LACOMBE 



3292 



LACQUER WARE 



Besides steel plants, which employ from 

 8,000 to 10.000 men. the city lias extensive 

 bridge works, coking plants and blast furnaces. 

 The noteworthy buildings are those of Saint 

 Joseph's Orphan Asylum. Saint John's Pro- 

 tectory, Moses Taylor Hospital, the city hall 

 and the high school. South Park is a feature 

 of interest. G.R.M. 



LACOMBE, lakohm', a town in Alberta, in 

 the south-central part of the province. It is 

 on the Calgary-Edmonton branch of the Cana- 

 1 1 ia 11 Pacific Railway, eighty-one miles south of 

 Edmonton, thirty-eight miles south of Wetas- 

 kiwin and 113 miles north of Calgary, and is 

 also the western terminus of the Moose Jaw- 

 Laeombe branch. Lacombe is the center of a 

 rich agricultural district, a fact indicated by 

 iln grain elevators, flour mills, creamery and 

 farm implement distributors, which are its chief 

 commercial establishments. It has a Domin- 

 ion experimental farm, and is the seat of 

 Alberta Industrial College, with nearly 300 

 students. On Gull Lake, a popular summer 

 resort eight miles north of Lacombe, are sev- 

 eral hotels and many summer cottages. Popu- 

 lation in 1911, 1.029; in 1916, about 1,800. 



LACONIA, lako'nia, in ancient times the 

 most important division of Southern Greece, 

 or the Peloponnesus, famed as the country of 

 the Spartans. It lay in the 'extreme southern 

 part of the Peloponnesus, and was bounded 

 on the west by 

 Messenia and on 

 the north by Ar- 

 cadia and Argo- 

 lis. It- (astern 

 .UK! southern 

 shores were 

 washed by the 

 Mediterranean 

 .Sea. Through its 

 central part ex- 



LACONIA 



tended the deep valley of the Eurotas River, 

 which gave to this region the name ''Hollow 

 I.acedaemon." Sparta, capital city of Laconia, 

 was situated in the western part. In the 

 Homeric poem.- Laconia is described as tin- 

 real m ni' Meiielaus. husband of the beautiful 

 Helen of Troy. For the hi.-iory of the country, 

 ; he article SPARTA. 



Modern Laconia is a political division of 

 Greece, having a population of about 62,000. 



LACONIA, N. H., the county seat of Belknap 

 County, is a summer resort and manufacturing 

 city in the mountainous lake region of the cen- 

 tral pan of the atate. Mount IViknap. one 



of the White Mountains, is six miles distant. 

 The city is built along both banks of the 

 Winnepesaukee River between Lake Winnes- 

 quam to the southwest and Lake Winnepe- 

 saukee, northwest. Concord is twenty-seven 

 miles south and west and Boston is 103 miles 

 south. The city is served by two branches of 

 the Boston & Maine Railroad and by an elec- 

 tric line to the Weirs, and is a port for pleas- 

 ure boats and timber rafts on the lakes. The 

 area of the city is fifteen square miles. The 

 population, which is nearly fifty per cent 

 French Canadian, was 10,183 in 1910 and 11.528 

 in 1916, by Federal estimate. 



The cool climate, beautiful lake and moun- 

 tain scenery and opportunities for fishing and 

 boating attract many people in the summer. 

 Opechee and several other small parks and an 

 athletic field are places of interest. The pub- 

 lic institutions include the Gale Memorial 

 library, the state school for feeble-minded chil- 

 dren and a home for the aged. The New 

 Hampshire state fish hatchery is located here. 

 The construction of a Federal building was be- 

 gun in 1916. 



Good water power has attracted a number 

 of large manufactories. The Laconia Car Com- 

 pany employs nearly 1,200 men; the producing 

 capacity is one passenger car a day and one 

 freight car an hour. There is an extensive 

 lumber business. More than 4,000 pairs of 

 hosiery are produced daily by the city's hosiery 

 mills. Other manufactured products are yarn, 

 knitting machines, needles, sashes and blinds, 

 axles, paper boxes and gas and gasoline en- 

 gines. 



A group of English people from the southern 

 part of New Hampshire settled Laconia in 

 1780-1782. The place was incorporated in 1852 

 and chartered as a eity in 1893. F.H. 



LACQUER, lak'er, WARE, a beautiful prod- 

 uct from the Far East, is made by application 

 of many successive coats of a varnish called 

 lacquer to any object from a match box to a 

 bridge. In Japan lacquer is the sap of the 

 urushi tree; in China and other countries it 

 is generally lac (which see). The .)apane.-e. 

 who excel in the brilliancy, beauty of design 

 and durability of their ware, learned the art 

 from the Chinese, probably in the sixth cen- 

 tury. A piece of Japanese lacquer ware has 

 perhaps thirty-five thin coatings of black lac- 

 quer, each dried and highly polished before 

 the application of the next, on a foundation 

 of wood sometime? as thin as paper. The 

 decorators draw their pictures with powder- i 



