LIBRATION (Lat. libra, a balance), a slow oscillation, as of a balance; in astronomy especially the seeming oscillation of the moon around her axis, by which portions of her surface near the edge of the disk are alternately brought into sight and swung out of sight.
LIBYA, the Greek name for the northern part of Africa, with which alone Greek and Roman history are concerned. It is mentioned as a land of great fertility in Homer (Odyssey, iv. 85), but no indication of its extent is given. It did not originally include Egypt, which was considered part of Asia, and first assigned to Africa by Ptolemy, who made the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between the two continents. The name Africa came into general use through the Romans. In the early empire, North Africa (excluding Egypt) was divided into Mauretania, Numidia, Africa Propria and Cyrenaica. The old name was reintroduced by Diocletian, by whom Cyrenaica (detached from Crete) was divided into Marmarica (Libya inferior) in the east, and Cyrenaica (Libya superior) in the west. A further distinction into Libya interior and exterior is also known. The former (ἡ ἐντός) included the interior (known and unknown) of the continent, as contrasted with the N. and N.E. portion; the latter (ἡ ἔξω, called also simply Libya, or Libyae nomos), between Egypt and Marmarica, was so called as having once formed an Egyptian “nome.” See Africa, Roman.
LICATA, a seaport of Sicily, in the province of Girgenti, 24 m. S.E. of Girgenti direct and 54 m. by rail. Pop. (1901) 22,931. It occupies the site of the town which Phintias of Acragas (Agrigentum) erected after the destruction of Gela, about 281 B.C., by the Mamertines, and named after himself. The river Salso, which flows into the sea on the east of the town, is the ancient Himera Meridionalis. The promontory at the foot of which the town is situated, the Poggio di Sant’ Angelo, is the Ecnomus (Eknomon) of the Greeks, and upon its slopes are scanty traces of ancient structures and rock tombs. It was off this promontory that the Romans gained the famous naval victory over the Carthaginians in the spring of 256 B.C., while the plain to the north was the scene of the defeat of Agathocles by Hamilcar in 310 B.C. The modern town is mainly important as a shipping port for sulphur.
LICENCE (through the French from Lat. licentia, licere, to be lawful), permission, leave, liberty, hence an abuse of liberty, licentiousness; in particular, a formal authority to do some lawful act. Such authority may be either verbal or written; when written, the document containing the authority is called a “licence.” Many acts, lawful in themselves, are regulated by statutory authority, and licences must be obtained. For the sale of alcoholic liquor see Liquor Laws.
LICHEN (lichen ruber), in medical terminology, a papular disease of the skin, consisting of an eruption in small thickly set, slightly elevated red points, more or less widely distributed over the body, and accompanied by slight febrile symptoms.
LICHENS, in botany, compound or dual organisms each consisting of an association of a higher fungus, with a usually unicellular, sometimes filamentous, alga. The fungal part of the organism nearly always consists of a number of the Discomycetes or Pyrenomycetes, while the algal portion is a member of the Schizophyceae (Cyanophyceae or Blue-green Algae) or of the Green Algae; only in a very few cases is the fungus a member of the Basidiomycetes. The special fungi which take part in the association are, with rare exceptions, not found growing separately, while the algal forms are constantly found free. The reproductive organs of the lichen are of a typically fungal character, i.e. are apothecia or perithecia (see Fungi) and spermogonia. The algal cells are never known to form spores while part of the lichen-thallus, but they may do so when separated from it and growing free. The fungus thus clearly takes the upper hand in the association.
Owing to their peculiar dual nature, lichens are able to live in situations where neither the alga nor fungus could exist alone. The enclosed alga is protected by the threads (hyphae) of the fungus, and supplied with water and salts and, possibly, organic nitrogenous substances; in its turn the alga by means of its green or blue-green colouring matter and the sun’s energy manufactures carbohydrates which are used in part by the fungus. An association of two organisms to their mutual advantage is known as symbiosis, and the lichen in botanical language is described as a symbiotic union of an alga and a fungus. This form of relationship is now known in other groups of plants (see Bacteriology and Fungi), but it was first discovered in the lichens. The lichens are characterized by their excessively slow growth and their great length of life.
Until comparatively recent times the lichens were considered as a group of simple organisms on a level with algae and fungi. The green (or blue-green) cells were termed gonidia by Wallroth, who looked upon them as asexual reproductive cells, but when it was later realized that they were not reproductive elements they were considered as mere outgrowths of the hyphae of the thallus which had developed chlorophyll. In 1865 De Bary suggested the possibility that such lichens as Collema, Ephebe, &c., arose as a result of the attack of parasitic Ascomycetes upon the algae, Nostoc, Chroococcus, &c. In 1867 the observations of Famintzin and Baranetzky showed that the gonidia, in certain cases, were able to live outside the lichen-thallus, and in the case of Physcia, Evernia and Cladonia were able to form zoospores. Baranetzky therefore concluded that a certain number, if not all of the so-called algae were nothing more than free living lichen-gonidia. In 1869 Schwendener put forward the really illuminating view—exactly opposite to that of Baranetzky—that the gonidia in all cases were algae which had been attacked by parasitic fungi. Although Schwendener supported this view of the “dual” nature of lichens by very strong evidence and identified the more common lichen-gonidia with known free-living algae, yet the theory was received with a storm of opposition by nearly all lichenologists. These workers were unable to consider with equanimity the loss of the autonomy of their group and its reduction to the level of a special division of the fungi. The observations of Schwendener, however, received ample support from Bornet’s (1873) examination of 60 genera. He investigated the exact relation of fungus and alga and showed that the same alga is able to combine with a number of different fungi to form lichens; thus Chroolepus umbrinus is found as the gonidia of 13 different lichen genera.
The view of the dual nature of lichens had hitherto been based on analysis; the final proof of this view was now supplied by the actual synthesis of a lichen from fungal and algal constituents. Rees in 1871 produced the sterile thallus of a Collema from its constituents; later Stahl did the same for three species. Later Bonnier (1886) succeeded in producing fertile thalli by sowing lichen spores and the appropriate algae upon sterile glass plates or portions of bark, and growing them in sterilized air (fig. 1). Möller also in 1887 succeeded in growing small lichen-thalli without their algal constituent (gonidia) on nutritive solutions; in the case of Calicium pycnidia were actually produced under these conditions.
The thallus or body of the lichen is of very different form in different genera. In the simplest filamentous lichens (e.g. Ephebe pubescens) the form of thallus is the form of the filamentous alga which is merely surrounded by the fungal hyphae (fig. 2). The next simplest forms are gelatinous lichens (e.g. Collemaceae); in these the algae are Chroococcaceae and Nostocaceae, and the fungus makes its way into the gelatinous membranes of the algal cells and ramifies there (fig. 3). We can distinguish this class of forms as lichens with a homoiomerous thallus, i.e. one in which the alga and fungus are equally distributed. The majority of the lichens, however, possess a stratified thallus in which the gonidia are found as a definite layer or layers embedded in a pseudo-parenchymatous mass of fungal hyphae, i.e. they are heteromerous (figs. 8 and 9). Obviously these two conditions may merge
