or the other, whereas they really had not. These papers were obtained either from some heathen neighbor or by bribery. In the persecution under Diocletian (303) a fourth class arose, the traditores, consisting of those who at command gave up their sacred books and vessels. Those who saved themselves by flight were reckoned among the lapsed, although their case was not regarded as equally bad with that of those who sacrificed to idols. The lapsed were at first punished by excommunication, and their reception into the Church again was strenuously resisted; but later a milder course was generally adopted with regard to them.
LAPUTA, lȧ-pū′tȧ. An island described as floating in the air, in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). Its movements were guided by a shuttle-shaped loadstone, under the control of the wise men of the island, and it followed the direction in which the loadstone was pointed. The imaginary inhabitants of this remarkable island were grave philosophers devoted to mathematics and music, who wore garments adorned with representations of harps, trumpets, fiddles, flutes, guitars, and other instruments, and with suns, moons, and stars. These philosophers were wont to be so absorbed in their speculations that they neither spoke, nor attended to what was said by others, until gently reminded by servants, who were supplied with blown bladders fastened like flails to the end of a sharp stick. With the bladders it was the duty of the servants to strike gently the mouths or ears of their masters in order to arouse them from their abstracted state of mind to answer questions. The island is a satire on the Royal Society, and especially on Sir Isaac Newton. See Swift, Jonathan.
LAPWING (AS. hlēapewince, lapwing, from hlēapan, OHG. hlaufan, Ger. laufen, to run, Goth. us-hlaupan, to spring up + AS. wincian, OHG. winchan, Ger. winken, Eng. wink; so called from the jerky motion of the wings, but confused by popular etymology with lap + wing), or Peewit. An Old World plover (Vanellus cristatus), differing from the true plovers chiefly in having a hind toe. It is numerous in summer in all the temperate parts of Europe and Asia, but the majority migrate southward in winter. It is very plover-like in form and habits, and among the most beautiful of shore-birds. The head, which is surmounted with a beautiful crest, is black; the throat black in summer and white in winter; the back is green, glossed with purple and copper color. The lapwing is very plentiful in moors, open commons, and marshy tracts, in pairs during the breeding season, and in winter in flocks, chiefly on the seashore, where its plaintive cry suggests the name ‘peewit’ (or in Scotland ‘peesweep’), by which it is known in popular speech. Its artifices to prevent the discovery of its nest are as eager and ingenious as those of other plovers, and, like them, its nest is little more than a depression in the ground containing four eggs. These eggs are esteemed a great delicacy, and great numbers are sent to the London market, under the name of plovers' eggs. The bird itself is also highly esteemed for the table. The resulting persecution was so great that the bird nearly vanished from Great Britain; it is now, however, protected by law, and is again numerous. Consult Newton, Dictionary of Birds (London, 1893-96), and other authorities on British birds. See Plate of Plovers.
THE LAPWING.
LAP′WORTH, Charles (1842—). An English geologist. He was born at Faringdon, Berkshire; received a pedagogical training at Culham College; taught at Galashiels (1864-75), at Madras College, Saint Andrews (1875-81), and at Mason College, Birmingham, which afterwards became Birmingham University. He won the Bigsby gold medal in 1887, and the Wollaston medal in 1899; in 1892 he became president of the geological section of the British Association of Edinburgh. Lapworth urged strongly the theory of ‘rock-fold’; investigated the graptolites—The Geological Distribution of the Rhabdophora (1879-80)—showing, against Barrande's theory of colonies, the chronological and zonal sequence; and made great contributions to the stratigraphy of the Darness Eribole district of the Scotch Highlands. His writings are in the publications of the Edinburgh Geological Society, the reports of the British Association, the Quarterly Journal of the London Geological Society, and the Geological Magazine. He revised the tenth edition of Page's Physical Geography (1881), also his Geology (1888), and published an Intermediate Text-book of Geology (1899).
LAR, lär. The capital of the Province of Laristan, Persia, situated on a well-wooded plain, at the foot of a ridge of hills, 60 miles from the Persian Gulf, and about 180 miles south-southeast of Shiraz (Map: Persia, E 6). The bazaar of Lar is said to be the finest and most elaborate in Persia. The chief product is tobacco. Population, estimated at 7000.
LARA, lȧ′rȧ. A poem by Byron (1814), and the name assumed by its hero Conrad on his return home. He is recognized by a knight, who mysteriously disappears before a duel arranged for the next day.
LA RABIDA, lȧ rä′Bē̇-Dȧ. A Franciscan convent near Palos, Spain, restored in 1855. Columbus stopped at the convent on his proposed journey to France to seek assistance in his plans, and through the interest which his conversation aroused in the prior was brought to the notice of Queen Isabella.
LARAMIE, lăr′ȧ-mē̇. A city and the county-seat of Albany County, Wyo., 50 miles northwest of Cheyenne, the State capital; on the Big Laramie River, and on the Union Pacific Railroad (Map: Wyoming, G 5). The city, situated on
