FRÉMY, EDMOND (1814-1894), French chemist, was born at Versailles on the 29th of February 1814. Entering Gay-Lussac’s laboratory in 1831, he became préparateur at the École Polytechnique in 1834 and at the Collège de France in 1837. His next post was that of répétiteur at the École Polytechnique, where in 1846 he was appointed professor, and in 1850 he succeeded Gay-Lussac in the chair of chemistry at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, of which he was director, in succession to M. E. Chevreul, from 1879 to 1891. He died at Paris on the 3rd of February 1894. His work included investigations of osmic acid, of the ferrates, stannates, plumbates, &c., and of ozone, attempts to obtain free fluorine by the electrolysis of fused fluorides, and the discovery of anhydrous hydrofluoric acid and of a series of acides sulphazotés, the precise nature of which long remained a matter of discussion. He also studied the colouring matters of leaves and flowers, the composition of bone, cerebral matter and other animal substances, and the processes of fermentation, in regard to the nature of which he was an opponent of Pasteur’s views. Keenly alive to the importance of the technical applications of chemistry, he devoted special attention as a teacher to the training of industrial chemists. In this field he contributed to our knowledge of the manufacture of iron and steel, sulphuric acid, glass and paper, and in particular worked at the saponification of fats with sulphuric acid and the utilization of palmitic acid for candle-making. In the later years of his life he applied himself to the problem of obtaining alumina in the crystalline form, and succeeded in making rubies identical with the natural gem not merely in chemical composition but also in physical properties.
FRENCH, DANIEL CHESTER (1850- ), American sculptor, was born at Exeter, New Hampshire, on the 20th of April 1850, the son of Henry Flagg French, a lawyer, who for a time was assistant-secretary of the United States treasury. After a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, French spent a month in the studio of John Q. A. Ward, then began to work on commissions, and at the age of twenty-three received from the town of Concord, Massachusetts, an order for his well-known statue “The Minute Man,” which was unveiled (April 19, 1875) on the centenary of the battle of Concord. Previously French had gone to Florence, Italy, where he spent a year with Thomas Ball. French’s best-known work is “Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor,” a memorial for the tomb of the sculptor Martin Milmore, in the Forest Hills cemetery, Boston; this received a medal of honour at Paris, in 1900. Among his other works are: a monument to John Boyle O’Reilly, Boston; “Gen. Cass,” National Hall of Statuary, Washington; “Dr Gallaudet and his First Deaf-Mute Pupil,” Washington; the colossal “Statue of the Republic,” for the Columbian Exposition at Chicago; statues of Rufus Choate (Boston), John Harvard (Cambridge, Mass.), and Thomas Starr King (San Francisco, California), a memorial to the architect Richard M. Hunt, in Fifth Avenue, opposite the Lenox library, New York, and a large “Alma Mater,” near the approach to Columbia University, New York. In collaboration with Edward C. Potter he modelled the “Washington,” presented to France by the Daughters of the American Revolution; the “General Grant” in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, and the “General Joseph Hooker” in Boston. French became a member of the National Academy of Design (1901), the National Sculpture Society, the Architectural League, and the Accademia di San Luca, of Rome.
FRENCH, NICHOLAS (1604-1678), bishop of Ferns, was an Irish political pamphleteer, who was born at Wexford. He was educated at Louvain, and returning to Ireland became a priest at Wexford, and before 1646 was appointed bishop of Ferns. Having taken a prominent part in the political disturbances of this period, French deemed it prudent to leave Ireland in 1651, and the remainder of his life was passed on the continent of Europe. He acted as coadjutor to the archbishops of Santiago de Compostella and Paris, and to the bishop of Ghent, and died at Ghent on the 23rd of August 1678. In 1676 he published his attack on James Butler, marquess of Ormonde, entitled “The Unkinde Desertor of Loyall Men and True Frinds,” and shortly afterwards “The Bleeding Iphigenia.” The most important of his other pamphlets is the “Narrative of the Earl of Clarendon’s Settlement and Sale of Ireland” (Louvain, 1668).
The Historical Works of Bishop French, comprising the three pamphlets already mentioned and some letters, were published by S. H. Bindon at Dublin in 1846. See T. D. McGee, Irish Writers of the 17th Century (Dublin, 1846); Sir J. T. Gilbert, Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, 1641-1652 (Dublin, 1879-1880); and T. Carte, Life of James, Duke of Ormond (new ed., Oxford, 1851).
FRENCH CONGO, the general name of the French possessions in equatorial Africa. They have an area estimated at 700,000 sq. m., with a population, also estimated, of 6,000,000 to 10,000,000. The whites numbered (1906) 1278, of whom 502 were officials. French Congo, officially renamed French Equatorial Africa in 1910, comprises—(1) the Gabun Colony, (2) the Middle Congo Colony, (3) the Ubangi-Shari Circumscription, (4) the Chad Circumscription. The two last-named divisions form the Ubangi-Shari-Chad Colony.
The present article treats of French Congo as a unit. It is of highly irregular shape. It is bounded W. by the Atlantic, N. by the (Spanish) Muni River Settlements, the German colony of Cameroon and the Sahara, E. by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and S. by Belgian Congo and the Portuguese territory of Kabinda. In the greater part of its length the southern frontier is the middle course of the Congo and the Ubangi and Mbomu, the chief northern affluents of that stream, but in the south-west the frontier keeps north of the Congo river, whose navigable lower course is partitioned between Belgium and Portugal. The coast line, some 600 m. long, extends from 5° S. to 1° N. The northern frontier, starting inland from the Muni estuary, after skirting the Spanish settlements follows a line drawn a little north of 2° N. and extending east to 16° E. North of this line the country is part of Cameroon, German territory extending so far inland from the Gulf of Guinea as to approach within 130 m. of the Ubangi. From the intersection of the lines named, at which point French Congo is at its narrowest, the frontier runs north and then east until the Shari is reached in 10° 40′ N. The Shari then forms the frontier up to Lake Chad, where French Congo joins the Saharan regions of French West Africa. The eastern frontier, separating the colony from the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, is the water-parting between the Nile and the Congo. The Mahommedan sultanates of Wadai and Bagirmi occupy much of the northern part of French Congo (see [Wadai] and [Bagirmi]).
Physical Features.—The coast line, beginning in the north at Corisco Bay, is shortly afterwards somewhat deeply indented by the estuary of the Gabun, south of which the shore runs in a nearly straight line until the delta of the Ogowé is reached, where Cape Lopez projects N.W. From this point the coast trends uniformly S.E. without presenting any striking features, though the Bay of Mayumba, the roadstead of Loango, and the Pointe Noire may be mentioned. A large proportion of the coast region is occupied by primeval forest, with trees rising to a height of 150 and 200 ft., but there is a considerable variety of scenery—open lagoons, mangrove swamps, scattered clusters of trees, park-like reaches, dense walls of tangled underwood along the rivers, prairies of tall grass and patches of cultivation. Behind the coast region is a ridge which rises from 3000 to 4500 ft., called the Crystal Mountains, then a plateau with an elevation varying from 1500 to 2800 ft., cleft with deep river-valleys, the walls of which are friable, almost vertical, and in some places 760 ft. high.