Luck, s. Chance, accident, fortune, hap; fortune, good or bad.
Lug, s. A land measure, a pole or perch; a worm found by digging in oozy sand, an excellent bait for flat fish; the sail of a lugger.
Lugger, s. A fast-sailing vessel with three masts, much used for smuggling and privateering. They vary in size from fifty to one hundred and fifty tons, and are useful vessels for any purposes requiring dispatch.
The lugger is, I think, the most inconvenient rig, especially for a yacht; the spars are so heavy that they require all hands to move them. They generally have two sets of lugs—large ones, which require dipping every time you tack; and small working lugs, which do not require dipping, the tack coming to the foot of the mast. The latter are generally used, except in making long reaches, as across Channel, &c. &c.
Another great objection to a lugger is, your decks are so encumbered with the spare spars and sails, which take up a great deal of room; besides the latter being exposed almost continually to the weather, which they must be while kept bent ready for setting; and, thirdly, a lugger is seldom fit to be altered to any thing but a schooner, not having breadth enough for one mast, which, after all, for beauty and speed, is the best: indeed, sailing men are so perfectly aware of this now, that you never see a schooner or lugger enter against a cutter at all near their tonnage. Take them to sea, and they might have a chance; though even there (setting aside accidents) I would back the cutter in a trial; but in fine weather or smooth water there is no comparison.—Sport. Mag.
Lumpfish, s. A sort of fish.
Lunar, a. Relating to the moon, under the dominion of the moon.
Lungs, s. The lights, the organs of respiration.
Each side of the cavity of the chest is occupied by soft, spongy, and slightly elastic masses, called lungs, having the heart appended between them. In a state of distension they completely fill the parietes of the thorax, to which their figure is exactly adapted. The lungs have a distinct division into a right and left mass, each of which presents deep fissures, partially dividing its substance into what are called its lobes. These divisions are not always the same in every subject, but in the majority of instances the right and largest lung presents three lobuli, the left two only. As already described, the pleura first lines the thoracic cavity, and is then reflected over the lungs, affording them a dense covering: a second reflection from each lung by a union of its laminæ, forms a septum, or a complete division of the chest, into two distinct cavities, and thus effectually shuts out all communication between one lung and the other, except by their vessels. The colour of the lungs varies considerably: in the colt they present a lively pinky hue; in the adult horse they are darker, and in very old subjects they have a greyish cast and granulated appearance.—Blaine.