LEMOYNE, JEAN BAPTISTE (1704-1778), French sculptor, was the pupil of his father, Jean Louis Lemoyne, and of Robert le Lorrain. He was a great figure in his day, around whose modest and kindly personality there waged opposing storms of denunciation and applause. Although his disregard of the classic tradition and of the essentials of dignified sculpture, as well as his lack of firmness and of intellectual grasp of the larger principles of his art, lay him open to stringent criticism, de Clarac’s charge that he had delivered a mortal blow at sculpture is altogether exaggerated. Lemoyne’s more important works have for the most part been destroyed or have disappeared. The equestrian statue of “Louis XV.” for the military school, and the composition of “Mignard’s daughter, Mme Feuquières, kneeling before her father’s bust” (which bust was from the hand of Coysevox) were subjected to the violence by which Bouchardon’s equestrian monument of Louis XIV. (q.v.) was destroyed. The panels only have been preserved. In his busts evidence of his riotous and florid imagination to a great extent disappears, and we have a remarkable series of important portraits, of which those of women are perhaps the best. Among Lemoyne’s leading achievements in this class are “Fontenelle” (at Versailles), “Voltaire,” “Latour” (all of 1748), “Duc de la Valière” (Versailles), “Comte de St Florentin,” and “Crébillon” (Dijon Museum); “Mlle Chiron” and “Mlle Dangeville,” both produced in 1761 and both at the Théâtre Français in Paris, and “Mme de Pompadour,” the work of the same year. Of the Pompadour he also executed a statue in the costume of a nymph, very delicate and playful in its air of grace. Lemoyne was perhaps most successful in his training of pupils, one of the leaders of whom was Falconnet.
LEMPRIÈRE, JOHN (c. 1765-1824), English classical scholar, was born in Jersey, and educated at Winchester and Pembroke College, Oxford. He is chiefly known for his Bibliotheca Classica or Classical Dictionary (1788), which, edited by various later scholars, long remained a readable if not very trustworthy reference book in mythology and classical history. In 1792, after holding other scholastic posts, he was appointed to the head-mastership of Abingdon grammar school, and later became the vicar of that parish. While occupying this living, he published a Universal Biography of Eminent Persons in all Ages and Countries (1808). In 1809 he succeeded to the head-mastership of Exeter free grammar school. On retiring from this, in consequence of a disagreement with the trustees, he was given the living of Meeth in Devonshire, which, together with that of Newton Petrock, he held till his death in London on the 1st of February 1824.
LEMUR (from Lat. lemures, “ghosts”), the name applied by Linnaeus to certain peculiar Malagasy representatives of the order [Primates] (q.v.) which do not come under the designation of either monkeys or apes, and, with allied animals from the same island and tropical Asia and Africa, constitute the suborder Prosimiae, or Lemuroidea, the characteristics of which are given in the article just mentioned. The typical lemurs include species like Lemur mongoz and L. catta, but the English name “lemur” is often taken to include all the members of the suborder, although the aberrant forms are often conveniently termed “lemuroids.” All the Malagasy lemurs, which agree in the structure of the internal ear, are now included in the family Lemuridae, confined to Madagascar and the Comoro Islands, which comprises the great majority of the group. The other families are the Nycticebidae, common to tropical Asia and Africa, and the Tarsiidae, restricted to the Malay countries. In the more typical Lemuridae there are two pairs of upper incisor teeth, separated by a gap in the middle line; the premolars may be either two or three, but the molars, as in the lower jaw, are always three on each side. In the lower jaw the incisors and canines are directed straight forwards, and are of small size and nearly similar form; the function of the canine being discharged by the first premolar, which is larger than the other teeth of the same series. With the exception of the second toe of the hind-foot, the digits have well-formed, flattened nails as in the majority of monkeys. In the members of the typical genus Lemur, as well as in the allied Hapalemur and Lepidolemur, none of the toes or fingers are connected by webs, and all have the hind-limbs of moderate length, and the tail long. The maximum number of teeth is 36, there being typically two pairs of incisors and three of premolars in each jaw. In habits some of the species are nocturnal and others diurnal; but all subsist on a mixed diet, which includes birds, reptiles, eggs, insects and fruits. Most are arboreal, but the ring-tailed lemur (L. catta) often dwells among rocks. The species of the genus Lemur are diurnal, and may be recognized by the length of the muzzle, and the large tufted ears. In some cases, as in the black lemur (L. macaco) the two sexes are differently coloured; but in others, especially the ruffed lemur (L. varius), there is much individual variation in this respect, scarcely any two being alike. The gentle lemurs (Hapalemur) have a rounder head, with smaller ears and a shorter muzzle, and also a bare patch covered with spines on the fore-arm. The sportive lemurs (Lepidolemur) are smaller than the typical species of Lemur, and the adults generally lose their upper incisors. The head is short and conical, the ears large, round and mostly bare, and the tail shorter than the body. Like the gentle lemurs they are nocturnal. (See [Avahi], [Aye-Aye], [Galago], [Indri], [Loris], [Potto], [Sifaka] and [Tarsier].)
(R. L.*)
LENA, a river of Siberia, rising in the Baikal Mountains, on the W. side of Lake Baikal, in 54° 10′ N. and 107° 55′ E. Wheeling round by the S., it describes a semicircle, then flows N.N.E. and N.E., being joined by the Kirenga and the Vitim, both from the right; from 113° E. it flows E.N.E as far as Yakutsk (62° N., 127° 40′ E.), where it enters the lowlands, after being joined by the Olekma, also from the right. From Yakutsk it goes N. until joined by its right-hand affluent the Aldan, which deflects it to the north-west; then, after receiving its most important left-hand tributary, the Vilyui, it makes its way nearly due N. to the Nordenskjöld Sea, a division of the Arctic, disemboguing S.W. of the New Siberian Islands by a delta 10,800 sq. m. in area, and traversed by seven principal branches, the most important being Bylov, farthest east. The total length of the river is estimated at 2860 m. The delta arms sometimes remain blocked with ice the whole year round. At Yakutsk navigation is generally practicable from the middle of May to the end of October, and at Kirensk, at the confluence of the Lena and the Kirenga, from the beginning of May to about the same time. Between these two towns there is during the season regular steamboat communication. The area of the river basin is calculated at 895,500 sq. m. Gold is washed out of the sands of the Vitim and the Olekma, and tusks of the mammoth are dug out of the delta.
See G. W. Melville, In the Lena Delta (1885).