[1] Of the 30 genera or subgenera which Swainson included in his Natural Arrangement and Relations of the Family of Flycatchers (published in 1838), at least 19 do not belong to the Muscicapidae at all, and one of them, Todus, not even to the order Passeres. It is perhaps impossible to name any ornithological work whose substance so fully belies its title as does this treatise. Swainson wrote it filled with faith in the so-called “Quinary System”—that fanciful theory, invented by W.S. Macleay, which misled and kept back so many of the best English zoologists of his generation from the truth,—and, unconsciously swayed by his bias, his judgment was warped to fit his hypothesis.
[2] By some writers this section is distinguished as Butalis of Boie, but to do so seems contrary to rule.
FLYGARE-CARLÉN, EMILIE (1807-1892), Swedish novelist, was born in Strömstad on the 8th of August 1807. Her father, Rutger Smith, was a retired sea-captain who had settled down as a small merchant, and she often accompanied him on the voyages he made along the coast. She married in 1827 a doctor named Axel Flygare, and went with him to live in the province of Småland. After his death in 1833 she returned to her old home and published in 1838 her first novel, Waldemar Klein. In the next year she removed to Stockholm, and married, in 1841, the jurist and poet, Johan Gabriel Carlén (1814-1875). Her house became a meeting-place for Stockholm men of letters, and for the next twelve years she produced one or two novels annually. The premature death of her son Edvard Flygare (1829-1853), who had already published three books, showing great promise, was followed by six years of silence, after which she resumed her writing until 1884. The most famous of her tales are Rosen på Tistelön (1842; Eng. trans. The Rose of Tistelön, 1842); Enslingen på Johannesskäret (1846; Eng. trans. The Hermit, 4 vols., 1853); and Ett Köpemanshus i skärgården (1859; The Merchant’s House on the Cliffs). Fru Carlén published in 1878 Minnen af svenskt författarlif 1840-1860, and in 1887-1888 three volumes of Efterskörd från en 80- årings författarbana, containing her last tales. She died at Stockholm on the 5th of February 1892. Her daughter, Rosa Carlén (1836-1883), was also a popular novelist.
Emilie Flygare-Carlén’s novels were collected in thirty-one volumes (Stockholm, 1869-1875).
FLYING BUTTRESS, in architecture, the term given to a structural feature employed to transmit the thrust of a vault across an intervening space, such as an aisle, chapel or cloister, to a buttress built outside the latter. This was done by throwing a semi-arch across to the vertical buttress. Though employed by the Romans and in early Romanesque work, it was generally masked by other constructions or hidden under a roof, but in the 12th century it was recognized as rational construction and emphasized by the decorative accentuation of its features, as in the cathedrals of Chartres, Le Mans, Paris, Beauvais, Reims, &c. Sometimes, owing to the great height of the vaults, two semi-arches were thrown one above the other, and there are cases where the thrust was transmitted to two or even three buttresses across intervening spaces. As a vertical buttress, placed at a distance, possesses greater power of resistance to thrust than if attached to the wall carrying the vault, vertical buttresses as at Lincoln and Westminster Abbey were built outside the chapterhouse to receive the thrust. All vertical buttresses are, as a rule, in addition weighted with pinnacles to give them greater power of resistance.
FLYING COLUMN, in military organization, an independent corps of troops usually composed of all arms, to which a particular task is assigned. It is almost always composed in the course of operations, out of the troops immediately available. Mobility being its raison d’être, a flying column is when possible composed of picked men and horses accompanied with the barest minimum of baggage. The term is usually, though not necessarily, applied to forces under the strength of a brigade. The “mobile columns” employed by the British in the South African War of 1899-1902, were usually of the strength of two battalions of infantry, a battery of artillery, and a squadron of cavalry—almost exactly half that of a mixed brigade. Flying columns are mostly used in savage or guerrilla warfare.