FLEABANE 



2207 



FLETCHERIZING 



It is remarkable to note the cleverness of 

 fleas which have been trained to do simple 

 tricks. It is said that a wealthy man once paid 

 $5,000 for such an insect. M.S. 



FLEABANE, flee 'bane, the popular name 

 for several asterlike plants of the thistle fam- 

 ily, so called from the mistaken idea, once 

 strongly maintained, that they drive away or 

 destroy fleas. Canada fleabane, also known as 

 horseweed, colt's tail, blood-stanch, etc., is a 

 weed common in waste places in Canada and 

 throughout the northern Mississippi Valley. 

 It is gathered when flowering and is carefully 

 dried; in that form it is sold as erigeron, or 

 fleabane, for stanching blood or for cases of 

 diarrhoea and dropsy. It sells at from six to 

 eight cents a pound. The fresh herb yields oil 

 of fleabane. Blue fleabane is common in dry 

 areas east of the Mississippi. It is also called 

 sweet scabious, or scabiosa, and as a remedy 

 for skin diseases is in great demand. 



The old-fashioned cultivated scabiosa, or 

 mourning bride, so-called because in Southern 

 Europe the flower-heads are extensively used 

 in making funeral wreaths, is a favorite garden 

 plant whose tube-shaped florets of lavender, 

 bluish-violet or pink are very attractive. 



FLEM'ING, SIR SANDFORD (1827-1915), a 

 Canadian engineer and publicist, the builder of 

 the Intercolonial Railway, surveyor of the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway's main line and in- 

 ventor of the system of standard time. Flem- 

 ing was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, but moved 

 to Canada at the age of eighteen. He found 

 a place on the engineering staff of the old 

 Northern Railway, and in 1857 became its 

 chief. A few years later he presented to the 

 British government the request of the settlers 

 in the Red River Valley for railway communi- 

 cation between Eastern Canada and the West. 

 The result of this agitation was the Inter- 

 colonial Railway, whose right of way was laid 

 out and its construction supervised by Fleming. 

 On the completion of this work in 1871 Fleming 

 became chief engineer of- the railway now 

 known as the Canadian Pacific, and by 1877 

 he had surveyed the entire route to the Pacific 

 coast practically as it now exists. He also paid 

 out of his own funds the expenses of locating 

 a railway line in Newfoundland. 



While these services made him a conspicuous 

 figure in Canadian life, they should be regarded 

 only as parts of his plans for consolidating the 

 British Empire by railways, telegraphs and 

 cables. As early as 1879 he proposed that an 

 all-British cable should be laid to connect Can- 



ada with Great Britain on the one hand and 

 Australia and New Zealand on the other; his 

 plan, practically unchanged, was put into oper- 

 ation in 1902. After retiring from active en- 

 gineering in 1880, Fleming returned to the 

 problem of universal or cosmic time in which 

 he had always been interested. As a result 

 of his studies he proposed the system of stan- 

 dard time (which see), which is now in general 

 use. Though not a politician in any sense, 

 he took a very active interest in political affairs 

 and frequently contributed vigorous articles on 

 public questions to the periodicals. From 

 1880 until his death he was chancellor of 

 Queen's University. He was an active member 

 of numerous learned and scientific societies, 

 and served in 1888 as president of the Royal 

 Society of Canada. In 1897 Queen Victoria 

 created him a Knight Commander of the Order 

 of Saint Michael and Saint George. G.H.L. 



FLEM'ISH LANGUAGE AND LITERA- 

 TURE. The Flemish language is a form of 

 Low German, spoken by a large number of the 

 inhabitants of Belgium, especially in the prov- 

 inces of East Flanders, West Flanders, Ant- 

 werp, Limburg and Brabant, and in parts of 

 the Netherlands. It is closely related to the 

 official language of the Hollanders, but retains 

 several peculiarities of spelling and pronuncia- 

 tion not found in modern Dutch. 



The history of Flemish literature is practi- 

 cally the history of Dutch literature until the 

 separation of Belgium from Holland in 1830. 

 When the revolution of that year made Bel- 

 gium an independent state, French had long 

 been used in government circles, and the Flem- 

 ish language existed in the Low German prov- 

 inces only in the form of spoken dialects. 



About 1830, however, there began a remark- 

 able movement for the revival of Flemish lan- 

 guage and literature, and this movement was 

 greatly aided by various laws passed by the 

 Belgian government, whereby Flemish was put 

 on an equal basis with French as the legal and 

 official language of the kingdom. Moreover, 

 Flemish was added to the course of study in 

 the public schools, and in 1886 a Flemish 

 Academy was established at Ghent. The Flem- 

 ish movement produced many writers of dis- 

 tinct merit, and the revived Low German liter- 

 ature is represented by novels, poetry and 

 plays. 



FLETCHER, JOHN. See BEAUMONT ANP 

 FLETCHER. 



FLETCH'ERIZING, a method of masticat- 

 ing the food, which has been emphasized by 



