Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/19

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
ABC—XYZ

L O E L S Polish prince till his death (1766). And now for more than a century all Lorraine and Alsace up to the Rhine were French. Meanwhile Francis Stephen, since 1736 the husband of Archduchess Maria Theresa, had obtained in compensation the grand-duchy of Tuscany, where the last of the Medici died in 1737. He became his wife s coregent in the Austrian provinces (1740), and was elected king of the Romans and crowned emperor 1745, the ancestor of the present rulers of Austria, When in the recent Franco- German war both Strasburg and Metz were taken by the German troops after a gallant defence, the French had to submit in the peace of Frankfort, May 10, 1871, to the political and strategical decisions of the conquerors. Old German territory, all Alsace, and a portion of Lorraine, the upper valley of the Saar, the strong fortresses of Diedenhofen (Thionville) and Metz on the Moselle, with the surrounding districts, viz., the greater part of the Moselle and the Meurthe departments, where here and there German is still the language of the inhabitants, were the spoils of victory. They are now united and administered in all civil and military matters as an imperial province of the new German empire. See Calraet, Hlstoirc Ecclesiastique et civile de la Lorraine, 3 vols. ; Mascov, Dissertatio de nexu Lotharingise, regni dim imperio Romano Germanico ; TJsinger, "Das deutsche Staatsgebiet bis gegen Ende des eilften Jahrhunderts," Hist. Zeitschrift, xxvii. 374 ; Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vols. v.-vii ; Giesebrecht, Geschichte dcr Dcutschen Kaiserzeit, vols. i.-v. ; Henri Martin, Histoire de France, 17 vols. ; Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter dcr Reformation, 6 vols. ; Ranke, Franzosische Geschichte, 5 vols. ; A. Schmidt, Elsass und Lothringen, Nachwcis ivie diese Provinzen dem deutschen Seiche verlorcn gingcn, 1859. (R. P.) LORY, a word of Malayan origin signifying Parrot, 1 in general use with but slight variation of form in many European languages, is the name of certain birds of the order Psittaci, mostly from the Moluccas and New Guinea, which are remarkable for their bright scarlet or crimson colouring, though also, and perhaps subsequently, applied to some others in which the plumage is chiefly green. The " Lories " have been referred to a considerable number of genera, of which Edectus, Lorius (the Domicella of some authors), Eos, and C halcopsittacus may be here particularized, while under the equally vague name of " Lorikeets " may be comprehended the genera Charmosyna, Loriciilus, and Coriphilus. By most systematists some of these forms have been placed far apart, even in different families of Psittaci, but Garrod has shown (Proc. Zool. Society, 1874, pp. 586-598, and 1876, p. 692) the many common characters they possess, which thus goes some way to justify the relationship implied by their popular designation. The latest and perhaps the most complete account of these birds is to be found in the first part of Count T. Salvadori s 1 The anonymous author of a Vocabulary of the English and Malay Languages, published at Batavia in 1879, in which the words are professedly spelt according to their pronunciation, gives it " looree." Buffon (Hist. Nat. Oiseaux, vi. p. 125) states that it comes from the bird s cry, which is likely enough in the case of captive examples taught to utter a sound resembling that of the name by which they are commonly called. Nieuhoff ( Voyages par mer et par terre d differents lieux des Indes, Amsterdam, 1682-92) seems to have first made the word "Lory" known (cf. Ray, Synops. Avium, p. 151). Crawfurd (Diet. Engl. and Malay Languages, p. 127) spells it " nori " or " nuri " ; and in the first of these forms it is used, says Dr Finsch (Die Papageien, ii. p. 732), by Pigafetta. Aldrovandus (Ornithologia, lib. xi. cap. 1) noticed a Parrot called in Java "nor," and Clusius (Exotica, p. 364) has the same word. This will account for the name " noyra " or " noira " applied by the Portuguese, accord ing to Buffon (ut supra, pp. 125-127); but the modern Portuguese seem to call a Parrot generally " Louro," and in the same language that word is used as an adjective, signifying bright in colour. The French write the word " Loury " (cf. Littre, sub voce). The Lory of colonists in South Africa is a TOURACOO (q. v. ) ; and King Lory is a name applied by dealers in birds to the Australian Parrots o f the genus Aprosmictus. Ornitologia delta Papuasia e delle Molucche, published at Turin in 1880, though he does not entirely accept Garrod s arrangement. Of the genus Edectus the Italian naturalist admits five species, namely, E. pectoralis and E. roratus, (which are respectively the polychlorus and grandis of most authors), E. cardincdis (otherwise intermedius), E. wester- mani, and E. cornelia the last two from an unknown habitat, though doubtless within the limits of his labour, while the first seems to range from Waigiou and Mysol through New Guinea, including the Kei and Aru groups, to the Solomon Islands, and the second is peculiar to the Moluccas and the third to Bouru, Amboyna, and Ceram. Still more recently Dr A. B. Meyer has described (Proc. Zool. Society, 1881, p. 917) what he considers to be another species, E. riedeli, from Cera or Seirah, one of the Tenimber group, of which Timor Laut is the chief, to the south-west of New Guinea. 2 Much interest has been excited of late by the discovery in 1873, by the traveller and naturalist last named, that the birds of this genus possessing a red plumage were the females of those wearing green feathers. So unexpected a discovery, which was announced by Dr Meyer on the 4th of March 1874, to the Zoological and Botanical Society of Vienna, 3 naturally provoked not a little controversy, for the difference of coloration is so marked that it had even been proposed to separate the Green from the Red Lories generically 4 ; but now the truth of his assertion is generally admitted, and the story is very fully told by him in a note contributed to Gould s Birds of Neiv Guinea (part viii., 1st October 1878), though several interesting matters therewith con nected are still undetermined. Among these is the question of the colour of the first plumage of the young, a point not without important signification to the student of phylo- geny. 5 Though the name Lory has long been used for the species of Eclectiis, and some other genera related thereto, some writers would restrict its application to the birds of the genera Lorius, Eos, Ckalcopsittacus, and their near allies, which are often placed in a subfamily, Loriinse, belonging to the so-called Family of Trichoglossidee, or " Brush- tongued " Parrots. Garrod in the course of his investiga tions on the anatomy of Psittaci was led not to attach much importance to the structure indicated by the epithet " brush-tongued," stating (Proc. Zool. Society, 1874, p. 597) that it "is only an excessive development of the papillae which are always found on the lingual surface." The birds of this group are very characteristic of the New- Guinea Subregion, 6 in which occur, according to Count Salvadori, ten species of Lorius, eight of Eos, and four of Chalcopsittacus ; but none seem here to require any further notice, 7 though among them, and particularly in the genus Eos, are included some of the most richly-coloured birds to be found in the whole world ; nor does it appear that more need be said of the so-called Lorikeets. (A. N.) LOS ANGELES, a city of the United States, the capital of Los Angeles county, California, is situated in the low land between the Sierra Madre and the Pacific, about 17 miles from the coast, on the west bank of a stream of its 2 There seems just a possibility of this, however, proving identical with either E. westermani or E. cornelia both of which are very rare in collections. 3 Verhandl. z.-b. Gesellsch. Wien, 1874, p. 179 ; and Zool. Garten, 1874, p. 161. 4 Proc. Zool. Society^ 1857, p. 226. 5 The chemical constitution of the colouring matter of the feathers in Edectus has been treated by Dr Krukenberg of Heidelberg ( Vergl. physiol. Studien, Reihe ii. Abth. i. p. 161, reprinted in Mittheil. Orn. Vereines in Wien, 1881, p. 83). 6 They extend, however, to Fiji, Tahiti, and Fanning Island. 7 Unless it be Oreopsittacus arfaki, of New Guinea, remarkable as the only Parrot known as yet to have fourteen instead of twelvo

rectrices.