Authorities.—The most notable of the European travellers who have visited Fezzan, and to whose works reference should be made for more detailed information regarding it, are, taking them in the order of date, as follows: F. Hornemann, 1798; G. F. Lyon, 1819; D. Denham, H. Clapperton and W. Oudney, 1822; J. Richardson, 1845; H. Barth, 1850–1855; E. Vogel, 1854; H. Duveyrier, 1859–1861; M. von Beurmann, 1862; G. Rohlfs, 1865; G. Nachtigal, 1869; P. L. Monteil, 1892; H. Vischer, 1906. Nachtigal’s Sahara and Sudan, vol. i. (Berlin, 1879), gathers up much of the information in earlier works, and a list of the Beni Mahommed sovereigns is given in A. M. H. J. Stokvis, Manuel d’histoire, vol. i. (Leiden, 1888), p. 471. Miss Tinné (q.v.), who travelled with Nachtigal as far as Murzuk, was shortly afterwards murdered at the Sharaba wells on the road to Ghat.
FIACRE, SAINT (Celt. Fiachra), an anchorite of the 7th century,
of noble Irish descent. We have no information concerning his
life in his native country. His Acta, which have scarcely any
historical value, relate that he left Ireland, and came to France
with his companions. He approached St Faro, the bishop of
Meaux, to whom he made known his desire to live a life of
solitude in the forest. St Faro assigned him a spot called
Prodilus (Brodolium), the modern Breuil, in the province of Brie.
There St Fiacre built a monastery in honour of the Holy Virgin,
and to it added a small house for guests, to which he himself
withdrew. Here he received St Chillen (? Killian), who was
returning from a pilgrimage to Rome, and here he remained until
his death, having acquired a great reputation for miracles.
His remains rested for a long time in the place which he had
sanctified. In 1568, at the time of the religious troubles, they
were transferred to the cathedral of Meaux, where his shrine
may still be seen in the sacristy. Various relics of St Fiacre were
given to princes and great personages. His festival is celebrated
on the 30th of August. He is the patron of Brie, and gardeners
invoke him as their protector. French hackney-coaches received
the name of fiacre from the Hôtel St Fiacre, in the rue St Martin,
Paris, where one Sauvage, who was the first to provide cabs for
hire, kept his vehicles.
See Acta Sanctorum, Augusti vi. 598-620; J. O’Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints, viii. 421-447 (Dublin, 1875–1904); J. C. O’Meagher, “Saint Fiacre de la Brie,” in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 3rd series, ii. 173-176. (H. De.)
FIARS PRICES, in the law of Scotland, the average prices of
each of the different sorts of grain grown in each county, as
fixed annually by the sheriff, usually after the verdict of a jury;
they serve as a rule for ascertaining the value of the grain due to
feudal superiors, to the clergy or to lay proprietors of teinds, to
landlords as a part or the whole of their rents and in all cases
where the price of grain has not been fixed by the parties. It is
not known when or how the practice of “striking the fiars,” as it
is called, originated. It probably was first used to determine the
value of the grain rents and duties payable to the crown. In
confirmation of this view it seems that at first the duty of the
sheriffs was merely to make a return to the court of exchequer of
the prices of grain within their counties, the court itself striking
the fiars; and from an old case it appears that the fiars were
struck above the true prices, being regarded rather as punishments
to force the king’s tenants to pay their rents than as the
proper equivalent of the grain they had to pay. Co-existent,
however, with these fiars, which were termed sheriffs’ fiars, there
was at an early period another class called commissaries’ fiars, by
which the values of teinds were regulated. They have been
traced back to the Reformation, and were under the management
of the commissary or consistorial courts, which then took the
place of the bishops and their officials. They have now been long
out of use, but they were perhaps of greater antiquity than the
sheriffs’ fiars, and the model upon which these were instituted.
In 1723 the court of session passed an Act of Sederunt for the
purpose of regulating the procedure in fiars courts. Down to
that date the practice of striking the fiars was by no means
universal over Scotland; and even in those counties into which
it had been introduced, there was, as the preamble of the act puts
it, “a general complaint that the said fiars are struck and given
out by the sheriffs without due care and inquiry into the current
and just prices.” The act in consequence provided that all
sheriffs should summon annually, between the 4th and the 20th
of February, a competent number of persons, living in the shire, of
experience in the prices of grain within its bounds, and that from
these they should choose a jury of fifteen, of whom at least eight
were to be heritors; that witnesses and other evidence as to the
price of grain grown in the county, especially since the 1st of
November preceding until the day of inquiry, were to be brought
before the jury, who might also proceed on “their own proper
knowledge”; that the verdict was to be returned and the
sentence of the sheriff pronounced by the 1st of March; and
further, where custom or expediency recommended it, the sheriff
was empowered to fix fiars of different values according to the
different qualities of the grain. It cannot be said that this act
has remedied all the evils of which it complained. The propriety
of some of its provisions has been questioned, and the competency
of the court to pass it has been doubted, even by the court itself.
Its authority has been entirely disregarded in one county—Haddingtonshire—where
the fiars are struck by the sheriff alone,
without a jury; and when this practice was called in question the
court declined to interfere, observing that the fiars were better
struck in Haddingtonshire than anywhere else. The other
sheriffs have in the main followed the act, but with much variety
of detail, and in many instances on principles the least calculated
to reach the true average prices. Thus in some counties the
averages are taken on the number of transactions, without regard
to the quantities sold. In one case, in 1838, the evidence was so
carelessly collected that the second or inferior barley fiars were
2s. 4d. higher than the first. Formerly the price was struck by
the boll, commonly the Linlithgowshire boll; now the imperial
quarter is always used.
The origin of the plural word fiars (feors, feers, fiers) is uncertain. Jamieson, in his Dictionary, says that it comes from the Icelandic fe, wealth; Paterson derives it from an old French word feur, an average; others connect it with the Latin forum (i.e. market). The New English Dictionary accepts the two latter connexions. On the general subject of fiars prices see Paterson’s Historical Account of the Fiars in Scotland (Edin., 1852); Connell, On Tithes; Hunter’s Landlord and Tenant.
FIBRES (or Fibers, in American spelling; from Lat. fibra,
apparently connected either with filum, thread, or findere, to
split), the general term for certain structural components of
animal and vegetable tissue utilized in manufactures, and in
respect of such uses, divided for the sake of classification into
textile, paper-making, brush and miscellaneous fibres.
I. Textile Fibres are mostly products of the organic world, elaborated in their elongated form to subserve protective functions in animal life (as wool and epidermal hairs, &c.) or as structural components of vegetable tissues (flax, hemp and wood cells). It may be noted that the inorganic world provides an exception to this general statement in the fibrous mineral asbestos (q.v.), which is spun or twisted into coarse textiles. Other silicates are also transformed by artificial processes into fibrous forms, such as “glass,” which is fused and drawn or spun to a continuous fibre, and various “slags” which, in the fused state, are transformed into “slag wool.” Lastly, we note that a number of metals are drawn down to the finest dimensions, in continuous lengths, and these are woven into cloth or gauze, such metallic cloths finding valuable applications in the arts. Certain metals in the form of fine wire are woven into textile fabrics used as dress materials. Such exceptional applications are of insignificant importance, and will not be further considered in this article.
The common characteristics of the various forms of matter comprised in the widely diversified groups of textile fibres are those of the colloids. Colloidal matter is intrinsically devoid of structure, and in the mass may be regarded as homogeneous; whereas crystalline matter in its proximate forms assumes definite and specific shapes which express a complex of internal stresses. The properties of matter which condition its adaptation to structural functions, first as a constituent of a living individual, and afterwards as a textile fibre, are homogeneous continuity of substance, with a high degree of interior cohesion, and associated with an irreducible minimum of elasticity or extensibility. The colloids show an infinite diversity of variations in these essential properties: certain of them, and notably cellulose (q.v.), maintain
