Faenza (fa˙-en´za), an episcopal city of N. Italy, in the province of and 19 miles south-west of Ravenna. It is supposed to have been the first Italian city in which the earthenware called faience (q.v.) was introduced. The manufacture still flourishes here, and there is also a considerable trade in spinning and weaving silk. Pop. (commune), 40,164.
Fagaceæ, a nat. ord. of apetalous Dicotyledons, all trees and shrubs, mostly natives of temperate regions. It includes the beeches and oaks, and the sweet chestnut (Castanea).
Fagging, a custom which formerly prevailed generally at most of the English schools, and is still practised at Eton, Winchester, Harrow, Rugby, and one or two other places. It consists in making the junior boys act as servants or 'fags' in the performance of multifarious menial offices for elder boys, such as carrying messages or preparing breakfast for their master, in return for which the elder boy accepts a certain responsibility for keeping order, and becomes the recognized adviser and protector of his 'fags'.
Faggot-vote, a term formerly applied in Britain to a vote procured by the purchase of property so as to constitute a nominal qualification without a substantial basis. Faggot-votes were chiefly used in county elections for members of Parliament. The way in which they were usually manufactured was by the purchase of a property which was divided into as many lots as would constitute separate votes, and given to different persons, who need not be resident members of the constituency. The practice disappeared after the Reform Act of 1884.
Faguet, Émile, French literary historian, critic, and journalist, born at La Roche-sur-Yon in 1847, died in 1916. He became professor of poetry at the Sorbonne in 1897. Endowed with a keen power of analysis and a wealth of original ideas, he was one of the most brilliant French critics of the nineteenth century. Whilst praising the literature of the seventeenth century, Faguet somewhat depreciated the writers of the eighteenth century. Among his numerous works are: Le théâtre contemporain (1880-91), Dix-huitième siècle (1890), Seizième siècle (1893), Drame ancien et drame moderne (1898), Histoire de la littérature française (1900), Propos littéraires (1902), Initiation into Literature, and Initiation into Philosophy.
Fagus. See Beech.
Fahlerz (fäl´erts), or grey copper ore, is of a steel-grey or iron-black colour. It occurs crystallized in the form of the tetrahedron, also massive and disseminated. Its fracture is uneven or imperfectly conchoidal. Specific gravity, 4.5-5.1. Tetrahedrite, the typical species, is composed of copper, sulphur, and antimony. Part of the copper is often replaced by iron, zinc, silver, or mercury, and part of the antimony by arsenic.
Fahlunite, a mineral of a greenish colour occurring in six-sided prisms. It is a pseudomorph after iolite, and consists mainly of hydrous aluminium silicate. It takes its name from Fahlun in Sweden.
Fahrenheit (fä´rėn-hīt), Gabriel Daniel, German physicist, known for his arrangement of the thermometer, was born at Danzig in 1686, died in 1736. Abandoning the commercial profession for which he had been designed, he settled in Holland to study natural philosophy. In 1720 he effected a great improvement by the use of quicksilver instead of spirits of wine in thermometers. He invented the Fahrenheit scale (see Thermometer), and made several valuable discoveries in physics. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1724.
Faidherbe (fā-derb), Louis Léon César, a French general, born in 1818, died in 1889. He entered the army in 1840, served in Africa and the West Indies, was appointed Governor of Senegal in 1854, and afterwards of a district in Algiers from 1867 to 1870. After the fall of Napoleon III, he was summoned by the Government of the National Defence to France and appointed commander of the army of the north. He fought some bloody but indecisive battles with the Germans under Manteuffel and Goeben. After the war he was elected to the Assembly by Lille, his native place, but on the triumph of Thiers retired from politics to private life. He wrote Épigraphie Phénicienne, and valuable monographs on Senegal, the Sudan, and other parts of Africa.