[1] The measurements given are from nose to root of tail of average large sizes after the dressing process, which has a shrinking tendency. The depths of fur quoted are the greatest, but there are plenty of good useful skins possessing a lesser depth.
[2] Stout, old-fashioned boxcloth is almost the only cloth that (after a soft, heavy lining has been added to it) affords even two-thirds as much protection against cold as does fur. It weighs 4.273 oz. per sq. ft. more than the heaviest of coat-furs, and is so rigid as to be uncomfortable, while the subtileness of fur makes it “kind” to the body.
FURAZANES (furo—a.a′—diazoles), organic compounds obtained by heating the glyoximes (dioximes of ortho-diketones) with alkalis or ammonia. Dimethylfurazane is prepared by heating dimethylglyoxime with excess of ammonia for six hours at 165° C. (L. Wolff, Ber., 1895, 28, p. 70). It is a liquid (at ordinary temperature) which boils at 156° C. (744 mm.). Potassium permanganate oxidizes it first to methylfurazane-carboxylic acid and then to furazanedicarboxylic acid. Methyl-ethylfurazane and diphenylfurazane are also known. By warming oxyfurazane acetic acid with excess of potassium permanganate to 100° C. oxyfurazanecarboxylic acid is obtained (A. Hantzsch and J. Urbahn, Ber., 1895, 28, p. 764). It crystallizes in prisms, which melt at 175° C. Furazanecarboxylic acid is prepared by the action of a large excess of potassium permanganate on a hot solution of furazanepropionic acid. It melts at 107º C, and dissolves in caustic soda, with a deep yellow colour and formation of nitrosocyanacetic acid (L. Wolff and P.F. Ganz, Ber., 1891, 24, p. 1167). Furoxane is an oxide of furazane, considered by H. Wieland to be identical with glyoxime peroxide; Kekulés dibromnitroacetonitrile is dibromfuroxane.
The formulae of the compounds above mentioned are:
FURETIÈRE, ANTOINE (1619-1688), French scholar and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris on the 28th of December 1619. He first studied law, and practised for a time as an advocate, but eventually took orders and after various preferments became abbé of Chalivoy in the diocese of Bourges in 1662. In his leisure moments he devoted himself to letters, and in virtue of his satires—Nouvelle Allégorique, ou histoire des derniers troubles arrivés au royaume d’éloquence (1658); Voyage de Mercure (1653)—he was admitted a member of the French Academy in 1662. That learned body had long promised a complete dictionary of the French tongue; and when they heard that Furetière was on the point of issuing a work of a similar nature, they interfered, alleging that he had purloined from their stores, and that they possessed the exclusive privilege of publishing such a book. After much bitter recrimination on both sides the offender was expelled in 1685; but for this act of injustice he took a severe revenge in his satire, Couches de l’académie (Amsterdam, 1687). His Dictionnaire universel was posthumously published in 1690 (Rotterdam, 2 vols.). It was afterwards revised and improved by the Protestant jurist, Henri Basnage de Beauval (1656-1710), who published his edition (3 vols.) in 1701; and it was only superseded by the compilation known as the Dictionnaire de Trévoux (Paris, 3 vols., 1704; 7th ed., 8 vols., 1771), which was in fact little more than a reimpression of Basnage’s edition. Furetière is perhaps even better known as the author of Le Roman bourgeois (1666). It cast ridicule on the fashionable romances of Mlle de Scudéry and of La Calprenède, and is of interest as descriptive of the everyday life of his times. There is no element of burlesque, as in Scarron’s Roman comique, but the author contents himself with stringing together a number of episodes and portraits, obviously drawn from life, without much attempt at sequence. The book was edited in 1854 by Edward Fournier and Charles Asselineau and by P. Jannet.
The Fureteriana, which appeared in Paris eight years after Furetière’s death, which took place on the 14th of May 1688, is a collection of but little value.