332 



THE CENTURY BOOK OP FACTS. 



proper, known as the " sun fisn, when large is 

 one of the roost beautiful of the jelly fishes. The 

 Gulf of Mexico furnishes the finest hydroids. 



Lace-Making. The application of ma- 

 chinery to lace making has cheapened lace that 

 would otherwise always have remained ex- 

 pensive, and has consequently deprived a large 

 number of the inhabitants of towns in France 

 and elsewhere of a lucrative source of income. 

 The great centers of the manufacture of real 

 lace, as hand-made lace is called to distinguish 

 it from machine-made or imitation lace, are 

 Belgium, France, and England. Tn the for- 

 mer country there are at least 900 lace schools, 

 and over 150,000 women find employment in 

 this trade. Brussels lace, which is of very 

 fine thread and intricate design, has a world- 

 wide reputation. Mechlin lace, a fine and 

 transparent web, is made at Mechlin, Ant- 

 werp, Lierre, and Turnbrout. Valenciennes is 

 largely made in Flanders, but is extinct in its 

 native city, from which it derived its name. 

 The towns of Ypres, Bruges, Courtrai, Menin, 

 Ghent, and Alost produced this lace in large 

 quantities and fine quality. Before the intro- 

 duction of machinery the number of lace- 

 makers in France was estimated to be at least 

 250,000, but this number has been greatly re- 

 duced within the last few years. The cele- 

 brated Point d'Alengon lace, which is made en- 

 tirely by hand with a small needle, in small 

 pieces, which are afterward united by invisible 

 seams, is made chiefly at Bayeux. Another 

 favorite lace, the Chantilly, which was for- 

 merly made almost altogether at Chantilly, is 

 now made at Bayeux and Caen. Lille lace, 

 which though simple in design is fine and beau- 

 tiful, is the production of the town of Lille. 

 The lace of Bailleul is strong and cheap, and 

 extensively used for trimming. In the dis- 

 trict of Auvergne, of which the town of Le 

 Puy is the center, ovor 100,000 women are em- 

 ployed in lace-making, and nearly every kind 

 of lace is made. The industry is considered 

 more extensive and more ancient in this dis- 

 trict ihan in any other portion of France. In 

 England the counties of Buckingham, Devon, 

 and Bedford are the centers of lace-making. 

 The most widely known of the English lace is 

 Honiton, so called from the town of this name 

 in Devonshire The manufacture of hand- 

 made laces was an important industry in Not- 

 tingham some years ago, but it has been al- 

 most entirely destroyed by the introduction of 

 machinery. Lace is made to a limited extent 

 in Limerick, Ireland ; also in Scotland, and in 

 fact in nearly every country in Europe. The 

 imitation or machine-made lace is manufac- 

 tured in Caen, France ; in Nottingham, Eng- 

 Lland ; and also in the United States. 



Lamps are mentioned in all the early ages ; 

 they were in use in Egypt, Greece, and Rome. 

 The earthen lamp which Epictetus, the philos- 

 opher, had in his study, sold, after his death, 

 for 3,000 drachmas. Lamps with horn sides 

 are said to be the invention of Alfred. Lon- 

 don streets were first lighted with oil lamps in 

 1681, and with gas lamps in 1814. A lamp 

 constructed to produce neither smoke nor 

 smell was patented, in 1784, by a Frenchman, 

 and was brought into general use in England 

 early in the present century. On the principle 

 of Argand are founded the lamps invented by 

 Carcel, about 1803, and since 1825 the mod- 

 erator lamps of Levavasseur, Hadrot, and 

 Neuburger. The domestic lamp is now of 

 elegant manufacture and many artistic designs. 



Latitude. First determined by Hip- 

 parchus, of Nice, about 170 B. C. It is the 

 extent of the earth, or of the heavens, reck- 

 oned from the equator to either pole. Mau- 

 pertuis, in 1737, measured a degree of latitude, 

 and made it 69.493 ; Swanberg, in 1803, made 

 it 69.292. At the equator, in 1744, four 

 astronomers made it 68.732 ; and Lambton 

 made it 68.743 ; Mudge, in England, made it 

 69.148; Cassini, in France, made it 69.12, 

 and Biot, 68.769 ; while a recent measure, in 

 Spain, makes it 68.63 less than at the 

 equator, and contradicts all others, proving 

 the earth to be a prolate spheroid, which was 

 the opinion of Cassini, Bernouilli, Euler. and 

 others, while it has more generally been re- 

 garded as an oblate spheroid. 



Life Insurance, Origin of. The rise 

 of life insurance may be traced to several 

 sources. The doctrine of probabilities devel- 

 oped by Pascal and Iluvghens as to games of 

 chance was applied to life contingencies by the 

 great Dutch statesman Jan De Witt in 1671, 

 but it was not till some time after that it was 

 applied to life insurance. In 1696 there was 

 a hint at modern life insurance in a London 

 organization, and this was followed by another 

 association two years after. The operators of 

 these two seem to have passed away without 

 giving to their successors any clear account of 

 their plan of operations. In 1706 the Amica- 

 ble Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office 

 was founded in London, and this is considered 

 the first actual life insurance company estab- 

 lished. Its plan was mutual that is, each 

 member, without reference to age, paid a fixed 

 admission fee and a fixed annual payment per 

 share on from one to three shares ; at the end 

 of the year a portion of the fund was divided 

 among the heirs of deceased members in pro- 

 portion to the shares held by each. In after 

 years the limitations as to age, occupation, 

 and health were added. 



