Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/126

 118 FELONY FELT Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv., p. 190.) Suicide does ot seem ever to have been made punishable as a crime by any statutory provi- sions of the United States; nor are we aware that the barbarous usages of England in rela- tion to the burial of the corpse were ever prac- tised here. It is held at the common law that if one encourage and assist another in the com- mission of suicide, he is guilty of murder as a principal. FELONY. The origin and the exact meaning of this common-law term are both uncertain. There is about equally good authority for de- riving it from the Saxon words feh, fee, and Ion, price or pay, when its primary sense would be forfeiture or loss of fee ; or from a single word felen, to fall or fail, when its meaning might be the falling of the guilty party into crime, or the falling of his land into the hands of his lord by forfeiture. It seems quite cer- tain that in England, from the earliest times, felony was always attended by absolute for- feiture of land or of goods, or of both ; and the definition of Blackstone (4 Bl. Com. 95) is, in accordance with this principle : " An offence which occasions a total forfeiture of lands or goods, or both, at the common law, and to which capital or other punishment may be superadded, according to the degree of guilt." But we understand Blackstone to mean, gen- erally, by felony, all capital crimes below trea- son (p. 98); and Coke says (3 Inst. 15) that treason itself was anciently included within the meaning of felony. In those distant ages a felon was to be punished : 1, by loss of life ; 2, by loss of land ; 3, by loss of goods ; 4, by loss of blood, or attainder, under which he could have no heir, and none could ever claim through him. In more recent times felony meant in practice any crime punishable with death ; and therefore when a statute de- clared any offence to be felony, it became at once punishable with death ; and vice versa, a crime which is made punishable with death becomes thereby a felony. Even in early times felony was sometimes defined as any capital crime ; although it is said that before the reign of Henry I. felonies were punished only by pecuniary mulct or fine, and that sovereign having about 1108 ordered those guilty of felony to be hanged, this has since been the law of England. (Tomlin's "Law Diction- ary," word " Felony.") It cannot be doubt- ed, however, that at common law the forfeit- ure incurred by the crime was the essence and the test of felony. In the United States there is little or no forfeiture for crime (see FORFEITURE) ; and in England capital offences are far less numerous than formerly. It may be said that in the United States the word, so far as it has any definite meaning, signifies a crime punishable with death or imprison- ment. The statutes of some of the states de- fine it as any offence punishable to a certain extent, as by death or confinement in the state prison or penitentiary. F.ELSINO, Jakob, a German engraver, born in Darmstadt in 1802. He received his first in- struction from his father, studied at the acade- my of Milan, and acquired reputation by his faithful reproduction of the manner of the painters whose works he engraved. After re- siding in Italy, and visiting Munich and Paris, he returned to Darmstadt in 1839. His best engravings are from Carlo Dolce's " Christ on the Mount of Olives," Andrea del Sarto's "Ma- donna on the Throne," Kaphael's " Yiolin Play- er," Bendemann's "Young Girl at the Foun- tain," Overbeck's "Holy Family," Crespi's "Christ with the Cross," Correggio's "Mar- riage of St. Catharine," and Steinbruck's "St. Genevieve," and other paintings of the Diis- seldorf school. FELT, a fabric of wool or fur, separate or mixed, manufactured by matting the fibres to- gether without spinning or weaving. The fur of the beaver, hare, rabbit, and seal, camel's and goat's hair, and the wool of the sheep, are well adapted for this process. Felt is an an- cient manufacture, supposed by Pliny to have been produced before woven cloth. It is prob- ably the same as the lana coacta anciently used for the cloaks of soldiers, and by the La- cedaemonians for hats. Early in the present century a piece of ancient felt was discovered with some other stuffs in a tomb at St. Germain des Pres, and a paper relating to them was pre- sented by Desmarest in 1806 to the academy of sciences. The production of a fabric from the loose fibres results from the tendency these have from their barbed structure to work to- gether when rubbed, each fibre moving for- ward in the direction of its larger end without a possibility of moving in the other direction. This peculiar structure of the animal fibre, so dif- ferent from that of the smooth vegetable fibres, is readily perceived on drawing a filament of wool through the fingers, holding it first by one end and then by the other. Examined through a powerful microscope, the short fibre exhibits the appearance of a continuous vege- table growth with numerous sprouts, all point- ing toward the smaller end. In a filament of merino wool as many as 2,400 of these projec- tions or teeth have been found in a single inch ; and in one of Saxon wool of superior felting quality there were 2, TOO serrations in the same space. Southdown wool, which is not so much esteemed for this use, contained only 2,080 ser- rations in one inch ; and Leicester wool, which is not at all adapted for felting, only 1,860. The short curly fibres of wool, freed from grease and brought together, intertwine at once very closely and form a compact mat. By rubbing this with the hands, and moistening it with some soapy liquid, the matter is made more dense according to the pressure with which it is rubbed. At last the fibres can go no further without danger of fracture, and the fabric be- comes hard and stiff. It may, however, be made thicker to any desired extent by adding more fibres and rubbing these in by separate