Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/595

* FERGUSSON. ,Vi:i FERMAT. cesses which impaired liis health. He became melancholy, and, after a fall down a stairway, in-. inc. In 1789 liurns placed over his grave a memorial bearing a verse epitaph, Fergusson, a iluent and natural versifier in the Scotch dia- lect, was the forerunner of Burns. Consult: Works, edited with Life, and Essay on Poetical genius by Urosart (Edinburgh, 1851); and Ward, English Poets, vol. iii. (London and New York, 188!)). FERGUSSON, Sir William (1808-77). An English surgeon. He was born at Prestonpans, Scotland, and was educated at Edinburgh. In 1831 he was elected surgeon of the Edinburgh Royal Dispensary, and after 183G he served in the same capacity at the Royal Infirmary. He afterwards successively became professor of sur- gery at King's College, London (1840-70) : sur- geon in ordinary to the Prince Consort (1849), and to the Queen (1867) ; president of the Royal College of Surgeons (1870), and clinical professor of surgery at King's College (1870-77). He was for many years the leading operator in London, and was the inventor of numerous ingenious sur- gical instruments, such as the 'bulldog' forceps and the mouth-gag for cleft palate. He was especially successful with the operations for hare- lip and cleft palate, and for the amputation of limbs. His principal work is the System of Practical Surgery (5th ed. 1870). FE'RI-33 (Lat., holidays). Holidays during which political and legal transactions were sus- pended in ancient Rome, and slaves enjoyed a cessation from labor. Feriae were thus dies nefasii, the opposite of the dies fasti. (See Fasti.) Days which were consecrated to a par- ticular divinity, on which any public ceremony was celebrated, and the like, were feriae. In con- tradistinction to these, which were ferice publico; (public holidays), there were ferice privates, which were observed by single families, in com- memoration of some particular occurrence of importance to them or their ancestors. Birth- days, days of purification after a funeral, etc.. were also observed as family feriae. The public feria? were divided into those which were always kept [stativce) on certain days marked in the calendar, and those which were kept by com- mand of the consuls or other superior magistrates on the occasion of any public emergency i im- peratival). There were forty-five fixed holidays in ancient Rome, and a large number of movable ferice, the most important of which were the ferice latino', the original common festival of the Latin tribes, held on the top of the Alban Mount, afterwards carried to Rome along with the su- premacy over Latium; the ferice sementivee or sowers' festival, in the spring; and the ferice vindemiales, or vintage festival, in the fall. FERISHTAH, or FIRISHTAH, fe-resh'ta, Mohammed Kasim Hixdttshah (c. 1550-c. 1612). A Persian historian, born at Astrabad. Under commission from Ibrahim Adil Shah (1585- 1628), he wrote the Tarlkh-i-Ferishtah, a history of the Mahammedan dynastic- of India from about the end of the tenth century, with an in- troduction on Indian history previous to Moham- medan dominion. This work is considered one of the most reliable of Oriental histories. It was translated into English bv Dow (2 vols., 1768) and Briggs (4 vols., 1832). FERLAND, far'la.N'. Ji, l: wi 'si i I mi I (1805-04), L Canadian clergj man and historian, borri in Montreal. In 1828 he was ordained a priest oi the R an Catholic Church, and was made Vicar of Quel In Isit. while professor in the Seminary of Nicolet, he distinguished him- -.■it for his courage during an epidemic oi typhoid fever. He was appointed professor of history in the Laval University in 1855. Hi- reputation as an historian rests on his Cows d'histoin du Canada (vol. i., lsiil : vol. ii. by Laverdiere, 1865), in which an attempt i- made to harmonize the confused accounts of the early settlers. FERMANAGH, for - mSn'a or fSr - ma'na (named from the Irish clan Fir-Monach, men of Monach). An inland county in the southwest of the Province of Ulster, Ireland (Map: Iceland, D 2). Area, 711 square miles. The chief towns are Fermanagh and Enniskillen. The population, chiefly engaged in agriculture, show- a gradual decline since 1841, when it was 156,850. In 1851 it was 110.400; in 1891, 74,170; in 1901, G5.240. FERMAT, far'ma'. Pierre de (1601-65). A French mathematician, born at Beaumont-de- Lomagne, near Montauban. He was one of the most versatile mathematicians of his time, and was unsurpassed as a contributor to the theory of numbers. Fermat was educated privately, was of a retiring disposition, and published little dur- ing his lifetime. At one time he turned his attention to law, and in 1631 became counselor for the Parliament of Toulouse. The first edition of his works, gathered from his papers, annota- tions, and personal letters, was published in two volumes unter the title, Opera ilathematica ( 1670- 79) . Copies of t h i- edition have become quite rare. The first volume contains the Arithmetic of Diophantus annotated, and the second, mono- graphs on maxima and minima tangents, and centres of gravity, and copies of his correspon- dence with Huygens, Pascal, Descartes, and others. His chief contributions to the theory of numbers are found in his commentaries on Dio- phantus. Among them are such well-known propositions as follow: If a is prime to p. ;> being a prime number, then a*-' — 1 is divisible by p, or, expressed in the notation of congruences (q.v.), oP" 1 — 1=0 (mod. p) . A prime greater than 2 can be uniquely expressed as the difference of two squares, /r+q". where » is prime to q, is not divisible by a prime of the form in — 1. If p, q. r. are integers such that /r + g 2 =r*, then /<y cannot be a square. The equation x 2 + 2=// :: has a unique solution, and the equation f-j-4 = ;/ ! has two solutions. The equation a-n -L. y" = z a has no integral root if n is integral and greater than 2. In the case of particular curves, Fermat obtained the maximum and mini- mum value- of their functions; also the sub- tangents of the ellipse, cycloid, conchoid, and quadratrix. The methods employed so resembled those afterwards developed through the differen- tial calculus that some mathematicians, espe- cially Laplace and Lagrange, have suggested Fermat as the inventor of the calculus. The rise of the theory of probability (see Probability) may be dated practically from the correspondence of Fermat and Pascal (1654), Fermat's an- swer- to the problems suggested by Pascal re- veal his firm grasp on the fundamental princi-