[3] This sounds like pee-weet, with some variety of intonation. Hence the names peewit, peaseweep and teuchit, commonly applied in some parts of Britain to this bird—though the first is that by which one of the smaller gulls, Larus ridibundus (see [Gull]), is known in the districts it frequents. In Sweden Vipa, in Germany Kiebitz, in Holland Kiewiet, and in France Dixhuit, are names of the lapwing, given to it from its usual cry. Other English names are green plover and hornpie—the latter from its long hornlike crest and pied plumage. The lapwing’s conspicuous crest seems to have been the cause of a common blunder among English writers of the middle ages, who translated the Latin word Upupa, property hoopoe, by lapwing, as being the crested bird with which they were best acquainted. In like manner other writers of the same or an earlier period latinized lapwing by Egrettides (plural), and rendered that again into English as egrets—the tuft of feathers misleading them also. The word Vanellus is from vannus, the fan used for winnowing corn, and refers to the audible beating of the bird’s wings.
LAPWORTH, CHARLES (1842- ), English geologist, was born at Faringdon in Berkshire on the 30th of September 1842. He was educated partly in the village of Buckland in the same county, and afterwards in the training college at Culham, near Oxford (1862-1864). He was then appointed master in a school connected with the Episcopal church at Galashiels, where he remained eleven years. Geology came to absorb all his leisure time, and he commenced to investigate the Silurian rocks of the Southern Uplands, and to study the graptolites and other fossils which mark horizons in the great series of Lower Palaeozoic rocks. His first paper on the Lower Silurian rocks of Galashiels was published in 1870, and from that date onwards he continued to enrich our knowledge of the southern uplands of Scotland until the publication by the Geological Society of his masterly papers on The Moffat Series (1878) and The Girvan Succession (1882). Meanwhile in 1875 he became an assistant master in the Madras College, St Andrews, and in 1881 professor of geology and mineralogy (afterwards geology and physiography) in the Mason College, now University of Birmingham. In 1882 he started work in the Durness-Eriboll district of the Scottish Highlands, and made out the true succession of the rocks, and interpreted the complicated structure which had baffled most of the previous observers. His results were published in “The Secret of the Highlands” (Geol. Mag., 1883). His subsequent work includes papers on the Cambrian rocks of Nuneaton and the Ordovician rocks of Shropshire. The term Ordovician was introduced by him in 1879 for the strata between the base of the Lower Llandovery formation and that of the Lower Arenig; and it was intended to settle the confusion arising from the use by some writers of Lower Silurian and by others of Upper Cambrian for the same set of rocks. The term Ordovician is now generally adopted. Professor Lapworth was elected F.R.S. in 1888, he received a royal medal in 1891, and was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society in 1899. He was president of the Geological Society, 1902-1904. His Intermediate Text-book of Geology was published in 1899.
See article, with portrait and bibliography, in Geol. Mag. (July 1901).
LAR, a city of Persia, capital of Laristan, in 27° 30′ N., 53° 58′ E., 180 m. from Shiraz and 75 from the coast at Bander Lingah. It stands at the foot of a mountain range in an extensive plain covered with palm trees, and was once a flourishing place, but a large portion is in ruins, and the population which early in the 18th century numbered 50,000 is reduced to 8000. There are still some good buildings, of which the most prominent are the old bazaar consisting of four arcades each 180 ft. long, 14 broad and 22 high, radiating from a domed centre 30 ft. high, an old stone mosque and many cisterns. The crest of a steep limestone hill immediately behind the town and rising 150 ft. above the plain is crowned by the ruins of a castle formerly deemed impregnable. Just below the castle is a well sunk 200 ft. in the rock. The tower-flanked mud wall which surrounds the town is for the most part in ruins.
LARA, western state of Venezuela, lying in the angle formed by the parting of the N. and N.E. ranges of the Cordillera de Mérida and extending N.E. with converging frontiers to the Caribbean. Pop. (1905 estimate) 272,252. The greater part of its surface is mountainous, with elevated fertile valleys which have a temperate climate. The Tocuyo river rises in the S.W. angle of the state and flows N.E. to the Caribbean with a total length of 287 m. A narrow-gauge railway, the “South-western,” owned by British capitalists, runs from the port of Tucacas 55 m. S.W. to Barquisimeto by way of the Aroa copper-mining district. Lara produces wheat and other cereals, coffee, sugar, tobacco, neat cattle, sheep and various mineral ores, including silver, copper, iron, lead, bismuth and antimony. The capital, Barquisimeto, is one of the largest and most progressive of the inland cities of Venezuela. Carora is also prominent as a commercial centre. Tocuyo (pop. in 1891, 15,383), 40 m. S.W. of Barquisimeto, is an important commercial and mining town, over 2000 ft. above sea-level, in the midst of a rich agricultural and pastoral region. Yaritagua (pop. about 12,000), 20 m. E. of Barquisimeto, and 1026 ft. above the sea, is known for its cigar manufactories.
LARAISH (El Araish), a port in northern Morocco on the Atlantic coast in 35° 13′ N., 6° 9′ W., 43 m. by sea S. by W. of Tangier, picturesquely situated on the left bank of the estuary of the Wad Lekkus. Pop. 6000 to 7000. The river, being fairly deep inside the bar, made this a favourite port for the Salli rovers to winter in, but the quantity of alluvial soil brought down threatens to close the port. The town is well situated for defence, its walls are in fair condition, and it has ten forts, all supplied with old-fashioned guns. Traces of the Spanish occupation from 1610-1689 are to be seen in the towers whose names are given by Tissot as those of St Stephen, St James and that of the Jews, with the Castle of Our Lady of Europe, now the kasbah or citadel. The most remarkable feature of Laraish is its fine large market-place inside the town with a low colonnade in front of very small shops. The streets, though narrow and steep, are generally paved. Its chief exports are oranges, millet, dra and other cereals, goat-hair and skins, sheepskins, wool and fullers’ earth. The wool goes chiefly to Marseilles. The annual value of the trade is from £400,000 to £500,000.