, as did the Rev. E. L. Berthon in
1849, and C. E. Kelway invented an electrical log in 1876.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
_Common Log._--To ascertain the ship's speed by the common log four
articles are necessary--a log-ship or log-chip, log-reel, log-line and
log-glass. The log-ship (fig. 1) is a wooden quadrant ½ in. thick, with
a radius of 5 or 6 in., the circumference of which is weighted with lead
to keep it upright and retard its passage through the water. Two holes
are made near its lower angles. One end of a short piece of thin line is
passed through one of these holes, and knotted; the other end has
spliced to it a hard bone peg which is inserted in the other hole. The
holes are so placed that the log-ship will hang square from the span
thus formed. The log-line is secured to this span and consists of two
parts. The portion nearest the log-ship is known as the "stray line";
its length varies from 10 to 20 fathoms, but should be sufficient to
ensure that the log-ship shall be outside the disturbing element of the
ship's wake. The point where it joins the other part is marked by a
piece of bunting, and the line from this point towards its other end is
marked at known intervals with "knots," which consist of pieces of cord
worked in between its strands. A mean degree of the meridian being
assumed to be 69.09 statute miles of 5280 ft., the nautical mile (1/60
degree) is taken as 6080 ft., which is a sufficiently close
approximation for practical purposes, and the distances between the
knots are made to bear the same relation to 6080 ft. as 28 seconds to an
hour (3600 seconds); that is, they are placed at intervals of 47 ft. 3
in. The end of the first interval of this length (counting from the
piece of bunting) is marked by a bit of leather, the second by a cord
with two knots, the third by one with three knots, and so on; the middle
of each of these lengths (half-knot) is also marked by a cord with one
knot. It follows that, if, say, five knots of the line run out in 28
seconds, the ship has gone 5 × 47¼ ft. in that time, or is moving at the
rate of 5 × 6080 ft. (= five nautical miles) an hour; hence the common
use of knot as equivalent to a nautical mile. In the log-glass the time
is measured by running sand, which, however, is apt to be affected by
the humidity of the atmosphere. Sometimes a 30-second glass is used
instead of a 28-second one, and the intervals between the knots on the
log-line are then made 50 ft. 7 in. instead of 47 ft. 3 in. For speeds
over six knots a 14-second glass is employed, and the speed indicated by
the log-line is doubled.
The log-line, after being well soaked, stretched and marked with
knots, is wound uniformly on the log-reel, to which its inner end is
securely fastened. To "heave the log," a man holds the log-reel over
his head (at high speeds the man and portable reel are superseded by a
fixed reel and a winch fitted with a brake), and the officer places
the peg in the log-ship, which he then throws clear and to windward of
the ship, allowing the line to run freely out. When the bunting at the
end of the stray line passes his hand, he calls to his assistant to
turn the glass, and allows the line to pay out freely. When all the
sand has run through, the assistant calls "Stop!" when the log-line is
quickly nipped, the knots counted, and the intermediate portion
estimated. The strain on the log-ship when the log-line is nipped,
causes the peg to be withdrawn from it, and the log-ship is readily
hauled in. In normal circumstances, the log is hove every hour. In a
steam vessel running at high speed on an ocean route, with engines
working smoothly and uniformly, a careful officer with correct line
and glass can obtain very accurate results with the common log.