FEL 



land or real estate ; nor is his wife barred 

 of her dower. If a man and his wife are 

 possessed of a term, and the man commit 

 suicide, the term is forfeited, and the wife 

 shall not have it by survivorship. The 

 Coroner must find the fact upon an in- 

 quest, on view of the body, in order to 

 vest the goods in the king. 



This law is, in our opinion, hard and 

 unjust : if a man is determined to com- 

 mit suicide, human laws can have no hold 

 upon him: and the cruelty of punishing 

 the descendant for the act of the father 

 is so generally acknowledged, that where 

 the party has any thing to forfeit, it is ei- 

 ther found lunacy, or the crown gives up 

 the forfeiture upon petition. The further 

 punishment of a.felo de se is, to be buried 

 in a highway, and a stake run through 

 the body. This being never practised 

 but upon the poor, is become merely an 

 odious distinction. The law of the Ro- 

 mans seems more reasonable, which only 

 forfeited the estate, where the party kill- 

 ed himself to avoid punishment for a 

 crime. 



FELONY, in the general acceptation 

 of law, comprises every species of crime 

 which occasions, at common law, the for- 

 feiture of land or goods. The punish- 

 ment of a person for felony, by our an- 

 cient books, is 1st, to lose his life ; 2dly, 

 to lose his blood, as to his ancestry, and 

 so to have neither heir nor posterity ; 

 Sdly, to lose his goods ; 4thly, to lose his 

 lands ; and the King shall have year, day, 

 and waste, to the intent that his wife and 

 children be cast out of the house, his 

 house pulled down, and all that he had 

 for his comfort and delight destroyed. A 

 felony by statute, incidentally implies, 

 that the offender shall be subject to the 

 like attainder and forfeiture, &c., as is in- 

 cident to a felon at common law. This 

 is now the punishment in case of a capi- 

 tal felony only ; but for some offences, 

 benefit of clergy is allowed, when the 

 offence is punished only with transporta- 

 tion, imprisonment, &c. which are called 

 felonies with benefit of clergy ; but the 

 goods and estate of the felon are forfeited 

 as in cases of capital felony. 



FELT, in commerce, a sort of stuff, 

 deriving all its consistence merely from 

 being fulled, or wrought with lees and 

 size, without either spinning or weaving. 

 Felt is made either of wool alone, or of 

 wool r..d hair. 



FELTING, the method of working up 

 hair or wool into a species of cloth, in- 

 dependently of either spinning or weav. 



FEM 



ing-. A hatter separates the hairs from 

 each othr by striking the wool with the 

 string of -his bow, causing them to spring 

 up in the air, which fall on the table in 

 every direction, which is covered by the 

 workman with cloth, pressing it with his 

 hands, and moving the hairs backwards 

 and forwards in different directions. In 

 this manner the hairs are brought against 

 each other, and their points of contact 

 considerably multiplied, and the agitation 

 gives each hair a progressive motion to- 

 wards the root, in consequence of which, 

 the hairs become twisted together. As 

 the mass becomes compact, the pressure 

 should be increased, in order to keep up 

 the progressive motion and twisting of 

 the hairs, which is then performed with 

 greater difficulty. The hair intended for 

 the manufacturing of hats is always cut 

 off with a sharp instrument, and not pull- 

 ed out by the roots, because the bulb of 

 the hair, which would come out with it, 

 in the latter case, would render the end 

 which was fixed in the skin very obtuse, 

 and nearly destroy its disposition to unite 

 with the adjacent hairs. The hairs should 

 not be straight like needles, for then there 

 would be no compactness in the stuff. 

 The fibres of wool having naturally a 

 crooked form, that substance is well 

 adapted to the operation of felting. The 

 hair of beavers, rabbits, hares, &c. being 

 straight, cannot be used in felting, till it 

 has been prepared for the purpose. 



FEMME covert, in law, a married wo- 

 man ; so called from being under the 

 cover, protection and influence of her 

 husband. 



FEMME sole, in law, a single or unmar- 

 ried woman. 



FEMME sole trader, a married woman, 

 who, by the custom of London, trades on 

 her own account, independent of her 

 husband ; who, by the same custom, is 

 answerable for her own debts, and may 

 be made a bankrupt. 



FEMININE, in grammar, one of the 

 genders of nouns. As there are but two 

 sexes, so in fact, there can be but tw* 

 genders. 



The feminine gender serves to intimate 

 that the noun belongs to the female. I* 

 Latin, the feminine gender is most com- 

 monly distinguished by the article h<ec, as 

 it is in the Greek by the article jj' . In 

 the French, the article la commonly de- 

 notes this gender , but we have no suck 

 distinction by articles in the English lan- 

 guage. 



FEMINEUS,/os, a female flower. By 



