Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/96

 90 LADY cotton, and indigo. The climate is salubrious, the heat being tempered by the trade winds. Horses, cattle, and llamas were early intro- duced by the Spaniards ; wild hogs are numer- ous and very large. The principal islands are Guahan, Rota, Aguijan, Saypan or Seypan, and Tinian. Lord Anson visited Tinian in 1742, and found there cyclopean ruins. The seat of government is at San Ignacio de Agafta, on the island of Guahan, the most southerly of the group, where there is also a good fortified har- bor. Asuncion and Pagon, in the north, are noted for their volcanoes. The general navi- gation is rendered dangerous by shoals and cur- rents. A pearl fishery exists on^the coast of Saypan. Magellan discovered the islands short- ly before his death in 1521, and named them the Ladrones from the thievish disposition of the natives. They were afterward called the Lazarus islands, and in 1667, when the Jesuits settled there, they were renamed Marianne or Mariana in honor of the Spanish queen. There are two other small groups called La- drones: one in China, situated at the mouth of the bay of Canton, which is resort of pirates ; the other in the Pacific, 10 m. off the coast of Colombia. LADY (Anglo-Saxon, Jildfdige ; Old Eng., levedy), a title used as the correlative of lord (A. S. hldford), or, in common speech, as the correlative of gentleman. It is supposed to have signified originally " bread-giver " (Goth. hlaif, loaf, and dian, to distribute), or "she who takes care of the bread " (A. S. hldf, loaf, and weard, to look after, to care for, to ward). The primary notion entertained of a chief or lord was that he was the provider of the food consumed by his family, and his lady had the care or distribution of it. Home Tooke's derivation of the word from hlifian, to lift, i. e., one raised to the rank of her lord, is untenable. As a title of honor in England, it belongs to peeresses, and to the wives of peers and of peers by courtesy, being prefixed in such cases to the peerage title. The daugh- ters of dukes, marquises, and earls are desig- nated by courtesy by the title, prefixed to their Christian and their surname. The wives of baronets receive it by courtesy, their legal designation being dame, and it is generally extended, also by courtesy, to the wives of knights of every degree. In Saxon times the queen was occasionally termed ses hldf dig, the lady, which is still preserved in the phrase " our sovereign lady the queen." In common usage the term is applied to any woman of the better class, and in the United tates it has so lost its significance as to be given indiscrimi- nately to almost any well dressed woman. "Our Lady" is a title frequently applied to the Virgin Mary, generally in connection with some attribute, as " Our Lady of Mercy." Lady chapel, in cathedrals, is a chapel dedi- cated to the Virgin, and is usually placed east of the altar. Lady day, in the calendar, is the 25th of March, being the Annunciation of the LADY'S SLIPPER Virgin Mary. In England and Ireland it is one of the regular quarter days, on which rent is made payable. LADY-BIRD (sometimes called LADY-BUG), a small beetle of the trimerous division, and of the genus coccinella (Frisch). In this exten- sive and well known genus the body is hemi- spherical, the thorax very short, the antennas composed of 11 joints and the tarsi of 3, the elytra convex, the under surface flat, and the legs short ; the diges- tive canal is nearly straight, and as long as the body. The general -.,., colors are red, yellow, or orange with black spots, or black with white, red, or yellow spots. Many species have been described. The larvse are small, bluish, flattened grubs, spotted with red or yellow, and with six legs on the anterior part of the body ; they are hatched from yellowish eggs, of a disagreeable odor, laid usually in the spring in clusters among the aphides or plant lice. Both the larvae and the perfect insects destroy immense numbers of these lice, and are therefore among the best friends of the agriculturist; when found upon plants they are in quest of their insect prey, and deprive vegetation of none of its juices, and they are entirely guiltless of producing the potato rot or any other similar disease. There are some very small lady-birds of a blackish color, and with a few short hairs, of the genus scymnus, whose larvae are as savage among the plant lice as the lion among the smaller mammals. LADY'S SLIPPER, the common name, corre- sponding to the generic one, of orchidaceous plants of the genus cypripedium (Gr. Ki^pi?, a name of Venus, and 7r66iov, a sock), also some- times called moccason flower. The genus and two other allied ones differ from other orchids in having two anthers instead of one ; the se- pals are three, two of them frequently united ; petals three, of which the lower one, or lip as it is termed in orchids, is inflated to form a large sac, which in some species bears a re- semblance to a slipper. To add to the ordi- narily strange appearance of the flower, the lateral petals are in some of the exotics pro- longed to form tails, which hang down for several inches below the lip. The genus has a wide range, from the tropics, where they have leathery and persistent leaves, to Canada and Siberia ; the leaves of the northern ones are thin, and perish with the stem after flowering. Our commonest native lady's slipper is the stemless (C. dcaule), which is found in woods, especially under evergreens, from the Caroli- nas to Canada, but is much more frequent northward; it has two large oblong leaves, from between which arises a stem, sometimes a foot high, bearing at its summit a single large flower, the lip of which, about 2 in. long, is beautifully veined with rose purple on a lighter or white ground. Two yellow-flowered spe- cies (C. parmflorum and C. pubescens), which differ but little except in size, are not rare in