The whole district between the city and the river, the island of Nantai, and the southern banks of the Min are occupied by extensive suburbs; and the river itself bears a large floating population. Communication from bank to bank is afforded by a long stone bridge supported by forty solid stone piers in its northern section and by nine in its southern. The most remarkable establishment of Fuchow is the arsenal situated about 3 m. down the stream at Pagoda Island, where the sea-going vessels usually anchor. It was founded in 1867, and is conducted under the direction of French engineers according to European methods. In 1870 it employed about 1000 workmen besides fifty European superintendents, and between that date and 1880 it turned out about 20 or 30 small gunboats. In 1884 it was partially destroyed by the French fleet, and for a number of years the workshops and machinery were allowed to stand idle and go to decay. On the 1st of August 1895 an attack was made on the English mission near the city of Ku-chang, 120 m. west of Fuchow, on which occasion nine missionaries, of whom eight were ladies, were massacred. The port was opened to European commerce in 1842; and in 1853 the firm of Russell and Co. shipped the first cargoes of tea from Fuchow to Europe and America. The total trade in foreign vessels in 1876 was imports to the value of £1,531,617, and exports to the value of £3,330,489. In 1904 the imports amounted to £1,440,351, and the exports to £1,034,436. The number of vessels that entered in 1876 was 275, and of these 211 were British, 27 German, 11 Danish and 9 American. While in 1904, 480 vessels entered the port, 216 of which were British. A large trade is carried on by the native merchants in timber, paper, woollen and cotton goods, oranges and olives; but the foreign houses mainly confine themselves to opium and tea. Commercial intercourse with Australia and New Zealand is on the increase. The principal imports, besides opium, are shirtings, T-cloths, lead and tin, medicines, rice, tobacco, and beans and peas. Two steamboat lines afford regular communication with Hong-Kong twice a month. The town is the seat of several important missions, of which the first was founded in 1846. That supported by the American board had in 1876 issued 1,3000,000 copies of Chinese books and tracts.
FUCHS, JOHANN NEPOMUK VON (1774–1856), German
chemist and mineralogist, was born at Mattenzell, near Brennberg
in the Bavarian Forest, on the 15th of May 1774. In 1807 he
became professor of chemistry and mineralogy at the university
of Landshut, and in 1823 conservator of the mineralogical
collections at Munich, where he was appointed professor of
mineralogy three years later, on the removal thither of the
university of Landshut. He retired in 1852, was ennobled by
the king of Bavaria in 1854, and died at Munich on the 5th of
March 1856. His name is chiefly known for his mineralogical
observations and for his work on soluble glass.
His collected works, including Über den Einfluss der Chemie und Mineralogie (1824), Die Naturgeschichte des Mineralreichs (1842), Über die Theorien der Erde (1844), were published at Munich in 1856.
FUCHS, LEONHARD (1501–1566), German physician and
botanist, was born at Wembdingen in Bavaria on the 17th
of January 1501. He attended school at Heilbronn and Erfurt,
and in 1521 graduated at the university of Ingolstadt. About
the same time he espoused the doctrines of the Reformation.
Having in 1524 received his diploma as doctor of medicine, he
practised for two years in Munich. He became in 1526 professor
of medicine at Ingolstadt, and in 1528 physician to the margrave
of Anspach. In Anspach he was the means of saving the lives
of many during the epidemic locally known as the “English
sweating-sickness.” By the duke of Württemberg he was, in
1535, appointed to the professorship of medicine at the university
of Tübingen, a post held by him till his death on the 10th of May
1566. Fuchs was an advocate of the Galenic school of medicine,
and published several Latin translations of treatises by its
founder and by Hippocrates. But his most important publication
was De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Basel, 1542),
a work illustrated with more than five hundred excellent outline
illustrations, including figures of the common foxglove and of
another species of the genus Digitalis, which was so named by
him.
 |
| Fuchsia coccinea. |
| 1, Flower cut open after removal of
sepals; 2, fruit; 3, floral diagram. |
FUCHSIA, so named by Plumier in honour of the botanist Leonhard Fuchs, a genus of plants of the natural order Onagraceae, characterized by entire, usually opposite leaves, pendent flowers, a funnel-shaped, brightly coloured, quadripartite, deciduous calyx, 4 petals, alternating with the calycine segments, 8, rarely 10, exserted stamens, a long filiform style, an inferior ovary, and fruit, a fleshy ovoid many-seeded berry. All the members of the genus, with the exception of the New Zealand species, F. excorticata, F. Colensoi and F. procumbens, are natives of Central and South America—occurring in the interior of forests or in damp and shady mountainous situations. The various species differ not a little in size as well as in other characters; some, as F. verrucosa, being dwarf shrubs; others, as F. arborescens and F. apetala, attaining a height of 12 to 16 ft., and having stems several inches in diameter. Plumier, in his Nova plantarum Americanarum genera (p. 14, tab. 14, Paris, 1703), gave a description of a species of fuchsia, the first known, under the name of Fuchsia triphylla, flore coccineo, and a somewhat conventional outline figure of the same plant was published at Amsterdam in 1757 by Burmann. In the Histoire des plantes médicinales of the South American traveller Feuillée (p. 64, pl. XLVII.), written in 1709–1711, and published by him with his Journal, Paris, 1725, the name Thilco is applied to a species of fuchsia from Chile, which is described, though not evidently so figured, as having a pentamerous calyx. The F. coccinea of Alton (fig.) (see J. D. Hooker, in Journal Linnean Soc., Botany, vol. x. p. 458, 1867), the first species of fuchsia cultivated in England, where it was long confined to the greenhouse, was brought from South America by Captain Firth in 1788 and placed in Kew Gardens. Of this species Mr Lee, a nurseryman at Hammersmith, soon afterwards obtained an example, and procured from it by means of cuttings several hundred plants, which he sold at a guinea each. In 1823 F. macrostemma and F. gracilis, and during the next two or three years several other species, were introduced into England; but it was not until about 1837, or soon after florists had acquired F. fulgens, that varieties of interest began to make their appearance. The numerous hybrid forms now existing are the result chiefly of the intercrossing of that or other long-flowered with globose-flowered plants. F. Venus-victrix, raised by Mr Gulliver, gardener to the Rev. S. Marriott of Horsemonden, Kent, and sold in 1822 to Messrs Cripps, was the earliest white-sepalled fuchsia. The first fuchsia with a white corolla was produced about 1853 by Mr Storey. In some varieties the blossoms are variegated, and in others they are double. There appears to be very little limit to the number of forms to be obtained by careful cultivation and selection. To hybridize, the flower as soon as it opens is emasculated, and it is then fertilized with pollen from some different flower.
Ripe seed is sown either in autumn or about February or March in light, rich, well-drained mould, and is thinly covered with
