Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 05.djvu/574

LEFT LINNE 490 LION divided the vegetable kingdom into 24 classes. LINNE (lin'na), KARL VON, com- monly LiNN^us, the greatest botanist of his age; born in Rashult, Sweden, May 13, 1707. He was the son of a clergy- man; educated at the grammar school of Wexio. He entered the University of Lund, where his botanical tastes were en- couraged; and removed to Upsala in 1728, where he undertook the supervision of the botanic garden, and became as- sistant to the botanist Rudbeck. Aided by the Academy of Sciences at Upsala Linne made a journey through Lapland, the result of his travels was "Flora Lap- ponica," published in 1735. In this year he went to the University of Harderwyk in Holland and took an M. D. degree; afterward visited Leyden, where he pub- lished the first sketch of his "Systema Naturae" and "Fundamenta Botanica." In 1736 he visited England, went to Paris in 1738, and afterward settled in Stockholm as a physician. He became Professor of Medicine at Upsala in 1741, and then of botany and natural history; was made a Knight of the Polar Star with the rank of nobility. The great merit of Linne as a botanist was that he arranged plants on a simple system of sexual relationship" and prepared the way for the more natural and satisfac- tory classification which has superseded the Linnaean system. Among his works are "Genera Plantarum" (1737); "Clas- ses Plantarum" (1738) ; "Flora Suecica" (1745) ; "Fauna Suecica" (1746) ; "Phil- osophia Botanica" (1751) ; and the "Species Plantarum" (1753). He died in Upsala, Jan. 10, 1778. LINNET, a very common and well- known song-bird, frequenting all Europe S. of 64°, and in Asia extending to Turkestan. It is a winter visitor to Egypt and Abyssinia, and is found in gi-eat numbers in Barbary, the Canaries, and Madeira. In autumn and winter the plumage is brown; in the breeding sea- son the breast and head of both sexes becomes a crimson-red, varying only in degree. The (later) generic and spe- cific names have reference to the fond- ness of the bird for the seeds of flax and hemp. It is popularly known, according to its sex and the season of the year, as the red, gray, or brown linnet. LINOTYPE, a machine, operated by finger- keys, which automatically pro- duce,' and assembles, ready for the press or stereotyping table, type metal bars, each bearing, properly justified, the type characters to print an entire line, the linotype is the invention of Ottmar Mer- genthaler. Beginning in 1876, he per- fected his device in 1886, the first news- paper to use it being the New York "Tribune." The device has since been greatly improved by means of spacing facilities, etc., and is adapted for book work as well as for newspapers. Its manipulation may be roughly approxi- mated to that of a typewriter. The lino- type does not set type. It produces a slug or line of metal upon which the characters to be printed stand out after the fashion of reading matter for the blind. LINSEED OIL, the fixed oil expressed from linseed. Linseed oil consists of the glycerides of linoleic, palmitic, and stearic acids, about nine-tenths of the whole being the glyceride of linoleic acid. It may be taken as the type of the class known as drying oils, from their prop- erty of drying up into a transparent, tough, resinous mass when exposed to the air. When the oil is boiled for some time, till_ it loses about one-sixth of its weight, it becomes thicker, tenacious, and viscid, and dries up, still more read- ily than in the fresh state, into a turpen- tine-like mass, scarcely soluble in oils. It then forms the basis of printers' and painters' varnishes. Linseed oil, mixed with chloride of sulphur, forms caout- chouc-like products, and with alkalies a soft soap. LINZ, capital of the crown-land of Upper Austria; 117 miles W. of Vienna, on the Danube. As a place of some stra- tegic importance Linz has been besieged on several occasions, notably by the peasants in 1626, and during the war of the Austrian Succession in 1741 and again in 1742. Here peace was sig^ned between the Emperor Ferdinand III. and George Rakoczy of Transylvania in 1645, and in the vicinity Bernadotte defeated the Austrians in 1809. Pop. about 70,000. LION, in zoology, Felis leo (formerly elevated into a distinct genus with a sin- gle species, Leo nobilis), one of the larg- est and the most important of the liv- ing carnivora. Its range in historical time is very wide. The Hebrew Scrip- tures aboimd with references to it, and in the time of Darius lions were em- ployed to execute judicial sentences (Dan. vi: 16-24). It is mentioned by Homer; Herodotus and Theocritus mention lions as found in Africa, and in Europe; by Vergil, by Ovid, by Martial in almost every book, and by Catullus. It played an important part in the sanguinary games of the Roman amphitheater. Its geographical range is now confined to Africa and the S. W. of Asia, extend- ing E. as far as Gujerat. It varies