Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/235

 F I 11 F I 11 225 and occurs in the Black Forest and in the Vosges ; it is plentiful likewise on the Pyrenees and Apennines. The wood is inferior to that of Abies excelsa, but, being soft and easily worked, is largely employed in the countries to which it is indigenous for all the purposes of carpentry. Articles of furniture are frequently made of it, and it is in great esteem for carving and for the construction of stringed instruments. Deficient in resin, the wood is more perish able than that of the spruce fir when exposed to the air, though it is said to stand well under water. The bark contains a large amount of a fine, highly-resinous turpentine, which collects in tumours on the trunk during the heat of summer. In the Alps and Vosges, this resinous semi-fluid is collected by climbing the trees, and pressing out the con tents of the natural receptacles of the bark into horn or tin vessels held beneath them. After purification by straining, it is sold as &quot; Strasburg turpentine,&quot; much used in the preparation of some of the finer varnishes. Burgundy pitch is also prepared from it by a similar process as that from Abies excelsa. A fine oil of turpentine is distilled from the crude material ; the residue forms a coarse rosin. Introduced into Britain in the 17th century, the silver fir has become common there as a planted tres, though, like the Norway spruce, it rarely comes up from seed scattered naturally. There are many fine trees in Scotland ; one near lloseneath, figured by Strutt in his Sylva Britan- nica, then measured more than 22 feet round the trunk. In the more southern parts of the island it often reaches a height of 90 feet, and specimens exist considerably above that size ; but the young shoots are apt to be injured in severe winters, and the tree on light soils is also hurt by long droughts, so that it usually presents a ragged appearance ; though, in the distance, the lofty top and hori zontal boughs sometimes stand out in most picturesque relief above the rounded summits of the neighbouring trees. The silver fir flourishes in a deep loamy soil, and will grow even upon stiff clay, when well drained a situa tion in which few conifers will succeed. On such lands, where otherwise desirable, it may sometimes be planted with profit. The cones do not ripen till the second year. The Silver Fir of Canada (P. balsamea), a small tree resembling the last species in foliage, furnishes the &quot; Canada balsam&quot; used in medicine, and highly valued by the microscopist as a &quot; mounting &quot; medium. It is obtained from natural swellings or receptacles in the bark, like the resin of the common silver fir. The tree abounds in Lower Canada and the adjacent provinces. Numerous other firs are common in gardens and shrub beries, and some furnish valuable products in their native countries ; but they are not yet of sufficient economic or general interest to demand mention here. (c. p. J.) FIRDOUSf. Abu 1 Casim Mansur, who took the nom de plume of Firdousf, was a Persian poet of great eminence, and is chiefly known to European readers by his magnificent epic poem the Shahnainah, or &quot; Book of Kings,&quot; a complete history of Persia in nearly 60,000 verses. He was born at Shadab, a suburb of Tus, about the year 329 of the Hegira (941 A.D.). His father, Maulana Ahmed, son of Maulana Fakhr-ed-din el Firdousi, belonged to the class of Dihkans (the old native country families and landed proprietors of Persia, who had preserved their influence and status under the Arab rule), and possessed an estate in the neighbourhood of Tus. Firdousi s own education eminently qualified him for the gigantic task which he subsequently undertook, for he was profoundly versed in the Arabic language and literature, and had also studied deeply the Pehlavi or Old Persian, and was conversant with the ancient historical records which existed in that tongue. As his history is intimately connected with that of the grand epic which he composed, it will be necessary to say a few words concerning the origin of the latter and the nature of the authorities from which it was compiled. An epic poem, properly so called, is a collection of the ballads and songs, in which the memory of heroic deeds is always preserved in the earlier periods of a people s history, thrown by the rhapsodists into a connected and consecutive form. To become national and to take hold on the people s hearts it must contain nothing but the genuine national legends and traditions, and must have grown spontaneously. Many attempts have been made by poets of different nations to create a national epic, but they have always failed for the lack of the elements above referred to. Homer s Iliad and Virgil s jEndd are typical specimens of the real and spurious epic, the former breathing in every line the true spirit of the Hellenic nation, and always rousing the national enthusiasm and appealing to the national feeling ; the latter never having been regarded by the Latin race with any deeper feeling than that of admiration for its literary merits. The Shahnamah of Firdousi is perhaps the only exception of a poem produced by a single author, and at once taking its place as the national epic of the people. The nature of the work, the materials from which it was composed, and the circumstances under which it was written are, however, in themselves exceptional, and necessarily tended to this result. The grandeur and an tiquity of the empire and the vicissitudes through which it passed, their long series of wars and the magnificent monuments erected by their ancient sovereigns, could not fail to leave numerous traces in the memory of so imagi native a people as the Persians. As early as the 5th century of the Christian era we find mention made of these historical traditions in the w r ork of an Armenian author, Moses of Khorene. During the reign of Naushirwan, the contemporary of Mahomet, and by order of that monarch, an attempt had been made to collect, from various parts of the kingdom, all the popular tales and legends relating to the ancient kings, and the results were deposited in the royal library. Under the last sovereign of the Sassanian dynasty, Yezdegird, the work was resumed, the former collection being revised and greatly added to by the Dihkan Danishwer, assisted by several learned mobeds. His work was entitled the Khodai-nameh, which in the old dialect also meant the &quot;Book of Kings.&quot; On the Arab invasion this work was in great danger of perishing at the hands of the iconoclastic caliph Omar and his generals, but it w r as fortunately preserved ; and we find it in the 2d century of the Hegira being paraphrased in Arabic by Abdallah ibn el Mokaffa, a learned Persian who had embraced Islam. Other Guebres occupied themselves privately with the collection of these traditions ; and, when a prince of Persian origin, Yakiib ibn Leith, founder of the Soffaride dynasty, succeeded in throwing off his allegiance to the caliphate, he at once set about con tinuing the work of his illustrious predecessors. His &quot; Book of Kings &quot; was completed in the year 260 of the Hegira, and was freely circulated in Khorassan and Irak. Yakub s family did not continue long in power ; but the Samanian princes, descendants of the Sassanians, who suc ceeded them, applied themselves zealously to the same work, and entrusted it to the poet Dakiki himself, a Guebre by religion. Dakiki s labours were brought to a sudden stop by his own assassination, and the fall of the Samanian house happened not long after, and their kingdom passed into the hands of the Ghaznavides. Mahmud ibn Sebuk- tagin, the second of the dynasty (667-1030 A.D.), continued to make himself still more independent of the caliphate than his predecessors, and, though a warrior and a fanatical Moslem, extended a generous patronage to Persian literature and learning, and even developed it at the expense of the Arabic institutions. The ta^-k of continuing and com IX. 29