ry is
cod and herring fishing.

LA BRUYERE, JEAN DE, a celebrated French moralist, born at Paris;
was tutor to the Duke of Bourbon, the grandson of the great Conde, and
spent a great part of his life in Paris in connection with the Conde
family; his most celebrated work is "Les Caracteres de Theophrastus"
(1687), which abounds in wise maxims and reflections on life, but gave
offence to contemporaries by the personal satires in it under disguised
names; he ranks high as a writer no less than as a moralist; his style is
"a model of ease, grace, and fluency, without weakness in his characters;
a book," adds Professor Saintsbury, "most interesting to read, and
especially to Englishmen" (1645-1696).

LABUAN (6), a small island, distant 6 m. from the W. coast of North
Borneo, ceded to Britain in 1846, and administered by the British North
Borneo Company; has rich coal-beds; its town, Victoria, is a market for
Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago, and exports sago, camphor, and pearls;
the population is chiefly Malay and Chinese.

LABYRINTH, a name given to sundry structures composed of winding passages
so intricate as to render it difficult to find the way out, and sometimes
in. Of these structures the most remarkable were those of Egypt and of
Crete. The Egyptian to the E. of Lake Moeris, consisted of an endless
number of dark chambers, connected by a maze of passages into which it
was difficult to find entrance; and the Cretan, built by Daedalus, at the
instance of Minos, to imprison the Minotaur, out of which one who entered
could not find his way out again unless by means of a skein of thread. It
was by means of this, provided him by ARIADNE, PERSEUS (q. v.) found his
way out after slaying the MINOTAUR (q. v.).

LAC, a term employed in India for a hundred thousand, a crore
amounting to 100 lacs, usually of money.

LACCADIVES, THE, or THE HUNDRED THOUSAND ISLES (14), a
group of low-lying coral islands 200 m. W. of the Malabar coast of India,
mostly barren, and yielding chiefly cocoa-nuts; the population being
Hindus professing Mohammedanism and poorly off.

LACEPEDE, COMTE DE, French naturalist, born at Agen; was entrusted
by Buffon to complete his Natural History on his death; wrote on his own
account also the natural histories of reptiles, of fishes, and of man
(1756-1825).

LACHAISE, FRANCOIS DE, a French Jesuit, an extremely politic member
of the fraternity in the reign of Louis XIV.; had a country hou