THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XVI SLICE VII
Liquid Gases to Logar

Articles in This Slice

LIQUID GASES.[1] Though Lavoisier remarked that if the earth were removed to very cold regions of space, such as those of Jupiter or Saturn, its atmosphere, or at least a portion of its aeriform constituents, would return to the state of liquid (Œuvres, ii. 805), the history of the liquefaction of gases may be said to begin with the observation made by John Dalton in his essay “On the Force of Steam or Vapour from Water and various other Liquids” (1801): “There can scarcely be a doubt entertained respecting the reducibility of all elastic fluids of whatever kind into liquids; and we ought not to despair of effecting it in low temperatures and by strong pressures exerted on the unmixed gases.” It was not, however, till 1823 that the question was investigated by systematic experiment. In that year Faraday, at the suggestion of Sir Humphry Davy, exposed hydrate of chlorine to heat under pressure in the laboratories of the Royal Institution. He placed the substance at the end of one arm of a bent glass tube, which was then hermetically sealed, and decomposing it by heating to 100° F., he saw a yellow liquid distil to the end of the other arm. This liquid he surmised to be chlorine separated from the water by the heat and “condensed into a dry fluid by the mere pressure of its own abundant vapour,” and he verified his surmise by compressing chlorine gas, freed from water by exposure to sulphuric acid, to a pressure of about four atmospheres, when the same yellow fluid was produced (Phil. Trans., 1823, 113, pp. 160-165). He proceeded to experiment with a number of other gases subjected in sealed tubes to the pressure caused by their own continuous production by chemical action, and in the course of a few weeks liquefied sulphurous acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, carbonic acid, euchlorine, nitrous acid, cyanogen, ammonia and muriatic acid, the last of which, however, had previously been obtained by Davy. But he failed with hydrogen, oxygen, fluoboric, fluosilicic and phosphuretted hydrogen gases (Phil. Trans., ib. pp. 189-198). Early in the following year he published an “Historical statement respecting the liquefaction of gases” (Quart. Journ. Sci., 1824, 16, pp. 229-240), in which he detailed several recorded cases in which previous experimenters had reduced certain gases to their liquid state.

In 1835 Thilorier, by acting on bicarbonate of soda with sulphuric acid in a closed vessel and evacuating the gas thus obtained under pressure into a second vessel, was able to accumulate large quantities of liquid carbonic acid, and found that when the liquid was suddenly ejected into the air a portion of it was solidified into a snow-like substance (Ann. chim. phys., 1835, 60, pp. 427-432). Four years later J. K. Mitchell in America, by mixing this snow with ether and exhausting it under an air pump, attained a minimum temperature of 146° below zero F., by the aid of which he froze sulphurous acid gas to a solid.

Stimulated by Thilorier’s results and by considerations arising out of the work of J. C. Cagniard de la Tour (Ann. chim. phys., 1822, 21, pp. 127 and 178, and 1823, 22, p. 410), which appeared to him to indicate that gases would pass by some simple law into the liquid state, Faraday returned to the subject about 1844, in the “hope of seeing nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen either as liquid or solid bodies, and the latter probably as a metal” (Phil. Trans., 1845, 135, pp. 155-157). On the basis of Cagniard de la Tour’s observation that at a certain temperature a liquid under sufficient pressure becomes a vapour or gas having the same bulk as the liquid, he inferred that “at this temperature or one a little higher, it is not likely that any increase of pressure, except perhaps one exceedingly great, would convert the gas into a liquid.” He further surmised that the Cagniard de la Tour condition might have its point of temperature for oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, &c., below that belonging to the bath of solid carbonic acid and ether, and he realized that in that case no pressure which any apparatus would be able to bear would be able to bring those gases into the liquid or solid state, which would require a still greater degree of cold. To fulfil this condition he immersed the tubes containing his gases in a bath of solid carbonic acid and ether, the temperature of which was reduced by exhaustion under the air pump to −166° F., or a little lower, and at the same time he subjected the gases to pressures up to 50 atmospheres by the use of two pumps working in series. In this way he added six substances, usually gaseous, to the list of those that could be obtained in the liquid state, and reduced seven, including ammonia, nitrous oxide and sulphuretted hydrogen, into the solid form, at the same time effecting a number of valuable determinations of vapour tensions. But he failed to condense oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, the original objects of his pursuit, though he found reason to think that “further diminution of temperature and improved apparatus for pressure may very well be expected to give us these bodies in the liquid or solid state.” His surmise that increased pressure alone would not suffice to bring about change of state in these gases was confirmed by subsequent investigators, such as M. P. E. Berthelot, who in 1850 compressed oxygen to 780 atmospheres (Ann. chim. phys., 1850, 30, p. 237), and Natterer, who a few years later subjected the permanent gases to a pressure of 2790 atmospheres, without result; and in 1869 Thomas Andrews (Phil. Trans., 11) by his researches on carbonic acid finally established the conception of the “critical temperature” as that temperature, differing for different bodies, above which no gas can be made to assume the liquid state, no matter what pressure it be subjected to (see [Condensation of Gases]).

About 1877 the problem of liquefying the permanent gases was taken up by L. P. Cailletet and R. P. Pictet, working almost simultaneously though independently. The former relied on the cold produced by the sudden expansion of the gases at high compression. By means of a specially designed pump he compressed about 100 cc. of oxygen in a narrow glass tube to about 200 atmospheres, at the same time cooling it to about −29° C., and on suddenly releasing the pressure he saw momentarily in the interior of the tube a mist (brouillard), from which he inferred the presence of a vapour very near its point of liquefaction. A few days later he repeated the experiment with hydrogen, using a pressure of nearly 300 atmospheres, and observed in his tube an exceedingly fine and subtle fog which vanished almost instantaneously. At the time when these experiments were carried out it was generally accepted that the mist or fog consisted of minute drops of the liquefied gases. Even had this been the case, the problem would not have been completely solved, for Cailletet was unable to collect the drops in the form of a true stable liquid, and at the best obtained a “dynamic” not a “static” liquid, the gas being reduced to a form that bears the same relation to a true liquid that the partially condensed steam issuing from the funnel of a locomotive bears to water standing in a tumbler. But subsequent knowledge showed that even this proximate liquefaction could not have taken place, and that the fog could not have consisted of drops of liquid hydrogen, because the cooling produced by the adiabatic expansion would give a temperature of only 44° abs., which is certainly above the critical temperature of hydrogen. Pictet again announced that on opening the tap of a vessel containing hydrogen at a pressure of 650 atmospheres and cooled by the cascade method (see [Condensation of Gases]) to −140° C., he saw issuing from the orifice an opaque jet which he assumed to consist of hydrogen in the liquid form or in the liquid and solid forms mixed. But he was no more successful than Cailletet in collecting any of the liquid, which—whatever else it may have been, whether ordinary air or impurities associated with the hydrogen—cannot have been hydrogen because the means he employed were insufficient to reduce the gas to what has subsequently been ascertained to be its critical point, below which of course liquefaction is impossible. It need scarcely be added that if the liquefaction of hydrogen be rejected a fortiori Pictet’s claim to have effected its solidification falls to the ground.

After Cailletet and Pictet, the next important names in the history of the liquefaction of gases are those of Z. F. Wroblewski and K. S. Olszewski, who for some years worked together at Cracow. In April 1883 the former announced to the French Academy that he had obtained oxygen in a completely liquid state and (a few days later) that nitrogen at a temperature of −136° C., reduced suddenly from a pressure of 150 atmospheres to one of 50, had been seen as a liquid which showed a true meniscus, but disappeared in a few seconds. But with hydrogen treated in the same way he failed to obtain even the mist reported by Cailletet. At the beginning of 1884 he performed a more satisfactory experiment. Cooling hydrogen in a capillary glass tube to the temperature of liquid oxygen, he expanded it quickly from 100 atmospheres to one, and obtained the appearance of an instantaneous ebullition. Olszewski confirmed this result by expanding from a pressure of 190 atmospheres the gas cooled by liquid oxygen and nitrogen boiling under reduced pressure, and even announced that he saw it running down the walls of the tube as a colourless liquid.

Wroblewski, however, was unable to observe this phenomenon, and Olszewski himself, when seven years later he repeated the experiment in the more favourable conditions afforded by a larger apparatus, was unable to produce again the colourless drops he had previously reported: the phenomenon of the appearance of sudden ebullition indeed lasted longer, but he failed to perceive any meniscus such as would have been a certain indication of the presence of a true liquid. Still, though neither of these investigators succeeded in reaching the goal at which they aimed, their work was of great value in elucidating the conditions of the problem and in perfecting the details of the apparatus employed. Wroblewski in particular devoted the closing years of his life to a most valuable investigation of the isothermals of hydrogen at low temperatures. From the data thus obtained he constructed a van der Waals equation which enabled him to calculate the critical temperature, pressure and density of hydrogen with very much greater certainty than had previously been possible. Liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen and liquid air—the last was first made by Wroblewski in 1885—became something more than mere curiosities of the laboratory, and by the year 1891 were produced in such quantities as to be available for the purposes of scientific research. Still, nothing was added to the general principles upon which the work of Cailletet and Pictet was based, and the “cascade” method, together with adiabatic expansion from high compression (see [Condensation of Gases]), remained the only means of procedure at the disposal of experimenters in this branch of physics.

In some quarters a certain amount of doubt appears to have arisen as to the sufficiency of these methods for the liquefaction of hydrogen. Olszewski, for example, in 1895 pointed out that the succession of less and less condensible gases necessary for the cascade method breaks down between nitrogen and hydrogen, and he gave as a reason for hydrogen not having been reduced to the condition of a static liquid the non-existence of a gas intermediate in volatility between those two. By 1894 attempts had been made in the Royal Institution laboratories to manufacture an artificial gas of this nature by adding a small proportion of air to the hydrogen, so as to get a mixture with a critical point of about −200° C. When such a mixture was cooled to that temperature and expanded from a high degree of compression into a vacuum vessel, the result was a white mass of solid air together with a clear liquid of very low density. This was in all probability hydrogen in the true liquid state, but it was not found possible to collect it owing to its extreme volatility. Whether this artificial gas might ultimately have enabled liquid hydrogen to be collected in open vessels we cannot say, for experiments with it were abandoned in favour of other measures, which led finally to a more assured success.

Vacuum Vessels.—The problem involved in the liquefaction of hydrogen was in reality a double one. In the first place, the gas had to be cooled to such a temperature that the change to the liquid state was rendered possible. In the second, means had to be discovered for protecting it, when so cooled, from the influx of external heat, and since the rate at which heat is transferred from one body to another increases very rapidly with the difference between their temperatures, the question of efficient heat insulation became at once more difficult and more urgent in proportion to the degree of cold attained. The second part of the problem was in fact solved first. Of course packing with non-conducting materials was an obvious expedient when it was not necessary that the contents of the apparatus should be visible to the eye, but in the numerous instances when this was not the case such measures were out of the question. Attempts were made to secure the desired end by surrounding the vessel that contained the cooled or liquid gas with a succession of other vessels, through which was conducted the vapour given off from the interior one. Such devices involved awkward complications in the arrangement of the apparatus, and besides were not as a rule very efficient, although some workers, e.g. Dr Kamerlingh Onnes, of Leiden, reported some success with their use. In 1892 it occurred to Dewar that the principle of an arrangement he had used nearly twenty years before for some calorimetric experiments on the physical constants of hydrogenium, which was a natural deduction from the work of Dulong and Petit on radiation, might be employed with advantage as well to protect cold substances from heat as hot ones from cold. He therefore tried the effect of surrounding his liquefied gas with a highly exhausted space. The result was entirely successful. Experiment showed that liquid air contained in a glass vessel with two walls, the space between which was a high vacuum, evaporated at only one fifth the rate it did when in an ordinary vessel surrounded with air at atmospheric pressure, the convective transference of heat by means of the gas particles being enormously reduced owing to the vacuum. But in addition these vessels lent themselves to an arrangement by which radiant heat could still further be cut off, since it was found that when the inner wall was coated with a bright deposit of silver, the influx of heat was diminished to one-sixth of the amount existing without the metallic coating. The total effect, therefore, of the high vacuum and silvering is to reduce the in-going heat to one-thirtieth part. In making such vessels a mercurial vacuum has been found very satisfactory. The vessel in which the vacuum is to be produced is provided with a small subsidiary vessel joined by a narrow tube with the main vessel, and connected with a powerful air-pump. A quantity of mercury having been placed in it, it is heated in an oil- or air-bath to about 200° C., so as to volatilize the mercury, the vapour of which is removed by the pump. After the process has gone on for some time, the pipe leading to the pump is sealed off, the vessel immediately removed from the bath, and the small subsidiary part immersed in some cooling agent such as solid carbonic acid or liquid air, whereby the mercury vapour is condensed in the small vessel and a vacuum of enormous tenuity left in the large one. The final step is to seal off the tube connecting the two. In this way a vacuum may be produced having a vapour pressure of about the hundred-millionth of an atmosphere at 0° C. If, however, some liquid mercury be left in the space in which the vacuum is produced, and the containing part of the vessel be filled with liquid air, the bright mirror of mercury which is deposited on the inside wall of the bulb is still more effective than silver in protecting the chamber from the influx of heat, owing to the high refractive index, which involves great reflecting power, and the bad heat-conducting powers of mercury.

With the discovery of the remarkable power of gas absorption possessed by charcoal cooled to a low temperature (see below), it became possible to make these vessels of metal. Previously this could not be done with success, because gas occluded in the metal gradually escaped and vitiated the vacuum; but now any stray gas may be absorbed by means of charcoal so placed in a pocket within the vacuous space that it is cooled by the liquid in the interior of the vessel. Metal vacuum vessels (fig. 1), of a capacity of from 2 to 20 litres, may be formed of brass, copper, nickel or tinned iron, with necks of some alloy that is a bad conductor of heat, silvered glass vacuum cylinders being fitted as stoppers. Such flasks, when properly constructed, have an efficiency equal to that of the chemically-silvered glass vacuum vessels now commonly used in low temperature investigations, and they are obviously better adapted for transport. The principle of the Dewar vessel is utilized in the Thermos flasks which are now extensively manufactured and employed for keeping liquids warm in hospitals, &c.

Thermal Transparency at Low Temperatures.—The proposition, once enunciated by Pictet, that at low temperatures all substances have practically the same thermal transparency, and are equally ineffective as non-conductors of heat, is based on erroneous observations. It is true that if the space between the two walls of a double-walled vessel is packed with substances like carbon, magnesia, or silica, liquid air placed in the interior will boil off even more quickly than it will when the space merely contains air at atmospheric pressure; but in such cases it is not so much the carbon, &c., that bring about the transference of heat, as the air contained in their interstices. If this air be pumped out such substances are seen to exert a very considerable influence in stopping the influx of heat, and a vacuum vessel which has the space between its two walls filled with a non-conducting material of this kind preserves a liquid gas even better than one in which that space is simply exhausted of air. In experiments on this point double-walled glass tubes, as nearly identical in shape and size as possible, were mounted in sets of three on a common stem which communicated with an air-pump, so that the degree of exhaustion in each was equal. In two of each three the space between the double walls was filled with the powdered material it was desired to test, the third being left empty and used as the standard. The time required for a certain quantity of liquid air to evaporate from the interior of this empty bulb being called 1, in each of the eight sets of triple tubes, the times required for the same quantity to boil off from the other pairs of tubes were as follows:—

Other experiments of the same kind made—(a) with similar vacuum vessels, but with the powders replaced by metallic and other septa; and (b) with vacuum vessels having their walls silvered, yielded the following results:—

It appears from these experiments that silica, charcoal, lampblack, and oxide of bismuth all increase the heat insulations to four, five and six times that of the empty vacuum space. As the chief communication of heat through an exhausted space is by molecular bombardment, the fine powders must shorten the free path of the gaseous molecules, and the slow conduction of heat through the porous mass must make the conveyance of heat-energy more difficult than when the gas molecules can impinge upon the relatively hot outer glass surface, and then directly on the cold one without interruption. (See Proc. Roy. Inst. xv. 821-826.)

Density of Solids and Coefficients of Expansion at Low Temperatures.—The facility with which liquid gases, like oxygen or nitrogen, can be guarded from evaporation by the proper use of vacuum vessels (now called Dewar vessels), naturally suggests that the specific gravities of solid bodies can be got by direct weighing when immersed in such fluids. If the density of the liquid gas is accurately known, then the loss of weight by fluid displacement gives the specific gravity compared to water. The metals and alloys, or substances that can be got in large crystals, are the easiest to manipulate. If the body is only to be had in small crystals, then it must be compressed under strong hydraulic pressure into coherent blocks weighing about 40 to 50 grammes. Such an amount of material gives a very accurate density of the body about the boiling point of air, and a similar density taken in a suitable liquid at the ordinary temperature enables the mean coefficient of expansion between +15° C. and −185° C. to be determined. One of the most interesting results is that the density of ice at the boiling point of air is not more than 0.93, the mean coefficient of expansion being therefore 0.000081. As the value of the same coefficient between 0° C. and −27° C. is 0.000155, it is clear the rate of contraction is diminished to about one-half of what it was above the melting point of the ice. This suggests that by no possible cooling at our command is it likely we could ever make ice as dense as water at 0° C., far less 4° C. In other words, the volume of ice at the zero of temperature would not be the minimum volume of the water molecule, though we have every reason to believe it would be so in the case of the majority of known substances. Another substance of special interest is solid carbonic acid. This body has a density of 1.53 at −78° C. and 1.633 at −185° C., thus giving a mean coefficient of expansion between these temperatures of 0.00057. This value is only about 1⁄6 of the coefficient of expansion of the liquid carbonic acid gas just above its melting point, but it is still much greater at the low temperature than that of highly expansive solids like sulphur, which at 40° C. has a value of 0.00019. The following table gives the densities at the temperature of boiling liquid air (−185° C.) and at ordinary temperatures (17° C.), together with the mean coefficient of expansion between those temperatures, in the case of a number of hydrated salts and other substances:

Table I.

It will be seen from this table that, with the exception of carbonate of soda and chrome alum, the hydrated salts have a coefficient of expansion that does not differ greatly from that of ice at low temperatures. Iodoform is a highly expansive body like iodine, and oxalate of methyl has nearly as great a coefficient as paraffin, which is a very expansive solid, as are naphthalene and oxalic acid. The coefficient of solid mercury is about half that of the liquid metal, while that of sodium is about the value of mercury at ordinary temperatures. Further details on the subject can be found in the Proc. Roy. Inst. (1895), and Proc. Roy. Soc. (1902).

Density of Gases at Low Temperatures.—The ordinary mode of determining the density of gases may be followed, provided that the glass flask, with its carefully ground stop-cock sealed on, can stand an internal pressure of about five atmospheres, and that all the necessary corrections for change of volume are made. All that is necessary is to immerse the exhausted flask in boiling oxygen, and then to allow the second gas to enter from a gasometer by opening the stop-cock until the pressure is equalized. The stop-cock being closed, the flask is now taken out of the liquid oxygen and left in the balance-room until its temperature is equalized. It is then weighed against a similar flask used as a counterpoise. Following such a method, it has been found that the weight of 1 litre of oxygen vapour at its boiling point of 90.5° absolute is 4.420 grammes, and therefore the specific volume is 226.25 cc. According to the ordinary gaseous laws, the litre ought to weigh 4.313 grammes, and the specific volume should be 231.82 cc. In other words, the product of pressure and volume at the boiling point is diminished by 2.46%. In a similar way the weight of a litre of nitrogen vapour at the boiling point of oxygen was found to be 3.90, and the inferred value for 78° absolute, or its own boiling point, would be 4.51, giving a specific volume of 221.3.

Regenerative Cooling.—One part of the problem being thus solved and a satisfactory device discovered for warding off heat in such vacuum vessels, it remained to arrange some practically efficient method for reducing hydrogen to a temperature sufficiently low for liquefaction. To gain that end, the idea naturally occurred of using adiabatic expansion, not intermittently, as when gas is allowed to expand suddenly from a high compression, but in a continuous process, and an obvious way of attempting to carry out this condition was to enclose the orifice at which expansion takes place in a tube, so as to obtain a constant stream of cooled gas passing over it. But further consideration of this plan showed that although the gas jet would be cooled near the point of expansion owing to the conversion of a portion of its sensible heat into dynamical energy of the moving gas, yet the heat it thus lost would be restored to it almost immediately by the destruction of this mechanical energy through friction and its consequent reconversion into heat. Thus the net result would be nil so far as change of temperature through the performance of external work was concerned. But the conditions in such an arrangement resemble that in the experiments of Thomson and Joule on the thermal changes which occur in a gas when it is forced under pressure through a porous plug or narrow orifice, and those experimenters found, as the former of them had predicted, that a change of temperature does take place, owing to internal work being done by the attraction of the gas molecules. Hence the effective result obtainable in practice by such an attempt at continuous adiabatic expansion as that suggested above is to be measured by the amount of the “Thomson-Joule effect,” which depends entirely on the internal, not the external, work done by the gas. To Linde belongs the credit of having first seen the essential importance of this effect in connexion with the liquefaction of gases by adiabatic expansion, and he was, further, the first to construct an industrial plant for the production of liquid air based on the application of this principle.

The change of temperature due to the Thomson-Joule effect varies in amount with different gases, or rather with the temperature at which the operation is conducted. At ordinary temperatures oxygen and carbonic acid are cooled, while hydrogen is slightly heated. But hydrogen also is cooled if before being passed through the nozzle or plug it is brought into a thermal condition comparable to that of other gases at ordinary temperatures—that is to say, when it is initially cooled to a temperature having the same ratio to its critical point as their temperatures have to their critical points—and similarly the more condensible gases would be heated, and not cooled, by passing through a nozzle or plug if they were employed at a temperature sufficiently above their critical points. Each gas has therefore a point of inversion of the Thomson-Joule effect, and this temperature is, according to the theory of van der Waals, about 6.75 times the critical temperature of the body. Olszewski has determined the inversion-point in the case of hydrogen, and finds it to be 192.5° absolute, the theoretical critical point being thus about 28.5° absolute. The cooling effect obtained is small, being for air about ¼° C. per atmosphere difference of pressure at ordinary temperatures. But the decrement of temperature is proportional to the difference of pressure and inversely as the absolute temperature, so that the Thomson-Joule effect increases rapidly by the combined use of a lower temperature and greater difference of gas pressure. By means of the “regenerative” method of working, which was described by C. W. Siemens in 1857, developed and extended by Ernest Solvay in 1885, and subsequently utilized by numerous experimenters in the construction of low temperature apparatus, a practicable liquid air plant was constructed by Linde. The gas which has passed the orifice and is therefore cooled is made to flow backwards round the tube that leads to the nozzle; hence that portion of the gas that is just about to pass through the nozzle has some of its heat abstracted, and in consequence on expansion is cooled to a lower temperature than the first portion. In its turn it cools a third portion in the same way, and so the reduction of temperature goes on progressively until ultimately a portion of the gas is liquefied. Apparatus based on this principle has been employed not only by Linde in Germany, but also by Tripler in America and by Hampson and Dewar in England. The last-named experimenter exhibited in December 1895 a laboratory machine of this kind (fig. 2), which when supplied with oxygen initially cooled to −79° C., and at a pressure of 100-150 atmospheres, began to yield liquid in about a quarter of an hour after starting. The initial cooling is not necessary, but it has the advantage of reducing the time required for the operation. The efficiency of the Linde process is small, but it is easily conducted and only requires plenty of cheap power. When we can work turbines or other engines at low temperatures, so as to effect cooling through the performance of external work, then the economy in the production of liquid air and hydrogen will be greatly increased.

This treatment was next extended to hydrogen. For the reason already explained, it would have been futile to experiment with this substance at ordinary temperatures, and therefore as a preliminary it was cooled to the temperature of boiling liquid air, about −190° C. At this temperature it is still 2½ times above its critical temperature, and therefore its liquefaction in these circumstances would be comparable to that of air, taken at +60° C., in an apparatus like that just described. Dewar showed in 1896 that hydrogen cooled in this way and expanded in a regenerative coil from a pressure of 200 atmospheres was rapidly reduced in temperature to such an extent that after the apparatus had been working a few minutes the issuing jet was seen to contain liquid, which was sufficiently proved to be liquid hydrogen by the fact that it was so cold as to freeze liquid air and oxygen into hard white solids. Though with this apparatus, a diagrammatic representation of which is shown in fig. 3, it was now found possible at the time to collect the liquid in an open vessel, owing to its low specific gravity and the rapidity of the gas-current, still the general type of the arrangement seemed so promising that in the next two years there was laid down in the laboratories of the Royal Institution a large plant—it weighs 2 tons and contains 3000 ft. of pipe—which is designed on precisely the same principles, although its construction is far more elaborate. The one important novelty, without which it is practically impossible to succeed, is the provision of a device to surmount the difficulty of withdrawing the liquefied hydrogen after it has been made. The desideratum is really a means of forming an aperture in the bottom of a vacuum vessel by which the contained liquid may be run out. For this purpose the lower part of the vacuum vessel (D in fig. 3) containing the jet is modified as shown in fig. 4; the inner vessel is prolonged in a fine tube, coiled spirally, which passes through the outer wall of the vacuum vessel, and thus sufficient elasticity is obtained to enable the tube to withstand without fracture the great contraction consequent on the extreme cold to which it is subjected. Such peculiarly shaped vacuum vessels were made by Dewar’s directions in Germany, and have subsequently been supplied to and employed by other experimenters.

With the liquefying plant above referred to liquid hydrogen was for the first time collected in an open vessel on the 10th of May 1898. The gas at a pressure of 180 atmospheres was cooled to −205° C. by means of liquid air boiling in vacuo, and was then passed through the nozzle of the regenerative coil, which was enclosed in vacuum vessels in such a way as to exclude external heat as perfectly as possible. In this way some 20 cc. of the liquid had been collected when the experiment came to a premature end, owing to the nozzle of the apparatus becoming blocked by a dense solid—air-ice resulting from the congelation of the air which was present to a minute extent as an impurity in the hydrogen. This accident exemplifies what is a serious trouble encountered in the production of liquid hydrogen, the extreme difficulty of obtaining the gas in a state of sufficient purity, for the presence of 1% of foreign matters, such as air or oxygen, which are more condensible than hydrogen, is sufficient to cause complete stoppage, unless the nozzle valve and jet arrangement is of special construction. In subsequent experiments the liquid was obtained in larger quantities—on the 13th of June 1901 five litres of it were successfully conveyed through the streets of London from the laboratory of the Royal Institution to the rooms of the Royal Society—and it may be said that it is now possible to produce it in any desired amount, subject only to the limitations entailed by expense. Finally, the reduction of hydrogen to a solid state was successfully undertaken in 1899. A portion of the liquid carefully isolated in vacuum-jacketed vessels was suddenly transformed into a white mass resembling frozen foam, when evaporated under an air-pump at a pressure of 30 or 40 mm., and subsequently hydrogen was obtained as a clear transparent ice by immersing a tube containing the liquid in this solid foam.

Liquefaction of Helium.—The subjection of hydrogen completed the experimental proof that all gases can be reduced to the liquid and solid states by the aid of pressure and low temperature, at least so far as regards those in the hands of the chemist at the beginning of the last decade of the 19th century. But a year or so before hydrogen was obtained in the liquid form, a substance known to exist in the sun from spectroscopic researches carried out by Sir Edward Frankland and Sir J. Norman Lockyer was shown by Sir William Ramsay to exist on the earth in small quantities. Helium (q.v.), as this substance was named, was found by experiment to be a gas much less condensable than hydrogen. Dewar in 1901 expanded it from a pressure of 80-100 atmospheres at the temperature of solid hydrogen without perceiving the least indication of liquefaction. Olszewski repeated the experiment in 1905, using the still higher initial compression of 180 atmospheres, but he equally failed to find any evidence of liquefaction, and in consequence was inclined to doubt whether the gas was liquefiable at all, whether in fact it was not a truly “permanent” gas. Other investigators, however, took a different and more hopeful view of the matter. Dewar, for instance (Pres. Address Brit. Assoc., 1902), basing his deductions on the laws established by van der Waals and others from the study of phenomena at much higher temperatures, anticipated that the boiling-point of the substance would be about 5° absolute, so that the liquid would be about four times more volatile than liquid hydrogen, just as liquid hydrogen is four times more volatile than liquid air; and he expressed the opinion that the gas would succumb on being subjected to the process that had succeeded with hydrogen, except that liquid hydrogen, instead of liquid air, evaporating under exhaustion must be employed as the primary cooling agent, and must also be used to surround the vacuum vessel in which the liquid was collected.

Various circumstances combined to prevent Dewar from actually carrying out the operation thus foreshadowed, but his anticipations were justified and the sufficiency of the method he indicated practically proved by Dr H. Kamerlingh Onnes, who, working with the splendid resources of the Leiden cryogenic laboratory, succeeded in obtaining helium in the liquid state on the 10th of July 1908. Having prepared 200 litres of the gas (160 litres in reserve) from monazite sand,[2] he cooled it with exhausted liquid hydrogen to a temperature of 15 or 16° abs., and expanded it through a regenerative coil under a pressure of 50 to 100 atmospheres, making use of the most elaborate precautions to prevent influx of heat and securing the absence of less volatile gases that might freeze and block the tubes of the apparatus by including in the helium circuit charcoal cooled to the temperature of liquid air. Operations began at 5.45 in the morning with the preparation of the necessary liquid hydrogen, of which 20 litres were ready by 1.30. The circulation of the helium was started at 4.30 in the afternoon and was continued until the gas had been pumped round the circuit twenty times; but it was not till 7.30, when the last bottle of liquid hydrogen had been brought into requisition, that the surface of the liquid was seen, by reflection of light from below, standing out sharply like the edge of a knife against the glass wall of the vacuum vessel. Its boiling-point has been determined as being 4° abs., its critical temperature 5°, and its critical pressure not more than three atmospheres. The density of the liquid is found to be 0.015 or about twice that of liquid hydrogen. It could not be solidified even when exhausted under a pressure of 2 mm., which in all probability corresponds to a temperature of 2° abs. (see Communications from the physical laboratory at the University of Leiden, 1908-1909).

The following are brief details respecting some of the more important liquid gases that have become available for study within recent years. (For argon, neon, krypton, &c., see [Argon].)

Oxygen.—Liquid oxygen is a mobile transparent-liquid, possessing a faint blue colour. At atmospheric pressure it boils at −181.5° C.; under a reduced pressure of 1 cm. of mercury its temperature falls to −210° C. At the boiling point it has a density of 1.124 according to Olszewski, or of 1.168 according to Wroblewski; Dewar obtained the value 1.1375 as the mean of twenty observations by weighing a number of solid substances in liquid oxygen, noting the apparent relative density of the liquid, and thence calculating its real density, Fizeau’s values for the coefficients of expansion of the solids being employed. The capillarity of liquid oxygen is about one-sixth that of water; it is a non-conductor of electricity, and is strongly magnetic. By its own evaporation it cannot be reduced to the solid state, but exposed to the temperature of liquid hydrogen it is frozen into a solid mass, having a pale bluish tint, showing by reflection all the absorption bands of the liquid. It is remarkable that the same absorption bands occur in the compressed gas. Dewar gives the melting-point as 38° absolute, and the density at the boiling-point of hydrogen as 1.4526. The refractive index of the liquid for the D sodium ray is 1.2236.

Ozone.—This gas is easily liquefied by the use of liquid air. The liquid obtained is intensely blue, and on allowing the temperature to rise, boils and explodes about −120° C. About this temperature it may be dissolved in bisulphide of carbon to a faint blue solution. The liquid ozone seems to be more magnetic than liquid oxygen.

Nitrogen forms a transparent colourless liquid, having a density of 0.8042 at its boiling-point, which is −195.5° C. The refractive index for the D line is 1.2053. Evaporated under diminished pressure the liquid becomes solid at a temperature of −215° C., melting under a pressure of 90 mm. The density of the solid at the boiling-point of hydrogen is 1.0265.

Air.—Seeing that the boiling-points of nitrogen and oxygen are different, it might be expected that on the liquefaction of atmospheric air the two elements would appear as two separate liquids. Such, however, is not the case; they come down simultaneously as one homogeneous liquid. Prepared on a large scale, liquid air may contain as much as 50% of oxygen when collected in open vacuum-vessels, but since nitrogen is the more volatile it boils off first, and as the liquid gradually becomes richer in oxygen the temperature at which it boils rises from about −192° C. to about −182° C. At the former temperature it has a density of about 0.910. It is a non-conductor of electricity. Properly protected from external heat, and subjected to high exhaustion, liquid air becomes a stiff transparent jelly-like mass, a magma of solid nitrogen containing liquid oxygen, which may indeed be extracted from it by means of a magnet, or by rapid rotation of the vacuum vessel in imitation of a centrifugal machine. The temperature of this solid under a vacuum of about 14 mm. is −216°. At the still lower temperatures attainable by the aid of liquid hydrogen it becomes a white solid, having, like solid oxygen, a faint blue tint. The refractive index of liquid air is 1.2068.

Fluorine, prepared in the free state by Moissan’s method of electrolysing a solution of potassium fluoride in anhydrous hydrofluoric acid, was liquefied in the laboratories of the Royal Institution, London, in 1897. Exposed to the temperature of quietly-boiling liquid oxygen, the gas did not change its state, though it lost much of its chemical activity, and ceased to attack glass. But a very small vacuum formed over the oxygen was sufficient to determine liquefaction, a result which was also obtained by cooling the gas to the temperature of freshly-made liquid air boiling at atmospheric pressure. Hence the boiling-point is fixed at about −187° C. The liquid is of a clear yellow colour, possessing great mobility. Its density is 1.14, and its capillarity rather less than that of liquid oxygen. The liquid, when examined in a thickness of 1 cm., does not show any absorption bands, and it is not attracted by a magnet. Cooled in liquid hydrogen it is frozen to a white solid, melting at about 40° abs.

Hydrogen.—Liquid hydrogen is the lightest liquid known to the chemist, having a density slightly less than 0.07 as compared with water, and being six times lighter than liquid marsh-gas, which is next in order of lightness. One litre weighs only 70 grammes, and 1 gramme occupies a volume of 14-15 cc. In spite of its extreme lightness, however, it is easily seen, has a well-defined meniscus and drops well. At its boiling-point the liquid is only 55 times denser than the vapour it is giving off, whereas liquid oxygen in similar condition is 258 times denser than its vapour, and nitrogen 177 times. Its atomic volume is about 14.3, that of liquid oxygen being 13.7, and that of liquid nitrogen 16.6, at their respective boiling-points. Its latent heat of vaporization about the boiling-point is about 121 gramme-calories, and the latent heat of fluidity cannot exceed 16 units, but may be less. Hydrogen appears to have the same specific heat in the liquid as in the gaseous state, about 3.4. Its surface tension is exceedingly low, about one-fifth that of liquid air at its boiling-point, or one-thirty-fifth that of water at ordinary temperatures, and this is the reason that bubbles formed in the liquid are so small as to give it an opalescent appearance during ebullition. The liquid is without colour, and gives no absorption spectrum. Electric sparks taken in the liquid between platinum poles give a spectrum showing the hydrogen lines C and F bright on a background of continuous spectrum. Its refractive index at the boiling-point has theoretically the value 1.11. It was measured by determining the relative difference of focus for a parallel beam of light sent through a spherical vacuum vessel filled successively with water, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen; the result obtained was 1.12. Liquid hydrogen is a non-conductor of electricity. The precise determination of its boiling-point is a matter of some difficulty. The first results obtained from the use of a platinum resistance thermometer gave −238° C., while a similar thermometer made with an alloy of rhodium-platinum indicated a value 8 degrees lower. Later, a gold thermometer indicated about −249° C., while with an iron one the result was only −210° C. It was thus evident that electrical resistance thermometers are not to be trusted at these low temperatures, since the laws correlating resistance and temperature are not known for temperatures at and below the boiling-point of hydrogen, though they are certainly not the same as those which hold good higher up the thermometric scale. The same remarks apply to the use of thermo-electric junctions at such exceptional temperatures. Recourse was therefore had to a constant-volume hydrogen thermometer, working under reduced pressure, experiments having shown that such a thermometer, filled with either a simple or a compound gas (e.g. oxygen or carbonic acid) at an initial pressure somewhat less than one atmosphere, may be relied upon to determine temperatures down to the respective boiling-points of the gases with which they are filled. The result obtained was −252° C. Subsequently various other determinations were carried out in thermometers filled with hydrogen derived from different sources, and also with helium, the average value given by the experiments being −252.5° C. (See “The Boiling Point of Liquid Hydrogen determined by Hydrogen and Helium Gas Thermometers,” Proc. Roy. Soc., 7th February 1901.) The critical temperature is about 30° absolute (−243° C.), and the critical pressure about 15 atmospheres. Hydrogen has not only the lowest critical temperature of all the old permanent gases, but it has the lowest critical pressure. Given a sufficiently low temperature, therefore, it is the easiest gas to liquefy so far as pressure is concerned. Solid hydrogen has a temperature about 4° less. By exhaustion under reduced pressure a still lower depth of cold may be attained, and a steady temperature reached less than 16° above the zero of absolute temperature. By the use of high exhaustion, and the most stringent precautions to prevent the influx of heat, a temperature of 13° absolute (−260° C.) may be reached. This is the lowest steady temperature which can be maintained by the evaporation of solid hydrogen. At this temperature the solid has a density of about 0.077. Solid hydrogen presents no metallic characteristics, such as were predicted for it by Faraday, Dumas, Graham and other chemists and neither it nor the liquid is magnetic.

The Approach to the Absolute Zero.—The achievement of Kamerlingh Onnes has brought about the realization of a temperature removed only 3° from the absolute zero, and the question naturally suggests itself whether there is any probability of a still closer approach to that point. The answer is that if, as is not impossible, there exists a gas, as yet unisolated, which has an atomic weight one-half that of helium, that gas, liquefied in turn by the aid of liquid helium, would render that approach possible, though the experimental difficulties of the operation would be enormous and perhaps prohibitive. The results of experiments bearing on this question and of theory based on them are shown in table II. The third column shows the critical temperature of the gas which can be liquefied by continuous expansion through a regenerative cooling apparatus, the operation being started from the initial temperature shown in the second column, while the fourth column gives the temperature of the resulting liquid. It will be seen that by the use of liquid or solid hydrogen as a cooling agent, it should be possible to liquefy a body having a critical temperature of about 6° to 8° on the absolute scale, and a boiling point of about 4° or 5°, while with the aid of liquid helium at an initial temperature of 5° we could liquefy a body having a critical temperature of 2° and a boiling point of 1°.

Table II.

It is to be remarked, however, that even so the physicist would not have attained the absolute zero, and he can scarcely hope ever to do so. It is true he would only be a very short distance from it, but it must be remembered that in a thermodynamic sense one degree low down the scale, say at 10° absolute, is equivalent to 30° at the ordinary temperature, and as the experimenter gets to lower and lower temperatures, the difficulties of further advance increase, not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. Thus the step between the liquefaction of air and that of hydrogen is, thermodynamically and practically, greater than that between the liquefaction of chlorine and that of air, but the number of degrees of temperature that separates the boiling-points of the first pair of substances is less than half what it is in the case of the second pair. But the ratio of the absolute boiling-points in the first pair of substances is as 1 to 4, whereas in the second pair it is only 1 to 3, and it is this value that expresses the difficulty of the transition.

But though Ultima Thule may continue to mock the physicist’s efforts, he will long find ample scope for his energies in the investigation of the properties of matter at the temperatures placed at his command by liquid air and liquid and solid hydrogen. Indeed, great as is the sentimental interest attached to the liquefaction of these refractory gases, the importance of the achievement lies rather in the fact that it opens out new fields of research and enormously widens the horizon of physical science, enabling the natural philosopher to study the properties and behaviour of matter under entirely novel conditions. We propose to indicate briefly the general directions in which such inquiries have so far been carried on, but before doing so will call attention to the power of absorbing gases possessed by cooled charcoal, which has on that account proved itself a most valuable agent in low temperature research.

Table III.—Gas Absorption by Charcoal.

Gas Absorption by Charcoal.—Felix Fontana was apparently the first to discover that hot charcoal has the power of absorbing gases, and his observations were confirmed about 1770 by Joseph Priestley, to whom he had communicated them. A generation later Theodore de Saussure made a number of experiments on the subject, and noted that at ordinary temperatures the absorption is accompanied with considerable evolution of heat. Among subsequent investigators were Thomas Graham and Stenhouse, Faure and Silberman, and Hunter, the last-named showing that charcoal made from coco-nut exhibits greater absorptive powers than other varieties. In 1874 Tait and Dewar for the first time employed charcoal for the production of high vacua, by using it, heated to a red heat, to absorb the mercury vapour in a tube exhausted by a mercury pump; and thirty years afterwards it occurred to the latter investigator to try how its absorbing powers are affected by cooling it, with the result that he found them to be greatly enhanced. Some of his earlier observations are given in table III., but it must be pointed out that much larger absorptions were obtained subsequently when it was found that the quality of the charcoal was greatly influenced by the mode in which it was prepared, the absorptive power being increased by carbonizing the coco-nut shell slowly at a gradually increasing temperature. The results in the table were all obtained with the same specimen of charcoal, and the volumes of the gases absorbed, both at ordinary and at low temperatures, were measured under standard conditions—at 0° C., and 760 mm. pressure. It appears that at the lower temperature there is a remarkable increase of absorption for every gas, but that the increase is in general smaller as the boiling-points of the various gases are lower. Helium is conspicuous for the fact that it is absorbed to a comparatively slight extent at both the higher and the lower temperature, but in this connexion it must be remembered that, being the most volatile gas known, it is being treated at a temperature which is relatively much higher than the other gases. At −185° (= 88° abs.), while hydrogen is at about 4½ times its boiling-point (20° abs.), helium is at about 20 times its boiling-point (4.5° abs.), and it might, therefore, be expected that if it were taken at a temperature corresponding to that of the hydrogen, i.e. at 4 or 5 times its boiling-point, or say 20° abs., it would undergo much greater absorption. This expectation is borne out by the results shown in table IV., and it may be inferred that charcoal cooled in liquid helium would absorb helium as freely as charcoal cooled in liquid hydrogen absorbs hydrogen. It is found that a given specimen of charcoal cooled in liquid oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen absorbs about equal volumes of those three gases (about 260 cc. per gramme); and, as the relation between volume and temperature is nearly lineal at the lowest portions of either the hydrogen or the helium absorption, it is a legitimate inference that at a temperature of 5° to 6° abs. helium would be as freely absorbed by charcoal as hydrogen is at its boiling-point and that the boiling-point of helium lies at about 5° abs.

Table IV.—Gas Absorption by Charcoal at Low Temperatures.

The rapidity with which air is absorbed by charcoal at −185° C. and under small pressures is illustrated by table V., which shows the reductions of pressure effected in a tube of 2000 cc. capacity by means of 20 grammes of charcoal cooled in liquid air.

Table V.—Velocity of Absorption.

Table VI.

Charcoal Occlusion Pressures.—For measuring the gas concentration, pressure and temperature, use may be made of an apparatus of the type shown in fig. 5. A mass of charcoal, E, immersed in liquid air, is employed for the preliminary exhaustion of the McLeod gauge G and of the charcoal C, which is to be used in the actual experiments, and is then sealed off at S. The bulb C is then placed in a large spherical vacuum vessel containing liquid oxygen which can be made to boil at any definite temperature under diminished pressure which is measured by the manometer R. The volume of gas admitted into the charcoal is determined by the burette D and the pipette P, and the corresponding occlusion pressure at any concentration and any temperature below 90° abs. by the gauge G. In presence of charcoal, and for small concentrations, great variations are shown in the relation between the pressure and the concentration of different gases, all at the same temperature. Table VI. gives the comparison between hydrogen and nitrogen at the temperature of liquid air, 25 grammes of charcoal being employed. It is seen that 15 cc. of hydrogen produce nearly the same pressure (0.0645 mm.) as 2500 cc. of nitrogen (0.06172 mm.). This result shows how enormously greater, at the temperature of liquid air, is the volatility of hydrogen as compared with that of nitrogen. In the same way the concentrations, for the same pressure, vary greatly with temperature, as is exemplified by table VII., even though the pressures are not quite constant. The temperatures employed were the boiling-points of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Table VII.

Table VIII.

Heat of Occlusion.—In every case when gases are condensed to the liquid state there is evolution of heat, and during the absorption of a gas in charcoal or any other occluding body, as hydrogen in palladium, the amount of heat evolved exceeds that of direct liquefaction. From the relation between occlusion-pressure and temperature at the same concentration, the reaction being reversible, it is possible to calculate this heat evolution. Table VIII. gives the mean molecular latent heats of occlusion resulting from Dewar’s experiments for a number of gases, having concentrations in the charcoal as shown. The concentrations were so regulated as to start with an initial pressure not exceeding 3 mm. at the respective boiling-points of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Production of High Vacua.—Exceedingly high vacua can be obtained by the aid of liquid gases, with or without charcoal. If a vessel containing liquid hydrogen be freely exposed to the atmosphere, a rain of snow (solid air) at once begins to fall upon the surface of the liquid; similarly, if one end of a sealed tube containing ordinary air be immersed in the liquid, the same thing happens, but since there is now no new supply to take the place of the air that has been solidified and has accumulated in the cooled portion of the tube, the pressure is quickly reduced to something like one-millionth of an atmosphere, and a vacuum is formed of such tenuity that the electric discharge can be made to pass only with difficulty. Liquid air can be employed in the same manner if the tube, before sealing, is filled with some less volatile gas or vapour, such as sulphurous acid, benzol or water vapour. But if a charcoal condenser be used in conjunction with the liquid air it becomes possible to obtain a high vacuum when the tube contains air initially. For instance, in one experiment, with a bulb having a capacity of 300 cc. and filled with air at a pressure of about 1.7 mm. and at a temperature of 15° C., when an attached condenser with 5 grammes of charcoal was cooled in liquid air, the pressure was reduced to 0.0545 mm. of mercury in five minutes, to 0.01032 mm. in ten minutes, to 0.000139 mm. in thirty minutes, and to 0.000047 mm. in sixty minutes. The condenser then being cooled in liquid hydrogen the pressure fell to 0.0000154 mm. in ten minutes, and to 0.0000058 mm. in a further ten minutes when solid hydrogen was employed as the cooling agent, and no doubt, had it not been for the presence of hydrogen and helium in the air, an even greater reduction could have been effected. Another illustration of the power of cooled charcoal to produce high vacua is afforded by a Crookes radiometer. If the instrument be filled with helium at atmospheric pressure and a charcoal bulb attached to it be cooled in liquid air, the vanes remain motionless even when exposed to the concentrated beam of an electric arc lamp; but if liquid hydrogen be substituted for the liquid air rapid rotation at once sets in. When a similar radiometer was filled with hydrogen and the attached charcoal bulb was cooled in liquid air rotation took place, because sufficient of the gas was absorbed to permit motion. But when the charcoal was cooled in liquid hydrogen instead of in liquid air, the absorption increased and consequently the rarefaction became so high that there was no motion when the light from the arc was directed on the vanes. These experiments again permit of an inference as to the boiling-point of helium. A fall of 75% in the temperature of the charcoal bulb, from the boiling-point of air to the boiling-point of hydrogen, reduced the vanes to rest in the case of the radiometer filled with hydrogen; hence it might be inferred that a fall of like amount from the boiling-point of hydrogen would reduce the vanes of the helium radiometer to rest, and consequently that the boiling-point of helium would be about 5° abs.

The vacua obtainable by means of cooled charcoal are so high that it is difficult to determine the pressures by the McLeod gauge, and the radiometer experiments referred to above suggested the possibility of another means of ascertaining such pressures, by determining the pressures below which the radiometer would not spin. The following experiment shows how the limit of pressure can be ascertained by reference to the pressures of mercury vapour which have been very accurately determined through a wide range of temperature. To a radiometer (fig. 6) with attached charcoal bulb B was sealed a tube ending in a small bulb A containing a globule of mercury. The radiometer and bulb B were heated, exhausted and repeatedly washed out with pure oxygen gas, and then the mercury was allowed to distil for some time into the charcoal cooled in liquid air. On exposure to the electric beam the vanes began to spin, but soon ceased when the bulb A was cooled in liquid air. When, however, the mercury was warmed by placing the bulb in liquid water, the vanes began to move again, and in the particular radiometer used this was found to happen when the temperature of the mercury had risen to −23° C. corresponding to a pressure of about one fifty-millionth of an atmosphere.

For washing out the radiometer with oxygen the arrangement shown in fig. 7 is convenient. Here A is a bulb containing perchlorate of potash, which when heated gives off pure oxygen; C is again the radiometer and B the charcoal bulb. The side tube E is for the purpose of examining the gas given off by minerals like thorianite or the gaseous products of the transformation of radioactive bodies.

Analytic Uses.—Another important use of liquid gases is as analytic agents, and for this purpose liquid air is becoming an almost essential laboratory reagent. It is one of the most convenient agents for drying gases and for their purification. If a mixture of gases be subjected to the temperature of liquid air, it is obvious that all the constituents that are more condensable than air will be reduced to liquid, while those that are less condensable will either remain as a gaseous residue or be dissolved in the liquid obtained. The bodies present in the latter may be separated by fractional distillation, while the contents of the gaseous residue may be further differentiated by the air of still lower temperatures, such as are obtainable by liquid hydrogen. An apparatus such as the following can be used to separate both the less and the more volatile gases of the atmosphere, the former being obtained from their solution in liquid air by fractional distillation at low pressure and separation of the condensable part of the distillate by cooling in liquid hydrogen, while the latter are extracted from the residue of liquid air, after the distillation of the first fraction, by allowing it to evaporate gradually at a temperature rising only very slowly.

In fig. 8, A represents a vacuum-jacketed vessel, containing liquid air; this can be made to boil at reduced pressure and therefore be lowered in temperature by means of an air-pump, which is in communication with the vessel through the pipe s. The liquid boiled away is replenished when necessary from the reservoir C, p being a valve, worked by handle q, by which the flow along r is regulated. The vessel B, immersed in the liquid air of A, communicates with the atmosphere by a; hence when the temperature of A falls under exhaustion below that of liquid air, the contents of B condense, and if the stop-cock m is kept open, and n shut, air from the outside is continuously sucked in until B is full of liquid, which contains in solution the whole of the most volatile gases of the atmosphere which have passed in through a. At this stage of the operation m is closed and n opened, a passage thus being opened along b from A to the remainder of the apparatus seen on the left side of the figure. Here E is a vacuum vessel containing liquid hydrogen, and d a three-way cock by which communication can be established either between b and D, between b and e, the tube leading to the sparking-tube g, or between D and e. If now d is arranged so that there is a free passage from b to D, and the stop-cock n also opened, the gas dissolved in the liquid in B, together with some of the most volatile part of that liquid, quickly distils over into D, which is at a much lower temperature than B, and some of it condenses there in the solid state. When a small fraction of the contents of B has thus distilled over, d is turned so as to close the passage between D and b and open that between D and e, with the result that the gas in D is pumped out by the mercury-pump, shown diagrammatically at F, along the tube e (which is immersed in the liquid hydrogen in order that any more condensable gas carried along by the current may be frozen out) to the sparking-tube or tubes g, where it can be examined spectroscopically. When the apparatus is used to separate the least volatile part of the gases in the atmosphere, the vessel E and its contents are omitted, and the tube b made to communicate with the pump through a number of sparking-tubes which can be sealed off successively. The nitrogen and oxygen which make up the bulk of the liquid in B are allowed to evaporate gradually, the temperature being kept low so as to check the evaporation of gases less volatile than oxygen. When most of the oxygen and nitrogen have thus been removed, the stop-cock n is closed, and the tubes partially exhausted by the pump; spectroscopic examination is made of the gases they contain, and repeated from time to time as more gas is allowed to evaporate from B. The general sequence of spectra, apart from those of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon compounds, which are never eliminated by the process of distillation alone, is as follows: The spectrum of argon first appears, followed by the brightest (green and yellow) rays of krypton. Then the intensity of the argon spectrum wanes and it gives way to that of krypton, until, as Runge observed, when a Leyden jar is in the circuit, the capillary part of the sparking-tube has a magnificent blue colour, while the wide ends are bright pale yellow. Without a jar the tube is nearly white in the middle and yellow about the poles. As distillation proceeds, the temperature of the vessel containing the residue of liquid air being allowed to rise slowly, the brightest (green) rays of xenon begin to appear, and the krypton rays soon die out, being superseded by those of xenon. At this stage the capillary part of the sparking-tube is, with a jar in circuit, a brilliant green, and it remains green, though less brilliant, if the jar is removed.

An improved form of apparatus for the fractionation is represented in fig. 9. The gases to be separated, that is, the least volatile part of atmospheric air, enter the bulb B from a gasholder by the tube a with stop-cock c. B, which is maintained at a low temperature by being immersed in liquid hydrogen, A, boiling under reduced pressure, in turn communicates through the tube b and stop-cock d with a sparking-tube or tubes f, and so on through e with a mercurial pump. To use the apparatus, stop-cock d is closed and c opened, and gas allowed to pass from the gasholder into B, where it is condensed in the solid form. Stop-cock c then being closed and d opened, gas passes into the exhausted tube f, where it is examined with the spectroscope. The vessel D contains liquid air, in which the tube e is immersed in order to condense vapour of mercury which would otherwise pass from the pump into the sparking-tube. The success of the operation of separating all the gases which occur in air and which boil at different temperatures, depends on keeping the temperature of B as low as possible, as will be understood from the following consideration:—

The pressure p, of a gas G, above the same material in the liquid state, at temperature T, is given approximately by the formula

where A and B are constants for the same material. For some other gas G′ the formula will be

and

Now for argon, krypton and xenon respectively the values of A are 6.782, 6.972 and 6.963, and those of B are 339, 496.3 and 669.2; so that for these substances and many others A − A1 is always a small quantity, while (B1 − B)/T is considerable and increases as T diminishes. Hence the ratio of p to p1 increases rapidly as T diminishes, and by evaporating all the gases from the solid state, and keeping the solid at as low a temperature as possible, the gas that is taken off by the mercurial pump first consists mainly of the substance which has the lowest boiling point, in this case nitrogen, and is succeeded with comparative abruptness by the gas which has the next higher boiling point. Examination of the spectrum in the sparking-tube easily reveals the change from one gas to another, and when that is observed the reservoirs into which the gases are pumped can be changed and the fractions stored separately. Or several sparking-tubes may be arranged so as to form parallel communications between b and e, and can be successively sealed off at the desired stages of fractionation.

Analytical operations can often be performed still more conveniently with the help of charcoal, taking advantage of the selective character of its absorption, the general law of which is that the more volatile the gas the less is it absorbed at a given temperature. The following are some examples of its employment for this purpose. If it be required to separate the helium which is often found in the gases given off by a thermal spring, they are subjected to the action of charcoal cooled with liquid air. The result is the absorption of the less volatile constituents, i.e. all except hydrogen and helium. The gaseous residue, with the addition of oxygen, is then sparked, and the water thus formed is removed together with the excess of oxygen, when helium alone remains. Or the separation may be effected by a method of fractionation as described above. To separate the most volatile constituents of the atmosphere an apparatus such as that shown in fig. 10 may be employed. In one experiment with this, when 200 c.c. was supplied from the graduated gas-holder F to the vessel D, containing 15 grammes of charcoal cooled in liquid air, the residue which passed on unabsorbed to the sparking-tube AB, which had a small charcoal bulb C attached, showed the C and F lines of hydrogen, the yellow and some of the orange lines of neon and the yellow and green of helium. By using a second charcoal vessel E, with stop-cocks at H, I, J, K and L to facilitate manipulation, considerable quantities of the most volatile gases can be collected. After the charcoal in E has been saturated, the stop-cock K is closed and I and J are opened for a short time, to allow the less condensable gas in E to be sucked into the second condenser D along with some portion of air. The condenser E is then taken out of the liquid air, heated quickly to 15° C. to expel the occluded air and replaced. More air is then passed in, and by repeating the operation several times 50 litres of air can be treated in a short time, supplying sparking-tubes which will show the complete spectra of the volatile constituents of the air.

The less volatile constituents of the atmosphere, krypton and xenon, may be obtained by leading a current of air, purified by passage through a series of tubes cooled in liquid air, through a charcoal condenser also cooled in liquid air. The condenser is then removed and placed in solid carbon dioxide at −78° C. The gas that comes off is allowed to escape, but what remains in the charcoal is got out by heating and exhaustion, the carbon compounds and oxygen are removed and the residue, consisting of nitrogen with krypton and xenon, is separated into its constituents by condensation and fractionation. Another method is to cover a few hundred grammes of charcoal with old liquid air, which is allowed to evaporate slowly in a silvered vacuum vessel; the gases remaining in the charcoal are then treated in the manner described above.

Charcoal enables a mixture containing a high percentage of oxygen to be extracted from the atmosphere. In one experiment 50 grammes of it, after being heated and exhausted were allowed to absorb air at −185° C.; some 5 or 6 litres were taken up in ten minutes, and it then presumably contained air of the composition of the atmosphere, i.e. 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen, as shown in fig. 11. But when more air was passed over it, the portion that was not absorbed was found to consist of about 98% nitrogen, showing that excess of oxygen was being absorbed, and in the course of a few hours the occluded gas attained a new and apparently definite composition exhibited in fig. 12. When the charcoal containing this mixture was transferred to a vacuum vessel and allowed to warm up slowly, the successive litres of gas when collected and analyzed separately showed the following composition:—

Table IX.

Calorimetry.—Certain liquid gases lend themselves conveniently to the construction of a calorimeter, in which the heat in weighed quantities of any substance with which it is desired to experiment may be measured by the quantity of liquid gas they are able to evaporate. One advantage of this method is that a great range of temperature is available when liquid air, oxygen, nitrogen or hydrogen is employed as the calorimetric substance. Another is the relatively large quantity of gas yielded by the evaporation, as may be seen from table IX., which shows the special physical constants of the various gases that are of importance in calorimetry. In consequence it is easy to detect 1⁄50 gram calorie with liquid air and so little as 1⁄300 gram calorie with liquid hydrogen.

The apparatus (fig. 13) consists of a large vacuum vessel A, of 2 or 3 litres’ capacity, containing liquid air, in which is inserted a smaller vacuum vessel B, of 25-30 c.c. capacity, having sealed to it a long narrow tube G that projects above the mouth of A and is held in place by some loosely packed cotton wool. To the top of this tube the test tube C, containing the material under investigation, is connected by a piece of flexible rubber tubing D; this enables C to be tilted so as to throw a piece or pieces of the contained material into the calorimeter. An improved form of this receptacle, attached to B by a flexible tube at D′, is shown at C′. In this P is a wire movable through a cork Q and having at its end a hook by which a piece of the substance under examination can be pulled up and dropped into B. In the absence of other arrangements the substance is at the temperature of the room, but when lower initial temperatures are desired a vacuum vessel H containing solid carbonic acid, liquid ethylene, air or other gas, can be placed to envelop C or C′, or higher temperatures may be obtained by filling the surrounding vessel with vapour of water or other liquids. The gas volatilized in B is conveyed by a side tube E to be collected in a graduated receiver F over water, oil or other liquid. If liquid hydrogen is to be used as the calorimetric substance the instrument must be so modified as to prevent the ordinary atmosphere from entering G, and to that end a current of hydrogen supplied from a Kipp apparatus is arranged to flow continuously through D and E until the moment of making the experiment, when it is cut off by a suitable stop-cock. In this case the outer vessel must contain liquid hydrogen instead of liquid air.

Table X.

Dewar used pure metallic lead for the purpose of conveying definite amounts of heat to liquid gas calorimeters of this kind, that metal being selected on the ground of the small variation in its specific heat at low temperatures. He was thus able to determine the latent heats of evaporation of liquid oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen directly at their boiling points, and he also ascertained the specific heats of a large number of inorganic and organic bodies, and of some gases in the solid state, such as carbon dioxide, sulphurous acid and ammonia. Perhaps his most interesting results were those which showed the variation in the specific heats of diamond, graphite and ice as typical bodies (table X.). With Professor Curie he used both the liquid oxygen and the liquid hydrogen calorimeter for preliminary measurements of the rate at which radium bromide gives out energy at low temperatures. The quantity of the salt available was 0.42 gram, and the thermal evolutions were as follows:—

The apparent increase of heat evolution at the temperature of liquid hydrogen was probably due to the calorimeter being too small; hydrogen spray was thus carried away with the gas, making the volume of gas too great and inferentially also the heat evolved.

Liquid air and liquid hydrogen calorimeters open up an almost unlimited field of research in the determination of specific heats and other thermal constants, and are certain to become common laboratory instruments for such purposes.

Chemical Action.—By extreme cold chemical action is enormously reduced, though it may not in all cases be entirely abolished even at the lowest temperatures yet attained; one reason for this diminution of activity may doubtless be sought in the fact that in such conditions most substances are solid, that is, in the state least favourable to chemical combination. Thus an electric pile of sodium and carbon ceases to yield a current when immersed in liquid oxygen. Sulphur, iron and other substances can be made to burn under the surface of liquid oxygen if the combustion is properly established before the sample is immersed, and the same is true of a fragment of diamond. Nitric oxide in the gaseous condition combines instantly with free oxygen, producing the highly-coloured gas, nitric peroxide, but in the solid condition it may be placed in contact with liquid oxygen without showing any signs of chemical action. If the combination of a portion of the mixture is started by elevation of temperature, then detonation may take place throughout the cooled mass. The stability of endothermic bodies like nitric oxide and ozone at low temperatures requires further investigation. The behaviour of fluorine, which may be regarded as the most active of the elements, is instructive in this respect. As a gas, cooled to −180° C. it loses the power of attacking glass; similarly silicon, borax, carbon, sulphur and phosphorus at the same temperature do not become incandescent in an atmosphere of the gas. Passed into liquid oxygen, the gas dissolves and imparts a yellowish tint to the liquid; if the oxygen has been exposed to the air for some hours, the fluorine produces a white flocculent precipitate, which if separated by filtering deflagrates with violence as the temperature rises. It appears to be a hydrate of fluorine. As a liquid at −210° fluorine attacks turpentine also cooled to that temperature with explosive force and the evolution of light, while the direction of a jet of hydrogen upon its surface is immediately followed by combination and a flash of flame. Even when the point of a tube containing solid fluorine is broken off under liquid hydrogen, a violent explosion ensues.

Photographic Action.—The action of light on photographic plates, though greatly diminished at −180°, is far from being in abeyance; an Eastman film, for instance, remains fairly sensitive at −210°. At the still lower temperature of liquid hydrogen the photographic activity is reduced to about half what it is at that of liquid air; in other words, about 10% of the original sensitivity remains. Experiments carried out with an incandescent lamp, a Röntgen bulb and the ultra-violet spark from magnesium and cadmium, to discover at what distances from the source of light the plates must be placed in order to receive an equal photographic impression, yielded the results shown in table XI.

Table XI.

It appears that the photographic action of both the incandescent lamp and the Röntgen rays is reduced by the temperature of liquid air to 17% of that exerted at ordinary temperatures, while ultra-violet radiation retains only 6%. It is possible that the greater dissipation of the latter by the photographic film at low temperatures than at ordinary ones is due to its absorption and subsequent emission as a phosphorescent glow, and that if the plate could be developed at a low temperature it would show no effect, the photographic action taking place subsequently through an internal phosphorescence in the film during the time it is heating up. With regard to the transparency of bodies to the Röntgen radiation at low temperatures, small tubes of the same bore, filled with liquid argon and chlorine, potassium, phosphorus, aluminium, silicon and sulphur, were exposed at the temperature of liquid air (in order to keep the argon and chlorine solid), in front of a photographic plate shielded with a sheet of aluminium, to an X-ray bulb. The sequence of the elements as mentioned represents the order of increasing opacity observed in the shadows. Sodium and liquid oxygen and air, nitrous and nitric oxides, proved much more transparent than chlorine. Tubes of potassium, argon and liquid chlorine showed no very marked difference of density on the photographic plates. It appears that argon is relatively more opaque to the Röntgen radiation than either oxygen, nitrogen or sodium, and is on a level with potassium, chlorine, phosphorus, aluminium and sulphur. This fact may be regarded as supporting the view that the atomic weight of argon is twice its density relative to hydrogen, since in general the opacity of elements in the solid state increases with the atomic weight.

Phosphorescence.—Phosphorescing sulphides of calcium, which are luminous at ordinary temperatures, and whose emission of light is increased by heating, cease to be luminous if cooled to −80° C. But their light energy is merely rendered latent, not destroyed, by such cold, and they still retain the capacity of taking in light energy at the low temperature, to be evolved again when they are warmed. At the temperature of liquid air many bodies become phosphorescent which do not exhibit the phenomenon at all, or only to a very slight extent, at ordinary temperatures, e.g. ivory, indiarubber, egg-shells, feathers, cottonwool, paper, milk, gelatine, white of egg, &c. Of definite chemical compounds, the platinocyanides among the inorganic bodies seem to yield the most brilliant effects. Crystals of ammonium platinocyanide, if stimulated by exposure to the ultra-violet radiation of the electric arc—or better still of a mercury vapour lamp in quartz—while kept moistened with liquid air, may be seen in the dark to glow faintly so long as they are kept cold, but become exceedingly brilliant when the liquid air evaporates and the temperature rises. Among organic bodies the phenomenon is particularly well marked with the ketonic compounds and others of the same type. The chloro-, bromo-, iodo-, sulpho- and nitro-compounds show very little effect as a rule. The activity of the alcohols, which is usually considerable, is destroyed by the addition of a little iodine. Coloured salts, &c., are mostly inferior in activity to white ones. When the lower temperature of liquid hydrogen is employed there is a great increase in phosphorescence under light stimulation as compared with that observed with liquid air. The radio-active bodies, like radium, which exhibit self-luminosity in the dark, maintain that luminosity unimpaired when cooled in liquid hydrogen.

Some crystals become for a time self-luminous when placed in liquid hydrogen, because the high electric stimulation due to the cooling causes actual electric discharges between the crystal molecules. This phenomenon is very pronounced with nitrate of uranium and some platinocyanides, and cooling such crystals even to the temperature of liquid air is sufficient to develop marked electrical and luminous effects, which are again observed, when the crystal is taken out of the liquid, during its return to normal temperature. Since both liquid hydrogen and liquid air are good electrical insulators, the fact that electric discharges take place in them proves that the electric potential generated by the cooling must be very high. A crystal of nitrate of uranium indeed gets so highly charged electrically that it refuses to sink in liquid air, although its density is 2.8 times greater, but sticks to the side of the vacuum vessel, and requires for its displacement a distinct pull on the silk thread to which it is attached. Such a crystal quickly removes cloudiness from liquid air by attracting all the suspended particles to its surface, just as a fog is cleared out of air by electrification. It is interesting to observe that neither fused nitrate of uranium nor its solution in absolute alcohol shows any of the remarkable effects of the crystalline state on cooling.

Cohesion.—The physical force known as cohesion is greatly increased by low temperatures. This fact is of much interest in connexion with two conflicting theories of matter. Lord Kelvin’s view was that the forces that hold together the ultimate particles of bodies may be accounted for without assuming any other forces than that of gravitation, or any other law than the Newtonian. An opposite view is that the phenomena of cohesion, chemical union, &c., or the general phenomena of the aggregation of molecules, depend on the molecular vibrations as a physical cause (Tolver Preston, Physics of the Ether, p. 64). Hence at the zero of absolute temperature, this vibrating energy being in complete abeyance, the phenomena of cohesion should cease to exist and matter generally be reduced to an incoherent heap of “cosmic dust.” This second view receives no support from experiment. Atmospheric air, for instance, frozen at the temperature of liquid hydrogen, is a hard solid, the strength of which gives no hint that with a further cooling of some 20 degrees it would crumble into powder. On the contrary, the lower the scale of temperature is descended, the more powerful become the forces which hold together the particles of matter. A spiral of fusible metal, which at ordinary temperatures cannot support the weight of an ounce without being straightened out, will, when cooled to the temperature of liquid oxygen, and so long as it remains in that cooled condition, support several pounds and vibrate like a steel spring. Similarly a bell of fusible metal at −182° C. gives a distinct metallic ring when struck. Balls of iron, lead, tin, ivory, &c., thus cooled, exhibit an increased rebound when dropped from a height; an indiarubber ball, on the other hand, becomes brittle, and is smashed to atoms by a very moderate fall. Tables XII. and XIII., which give the mean results of a large number of experiments, show the increased breaking stress gained by metals while they are cooled to the temperature of liquid oxygen.

Table XII.—Breaking Stress in Pounds of Metallic Wires 0.098 inch in diameter.

Table XIII.—Breaking Stress in Pounds of Cast Metallic Testpieces; diameter of rod-0.2 inch.

In the second series of experiments the test-pieces were 2 in. long and were all cast in the same mould. It will be noticed that in the cases of zinc, bismuth and antimony the results appear to be abnormal, but it may be pointed out that it is difficult to get uniform castings of crystalline bodies, and it is probable that by cooling such stresses are set up in some set of cleavage planes as to render rupture comparatively easy. In the case of strong steel springs the rigidity modulus does not appear to be greatly affected by cold, for although a number were examined, no measurable differences could be detected in their elongation under repeated additions of the same load. No quantitative experiments have been made on the cohesive properties of the metals at the temperature of boiling hydrogen (−252°), owing to the serious cost that would be involved. A lead wire cooled in liquid hydrogen did not become brittle, as it could be bent backwards and forwards in the liquid.

Electrical Resistivity.—The first experiments on the conductivity of metals at low temperatures appear to have been made by Wroblewski (Comptes rendus, ci. 160), and by Cailletet and Bouty (Journ. de phys. 1885, p. 297). The former’s experiments were undertaken to test the suggestion made by Clausius that the resistivity of pure metals is sensibly proportional to the absolute temperature; he worked with copper having a conductibility of 98%, and carried out measurements at various temperatures, the lowest of which was that given by liquid nitrogen boiling under reduced pressure. His general conclusion was that the resistivity decreases much more quickly than the absolute temperature, so as to approach zero at a point not far below the temperature of nitrogen evaporating in vacuo. Cailletet and Bouty, using ethylene as the refrigerant, and experimenting at temperatures ranging from 0° C. to −100° C. and −123° C., constructed formulae intended to give the coefficients of variation in electrical resistance for mercury, tin, silver, magnesium, aluminium, copper, iron and platinum. Between 1892 and 1896 Dewar and Fleming carried out a large number of experiments to ascertain the changes of conductivity that occur in metals and alloys cooled in liquid air or oxygen to −200° C. The method employed was to obtain the material under investigation in the form of a fine regular wire and to wind it in a small coil; this was then plunged in the liquid and its resistance determined. The accompanying chart (fig. 14) gives the results in a compendious form, the temperatures being expressed not in degrees of the ordinary air-thermometer scale, but in platinum degrees as given by one particular platinum resistance thermometer which was used throughout the investigation. A table showing the value of these degrees in degrees centigrade according to Dickson will be found in the Phil. Mag. for June 1898, p. 527; to give some idea of the relationship, it may be stated here that −100° of the platinum thermometer = −94°.2 C., −150° plat. = −140°.78 C., and −200° plat. = −185°.53 C. In general, the resistance of perfectly pure metals was greatly decreased by cold—so much so that, to judge by the course of the curves on the chart, it appeared probable that at the zero of absolute temperature resistance would vanish altogether and all pure metals become perfect conductors of electricity. This conclusion, however, has been rendered very doubtful by subsequent observations by Dewar, who found that with the still lower temperatures attainable with liquid hydrogen the increases of conductivity became less for each decrease of temperature, until a point was reached where the curves bent sharply round and any further diminution of resistance became very small; that is, the conductivity remained finite. The reduction in resistance of some of the metals at the boiling point of hydrogen is very remarkable. Thus copper has only 1⁄105th, gold 1⁄30th, platinum 1⁄35th to 1⁄17th, silver 1⁄24th the resistance at melting ice, but iron is only reduced to 1⁄8th part of the same initial resistance. Table XIV. shows the progressive decrease of resistance for certain metals and one alloy as the temperature is lowered from that of boiling water down to that of liquid hydrogen boiling under reduced pressure; it also gives the “vanishing temperature,” at which the conductivity would become perfect if the resistance continued to decrease in the same ratio with still lower temperatures, the values being derived from the extrapolation curves of the relation between resistance and temperature, according to Callendar and Dickson. It will be seen that many of the substances have actually been cooled to a lower temperature than that at which their resistance ought to vanish.

In the case of alloys and impure metals, cold brings about a much smaller decrease in resistivity, and the continuations of the curves at no time show any sign of passing through the zero point. The influence of the presence of impurities in minute quantities is strikingly shown in the case of bismuth. Various specimens of the metal, prepared with great care by purely chemical methods, gave in the hands of Dewar and Fleming some very anomalous results, appearing to reach at −80° C. a maximum of conductivity, and thereafter to increase in resistivity with decrease of temperature. But when the determinations were carried out on a sample of really pure bismuth prepared electrolytically, a normal curve was obtained corresponding to that given by other pure metals. As to alloys, there is usually some definite mixture of two pure metals which has a maximum resistivity, often greater than that of either of the constituents. It appears too that high, if not the highest, resistivity corresponds to possible chemical compounds of the two metals employed, e.g. platinum 33 parts with silver 66 parts = PtAg4; iron 80 with nickel 20 = Fe4Ni; platinum 80 with iridium 20 = IrPt4; and copper 70 with manganese 30 = Cu2Mn. The product obtained by adding a small quantity of one metal to another has a higher specific resistance than the predominant constituent, but the curve is parallel to, and therefore the same in shape as, that of the latter (cf. the curves for various mixtures of Al and Cu on the chart). The behaviour of carbon and of insulators like gutta-percha, glass, ebonite, &c., is in complete contrast to the metals, for their resistivity steadily increases with cold. The thermo-electric properties of metals at low temperatures are discussed in the article [Thermoelectricity].

Table XIV.

Magnetic Phenomena.—Low temperatures have very marked effects upon the magnetic properties of various substances. Oxygen, long known to be slightly magnetic in the gaseous state, is powerfully attracted in the liquid condition by a magnet, and the same is true, though to a less extent, of liquid air, owing to the proportion of liquid oxygen it contains. A magnet of ordinary carbon steel has its magnetic moment temporarily increased by cooling, that is, after it has been brought to a permanent magnetic condition (“aged”). The effect of the first immersion of such a magnet in liquid air is a large diminution in its magnetic moment, which decreases still further when it is allowed to warm up to ordinary temperatures. A second cooling, however, increases the magnetic moment, which is again decreased by warming, and after a few repetitions of this cycle of cooling and heating the steel is brought into a condition such that its magnetic moment at the temperature of liquid air is greater by a constant percentage than it is at the ordinary temperature of the air. The increase of magnetic moment seems then to have reached a limit, because on further cooling to the temperature of liquid hydrogen hardly any further increase is observed. The percentage differs with the composition of the steel and with its physical condition. It is greater, for example, with a specimen tempered very soft than it is with another specimen of the same steel tempered glass hard. Aluminium steels show the same kind of phenomena as carbon ones, and the same may be said of chrome steels in the permanent condition, though the effect of the first cooling with them is a slight increase of magnetic moment. Nickel steels present some curious phenomena. When containing small percentages of nickel (e.g. 0.84 or 3.82), they behave under changes of temperature much like carbon steel. With a sample containing 7.65%, the phenomena after the permanent state had been reached were similar, but the first cooling produced a slight increase in magnetic moment. But steels containing 18.64 and 29% of nickel behaved very differently. The result of the first cooling was a reduction of the magnetic moment, to the extent of nearly 50% in the case of the former. Warming again brought about an increase, and the final condition was that at the temperature of liquid air the magnetic moment was always less than at ordinary temperatures. This anomaly is all the more remarkable in that the behaviour of pure nickel is normal, as also appears to be generally the case with soft and hard iron. Silicon, tungsten and manganese steels are also substantially normal in their behaviour, although there are considerable differences in the magnitudes of the variations they display (Proc. Roy. Soc. lx. 57 et seq.; also “The Effect of Liquid Air Temperatures on the Mechanical and other Properties of Iron and its Alloys,” by Sir James Dewar and Sir Robert Hadfield, Id. lxxiv. 326-336).

Low temperatures also affect the permeability of iron, i.e. the degree of magnetization it is capable of acquiring under the influence of a certain magnetic force. With fine Swedish iron, carefully annealed, the permeability is slightly reduced by cooling to −185° C. Hard iron, however, in the same circumstances suffers a large increase of permeability. Unhardened steel pianoforte wire, again, behaves like soft annealed iron. As to hysteresis, low temperatures appear to produce no appreciable effect in soft iron; for hard iron the observations are undecisive.

Biological Research.—The effect of cold upon the life of living organisms is a matter of great intrinsic interest as well as of wide theoretical importance. Experiment indicates that moderately high temperatures are much more fatal, at least to the lower forms of life, than are exceedingly low ones. Professor M‘Kendrick froze for an hour at a temperature of −182° C. samples of meat, milk, &c., in sealed tubes; when these were opened, after being kept at blood-heat for a few days, their contents were found to be quite putrid. More recently some more elaborate tests were carried out at the Jenner (now Lister) Institute of Preventive Medicine on a series of typical bacteria. These were exposed to the temperature of liquid air for twenty hours, but their vitality was not affected, their functional activities remained unimpaired and the cultures which they yielded were normal in every respect. The same result was obtained when liquid hydrogen was substituted for air. A similar persistence of life has been demonstrated in seeds, even at the lowest temperatures; they were frozen for over 100 hours in liquid air at the instance of Messrs Brown and Escombe, with no other effect than to afflict their protoplasm with a certain inertness, from which it recovered with warmth. Subsequently commercial samples of barley, peas and vegetable-marrow and mustard seeds were literally steeped for six hours in liquid hydrogen at the Royal Institution, yet when they were sown by Sir W. T. Thiselton Dyer at Kew in the ordinary way, the proportion in which germination occurred was no smaller than with other batches of the same seeds which had suffered no abnormal treatment. Mr Harold Swithinbank has found that exposure to liquid air has little or no effect on the vitality of the tubercle bacillus, although by very prolonged exposures its virulence is modified to some extent; but alternate exposures to normal and very cold temperatures do have a decided effect both upon its vitality and its virulence. The suggestion once put forward by Lord Kelvin, that life may in the first instance have been conveyed to this planet on a meteorite, has been objected to on the ground that any living organism would have been killed before reaching the earth by its passage through the intense cold of interstellar space; the above experiments on the resistance to cold offered by seeds and bacteria show that this objection at least is not fatal to Lord Kelvin’s idea.

At the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine liquid air has been brought into use as an agent in biological research. An inquiry into the intracellular constituents of the typhoid bacillus, initiated under the direction of Dr Allan Macfadyen, necessitated the separation of the cell-plasma of the organism. The method at first adopted for the disintegration of the bacteria was to mix them with silver-sand and churn the whole up in a closed vessel in which a series of horizontal vanes revolved at a high speed. But certain disadvantages attached to this procedure, and accordingly some means was sought to do away with the sand and triturate the bacilli per se. This was found in liquid air, which, as had long before been shown at the Royal Institution, has the power of reducing materials like grass or the leaves of plants to such a state of brittleness that they can easily be powdered in a mortar. By its aid a complete trituration of the typhoid bacilli has been accomplished at the Jenner Institute, and the same process, already applied with success also to yeast cells and animal cells, is being extended in other directions.

Industrial Applications.—While liquid air and liquid hydrogen are being used in scientific research to an extent which increases every day, their applications to industrial purposes are not so numerous. The temperatures they give used as simple refrigerants are much lower than are generally required industrially, and such cooling as is needed can be obtained quite satisfactorily, and far more cheaply, by refrigerating machinery employing more easily condensable gases. Their use as a source of motive power, again, is impracticable for any ordinary purposes, on the score of inconvenience and expense. Cases may be conceived of in which for special reasons it might prove advantageous to use liquid air, vaporized by heat derived from the surrounding atmosphere, to drive compressed-air engines, but any advantage so gained would certainly not be one of cheapness. No doubt the power of a waterfall running to waste might be temporarily conserved in the shape of liquid air, and thereby turned to useful effect. But the reduction of air to the liquid state is a process which involves the expenditure of a very large amount of energy, and it is not possible even to recover all that expended energy during the transition of the material back to the gaseous state. Hence to suggest that by using liquid air in a motor more power can be developed than was expended in producing the liquid air by which the motor is worked, is to propound a fallacy worse than perpetual motion, since such a process would have an efficiency of more than 100%. Still, in conditions where economy is of no account, liquid air might perhaps, with effectively isolated storage, be utilized as a motive power, e.g. to drive the engines of submarine boats and at the same time provide a supply of oxygen for the crew; even without being used in the engines, liquid air or oxygen might be found a convenient form in which to store the air necessary for respiration in such vessels. But a use to which liquid air machines have already been put to a large extent is for obtaining oxygen from the atmosphere. Although when air is liquefied the oxygen and nitrogen are condensed simultaneously, yet owing to its greater volatility the latter boils off the more quickly of the two, so that the remaining liquid becomes gradually richer and richer in oxygen. The fractional distillation of liquid air is the method now universally adopted for the preparation of oxygen on a commercial scale, while the nitrogen simultaneously obtained is used for the production of cyanamide, by its action on carbide of calcium. An interesting though minor application of liquid oxygen, or liquid air from which most of the nitrogen has evaporated, depends on the fact that if it be mixed with powdered charcoal, or finely divided organic bodies, it can be made by the aid of a detonator to explode with a violence comparable to that of dynamite. This explosive, which might properly be called an emergency one, has the disadvantage that it must be prepared on the spot where it is to be used and must be fired without delay, since the liquid evaporates in a short time and the explosive power is lost; but, on the other hand, if a charge fails to go off it has only to be left a few minutes, when it can be withdrawn without any danger of accidental explosion.

For further information the reader may consult W. L. Hardin, Rise and Development of the Liquefaction of Gases (New York, 1899), and Lefèvre, La Liquéfaction des gaz et ses applications; also the article [Condensation of Gases]. But the literature of liquid gases is mostly contained in scientific periodicals and the proceedings of learned societies. Papers by Wroblewski and Olszewski on the liquefaction of oxygen and nitrogen may be found in the Comptes rendus, vols, xcvi.-cii., and there are important memoirs by the former on the relations between the gaseous and liquid states and on the compressibility of hydrogen in Wien. Akad. Sitzber. vols. xciv. and xcvii.; his pamphlet Comme l’air a été liquéfié (Paris, 1885) should also be referred to. For Dewar’s work, see Proc. Roy. Inst. from 1878 onwards, including “Solid Hydrogen” (1900); “Liquid Hydrogen Calorimetry” (1904); “New Low Temperature Phenomena” (1905); “Liquid Air and Charcoal at Low Temperatures” (1906); “Studies in High Vacua and Helium at Low Temperatures” (1907); also “The Nadir of Temperature and Allied Problems” (Bakerian Lecture), Proc. Roy. Soc. (1901), and the Presidential Address to the British Association (1902). The researches of Fleming and Dewar on the electrical and magnetic properties of substances at low temperatures are described in Proc. Roy. Soc. vol. lx., and Proc. Roy. Inst. (1896); see also “Electrical Resistance of Pure Metals, Alloys and Non-Metals at the Boiling-point of Oxygen,” Phil. Mag. vol. xxxiv. (1892); “Electrical Resistance of Metals and Alloys at Temperatures approaching the Absolute Zero,” ibid. vol. xxxvi. (1893); “Thermoelectric Powers of Metals and Alloys between the Temperatures of the Boiling-point of Water and the Boiling-point of Liquid Air,” ibid. vol. xl. (1895); and papers on the dielectric constants of various substances at low temperatures in Proc. Roy. Soc. vols. lxi. and lxii. Optical and spectroscopic work by Liveing and Dewar on liquid gases is described in Phil. Mag. vols. xxxiv. (1892), xxxvi. (1893), xxxviii. (1894) and xl. (1895); for papers by the same authors on the separation and spectroscopic examination of the most volatile and least volatile constituents of atmospheric air, see Proc. Roy. Soc. vols. lxiv., lxvii. and lxviii. An account of the influence of very low temperatures on the germinative power of seeds is given by H. T. Brown and F. Escombe in Proc. Roy. Soc. vol. lxii., and by Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, ibid. vol. lxv., and their effect on bacteria is discussed by A. Macfadyen, ibid. vols. lxvi. and lxxi.

(J. Dr.)

[1] Figs. 1, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13 in this article are from Proc. Roy. Inst., by permission.

[2] It may be noted that now that the commercial production of oxygen is effected by the liquefaction of air, with separation of its constituents in what is essentially a Coffey still, the chemist has at his command large quantities not only of the less volatile constituents, krypton and xenon, but also of the more volatile ones, neon and helium. Roughly a million volumes of air contain 20 volumes of neon and helium, about 15 of the former to 5 of the latter, approximately 1 volume of hydrogen being associated with them, so that in view of the enormous amounts of oxygen that are produced, helium can be obtained in practically any quantity directly from the atmosphere.

LIQUORICE. The hard and semi-vitreous sticks of paste, black in colour and possessed of a sweet somewhat astringent taste, known as liquorice paste or black sugar, are the inspissated juice of the roots of a leguminous plant, Glycyrrhiza glabra, the radix glycyrrhizae of the pharmacopoeia. The plant is cultivated throughout the warmer parts of Europe, especially on the Mediterranean shores, and to some extent in Louisiana and California. The roots for use are obtained in lengths of 3 or 4 ft., varying in diameter from 1/4 to 1 in.; they are soft, flexible and fibrous, and internally of a bright yellow colour, with a characteristic, sweet pleasant taste. To this sweet taste of its root the plant owes its generic name Glycyrrhiza (γλυκύῤῥιζα, the sweet-root), of which the word liquorice is a corruption. The roots contain grape-sugar, starch, resin, asparagine, malic acid and the glucoside glycyrrhizin, C24H36O9, a yellow amorphous powder with an acid reaction and a distinctive bitter-sweet taste. On hydrolysis, glycyrrhizin yields glucose and glycyrrhetin.

Stick liquorice is made by crushing and grinding the roots to a pulp, which is boiled in water over an open fire, and the decoction separated from the solid residue of the root is evaporated till a sufficient degree of concentration is attained, after which, on cooling, it is rolled into the form of sticks or other shapes for the market. The preparation of the juice is a widely extended industry along the Mediterranean coasts; but the quality best appreciated in the United Kingdom is made in Calabria, and sold under the names of Solazzi and Corigliano juice. Liquorice enters into the composition of many cough lozenges and other demulcent preparations; and in the form of aromatic syrups and elixirs it has a remarkable effect in masking the taste of nauseous medicines.

LIQUOR LAWS. In most Western countries the sale of alcoholic liquor is regulated by law. The original and principal object is to check the evils arising from the immoderate use of such liquor, in the interest of public order, morality and health; a secondary object is to raise revenue from the traffic. The form and the stringency of the laws passed for these purposes vary very widely in different countries according to the habits of the people and the state of public opinion. The evils which it is desired to check are much greater in some countries than in others. Generally speaking they are greater in northern countries and cold and damp climates than in southern and more sunny ones. Climate has a marked influence on diet for physiological reasons over which we have no control. The fact is attested by universal experience and is perfectly natural and inevitable, though usually ignored in those international comparisons of economic conditions and popular customs which have become so common. It holds good both of food and drink. The inhabitants of south Europe are much less given to alcoholic excess than those of central Europe, who again are more temperate than those of the north. There is even a difference between localities so near together as the east and west of Scotland. The chairman of the Prison Commissioners pointed out before a British royal commission in the year 1897 the greater prevalence of drunkenness in the western half, and attributed it in part to the dampness of the climate on the western coast. But race also has an influence. The British carry the habit of drinking wherever they go, and their colonial descendants retain it even in hot and dry climates. The Slav peoples and the Magyars in central Europe are much more intemperate than the Teutonic and Latin peoples living under similar climatic conditions. These natural differences lead, in accordance with the principle discerned and enunciated by Montesquieu, to the adoption of different laws, which vary with the local conditions. But social laws of this character also vary with the state of public opinion, not only in different countries but in the same country at different times. The result is that the subject is in a state of incessant flux. There are not only many varieties of liquor laws, but also frequent changes in them, and new experiments are constantly being tried. The general tendency is towards increased stringency, not so much because the evils increase, though that happens in particular places at particular times, as because public opinion moves broadly towards increasing condemnation of excess and increasing reliance on legislative interference. The first is due partly to a general process of refining manners, partly to medical influence and the growing attention paid to health; the second to a universal tendency which seems inherent in democracy.

Liquor laws may be classified in several ways, but the most useful way for the present purpose will be to take the principal methods of conducting the traffic as they exist, under four main headings, and after a brief explanation give some account of the laws in the principal countries which have adopted them. The four methods are: (1) licensing or commercial sale for private profit under a legal permit; (2) sale by authorized bodies not for private profit, commonly known as the Scandinavian or company system; (3) state monopoly; (4) prohibition. It is not a scientific classification, because the company system is a form of licensing and prohibition is no sale at all; but it follows the lines of popular discussion and is more intelligible than one of a more technical character would be. All forms of liquor legislation deal mainly with retail sale, and particularly with the sale for immediate consumption on the spot.

1. Licensing.—This is by far the oldest and the most widely adopted method; it is the one which first suggests itself in the natural course of things. Men begin by making and selling a thing without let or hindrance to please themselves. Then objections are raised, and when they are strong or general enough the law interferes in the public interest, at first mildly; it says in effect—This must not go on in this way or to this extent; there must be some control, and permission will only be given to duly authorized persons. Such persons are licensed or permitted to carry on the traffic under conditions, and there is obviously room for infinite gradations of strictness in granting permission and infinite variety in the conditions imposed. The procedure may vary from mere notification of the intention to open an establishment up to a rigid and minutely detailed system of annual licensing laid down by the law. But in all cases, even when mere notification is required, the governing authority has the right to refuse permission or to withdraw it for reasons given, and so it retains the power of control. At the same time holders of the permission may be compelled to pay for the privilege and so contribute to the public revenue. The great merit of the licensing system is its perfect elasticity, which permits adjustment to all sorts of conditions and to the varying demands of public opinion. It is in force in the United Kingdom, which first adopted it, in most European countries, in the greater part of North America, including both the United States and Canada, in the other British dominions and elsewhere.

2. The Scandinavian or Company System.—The principle of this method is the elimination of private profit on the ground that it removes an incentive to the encouragement of excessive drinking. A monopoly of the sale of liquor is entrusted to a body of citizens who have, or are supposed to have, no personal interest in it, and the profits are applied to public purposes. The system, which is also called “disinterested management,” is adopted in Sweden and Norway; and the principle has been applied in a modified form in England and Finland by the operation of philanthropic societies which, however, have no monopoly but are on the same legal footing as ordinary traders.

3. State Monopoly.—As the name implies, this system consists in retaining the liquor trade in the hands of the state, which thus secures all the profit and is at the same time able to exercise complete control. It is adopted in Russia, in certain parts of the United States and, in regard to the wholesale trade, in Switzerland.

4. Prohibition.—This may be general or local; in the latter case it is called “local option” or “local veto.” The sale of liquor is made illegal in the hope of preventing drinking altogether or of diminishing it by making it more difficult. General prohibition has been tried in some American states, and is still in force in a few; it is also applied to native races, under civilized rule, both in Africa and North America. Local prohibition is widely in force in the United States, Canada and Australasia, Sweden and Norway. In certain areas in other countries, including the United Kingdom, the sale of liquor is in a sense prohibited, not by the law, but by the owners of the property who refuse to allow any public-houses. Such cases have nothing to do with the law, but they are mentioned here because reference is often made to them by advocates of legal prohibition.

THE UNITED KINGDOM

England has had a very much longer experience of liquor legislation than any other country, and the story forms an introduction necessary to the intelligent comprehension of liquor legislation in general. England adopted a licensing system in 1551, and has retained it, with innumerable modifications, ever since. The English were notorious for hard drinking for centuries before licensing was adopted, and from time to time sundry efforts had been made to check it, but what eventually compelled the interference of the law was the growth of crime and disorder associated with the public-houses towards the end of the 15th century. Numbers of men who had previously been engaged in the civil wars or on the establishment of feudal houses were thrown on the world and betook themselves to the towns, particularly London, where they frequented the ale-houses, “dicing and drinking,” and lived largely on violence and crime. An act was passed in 1495 against vagabonds and unlawful games, whereby justices of the peace were empowered to “put away common ale-selling in towns and places where they should think convenient and to take sureties of keepers of ale-houses in their good behaviour.” That was the beginning of statutory control of the trade. The act clearly recognized a connexion between public disorder and public-houses. The latter were ale-houses, for at that time ale was the drink of the people; spirits had not yet come into common use, and wine, the consumption of which on the premises was prohibited in 1552, was only drunk by the wealthier classes.

Early History of Licensing.—The act of 1551-1552, which introduced licensing, was on the same lines but went further. It confirmed the power of suppressing common ale-selling, and enacted that no one should be allowed to keep a common ale-house or “tippling” house without obtaining the permission of the justices in open session or of two of their number. It further “directed that the justices should take from the persons whom they licensed such bond and surety by recognisance as they should think convenient, and empowered them in quarter session to inquire into and try breaches by licensed persons of the conditions of their recognisances and cases of persons keeping ale-houses without licences and to punish the offenders” (Bonham Carter, Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, vol. iii.). This act embodied the whole principle of licensing, and the object was clearly stated in the preamble: “For as much as intolerable hurts and troubles to the commonwealth of this realm doth daily grow and increase through such abuses and disorders as are had and used in common ale-houses and other places called tippling houses.” The evil was not due merely to the use of alcoholic liquor but to the fact that these houses, being public-houses, were the resort of idle and disorderly characters. The distinction should be borne in mind.

The act seems to have been of some effect, for no further legislation was attempted for half a century, though there is abundant evidence of the intemperate habits of all classes. Mr Bonham Carter (loc. cit.) observes:—

“The recognisances referred to in the act were valuable instruments for controlling the conduct of ale-house keepers. The justices, in exercise of their discretion, required the recognisances to contain such conditions for the management and good order of the business as they thought suitable. In this way a set of regulations came into existence, many of which were subsequently embodied in acts of Parliament. In some counties general rules were drawn up, which every ale-house keeper was bound to observe.”

It is interesting to note that among the conditions laid down about this time were the following: Closing at 9 P.M. and during divine service on Sunday; in some cases complete closing on Sunday except to travellers; the licence-holder to notify to the constable all strangers staying for more than a night and not to permit persons to continue drinking or tippling; prohibition of unlawful games, receiving stolen goods and harbouring bad characters; the use of standard measures and prices fixed by law. There was, however, no uniformity of practice in these respects until the 17th century, when an attempt was made to establish stricter and more uniform control by a whole series of acts passed between 1603 and 1627. The evils which it was sought to remedy by these measures were the existence of unlicensed houses, the use of ale-houses for mere drinking and the prevalence of disorder. It was declared that the ancient and proper use of inns and ale-houses was the refreshment and lodging of travellers, and that they were not meant for “entertainment and harbouring of lewd and idle people to spend and consume their money and their time in lewd and drunken manner.” Regulations were strengthened for the suppression of unlicensed houses, licences were made annual, and the justices were directed to hold a special licensing meeting once a year (1618). Penalties were imposed on innkeepers for permitting tippling, and also on tipplers and drunkards (1625). In 1634 licensing was first applied to Ireland. Later in the century heavy penalties were imposed for adulteration.

The next chapter in the history of licensing has to do with spirits, and is very instructive. Spirits were not a native product like beer; brandy was introduced from France, gin from the Netherlands and whisky from Ireland; but down to the year 1690 the consumption was small. The home manufacture was strictly limited, and high duties on imported spirits rendered them too dear for the general public unless smuggled. Consequently the people had not acquired the taste for them. But in 1690 distilling was thrown open to any one on the payment of very trifling duties, spirits became extremely cheap and the consumption increased with great rapidity. Regulation of the retail traffic was soon found to be necessary, and by an act passed in 1700-1701, the licensing requirements already existing for ale-house keepers were extended to persons selling distilled liquors for consumption on the premises. A new class of public-houses in the shape of spirit bars grew up. In the year 1732 a complete and detailed survey of all the streets and houses in London was carried out by William Maitland, F.R.S. Out of a total of 95,968 houses he found the following: brew-houses 171, inns 207, taverns 447, ale-houses 5975, brandy-shops 8659; total number of licensed houses for the retail sale of liquor 15,288, of which considerably more than one-half were spirit bars. The population was about three-quarters of a million. About one house in every six was licensed at this time, and that in spite of attempts made to check the traffic by restrictive acts passed in 1728-1729. The physical and moral evils caused by the excessive consumption of spirits were fully recognized; an additional duty of 5s. a gallon was placed on the distiller, and retailers were compelled to take out an excise licence of £20 per annum. The object was to make spirits dearer and therefore less accessible. At the same time, with a view to lessening the number of houses, the licensing procedure of the justices was amended by the provision that licences should only be granted at a general meeting of the justices acting in the division where the applicant resided, thus abolishing the power conferred by the original licensing act, of any two justices to grant a licence. This change, effected in 1729, was a permanent improvement, though it did not prevent the existence of the prodigious numbers of houses recorded by Maitland in 1732. The attempt to make spirits dearer by high excise duties, on the other hand, was adjudged a failure because it led to illicit trade, and the act of 1728 was repealed in 1732. But the evil was so glaring that another and more drastic attempt in the same direction was made in 1736, when the famous Gin Act was passed in response to a petition presented to parliament by the Middlesex magistrates, declaring “that the drinking of geneva and other distilled waters had for some years past greatly increased; that the constant and excessive use thereof had destroyed thousands of His Majesty’s subjects; that great numbers of others were by its use rendered unfit for useful labour, debauched in morals and drawn into all manner of vice and wickedness....” The retailing of spirits in quantities of less than 2 gallons was made subject to a licence costing £50 and the retailer had also to pay a duty of 20s. on every gallon sold. This experiment in “high licensing” was a disastrous failure, though energetic attempts were made to enforce it by wholesale prosecutions and by strengthening the regulations against evasion. Public opinion was inflamed against it, and the only results were corruptions of the executive and an enormous increase of consumption through illicit channels. The consumption of spirits in England and Wales nearly doubled between 1733 and 1742, and the state of things was so intolerable that after much controversy the high duties were repealed in 1742 with the object of bringing the trade back into authorized channels; the cost of a licence was reduced from £50 to £1 and the retail duty from 20s. to 1d. a gallon.

This period witnessed the high-water mark of intemperance in England. From various contemporary descriptions it is abundantly clear that the state of things was incomparably worse than anything in modern times, and that women, whose participation in the practice of drinking and frequenting public-houses is recorded by writers in the previous century, were affected as well as men. The experience is particularly instructive because it includes examples of excess and deficiency of opportunities and the ill effects of both on a people naturally inclined to indulgence in drink. It was followed by more judicious action, which showed the adaptability of the licensing system and the advantages of a mean between laxity and severity. Between 1743 and 1753 acts were passed which increased control in a moderate way and proved much more successful than the previous measures. The retail licence duty was moderately raised and the regulations were amended and made stricter. The class of houses eligible for licensing was for the first time taken into account, and the retailing of spirits was only permitted on premises assessed for rates and, in London, of the annual value of £10; justices having an interest in the trade were excluded from licensing functions. Another measure which had an excellent effect made “tippling” debts—that is, small public-houses debts incurred for spirits—irrecoverable at law. The result of these measures was that consumption diminished and the class of houses improved. At the same time (1753) the general licensing provisions were strengthened and extended. The distinction between new licences and the renewal of old ones was for the first time recognized; applicants for new licences in country districts were required to produce a certificate of character from the clergy, overseers and church-wardens or from three or four householders. The annual licensing sessions were made statutory, and the consent of a justice was required for the transfer of a licence from one person to another during the term for which it was granted. Penalties for infringing the law were increased, and the licensing system was extended to Scotland (1755-1756). With regard to wine, it has already been stated that consumption on the premises was forbidden in 1552, and at the same time the retail sale was restricted to towns of some importance and the number of retailers, who had to obtain an appointment from the corporation or the justices, was strictly limited. In 1660 consumption on the premises was permitted under a Crown (excise) licence, good for a variable term of years; in 1756 this was changed to an annual excise licence of fixed amount, and in 1792 wine was brought under the same jurisdiction of the justices as other liquors.

It is clear from the foregoing that a great deal of legislation occurred during the 18th century, and that by successive enactments, particularly about the middle of the century, the licensing system gradually became adjusted to the requirements of the time and took a settled shape. The acts then passed still form the basis of the law. In the early part of the 19th century another period of legislative activity set in. A parliamentary inquiry into illicit trade in spirits took place in 1821, and in 1828 important acts were passed amending and consolidating the laws for England and for Scotland; in 1833 a general Licensing Act was passed for Ireland. These are still the principal acts, though they have undergone innumerable amendments and additions. The English act of 1828 introduced certain important changes. A licence from the justices was no longer required for the sale of liquor for consumption off the premises, and the power of the justices to suppress public-houses at their discretion (apart from the annual licensing), which they had possessed since 1495, was taken away. The removal of this power, which had long been obsolete, was the natural corollary of the development of the licensing system, its greater stringency and efficiency and the increase of duties imposed on the trade. Men on whom these obligations were laid, and who were freshly authorized to carry on the business every year, could not remain liable to summary deprivation of the privileges thus granted and paid for. The justices had absolute discretion to withhold licences from an applicant whether new or old; but an appeal was allowed to quarter sessions against refusal and also against conviction for offences under the act. The main points in the law at this time were the following. The sale of alcoholic liquors for consumption on the premises was forbidden under penalties except to persons authorized according to law by the justices. Licences were granted for one year and had to be renewed annually. The justices held a general meeting each year at a specified time for the purpose of granting licences; those peculiarly interested in the liquor trade were disqualified. The licence contained various provisions for regulating the conduct of the house and maintaining order, but closing was only required during the hours of divine service on Sunday. Applicants for new licences and for the transfer of old ones (granted at a special sessions of the justices) were required to give notice to the local authorities and to post up notices at the parish church and on the house concerned.

Excise Licences.—It will be convenient at this point to explain the relation between that part of the licensing system which is concerned with the conduct of the traffic and lies in the jurisdiction of the justices and that part which has to do with taxation or revenue. The former is the earlier and more important branch of legislative interference; we have traced its history from 1495 down to 1828. Its object from the beginning was the maintenance of public order and good conduct, which were impaired by the misuse of public-houses; and all the successive enactments were directed to that end. They were attempts to suppress or moderate the evils arising from the traffic by regulating it. The excise licensing system has nothing to do with public order or the conduct of the traffic; its object is simply to obtain revenue, and for a long time the two systems were quite independent. But time and change gradually brought them into contact and eventually they came to form two aspects of one unified system. Licensing for revenue was first introduced in 1660 at the same time as duties on the manufacture of beer and spirits: but it was of an irregular character and was only applied to wine, which was not then under the jurisdiction of the justices at all (see above). In 1710 a small annual tax was imposed on the retailers of beer and ale and collected by means of a stamp on the justices’ licence. In 1728 an annual excise licence of £20 was imposed on retailers of spirits, and in 1736 this was raised to £50 (see above). The object of these particular imposts, however, was rather to check the sale, as previously explained, than to secure revenue. In 1756 the previous tax on the retail sale of wine for consumption on the premises was changed to an annual excise licence, which was in the next year extended to “made wines” and “sweets” (British wines). Similar licences, in place of the previous stamps, were temporarily required for beer and ale between 1725 and 1742 and permanently imposed in 1808. Thus the system of annual excise licences became gradually applied to all kinds of liquor. In 1825 the laws relating to them were consolidated and brought into direct relation with the other licensing laws. It was enacted that excise licences for the retail of liquor should only be granted to persons holding a justices’ licence or—to use the more correct term—certificate. The actual permission to sell was obtained on payment of the proper dues from the excise authorities, but they had no power to withhold it from persons authorized by the justices. And that was still the system in 1910.

Licensing since 1828.—There was no change in the form of the British licensing system between the consolidation of the law in 1825-1828 and the time (1910) at which we write; but there were a great many changes in administrative detail and some changes in principle. Only the most important can be mentioned. In 1830 a bold experiment was tried in exempting the sale of beer from the requirement of a justice’s licence. Any householder rated to the parish was entitled, under a bond with sureties, to take out an excise licence for the sale of beer for consumption on or off the premises. This measure, which applied to England and was commonly known as the Duke of Wellington’s Act, had two objects; one was to encourage the consumption of beer in the hope of weaning the people from spirits; the other was to counteract the practice of “tieing” public-houses to breweries by creating free ones. With regard to the first, it was believed that spirit-drinking was increasing again at the time and was doing a great deal of harm. The reason appears to have been a great rise in the returns of consumption, which followed a lowering of the duty on spirits from 11s. 8¼d. to 7s. a gallon in 1825. The latter step was taken because of the prevalence of illicit distillation. In 1823 the duty had been lowered for the same reason in Scotland from 6s. 2d. and in Ireland from 5s. 7d. to a uniform rate of 2s. 4¾d. a gallon, with so much success in turning the trade from illegal to legal channels that a similar change was thought advisable in England, as stated. The legal or apparent consumption rose at once from 7 to nearly 13 million gallons; but it is doubtful if there was much or any real increase. According to an official statement, more than half the spirits consumed in 1820 were illicit. The facts are of much interest in showing what had already been shown in the 18th century, that the liquor trade will not bear unlimited taxation; the traffic is driven underground. It is highly probable that this accounts for part of the great fall in consumption which followed the raising of the spirit duty from 11s. to 14s. 9d. under Mr Lloyd George’s Budget in 1909. With regard to “tied” houses, this is the original form of public-house. When beer was first brewed for sale a “tap” for retail purposes was attached to the brewery, and public-houses may still be found bearing the name “The Brewery Tap.” At the beginning of the 19th century complaints were made of the increasing number of houses owned or controlled by breweries and of the dependence of the licence-holders, and in 1817 a Select Committee inquired into the subject. The Beerhouse Act does not appear to have checked the practice or to have diminished the consumption of spirits; but it led to a great increase in the number of beer-houses. It was modified in 1834 and 1840, but not repealed until 1869, when beer-houses were again brought under the justices.

Most of the other very numerous changes in the law were concerned with conditions imposed on licence-holders. The hours of closing are the most important of these. Apart from the ancient regulations of closing during divine service on Sunday, there were no restrictions in 1828; but after that at least a dozen successive acts dealt with the point. The first important measure was applied in London under a Police Act in 1839; it ordered licensed houses to be closed from midnight on Saturday to mid-day on Sunday, and produced a wonderful effect on public order. In 1853 a very important act (Forbes Mackenzie) was passed for Scotland, by which sale on Sunday was wholly forbidden, except to travellers and lodgers, and was restricted on week days to the hours between 8 A.M. and 11 P.M. This act also introduced a distinction between hotels, public-houses and grocers licensed to sell liquor, and forbade the sale to children under 14 years, except as messengers, and to intoxicated persons. In England, after a series of enactments in the direction of progressive restriction, uniform regulations as to the hours of opening and closing for licensed premises were applied in 1874, and are still in force (see below). In 1878 complete Sunday closing, as in Scotland, was applied in Ireland, with the exemption of the five largest towns, Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick and Waterford; and in 1881 the same provision was extended to Wales.

Other changes worthy of note are the following. In 1860 the free sale of wine for consumption off the premises was introduced by the Wine and Refreshment Houses Act, which authorized any shopkeeper to take out an excise licence for this purpose; the licences so created were subsequently known as grocers’ licences. By the same act refreshment houses were placed under certain restrictions, but were permitted to sell wine for consumption on the premises under an excise licence. In 1861 spirit dealers were similarly authorized to sell spirits by the bottle. The effect of these measures was to exempt a good deal of the wine and spirit trade from the control of the justices, and the idea was to wean people from public-house drinking by encouraging them to take what they wanted at home and in eating-houses.

In 1869 this policy of directing the habits of the people into channels thought to be preferable, which had been inaugurated in 1830, was abandoned for one of greater stringency all round, which has since been maintained. All the beer and wine retail licences were brought under the discretion of the justices, but they might only refuse “off” licences and the renewal of previously existing beer-house “on” licences upon specified grounds, namely (1) unsatisfactory character, (2) disorder, (3) previous misconduct, (4) insufficient qualification of applicant or premises. In 1872 an important act further extended the policy of restriction; new licences had to be confirmed, and the right of appeal in case of refusal was taken away; penalties for offences were increased and extended, particularly for public drunkenness, and for permitting drunkenness; the sale of spirits to persons under 16 was prohibited. In 1876 many of these provisions were extended to Scotland. In 1886 the sale of liquor for consumption on the premises was forbidden to persons under 13 years. In 1901 the sale for “off” consumption was prohibited to persons under 14, except in sealed vessels; this is known as the Child Messenger Act. These measures for the protection of children were extended in 1908 by an act which came into operation in April 1909, excluding children under 14 from the public-house bars altogether. The progressive protection of children by the law well illustrates the influence of changing public opinion. The successive measures enumerated were not due to increasing contamination of children caused by their frequenting the public-house, but to recognition of the harm they sustain thereby. The practice of taking and sending children to the public-house, and of serving them with drink, is an old one in England. A great deal of evidence on the subject was given before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1834; but it is only in recent years, when the general concern for children has undergone a remarkable development in all directions, that attempts have been made to stop it. In 1902 clubs, which had been increasing, and habitual drunkards, were brought under the law.

In 1904 a new principle was introduced into the licensing system in England, and this, too, was due to change in public opinion. Between 1830 and 1869, under the influence of the legislation described above, a continuous increase in the number of public-houses took place in England; but after 1869 they began to diminish through stricter control, and this process has gone on continuously ever since. Reduction of numbers became a prime object with many licensing benches; they were reluctant to grant new licences, and made a point of extinguishing old ones year by year. At first this was easily effected under the new and stringent provisions of the legislation of 1869-1872, but it gradually became more difficult as the worst houses disappeared and the remaining ones were better conducted, and gave less and less excuse for interference. But the desire for reduction still gained ground, and a new principle was adopted. Houses against which no ill-conduct was alleged were said to be “superfluous,” and on that ground licences were taken away. But this, again, offended the general sense of justice; it was felt that to take away a man’s living or a valuable property for no fault of his own was to inflict a great hardship. To meet the difficulty the principle of compensation was introduced by the act of 1904. It provides that compensation shall be paid to a licence-holder (also to the owner of the premises) whose licence is withdrawn on grounds other than misconduct of the house or unsuitability of premises or of character. The compensation is paid out of a fund raised by an annual charge on the remaining licensed houses. This act has been followed by a large reduction of licences.

State of the Law in 1910.—In consequence of the long history and evolution of legislation in the United Kingdom and of the innumerable minor changes introduced, only a few of which have been mentioned above, the law has become excessively complicated. The differences between the English, Scottish and Irish codes, the distinction between the several kinds of liquor, between consumption on and off the premises, between new licences and the renewal of old ones, between premises licensed before 1869 and those licensed since, between excise and justices’ licences—all these and many other points make the subject exceedingly intricate; and it is further complicated by the uncertainty of the courts and a vast body of case-made law. Only a summary of the chief provisions can be given here.

1. The open sale of intoxicating liquor (spirits, wine, sweets, beer, cider) by retail is confined to persons holding an excise licence, with a few unimportant exceptions, including medicine.

2. A condition precedent to obtaining such a licence is permission granted by the justices who are the licensing authority and called a justices’ licence or certificate. Theatres, passenger boats and canteens are exempted from this condition; also certain dealers in spirits and wine.

3. Justices’ licences are granted at special annual meetings of the local justices, called Brewster Sessions. Justices having a pecuniary interest in the liquor trade of the district, except as railway shareholders, are disqualified from acting; “bias” due to other interests may also be a disqualification.

4. Justices’ licences are only granted for one year and must be renewed annually, with the exception of a particular class, created by the act of 1904 and valid for a term of years. Distinctions are made between granting a new licence and renewing an old one. The proceedings are stricter and more summary in the case of a new licence; notice of application must be given to the local authorities; the premises must be of a certain annual value; a plan of the premises must be deposited beforehand in the case of an “on” licence; the justices may impose conditions and have full discretion to refuse without any right of appeal; the licence, if granted, must be confirmed by a higher authority. In the case of old licences on the other hand, no notice is required; they are renewed to the former holders on application, as a matter of right; unless there is opposition or objection, which may come from the police or from outside parties or from the justices themselves. If there is objection the renewal may be refused, but only on specified grounds—namely misconduct, unfitness of premises or character, disqualification; otherwise compensation is payable on the plan explained above. There is a right of appeal to a higher court against refusal. In all cases, whether the justices have full discretion or not, they must exercise their discretion in a judicial manner and not arbitrarily.

5. Licences may be transferred from one person to another in case of death, sickness, bankruptcy, change of tenancy, wilful omission to apply for renewal, forfeiture or disqualification. Licences may also be transferred from one house to another in certain circumstances.

6. A licence may be forfeited through the conviction of the holder of certain specified serious offences.

7. Persons may similarly be disqualified from holding a licence.

8. Liquor may only be sold on the premises specified in the licence and during the following hours:—week-days; London, 5 A.M. to 12.30 P.M. (Saturday, midnight); large towns 6 A.M. to 11 P.M.; other places 6 A.M. to 10 P.M.—Sundays; London, 1 P.M. to 3 P.M., 6 P.M. to 11 P.M.; other places 12.30 P.M. (or 1 P.M.) to 2.30 P.M. (or 3 P.M.), 6 P.M. to 10 P.M.; Christmas Day and Good Friday are counted as Sunday. In Scotland, Wales and Ireland (except the five chief towns) no sale is permitted on Sunday. Licence holders may sell during prohibited hours to lodgers staying in the house and to bona-fide travellers, who must be not less than 3 m. from the place they slept in on the previous night. Extension of hours of sale may be granted for special occasions and for special localities (e.g. early markets).

9. The following proceedings are prohibited in licensed premises: permitting children under 14 to be in a bar, selling any liquor to children under 14 for consumption on the premises, selling liquor to children under 14 as messengers except in corked and sealed vessels, selling spirits for consumption on the premises to persons under 16; selling to drunken persons and to habitual drunkards; permitting drunkenness, permitting disorder, harbouring prostitutes, harbouring constables, supplying liquor to constables on duty, bribing constables, permitting betting (persistent) or gaming, permitting premises to be used as a brothel, harbouring thieves, permitting seditious meetings; permitting the payment of wagers on premises; permitting premises to be used for election committee rooms. In and within 20 m. of London music and dancing are prohibited on licensed premises except under special licences.

10. The police have the right of entry to licensed premises at any time for the purpose of preventing or detecting offences.

11. The injurious adulteration of any liquor is prohibited; also the dilution of beer; but dilution of spirits is not unlawful if the customer’s attention is drawn to the fact.

12. All clubs in which intoxicating liquor is sold must be registered. If the liquor is the collective property of the members no licence is required for retail sale, but no liquor can be sold for consumption off the premises. Clubs run for profit, known as proprietory clubs, are on the same legal footing as public-houses.

13. Penalties incurred by licence-holders for offences under the foregoing provisions. For selling any other kind of liquor than that authorized—first offence, fine not exceeding £50 or one month’s imprisonment; second offence, fine not exceeding £100 or 3 months’ imprisonment with forfeiture of licence and, if ordered, confiscation of liquor and disqualification for five years; third offence, fine not exceeding £100 or six months’ imprisonment with forfeiture of licence and, if ordered, confiscation of liquor and unlimited disqualification. Under the Excise Acts the penalty for selling without a licence is—for spirits, a fine of £100, confiscation of liquor, forfeiture of licence and perpetual disqualification; for wine, a fine of £20; for beer or cider “on” consumption £20, “off” consumption £10. For sale to children; first offence, fine up to £2, second offence, fine up to £5. Permitting premises to be used as a brothel, fine of £20, forfeiture of licence and perpetual disqualification. Other offences, fine up to £10 for first conviction, up to £20 for second.

14. The following are offences on the part of the public. Being found drunk on any highway or other public place or on licensed premises; penalty, fine up to 10s. for first conviction, up to 20s. for second, and up to 40s. for third. Riotous or disorderly conduct while drunk; fine up to 40s. Falsely pretending to be a traveller or lodger; fine up to £5. Causing children to be in a bar or sending them for liquor contrary to the law; fine up to £2 for first and up to £5 for second offence. Attempt to obtain liquor by a person notified to the police as an habitual drunkard; fine up to 20s. for first offence, up to 40s. for subsequent ones. Giving drunken persons liquor or helping them to get it on licensed premises; fine up to 40s. or imprisonment for a month. Causing children under 11 to sing or otherwise perform on licensed premises, and causing boys under 14 or girls under 16 to do so between 9 P.M. and 6 A.M.; fine up to £25 or three months’ imprisonment.

The foregoing statement of the law does not in all respects apply to Scotland and Ireland, where the administration differs somewhat from that of England. In Scotland the provost and bailies are the licensing authority in royal and parliamentary burghs, and elsewhere the justices. They hold two sessions annually for granting licences and have considerably more power in some respects than in England. The hours of opening are from 8 A.M. to 11 P.M. (week days only), but there is a discretionary power to close at 10 P.M. In Ireland the licensing authority is divided between quarter sessions and petty sessions. Public-house licences are granted and transferred at quarter sessions; renewals and other licences are dealt with at petty sessions. In Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Londonderry and Galway the licensing jurisdiction of quarter sessions is exercised by the recorder, elsewhere by the justices assembled and presided over by the county court judge. The licensing jurisdiction of petty sessions is exercised by two or more justices, but in Dublin by one divisional justice.

Excise Licences and Taxation.—The excise licences may be divided into four classes, (1) manufacturers’, (2) wholesale dealers’, (3) retail dealers’ for “on” consumption, (4) retail dealers’ for “off” consumption. Only the two last classes come under the jurisdiction of the justices, as explained above. The total number of different excise licences is between 30 and 40, but several of them are subvarieties and unimportant or are peculiar to Scotland or Ireland. The duties charged on them were greatly changed and increased by the Finance Act of 1909-1910, and it seems desirable to state the changes thus introduced. The table on the previous page gives the principal kinds of licence with the old and the new duties.

There are in addition “occasional” licences valid for one or more days, which come under the jurisdiction of the justices; the duty is 2s. 6d. a day for the full licence (raised to 10s.) and 1s. for beer or wine only (raised to 5s.).

The total amount raised by the excise licences in the United Kingdom for the financial year ending 31st March 1909 was £2,209,928. Of this amount £1,712,160, or nearly four-fifths, was derived from the full or publicans’ licence, £126,053 from the wholesale spirit licence and £88,167 from the beer-house licence; the rest are comparatively unimportant. But the licences only represent a small part of the revenue derived from liquor. The great bulk of it is collected by means of duties on manufacture and importation. The total amount for the year ending March 1909 was £37,428,189, or nearly 30% of the total taxation revenue of the country. The excise duties on the manufacture of spirits yielded £17,456,366 and those on beer £12,691,332; customs duties on importation yielded £5,046,949. The excise duty on spirits was at the rate of 11s. a gallon, raised at the end of April 1909 to 14s. 9d.; the corresponding duty on beer is 7s. 9d. a barrel (36 gallons). The relative taxation of the liquor trade in the United States, which has become important as a political argument, is discussed below.

Effects of Legislation.—The only effects which can be stated with precision and ascribed with certainty to legislation are the increase or diminution of the number of licences or licensed premises; secondary effects, such as increase or diminution of consumption and of drunkenness, are affected by so many causes that only by a very careful, well-informed and dispassionate examination of the facts can positive conclusions be drawn with regard to the influence of legislation (see [Temperance]). There is no more prolific ground for fallacious statements and arguments, whether unconscious or deliberate. The course of legislation traced above, however, does permit the broad conclusion that great laxity and the multiplication of facilities tend to increase drinking and disorder in a country like the United Kingdom, and that extreme severity produces the same or worse effects by driving the trade into illicit channels, which escape control, and thus really increasing facilities while apparently diminishing them. The most successful course has always been a mean between these extremes in the form of restraint judiciously applied and adjusted to circumstances. The most salient feature of the situation as influenced by the law in recent years is the progressive reduction in the number of licensed houses since 1869. Previously they had been increasing in England.

The number of public-houses, including beer-houses for “on” consumption, in 1831 was 82,466; in 1869 it had risen to 118,602; in 1909 it had fallen again to 94,794. But if the proportion of public-houses to population be taken there has been a continuous fall since 1831, as the following table shows:—

England and Wales.

The change may be put in another way. In 1831 there was one public-house to 168 persons; in 1909 the proportion was 1 to 375. The proportional reduction goes back to the 18th century. In 1732 there was in London one public-house to every 50 persons (see above).

In Scotland the number of public-houses has been diminishing since 1829, when there were 17,713; in 1909 there were only 7065, while the population had more than doubled. The number in proportion to population has therefore fallen far more rapidly than in England, thus—1831, 1 to 134 persons; 1909, 1 to 690 persons. In Ireland the story is different. There has been a fall in the number of public-houses since 1829, when there were 20,548; but it has not been large or continuous and the population has been steadily diminishing during the time, so that the proportion to population has actually increased, thus—1831, 1 to 395 persons; 1909, 1 to 249 persons. As a whole, however, the United Kingdom shows a large and progressive diminution of public-houses to population; nor is this counterbalanced by an increase of “off” licences. If we take the whole number of licences we get the following movement in recent years:—

No. of Retail Licences (“on” and “off”) per 10,000 of Population.

The diminution in the number of public-houses in England was markedly accelerated by the act of 1904, which introduced the principle of compensation. The average annual rate of reduction in the ten years 1894-1904 before the act was 359; in the four years 1905-1908; after the act it rose to 1388. The average annual number of licences suppressed with compensation was 1137, and the average annual amount of compensation paid was £1,096,946, contributed by the trade as explained above.

The reduction of public-houses has been accompanied in recent years by a constant increase in the number of clubs. By the act of 1902, which imposed registration, they were brought under some control and the number of legal clubs was accurately ascertained. Previously the number was only estimated from certain data with approximate accuracy. The following table gives the official figures:—

Clubs: England and Wales.

Clubs represent alternative channels to the licensed trade and they are under much less stringent control; they have no prohibited hours and the police have not the same right of entry. In so far, therefore, as clubs replace public-houses the reduction of the latter does not mean diminished facilities for drinking, but the contrary. In the years 1903-1908 the average number of clubs proceeded against for offences was 74 and the average number struck off the register was 52. The increase of clubs and the large proportion struck off the register suggest the need of caution in dealing with the licensed trade; over-stringent measures defeat their own end.

Persistent attempts have for many years been made to effect radical changes in the British system of licensing by the introduction of some of the methods adopted in other countries, and particularly those in the United States. But it is difficult to engraft new and alien methods, involving violent change, upon an ancient system consolidated by successive statutory enactments and confirmed by time and usage. The course of the law and administration since 1869 has made it particularly difficult. The stringent conditions imposed on licence-holders have given those who fulfil them a claim to consideration, and the reduction of licences, by limiting the market, has enhanced their value. An expectation of renewal, in the absence of misconduct, has grown up by usage and been confirmed by the law, which recognizes the distinction between granting a new licence and renewing an old one, by the treasury which levies death duties on the assumption that a licence is an enduring property, by local authorities which assess upon the same assumption, and by the High Courts of Justice, whose decisions have repeatedly turned on this point. The consequence of all this is that very large sums have been invested in licensed property, which has become part of the settled order of society; and to destroy it by some sudden innovation would cause a great shock. The position is entirely different in other countries where no such control has ever been exercised. It is possible to impose a new system where previously there was none, but not to replace suddenly an old and settled one for something entirely different. Only the most convincing proof of the need and the advantages of the change would justify it; and such proof has not been forthcoming. The British system has the great merit of combining adaptability to different circumstances and to changing customs with continuity and steadiness of administration. The advantages of abandoning it for some other are more than doubtful, the difficulties are real and serious. Over a very long period it has been repeatedly readjusted in conformity with the movement of public opinion and of national habits; while under it the executive have gradually got the traffic well in hand, and a great and progressive improvement in order and conduct has taken place. The process is gradual but sure, and the record will compare favourably with that of any other comparable country. Further readjustment will follow and is desirable. The great defect of the law is its extreme complexity; it needs recasting and simplification. There are too many kinds of licence, and the classification does not correspond with the actual conditions of the traffic. Some licences are obsolete and superfluous; others make no distinction between branches of the trade which fulfil entirely different functions and require different treatment. The full or publican’s licence, which is incomparably the most important, places on the same legal footing hotels, restaurants, village inns and mere drinking bars, and the lack of distinction is a great stumbling-block. In the attempt made in 1908 to introduce new legislation it was found necessary to incorporate distinctions between different classes of establishment, although that was not contemplated in the original bill. It will always be found necessary whenever the subject is seriously approached, because the law has to deal with things as they actually are. It does not fall within the scope of this article to discuss the numerous controversial questions which arise in connexion with various legislative proposals for dealing with the liquor traffic; but an account of the methods which it has been proposed to adopt from other countries will be found below.

The United States

The liquor legislation of the United States presents a great contrast to that of the United Kingdom, but it is not less interesting in an entirely different way. In place of a single homogeneous system gradually evolved in the course of centuries it embraces a whole series of different ones based on the most diverse principles and subject to sudden changes and frequent experiments. It is not sufficiently understood in Europe that the legislatures of the several states are sovereign in regard to internal affairs and make what laws they please subject to the proviso that they cannot over-ride the Federal law. There is therefore no uniformity in regard to such matters as liquor legislation, and it is a mistake to speak of any particular system as representing the whole country. The United States government only interferes with the traffic to tax it for revenue, and to regulate the sale of liquor to Indians, to soldiers, etc. The liquor traffic is subject—whether in the form of manufacture, wholesale or retail trade—to a uniform tax of 25 dollars (£5) per annum imposed on every one engaged in it. Congress, under the constitution, controls interstate commerce, and the Supreme Court has decided that without its consent no state can prevent a railway or other carrying agency from bringing liquor to any point within its borders from outside. Thus no state can keep out liquor or prevent its consumption, but any state legislature may make what internal regulations it pleases and may prohibit the manufacture and sale altogether within its own borders. It may go further. In 1887 a judgment was delivered by the Supreme Court of the United States that it is within the discretionary power of a state to protect public health, safety and morals even by the destruction of property without compensation, and that the constitution of the United States is not thereby violated. Use has been made of this power in Kansas, and it appears therefore that persons who engage in the liquor trade do so at their own risk. There is in fact no stability at all except in a few states which have incorporated some principle in their constitutions, and even that does not ensure continuity of practice, as means are easily found for evading the law or substituting some other system which amounts to the same thing. As a whole the control of the liquor traffic oscillates violently between attempted suppression and great freedom combined with heavy taxation of licensed houses.

In the great majority of the states some form of licensing exists; it is the prevailing system and was adopted, no doubt from England, at an early period. It is exercised in various ways. The licensing authority may be the municipality or a specially constituted body or the police or a judicial body. The last, which is the method in Pennsylvania, seems to be exceptional. According to Mr Fanshawe there is a general tendency, due to the prevailing corruption, to withdraw from municipal authorities power over the licensing, and to place this function in the hands of commissioners, who may be elected or nominated. In New York state the licensing commissioners used to be nominated in cities by the mayors and elected elsewhere; but by the Raines law of 1896 the whole administration was placed under a state commissioner appointed by the governor with the consent of the Senate. A similar plan is in force in some important cities in other states. In Boston the licensing is in the hands of a police board appointed by the governor; in Baltimore and St Louis the authority is vested in commissioners similarly appointed; and in Washington the licensing commissioners are appointed by the president. In Pennsylvania, where the court of quarter sessions is the authority, the vesting of licensing in a judicial body dates back to 1676 and bears the stamp of English influence. It is noteworthy that in Philadelphia and Pittsburg (Allegheny county) the judicial court was for a time given up in favour of commissioners, but the change was a great failure and abandoned in 1888. The powers of the licensing authority vary widely; in some cases the only grounds of refusal are conduct and character, and licences are virtually granted to every applicant; in others the discretion to refuse is absolute. In Massachusetts the number of licences allowed bears a fixed ratio to the population, namely 1 to 1000, except in Boston, where it is 1 to 500, but as a rule where licences are given they are given freely. They are valid for a year and granted on conditions. The first and most general condition is the payment of a fee or tax, which varies in amount in different states. Under the “high licence” system (see below) it generally varies according to the size of the locality and the class of licence where different classes are recognized. In Massachusetts there are six licences; three for consumption on the premises—namely (1) full licence for all liquors, (2) beer, cider, and light wine, (3) beer and cider; two for consumption off the premises—namely (1) spirits, (2) other liquors; the sixth is for druggists. In New York state also there are six classes of licence, though they are not quite the same; but in many states there appears to be only one licence, and no distinction between on and off sale, wholesale or retail. Another condition generally imposed in addition to the tax is a heavy bond with sureties; it varies in amount but is usually not less than 2000 dollars (£400) and may be as high as 6000 dollars (£1200). A condition precedent to the granting of a licence imposed in some states is the deposit of a petition or application some time beforehand, which may have to be backed by a certain number of local residents or tax-payers. In Pennsylvania the required number is 12, and this is the common practice elsewhere; in Missouri a majority of tax-payers is required, and the licence may even then be refused, but if the petition is signed by two-thirds of the tax-payers the licensing authority is bound to grant it. This seems to be a sort of genuine local option. Provision is also generally made for hearing objectors. Another condition sometimes required (Massachusetts and Iowa) is the consent of owners of adjoining property. In some states no licences are permitted within a stated distance of certain institutions; e.g. public parks (Missouri) and schools (Massachusetts). Regulations imposed on the licensed trade nearly always include prohibition of sale to minors under 18 and to drunkards, on Sundays, public holidays and election days, and prohibition of the employment of barmaids. Sunday closing, which is universal, dates at least from 1816 (Indiana) and is probably much older. The hours of closing on week days vary considerably but are usually 10 P.M. or 11 P.M. Other things are often prohibited including indecent pictures, games and music.

State Prohibition.—In a few states no licences are allowed. State prohibition was first introduced in 1846 under the influence of a strong agitation in Maine, and within a few years the example was followed by the other New England states; by Vermont in 1852, Connecticut in 1854, New Hampshire in 1855 and later by Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They have all now after a more or less prolonged trial given it up except Maine. Other states which have tried and abandoned it are Illinois (1851-1853), Indiana (1855-1858), Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota. The great Middle states have either never tried it, as in the case of New York (where it was enacted in 1855 but declared unconstitutional), Pennsylvania and New Jersey, or only gave it a nominal trial, as with Illinois and Indiana. A curious position came about in Ohio,[1] one of the great industrial states. It did not adopt prohibition, which forbids the manufacture and sale of liquor; but in 1851 it abandoned licensing, which had been in force since 1792, and incorporated a provision in the constitution declaring that no licence should thereafter be granted in the state. The position then was that retail sale without a licence was illegal and that no licence could be granted. This singular state of things was changed in 1886 by the “Dow law,” which authorized a tax on the trade and rendered it legal without expressly sanctioning or licensing it. There were therefore no licences and no licensing machinery, but the traffic was taxed and conditions imposed. In effect the Dow law amounted to repeal of prohibition and its replacement by the freest possible form of licensing. In Iowa, which early adopted a prohibitory law, still nominally in force, a law, known as the “mulct law,” was passed in 1894 for taxing the trade and practically legalizing it under conditions. The story of the forty years’ struggle in this state between the prohibition agitation and the natural appetites of mankind is exceedingly instructive; it is an extraordinary revelation of political intrigue and tortuous proceedings, and an impressive warning against the folly of trying to coerce the personal habits of a large section of the population against their will. It ended in a sort of compromise, in which the coercive principle is preserved in one law and personal liberty vindicated by another contradictory one. The result may be satisfactory, but it might be attained in a less expensive manner. What suffers is the principle of law itself, which is brought into disrepute.

State prohibition, abandoned by the populous New England and central states, has in recent years found a home in more remote regions. In 1907 it was in force in five states—Maine, Kansas, North Dakota, Georgia and Oklahoma; in January, 1909, it came into operation in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina; and in July 1909 in Tennessee.

Local Prohibition.—The limited form of prohibition known as local veto is much more extensively applied. It is an older plan than state prohibition, having been adopted by the legislature of Indiana in 1832. Georgia followed in the next year, and then other states took it up for several years until the rise of state prohibition in the middle of the century caused it to fall into neglect for a time. But the states which adopted and then abandoned general prohibition fell back on the local form, and a great many others have also adopted it. In 1907 it was in force in over 30 states, including all the most populous and important, with one or two exceptions. But the extent to which it is applied varies very widely and is constantly changing, as different places take it up and drop it again. Some alternate in an almost regular manner every two or three years, or even every year; and periodical oscillations of a general character occur in favour of the plan or against it as the result of organized agitation followed by reaction. The wide discrepancies between the practice of different states are shown by some statistics collected in 1907, when the movement was running favourably to the adoption of no licence. In Tennessee the whole state was under prohibition with the exception of 5 municipalities; Arkansas, 56 out of 75 counties; Florida, 35 out of 46 counties; Mississippi, 56 out of 77 counties; North Carolina, 70 out of 97 counties; Vermont, 3 out of 6 cities and 208 out of 241 towns. These appear to be the most prohibitive states, and they are all of a rural character. At the other end of the scale were Pennsylvania with 1 county and a few towns (“town” in America is generally equivalent to “village” in England); Michigan, 1 county and a few towns; California, parts of 8 or 10 counties. New York had 308 out of 933 towns, Ohio, 480 out of 768 towns, Massachusetts, 19 out of 33 cities and 249 out of 321 towns. At the end of 1909 a strong reaction against the prohibition policy set in, notably in Massachusetts.

There is no more uniformity in the mode of procedure than in the extent of application. At least five methods are distinguished. In the most complete and regular form a vote is taken every year in all localities whether there shall be licences or not in the ensuing year and is decided by a bare majority. A second method of applying the general vote is to take it at any time, but not oftener than once in four years, on the demand of one-tenth of the electorate. A third plan is to apply this principle locally and put the question to the vote, when demanded, in any locality. A fourth and entirely different system is to invest the local authority with powers to decide whether there shall be licences or not; and a fifth is to give residents power to prevent licences by means of protest or petition. The first two methods are those most widely in force; but the third plan of taking a local vote by itself is adopted in some important states, including New York, Ohio and Illinois. Opinions differ widely with regard to the success of local veto, but all independent observers agree that it is more successful than state prohibition, and the preference accorded to it by so many states after prolonged experience proves that public opinion broadly endorses that view. Its advantage lies in its adaptability to local circumstances and local opinion. It prevails mainly in rural districts and small towns; in the larger towns it is best tolerated where they are in close proximity to “safety valves” or licensed areas in which liquor can be obtained; the large cities do not adopt it. On the other hand, it has some serious disadvantages. The perpetually renewed struggle between the advocates and opponents of prohibition is a constant cause of social and political strife; and the alternate shutting up and opening of public houses in many places makes continuity of administration impossible, prevents the executive from getting the traffic properly in hand, upsets the habits of the people, demoralizes the trade and stands in the way of steady improvement.

Public Dispensaries.—This entirely different system of controlling the traffic has been in general operation in one state only, South Carolina; but it was also applied to certain areas in the neighbouring states of North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. The coloured element is very strong in these states, especially in South Carolina, where the coloured far exceeds the white population. The dispensary system was inaugurated there in 1893. It had been preceded by a licensing system with local veto (adopted in 1882), but a strong agitation for state prohibition brought matters to a crisis in 1891. The usual violent political struggle, which is the only constant feature of liquor legislation in the United States, took place, partly on temperance and partly on economic grounds; and a way out was found by adopting an idea from the town of Athens in Georgia, where the liquor trade was run by the municipality through a public dispensary. A law was passed in 1892 embodying this principle but applying it to the whole state. The measure was fiercely contested in the courts and the legislature for years and it underwent numerous amendments, but it survived. Under it the state became the sole purveyor of liquor, buying wholesale from the manufacturers and selling retail through dispensaries under public management and only for consumption off the premises. Many changes were introduced from time to time without abandoning the principle, but in 1907 the system of state control was replaced by one of county administration. Local veto is also in force, and thus the localities have the choice of a dispensary or no sale at all. The regulations are very strict. The dispensaries are few and only open on week-days and during the day-time; they close at sunset. Liquor is only sold in bottles and in not less quantities than half a pint of spirits and a pint of beer, and it must be taken away; bars are abolished. There is a general consensus of testimony to the effect of the system in improving public order especially among the coloured population, who are very susceptible to drink. The law seems to be well carried out in general, but Charleston and Columbia, the only two considerable towns, are honeycombed with illicit drink-shops, as the writer has proved by personal experience. Columbia is the capital and the seat of cotton manufactures, as are all the larger towns, with the exception of Charleston, which is the port and business centre. The population of the state is predominantly rural, and local prohibition obtains in 18 out of 41 counties.

The following statistical comparison, extracted from the United States Census of 1900 and the Inland Revenue Returns by Mr W. O. Tatum (New Encyclopedia of Social Reform) and here presented in tabular form, is highly instructive. It shows the population and number of liquor dealers paying the United States tax in two prohibition states, one state under what is considered the best licensing system, and South Carolina.

This table may be said to epitomize the results of the United States restrictive liquor laws. It presents examples of three different systems; the proportion of retail liquor sellers to population is—under complete prohibition, 1 to 508 and 1 to 475; under licence and local prohibition, 1 to 530; under dispensary and local prohibition, 1 to 2509. But the remarkable thing is the enormous amount of illicit traffic existing under all three systems. It is incomparably greatest under complete prohibition because the whole of the traffic in these states is illicit. In South Carolina one of the wholesale dealers and 388 of the 534 retailers were illicit. In Massachusetts the number cannot be stated, but it is very large. If the whole state were under licence the total legal number of licences, which is limited in proportion to population (see above), would be 3400; and in that case there would be some 1700 illicit retailers. But a large part of the state, probably more than half, is under local prohibition, so that the majority of the 5000 retail dealers must be illicit. These facts, which are typical and not exceptional, reveal the failure of the laws to control the traffic; only partial or spasmodic attempts are made to enforce them and to a great extent they are ignored by common consent. The illegal trade is carried on so openly that the United States revenue officers have no difficulty in collecting the federal tax. It is not a satisfactory state of things, or one which countries where law is respected would care to imitate. The example is a good lesson in what to avoid.

Taxation.—Mention has been made above of the federal and state taxation imposed on the liquor trade. The former is uniform; the latter varies greatly, even in those states which have adopted the “high licence.” This system is intended to fulfil two purposes; to act as an automatic check on the number of licences and to produce revenue. It was introduced in Nebraska in 1881, when a tax of 1000 dollars (£200) was placed on saloons (public houses) in large towns, and half that amount in smaller ones. The practice gradually spread and has now been adopted by a large number of states, noticeably the populous and industrial north-eastern and central states. In Massachusetts, where the high licence was adopted in 1874 when the state returned to licensing after a trial of prohibition, the fees are exceptionally high, the minimum for a fully licensed on and off house being 1300 dollars (£260); in Boston the average tax is £310. In New York state it ranges from 150 dollars (£30) in sparsely populated districts to 1200 dollars (£240), and in Pennsylvania it is much the same. In New Jersey, on the other hand, it ranges from £20 to £60; in Connecticut from £50 to £90; in Rhode Island from £40 to £80. In Missouri, which has a special system of its own and a sort of sliding scale, great variations occur and in some cases the tax exceeds £500. In Michigan it is uniform at £100. The mean for the large cities is £133. The revenue derived from this source is distributed in many ways, but is generally divided in varying proportions between the state, the county and the municipality; sometimes a proportion goes to the relief of the poor, to road-making or some other public purpose. The amount levied in the great cities is very large. It will be seen from the foregoing that the taxation of licences is much heavier in the United States than in the United Kingdom. The total yield was ascertained by a special inquiry in 1896 and found to be rather less than 12 millions sterling; in the same year the yield from the same source in the United Kingdom was just under 2 millions. Allowing for difference of population the American rate of taxation was 3¼ times as great as the British. It has been inferred that the liquor trade is much more highly taxed in the United States and that it would bear largely increased taxation in the United Kingdom; that argument was brought forward in support of Mr Lloyd George’s budget of 1909. But it only takes account of the tax on licences and leaves out of account the tax on liquor which is the great source of revenue in the United Kingdom, as has been shown above. The scales are much lower in the United States, especially on spirits, which are only taxed at the average rate of 5s. 8d. a gallon against 11s. (raised to 14s. 9d. in 1909) in the United Kingdom. Mr Frederic Thompson has calculated out the effect of the two sets of rates and shown that if British rates were applied to the United States the average yield in the three years ending 1908 would be raised from 44 millions to 76 millions; and conversely if American rates were applied to the United Kingdom the average yield would be lowered from 36 millions to 23 millions. Taking licences and liquor taxation together he finds that the application of the British standards for both would still raise the total yield in the United States by 39%; and that even the exceptionally high rates prevailing in Massachusetts would, if applied to the United Kingdom, produce some 4 millions less revenue than the existing taxation. Other calculations based on the consumption and taxation per head lead to the same conclusion that the trade is actually taxed at a considerably higher rate in the United Kingdom. In the three years ending 1908 the average amount paid per head in taxation was 13s. 8¾d. in the United States and 17s. 6¾d. in the United Kingdom. It may be added that the method of taxing licences heavily has certain disadvantages; it stimulates that illicit trade which is the most outstanding feature of the traffic in the United States, and combined with the extreme insecurity of tenure involved in local option it gives licence-holders additional inducements to make as much money as possible by any means available, while they have the opportunity, for no compensation is ever paid for sudden dispossession. The notion that the trade will stand an indefinite amount of taxation is a dangerous and oft-proved fallacy.

European Countries.

With the exception of Sweden, Norway and Russia, which have special systems of their own, the continental countries of Europe have as yet paid comparatively little legislative attention to the subject of the liquor traffic, which is recognized by the law but for the most part freely permitted with a minimum of interference. Differences exist, but, generally speaking, establishments may be opened under a very simple procedure, which amounts to an elementary form of licensing, and the permission is only withdrawn for some definite and serious offence. Regulations and conditions are for the most part left to the discretion of the local authority and the police and are not burdensome. The reason for such freedom as compared with the elaborate and stringent codes of the United Kingdom and the United States is not less concern for public welfare but the simple fact that the traffic gives less trouble and causes less harm through the abuse of drink; the habits of the people are different in regard to the character of the drinks consumed, the mode of consumption and the type of establishment. Cafés, restaurants and beer-gardens are much more common, and mere pot-houses less so than in the English-speaking countries. Where trouble arises and engages the attention of the authorities and the legislature, it is almost invariably found to be associated with the consumption of spirits. In several of the wine-producing countries, which are generally marked by the temperate habits of the people, the widespread havoc among the vines caused some years ago by the phylloxera led to an increased consumption of spirits which had a bad effect and aroused considerable anxiety. This was notably the case in France, where an anti-alcohol congress, held in 1903, marked the rise of public and scientific opinion on the subject. Temperance societies have become active, and in some countries there is a movement towards stricter regulations or at least a demand for it; but in others the present law is a relaxation of earlier ones.

France.—The present law governing the licensing of establishments where liquor is sold for consumption on the premises was passed in 1880; it abrogated the previous decree of 1851, by which full discretion was vested in the local authorities, and freed the traffic from arbitrary restrictions. It provides that any person desiring to open a café, cabaret or other place for retailing liquor must give notice to the authorities, with details concerning himself, the establishment and the proprietor, at least 15 days beforehand; the authority in Paris is the préfecture of police and elsewhere the mairie. Transfers of proprietorship or management must be notified within 15 days, and intended transference of location 8 days beforehand. The penalty for infraction is a fine of 16 francs to 100 francs. Legal minors and persons convicted of certain crimes and offences—theft, receiving stolen goods, various forms of swindling, offences against morality, the sale of adulterated articles—are prohibited; in the case of crimes, forever; in the case of offences, for five years. Otherwise permission cannot be refused, subject to conditions which the local authority has power to lay down regulating the distance of such establishments from churches, cemeteries, hospitals, schools and colleges. But persons engaged in the trade, who are convicted of the offences mentioned above and of infraction of the law for the suppression of public drunkenness, are disabled, as above. The law practically amounts to free trade and the number of houses has increased under it; in 1900 there was one to every 81 persons. This proportion is only exceeded by Belgium. Under the Local Government Act of 1884 municipal authorities are empowered, for the maintenance of public order, to fix hours of closing, regulate dancing, forbid the employment of girls and the harbouring of prostitutes and make other regulations. The hours of closing differ considerably but usually they are 11 P.M., midnight or 1 A.M. The trade is lightly taxed; retailers pay from 15 to 50 francs a year; wholesale dealers, 125 francs; breweries the same in most departments, distilleries 25 francs. The excise revenue from liquor amounted to £20,000,000 in 1900.

Germany.—The German law and practice are broadly similar to the French, but the several states vary somewhat in detail. Under the imperial law of 1879 inns or hotels and retail trade in spirits for on or off consumption may not be carried on without a permit or licence from the local authority which, however, can only be refused on the ground of character or of unsuitability of premises. This is the general law of the empire; but the state governments are empowered to make the granting of a licence for retailing spirits dependent on proof that it is locally required, and also to impose the same condition on inn-keeping and the retailing of other drinks in places with less than 15,000 inhabitants and in larger ones which obtain a local statute to that effect. Before a licence is granted the opinion of the police and other executive officers is to be taken. The licensing authority is the mayor in towns and the chairman of the district council in rural areas. The provisions with regard to the dependence of a licence on local requirements have been adopted by Prussia and other states, but apparently little or no use is made of them. Permits are very freely granted, and the number of licensed houses, though not so great as in France, is very high in proportion to population. Three classes of establishment are recognized—(1) Gast-wirthschaft, (2) Schank-wirthschaft, (3) Klein-handel. Gast-wirthschaft is inn-keeping, or the lodging of strangers in an open house for profit, and includes “pensions” of a public character; the imperial law provides that a licence may be limited to this function and need not include the retailing of liquor. Schank-wirthschaft is the retailing for profit of all sorts of drinks, including coffee and mineral waters; it corresponds to café in France and refreshment house in England; but the mere serving of food does not come under the law with which we are here concerned. Klein-handel is retail sale either for on or off consumption, and the liquor for which a licence is required in this connexion is described as branntwein or spiritus, and is defined as distilled alcoholic liquor, whether by itself or in combination. A licence for Schank-wirthschaft includes Klein-handel, but not vice-versa; none is required for the retail sale of wine which is the seller’s own produce. Licences may be withdrawn for offences against the law. Licensed houses are under the supervision of the police, who fix the hours of closing; it is usually 10 P.M., but is commonly extended to 11 P.M. or midnight in the larger towns and still later in the case of particular establishments. Some cafés in Berlin do not close till 3 A.M. and some never close at all. Persons remaining on the premises in forbidden hours after being ordered to leave by the landlord are liable to punishment. Serving drunkards and persons of school age is forbidden. Drunkards, in addition to fines or imprisonment for disorderly conduct, are liable to be deprived of control of their affairs and placed under guardianship. For music and dancing special permits are required. With regard to taxation, in Prussia all business establishments beyond a certain value pay an annual tax and licensed houses are on the same footing as the rest. Businesses producing less than £75 a year or of less than £150 capital value are free; the rest are arranged in four classes on a rising scale. In the three lower classes the tax ranges from a minimum of 4s. to a maximum of £24; in the highest class, which represents businesses producing £2500 and upwards (or a capital value of £50,000 and upwards) the tax is 1% of the profits. There is also a stamp duty on the licence ranging from 1s. 6d. to £5. The latter goes to the local revenue, the business tax to the government. Beer and spirits are also subject to an excise tax, from which the imperial revenue derived £7,700,000 in 1901; but the total taxation of the liquor trade could only be calculated from the returns of all the federated states.

The laws of France and Germany are fairly representative of the European states, with some minor variations. In Holland the number of licensed spirit retailers is limited in proportion to population (1 to 500), and the taxation, which is both national and local, ranges from 10 to 25% of the annual value.

In Austria-Hungary and Rumania the licence duty is graduated according to the population of the place, as used to be the case in Prussia. In 1877 a severe police law was applied to Galicia in order to check the excesses of spirit-drinking. The Poles, it may be observed, are spirit-drinkers, and the exceptional treatment of this part of the Austrian empire is one more illustration of the trouble arising from that habit, which forces special attempts to restrain it. The law, just mentioned, in Holland is another instance; and the particular cases of Russia and Scandinavia, described below, enforce the same lesson. Where the drink of the people is confined to wine and beer there is comparatively little trouble. In Switzerland the manufacture and wholesale sale of spirits has been a federal monopoly since 1887, but the retailing is a licensed trade, as elsewhere, and is less restricted than formerly. Before federation in 1874 the cantons used to direct local authorities to restrict the number of licences in proportion to population; but under the new constitution the general principle of free trade was laid down, and the Federal Council intimated to the cantonal authorities that it was no longer lawful to refuse a licence on the ground that it was not needed.

Russia.—In 1895 Russia entered upon an experiment in regard to the spirit traffic and began to convert the previously existing licence system into a state monopoly. The experiment was held to be successful and was gradually extended to the whole country. Under this system, which to some extent resembles that of South Carolina but is much less rigid, the distilleries remain in private hands but their output is under government control. The retail sale is confined to government shops, which sell only in sealed bottles for consumption off the premises, and to commercial establishments which sell on commission for the government. Spirit bars are abolished and only in a few high class restaurants are spirits sold by the glass; in ordinary eating-houses and at railway refreshment rooms they are sold in sealed government bottles but may be consumed on the premises. The primary object was to check the excesses of spirit-drinking which were very great in Russia among the mass of the people. The effect has been a very large reduction in the number of liquor shops, which has extended also to the licensed beer-houses though they are not directly affected as such. Presumably when they could no longer sell spirits it did not pay them to take out a licence for beer.

Sweden and Norway.—In these countries the celebrated “Gothenburg” or company system is in force together with licensing and local veto. Like the Russian state monopoly the company system applies only to spirits, and for the same reason; spirits are or were the common drink of the people and excessive facilities in the early part of the 19th century produced the usual result. The story is very similar to that of England in the 18th century, given above. From 1774 to 1788 distilling in Sweden was a crown monopoly, but popular opposition and illicit trade compelled the abandonment of this plan in favour of general permission granted to farmers, innkeepers and landowners. At the beginning of the 19th century the right to distil belonged to every owner and cultivator of land on payment of a trifling licence duty, and it was further extended to occupiers. In 1829 the number of stills paying licence duty was 173,124 or 1 to every 16 persons; the practice was in fact universal and the whole population was debauched with spirits. The physical and moral results were the same as those recorded in England a hundred years before. The supply was somewhat restricted by royal ordinance in 1835, but the traffic was not effectively dealt with until 1855 when a law was passed which practically abolished domestic distilling by fixing a minimum daily output of 200 gallons, with a tax of about 10d. a gallon. This turned the business into a manufacture and speedily reduced the number of stills. At the same time the retail sale was subjected to drastic regulations. A licensing system was introduced which gave the local authority power to fix the number of licences and put them up to auction or to hand over the retail traffic altogether to a company formed for the purpose of carrying it on. The latter idea, which is the Gothenburg system, was taken from the example of Falun and Jönköping which had a few years ago voluntarily adopted the plan. The law of 1855 further gave rural districts the power of local veto. Four-fifths of the population live in rural districts, and the great majority of them immediately took advantage of the provision. The company system, on the other hand, was not applied by the towns until 1865, when Gothenburg adopted it.

In Norway the course of events was very similar. There, too, distilling and spirit-drinking were practically universal in the early part of the century under the laws of 1816, but were checked by legislation a few years sooner than in Sweden. In 1845 a special licensing system was introduced, giving the local authority power to fix the number of licences, and in 1848 the small and domestic stills were stopped. The Gothenburg system was not adopted in Norway until 1871 and then with some modification. The essence of this method of conducting the retail traffic is that the element of private gain is eliminated. A monopoly is granted to a company consisting of a number of disinterested citizens of standing with a capital, and they manage the sale both for “on” and “off” consumption in the public interest. The profits, after payment of 5% on the capital, originally went in Sweden mainly to the municipality in relief of rates, in Norway to objects of public utility. The latter was considered preferable because it offers less temptation to make the profits as high as possible. Fault has, however, been found with both methods, and payment of profits to the state is now preferred. In 1894 a law was passed in Norway providing for the following distribution: 65% to the state, 20% to the company, and 15% to the municipality. In 1907 Sweden adopted a law in the same direction. The intention is to eliminate more completely the motive of gain from the traffic. In 1898 the net profits of the companies exceeded half a million sterling in Sweden and reached £117,500 in Norway.

The company system had in 1910 had more than half a century’s trial; it had gone through some vicissitudes and been subjected to much criticism, which was balanced by at least as much eulogy. It had held its own in Sweden, where 101 towns had adopted it in 1906. In Norway at the same date it was in force in 32 towns while 29 had adopted local veto, which was extended from the country districts, where it had previously been optional, to the towns by the law of 1894.

As we have already said, it only applies to spirits. In both countries the sale of beer and wine for “on” consumption is carried on in the ordinary way under a licensing system; the sale of beer in bottles for consumption off the premises is practically free. The beer traffic is regarded by some as a “safety valve” and by others as a defect in the system. The consumption has greatly increased in Sweden; in Norway it increased up to 1900 and has since declined. But other more deleterious substitutes for spirits have come into use in the shape of concocted “wines” and methylated spirits. The company management has had the following effects: it has greatly reduced the number of spirit bars, improved their character and conduct, added eating-rooms, where good and cheap meals are served, stopped drinking on credit and by persons under 18 years of age, shortened the hours of sale, raised the price and lowered the strength of spirits. But the restrictions placed on the sale for consumption on the premises has stimulated the retail bottle trade and home drinking.

British Dominions.

Canada.—Liquor legislation in Canada has been much influenced by the proximity and example of the United States. Licensing, modified by local veto, prevails throughout the Dominion except in the Indian settlements; but the several provinces have their own laws, which vary in stringency. As a whole the licensing system rather resembles the American than the British type. The licensing authority is either a board of commissioners or the municipality, and there has been the same tendency as in the United States to substitute the former for the latter. In British Columbia no new hotel licence is granted in cities except on the request of two-thirds of the owners and occupiers of the adjoining property, but their consent is not necessary for renewal. In other provinces the municipal authority has power to limit as well as regulate the licensed trade. Sunday closing is the rule; on week-days the usual closing hour in the large towns is 11 P.M. The power of locally prohibiting licensed houses by vote was introduced by the Canada Temperance Act, a federal law passed in 1875 and commonly known as the Scott Act. Extensive use has been made of it, especially in the maritime provinces, where the temperance sentiment is very strong, but in recent years it has rather lost ground. In 1908 it was in force in 22 counties or cities, of which ten were in Nova Scotia, ten in New Brunswick and two in Manitoba; it was nowhere in force in the remaining provinces. Three elections were held under the act in 1907-1908, two in Nova Scotia and one in New Brunswick, and in the first two prohibition was defeated. In 1910 Nova Scotia, apparently dissatisfied with the progress of local prohibition under the Scott Act, passed a prohibitory law for the whole province, exempting Halifax, the capital and only considerable town, but making provision for its subsequent inclusion by a referendum to the ratepayers. There is in Canada the same oscillation of public opinion as in the United States, and the same toleration of evasion of the law. The writer has stayed in hotels in several prohibition towns, where there was not only a regular bar but a printed wine list from which anything could be ordered at meals without any concealment at all. The chief difference between the conduct of hotels under prohibition and under licensing is that under licensing the bar is closed at the legal hour, which is usually 11 o’clock, and under prohibition it remains open as long as there are any customers to serve. The law is nominally respected by imposing a periodical fine. In small towns and rural districts local prohibition is much more effective. In short the experience of Canada confirms that of the United States. In addition to the federal law, the local authorities have power, in Quebec, to prohibit as well as to regulate the trade. The high licence system has not been adopted in Canada. The total revenue derived by the Dominion government in 1908 from taxation of the liquor trade, including duties and licence fees, was £1,800,000.

Australia.—The licensing laws of Australia are less repressive and the practice more resembles the British model. Queensland has adopted local prohibition, but it is not applied. New South Wales has a limited form of veto applying only to new licences; South Australia has the same together with a provision for the optional reduction of licences; Victoria, on the other hand, allows an option both ways, for reducing or increasing the licences; West Australia and Tasmania merely give the local ratepayers the right of protest; in West Australia it holds good against new licences only and if a majority object the licence is refused; in Tasmania protest may be made against renewals and transfers also, but the decision lies with the licensing authority. There is practically no prohibition in the Commonwealth.

New Zealand.—This state has a licensing system with local option provisions of its own. The licensing authority is a local committee, and there are seven kinds of licence, of which two are for consumption on the premises. The fees range from £1 for a wine licence to £40 for a full publican’s licence in towns, or £45 for one permitting an additional hour’s sale at night; the fees go to the revenue of the local authority. In 1907 the total number of licences granted was 2179 and the fees paid amounted to £45,865. Of the whole number, 1367, or 1 to every 666 persons, were houses licensed for on consumption. The closing hour is 10 P.M. except for houses specially licensed to be open till 11 P.M. In 1893 local option was introduced by the Alcoholic Liquors Sale Control Act, which provided for the taking of a poll on the question of licences. The electoral districts for the purpose are the same as for the House of Representatives, except that the cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin each form a single district for the licensing poll. It is taken at the same time as the election of members of the House of Representatives, and three questions are propounded—(1) continuance of existing licences, (2) reduction, (3) no licences. A voter may vote for two proposals but not more. An absolute majority of all the votes recorded carries (1); an absolute majority of all the votes recorded carries (2), whereupon the licensing committee reduces the licences by any number from 5 to 25% of the total. But if three-fifths of all the votes cast are in favour of no licence then that supersedes (1) and (2). The poll taken in December 1905 gave the following results: of the 68 districts 40 carried no proposal (which is equivalent to continuance of existing licences), 18 carried continuance, 4 reduction, 6 no licence, including 3 which had previously adopted no licence. Women, it must be remembered, vote as well as men. The aggregate vote in favour of no licence shows a large proportional increase since the first poll in the present system in 1896.

Authorities.—Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws 1896-1899, Reports and Appendices; Licensing Statistics of England and Wales, annual. Canada Year-book; New Zealand Year-book; Code de Commerce, France; Gewerbeordnung, German Empire; Hand-book of Canada (British Association); New Encyclopedia of Social Reform; Brewers’ Almanack; Committee of Fifty (New York), The Liquor Problem in its Legislative Aspects (F. H. Wines and J. Koren); E. L. Fanshawe, Liquor Legislation in the United States and Canada; E.R.L. Gould, The Gothenburg System (Special Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor); E. A. Pratt, Licensing and Temperance in Sweden, Norway and Denmark; J. Rowntree and A. Sherwell, The Temperance Problem and Social Reform; The Taxation of the Liquor Trade; A. Shadwell, Drink, Temperance and Legislation; Strauss und Torney, Schanks-Konzessionswesen; F. W. Thompson, High Licence. See also [Temperance].

(A. Sl.)

[1] In 1908 local option was adopted in Ohio.

LIRA, the Italian name (Lat. libra, pound) for a silver coin, the Italian unit of value in the Latin Monetary Union, corresponding to the French, Swiss and Belgian franc (q.v.), and the drachma of Greece, &c. The name is sometimes used of the Turkish pound, medjidie.

LIRI, or Garigliano (anc. Liris), a river of central Italy, which rises at Cappadocia, 7 m. W. of Avezzano, and traverses a beautiful valley between lofty mountains, running S.S.E. as far as Arce. This valley is followed by the railway from Avezzano to Roccasecca. At Isola del Liri are two fine waterfalls. Below Ceprano, the ancient Fregellae, after it has issued from the mountains, the Liri is joined by the Sacco (anc. Trerus) formed by the union of several torrents between Palestrina and Segni, and the Melfa from the mountains N.E. of Atina, and runs E. through a broader valley. It then turns S. again through the mountains S.W. of the Via Latina (the line of which is followed by the modern railway to Naples), keeping W. of Rocca Monfina, and falls into the sea just below Minturnae, after a course of 104 m. It is not navigable at any point.

LIROCONITE, a rare mineral consisting of hydrous basic copper and aluminium arsenate, with the probable formula Cu9Al4(OH)15(AsO4)5·20H2O. It crystallizes in the monoclinic system, forming flattened octahedra almost lenticular in shape (hence the German name Linsenkupfer). Characteristic is the bright sky-blue colour, though sometimes, possibly owing to differences in chemical composition, it is verdigris-green. The colour of the streak or powder is rather paler; hence the name liroconite, from the Gr. λειρός, pale, and κονία, powder. The hardness is 2½, and the specific gravity 2.95. The mineral was found at the beginning of the 19th century in the copper mines near Gwennap in Cornwall, where it was associated with other copper arsenates in the upper, oxidized portions of the lodes.

(L. J. S.)

LISBON (Lisboa), the capital of the kingdom of Portugal and of the department of Lisbon; on the right bank of the river Tagus, near its entrance into the Atlantic Ocean, in 38° 42′ 24″ N. and 9° 11′ 10″ W. Pop. (1900) 356,009. Lisbon, the westernmost of European capitals, is built in a succession of terraces up the sides of a range of low hills, backed by the granite mountains of Cintra. It fronts the Tagus, and the view from the river of its white houses, and its numerous parks and gardens, is comparable in beauty with the approach to Naples or Constantinople by sea. The lower reaches of the estuary form a channel (Entrada do Tejo) about 2 m. wide and 8 m. long, which is partially closed at its mouth by a bar of silt. Owing to the reclamation of the foreshore on the right, and the consequent narrowing of the waterway, the current flows very swiftly down this channel, which is the sole outlet for the immense volume of water accumulated in the Rada de Lisboa—a tidal lake formed by the broadening of the estuary in its upper part to fill a basin 11 m. long with an average breadth of nearly 7 m. The southern or left shore of the channel rises sharply from the water’s edge in a line of almost unbroken though not lofty cliffs; the margin of the lake is flat, marshy and irregular. Lisbon extends for more than 5 m. along the shores of both channel and lake, and for more than 3 m. inland. Its suburbs, which generally terminate in a belt of vineyards, parks or gardens, interspersed with villas and farms, stretch in some cases beyond the Estrada Militar, or Estrada da Nova Circumvallação, an inner line of defence 25 m. long, supplementary to the forts and other military works at the mouth of the Tagus, on the heights of Cintra and Alverca, and at Caxias, Sacavem, Monsanto and Ameixoeira. The climate of Lisbon is mild and equable, though somewhat oppressive in summer. Extreme cold is so rare that in the twenty years 1856-1876 snow fell only thrice; and in the 18th and early 19th centuries Lisbon was justly esteemed as a winter health-resort. The mean annual temperature is 60.1° F., the mean for winter 50.9°, the average rainfall 29.45 in. As in 1906, when no rain fell between April and September, long periods of drought are not uncommon, although the proximity of the Atlantic and the frequency of sea-fogs keep the atmosphere humid; the mean atmospheric moisture is nearly 71 (100 = saturation). There is a good water supply, conveyed to the city by two vast aqueducts. The older of these is the Aqueducto das Aguas Livres, which was built in the first half of the 18th century and starts from a point near Bellas, 15 m. W.N.W. Its conduits, which are partly underground, are conveyed across the Alcantara valley through a magnificent viaduct of thirty-five arches, exceeding 200 ft. in height. At the Lisbon end of the aqueduct is the Mae d’Agua (i.e. “Mother of Water”), containing a huge stone hall in the midst of which is the reservoir. The Alviella aqueduct, opened in 1880, brings water from Alviella near Pernes, 70 m. N.N.E. Numerous fountains are among the means of distribution. Sewage is discharged into the Tagus, and the sanitation of the city is good, except in the older quarters.

Divisions of the City.—The four municipal districts (bairros) into which Lisbon is divided are the Alfama, or old town, in the east; the Cidade Baixa, or lower town, which extends inland from the naval arsenal and custom house; the Bairro Alto, comprising all the high ground west of the Cidade Baixa; and the Alcantara, or westernmost district, named after the small river Alcantara, which flows down into the Tagus. Other names commonly used, though unofficial, are “Lisboa Oriental” as an alternative for Alfama; “Lisboa Occidental” for the slopes which lead from the Cidade Baixa to the Bairro Alto; “Buenos Ayres” (originally so named from the number of its South American residents) for the Bairro Alto S.W. of the Estrella Gardens and E. of the Necessidades Park; “Campo de Ourique” and “Rato” for the suburbs respectively N.W. and N.E. of Buenos Ayres.

The Alfama.—The Alfama, which represents Roman and Moorish Lisbon, is less rich in archaeological interest than its great antiquity might suggest, although parts of a Roman temple, baths, &c., have been disinterred. But as the earthquake of 1755 did comparatively little damage to this quarter, many of its narrow, steep and winding alleys retain the medieval aspect which all other parts of the city have lost; and almost rival the slums of Oporto in picturesque squalor. The most conspicuous feature of the Alfama is the rocky hill surmounted by the Castello de São Jorge, a Moorish citadel which has been converted into a fort and barracks. The Sé Patriarchal, a cathedral founded in 1150 by Alphonso I., is said by tradition to have been a Moorish mosque. It was wrecked by an earthquake in 1344 and rebuilt in 1380, but the earthquake of 1755 shattered the dome, the roof and belfry were subsequently burned, and after the work of restoration was completed the choir and façade were the only parts of the 14th-century Gothic church unspoiled. In one of the side chapels is the tomb of St Vincent (d. 304), patron saint of Lisbon; a pair of ravens kept within the cathedral precincts are popularly believed to be the same birds which, according to the legend, miraculously guided the saint’s vessel to the city. The armorial bearings of Lisbon, representing a ship and two ravens, commemorate the legend. Other noteworthy buildings in the Alfama are the 12th-century church of São Vicente de Fóra, originally, as its name implies, “outside” the city; the 13th-century chapel of Nossa Senhora do Monte; the 16th-century church of Nossa Senhora da Graça, which contains a reputed wonder-working statue of Christ and the tomb of Alphonso d’Albuquerque (1453-1515); and a secularized Augustinian monastery, used as the archbishop’s palace.

Modern Lisbon.—West of the Alfama the city dates chiefly from the period after the great earthquake. Its lofty houses, arranged in long straight streets, its gardens and open spaces, a few of its public buildings, and almost all its numerous statues and fountains, will bear comparison with those of any European capital. The centre of social and commercial activity is the district which comprises the Praça do Commercio, Rua Augusta, Rocío, and Avenida da Liberdade, streets and squares occupying the valley of a vanished tributary of the Tagus. The Praça do Commercio is a spacious square, one side of which faces the river, while the other three sides are occupied by the arcaded buildings of the custom house, post office and other government property. In the midst is a bronze equestrian statue of Joseph I., by J. M. de Castro, which was erected in 1775 and gives point to the name of “Black Horse Square” commonly applied to the Praça by the British. A triumphal arch on the north side leads to Rua Augusta, originally intended to be the cloth-merchants’ street; for the plan upon which Lisbon was rebuilt after 1755 involved the restriction of each industry to a specified area. This plan succeeded in the neighbouring Rua Aurea and Rua da Prata, still, as their names indicate, famous for goldsmiths’ and silversmiths’ shops. Rua Augusta terminates on the north in the Rocío or Praça de Dom Pedro Quarto, a square paved with mosaic of a curious undulatory pattern and containing two bronze fountains, a lofty pillar surmounted by a statue of Pedro IV., and the royal national theatre (Teatro de Dona Maria Segunda), erected on the site which the Inquisition buildings occupied from 1520 to 1836. The narrow Rua do Principe, leading past the central railway station, a handsome Mauresque building, connects the Rocío with the Avenida da Liberdade, one of the finest avenues in Europe. The central part of the Avenida, a favourite open-air resort of Lisbon society, is used for riding and driving; on each side of it are paved double avenues of trees, with flower-beds, statues, ponds, fountains, &c., and between these and the broad pavements are two roadways for trams and heavy traffic. Thus the Avenida has the appearance of three parallel streets, separated by avenues of trees instead of houses. Its width exceeds 300 ft. It owes its name to an obelisk 98 ft. high, erected in 1882 at its southern end, to commemorate the liberation of Portugal from Spanish rule (December, 1640). North and north-east of the Avenida are the Avenida Park, the Edward VII. Park (so named in memory of a visit paid to Lisbon by the king of England in 1903), Campo Grande, with its finely wooded walks, and Campo Pequeno, with the bull-ring. Other noteworthy public gardens are the Passeio da Estrella, commanding magnificent views of the city and river, the Largo do Principe Real, planted with bananas and other tropical trees, the Tapada das Necessidades, originally the park of one of the royal residences, and the Botanical Gardens of the polytechnic school, with a fine avenue of palms and collections of tropical and subtropical flora hardly surpassed in Europe. There are large Portuguese cemeteries east and west of Lisbon, a German cemetery, and an English cemetery, known also as Os Cyprestes from the number of its cypresses. This was laid out in 1717 at the cost of the British and Dutch residents and contains the graves of Henry Fielding (1707-1754), the novelist, and Dr Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), the Nonconformist divine.

Lisbon is the seat of an archbishop who since 1716 has borne ex officio the honorary title of patriarch; he presides over the House of Peers and is usually appointed a cardinal. The churches of modern Lisbon are generally built in the Italian style of the 18th century; the interiors are overlaid with heavy ornament. Perhaps the finest is the Estrella church, with its white marble dome and twin towers visible for many miles above the city. The late Renaissance church of São Roque contains two beautiful chapels dating from the 18th century, one of which is inlaid with painted tiles, while the other was constructed in Rome of coloured marbles, and consecrated by the pope before being shipped to Lisbon. Its mosaics and lapis lazuli pillars are exceptionally fine. The 14th-century Gothic Igreja do Carmo was shattered by the great earthquake. Only the apse, pillared aisles and outer walls remain standing, and the interior has been converted into an archaeological museum. The church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição has a magnificent Manoeline façade.

The Palacio das Cortes, in which both Houses of Parliament sit, is a 16th-century Benedictine convent, used for its present purpose since 1834. It contains the national archives, better known as the Torre do Tombo collection, because in 1375 the archives were first stored in a tower of that name. The royal palace, or Paço das Necessidades, west of Buenos Ayres, is a vast 18th-century mansion occupying the site of a chapel dedicated to Nossa Senhora das Necessidades (i.e. “Our Lady who helps at need”).

The Suburbs of Ajuda and Belem.—In the extreme west of Lisbon, beyond the Alcantara valley, are Belem (i.e. “Bethlehem”), beside the Tagus, and Ajuda, on the heights above. The Paço de Belem, built in 1700 for the counts of Aveiro, became the chief royal palace under John V. (1706-1750). The Torre de Belem, on the foreshore, is a small tower of beautiful design, built in 1520 for the protection of shipping. The finest ecclesiastical building in Portugal except the monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha also fronts the river. It is the Convento dos Jeronymos, a Hieronymite convent and church, founded in 1499 to commemorate the discovery of the sea-route to India by Vasco da Gama. It was built of white limestone by João de Castilho (d. 1581), perhaps the greatest of Manoeline architects. Its cloisters form a square with blunted corners, surrounded by a two-storeyed arcade, every available portion of which is covered with exquisite sculptures. Parts of the building have been restored, but the cloisters and the beautiful central gateway remain unspoiled. The interior contains many royal tombs, including that of Catherine of Braganza (d. 1705), the wife of Charles II. of England. The supposed remains of Camoens and Vasco da Gama were interred here in 1880. In 1834, when the convent was secularized, its buildings were assigned to the Casa Pia, an orphanage founded by Maria I. Since 1903 they have contained the archaeological collections of the Portuguese Ethnological Museum. The royal Ajuda palace, begun (1816-1826) by John VI. but left unfinished, derives its name from the chapel of N. S. de Ajuda (“Our Lady of Aid”). It contains some fine pictures and historical trophies. In the coach-house there is an unsurpassed collection of state coaches, the cars upon which figures of saints are borne in procession, sedan chairs, old cabriolets and other curious vehicles.

The Environs of Lisbon.—The administrative district of Lisbon has an area of 3065 sq. m., with a population of 709,509 in 1900. It comprises the lower parts of the Tagus and Sado; the sea-coast from 5 m. S. of Cape Carvoeiro to within 3 m. of the bluff called the Escarpa do Rojo; and a strip of territory extending inland for a mean distance of 30 m. This region corresponds with the southern part of Estremadura (q.v.). Its more important towns, Setubal, Cintra, Torres Vedras and Mafra, are described in separate articles. Sines, a small seaport on Cape Sines, was the birthplace of Vasco da Gama. On the left bank of the Tagus, opposite Lisbon, are the small towns of Almada, Barreiro, Aldeia Gallega and Seixal, and the hamlet of Trafaria, inhabited by fishermen. The beautiful strip of coast west of Oeiras and south of Cape Roca is often called the “Portuguese Riviera.” Its fine climate, mineral springs and sea-bathing attract visitors at all seasons to the picturesque fortified bay of Cascaes, or to Estoril, Mont’ Estoril and São João do Estoril, modern towns consisting chiefly of villas, hotels and gardens. The Boca do Inferno (“Mouth of Hell”) is a cavity in the rocks at Cascaes resembling the Bufador at Peñiscola (q.v.). The villages of Carcavellos, Bucellas, Lumiar and Collares produce excellent wines; at Carcavellos is the receiving station for cables, with a large British staff, and a club and grounds where social and athletic meetings are held by the British colony. Alhandra, on the right bank of the Tagus, above Lisbon, was the birthplace of Albuquerque; fighting bulls for the Lisbon arena are bred in the adjacent pastures.

Railways, Shipping and Commerce.—Lisbon has five railway stations—the central (Lisboa-Rocío), for the lines to Cintra, northern and central Portugal, and Madrid via Valencia de Alcántara; the Santa Apolonia or Caes dos Soldados, at the eastern extremity of the quays, for the same lines (excluding Cintra) and for southern Portugal and Andalusia; the Caes do Sodré and Santos, farther west along the quays, for Cascaes; and the Barreiro, on the left bank of the Tagus, for southern Portugal. In 1902 the railways north and south of the Tagus were connected near Lisbon by a bridge. In the previous year an extensive system of electric tramways replaced the old-fashioned cable cars and mule trams. Electric and hydraulic lifts are used where the streets are too steep for trams. Lisbon is lighted by both electricity and gas; it has an admirable telephone service, and is connected by the Carcavellos cable-station with Cornwall (England), Vigo in Galicia, Gibraltar, the Azores and Madeira.

Ships of the largest size can enter the Tagus, and the Barreiro inlet is navigable at low water by vessels drawing 16 ft. There are extensive quays along the right bank, with hydraulic cranes, two graving docks, a slipway, warehouses and lines of railway. The government and private docks are on the left bank. Loading and discharging are principally effected by means of lighters. The exports are wines, oil, fruit, tinned fish, salt, colonial produce, cork, pitwood, leather and wool. The imports include cotton and woollen goods, linen, ale and porter, butter, tea, hardware, tin plates, coal, iron, machinery, chemical manure, &c., from Great Britain; grain and petroleum from the United States; dried codfish from Norway and Newfoundland; silks, perfumery and fancy goods from France; hemp, flax, grain, petroleum and cloth from Russia; linen, machinery, hardware, sugar, &c., from Germany and Holland, iron, steel, timber, pitch and salt fish from the Baltic; cocoa, coffee, wax and rubber from the Portuguese colonies. Towards the close of the 19th century the tourist traffic from Great Britain and Germany attained considerable importance, and Lisbon has long been one of the principal ports of debarcation for passengers from Brazil and of embarcation for emigrants to South America. Shipbuilding, including the construction of vessels for the national navy, is a growing industry. The fisheries have always been important, and in no European fishmarket is the produce more varied. Sardines and tunny are cured and tinned for export. In addition to a fleet of about 600 sailing boats, the Tagus is the headquarters of a small fleet of steam trawlers. The industries of Lisbon include dyeing, distillation of spirits and manufactures of woollen, cotton, silk and linen fabrics, of pottery, soap, paper, chemicals, cement, corks, tobacco, preserved foods and biscuits.

Education and Charity.—Although the seat of the only university in Portugal was fixed at Coimbra in 1527, Lisbon is the educational centre of the Portuguese world, including Brazil. Its chief learned societies are the Society of Medical Sciences, the Geographical Society, the Royal Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Fine Arts, the Royal Conservatory of Music and the Propaganda de Portugal. The museum of the Academy of Fine Arts contains the largest collection of pictures and statues by native and foreign artists in Portugal. The Geographical Society has gained an international reputation; it possesses a valuable library and museum. The National Library, founded in 1796, contains over 400,000 printed books, and upwards of 9000 MSS. There are also colonial, naval, artillery, natural history and commercial museums, meteorological and astronomical observatories, zoological gardens and an aquarium. Purely educational institutions include the medical, polytechnic, military and naval schools, commercial, agricultural and industrial institutes, a school of art, a central lyceum, a school for teachers, &c. The English college for British Roman Catholics dates from 1628. The Irish Dominicans have a seminary, and Portuguese ecclesiastical schools are numerous. There are hospitals for women, and for contagious diseases, almshouses, orphanages, a foundling hospital and a very large quarantine station on the south bank of the Tagus, founded in 1857 after an outbreak of yellow fever had devastated the city. Foremost among the theatres, circuses and other places of amusement is the royal opera-house of São Carlos, built in 1792-1793 on the model of the Scala at Milan.

Population.—The population of Lisbon, 187,404[1] in 1878, rose to 301,206 in 1890 and 356,009 in 1900. It includes a large foreign colony, composed chiefly of Spaniards, British, Germans, French, Brazilians and immigrants from the Portuguese colonies, among whom are many half-castes. The majority of the Spaniards are domestic servants and labourers from Galicia, whose industry and easily gained knowledge of the kindred Portuguese language enables them to earn a better livelihood here than in their own homes. The British, German and French communities control a large share of the foreign trade. The Brazilians and colonial immigrants are often merchants and landowners who come to the mother-country to spend their fortunes in a congenial social environment.

The street life of the city is full of interest. The bare-footed, ungainly fishwives, dressed in black and bearing flat trays of fish on their heads; the Galician water-carriers, with their casks; the bakers, bending beneath a hundredweight of bread slung in a huge basket from their shoulders; the countrymen, with their sombreros, sashes and hardwood quarter-staves, give colour and animation to their surroundings; while the bag-pipes played by peasants from the north, the whistles of the knife-grinders, and the distinctive calls of the vendors of fruit, lottery tickets, or oil and vinegar, contribute a babel of sound. For church festivals and holidays the country-folk come to town, the women riding on pillions behind the men, adorned in shawls, aprons and handkerchiefs of scarlet or other vivid hues, and wearing the strings of coins and ornaments of exquisite gold and silver filigree which represent their savings or dowries. The costumes and manners of all classes may be seen at their best in the great bull-ring of Campo Pequeno, a Mauresque building which holds many thousands of spectators. A Lisbon bullfight is a really brilliant exhibition of athletic skill and horsemanship, in which amateurs often take part, and neither horses nor bulls are killed. There is a Tauromachic Club solely for amateurs.

History.—The name Lisbon is a modification of the ancient name Olisipo, also written Ulyssippo under the influence of a mythical story of a city founded by Odysseus (Ulysses) in Iberia, which, however, according to Strabo, was placed by ancient tradition rather in the mountains of Turdetania (the extreme south of Spain). Under the Romans Olisipo became a municipium with the epithet of Felicitas Julia, but was inferior in importance to the less ancient Emerita Augusta (Mérida). From 407 to 585 it was occupied by Alaric, and thenceforward by the Visigoths until 711, when it was taken by the Moors. Under the Moors the town bore in Arabic the name of Al Oshbūna or Lashbūna. It was the first point of Moslem Spain attacked by the Normans in 844. When Alphonso I. of Portugal took advantage of the decline and fall of the Almoravid dynasty to incorporate the provinces of Estremadura and Alemtejo in his new kingdom, Lisbon was the last city of Portugal to fall into his hands, and yielded only after a siege of several months (21st October 1147), in which he was aided by English and Flemish crusaders on their way to Syria. In 1184 the city was again attacked by the Moslems under the powerful caliph Abu Yakub, but the enterprise failed. In the reign of Ferdinand I., the greater part of the town was burned by the Castilian army under Henry II. (1373), and in 1384 the Castilians again besieged Lisbon, but without success. Lisbon became the seat of an archbishop in 1390, the seat of government in 1422. During the 16th century it gained much in wealth and splendour from the establishment of a Portuguese empire in India and Africa. From 1580 to 1640 Lisbon was a provincial town under Spanish rule, and it was from this port that the Spanish Armada sailed in 1588. In 1640 the town was captured by the duke of Braganza, and the independence of the kingdom restored.

For many centuries the city had suffered from earthquakes, and on the 1st of November 1755 the greater part of it was reduced almost in an instant to a heap of ruins. A tidal wave at the same time broke over the quays and wrecked the shipping in the Tagus; fire broke out to complete the work of destruction; between 30,000 and 40,000 persons lost their lives; and the value of the property destroyed was about £20,000,000. The shock was felt from Scotland to Asia Minor. Careful investigation by Daniel Sharpe, an English geologist, has delimited the area in and near Lisbon to which its full force was confined. Lisbon is built in a geological basin of Tertiary formation, the upper portion of which is loose sand and gravel destitute of organic remains, while below these are the so-called Almada beds of yellow sand, calcareous sandstone and blue clay rich in organic remains. The Tertiary deposits, which altogether cover an area of more than 2000 sq. m., are separated near Lisbon from rocks of the Secondary epoch by a great sheet of basalt. The uppermost of these Secondary rocks is the hippurite limestone. It was found that no building on the blue clay escaped destruction, none on any of the Tertiary deposits escaped serious injury, and all on the hippurite limestone and basalt were undamaged. The line at which the earthquake ceased to be destructive thus corresponded exactly with the boundary of the Tertiary deposits.

At the beginning of the 19th century the French invasion, followed by the removal of the court to Rio de Janeiro, the Peninsular War, the loss of Brazil and a period of revolution and dynastic trouble, resulted in the utter decadence of Lisbon, from which the city only recovered after 1850 (see [Portugal]: History).

Bibliography.—Every book which deals with the topography, trade or history of Portugal as a whole necessarily devotes a portion of its space to the capital; see [Portugal]: Bibliography. The following treat more exclusively of Lisbon: A. Dayot, Lisbonne (No. ix. of the “Capitales du monde” series) (Paris, 1892); Freire de Oliveira, Elementos para a historia do municipio de Lisboa (9 vols., Lisbon, 1885-1898); J. de Castilho, Lisboa antiga (7 vols., Lisbon, 1890), and (by the same author) A Ribeira de Lisboa (Lisbon, 1893).

[1] This figure represents the population of a smaller area than that of modern Lisbon, for the civic boundaries were extended by a decree dated the 23rd of December 1886.

LISBURN, a market town, and cathedral city of Co. Antrim, Ireland, situated in a beautiful and fertile district on the Lagan, and on the Great Northern railway, 8 m. S.S.W. of Belfast. Pop. (1901) 11,461. Christ Church (1622) which possesses a fine octagonal spire, is the cathedral church of the united Protestant dioceses of Down, Connor and Dromore, and contains a monument to Jeremy Taylor, who was bishop of the see. The public park was presented to the town by Sir Richard Wallace (d. 1890), and after his death the castle gardens were also given to the town. The staple manufacture is linen, especially damasks and muslins, originally introduced by Huguenots. There are also bleaching and dyeing works, and a considerable agricultural trade. The town is governed by an urban district council. The ruins of Castle Robin, 2 m. N. of the town, stand on a summit of the White Mountains, and the building dates from the time of Queen Elizabeth. At Drumbo, 3½ m. E. of Lisburn, is one of the finest examples of early fortification in Ireland, known as the Giant’s Ring, with a cromlech in the centre. Here are also a round tower and the remains of a church ascribed to St Patrick.

In the reign of James I., Lisburn, which was then known as Lisnegarvy (Gambler’s Fort), was an inconsiderable village, but in 1627 it was granted by Charles I. to Viscount Conway, who erected the castle for his residence, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of the town by the introduction of English and Welsh settlers. In November 1641 the town was taken by the insurgents, who on the approach of superior numbers set fire to it. The troops of Cromwell gained a victory near the town in 1648, and the castle surrendered to them in 1650. The church was constituted a cathedral in 1662 by Charles II., from whom the town received the privilege of returning two members to parliament, but after the Union it returned only one and in 1885 ceased to be a parliamentary borough. Lisburn gives the titles of earl and viscount to the family of Vaughan.

LISIEUX, a town of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Calvados, 30 m. E. of Caen by rail. Pop. (1906) 15,194. Lisieux is prettily situated in the valley of the Touques at its confluence with the Orbiquet. Towers of the 16th century, relics of the old fortifications, remain, and some of the streets, bordered throughout by houses of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, retain their medieval aspect. The church of St Peter, formerly a cathedral, is reputed to be the first Gothic church built in Normandy. Begun in the latter half of the 12th century it was completed in the 13th and 16th centuries. There is a lantern-tower over the crossing and two towers surmount the west façade, one only of which has a spire, added towards the end of the 16th century. In the interior there is a Lady-Chapel, restored in the 15th century by Bishop Pierre Cauchon, one of the judges of Joan of Arc. The church of St Jacques (late 15th century) contains beautiful glass of the Renaissance, some remarkable stalls and old frescoes, and a curious picture on wood, restored in 1681. The church of St Désir (18th century) once belonged to a Benedictine abbey. The old episcopal palace near the cathedral is now used as a court-house, museum, library and prison, and contains a beautiful hall called the salle dorée. Lisieux is the seat of a sub-prefect, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of arts and manufactures, a board of trade arbitrators and a communal college. Its manufactures of woollens are important, and bleaching, wool and flax-spinning, tanning, brewing, timber-sawing, metal-founding, and the manufacture of machinery, hosiery and boots and shoes are carried on; there is trade in grain, cattle and cheese.

In the time of Caesar, Lisieux, under the name of Noviomagus, was the capital of the Lexovii. Though destroyed by the barbarians, by the 6th century it had become one of the most important towns of Neustria. Its bishopric, suppressed in 1802, dates from that period. In 877 it was pillaged by the Normans; and in 911 was included in the duchy of Normandy by the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte. Civil authority was exercised by the bishop as count of the town. In 1136 Geoffrey Plantagenet laid siege to Lisieux, which had taken the side of Stephen of Blois. The town was not reduced till 1141, by which time both it and the neighbourhood had been brought to the direst extremities of famine. In 1152 the marriage of Henry II. of England to Eleanor of Guienne, which added so largely to his dominions, was celebrated in the cathedral. Thomas à Becket took refuge here, and some vestments used by him are shown in the hospital chapel. Taken by Philip Augustus and reunited to France in 1203, the town was a frequent subject of dispute between the contending parties during the Hundred Years’ War, the religious wars, and those of the League.

LISKEARD, a market town and municipal borough in the Bodmin parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, 15 m. W.N.W. of Plymouth, on the Great Western and the Liskeard and Looe railways. Pop. (1901) 4010. It lies high, above two small valleys opening to that of the Looe river, in a hilly, picturesque district. The Perpendicular church of St Martin, with a tower of earlier date, having a Norman arch, is one of the largest ecclesiastical buildings in the county. The site of a castle built by Richard, brother of Henry III. and earl of Cornwall, is occupied by public gardens. At the grammar school, which formerly occupied a building in those gardens, Dr John Wolcot, otherwise known as Peter Pindar, was educated. Liskeard was formerly an important mining centre. Its manufactures include leather and woollen goods, and there are iron foundries. The borough is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 2704 acres.

Liskeard (Liscarret) was at the time of the Domesday Survey an important manor with a mill rendering 12d. yearly and a market rendering 4s. By the Conqueror it had been given to the count of Mortain by whom it was held in demesne. Ever since that time it has passed with the earldom or duchy of Cornwall. The fertility of its soil and the river Looe probably led to early settlement at Liskeard. Richard, king of the Romans, recognized its natural advantages and built the manor house or castle and resided there occasionally. In 1240 he constituted Liskeard a free borough and its burgesses freemen with all the liberties enjoyed by the burgesses of Launceston and Helston. In 1266 he granted fairs at the Feasts of the Assumption and St Matthew. His son Edmund earl of Cornwall in 1275 granted to the burgesses for a yearly rent of £18 (sold by William III. to Lord Somers) the borough in fee farm with its mills, tolls, fines and pleas, pleas of the crown excepted. Liskeard was made a coinage town for tin in 1304. Edward the Black Prince secured to the burgesses in 1355 immunity from pleas outside their franchise for trespass done within the borough. Queen Elizabeth granted a charter of incorporation in 1580 under which there were to be a mayor, recorder and eight councillors. This charter was surrendered to Charles II. in 1680 and a new one granted by his brother under which the corporation became a self-elected body. From 1295 to 1832 Liskeard sent two members to the House of Commons. The parliamentary franchise, at first exercised by the burgesses, was vested by James’ charter in the corporation and freemen. By determining to admit no new freemen the voters became reduced to between 30 and 60. Sir Edward Coke was returned for this borough in 1620, and Edward Gibbon the historian in 1774. In 1832 Liskeard was deprived of one of its members and in 1885 it became merged in the county.

Besides the fairs already mentioned a third was added by Elizabeth’s charter to be held on Ascension Day. These are still among the most considerable cattle fairs in the county. The same charter ratified a market on Mondays and provided for another on Saturdays. The latter is now held weekly, the former twice a month. The flour mill at Lamellion mentioned in the charter of 1275, and probably identical with the mill of the Domesday Survey, is still driven by water.

LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685), commonly known as Lady Alice Lisle, was born about 1614. Her father, Sir White Beckenshaw, was descended from an old Hampshire family; her husband, John Lisle (d. 1664), had been one of the judges at the trial of Charles I., and was subsequently a member of Cromwell’s House of Lords—hence his wife’s courtesy title. Lady Lisle seems to have leaned to Royalism, but with this attitude she combined a decided sympathy with religious dissent. On the 20th of July 1685, a fortnight after the battle of Sedgemoor, the old lady consented to shelter John Hickes, a well-known Nonconformist minister, at her residence, Moyles Court, near Ringwood. Hickes, who was a fugitive from Monmouth’s army, brought with him Richard Nelthorpe, also a partizan of Monmouth, and under sentence of outlawry. The two men passed the night at Moyles Court, and on the following morning were arrested, and their hostess, who had denied their presence in the house, was charged with harbouring traitors. Her case was tried by Judge Jeffreys at the opening of the “Bloody Assizes” at Winchester. She pleaded that she had no knowledge that Hickes’s offence was anything more serious than illegal preaching, that she had known nothing previously of Nelthorpe (whose name was not included in the indictment, but was, nevertheless, mentioned to strengthen the case for the Crown), and that she had no sympathy with the rebellion. The jury reluctantly found her guilty, and, the law recognizing no distinction between principals and accessories in treason, she was sentenced to be burned. Jeffreys ordered that the sentence should be carried out that same afternoon, but a few days’ respite was subsequently granted, and James II. allowed beheading to be substituted for burning. Lady Lisle was executed in Winchester market-place on the 2nd of September 1685. By many writers her death has been termed a judicial murder, and one of the first acts of parliament of William and Mary reversed the attainder on the ground that the prosecution was irregular and the verdict injuriously extorted by “the menaces and violences and other illegal practices” of Jeffreys. It is, however, extremely doubtful whether Jeffreys, for all his gross brutality, exceeded the strict letter of the existing law.

See Howell, State Trials; H. B. Irving, Life of Judge Jeffreys; Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England.

LISMORE, an island in the entrance to Loch Linnhe, Argyllshire, Scotland, 5 m. N.W. of Oban. Pop. (1901) 500. It lies S.W. and N.E., is 9½ m. long and 1¾ m. broad, and has an area of 9600 acres. It divides the lower end of the loch into two channels, the Lynn of Morvern on the W. and the Lynn of Lome on the E. The name is derived from the Gaelic lios mòr, “great garden.” Several ruined castles stand on the coast, and the highest point of the island is 500 ft. above the sea. The inhabitants raise potatoes, oats, cattle and horses, and these, with dairy produce, form the bulk of the trade. Steamers call at Auchnacrosan. A Columban monastery was founded in Lismore by St Moluag about 592. About 1200 the see of Argyll was separated from Dunkeld by Bishop John, “the Englishman,” and Lismore soon afterwards became the seat of the bishop of Argyll, sometimes called “Episcopus Lismoriensis,” quite distinct from the bishop of the Isles (Sudreys and Isle of Man), called “Episcopus Sodoriensis” or “Insularum,” whose see was divided in the 14th century into the English bishopric of Sodor and Man and the Scottish bishopric of the Isles. The Rev. John Macaulay (d. 1789), grandfather of Lord Macaulay, the historian, and the Rev. Donald M’Nicol (1735-1802), who took up the defence of the Highlands against Dr Johnson, were ministers of Lismore.

For the Book of the Dean of Lismore see [Celt]: Scottish Gaelic Literature.

LISMORE, a town of Rous county, New South Wales, Australia, 320 m. direct N. by E. of Sydney. Pop. (1901) 4378. It is the principal town of the north coast district, and the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop. The surrounding country is partly pastoral, and partly agricultural, the soil being very fertile. The town has a cathedral, school of art, and other public buildings, while its industrial establishments include saw-mills, sugar-mills, butter factories and an iron foundry. Standing at the head of navigation of the Richmond river, Lismore has a large export trade in dairy produce, poultry, pigs, and pine and cedar timber.

LISMORE, a market town and seat of a diocese in Co. Waterford, Ireland, 43 m. W.S.W. of Waterford by the Waterford and Mallow branch of the Great Southern & Western Railway. Pop. (1901) 1583. It is beautifully situated on a steep eminence rising abruptly from the Blackwater. At the verge of the rock on the western side is the old baronial castle, erected by King John in 1185, which was the residence of the bishops till the 14th century. It was besieged in 1641 and 1643, and in 1645 it was partly destroyed by fire. The present fabric is largely modern; while the portico was designed by Inigo Jones. To the east, on the summit of the height, is the cathedral of St Carthagh, of various dates. There are portions probably of the 12th and 13th centuries, but the bulk of the building is of the 17th century, and considerable additions, including the tower and spire, were made in the 19th. There are a grammar school, a free school and a number of charities. Some trade is carried on by means of the river, and the town is the centre of a salmon fishery district.

The original name of Lismore was Maghsciath. A monastery founded here by St Carthagh in 633 became so celebrated as a seat of learning that it is said no fewer than twenty churches were erected in its vicinity. The bishopric, which is said to have originated with this foundation, was united to that of Waterford in 1363. In the 9th and beginning of the 10th centuries the town was repeatedly plundered by the Danes, and in 978 the town and abbey were burned by the men of Ossory. Henry II., after landing at Waterford, received in Lismore castle the allegiance of the archbishops and bishops of Ireland. In 1518 the manor was granted to Sir Walter Raleigh, from whom it passed to Sir Richard Boyle, afterwards earl of Cork. From the earls of Cork it descended by marriage to the dukes of Devonshire. It was incorporated as a municipal borough in the time of Charles I., when it also received the privilege of returning members to parliament, but at the Union in 1800 it was disfranchised and also ceased to exercise its municipal functions.

LISSA (Serbo-Croation Vis; Lat. Issa), an island in the Adriatic sea, forming part of Dalmatia, Austria. Lissa lies 31 m. S. by W. of Spalato, and is the outermost island of the Dalmatian Archipelago. Its greatest length is 10½ m.; its greatest breadth 4½ m. In shape it is a long, roughly drawn parallelogram, surrounded by a wall of rock, which incloses the fertile central plain, and is broken, on the north, west and east by natural harbours. Its culminating point is Mount Hum (1942 ft.), on the south-west. The island, which belongs to the administrative district of Lesina, is divided between two communes, named after the chief towns, Lissa (Vis), on the north, and Comisa (Komia), on the west. Lissa, the capital, has a strongly fortified harbour. It contains the palace of the old Venetian counts Gariboldi, the former residence of the English governor, the monastery of the Minorites and at a little distance to the west the ruins of the ancient city of Issa. The islanders gain their livelihood by viticulture, for which Issa was once famous, by sardine fishing and by the distillation of rosemary oil. Pop. (1900) 9918, of whom 5261 belonged to the town and commune of Lissa, and 4657 to Comisa.

Issa is said to have been settled by people from Lesbos, the Issa of the Aegean. The Parians, assisted by Dionysius the Elder of Syracuse, introduced a colony in the 4th century B.C. During the First Punic War (265-241 B.C.) the Issaeans with their beaked ships helped the Roman Duilius; and the great republic, having defended their island against the attacks of Agron of Illyria and his queen Teuta, again found them serviceable allies in the war with Philip of Macedon (c. 215-211). As early as 996 the Venetians ruled the island, and, though they retired for a time before the Ragusans, their power was effectually established in 1278. Velo Selo, then the chief settlement, was destroyed by Ferdinand of Naples in 1483 and by the Turks in 1571. The present city arose shortly afterwards. During the Napoleonic wars, the French held Lissa until 1811, and during this period the island prospered greatly, its population increasing from 4000 to 12,000 between 1808 and 1811. In the latter year the French squadron was defeated by the British (see below); though in the same year a French fleet, flying British colours, entered Lissa, and only retired after burning 64 merchantmen. Thenceforward the island gained a valuable trade in British goods, which, being excluded from every port under French control, were smuggled into Dalmatia. In 1812 the British established an administrative system, under native officials, in Lissa and the adjoining islands of Curzola and Lagosta. All three were ceded to Austria in 1815.

Battles of Lissa.—Two naval actions have been fought in modern times near this island. The first took place on the 13th of March 1811, and was fought between a Franco-Venetian squadron, under the command of an officer named Dubourdieu (of whom little or nothing else is known), and Captain (afterwards Sir) William Hoste with a small British force. The Franco-Venetian squadron (Venice was then part of the dominions of the emperor Napoleon) consisted of six frigates, of which four were of forty guns, and of five corvettes or small craft. The British squadron was composed of three frigates, the “Amphion,” 32 (Captain William Hoste), the “Cerberus” (Captain Henry Whitby) and the “Active,” 38 (Captain James A. Gordon). With them was the “Volage,” 22 (Captain Phipps Hornby). The action has a peculiar interest because the French captain imitated the method of attack employed by Nelson at Trafalgar. He came down from windward in two lines parallel to one another, and at an angle to the British squadron. Captain Hoste was not compelled to lie still as the allies did at Trafalgar. He stood on, and as the two French lines had to overtake him as he slipped away at an angle to their course, one of them got in the way of the other. Captain Hoste materially forwarded the success of his manœuvre by leading the foremost French ship, the “Favorite,” 40, on to a reef, which was known to himself, but not to the enemy. Both squadrons then turned, and the Franco-Venetians falling into great confusion were defeated in spite of the gallant fighting of the individual ships. Two prizes were taken and Dubourdieu was killed.

The second naval battle of Lissa was fought between the Austrian and Italian navies on the 20th of July 1866. The island, then in possession of the Austrians, was attacked by an Italian squadron from Ancona of 12 ironclads and 22 wooden vessels. One of the ironclads was damaged in a bombardment of the forts, and two were detached on other service, when an Austrian squadron of 7 ironclads, one unarmoured warship the “Kaiser” and a number of small craft which had left Fasano under the command of Admiral Tegethoff came to interrupt their operations. The Italian admiral Persano arranged his ships in a single long line ahead, which allowing for the necessary space between them meant that the Italian formation stretched for more than 2 m. Just before the action began Admiral Persano shifted his flag from the “Ré d’Italia,” the fourth ship in order from the van, to the ram “Affondatore,” the fifth. This made it necessary for the “Affondatore” and the ships astern to shorten speed, and, as the leading vessels stood on, a gap was created in the Italian line. Admiral Tegethoff, who was on the port bow of the Italians, attacked with his squadron in three divisions formed in obtuse angles. The Italians opened a very rapid and ill-directed fire at a distance of 1000 yds. The Austrians did not reply till they were at a distance of 300 yds. Under Tegethoff’s vigorous leadership, and aided by the disorder in the Italian line, the Austrians brought on a brief, but to the Italians destructive, mêlée. They broke through an interval between the third and fourth Italian ships. The unarmed Austrian ships headed to attack the unarmed Italians in the rear. At this point an incident occurred to which an exaggerated importance was given. The Italian ironclad “Ré di Portogallo” of 5600 tons, in the rear of the line, stood out to cover the unarmoured squadron by ramming the Austrians. She was herself rammed by the wooden “Kaiser” (5000 tons), but received little injury, while the Austrian was much injured. The “Kaiser” and the wooden vessels then made for the protection of fort San Giorgio on Lissa unpursued. In the centre, where the action was hottest, the Austrian flagship “Ferdinand Max” of 5200 tons rammed and sank the “Ré d’Italia.” The Italian “Palestro” of 2000 tons was fired by a shell and blew up. By midday the Italians were in retreat, and Tegethoff anchored at San Giorgio. His squadron had suffered very little from the wild fire of the Italians. The battle of the 20th July was the first fought at sea by modern ironclad steam fleets, and therefore attracted a great deal of attention. The sinking of the “Ré d’Italia” and the ramming of the “Portogallo” by the “Kaiser” gave an immense impulse to the then popular theory that the ram would be a leading, if not the principal, weapon in modern sea warfare. This calculation has not been borne out by more recent experience, and indeed was not justified by the battle itself, in which the attempts to ram were many and the successes very few. The “Ré d’Italia” was struck only because she was suddenly and most injudiciously backed, so that she had no way on when charged by the “Ferdinand Max.”

For the first battle of Lissa see James’s Naval History, vol. v. (1837). A clear account of the second battle will be found in Sir S. Eardley-Wilmot’s Development of Navies (London, 1892); see also H. W. Wilson’s Ironclads in Action (London, 1896).

(D. H.)

LISSA (Polish Lézno), a town in the Prussian province of Posen, 25 m. N.E. from Glogau by rail and at the junction of lines to Breslau, Posen and Landsberg. Pop. (1905) 16,021. The chief buildings are the handsome palace, the medieval town-hall, the four churches and the synagogue. Its manufactures consist chiefly of shoes, machinery, liqueurs and tobacco; it also possesses a large steam flour-mill, and carries on a brisk trade in grain and cattle.

Lissa owes its rise to a number of Moravian Brothers who were banished from Bohemia by the emperor Ferdinand I. in the 16th century and found a refuge in a village on the estate of the Polish family of Leszczynski. Their settlement received municipal rights in 1561. During the Thirty Years’ War the population was reinforced by other refugees, and Lissa became an important commercial town and the chief seat of the Moravian Brothers in Poland. Johann Amos Comenius was long rector of the celebrated Moravian school here. In 1656 and 1707 Lissa was burned down.

See Voigt, Aus Lissas erster Blütezeit (Lissa, 1905), and Sanden, Geschichte der Lissaer Schule (Lissa, 1905).

LIST, FRIEDRICH (1789-1846), German economist, was born at Reutlingen, Württemberg, on the 6th of August 1789. Unwilling to follow the occupation of his father, who was a prosperous tanner, he became a clerk in the public service, and by 1816 had risen to the post of ministerial under-secretary. In 1817 he was appointed professor of administration and politics at the university of Tübingen, but the fall of the ministry in 1819 compelled him to resign. As a deputy to the Württemberg chamber, he was active in advocating administrative reforms. He was eventually expelled from the chamber and in April 1822 sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment with hard labour in the fortress of Asperg. He escaped to Alsace, and after visiting France and England returned in 1824 to finish his sentence, and was released on undertaking to emigrate to America. There he resided from 1825 to 1832, first engaging in farming and afterwards in journalism. It was in America that he gathered from a study of Alexander Hamilton’s work the inspiration which made him an economist of his pronounced “National” views. The discovery of coal on some land which he had acquired made him financially independent, and he became United States consul at Leipzig in 1832. He strongly advocated the extension of the railway system in Germany, and the establishment of the Zollverein was due largely to his enthusiasm and ardour. His latter days were darkened by many misfortunes; he lost much of his American property in a financial crisis, ill-health also overtook him, and he brought his life to an end by his own hand on the 30th of November 1846.

List holds historically one of the highest places in economic thought as applied to practical objects. His principal work is entitled Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie (1841). Though his practical conclusions were different from those of Adam Müller (1779-1829), he was largely influenced not only by Hamilton but also by the general mode of thinking of that writer, and by his strictures on the doctrine of Adam Smith. It was particularly against the cosmopolitan principle in the modern economical system that he protested, and against the absolute doctrine of free trade, which was in harmony with that principle. He gave prominence to the national idea, and insisted on the special requirements of each nation according to its circumstances and especially to the degree of its development.

He refused to Smith’s system the title of the industrial, which he thought more appropriate to the mercantile system, and designated the former as “the exchange-value system.” He denied the parallelism asserted by Smith between the economic conduct proper to an individual and to a nation, and held that the immediate private interest of the separate members of the community would not lead to the highest good of the whole. That the nation was an existence, standing between the individual and humanity, and formed into a unity by its language, manners, historical development, culture and constitution. That this unity must be the first condition of the security, wellbeing, progress and civilization of the individual; and private economic interests, like all others, must be subordinated to the maintenance, completion and strengthening of the nationality. The nation having a continuous life, its true wealth must consist—and this is List’s fundamental doctrine—not in the quantity of exchange-values which it possesses, but in the full and many-sided development of its productive powers. Its economic education should be more important than the immediate production of values, and it might be right that one generation should sacrifice its gain and enjoyment to secure the strength and skill of the future. In the sound and normal condition of a nation which has attained economic maturity, the three productive powers of agriculture, manufactures and commerce should be alike developed. But the two latter factors are superior in importance, as exercising a more effective and fruitful influence on the whole culture of the nation, as well as on its independence. Navigation, railways, all higher technical arts, connect themselves specially with these factors; whilst in a purely agricultural state there is a tendency to stagnation. But for the growth of the higher forms of industry all countries are not adapted—only those of the temperate zones, whilst the torrid regions have a natural monopoly in the production of certain raw materials; and thus between these two groups of countries a division of labour and confederation of powers spontaneously takes place.

List then goes on to explain his theory of the stages of economic development through which the nations of the temperate zone, which are furnished with all the necessary conditions, naturally pass, in advancing to their normal economic state. These are (1) pastoral life, (2) agriculture, (3) agriculture united with manufactures; whilst in the final stage agriculture, manufactures and commerce are combined. The economic task of the state is to bring into existence through legislative and administrative action the conditions required for the progress of the nation through these stages. Out of this view arises List’s scheme of industrial politics. Every nation, according to him, should begin with free trade, stimulating and improving its agriculture by intercourse with richer and more cultivated nations, importing foreign manufactures and exporting raw products. When it is economically so far advanced that it can manufacture for itself, then a system of protection should be employed to allow the home industries to develop themselves fully, and save them from being overpowered in their earlier efforts by the competition of more matured foreign industries in the home market. When the national industries have grown strong enough no longer to dread this competition, then the highest stage of progress has been reached; free trade should again become the rule, and the nation be thus thoroughly incorporated with the universal industrial union. What a nation loses for a time in exchange values during the protective period she much more than gains in the long run in productive power—the temporary expenditure being strictly analogous, when we place ourselves at the point of view of the life of the nation, to the cost of the industrial education of the individual. The practical conclusion which List drew for Germany was that she needed for her economic progress an extended and conveniently bounded territory reaching to the sea-coast both on north and south, and a vigorous expansion of manufactures and commerce, and that the way to the latter lay through judicious protective legislation with a customs union comprising all German lands, and a German marine with a Navigation Act. The national German spirit, striving after independence and power through union, and the national industry, awaking from its lethargy and eager to recover lost ground, were favourable to the success of List’s book, and it produced a great sensation. He ably represented the tendencies and demands of his time in his own country; his work had the effect of fixing the attention, not merely of the speculative and official classes, but of practical men generally, on questions of political economy; and his ideas were undoubtedly the economic foundation of modern Germany, as applied by the practical genius of Bismarck.

See biographies of List by Goldschmidt (Berlin, 1878) and Jentsch (Berlin, 1901), also Fr. List, ein Vorläufer und ein Opfer für das Vaterland (Anon., 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1877); M. E. Hirst’s Life of Friedrich List (London, 1909) contains a bibliography and a reprint of List’s Outlines of American Political Economy (1827).

LIST (O.E. liste, a Teutonic word, cf. Dut. lijst, Ger. Leiste, adapted in Ital. lista and Fr. liste), properly a border or edging. The word was thus formerly used of a geographical boundary or frontier and of the lobe of the ear. In current usage “list” is the term applied to the “selvage” of a piece of cloth, the edging, i.e. of a web left in an unfinished state or of different material from the rest of the fabric, to be torn or cut off when it is made up, or used for forming a seam. A similar edging prevents unravelling. The material, cut off and collected, is known as “list,” and is used as a soft cheap material for making slippers, padding cushions, &c. Until the employment of rubber, list was used to stuff the cushions of billiard tables. The same word probably appears, in a plural form “lists,” applied to the barriers or palisades enclosing a space of ground set apart for tilting (see [Tournament]). It is thus used of any place of contest, and the phrase “to enter the lists” is frequently used in the sense of “to challenge.” The word in this application was taken directly from the O. Fr. lisse, modern lice, in Med. Lat. liciae. This word is usually taken to be a Romanic adaptation of the Teutonic word. In medieval fortifications the lices were the palisades forming an outwork in front of the main walls of a castle or other fortified place, and the word was also used of the space enclosed between the palisades and the enceinte; this was used for exercising troops, &c. From a transference of “list,” meaning edge or border, to a “strip” of paper, parchment, &c., containing a “list” of names, numbers, &c., comes the use of the word for an enumeration of a series of names of persons or things arranged in order for some specific purpose. It is the most general word for such an enumeration, other words, such as “register,” “schedule,” “inventory,” “catalogue,” having usually some particular connotation. The chief early use of list in this meaning was of the roll containing the names of soldiers; hence to “list a soldier” meant to enter a recruit’s name for service, in modern usage “to enlist” him. There are numerous particular applications of “list,” as in “civil list” (q.v.), “active or retired list” in the navy or army. The term “free list” is used of an enumeration of such commodities as may at a particular time be exempt from the revenue laws imposing an import duty.

The verb “to list,” most commonly found in the imperative, meaning “hark!” is another form of “listen,” and is to be referred, as to its ultimate origin, to an Indo-European root klu-, seen in Gr. κλύειν, to hear, κλέος, glory, renown, and in the English “loud.” The same root is seen in Welsh clûst and Irish clûas, ear. Another word “list,” meaning pleasure, delight, or, as a verb, meaning “to please, choose,” is chiefly found in such phrases as “the wind bloweth where it listeth.” This is from the O.E. lystan, cf. Dut. lusten, Ger. lüsten, to take pleasure in, and is also found in the English doublet “lust,” now always used in the sense of an evil or more particularly sexual desire. It is probably an application of this word, in the sense of “inclination,” that has given rise to the nautical term “list,” for the turning over of a ship on to its side.

LISTA Y ARAGON, ALBERTO (1775-1848), Spanish poet and educationalist, was born at Seville on the 15th of October 1775. He began teaching at the age of fifteen, and when little over twenty was made professor of elocution and poetry at Seville university. In 1813 he was exiled, on political grounds, but pardoned in 1817. He then returned to Spain and, after teaching for three years at Bilbao, started a critical review at Madrid. Shortly afterwards he founded the celebrated college of San Mateo in that city. The liberal character of the San Mateo educational system was not favoured by the government, and in 1823 the college was closed. Lista after some time spent in Bayonne, Paris and London was recalled to Spain in 1833 to edit the official Madrid Gazette. He was one of the founders of the Ateneo, the free university of Madrid, and up till 1840 was director of a college at Cadiz. All the leading spirits of the young generation of Spaniards, statesmen, writers, soldiers and diplomatists came under his influence. He died at Seville on the 5th of October 1848.

LISTER, JOSEPH LISTER, 1st Baron (1827-  ), English surgeon, was born at Upton, in Essex, on the 5th of April 1827. His father, Joseph Jackson Lister, F.R.S., was eminent in science, especially in optical science, his chief claim to remembrance being that by certain improvements in lenses he raised the compound microscope from the position of a scientific toy, “distorting as much as it magnified,” to its present place as a powerful engine of research. Other members of Lord Lister’s family were eminent in natural science. In his boyhood Joseph Lister was educated at Quaker schools; first at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and afterwards at Tottenham, near London. In 1844 he entered University College, London, as a student in arts, and took his B.A. degree at the University of London in 1847. He continued at University College as a medical student, and became M.B. and F.R.C.S. in 1852. The keen young student was not long in bringing his faculties to bear upon pathology and the practice of medicine. While house-surgeon at University College Hospital, he had charge of certain cases during an outbreak of hospital gangrene, and carefully observed the phenomena of the disease and the effects of treatment upon it. He was thus early led to suspect the parasitic nature of the disorder, and searched with the microscope the material of the spreading sore, in the hope of discovering in it some invading fungus; he soon convinced himself of the cardinal truth that its causes were purely local. He also minutely investigated cases of pyaemia, another terrible scourge of hospitals at that time, and made camera lucida sketches of the appearances revealed by the microscope.

To realize Lister’s work it is necessary to remember the condition of surgical practice at that date. About the middle of the 19th century the introduction of anaesthetics had relieved the patient of much of the horror of the knife, and the surgeon of the duty of speed in his work. The agony of the sufferer had naturally and rightly compelled the public to demand rapid if not slap-dash surgery, and the surgeon to pride himself on it. Within decent limits of precision, the quickest craftsman was the best. With anaesthetics this state of things at any rate was changed. The pain of the operation itself no longer counted, and the surgeon was enabled not only to be as cautious and sedulous as dexterous, but also to venture upon long, profound and intricate operations which before had been out of the question. Yet unhappily this new enfranchisement seemed to be but an ironical liberty of Nature, who with the other hand took away what she had given. Direct healing of surgical wounds (“by first intention”), far from being the rule, was a piece of luck too rare to enter into the calculations of the operator; while of the graver surgical undertakings, however successful mechanically, the mortality by sepsis was ghastly. Suppuration, phagedaena and septic poisonings of the system carried away even the most promising patients and followed even trifling operations. Often, too, these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences, so that patients, however extreme their need, dreaded the very name of hospital, and the most skilful surgeons distrusted their own craft. New hospitals or new wards were built, yet after a very short time the new became as pestiferous as the old; and even scrupulous care in ventilation and housemaids’ cleanliness failed to prevent the devastation. Surgery had enlarged its freedom, but only to find the weight of its new responsibilities more than it could bear.

When Lister was appointed to the chair of surgery in Glasgow the infirmary of that city was a hotbed of septic disease; so much so that his hospital visits evidently distressed him greatly. Windows were widely opened, piles of clean towels were supplied, but still the pestilence stalked through the wards. The building stands to-day as it stood then, with no substantial alteration; but by the genius of Lister its surgical wards are now as free from septic accidents as the most modern hospital in the land. James Simpson, early in the ’sixties, pathetically denounced the awful mortality of operations in hospitals, and indeed uttered desperate protests against the hospital system itself; yet, not long afterwards, Lister came to prove that it was not in the hospital that the causes of that mortality lay hidden, but in the operator himself, his tools and his assistants. Happily this beneficent discovery was made in time to preserve the inestimable boon of the hospital system from the counsels of despair. When Lister took up the task speculation was on the wrong tack; the oxygen of the air was then supposed to be the chief cause of the dissolution of the tissues, and to prevent access of air was impossible. For instance, a simple fracture, as of a bone of the leg, would do perfectly well, while in the very next bed a compound fracture—one, that is, where the skin is lacerated, and access to the seat of injury opened out—would go disastrously wrong. If the limb were amputated, a large proportion of such cases of amputation succumbed to septic poisoning.

On graduation as bachelor of medicine, Lister went to Edinburgh, where he soon afterwards became house-surgeon to Mr Syme; and he was much impressed by the skill and judgment of this great surgeon, and also by the superiority of his method of dressing recent wounds with dry lint, as compared with the “water dressing” in use at University College. Yet under these more favourable conditions the amelioration was only one of degree; in most wounds indeed “union by first intention” was rendered impossible by the presence of the silk ligatures employed for arresting bleeding, for these could come away only by a process of suppuration. On the expiry of his house-surgeoncy in Edinburgh, Lister started in that city an extra-academical course of lectures on surgery; and in preparation for these he entered on a series of investigations into inflammation and allied subjects. These researches, which were detailed fully in three papers in Phil. Trans. (1859), and in his Croonian lecture to the Royal Society in 1863, testified to an earnestness of purpose, a persevering accuracy of observation and experiment and an insight of scientific conception which show that if Lister had never developed the aseptic method of surgery, he would have taken a very high place in pathology. In his speech in Paris at the Thirteenth International Congress of Medicine in 1900, Lord Lister said that he had done no more than seize upon Pasteur’s discoveries and apply them to surgery. But though Lister saw the vast importance of the discoveries of Pasteur, he saw it because he was watching on the heights; and he was watching there alone. From Pasteur Lister derived no doubt two fruitful ideas: first, that decomposition in organic substances is due to living “germs”; and, secondly, that these lowly and minute forms of vegetable life spring always, like higher organisms, from parents like themselves, and cannot arise de novo in the animal body. After his appointment to the Glasgow chair in 1860, Lister had continued his researches on inflammation; and he had long been led to suspect that decomposition of the blood in the wound was the main cause of suppuration. The two great theories established by Pasteur seemed to Lister to open out the possibility of what had before appeared hopeless—namely, the prevention of putrefaction in the wound, and consequently the forestalling of suppuration. To exclude the oxygen of the air from wounds was impossible, but it might be practicable to protect them from microbes.