FERTILISATION OF PLANTS-FESCUE. as above described, they are inter regalia, i. e., they belong to the crown for the public benefit. In this case, they are under the management of the trustees of the roads connected with them, or are regulated by the justices of the peace for the county, or by special acts of parliament. By 8 and 9 Vict. c. 41, certain rules are laid down for the regulation of ferries. The act is confined to Scotland. Common rowing-boats are generally used for ferrying foot-passengers, but when horses and carriages have to be taken across, a flat-bottomed barge, with an inclined plane at one end, to rest upon the shore, for landing and embarking, is generally used. This is either rowed across or pulled by a rope. When the current is strong, and the river of moderate width, the latter is best. The rope stretched across the river passes through rings or over pulleys attached to the barge, and the ferrymen move the barge across by pulling the rope. The chief advantage of the rope is to restrain the barge from drifting in the direction of the stream. With a small boat, this is obviated by the ferryman rowing obliquely, as though he were steering for a point higher up the river; thus he moves through the water upwards to the same extent that the water moves over the land downwards; and by a composition of these motions, and his tending to the other side, he is carried directly Broad estuaries are now traversed in many places by steam-ferry. across. Rafts are sometimes used for ferrying. On the Nile, a sort of raft is made of inverted earthen-pots full of air. For further information on the crossing of rivers, see FORDS AND FORDING. Flying-bridge is the name given to a kind of ferry-boat which is moved across a river by the action of the combined forces of the stream and the resistance of a long rope or chain made fast to a fixed buoy in the middle of the river. The boat thus attached is made to take an oblique position by means of the rudder; the stream then acting against the side, tends to move it in a direction at right angles to its length, while the rope exerts a force in the direction towards the buoy. If these two forces be represented by the sides of a parallelogram, the actual course of the boat would be in the direction of the diagonal (see COMPOSITION AND RESOLUTION OF FORCES); but as the length of the rope remains the same, the boat must continue always at the same distance from the buoy, and therefore its course is a curve, a portion of a circle, of which the buoy is the centre, and the rope the radius. The course of the boat and the action of the two forces are strictly analogous to the path of a rising kite, and to the forces of which this path is the resultant. The holder of the kite corresponds to the buoy, the wind to the tidal stream, and the tail to the rudder. Flyingbridges are used for military purposes, and the modes of adapting them to the varying circumstances of the width of rivers and the velocity of their currents, forms a part of the study of military engineering. An important element in the problem, is the determination of the right point of attachment for the rope. In the case of a wide river, the rope or chain requires to be of considerable length, and must be supported by movable buoys or by small boats. FERTILISATION OF PLANTS. See FECUN DATION. FESA, or FASA, a town of Persia, in the province of Fars, 80 miles south-east of Shiraz, is situated in a mountain defile, is of considerable size, and is said to have a population of 18,000. It has manufactures of silken, woollen, and cotton fabrics, and some trade in a superior kind of tobacco which is grown in the vicinity. FE'SCENNINE VERSES, a branen of the indigenous poetry of ancient Italy, were a sort of dialogues in rude extempore verses, generally in Saturnine measure, in which the parties rallied and ridiculed one another. It formed a favourite amusement of the country-people on festive occasions, especially at the conclusion of harvest and at weddings. As was to be expected, it often degenerated into licentiousness, that at last required the curb of the law. The Fescennine verses are usually considered to be of Etruscan origin, and to have derived their name from the Etrurian town Fescennium; but there is little probability in this etymology. Verses of this sort were and are popular to this day all over Italy. The name is more likely connected with fascinum, fascination, enchantment, or the evil eye, against which the chanting of verses may have originally been intended as a protection." FESCUE (Festuca), a genus of grasses, very nearly allied to Brome-grass (q. v.), and having in some species a loose, in some a contracted panicle; the spikelets many-flowered, with two unequal glumes, which they much exceed in length; each oret having two lanceolate palea, the outer palea rounded at the back, and acuminate or awned at the summit; the stigmas growing from the apex of the germen. The species are numerous, and are very Fescue Grass (Festuca pratensis) : a, germen and stigmas; b, a spikelet. widely diffused over the world, both in the northern and southern hemispheres. Among them are many of the most valuable pasture and fodder grasses. None are more valuable than some of the British species.-MEADOW F. (F. pratensis), a species with spreading panicle and linear spikelets, from two to three feet high, common in moist meadows and pastures of rich soil, in Britain and throughout Europe, in Northern Asia, and in some parts of North America, is perhaps excelled by no meadow or pasture grass whatever. It is suitable both for FESS-FESTIVALS. alternate husbandry and for permanent pasture. SPIKED F. (F. loliacea)-by many botanists regarded as a variety of Meadow F., although it departs from the habit of the genus in having the branches of the panicle reduced to a single spikelet, and forming a two-rowed raceme or spike-is regarded as an excellent grass for rich moist meadows.-HARD F., (F. duriuscula), a grass from one foot and a half to two feet high, with a somewhat contracted panicle, mostly on one side, is one of the best grasses for lawns and sheep-pastures, particularly on dry or sandy soils. Several varieties are known to seedsmen and farmers.-CREEPING F. or RED F. (F. rubra) is probably a mere variety of Hard F., being distinguished chiefly by its extensively creeping root, which particularly adapt it to sandy pastures, and to places liable to occasional inundations. SHEEP'S F. (F. ovina) is a smaller grass than any of these, not generally exceeding a foot in height, and often much less, abundant in mountainous pastures, and especially suitable for such situations, in which it often forms a principal part of the food of sheep for many months of the year. It is common in all the mountainous parts of Europe, and in the Himalaya, it is also a native of North America, and species very similar, if not mere varieties, abound in the southern hemisphere. Its habit of growth is much tufted.-TALL F. (F. elatior) is a grass of very different appearance, four or five feet high, with spreading much branched panicle, growing chiefly near rivers and in moist low grounds, and yielding a great quantity of coarse herbage, which, however, is relished by cattle.-Of foreign species, which have been introduced into Britain, F. heterophylla best deserves notice, a tall species with narrow root-leaves, and broad leaves on the culm; a native of France and other parts of the continent of Europe, and pretty extensively cultivated in some countries, particularly the Netherlands.-All these species are perennial. Some small annual species occasionally form a considerable part of the pasture in dry sandy soils, but are never sown by the farmer. A Peruvian species (F. quadridentata), called Pigouil in its native country, and there used for thatch, is said to be poisonous to cattle. of style, render F.'s works (all written in German) attractive in the highest degree. FESTIVAL PLAYS. See MORALITIES, MIRACLE PLAYS, MYSTERIES. FESTIVALS, or FEASTS (Lat. festum, probably from the same root as fast (q. v.); according to some, from Gr. hestia, hearth), a term denoting certain periodically recurring days and seasons set aside by a community for rest from the ordinary labour of life, and more or less hallowed by religious solemnities. Originating within the narrow circle of the family, and commemorating momentous events affecting one member or all, these pauses became more frequent, and of wider scope, as the house gradually expanded into a tribe, a people, a state. The real or imaginary founders, legislators, heroes, became objects of veneration and deification, and the salient epochs of their lives the consecrated epochs of the year. National calamities or triumphs were, in the absence of annals, best remembered by corresponding general days of humiliation or exultation. Earliest of all, however, did the marked stages in the onward march of nature: spring and autumn, seed-time and harvest-time-symbols of life and death; the solstices-turning-points of summer and winter; the new moon and the full moon; the termination of cycles of moons and cycles of years, present themselves as opportune halting-places for man himself. No less were the all-important periodical rises of fertilising rivers, and the anniversaries of importa tions and inventions of new implements for the better cultivation of the soil, or tending of the flocks, befittingly celebrated. The inherent human tendency towards referring all things of graver import, life and death, abundance and want, victory and defeat, to a higher power, could not but infuse a religious feeling into epochs so marked. Fostered and guided by priests and lawgivers, this property of our nature erelong found its expression in common sacrifices, prayers, and ceremonies, consecrated to the various superior and minor deities who presided over and inhabited the elements of the visible and invisible creation, and who, working all the changes within them, acted, each in his sphere, as a partial providence over man. According to the event which called them forth, these festivals were mournful or joyous, jubilant or expiatory. Even when sorrow was to be expressed, the mortification of the body did not always suffice, but plays, songs, dances, and to-as in the festivals of Isis at Busiris, of Mars FESS. The fess in heraldry consists of lines drawn horizontally across the shield, and containing the third part of it, between the honour point and the nombril. It is one of the honourable ordinaries, and is supposed to represent the waist-belt or girdle of honour, which was one of the insignia of knight-processions full of boisterous mirth, were resorted hood. PER FESS.-A shield, or charge in a shield, is said to be party per fess, when it is horizontally divided through the middle, or, as the French say, simply coupé. FESSWISE is said of a charge placed in fess; that is to say, horizontally across the shield. at Papremis, in the Adonia of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece-because the divine wrath or sorrow was, like that of man, to be changed into satisfaction. Besides the relation between the common tutelary which the otherwise disconnected members of the deity and those he protected, the bond also by body politic were held together was, by means of FE'SSLER, IGNAZ. AURELIUS, a celebrated Hun- these festive gatherings, periodically brought in garian historian, was born in 1756, in the county view, and invested with greater strength and of Soprony or Oedenburg. During a long life full importance. Apart, however, from this their hisof adventures, F. served successively the Emperor torical, astronomical, religious, and political end, Joseph II., the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of festivals served another purpose--that of growing Russia; and also held the office of Professor of civilisation. It was the glowing spirit of emulation Oriental Languages at different universities. He which, stimulating the gifted in mind and body to died at St Petersburg 15th December 1839. Among strive for the festive laurel in contests of genius and his works of a lasting value are-Attila (Breslau, skill, in honour of the gods, and in the face of all 1794), Mathias Corvinus (2 vols. 1793; 2d edition, the people, matured all that was noble and brilliant 1806, Breslau), and the History of the Hungarians, within the community. Archaic rudeness and rustic &c. (Geschichte der Ungern und deren Landsassen, extravagance became refined grace and classic har10 vols., Leip. 1812-1825). His autobiography, mony. The stirring drama, the glorious anthem, entitled Recollections of my 70 Years' Pilgrimage the melodious dance, the elegant game, which (Rückblicke auf meine 70 jährige Pilgerschaft, Breslau, accompanied the festive sacrifice of some nations 1826; 2d edit. Leip. 1851), is also a very interesting at their highest stage of development, had arisen work. Deep learning, coupled with a rare beauty out of those very mimicries and shouts, rude FESTIVALS. and savage beyond expression, of generations not long before them. Enthusiastic, wild, metaphysical Egypt invested the countless days consecrated to her deified stars, plants, animals, and ideas; to the Nile, to Ammon, Kneph, Menes, Osiris; to Horus, to Neitha, to Ptah, with a mystery, sensuality, and mournfulness always exaggerated, sometimes monstrous. The Hindu, no longer daring to offer human sacrifices, shews his odd and cruel materialism by throwing into the waves, on his festival of rivers, some of his costliest goods, gold, jewels, garments, and instruments; while in the licentiousness and debaucheries perpetrated on the festival of Shiva, the god of procreation, or on the Bacchantics of the goddess Bhavani, he exceeds even those of the Egyptians on their Neitha feasts at Bubastis, and the Greek worship of Venus in her Cyprian groves. Phoenicians and Assyrians, Babylonians and Phrygians, according to the little we know of their religions and manners, appear to have feasted, thanked, propitiated, mourned all at different times, and in the way most befitting their several natures, even in the case of those gods and festivals which they had in common. The ancient Persians alone of all nations had no festivals, as they had no temples and no common worship. These Puritans of Polytheism,' who worshipped the sun only, and his representative on earth, fire, scorned show and pomp, and large religious gatherings. A striking contrast to them is formed, in another hemisphere, by the ancient Mexicans, who were found to possess one of the most richly developed calendars of festivals, scientifically divided into movable and immovable feasts. As a strange and singular phenomenon among festivals, we may also mention here that of the Dead or Souls,' celebrated among the wild tribes of North America. At a certain time, all the graves are emptied, and the remains of the bodies buried since the last festival are taken out by the relatives, and thrown together into a large common mound, amid great rejoicings and solemnities, to which all the neighbouring tribes are invited. Greece had received the types of civilisation, religion, and art from Egypt and the East generally, but she developed them all in a manner befitting her glorious clime and the joyous genius of her sons. At the time of the Iliad, two principal festivals only-the harvest and the vintage-seem to have been celebrated (ix. 250); but they increased with such rapidity, that in the days of Pericles they had reached the number of a thousand; some indeed being an epitome only of their memorable feats of arms, others restricted to one town, or province, or profession, or sex, or to a few initiated, or recurring only at intervals of several years; but there were still so many kept by the whole people, that ancient writers bitterly denounce them as merry beginnings of a sad end, as the slow but sure ruin of the commonwealth. Their forebodings proved true enough; and yet Greece would certainly never have reached the highest place among nations, as far as literature, the arts, and philosophy are concerned, had it not been for the constant contests attached to her many festivals. She resisted Asia, because her citizens were always alert, always ready. The religious part of the festival-homage offered to personified ideas-consisted mostly in the carrying about of the deity of the day to the sound of flute, lyre, and hymns, and in a sacrifice, followed by a general meal upon certain portions of the animal offered. Then followed scenic representations symbolising the deeds of the gods; after which came games and matches of all kinds-foot, horse, and chariot races, leaping, boxing, throwing, wrestling, &c. Separate accounts are given of some of the more remarkable Greek festivals. See BACCHUS, ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, PANATHENAIA, &c. There were also special times set aside for the Holy Games' proper. The most important of these were the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian. (See these heads.) As all these festivities were provided out of the public purse-from the confiscated estates of the tyrants' and political delinquents-the individual did not suffer more than a welcome interruption of his usual business, and under that genial sky the penalty to be paid for occasional indolence was not too heavy. Rome, founded amid pastoral festivities in honour of some god Pales, adopted and acclimatised, as she went on from conquest to conquest, the foreign deities, exactly as, with her usual prudence and practical sense, she conferred her right of citizenship on her foreign inhabitants, and on whole nations subjected to her rule. Her yoke was thus less galling to the new provinces, while at the same time the populace at home found sufficient distraction in the many ancient and newly imported festivals, with their quaint rites and gorgeous pageantry. Yet the Romans-more parsimonious and abstract by nature than the vivacious Greek neighbours from whom they had accepted the greatest part of their religion-never exceeded in their festivals the number of one hundred, and in these, again, a distinct line was drawn between civil and religious ones. Some of the principal religious festivals were the Sementina, on the 25th of January -the rural festival of the seed-time; the Lupercalia, in honour of Pan; the Cerealia; the night festival of the Bona Dea; Matronalia; Minervalia; &c. To the purely civil ones belong the Janualia, the 1st of January and the new-year's day, when the new consuls entered upon their office, and friends used to send presents (strence) to each other; the Quirinalia, in memory of Romulus, deified under the name of Quirinus; and the Saturnalia, in remembrance of the golden age of Saturn, beginning on the 19th of December. The celebration of these festivals was in all respects imitated from the Greeks, with this difference only, that the games connected with them became, with the pre-eminently bellicose Romans, terribly lifelike images of war. Their sham seafights; their pitched battles between horse and foot, between wild beasts and men; their so-called Trojan games, executed by the flower of the nobility; their boxing-matches (with gloves that had lead and iron sewed into them): circus, arena, and amphitheatre gave, especially in later times, the greater satisfaction the greater the number of victims. It is one thing only that monotheism has in common with polytheism with respect to its festivals-namely, that they are with each the religious expression of human joy or human sorrow. But if the former, with a dim misgiving of some awful and supreme power, invited the multifarious governors of the many provinces of nature to partake, as guests, of bodily and intellectual feasts, together with their hosts; monotheism, in binding up all fear and all hope, all gratitude and all awe, which moved the heart of man, in one almighty Creator, Mover, and Maintainer of all things, celebrated its festivals in honour of this omnipresent Spirit with a veneration, a purity, and a lofty elevation, such as the worshippers of star, animal, or image never knew. With the first and strictest monotheists, the Hebrews, whose very existence as a nation was traced to the special and miraculous interference of this highest and only God, the remembrance of that great event, their liberation from Egypt, and the momentous period of preparation in the desert which followed it, mingled with almost all their religious FESTIVALS. Sinai, became the festival of the outpouring of the In the course of the 4th c., two new festivals were introduced: Epiphany (q. v.), which originated in the East; and that of the Nativity or Christmas (q. v.). Circumcision, Corpus Domini, the festivals of the Cross, of Transfiguration, of the Trinity, and many others, are of still later date. The veneration felt for Mary as the 'Mother of God,' found its expression likewise in the consecration of many days to her special service and worship; such as that of her Presentation, Annunciation (Lady's Day), Assumption, Visitation, Immaculate Conception (q. v.), and many minor festivals, over and above the Saturdays, which in some parts were entirely dedicated to her, in order that the Mother might have her weekly day like the Son. Besides these, there were festivals of Angels, of Apostles, Saints, Martyrs (on the supposed anniversary of their death, called their birthday, dies natalis), of Souls, Ordinations, &c. observances, and especially their festivals, and infused into them all a tone of deep and fervent gratitude; while at the same time it held ever before their eyes the cause of their nationality, and their aim and destiny to be a kingdom of priests and a holy people.' The Hebrew festivals, too, are of a historical, agricultural, astronomical, and political nature; but they mostly combine all these characteristics, and are always hallowed by the same religious idea, and the same piety and devotion to one and the same holy name. Connected with their festivals were no plays and no representations of a god's deeds, no games and no cruelty, no mystery and no sensuality, but the sacrifice of the day, and a special occupation with the divine law, were the visible signs of the exalted seasons. The influence of the number seven ---an influence met with among most eastern nations -is seen in the recurrence of many of the Jewish solemnities. See SEVEN. The Sabbath, the first and most important of these septenary festivals, is treated of under its own head. Of the service in the temple, and of the way in which this and the other festivals were and are kept after the destruc- Celebrated at first with all the primitive simplicity tion of the temple, something will be said under of genuine piety, most of these festivals were ere long HEBREWS and JEWS. The most exalted of new invested with such pomp and splendour that they moon festivals was that of the first day of the seventh surpassed those of the ancient Greeks and Romans. month, 'the day of remembrance of the sounding' Burlesque, even coarse and profane representations, or of trumpets' (Lev. xxiii. 24), to which in later processions, mysteries, and night-services, were, in times, when the Seleucidian era was introduced (the some places, although unauthorised by the general Syrian year beginning with the autumnal equinox), church, connected with them, and voices within the the name of Rosh hashana (New Year) was given; church loudly denounced these pagan practices.' notwithstanding that in Exodus (xii. 2) Nisan is Ordinances forbidding mundane music and female spoken of as the first month of the year. After a singers for divine service were issued, the vigils period of six years of labour, the earth, too, was to were transformed into fasts, days of abstinence and celebrate a Sabbath-year; what it produced sponta- penance were instituted, partly as counterpoises, neously belonged to the poor, the stranger, and to but with little result. Nor did the prodigious animals. It is remarkable that even Alexander the increase of these festive occasions, and the rigour Great and Cæsar remitted the taxes of Judea in this with which abstinence from labour was enforced in year of Shemitta (abandoning). After a revolution of most cases, fail to produce the natural results of seven times seven years, the year of Jubilee or Jobel indolence and licentiousness among the large mass was to be celebrated, in which all the Hebrew slaves of the people. Bitter and frequent were the comwere set free, and all land which had been sold in plaints throughout Christendom; but although even the interval was restored to the former owners, in men like Archbishop Simon of Canterbury (1332), order that the original equilibrium in the families Petrus de Alliaco, Nicolaus of Clemangis, did their and tribes should be maintained intact. (These two utmost to obtain a reduction of these festive occafestivals, however, were, according to the Talmud, sions, which overspread well-nigh the whole year, it not kept before the Babylonian captivity.) The was only after the most decided and threatening pre-eminently agronomical and historical festivals demands, such as that pronounced by the German were the three Chaggim (whence the Arab. Hagg, Diet of Nürnberg in 1522, that Pope Urban was a pilgrim to Mecca)—viz., Pesach (Passover), Scha- prevailed upon to reduce the number for Catholic buoth (Feast of Weeks), and Succoth (Feast of Christianity (1642). Benedict XIV. (1742), Clement Tabernacles), on which three every male was XIV. (1773), followed in the same direction. On obliged to go up to Jerusalem and offer some of the change produced both in their number and in the first fruits, besides the prescribed sacrifices the manner of their celebration through the Reforma(see PASSOVER, &c.). tion, we must forbear to enlarge here. The postmosaic and exclusively historical festivals, Purim, the feast of Haman, Chanuca, the feast of the Maccabees, will be noticed in the articles on JEWS, and JEWISH RITES. The Christian festivals have been divided variously: into feria statute (returning annually at fixed times), indicte (extraordinary, specially proclaimed), duplicia (double reminiscence, or of higher importance), semiduplicia (half double), &c. Another division is into weekly and yearly feasts, these latter being subdivided into greater and minor, or into movable and immovable. There is also a distinction made between integri (whole days), intercisi (halfdays), &c. Only a cursory glance can be here taken of the Christian festivals, which are treated fully and separately under their various names. They were for the inost part grafted, in the course of time, upon the Jewish and Pagan ones, but always with a distinct reference to Christ and other holy personages. The weekly day of rest was transferred from The only trace of the ancient manner of dating a Saturday to Sunday, and called the Day of Joy, or festival from the eve or vesper of the previous day Resurrection, just as the weekly Jewish fasts of -a practice discontinued since the 12th c., when Monday and Thursday were changed for Wednesday the old Roman way of counting the day from and Friday. See FASTS. For a long time, both midnight to midnight was reintroduced-survives in Saturday and Sunday were celebrated, especially in the 'ringing in' of certain days of special solemnity the East. Two separate celebrations took the place on the night before, and in the fasts of the vigils. of the Jewish Passover: the Pascha Staurosimon On some of the principal Mohammedan festivals, was the festival of the Death, the Pascha Anastasi-partly based upon those of the Jews and Christians, mon of the Resurrection of our Lord (see EASTER); such as the weekly Friday, the Yom Ashoora (the and the festival of Pentecost, or the law-giving at Jewish Day of Atonement), the Birthday of the FESTOON-FEU AND FEU-DUTY. thing in nature or art to which a magical power is ascribed, e. g., stones, carved figures, or certain parts of plants, animals, &c. In this general sense fetichism coincides with the belief in charms-a belief which is also to be found among monotheistic nations. The first step out of fetichism, is when ignorant tribes cease to be satisfied with believing merely in the magical power inherent in their fetiches, and begin to ascribe a certain conscious operation to the objects of their reverence, especi ally to the fetiches in the forms of beasts or men. In this way the fetich becomes an idol, and fetichism an idolatry. The lowest form of such idolatry is where the savage does not hesitate to throw away, to chastise, or even to destroy his fetich, if it does not appear to gratify his desires. The reverence for sacred woods, mountains, streams, &c., which formed part of the religion of the old Greeks, Celts, and Germans, is not fetichism proper, but rather belongs to the worship of nature. Prophet (Molid An-Nebee), that of Hussein, of and from him into German, through the medium of Mohammed's granddaughter Zeyneb, of the Night Pistorius (Stralsund, 1785). The term has now of the Prophet's Ascension to Heaven (Leylet Al-received European recognition. A fetich is anyMearag), the Night of the Middle of the month Shaaban, in which the fate of every man is confirmed for the ensuing year; the Eed Al-Shagheer or Ramadan-Beyram, at the end of the Ramadan fasts, and the Eed Al-Kabir, or the great festival of the Sacrifice (Kurban Beyram), see MоHAMMEDANISM. For further information, see Herodotus (ii. 60); Plutarch (vii.); Strabo (vi. and x.); Ovid, Fasti; Macrobius, Sat. i. 7, 11; Meursius, Gracia Feriata; Meiners, Geschichte d. Relig.; Fasold, Ierologia; Bible; Mishna; Gemara; Shulchan Aruch; Josephus; Philo; Maimonides; Buxtorf, Lex. Talm.; Synag. Jud.; Bartolocci, Bibl. Rabb.; Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. and Talm.; Lund, Bibl. Hebr.; Wette, Archeologie; Neander, Hist. of the Ch.; Blackmore, Christ. Antiq.; Baumgarten, Erläuterung d. chr. Alterth.; Siegel, Handb. d. chr. Alterth.; Mai, Discorsi di Argomento Religioso; Koran, &c. FESTOO'N, in Architecture, a sculptured wreath of flowers or fruit, frequently used as an ornament in Roman and renaissance buildings. Like many of the other ornaments of classic architecture, it owes its origin to one of the sacrificial emblems, viz. the Festoon: St Mark's Library, Venice. flowers with which the heads of the animals, the altars, &c., used to be decorated. The festoon occurs along with bulls' heads on the frieze of the temple of Vesta at Tivoli. The fig. is an example of a renaissance festoon, from the library of St Mark at Venice. FETID LI’MESTONE, a variety of limestone which gives out, on being violently rubbed, or struck with a hammer, a smell like that of sulphuretted hydrogen gas. It has a dark colour, produced very probably from the perishable portions of the animals whose hard skeletons compose the rock. This animal matter may perhaps also be the cause of the disagreeable smell. Stinkstone or Swinestone have been likewise employed as characteristic names for this limestone. FETLOCK, or FETTERLOCK. English heraldic writers speak of a horse fetlock or fetterlock, and represent it thus. It seems to have been an instrument fixed on the leg of a horse when put to him from running off. pasture, for the purpose of preventing In Scotch Heraldry, a hoop is usually substituted for the chain, and the fetlock is represented thus, as in the arms of Lokkert (Lockhart) of Barre, given by Sir David Lindsay; Argent, on a bend sable three fetterlocks or. Some branches of this family carry a man's heart within the fetterlock, one of the heads of it having accompanied Good Sir James Douglas with King Robert the Bruce's heart to Jerusalem (Nisbet, i. p. 325). Fetlocks. FE'STUS, SEXTUS POMPEIUS, a Latin lexicographer, of the third or fourth c. of our era, is one of the most important ancient authorities we have on the Latin language. He made an epitome of the great work of Verrius Flaccus, De Verborum Sig. nificatione. This compilation, which was arranged alphabetically in 20 books, was still further abridged FEU AND FEU-DUTY. A feu may be described, and spoiled in the end of the 8th c. by Paul, son in familiar language, as a right to the use and enjoyof Warnefried, commonly called Paulus Diaconus. ment of lands, houses, or other heritable subjects, in The great work of Flaccus has unfortunately entirely perished, and of the abridgment made by Festus, perpetuity, in consideration of an annual payment only a single MS., and that in a deplorably imper- contingent burdens called casualties of superiority in grain or money, called feu-duty, and certain other fect condition, has survived. It came from Illyria, (see CASUALTY). Though a feu was frequently used and fell into the hands of Pomponius Lætus, a to express any kind of tenure by which the relation distinguished scholar of the 15th century. It ulti- of superior and vassal was constituted, in its narmately passed into the library of Cardinal Farnese, rower meaning, which we have here indicated, and at Parma, and is now preserved at Naples. The work, which is that in which it is now almost exclusively in spite of all its imperfections, is a grand storehouse used, it was opposed, on the one hand, to those of knowledge on points of mythology, grammar, and tenures in which the return consisted of military or antiquities. All previous editions of F. are of little other personal service (ward and the like), and on value compared with that of K. O. Müller (Gött. the other, to those in which the return was illusory 1839), in which he has made use of the Farnese MS. (blanch), the only object of which was to preserve and other sources, distinguishing the value of each. the relation of superior and vassal. A feu, in short, FETICHISM is the worship of a fetich. The was a perpetual lease-a feu-farm, as it was often word fetich comes to us from the Portuguese, who called-by which the tenant became bound to pay were the first Europeans that traded on the west a substantial consideration, and his rights under coast of Africa, and who expressed their idea of the which he might forfeit, as the penalty of non-payreligion of the natives by the Portuguese word ment. In the present day, the disposal of land in feitição, magic.' This word, somewhat modified, feu is practically a sale for a stipulated annual paypassed into the French language, through Brosse's ment, equivalent to chief rent. It is in this light, treatise, Du Culte des Dieux Fétiches (Dijon, 1760), | accordingly, that feus are generally regarded in 176 305 |