Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/326

 308 L A P L A P their more powerful neighbours. The aggregate number in all Lap land is estimated at 27,000. Ac:ording to official statistics the Swedish Lapps increased from 5617 in 1830 to 6702 in 1870. In Norway there were 14,464 in 1845, 17,178 in 1865. For Russian and Finnish Lapland the numbers were given in 1859 as 1200 and 2183, and according to Kelsieff the whole number in Russia is not now more than 3000. The number of reindeer possessed by the whole people is estimated at 363,000. Gustaf von Diiben s Om Lappland och Lapparne (Stockh., 1873) is the fullest and most systematic work on its subject. It gives a list of more than two hundred authorities. See also Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankf., 1673; English version, Oxford, 1674), for long the standard book ; Regnnrd, Voyage do Laponie (1631, often reprinted; English in Pinkerton, vol i.); Hogstrom, Beskrifn. o foer fie till Seeriges Krona lydande Lappmarker, Stockh., 1746 ; Leem, Beskri- velse over Finmarkens Lapper, Copenh., 1767,, extremely important, in Danish and Latin ; Acerbi, Reise (lurch Schiceden, Berlin, 1808 ; Laastadius, Journal, Ac., Stockh., 1831 ; Leopold von Buch, Reise aurch A orwegen und Lapp- land, Berlin, 1840; Bayar-l Taylor, Northern Travel, London, 1858; Castren, Nordiska Resor (Hels., 1852-58; Germ, transl., St Petersburg); Stockfleth, Dagbog over mine Missions- Reiser, Christ., 1860, of great value; Frijs, En sommer (1867) i Finmarken, &c., Christ., 1871; Aubel, Reise nach Lappland, Leipsic, 1874; Nemirovitch-Dantehenko, Laplanditja i Laplandtzui, St Peters burg, 1874; Reports by Kelsieff, &c., for the Anthropological Exhibition at Moscow, 1877, Moscow, 1878 ; Ecker, Lappland, &c., Freiburg, 1878; Du Chaillu, Land of the Midnight Sun, London, 1881 ; Edward Rae. The White &amp;lt;Si Peninsula, London, 1882. (H. A. W.) LA PORTE, chief city of La Ports county, Indiana, U.S., is situated at the intersection of three railways, 12 miles south of Lake Michigan, and about 60 miles south east of Chicago. Surrounded by a fertile agricultural region, it carries on a considerable trade, and has manu factories of agricultural implements, foundries, and various mills. The vicinity has become a favourite summer resi dence, on account of its beautiful lakes, which in winter supply large quantities of clear ice for the Chicago and southern markets. The population in 1880 was 6195. LAPPENBERG, JOHANX MARTIN (1794-1865), a German historical writer, was born July 30, 1794, at Hamburg, where his father held a good official position ; early in life he began to study medicine, and afterwards history, at Edinburgh. The latter pursuit he continued in London and at the universities of Berlin and Gottingen, graduating as doctor of laws of Gottingen in 1816. He was forthwith sent by the Hamburg senate as resident minister to the Prussian court, where he remained till 1823, when he became keeper of the Hamburg archives, an office in which he had the amplest opportunities for the cultivation and exercise of those habits of laborious and critical research on which his highly respectable reputation as an historian rests. He continued to hold this post until 1863, when a serious affection of the eyes compelled him to resign. In 1850 he had the honour of representing Hamburg at the Frankfort conference. His death took place on November 28, 1865. Lappenberg s most important contribution to literature, and that by which he is best known outside of Germany, was his Geschichte von England (2 vols., Hamburg, 1834-37), which was translated by Thorpe (1845-57) and continued by Pauli (from 1160). His other works include a continuation of the Geschichte des Ursprungs der dciitschen Hansn of Sartorius, 1830; Hamburgischcs Urkunden- buch, 1842; Hamburger Rechtsaltcrthumcr, 1845; Chroniken dcr Stadt Hamburg in nicdcrdcutsclicr Sprachc, 1852-61 ; Qucllen zur Geschichte dcs Erzbisthums u. dor Stadt Bremen, 1841 ; editions of Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, Helmold, and Arnold of Liibeck in the Monumenta of Pertz, and an edition of Th. Murner s Till Eulcnspieycl, 1853. LAPWING, Anglo-Saxon Hledpewince ( = &quot; one who turns about in running or flight,&quot; see Skeat s Etymol. Dictionary, p. 321), 1 a bird, the Tringa vanellus of Linnaeus and the Vanellus mdgaris or V. cristatus of modern orni thologists. In the temperate parts of the Old World this species is perhaps the most abundant of the Plovers, Charadriidse, breeding in greater or fewer numbers in almost every suitable place from Ireland to Japan, the majority migrating towards winter to southern countries, as the Punjab, Egypt, and Barbary, though in the British Islands some are always found at that season, chiefly about estuaries. As a straggler it has occurred within the Arctic 1 Caxton in 1481 has &quot; lapwynches &quot; (Reynard the Fox, cap. 27). Circle (as on the Varanger Fjord in Norway), as well as in Iceland and even Greenland ; while it not unfrequently appears in Madeira and the Azores. Conspicuous as the strongly contrasted colours of its plumage and its very peculiar flight make it, one may well wonder at its success in maintaining its ground when so many of its allies have been almost exterminated, for the Lapwing is the object perhaps of greater persecution than any other European bird that is not a plunderer. Its eggs the well known &quot; Plovers Eggs &quot; of commerce 2 are taken by the thousand or ten thousand; and, worse than this, the bird, wary and wild at other times of the year, in the breeding-season becomes easily approachable, and is (or used to be) shot down in enormous numbers to be sold in the markets for &quot;Golden Plover.&quot; Its growing scarcity as a species was consequently in Great Britain very perceptible until an Act of Parliament (35 & 36 Viet. cap. 78) frightened people into letting it alone, 3 and its numbers have since then as perceptibly increased, to the manifest advantage of many classes of the community those who would eat its eggs, those who would eat its flesh (at the right time of year), as well as the agriculturists whose lands it frequented, for it is admitted on all hands that no bird is more completely the farmer s friend. What seems to be the secret of the Lapwing holding its position in spite of slaughter and rapine is the adaptability of its nature to various kinds of localities. It will find sustenance for itself and its progeny equally on the driest soils as on the fattest pastures; upland and fen, arable and moorland, are alike to it, provided only the ground be open enough. The wailing cry 4 and the frantic gestures of the cock bird in the breeding-season will tell any passer-by that a nest or brood is near ; but, unless he knows how to look for it, nothing save mere chance will enable him to find it. Yet by practice those who are acquainted with the bird s habits will accurately mark the spot whence the hen silently rises from her treasure, and, disregarding the behaviour of the cock, which is intended to delude the intruder, will walk straight to one nest after another as though they knew beforehand the exact position of each. The nest is a slight hollow in the ground, wonderfully inconspicuous even when deepened, as is usually the case, by incubation, and the black-spotted olive 2 There is a prevalent belief that many of the eggs sold as &quot;Plovers &quot; are those of Rooks, but no notion can be more absurd, since the appearance of the two is wholly unlike. Those of the Redshank, of the Golden Plover (to a small extent), and enormous numbers of those of the Black-headed Gull, and in certain places of some of the Terns, are, however, undoubtedly sold as Lapwings, having a certain simi larity of shell to the latter, and a difference of flavour only to be, detected by a fine palate. It is estimated that 800,000 Lapwings eggs are yearly sent to England from the one province of Friesland in Holland (see Ornith. Centralblatt, 1877, p. 108). 3 This measure was really insufficient to afford it, or any other bird, proper protection, but the British public seldom read Acts of Parlia ment critically, and, hearing that one had been passed for the Preser vation of Wild Birds, in which the Lapwing was specially named, most persons desisted from persecuting this species, not in the least knowing that the utmost penalty they could incur by killing it in the close- season would be but trifling. 4 This sounds like pee-weet, with some variety of intonation. Hence the names Peewit, Peaseweep, and Teuchit, commonly applied in some parts of Britain to this bird, though the first is that by which one of the smaller Gulls, Larus ridilundus (sec GULL, vol. xi. p. 274), is known in the districts it frequents. In Sweden Vipa, in Germany Kiebitz, in Holland Kiemet, and in France Dixhuit, are names of the Lapwing, given to it from its usual cry. Other English names are Green Plover and Hornpie the latter from its long hornlike crest and pied plumage. The Lapwing s conspicuous crest seems to have been the cause of a common blunder among our writers of the Middle Ages, who translated the Latin word Upupa, properly HOOPOE (q.v.), by Lapwing, as being the crested bird with which they were best acquainted. In like manner other writers of the same or an earlier period Latinized Lapwing by Egrettides (plural), and rendered that again into English as Egrets the tuft of feathers misleading them also. The word Vanellus is from vannus, the fan used for winnowing corn, and refers to the audible beating of the bird s wings.