Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/81

LABYRINTH LAO 75 Europe it is also called bean trefoil. Its hard and heavy wood is largely used for ornamental work, and for handles to knives and other in- struments ; it takes a high polish, and has a greenish color ; the French call it the ebony of the Alps. Rabbits are so fond of its bark, that they eat it in preference to that of any other tree. The seeds are highly emetic, and may be regarded as poisonous, and their great pro- fusion and brilliant appearance render it some- what objectionable to cultivate the tree, from the danger of children or cattle being tempted to eat them. A hybrid (probably a graft hy- brid) between this and a purple-flowered spe- cies obtained by a French horticulturist, M. Adam, is known as Adam's laburnum. Its flowers, which are of a dull purple color, fre- quently revert to one or the other parent; and the same branch, and even the same cluster, bears pure yellow and purple flowers of the parent species, as well as the dull purple ones of the hybrid. The alpine or Scotch laburnum (L. alpinum) attains a greater size than the one already described; it is a native of southern Europe, and cultivated forms of the two are so much alike that it is probable they are not specifically distinct. LABYRINTH, a structure of intricate passage- ways which it is impossible to traverse with- out a clue. Three labyrinths are mentioned in ancient story. The best authenticated is the labyrinth of Egypt, situated at Arsinoe, near Lake Moeris. Herodotus visited and describes it. It consisted of 3,000 chambers, half of them below ground, the subterranean apart- ments being sacred burial places. It was ex- tant in Pliny's time. Ruins at the modern vil- lage of Howara in Fayoom have been identi- fied by Lepsius with those of the labyrinth. Another structure, on a smaller scale but on the model of that of Egypt, was reported to have been built near Onossus in Crete, by Dao- dalus, as a place of confinement for the fabled monster the Minotaur ; but antiquaries discover nothing more labyrinthine in that locality than the caves and quarries of Mt. Ida. A third labyrinth was in the isle of Lemnos; remains of it were extant in the time of Pliny, but none can now be traced. A similar structure was said to exist on the island of Samos, .and another, called the labyrinthine tomb of Lars Porsena, near Clusium, in Etruria; but no particulars are known of either, and their ex- istence at any time is doubted. LABYRINTHODON (Gr. ^ipivdo^ labyrinth, and odovf, a tooth), a gigantic fossil reptile, so named by Prof. Owen from the complex laby- rinthic structure of the teeth ; the same animal had been previously called cheirotherium by Kaup, from the resemblance of its tracks to impressions of the human hand. This animal, which possesses both saurian and batrachian characters, probably most nearly resembled a gigantic frog about 10 or 12 ft. long. A his- torical sketch of the discoveries in connection with this reptile may be found in the " Pro- ceedings of the Boston Society of Natural His- tory " (vol. v., 1856, p. 298), and full details on its affinities in the " Annals and Magazine of Natural History " (vol. viii., London, 1852, pp. 305-313). Footprints and bones of the laby- rinthodon have been found in the trias of Eng- land and Germany; from an examination of the head and teeth, vertebras, pelvis, and bones of the extremities, Prof. Owen constructed an animal intermediate between the crocodile and the frog. Pictet (Traite de paleontologie, 1853) calls it mastodonsaurus, and considers it a saurian from the presence of scutes on the skin and the form of the teeth. The general shape of the head is frog-like, as also are the double occipital condyles, narrow palatal pro- cesses of the maxillary, the roof of the mouth, the row of small teeth across the anterior part of the palate and a longitudinal row on the palate concentric with the maxillary teeth, the lower jaw and the vertebrae, and bones of the fore limbs ; on the other hand, the facial and nasal parts of the skull are crocodilian, as are the maxillary tusks, the strong transverse pro- Labyrmthodon (restored). cesses for ribs, bony dermal plates, &c. In some of the dental characters it resembles fishes. The size of the tracks varies from 4 to 12 in. in length, with five toes on each, one turned in like the human thumb; the hind foot was three or four times as large as the fore foot; there is no positive evidence that the animal had a tail ; its progression seems to have been slow and awkward, the legs having been swung outward like the course of a scythe. Near each large step, and l^in. before it, is a smaller one of the fore foot, the distance from pair to pair being about 14 in. The American cheirotherium made a double series of tracks, and evidently belonged to a different genus from that of Europe. LAC, a resinous exudation from the twigs and branches of various kinds of trees in the East Indies, caused by the punctures of the insect coccus ficus^ which swarms upon trees yielding a milky juice. The exuding juice forms an incrustation around the twigs, and in this the insects make the cells for containing their