Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/93

 LA CROSSE LACTIC ACID 87 of Indian corn, 286,126 of oats, 25,985 of bar- ley, 66,526 of potatoes, 27,179 Ibs. of wool, 182,501 of hops, 248,638 of butter, and 15,297 tons of hay. There were 3,486 horses, 4,438 milch cows, 5,231 other cattle, 9,288 sheep, and 4,408 swine; 2 manufactories of agricul- tural implements, 1 of boats, 3 of carriages, 1 of iron castings, 1 of machinery, 4 of saddlery and harness, 1 of sash, doors, and blinds, 5 of tin, copper, and sheet-iron ware, 1 of woollen goods, 4 breweries, 7 saw mills, and 1 bridge- building establishment. Capital, La Crosse. LA CROSSE, a city and the capital of La Crosse co., Wisconsin, on the E. bank of the Mississippi river, at the mouth of the Black and La Crosse rivers, 105 m. W. N. W. of Madison and 175 m. W. N. W. of Milwaukee ; pop. in 1860, 3,860; in 1870, 7,785; in 1874, including the village of North La Crosse an- nexed in 1871, estimated by local authorities at 13,000. It is finely situated on a level prairie, and has many handsome buildings, including the court house, which cost $40,000, the post office, an opera house, and the high school building. It has ample railroad commu- nication by means of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, the Chicago and Northwestern, the La Crosse, Trempealeau, and Prescott, the Southern Minnesota, and the Chicago, Dubuque, and Minnesota lines. The city has an extensive trade in lumber, and contains a large manufac- tory of saddlery and harness, a plough factory, three founderies and machine shops, a grist mill, a large sash, door, and blind factory, sev- eral breweries, nine saw mills, and three bank- ing houses. The United States courts for the W. district of Wisconsin hold one session here annually. There are flourishing graded schools, a young men's library of 2,400 volumes, two daily and five weekly (one German and one Norwegian) newspapers, a semi-monthly peri- odical, and 17 churches. La Crosse was first laid out in 1851, though an establishment for trading with the Indians existed as early as 1841. It was incorporated as a city in 1856. LACTANTIUS, Firmianus, one of the fathers of the Latin church, born, according to some, in Firmium, Italy, according to others, in Africa, about 260, died in Treves about 325. The names Lucius Ccelius or Caecilius, sometimes bestowed on him, are not mentioned by Je- rome and Augustine, or found in any ancient manuscript. According to his own account, he was born of heathen parents, and became a Christian at a mature age. Jerome calls him a pupil of the African Arnobius, under whom he studied rhetoric at Sicca, near Carthage. In early life he published in hexameters a work entitled Symposion, being a collection of rid- dles for convivial amusement. This work gained him such a reputation that he was in- vited by Diocletian in 301 to open a school of eloquence in Nicomedia, where he remained till 312. As this city was almost exclusively inhabited or visited by Greeks, Lactantius found but few pupils. During his stay there the Christians were persecuted, and their religion assailed by the heathen philosophers. Having, it is surmised, become himself a Chris- tian about this epoch, he wrote in defence of the persecuted creed his great work Institu- tiones Divince, of which, while still in Nico- media, he composed an epitome addressed to his brother Pentadius. This was followed by another entitled De Opificio Dei. In the for- mer work Lactantius proposes to demonstrate the right of the Christian religion to exist le- gally, and to communicate its doctrines by public teaching ; in the latter he grounds the belief in the existence of a God on the adapta- tions seen in every known form of organic life. In 312 Lactantius was called to Treves by the emperor Constantine, to superintend the edu- cation of his son Crispus. He appears to have lived in great poverty while in Nicomedia, and to have distinguished himself by his modesty and disinterestedness while at court. Before his conversion to Christianity, Lactantius had been a diligent student of the great Eoman orator, whose harmonious and eloquent style he had labored so successfully to imitate that he acquired from posterity the appellation of the " Christian Cicero," and St. Jerome says that he was by far the most learned man of his age. Besides the works mentioned, he wrote a treatise De Ira Dei, which is still extant, two books to Asclepiades, and eight books of let- ters, which are lost. The work De Mortibus Persecutorum is thought by many of the best critics to belong to Lactantius, and to be iden- tical with the work De Persecutione Liber unus mentioned as his by St. Jerome. The first edition of his works was printed at Subi- aco in 1465 ; later editions are byLe Brun and Lenglet du Fresnoy (2 vols. 4to, Paris, 1748), Pere Edouard de St. Francois Xavier (14 vols. 8vo, Rome, 1754-'9, considered the best), and in Gersdorf's Biblioiheca Patrum Ecclesim se- lecta (vols. x., xi., Leipsic, 1842). See "A Summary of the Writings of Lactantius," by the Rev. J. H. B. Mountain (London, 1839). LACTIC ACID, a product of the decomposi- tion of any kind of sugar in solution, induced by the presence of certain albuminous fer- ments, as diastase exposed for some time in so- lution to the air. Milk contains both the ele- ments for the production of this acid, sugar of milk and albuminous caseine. Its change to sour milk is called the lactic fermentation, and lactic acid is a product of this change. It was in sour milk that the acid was originally dis- covered by Scheele, whence he named it lactic ; but it has since been obtained from the juices of many vegetables, and from the fluids of the stomach and flesh of animals. As milk turns, the coagulum which is formed is a combination of lactic acid and caseine. If the lactic acid be taken up by bicarbonate of soda, the ca- seine set free induces further fermentation, and more lactic acid is formed from the sugar of milk ; and so by adding more soda the process may be kept up until all the sugar of milk is