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LAUGIER LAUMONITE 207 Billow, 2 provincial councillors, and 15 depu- ties chosen for six years (5 of the noble estates, 5 of the towns, and 5 of the peasants' estates). The provincial councillors are appointed for life, and constitute with the Erblandmarschall the Landrathscollegium, which shares with the government the right of convoking the diet. The government of the duchy consists of a president (Landdrost) and two councillors at Ratzeburg, subordinate to the minister for the duchy of Lauenburg, who resides at Berlin. From 1865 to 1874 this office was held by Prince Bismarck. The highest judicial resort is the supreme court of appeal at Berlin. In the budget for 1873, the revenue and expendi- ture were estimated at $313,000 each. The public debt amounted to $1,224,000. The capi- tal is Ratzeburg, and there are only two other towns, Lauenburg and Molln. Henry the Lion of Saxony conquered the duchy of Lauenburg from the Slavic tribe of the Polabs (i. e., dwell- ers on the Elbe). It then remained for some time a subject of dispute between his descen- dants and the Saxon dukes of the Ascanian line, until in 1227 it was occupied by Albert I. of Saxony, whose younger son, John I., became in 1260 the founder of a separate line, Saxe-Lau- enburg, which became extinct in 1689. In ac- cordance with a family pact, concluded in 1369 with the house of Brunswick-Luneburg, the duchy fell to the duke of Brunswick-Limeburg- Oelle, after whose death it was inherited by George L, elector of Hanover and king of England. In 1810 it was incorporated with the French department of Bouches-de-1'Elbe ; in 1813 it was reoccupied by Hanover, and in 1815 ceded to Prussia, which in the same year transferred it to Denmark in exchange for Swedish Pomerania. By the peace of Vienna, 1864, it was ceded by Denmark to Austria and Russia ; and by the convention of Gastein, Aug. 14, 1865, Austria, in consideration of a sum of 1,875,000 thalers, left it to the sole possession of the king of Prussia, who formally took pos- session of it as duke of Lauenburg, but without consolidating it with his other dominions. LAIIGIER, Angnste Ernest Paul, a French as- tronomer, born in Paris in 1812, died there, April 5, 1872. He was a son of the chemist Andre" Laugier (1770-1832), and a brother of the medical writer Stanislas Laugier (1799- 1872). He studied under Arago, became con- nected with the observatory of Paris, and was employed in naval examinations. He was the first to define the proper motion of solar spots. His discovery and calculation of a telescopic comet in 1842 won for him the Lalande gold medal, and in 1843 he succeeded Savary in the academy of sciences, of which he was president for some time. At the re- quest of Humboldt he was engaged for some years in the improvement of the construction of astronomical clocks. In 1853 he made an exact determination of the latitude of the Pa- ris observatory, estimating it at 48 50' 11-19", differing considerably from the earlier deter- mination of Arago and Mathieu. In 1857 he published a catalogue of the declination of 140 stars, having previously issued one of 53 neb- ula. He was associated with Arago in re- searches on the physics of the globe, and in magnetic and photometric labors; and for a long time he made the observations on the declination and inclination of the magnet for the bureau of longitudes. LAUGIER, Cesar de Belleconr, count de, an Italian soldier and author, of French origin, born at Porto Ferrajo, Elba, Oct. 5, 1789. He served in the French and Italian armies, dis- tinguishing himself in May, 1848, at Curtatone, at the head of the Tuscan forces, against the Austrians; but in 1849 he opposed the Tuscan patriots in the interest of monarchy, and was obliged to seek refuge in Piedmont until the restoration of the grand duke Leopold II., after which he was minister of war till Octo- ber, 1851. He is one of the most voluminous and able writers of Italy ; his principal work is Fastes et vicissitudes des peoples italiens de 1801 a, 1815 (13 vols., Florence, 1829-'32). LAUGIER, Jean Nicolas, a French engraver, born in Toulon in 1785, died near Paris in 1865. He studied under Girodet in Paris, and in the school of fine arts. His engravings of Delorme's "Hero and Leander" (1817), and of Gros's "Plague-stricken at Jaffa" (1831), re- ceived gold medals. His subsequent works comprise engravings after Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, and other masters, Poussin's "Trance of St. Paul," David's "Leonidas at Thermopyla3," and Girodet's "Pygmalion and Galatea," and his portrait of Chateaubriand. While at the Boston athenaeum he made a drawing of Stuart's portrait for Le"on Coi- gnet's picture of Washington. LAUMONITE (called by Werner efflorescing zeolite, from its property of crumbling at the touch after exposure to the air), a mineral found in cavities in amygdaloidal rocks, and also in syenite and porphyry; named after Laumont the mineralogist, who first observed it in 1785 in the lead mines in Brittany. It occurs in crystals of the form of oblique rhom- boidal prisms, and also in lamellar masses. The color is yellowish or grayish white ; it is trans- parent, and has a vitreous lustre, but becomes opaque and usually pulverulent on exposure ; hardness 3'5-4; specific gravity 2-3-2-4. In composition it is a hydrated silicate of alumina and lime, a specimen from Phippsburg, Me., giving the following proportions of its ingre- dients: silica 51-98, alumina 21-12, lime 11-71, and water 15-05=99-86. Some varieties are so liable to effloresce and fall to fine powder, that they can be preserved only by a coating of gum arabic, or by keeping them in moist air. The mineral is found principally in the Faroe islands, the Hebrides, Greenland, and Switzerland, but occurs also on the N. shore of Lake Superior, at Bergen Hill, K J., and at Port George, Nova Scotia, where the veins are sometimes 3 in. thick* 481 VOL. X. 14