Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/101

F E R- same date at the Enniskillen model school there were 339 pupila on the rolls, of whom 229 were Protestant Episco palians, 33 Presbyterians, 18 Roman Catholics, and 59 of other persuasions. In Fermanagh there are neither reforma tory nor industrial schools. Administration, it-c. Fermanagh returns three members to parliament two for the county, and one for the borough of Enniskillen. The assizes are held at Enniskillen, quarter sessions at Enniskillen and Newtownbutler, and petty sessions at eleven places throughout the county. Fer managh is within the Belfast military district. The barrack stations are at Enniskillen and Belleek, Ecclesiastically it belongs for tho most part to the diocese of Clogher. The county jail and the county infirmary are at Enniskillen ; but the district lunatic asylum is at Omagh (in Tyrone), serving for the two counties, Fermanagh and Tyrone. The poor law union workhouses for the county are at Enniskillen, Irvinestown, and Lisnaskea. Population. The population of Fermanagh steadily in creased up till the year 1841. The famine and subse quent emigration intervening between that year and the next parliamentary census (1851), the population showed a decrease at the latter date of about 25 per cent, and since 1851 the decrease has continued. The exact decrease during the 30 years 1841 to 1871 is 40 69 per cent. In 1841 the population was 156,481; in 1851," 116,047 ; in 1861, 105,768; in 1871, 92,794; and on the 31st December 1876 it was estimated at 91,188. From the 1st May 1851 to 31st December 1876, tho total number of emigrants from Fermanagh was 34,776, or an average of 1337 per annum. In 1871 55 per cent, of the population were re turned as Catholics. History and Antiquities. According to Ptolemy, the aborigenes of this county were the Erdini. By the ancient Irish it was called Feor-magh-Eanagh, or the " country of the lakes" (lit. "the mountain- valley marsh district "); and also Magh-uire, or " the country of the waters." It was divided into two large portions the one called Targoll, the other Rosgoll. The latter was occupied by the Guarii, the ancestors of the MacGuires or Maguires, a name still very common in the district. This tribe or family was so influ ential that for centuries the county was called after them Maguire s Country, and one of the towns still existing bears their name, Maguire s Bridge. Fermanagh was one of the six counties which reverted to the crown at the time of the flight of the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, and which were included in the well known scheme of colonization of James I., the Plantation of Ulster. Among the principal Scotch and English settlers at the period of the Plantation were Sir Stephen Butler, Sir Wm. Cole, John Archdall, and Sir Gerard Lowther, from whom some of the towns and villages in the county derived their names, and whose descendants form the leading gentry to the present day, During the revolution of 1688 Fermanagh rendered signal service to the cause of William III. by the gallant stand which its yeomen made against the Irish army, and their descendants possess so much of the military spirit of their forefathers as to make the title "Fermanagh men" still synonymous with bravery and loyalty to the constitu tion. In the year 1689 battles were fought between William III. 3 army and the Irish under Macarthy (for James II.) at Lisnaskea (26th July) and Newtownbutler (30th July). The chief place of interest to the antiquary is Devenish Isle in Lough Erne, about 2| miles N.W. from Enniskillen. It contains about 80 acres of very fertile pas ture land, and has long been celebrated for its romantic situation and ecclesiastical ruins. Near the remains of the abbey of St Mary, founded in the 6th century by St Laserian (called also Molaisse or Molush), is one of the best specimens of Ireland s round towers. It is 82 feet high and F E R 91 49 in circumference, with an ingeniously constructed conical roof. About half a century ago it was carefully repaired, and is now in excellent preservation. Pursuant to " Tho Irish Church Act, 1869," both the round tower and the abbey have been vested in the secretary of the commissioners of public works in Ireland to be preserved as national monuments. In various places throughout the county may be seen the ruins of several ancient castles, Danish raths, and tumuli, in which last have been found at times urns and stone coffins. At Wattlebridge, near Newtownbutler, are the remains of a Druidical temple. (w. E. c.) FERMAT, PIEKRE DE (1601-1665), a famous mathe matician, was born at Beaumont-de-Lomagne near Mont- auban. While still young he, along with Pascal, made some discoveries in regard to the properties of numbers, on which he afterwards built his method of calculating probabilities. He discovered a simpler method of quadrating parabolas than that of Archimedes, and a method of finding the great est and smallest ordiuates of crooked lines analogous to that of the then unknown differential calculus. His method of maxima and minima brought him into conflict with Descartes, but the dispute was due chiefly to a want of explicitnesa in the statement of Fcrmat. Fermat was for some time councillor for the parliament of Toulouse, and in the discharge of the duties of that office he was distinguished both for legal knowledge and for strict integrity of conduct. Though the sciences were the principal objects of his private studies, he was also an accomplished general scholar and an excellent linguist. He died at Toulouse in 1665. He left a son, Samuel de Fermat, who was a man of some learning, and published translations of several Greek authors. The Opera Mathematics of Fermat were published at Toulouse, in 2 vols. folio, 1670 and 1679 ; they have now become very scarce. The first contains tho "Arithmetic of Diophantus, * with notes and additions. The second includes a " Method for the Quadrature of Parabolas," and a treatise " onMaxima and Minima, on Tangents, and on Centres of Gravity," containing the same solutions of a variety of problems as were afterwards incorporated into the more ex tensive method of fluxions by Newton and Leibnitz. In the same volume arc treatises on " Geometric Loci, or Spherical Tangencies," and on the "Rectification of Curves," besides a restoration of "Apollouius s Plane Loci, "together with the author s correspondence addressed to Descartes, Pascal, Roberval, Iluygens, and others. FERMENTATION, a chemical term, which, in accord ance with its derivation tromfervere (to boil), was originally applied indiscriminately to all chemical changes involving the effervescence of a liquid, but which, in its modern accept ation, has in itself nothing at all to do with effervescence, being used to designate a peculiar class of metamorphoses which certain complex organic materials are liable to, aiid of which the well-known change which grape juice under goes when it " ferments " into wine, the souring of wine or milk, and the putrefaction of animal or vegetable matter may be cited as familiar examples. What in all these and similar processes strikes the ordinary observer as something particularly characteristic is their spontaneity : sweet milk turns sour, grape juice passes into wine, wine into vinegar, vinegar into a foul insipid fluid without the application or addition from without of any agent or reagent ; but the " spontaneity " in the eyes of the chemical investigator does not go far. All chemical reactions are spontaneous; and wherever a case occurs of two things acting upon each other, it makes no difference whether one of them be added, say, to the solution of the other from a bottle, or whether it were present in the liquid from the first. What caused chemists to group together fermentative changes as a class of phenomena different from ordinary reactions was the fact that wherever they succeeded in reducing the phenomena to a degree^ of simplicity sufficient for translating the respective reaction into an equation, this equation, though perfectly correct in