sq.), frankincense was not sacrificially employed in Trojan times. It was used by the ancient Egyptians in their religious rites, but, as Herodotus tells us (ii. 86), not in embalming. It constituted a fourth part of the Jewish incense of the sanctuary (Ex. xxx. 34), and is frequently mentioned in the Pentateuch. With other spices it was stored in a great chamber of the house of God at Jerusalem (1 Chron. ix. 29, Neh. xiii. 5-9). On the sacrificial use and import of frankincense and similar substances see Incense.
In the Red Sea regions frankincense is valued not only for its sweet odour when burnt, but as a masticatory; and blazing lumps of it are not infrequently used for illumination instead of oil lamps. Its fumes are an excellent insectifuge. As a medicine it was in former times in high repute. Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxv. 82) mentions it as an antidote to hemlock. Avicenna (ed. Plempii, lib. ii. p. 161, Lovanii, 1658, fol.) recommends it for tumours, ulcers of the head and ears, affections of the breast, vomiting, dysentery and fevers. In the East frankincense has been found efficacious as an external application in carbuncles, blind boils and gangrenous sores, and as an internal agent is given in gonorrhoea. In China it was an old internal remedy for leprosy and struma, and is accredited with stimulant, tonic, sedative, astringent and vulnerary properties. It is not used in modern medicine, being destitute of any special virtues. (See Waring, Pharm. of India, p. 443, &c.; and F. Porter Smith, op. cit., p. 162.)
Common frankincense or thus, Abietis resina, is the term applied to a resin which exudes from fissures in the bark of the Norway spruce fir, Abies excelsa, D.C.; when melted in hot water and strained it constitutes “Burgundy pitch,” Pix abietina. The concreted turpentine obtained in the United States by making incisions in the trunk of a species of pine, Pinus australis, is also so designated. It is commercially known as “scrape,” and is similar to the French “galipot” or “barras.” Common frankincense is an ingredient in some ointments and plasters, and on account of its pleasant odour when burned has been used in incense as a substitute for olibanum. (See Flückiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia.) The “black frankincense oil” of the Turks is stated by Hanbury (Science Papers, p. 142, 1876) to be liquid storax. (F. H. B.)
FRANKING, a term used for the right of sending letters or
postal packages free (Fr. franc) of charge. The privilege was
claimed by the House of Commons in 1660 in “a Bill for erecting
and establishing a Post Office,” their demand being that all
letters addressed to or sent by members during the session should
be carried free. The clause embodying this claim was struck
out by the Lords, but with the proviso in the Act as passed
for the free carriage of all letters to and from the king and the
great officers of state, and also the single inland letters of the
members of that present parliament during that session only.
It seems, however, that the practice was tolerated until 1764,
when by an act dealing with postage it was legalized, every peer
and each member of the House of Commons being allowed to
send free ten letters a day, not exceeding an ounce in weight,
to any part of the United Kingdom, and to receive fifteen. The
act did not restrict the privilege to letters either actually written
by or to the member, and thus the right was very easily abused,
members sending and receiving letters for friends, all that was
necessary being the signature of the peer or M.P. in the corner
of the envelope. Wholesale franking grew usual, and M.P.’s
supplied their friends with envelopes already signed to be used
at any time. In 1837 the scandal had become so great that
stricter regulations came into force. The franker had to write
the full address, to which he had to add his name, the post-town
and the day of the month; the letter had to be posted on the
day written or the following day at the latest, and in a post-town
not more than 20 m. from the place where the peer or M.P. was
then living. On the 10th of January 1840 parliamentary franking
was abolished on the introduction of the uniform penny rate.
In the United States the franking privilege was first granted in January 1776 to the soldiers engaged in the American War of Independence. The right was gradually extended till it included nearly all officials and members of the public service. By special acts the privilege was bestowed on presidents and their widows. By an act of the 3rd of March 1845, franking was limited to the president, vice-president, members and delegates in Congress and postmasters, other officers being required to keep quarterly accounts of postage and pay it from their contingent funds. In 1851 free exchange of newspapers was re-established. By an act of the 3rd of March 1863 the privilege was granted the president and his private secretary, the vice-president, chiefs of executive departments, such heads of bureaus and chief clerks as might be designated by the postmaster-general for official letters only; senators and representatives in Congress for all correspondence, senders of petitions to either branch of the legislature, and to publishers of newspapers for their exchanges. There was a limit as to weight. Members of Congress could also frank, in matters concerning the federal department of agriculture, “seeds, roots and cuttings,” the weight to be fixed by the postmaster-general. This act remained in force till the 31st of January 1873, when franking was abolished. Since 1875, by sundry acts, franking for official correspondence, government publications, seeds, &c., has been allowed to congressmen, ex-congressmen (for 9 months after the close of their term), congressmen-elect and other government officials. By special acts of 1881, 1886, 1902, 1909, respectively, the franking privilege was granted to the widows of Presidents Garfield, Grant, McKinley and Cleveland.
FRANKL, LUDWIG AUGUST (1810–1894), Austrian poet. He took part in the revolution of 1848, and his poems on liberty had considerable vogue. His lyrics are among his best work. He was secretary of the Jewish community in Vienna, and did a lasting service to education by his visit to the Orient in 1856. He founded the first modern Jewish school (the Von Lämmel Schule) in Jerusalem. His brilliant volumes Nach Jerusalem describing his eastern tour have been translated into English, as is the case with many of his poems. His collected poems appeared in three volumes in 1880. (I. A.)
FRANKLAND, SIR EDWARD (1825–1899), English chemist,
was born at Churchtown, near Lancaster, on the 18th of January
1825. After attending the grammar school at Lancaster he spent
six years as an apprentice to a druggist in that town. In 1845
he went to London and entered Lyon Playfair’s laboratory,
subsequently working under R. W. Bunsen at Marburg. In
1847 he was appointed science-master at Queenwood school,
Hampshire, where he first met J. Tyndall, and in 1851 first
professor of chemistry at Owens College, Manchester. Returning
to London six years later he became lecturer in chemistry
at St Bartholomew’s hospital, and in 1863 professor of chemistry
at the Royal Institution. From an early age he engaged in
original research with great success.
Analytical problems, such as the isolation of certain organic radicals, attracted his attention to begin with, but he soon turned to synthetical studies, and he was only about twenty-five years of age when an investigation, doubtless suggested by the work of his master, Bunsen, on cacodyl, yielded the interesting discovery of the organo-metallic compounds. The theoretical deductions which he drew from the consideration of these bodies were even more interesting and important than the bodies themselves. Perceiving a molecular isonomy between them and the inorganic compounds of the metals from which they may be formed, he saw their true molecular type in the oxygen, sulphur or chlorine compounds of those metals, from which he held them to be derived by the substitution of an organic group for the oxygen, sulphur, &c. In this way they enabled him to overthrow the theory of conjugate compounds, and they further led him in 1852 to publish the conception that the atoms of each elementary substance have a definite saturation capacity, so that they can only combine with a certain limited number of the atoms of other elements. The theory of valency thus founded has dominated the subsequent development of chemical doctrine, and forms the groundwork upon which the fabric of modern structural chemistry reposes.
In applied chemistry Frankland’s great work was in connexion with water-supply. Appointed a member of the second royal commission on the pollution of rivers in 1868, he was provided
