Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/465

 L E N L E N 445 or whether their limbs were of a more generalized type. The discussions which have taken place on their nature at all events show how liitle reliance can be placed upon the characters of the molar teeth alone in judging of the affinities of an extinct animal. Perhaps the most important of all the numerous recent palreontological discoveries in the Tertiary beds of the rocky mountain district of North America has been that of animals which their describers believe to be low and generalized forms of the order Primates. Their existence was not suspected till 1872, in which year Professor Marsh and Professor Cope almost simultaneously announced the fact. Since that time numerous genera have been assigned to the group, including five which were previously described by Leidy from teeth alone, the nature of which he did not venture to determine. These are nearly all from the Eocene or lowest Miocene formations. Until we receive fuller information regarding the remains of these animals, it is premature to speculate upon their real character or affinities. The difficulty of doing so is at present enhanced by their describers in the provisional accounts already given adopt ing the old assumption that lemurs and monkeys are animals of the same general type, and speaking of them sometimes as one and sometimes as the other. It is possible that these animals, or some of them, may have been monkeys, in which case they were not lemurs ; or they may have been lemurs, in which case they were not monkeys. It is possible also that they may form a connect ing link between the two, and so justify their old associa tion in one group. The recently described Anaptomorphus homunculus from the Lower Eocene of Wyoming, an ani mal smaller than Tarsius spectrum, is considered by Cope to be &quot; the most simian lemur yet discovered, and prob ably representing the family from which the true monkeys and men were derived&quot; (Palxontological Bulletin, No. 34, February 20, 1882). In this case the lemurs, which, judging by their present distribution, appear to have spread east and west from Madagascar, may have had quite a different origin. Literature. Besides the works cand memoirs on particular families and genera referred to above, see St G. Mivart, &quot;Notes on the Crania and Dentition of the Lcmuridai,&quot; in Proc. Zool. Soc., 1864 (p. 611-648) and 1867 (p. 960-975) ; Mivart and Murie, &quot; On the Anatomy of the Lemuroidea,&quot; in Trans. Zool. Soc., vol. vii., 1872, pp. 1-113 ; &quot;W. Turner, &quot;On the Placentation of the Lemurs,&quot; in Phil. Trans., clxvi., pp. 569-587 ; F. Pollen and D. C. Van Dam, Rechcrchcs sur la Faune dc Madagascar, 2mep a rte, &quot; Mammiferes,&quot; 1868. (W. H. F.) LENA. See SIBERIA. LENCLOS, NINON DE (1615-1705), was the daughter of a gentleman of good position in Touraine. Her long and eventful life divides into two periods, during the former of which she was the typical Frenchwoman of the gayest and most licentious society of the 17th century, during the latter the recognized leader of the fashion in Paris, and the friend of wits and poets. Of her earlier life the less said the better, and in her defence all that can be pleaded is that she had been educated by her father in the epicurean and sensual beliefs made popular by Montaigne, and that she retained throughout the frank demeanour, and disregard of money, which won from Saint Evremond the remark that she was an honnete homme. Against her, and the numerous specious defences set up for her by contemporaneous and subsequent French writers, must be mentioned her absolute want of maternal feeling and even of natural shame. The well-known visit of Queen Christina to her attests the extent of her renown, or infamy, and the inefficacy of the threats of Anne of Austria prove her power. Of a perfectly different character was her later life, when, though she had continued her career of debauchery for a preposterous length of time, she settled down to the social leadership of Paris. Then there were to be found in her salon all that was most witty and refined in France, &quot;ladies as well as gentlemen of the highest birth,&quot; remarks a correspondent to Madame de Sevigne*, poets like Moliere, abbe s like Chateauneuf, Genevese preachers like Turretin, the protege 1 of Saint Evremond. It became the fashion for young men as well as old to throng round her, and the best of all introductions for a young man who wished to make a figure in society was an introduction to Mdlle. de Lenclos. The cause for this surpassing social success is to be found perhaps as much in her past notoriety, and past intimacy with the great names of the last generation, as in the wit and tact, to which Saint Evremond, and after him Sainte-Beuve, ascribe it. Her long friendship with Saint Evremond must be shortly noticed. They were of the same age, and had been intimate in their youth, and throughout his long exile the wit seems to have kept a kind remembrance of Ninon. The few really authentic letters of Ninon herself are those addressed to her old friend, and the letters of both in the last few years of their equally long lives are owes part of her posthumous fame to the old wit, she owes at least as much to the young Arouet, who was presented to her as a promising boy poet by the abbe&quot; de Chateauneuf, to whom she left 2000 francs to buy books, and who, as Voltaire, was to write a letter on her which was to be the chief authority of many subsequent biographers. Her personal appearance is, according to Sainte-Beuve, best described in a novel of Mdlle. de Scude ry, and the charac teristic of it was neither beauty nor wit, but high spirits, and perfect evenness of temperament. The letters of Ninon published after her death were, according to Voltaire, all spurious, and the only authentic ones are those to Saint Evremond, which can be best studied in Dauxmesnil s edition of Saint fivremond, and his notice on her. Sainte-Beuve has an interesting notice of these letters in the Caiiseries du Lundi, vol. iv. Most biographies of Ninon are full of unauthentic stories. LENFANT, JACQUES (1661-1728), author of numerous works, chiefly in ecclesiastical history, was born at Bazoche (Eure-et-Loir) on April 13, 1661. His father, Paul Lenfant, was Protestant pastor at Bazoche and afterwards at Chatillon-sur-Loing until the revocation of the edict of Nantes, when he removed to Cassel. After studying at Saumur and Geneva, Lenfant completed his theological course at Heidelberg, where in 168-i he was ordained pastor of the French Protestant church, and appointed chaplain to the dowager electress palatine. The French invasion in 1688 compelled his withdrawal to Berlin, where in the following year he was again appointed by Frederick to be one of the ministers of the French Protestant church ; this office he continued to hold until his death, ultimately adding to it that of chaplain to the king, with the dignity of consistorialrath. He visited Holland and England in 1707, and had the honour of preaching before Queen Anne, and, it is said, of being invited to become one of her chaplains. In search of materials for his histories he visited Helmstadt in 1712, and Leipsic in 1715 and 1725, but otherwise the course of his life was quite uneventful. He died at Berlin on August 7, 1728. An exhaustive catalogue of his publications, thirty-two in all, will be found in Chauffepie s Dictionnaire, where his personal excellen cies are dwelt upon with some fulness and warmth. See also Haag s France Protestante. He is now best known by his Histoire du Concile de Constance, tiree prineipalement d Autcurs qui ont assiste au Concile (Amsterdam, 1714 ; 2d ed., 1728 ; English translation, 1730). It is of course largely dependent upon the previous laborious work of Van dor Hardt, but has indisputable literary merits peculiar to itself, and in particular lias been praised on all sides for its fairness. It was followed by Histoire du Concile de Pise, et de ce qui s est passi de plus memorable depuis ce Concile jusqu au Concile de Constance (1724), and (posthumously) by
 * exceptionally touching, and unique in the polite compli-
 * ments with which they try to keep off old age. If Ninon