Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/110

 100 F E R F E R bours defended by forts, and serves as a place of banish ment for criminals from Brazil The next largest island of the group is about a mile in circumference, and the others are small barren rocks. The convict village numbers about 1000 inhabitants, and consists of a square formed by the governor s residence, a chapel, the prison, workshop, and Government stores, and three or four streets radiating up wards, and composed of wattle-built huts. About 1000 additional convicts are employed in cultivating the planta tions in different parts of the island. The island is occupied by about 150 soldiers and G officers under a governor. Stores, convicts, and mails are carried by steamer twice a month to and from Pernambuco. See &quot; Visit to Fernando Noronha&quot; by Alexander Eattray, M.D., K. N., in Journal of the Royal Geographical Society for 1872. FERNANDO PO, or FERXAO DO PAO, an island on the W. coast of Africa, lying in the Bight of Biafra, about 20 miles from the mainland, in 3 12 N. lat. and 3 4-8 E. long. It is about 44 miles in length from N.N.E. to S.S.W.. and about 20 in breadth. The coasts are steep and rocky, and the interior is mountainous. A ridge of mountains to wards the centre of the island rises to the height of 8000 feet, and is terminated at each extremity by a peaked mountain, the northern one (Ste Isabelle) attain ing a height of 10,700 feet. The southern extremity of the island is also intersected by several steep mountains, varying from 1000 to 3000 feet. These mountains are covered, most of them to their summits, as are the intervening valleys, with dense forests of shrubs and lofty trees of luxuriant growth. The rocks are of volcanic origin ; and the soil is rich and fertile, producing rice, sugar-cane, cotton, tobacco, yams, and palms. Antelopes, monkeys, sheep, goats, fowls, turtle, and fish are abundant. The climate is salubrious, though the rainy season lasts from May to December, and is succeeded by a season of dense fogs. The principal harbour, Port Clarence on the northern shore, is frequented by English vessels, especially for palm-oil, This island was discovered in 1471 by a Portuguese navigator, whose name it bears. It was taken possession of by Spain in 1778, but was abandoned in 1782. The English formed a settle ment on the island in 1827, and made use of it as a harbour for the ships of war sent to watch the slave traffic, but they relinquished it in 1834; the Spaniards resumed possession of it in 1844, and changed its name to Puerto de Isabel. The population is about 15,000, and is composed partly of half-breed Protuguese, negroes formerly freed by the British, a few Europeans, and the native inhabitants called Edeeyahs or Bobies, who are in the proportion of ten to one of all the others, and whose jealous hosti) ity perhaps, as much as the reputed insalubrity of the climate, has prevented the colonization of the island by Europeans. The Baptist missionaries who settled on the island during its occupation by the British were expelled by the Spaniards in 1858. See Benedetti, &quot;Les iles espagnoles du golfe de Guine e,&quot; in EM. de la Soc. de Geogr., 1869. FERNEL, JEAN FRANCOIS (1497-1558), a distinguished French physician, was born at Clermont in 1497. After receiving his early education at his native town, he entered the college of Sainte-Barbe, Paris, where he so distinguished himself in mathematics, philosophy, and languages, that not long after obtaining his M.A. degree he was offered a professorship in the college. This offer he, however, declined, choosing in preference to become a physician. He received his doctor s degree in 1530, and was named professor of medicine in 1534. His extraordinary general erudition, and the skill and success with which he sought to revive the study of the old Greek physicians, gained for him a great reputation, and ultimately the office of physician to the court. He practised with very great success, and at his death in 1558 left behind him an immense fortune. His principal works are Monalos2ihccrium, sire Astrolalii genus, gcncralis Horarii Strnctura ct Usus ; De Abditis Rcrum Causis ; Mcdicina, ad Henricum II.; and Consiliorum Mcdicinalium Liber. All of them have been several times reprinted. FERNOW, KARL Lumvia (1763-1808), German art- critic and archaeologist, was born in Pomerania, November 19, 1763. His father was a servant in the household of the lord of Blumenhagen. At the age of twelve he became clerk to a notary, and was afterwards apprenticed to a druggist. While serving his time he had the misfortune accidentally to shoot a young man who came to visit him ; and although through the intercession of his master he escaped prosecution, the untoward event weighed heavily on his mind, and led him at the close of his apprenticeship to quit his native place. He obtained a situation at Liibeck, where he had leisure to cultivate his natural taste for draw ing and poetry. Having formed an acquaintance with the painter Cars tens, whose influence was an important stimulus and help to him, he renounced his trade of druggist, and set up as portrait-painter and drawing-master. At Ludwigs- lust he fell in love with a young girl, and followed her to Weimar ; but failing in his suit, he went next to Jena. There he was introduced to Professor Reinhold, and in his house met the Danish poet Baggesen. The latter invited him to accompany him to Switzerland and Italy, a proposal which he eagerly accepted (1794) for the sake of the opportunity of furthering his studies in the fine arts. On Baggeseu s return to Denmark, Fernow, assisted by some of his friends, visited Rome and made some stay there. He now renewed his intercourse with Carstens, who had settled at Rome, and applied himself to the study of the history and theory of the fine arts and of the Italian language and literature. Making rapid progress, he was soon qualified to give a course of lectures on archaeology, which was attended by the principal artists then at Rome. Plaving married a Roman lady, he returned in 1802 to Germany, and was appointed in the following year professor extraordinary of Italian literature at Jena. In 1804 he accepted the post of librarian to Amelia, duchess-dowager of Weimar, which gave him the leisure he desired for the purpose of turning to account the literary and archaeological researches in which he had engaged at Rome. His most valuable work, the Jidmische Studien, appeared in 3 vols., 1806-1808. Among his other works are Das Lelen des Kiinstlers Carstens (1806), Ariosto s Lebenslaiif (1809), and Francesco Petrarca (1818). Fernow died at Weimar, December 4, 1808. A memoir of his life by Johanna Schopenhauer, mother of the philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, appeared in 1810, and a complete edition of his works in 1829. FERNS, a large group of cryptogamic plants forming in a wide sense a very naturally limited group. In the article BIOLOGY (vol. iii. p. 694) it has been shown that the sub- kingdom Cormophyta includes three well-marked series, Eryopliyta, Pteridophyfa, Phanerogams. Of the second of these, Ferns, in the most restricted acceptation of the word, are the most conspicuous representatives. It will be con venient, however, to give some account under the present head, not merely of ferns proper, but also of the other smaller groups, closely related to ferns and often spoken of in familiar language as Fern-allies, which are included in the Pteridophyta. The life-history of all these is divisible into two distinct stages or generations, in which not only are the external morphological characters extremely different, but the phy siological functions are also sharply contrasted. These stages have been termed in the article already referred to the sporopkore and the oopkore. The vigorous vegetative forms which are what are familiarly understood when ferns are spoken of are only one phase of their complete life-cycle. They are the sporophores ;