LARCOM 



3334 



LAREDO 



Give me of your roots, O Tamarack ! . 

 Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-Tree ! 

 My canoe to bind together. 



Larch wood, which contains a great deal of 

 resin but does not burn readily, is tough and 

 durable, and timbers of it in old French castles 

 have been found perfectly sound when stones 



THE LARCH 

 Tree and detail of branch. 



of the building were crumbled and decayed. 

 It is widely used for telegraph poles, ship 

 masts, railroad ties and fence posts, and yields 

 a large percentage of excellent lumber which 

 is, however, difficult to dry. 



Of a total amount of nearly 410,000,000 'feet 

 of larch lumber cut in the United States an- 

 nually, the contributions of various states are 

 practically as follows, the figures representing 

 per cent: 



Montana 30 Washington 7 



Idaho 28 Michigan 7 



Minnesota 17 Oregon 3 



Wisconsin 8 



About 100,000,000 board feet of tamarack are 

 produced each year in Canada. The most im- 

 portant commercial use of the wood in that 

 country is for making railroad ties. 



LAR'COM, LUCY (1826-1893), an American 

 poetess, was born at Beverly, Mass. After 

 three years in school she became a factory 

 employee in the cotton mills at Lowell. Her 

 contributions to the Lowell Offering, a periodi- 

 cal for the mill employees, attracted the atten- 

 tion of John Greenleaf Whittier, with whose 

 assistance she afterwards compiled Child-Life 

 and Songs of Three Centuries. For three years 

 she attended the Monticello Female Seminary 

 in Illinois, then returned to Massachusetts and 

 taught in the Norton and Boston schools. In 

 1865 she became assistant editor, and in 1866 



editor, of Our Young Folks, a magazine since 

 absorbed by Saint Nicholas. Her writings in- 

 clude Similitudes, Ships in the Mist and Wild 

 Roses of Cape Ann. 



LARD, or hog fat, is a substance used ex- 

 tensively for cooking, for soap making, as a 

 lubricant and in the preparation of ointments. 

 It is extracted from the fatty parts of the hog 

 by melting in kettles. When brought to a 

 high temperature it is strained, then cooled 

 by refrigeration and clarified. Lard intended 

 for culinary purposes for making of biscuits, 

 pie crust and other pastry, and for frying foods 

 of various kinds is run into pails just before 

 it solidifies. The finest lard, called leaf lard, 

 obtained from the fat around the kidneys of 

 the hog, is used both in cooking and in the 

 preparation of oils and ointments. When the 

 fat is subjected to pressure a substance known 

 as- olein is liberated in the form of lard oil, 

 which is used extensively for lubricating ma- 

 chinery. 



On the farm the hog fat is cut into small 

 pieces, put into kettles over bonfires and heated 

 until the grease is entirely dissolved from the 

 tissues, or "cracklin," when it is run into vessels 

 to cool. The fat around the kidneys, which 

 is removed from the hog in large, irregularly- 

 shaped pieces, is often bought by the housewife 

 who prefers to render it into lard herself, so 

 she may be sure that the cooking fat is not 

 adulterated. She wastes very little in buying 

 leaf lard, as the tissues, which are left after 

 the lard is extracted, weigh very little. 



Lard is composed of olein, stearin and pal- 

 mitin, in the proportion of sixty-two per cent 

 of olein to thirty-eight per cent of the other 

 ingredients. As a food it is wholesome, and 

 when fresh is mild in flavor and pleasing in 

 odor. 



LAREDO, lara'doh, TEX., the county seat of 

 Webb County, situated on the Rio Grande 

 River, the International boundary line, oppo- 

 site Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. It is about 125 

 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and 150 miles 

 southwest of San Antonio, and is on the Inter- 

 national & Great Northern, the National of 

 Mexico and the Rio Gra.nde & Eagle Pass rail- 

 roads. The population, which in 1910 was 

 14,855, was 15,749 in 1916 (Federal estimate). 

 Interesting features of the city are the Federal 

 building, courthouse and jail, city hall, the 

 market, Mexican National Hospital and Mercy 

 Hospital and an old Spanish cathedral. There 

 is a railroad bridge across the Rio Grande. 

 Loma Vista Park is an attractive pleasure re- 



