LANSING MAN, the term applied by American ethnologists to certain human remains discovered in 1902 during the digging of a cellar near Lansing, Kansas, and by some authorities believed to represent a prehistoric type of man. They include a skull and several large adult bones and a child’s jaw. They were found beneath 20 ft. of undisturbed silt, in a position indicating intentional burial. The skull is preserved in the U. S. National Museum at Washington. It is similar in shape to those of historic Indians of the region. Its ethnological value as indicating the existence of man on the Missouri in the glacial period is very doubtful, it being impossible accurately to determine the age of the deposits.
See Handbook of American Indians (Washington, 1907).
LANSQUENET, the French corrupted form of the German Landsknecht (q.v.), a mercenary foot-soldier of the 16th century. It is also the name of a card game said to have been introduced into France by the Landsknechte. The pack of 52 cards is cut by the player at the dealer’s right. The dealer lays the two first cards face upwards on the table to his left; the third he places in front of him and the fourth, or réjouissance card, in the middle of the table. The players, usually called (except in the case of the dealer) punters, stake any sum within the agreed limit upon this réjouissance card; the dealer, who is also the banker, covers the bets and then turns up the next card. If this fails to match any of the cards already exposed, it is laid beside the réjouissance card and then punters may stake upon it. Other cards not matching are treated in the same manner. When a card is turned which matches the réjouissance card, the banker wins everything staked on it, and in like manner he wins what is staked on any card (save his own) that is matched by the card turned. The banker pays all stakes, and the deal is over as soon as a card appears that matches his own; excepting that should the two cards originally placed at his left both be matched before his own, he is then entitled to a second deal. In France matching means winning, not losing, as in Great Britain. There are other variations of play on the continent of Europe.
LANTARA, SIMON MATHURIN (1729-1778), French landscape painter, was born at Oncy on the 24th of March 1729. His father was a weaver, and he himself began life as a herdboy; but, having attracted the notice of Gille de Reumont, a son of his master, he was placed under a painter at Versailles. Endowed with great facility and real talent, his powers found ready recognition; but he found the constraint of a regular life and the society of educated people unbearably tiresome; and as long as the proceeds of the last sale lasted he lived careless of the future in the company of obscure workmen. Rich amateurs more than once attracted him to their houses, only to find that in ease and high living Lantara could produce nothing. He died in Paris on the 22nd of December 1778. His works, now much prized, are not numerous; the Louvre has one landscape, “Morning,” signed and dated 1761. Bernard, Joseph Vernet, and others are said to have added figures to his landscapes and sea-pieces. Engravings after Lantara will be found in the works of Lebas, Piquenot, Duret, Mouchy and others. In 1809 a comedy called Lantara, or the Painter in the Pothouse, was brought out at the Vaudeville with great success.
See E. Bellier de la Chavignerie, Recherches sur le peintre Lantara (Paris, 1852).
LANTERN (an adaptation of the Fr. lanterne from Lat. lanterna or laterna, supposed to be from Gr. λαμπτήρ, a torch or lamp, λάμπειν, to shine, cf. “lamp”; the 16th- and 17th-century form “lanthorn” is due to a mistaken derivation from “horn,” as a material frequently used in the making of lanterns), a metal case filled in with some transparent material, and used for holding a light and protecting it from rain or wind. The appliance is of two kinds—the hanging lantern and the hand lantern—both of which are ancient. At Pompeii and Herculaneum have been discovered two cylindrical bronze lanterns, with ornamented pillars, to which chains are attached for carrying or hanging the lantern. Plates of horn surrounded the bronze lamp within, and the cover at the top can be removed for lighting and for the escape of smoke. The hanging lantern for lighting rooms was composed of ornamental metal work, of which iron and brass were perhaps most frequently used. Silver, and even gold, were, however, sometimes employed, and the artificers in metal of the 17th and 18th centuries produced much exceedingly artistic work of this kind. Oriental lanterns in open-work bronze were often very beautiful. The early lantern had sides of horn, talc, bladder or oiled paper, and the primitive shape remains in the common square stable lantern with straight glass sides, to carry a candle. The hand lantern was usually a much more modest appliance than the hanging lantern, although in great houses it was sometimes richly worked and decorated. As glass grew cheaper it gradually ousted all other materials, but the horn lantern which was already ancient in the 13th century was still being used in the early part of the 19th. By the end of the 18th century lanterns in rooms had been superseded by the candlestick. The collapsible paper lanterns of China and Japan, usually known as Chinese lanterns, are globular or cylindrical in shape, and the paper is pleated and when not in use folds flat. For illuminative and decorative purposes they are coloured with patterns of flowers, &c. The lanterns carried by the ordinary foot passenger are made of oiled paper. In China the “Feast of Lanterns” takes place early in the New Year and lasts for four days. In Japan the festival of Bon is sometimes known as the “feast of lanterns.” It is then that the spirits of the dead ancestors return to the household altar. The festival takes place in July. The “bull’s-eye” lantern has a convex lens which concentrates the light and allows it to be thrown in the shape of a diverging cone. The “dark lantern” has a shutter or slide arrangement by which the light can be shut off at will. Ships’ lanterns are used as masthead or other signal lights. On Trajan’s column is a representation of a heavy poop-lantern on a ship. The ships’ lanterns of the 16th and 17th centuries were highly ornamental, especially when placed on the poop. At the Armeria Real in Madrid is a collection of these 16th-century ships’ lanterns. The protected cages which contain the lights used in lighthouses are also known as “lanterns” (see [Lighthouses]).
In architecture a lantern is primarily a framework of timber, with windows all round, to admit ample light, placed on the top of a roof. In a broader sense, it is applied to those portions of buildings which are largely perforated with windows, and more especially to the upper part of the towers of cathedrals and churches, as in the octagon of Ely cathedral, or the tower of Boston church, Lincolnshire. The term is also applied to the entire church, as in the case of Bath Abbey church, which was called the “lantern of England,” from the number of its windows, and St John’s Priory at Kilkenny, the “lantern of Ireland,” on account of the window on the south side of the choir which was 54 ft. long. In the Renaissance style the lantern was looked upon as a decorative feature surmounting the dome, as in St Peter’s, Rome, the Invalides, Paris, and St Paul’s, London.