[1] The word "function" (from Lat. _fungi_, to perform) has many
uses, with the fundamental sense of an activity special or proper to
an office, business or profession, or to an organ of an animal or
plant, the definite work for which the organ is an apparatus. From
the use of the word, as in the Italian _funzione_, for a ceremony of
the Roman Church, "function" is often employed for a public ceremony
of any kind, and loosely of a social entertainment or gathering.
FUNDY, BAY OF, an inlet of the North Atlantic, separating New Brunswick
from Nova Scotia. It is 145 m. long and 48 m. wide at the mouth, but
gradually narrows towards the head, where it divides into Chignecto Bay
to the north, which subdivides into Shepody Bay and Cumberland Basin
(the French Beaubassin), and Minas Channel, leading into Minas Basin, to
the east and south. Off its western shore opens Passamaquoddy Bay, a
magnificent sheet of deep water with good anchorage, receiving the
waters of the St Croix river and forming part of the boundary between
New Brunswick and the state of Maine, The Bay of Fundy is remarkable for
the great rise and fall of the tide, which at the head of the bay has
been known to reach 62 ft. In Passamaquoddy Bay the rise and fall is
about 25 ft., which gradually increases toward the narrow upper reaches.
At spring tides the water in the Bay of Fundy is 19 ft. higher than it
is in Bay Verte, in Northumberland Strait, only 15 m. distant. Though
the bay is deep, navigation is rendered dangerous by the violence and
rapidity of the tide, and in summer by frequent fogs. At low tide, at
such points as Moncton or Amherst, only an expanse of red mud can be
seen, and the tide rushes in a bore or crest from 3 to 6 ft. in height.
Large areas of fertile marshes are situated at the head of the bay, and
the remains of a submerged forest show that the land has subsided in the
latest geological period at least 40 ft. The bay receives the waters of
the St Croix and St John rivers, and has numerous harbours, of which the
chief are St Andrews (on Passamaquoddy Bay) and St John in New
Brunswick, and Digby and Annapolis (on an inlet known as Annapolis
Basin) in Nova Scotia. It was first explored by the Sieur de Monts (d.
c. 1628) in 1604 and named by him La Baye Francaise.
FUNERAL RITES, the ceremonies associated with different methods of
disposing of the dead. (See also BURIAL AND BURIAL ACTS; CEMETERY; and
CREMATION.) In general we have little record, except in their tombs, of
races which, in a past measured not merely by hundreds but by thousands
of years, occupied the earth; and exploration of these often furnishes
our only clue to the religions, opinions, customs, institutions and arts
of long vanished societies. In the case of the great culture folks of
antiquity, the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hindus, Persians, Greeks and
Romans, we have, besides their monuments, the evidence of their
literatures, and so can know nearly as much of their rites as we do of
our own. The rites of modern savages not only help us to interpret
prehistoric monuments, but explain peculiarities in our own rituals and
in those of the culture folks of the past of which the significance was
lost or buried under etiological myths. We must not then confine
ourselves to the rites of a few leading races, neglecting their less
fortunate brethren who have never achieved civilization. It is better to
try to classify the rites of all races alike according as they embody
certain leading conceptions of death, certain fears, hopes, beliefs
entertained about the dead, about their future, and their relations with
the living.
The main ideas, then, underlying funeral rites may roughly be
enumerated as follows: