OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clue

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​CLUE, or Clew (O. Eng. cluwe), originally a ball of thread or wool, the thread of life, which, according to the fable, the Fates spin for every man. The ordinary figurative meaning, a piece of evidence leading to discovery, or a sign pointing to the right track, is derived from the story of Theseus, who was guided through the labyrinth by the ball of thread held by Ariadne.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clunes

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​CLUNES, a borough of Talbot county, Victoria, Australia, 97½ m. by rail N.W. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 2426. It is the centre of an agricultural, pastoral and mining district, in which gold was first discovered in 1851. It lies in a healthy and picturesque situation at an elevation of 1081 ft. An annual agricultural exhibition and large weekly cattle sales are held in the town.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cluentius Habitus, Aulus

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​CLUENTIUS HABITUS, AULUS, of Larinum in Samnium, the hero of a Roman cause célèbre. In 74 B.C. he accused his stepfather Statius Albius Oppianicus of an attempt to poison him; had it been successful, the property of Cluentius would have fallen to his mother Sassia. Oppianicus and two others were condemned, and some years later Oppianicus died in exile. But the verdict was looked upon with suspicion, and it was known for a fact that one of the jurymen had received a large sum of money for distribution amongst his colleagues. The result was the degradation of Cluentius himself and several of the jurymen. In 66, Sassia induced her stepson Oppianicus to charge Cluentius with having caused the elder Oppianicus to be poisoned while in exile. On this occasion the defence was undertaken by Cicero in the extant speech Pro Cluentio. In the end Cluentius was acquitted. Cicero afterwards boasted openly that he had thrown dust in the eyes of the jury (Quintilian, Instit. ii. 17. 21, who quotes this speech more than any other). His efforts are chiefly devoted to proving that the condemnation ​of the elder Oppianicus was just and in no way the result of the jury having been bribed by Cluentius; only a small portion of the end of the speech deals with the specific charge. It was generally believed that the verdict in the former trial was an unfair one; and this opinion was most prejudicial to Cluentius. But even if it could be shown that Cluentius had bribed the jurymen, this did not prove that he had poisoned Oppianicus, although it supplied a sufficient reason for wishing to get him out of the way. The speech delivered by Cicero on this occasion is considered one of his best.
Editions of the speech by W. Y. Fausset (1887), W. Ramsay (1883); see also H. Nettleship, Lectures and Essays (1885).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clump

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​CLUMP, a word common to Teutonic languages, meaning a mass, lump, group or cluster of indefinite form, as a clump of grass or trees. The word is used of a wooden and clumsy shoe, made out of one piece of wood, worn by German peasants, and by transference is applied to the thick extra sole added to heavy boots for rough wear. Shoemakers speak of “clumping” a boot when it is mended by having a new sole fastened by nails and not sewn by hand to the old sole.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cluseret, Gustave Paul

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​CLUSERET, GUSTAVE PAUL (1823–1900), French soldier and politician, was born at Paris. He was an officer in the garde mobile during the revolution of 1848. He took part in several expeditions in Algeria, joined Garibaldi’s volunteers in 1860, and in 1861 resigned his commission to take part in the Civil War in America. He served under Frémont and McClellan, and rose to the rank of general. Then, joining a band of Irish adventurers, he went secretly to Ireland, and participated in the Fenian insurrection (1866–67). He escaped arrest on the collapse of the movement, but was condemned to death in his absence. On his return to France he proclaimed himself a Socialist, opposed militarism, and became a member of the Association Internationale des travailleurs, a cosmopolitan Socialist organization, known as the “Internationale.” On the proclamation of the Third Republic in 1871 he set to work to organize the social revolution, first at Lyons and afterwards at Marseilles. His energy, his oratorical gifts, and his military experience gave him great influence among the working classes. On the news of the communist rising of the 18th of March 1871 he hastened to Paris, and on the 16th of April was elected a member of the commune. Disagreements with the other communist leaders led to his arrest on the 1st of May, on a false charge of betraying the cause. On the 24th of the same month the occupation of Paris by the Versailles troops restored him to liberty, and he succeeded in escaping from France. He did not return to the country till 1884. In 1888 and 1889 he was returned as a deputy to the chamber by Toulon. He died in 1900. Cluseret published his Mémoires (of the Commune) at Paris in 1887–1888.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Flowers, Artificial

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​FLOWERS, ARTIFICIAL. Imitations of natural flowers are sometimes made for scientific purposes (as the collection of glass flowers at Harvard University, which illustrates the flora of the United States), but more often as articles of decoration and ornament. A large variety of materials have been used in their manufacture by different peoples at different times—painted linen and shavings of stained horn by the Egyptians, gold and silver by the Romans, rice-paper by the Chinese, silkworm cocoons in Italy, the plumage of highly coloured birds in South America, wax, small tinted shells, &c. At the beginning of the 18th century the French, who originally learnt the art from the Italians, made great advances in the accuracy of their reproductions, and towards the end of that century the Paris manufacturers enjoyed a world-wide reputation. About the same time the art was introduced into England by French refugees, and soon afterwards it spread also to America. The industry is now a highly specialized one and comprises a large number of operations performed by separate hands. Four main processes may be distinguished. The first consists of cutting up the various fabrics and materials employed into shapes suitable for forming the leaves, petals, &c.; this may be done by scissors, but more often stamps are employed which will cut through a dozen or more thicknesses at one blow. The veins of the leaves are next impressed by means of a die, and the petals are given their natural rounded forms by goffering irons of various shapes. The next step is to assemble the petals and other parts of the flower, which is built up from the centre outwards; and the fourth is to mount the flower on a stalk formed of brass or iron wire wrapped round with suitably coloured material, and to fasten on the leaves required to complete the spray.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fludd, Robert

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​FLUDD, or Flud, ROBERT [Robertus de Fluctibus] (1574–1637), English physician and mystical philosopher, the son of Sir Thomas Fludd, treasurer of war to Queen Elizabeth in France and the Low Countries, was born at Milgate, Kent. After studying at St John’s College, Oxford, he travelled in Europe for six years, and became acquainted with the writings of Paracelsus. He subsequently returned to Oxford, became a member of Christ Church, took his medical degrees, and ultimately became a fellow of the College of Physicians. He practised in London with success, though it is said that he combined with purely medical treatment a good deal of faith-healing. Following Paracelsus, he endeavoured to form a system of philosophy founded on the identity of physical and spiritual truth. The universe and all created things proceed from God, who is the beginning, the end and the sum of all things, and to him they will return. The act of creation is the separation of the active principle (light) from the passive (darkness) in the bosom of the divine unity (God). The universe consists of three worlds; the archetypal (God), the macrocosm (the world), the microcosm (man). Man is the world in miniature, all the parts of both sympathetically correspond and act upon each other. It is possible for man (and even for the mineral and the plant) to undergo transformation and to win immortality. Fludd’s system may be described as a materialistic pantheism, which, allegorically interpreted, he put forward as containing the real meaning of Christianity, revealed to Adam by God himself, handed down by tradition to Moses and the patriarchs, and revealed a second time by Christ. The opinions of Fludd had the honour of being refuted by Kepler, Gassendi and Mersenne. Though rapt in mystical speculation, Fludd was a man of varied attainments. He did not disdain scientific experiments, and is thought by some to be the original inventor of the barometer. He was an ardent defender of the Rosicrucians, and De Quincey considers him to have been the immediate, as J.V. Andreä was the remote, father of freemasonry. Fludd died on the 8th of September 1637.
See J. B. Craven, Robert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian (1902), where a list of his works is given; A. E. Waite, The Real History of the Rosicrucians (1887); De Quincey, The Rosicrucians and Freemasons; J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England (1870), i. 240 seq. His works were published in 6 vols., Oppenheim and Gouda, 1638.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fluke

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​FLUKE (probably connected with the Ger. flach, flat), a name given to several kinds of fish, flat in shape, especially to the common flounder; also the name of a trematoid worm, resembling a flounder in shape, which as a parasite infects the liver and neighbouring organs of certain animals, especially sheep, and causes liver-rot. The most common is the Fasciola hepatica (see Trematodes). It is also the name of a species of kidney potato. Probably from a resemblance to the shape of the fish, “fluke” is the name given to the holding-plates, triangular in shape, at the end of the arms of an anchor, and to the triangular extremities of the tail of a whale. The use of the word as a slang expression for a lucky accident appears to have been first applied in billiards to an unintentional scoring shot.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Floyd, John

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​FLOYD, JOHN (1572–1649), English Jesuit, was born in Cambridgeshire in 1572. He entered the Society of Jesus when at Rome in 1592 and is also known as Daniel à Jesu, Hermannus Loemelius, and George White, the names under which he published a score of controversial treatises. He had considerable fame both as a preacher and teacher, and was frequently arrested in England. His last years were spent at Louvain and he died at St Omer on the 15th of September 1649. His brother Edward Floyd was impeached and sentenced by the Commons in 1621 for speaking disparagingly of the elector palatine.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Floyer, Sir John

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​FLOYER, SIR JOHN (1649–1734), English physician and author, was born at Hinters in Staffordshire, and was educated at Oxford. He practised in Lichfield, and it was by his advice that Dr Johnson, when a child, was taken by his mother to be touched by Queen Anne for the king’s evil on the 30th of March 1714. He died on the 1st of February 1734. Floyer was an advocate of cold bathing, introduced the practice of counting the rate of the pulse-beats, and gave an early account of the pathological changes in the lungs associated with emphysema.
His writings include:—Φαρμακο–Βάσανος: or the Touchstone of Medicines, discovering the virtues of Vegetables, Minerals and Animals, by their Tastes and Smells (2 vols., 1687); The praeternatural State of animal Humours described by their sensible Qualities (1696); An Enquiry into the right Use and Abuses of the hot, cold and temperate Baths in England (1697); A Treatise of the Asthma (1st ed., 1698); The ancient Ψυχρολουσία revived, or an Essay to prove cold Bathing both safe and useful (London, 1702; several editions 8vo; abridged, Manchester, 1844, 12mo); The Physician’s Pulse-watch (1707–1710); The Sibylline Oracles, translated from the best Greek copies, and compared with the sacred Prophecies (1st ed., 1713); Two Essays: the first Essay concerning the Creation, Aetherial Bodies, and Offices of good and bad Angels; the second Essay concerning the Mosaic System of the World (Nottingham, 1717); An Exposition of the Revelations (1719); An Essay to restore the Dipping of Infants in their Baptism (1722); Medicina Gerocomica, or the Galenic Art of preserving old Men’s Healths (1st ed., 1724); A Comment on forty-two Histories described by Hippocrates (1726).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Flumini Maggiore

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​FLUMINI MAGGIORE, a town of the province of Cagliari, Sardinia, 10 m. by road N. of Iglesias, and 5 m. from the W. coast. Pop. (1901) town 3908; commune 9647. It is the centre of a considerable lead and zinc mining district. Three miles to the S. are the ruins of a temple erected probably in the time of Commodus (Corpus inscr. Lat. x., Berlin, 1883, No. 7539). They seem to mark the site of Metalla (mines), a station on the coast road from Sulci to Tharros, and the centre of the mining district in Roman times. At Flumini Maggiore itself were found two ingots of lead, one bearing a stamp with Hadrian’s name.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Flower, Sir William Henry

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​FLOWER, SIR WILLIAM HENRY (1831–1899), English biologist, was born at Stratford-on-Avon on the 30th of November 1831. Choosing medicine as his profession, he began his studies at University College, London, where he showed special aptitude for physiology and comparative anatomy and took his M.B. degree in 1851. He then joined the Army Medical Service, and went out to the Crimea as assistant-surgeon, receiving the medal with four clasps. On his return to England he became a member of the surgical staff of the Middlesex hospital, London, and in 1861 succeeded J. T. Quekett as curator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. In 1870 he also became Hunterian professor, and in 1884, on the death of Sir Richard Owen, was appointed to the directorship of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. He died in London on the 1st of July 1899. He made valuable contributions to structural anthropology, publishing, for example, complete and accurate measurements of no less than 1300 human skulls, and as a comparative anatomist he ranked high, devoting himself especially to the study of the mammalia. He was also a leading authority on the arrangement of museums. The greater part of his life was spent in their administration, and in consequence he held very decided views as to the principles upon which their specimens should be set out. He insisted on the importance of distinguishing between collections intended for the use of specialists and those designed for the instruction of the general public, pointing out that it was as futile to present to the former a number of merely typical forms as to provide the latter with a long series of specimens differing only in the most minute details. His ideas, which were largely and successfully applied to the museums of which he had charge, gained wide approval, and their influence entitles him to be looked upon as a reformer who did much to improve the methods of museum arrangement and management. In addition to numerous original papers, he was the author of An Introduction to the Osteology of the Mammalia (1870); Fashion in Deformity (1881); The Horse: a Study in Natural History (1890); Introduction to the Study of Mammals, Living and Extinct (1891); Essays on Museums and other Subjects (1898). He also wrote many articles for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Floyd, John Buchanan

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​FLOYD, JOHN BUCHANAN (1807–1863), American politician, was born at Blacksburg, Virginia, on the 1st of June 1807. He was the son of John Floyd (1770–1837), a representative in Congress from 1817 to 1829 and governor of Virginia from 1830 to 1834. After graduating at South Carolina College in 1826, the son practised law in his native state and at Helena, Arkansas, and in 1839 settled in Washington county, Virginia, which in 1847–1849 and again in 1853 he represented in the state legislature. Meanwhile, from 1849 to 1852, he was governor of Virginia, in which position he recommended to the legislature the enactment of a law laying an import tax on the products of such states as refused to surrender fugitive slaves owned by Virginia masters. In March 1857 he became secretary of war in President Buchanan’s cabinet, where his lack of administrative ability was soon apparent. In December 1860, on ascertaining that Floyd had honoured heavy drafts made by government contractors in anticipation of their earnings, the president requested his resignation. Several days later Floyd was indicted for malversation in office, but the indictment was overruled on technical grounds. There is no proof that he profited by these irregular transactions; in fact he went out of the office ​financially embarrassed. Though he had openly opposed secession before the election of Lincoln, his conduct after that event, especially after his breach with Buchanan, fell under suspicion, and he was accused of having sent large stores of government arms to Southern arsenals in anticipation of the Civil War. In the last days of his term he apparently had such an intention, but during the year 1860 the Southern States actually received less than their full quota of arms. After the secession of Virginia he was commissioned a brigadier-general in the Confederate service. He was first employed in some unsuccessful operations in western Virginia, and in February 1862 became commander of the Confederate forces at Fort Donelson, from which he fled with his second in command, General Gideon J. Pillow, on the night of February 18, leaving General Simon B. Buckner to surrender to General Grant. A fortnight later President Davis relieved him of his command. He died at Abingdon, Virginia, on the 26th of August 1863.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Flume

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​FLUME (through an O. Fr. word flum, from the Lat. flumen, a river), a word formerly used for a stream, and particularly for the tail of a mill-race. It is used in America for a very narrow gorge running between precipitous rocks, with a stream ​at the bottom, but more frequently is applied to an artificial channel of wood or other material for the diversion of a stream of water from a river for purposes of irrigation, for running a sawmill, or for various processes in the hydraulic method of gold-mining (see Aqueduct).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lahr

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​LAHR, a town in the grand-duchy of Baden, on the Schutter, about 9 m. S. of Offenburg, and on the railway Dinglingen-Lahr. Pop. (1900) 13,577. One of the busiest towns in Baden, it carries on manufactures of tobacco and cigars, woollen goods, chicory, leather, pasteboard, hats and numerous other articles, has considerable trade in wine, while among its other industries are printing and lithography. Lahr first appears as a town in 1278, and after several vicissitudes it passed wholly to Baden in 1803.
See Stein, Geschichte und Beschreibung der Stadt Lahr (Lahr, 1827); and Sütterlin, Lahr und seine Umgebung (Lahr, 1904).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laidlaw, William

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​LAIDLAW, WILLIAM (1780–1845), friend and amanuensis of Sir Walter Scott, was born at Blackhouse, Selkirkshire, on the 19th of November 1780, the son of a sheep farmer. After an elementary education in Peebles he returned to work upon his father’s farm. James Hogg, the shepherd poet, who was employed at Blackhouse for some years, became Laidlaw’s friend and appreciative critic. Together they assisted Scott by supplying material for his Border Minstrelsy, and Laidlaw, after two failures as a farmer in Midlothian and Peebleshire, became Scott’s steward at Abbotsford. He also acted as Scott’s amanuensis at different times, taking down a large part of The Bride of Lammermoor, The Legend of Montrose and Ivanhoe from the author’s dictation. He died at Contin near Dingwall, Ross-shire, on the 18th of May 1845. Of his poetry, little is known except Lucy’s Flittin’ in Hogg’s Forest Minstrel.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laing, Samuel

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​LAING, SAMUEL (1810–1897), British author and railway administrator, was born at Edinburgh on the 12th of December 1810. He was the nephew of Malcolm Laing, the historian of Scotland; and his father, Samuel Laing (1780–1868), was also a well-known author, whose books on Norway and Sweden attracted much attention. Samuel Laing the younger entered St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1827, and after graduating as second wrangler and Smith’s prizeman, was elected a fellow, and remained at Cambridge temporarily as a coach. He was called to the bar in 1837, and became private secretary to Mr Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton), the president of the Board of Trade. In 1842 he was made secretary to the railway department, and retained this post till 1847. He had by then become an authority on railway working, and had been a member of the Dalhousie Railway Commission; it was at his suggestion that the “parliamentary” rate of a penny a mile was instituted. In 1848 he was appointed chairman and managing director of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, and his business faculty showed itself in the largely increased prosperity of the line. He also became chairman (1852) of the Crystal Palace Company, but retired from both posts in 1855. In 1852 he entered parliament as a Liberal for Wick, and after losing his seat in 1857, was re-elected in 1859, in which year he was appointed financial secretary to the Treasury; in 1860 he was made finance minister in India. On returning from India, he was re-elected to parliament for Wick in 1865. He was defeated in 1868, but in 1873 he was returned for Orkney and Shetland, and retained his seat till 1885. Meanwhile he had been reappointed chairman of the Brighton line in 1867, and continued in that post till 1894, being generally recognized as an admirable administrator. He was also chairman of the Railway Debenture Trust and the Railway Share Trust. In later life he became well known as an author, his Modern Science and Modern Thought (1885), Problems of the Future (1889) and Human Origins (1892) being widely read, not only by reason of the writer’s influential position, experience of affairs and clear style, but also through their popular and at the same time well-informed treatment of the scientific problems of the day. Laing died at Sydenham on the 6th of August 1897.