FUSTIC (Fr. fustoc, from Arab. fustuq, Gr. πιστάκη, pistachio) Yellow Wood or Old Fustic, a dye-stuff consisting of the wood of Chlorophora tinctoria, a large tree of the natural order Moraceae, growing in the West Indies and tropical America. Fustic occurs in commerce in blocks, which are brown without, and of a brownish-yellow within. It is sometimes employed for inlaid work. The dye-stuff termed young fustic or Zante fustic, and also Venetian sumach, is the wood of Rhus cotinus (fustet, or smoke tree), a southern European and Asiatic shrub of the natural order Anacardiaceae, called by Gerarde “red sumach,” and apparently the “coccygia” and “cotinus” of Pliny (Nat. Hist. xiii. 41, xvi. 30). Its colouring matter is fisetin, C15H10O6, which was synthesized by S. von Kostanecki (Ber., 1904, 37, p. 384). (See [Dyeing].)
FUTURES, a term used in the produce markets for purchases or sales of commodities to be completed at a future date, as opposed to cash or “spot” transactions, which are settled immediately. See [Market], and (for a detailed discussion of the question as affecting cotton) [Cotton]: Marketing and Supply.
FUX, JOHANN JOSEPH (1660-1741), Austrian musician, was born at Hirtenfeld (Styria) in 1660. Of his youth and early training nothing is known. In 1696 he was organist at one of the principal churches of Vienna, and in 1698 was appointed by the emperor Leopold I. as his “imperial court-composer,” with a salary of about £6 a month. At the court of Leopold and of his successors Joseph I. and Charles VI., Fux remained for the rest of his life. To his various court dignities that of organist at St Stephen’s cathedral was added in 1704. He married the daughter of the government secretary Schnitzbaum. As a proof of the high favour in which he was held by the art-loving Charles VI., it is told that at the coronation of that emperor as king of Bohemia in 1723 an opera, La Constanza e la Fortezza, especially composed by Fux for the occasion, was given at Prague in an open-air theatre. Fux at the time was suffering from gout, but the emperor had him carried in a litter all the way from Vienna, and gave him a seat in the imperial box. Fux died at Vienna on the 13th of February 1741. His life, although passed in the great world, was eventless, and his only troubles arose from the intrigues of his Italian rivals at court. Of the numerous operas which Fux wrote it is unnecessary to speak. They do not essentially differ from the style of the Italian opera seria of the time. Of greater importance are his sacred compositions, psalms, motets, oratorios and masses, the celebrated Missa Canonica amongst the latter. It is an all but unparalleled tour de force of learned musicianship, being written entirely in that most difficult of contrapuntal devices—the canon. As a contrapuntist and musical scholar generally, Fux was unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries, and his great theoretical work, the Gradus ad Parnassum, long remained by far the most thorough treatment of counterpoint and its various developments. The title of the original Latin edition is Gradus ad Parnassum sive manuductio ad compositionem musicae regularem, methoda nova ac certa nondum ante tam exacta ordine in lucem edita, elaborata a Joanne Josepho Fux (Vienna, 1715). It was translated into most European languages during the 18th century, and is still studied by musicians interested in the history of their art. The expenses of the publication were defrayed by the emperor Charles VI.
Fux’s biography was published by Ludwig von Köchel (Vienna, 1871). It is based on minute original research and contains, amongst other valuable materials, a complete catalogue of the composer’s numerous works.
FUZE or Fuse, an appliance for firing explosives in blasting operations, military shells, &c. (see [Blasting] and [Ammunition], § Shell). The spelling is not governed by authority, but modern convenience has dictated the adoption of the “z” by military engineers as a general rule, in order to distinguish this sense from that of melting by heat (see below). The word, according to the New English Dictionary, is one of the forms in which the Lat. fusus, spindle, has been adapted through Romanic into English, the ordinary fuze taking the shape of a spindle-like tube. Similarly the term “fusee” (Fr. fusée, spindle full of tow, Late Lat. fusata) is applied to a coned spindle sometimes used in the wheel train of watches and spring clocks to equalize the action of the mainspring (see [Watch]); and the application of the same term to a special kind of match may also be due to its resemblance to a spindle. Again, in heraldry, another form, “fusil,” derived through the French from a Late Lat. diminutive (fusillus or fusellus) of this same fusus, is used of a bearing, an elongated lozenge. According to other etymological authorities, however (see Skeat, Etym. Dict., 1898), “fuze” or “fuse,” and “fusee” in the sense of match, are all forms derived through the Fr. fusil, from Late Lat. focile, steel for striking fire from a flint, from Lat. focus, hearth. The Fr. fusil and English “fusil” were thus transferred to the “firelock,” i.e. the light musket of the 17th century (see [Fusilier]).
In electrical engineering a “fuse” (always so spelled) is a safety device, commonly consisting of a strip or wire of easily fusible metal, which melts and thus interrupts the circuit of which it forms part, whenever that circuit, through some accident or derangement, is caused to carry a current larger than that for which it is intended. In this sense the word must be connected with fusus, the past participle of Lat. fundere, to pour, whence comes the verb “fuse,” to melt by heat, often used figuratively in the sense of blend, mix.