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ton costing about 72s. and selling for not more than 25s. or 30s. The want of machinery strong enough to keep the workings dry is assigned as one of the chief reasons of the collapse. The coal, which appears to be of Tertiary formation, is of good quality; the mines are on the north end of the island near the village of Lubok Tamiang. The general trade of Labuan consists mainly of the importation and re-exportation of Bornean produce; and most of the Labuan merchants are from Singapore houses. There are several factories for the preparation of sago flour. The total burden of the vessels entering the port in 1879 was only 10,787 tons, of which 8516 was due to steam ships. The population, which in 1861 was 2373 (1627 males, 701 females), was 5731 (3414 males, 2317 females) in 1881. It includes Chinese, Klings, chiefly from Karikal in French India, Malay fishermen, and Kudayans and Tutongs from Borneo. Port Victoria, the principal settlement, has no municipal government.
The colony is now self-supporting. The Chinese have schools for their own children; and Sir Henry Bulwer established in 1873 a school for the teaching of Malay and English. The temporary diocese of Labuan includes, not only Sarawak in Borneo, but also Singapore (which is 770 miles distant); and the church of St Andrews in that city is the cathedral of the see. Convicts have been sent to Labuan from the Straits settlements since 1866.
See Keppel, Visit to Indian Archipelago, London, 1853; Mundy, Narrative of Events in Borneo, London, 1848; Burbidge, Gardens of the Sun, London, 1880.
LABURNUM is the specific name of a familiar tree of the genus Cytisus, Dec., of the pea family or Leguminosæ. It is a native of the mountains of France, Switzerland, southern Germany, northern Italy, &c., has long been cultivated as an ornamental tree throughout Europe, and was introduced into north-east America by the European colonists. Gerard records it as growing in his garden in 1596 under the names of anagyris, laburnum, or beane trefoyle (Historie of Plants, p. 1239), but the date of its introduction into England appears to be unknown. In France it is called l'aubour – a corruption from laburnum according to Du Hamel – as also arbois, i.e., arc-bois, "the wood having been used by the ancient Gauls for bows. It is still so employed in some parts of the Mâconnois, where the bows are found to preserve their strength and elasticity for half a century" (London, Arboretum, ii. p. 590).
Several varieties of this well-known tree are cultivated, differing in the size of the flowers, in the form of the foliage, &c., such as the "oak-leafed" (quercifolium), pendulum, crispum, &c. One of the most remarkable forms is C. Adami, Poir. (C. purpurascens, Hort.), which bears three kinds of blossoms, viz., racemes of pure yellow flowers, others of a purple colour, and others of an intermediate brick-red tint all three kinds being borne by one and the same tree. The last are hybrid blossoms, and are sterile, with malformed ovules, though, curiously enough, the pollen appears to be good. The yellow and purple "reversions" are fertile. It originated in Paris in 1828 by M. Adam, who inserted a "shield" of the bark of C. purpureus, Scop., into a stock of C. Laburnum, L. A vigorous shoot from this bud was subsequently propagated. Hence it would appear that the two distinct species mentioned above became united by their cambium layers, and the trees propagated therefrom subsequently reverted to their respective parentages in bearing both yellow and purple flowers, but produce as well blossoms of an intermediate or hybrid character. Such a result, Mr Darwin observes, may be called a "graft-hybrid." For full details see Darwin's Animals and Plants under Domestication.
The laburnum has highly poisonous properties. A case is recorded of nearly fatal results to several boys who masticated the roots on finding they tasted like liquorice, which is a member of the same family as the laburnum. It has proved fatal to cattle, though hares and rabbits eat the bark of it with avidity (Gardener's Chronicle, 1881, vol. xvi. p. 666). The seeds also are highly poisonous, possessing emetic as well as narcotico-acrid principles especially in a green state. Gerard (loc. cit.) alludes to the powerful effect produced on the system by taking the bruised leaves medicinally. Pliny records that bees will not visit the flowers (N. H., xvi. 31), but this may be an error, for Mr Darwin found by experiment that insects play an important part in the fertilization of the laburnum. The heart wood of the laburnum is of a dark reddish-brown colour, hard and durable, and takes, a good polish. Hence it is much prized by turners, and used with other coloured woods for inlaying purposes. The laburnum has been called false ebony from this character of its wood.
The roots are subject to a peculiar disease, not at all uncommon in other members of the Leguminosæ, the fine rootlets swelling into minute club-shaped processes called exostoses, resembling coral-branches in shape. Large masses of such, one or two inches in diameter, may be found at the extremities of the roots of old laburnum trees. They are apparently caused by a fungus which appears to be ubiquitous, as the disease is rarely, if ever, known to be absent, though it does not seem to cause much if any injury to the health of the plants it attacks. See Studier öfver Leguminosernas rotknölar, 1874, by Dr Jacob Eriksson; also Gardener's Chronicle, 1879, xi. p. 209, and xii. p. 112.
LABYRINTH. I. The legendary labyrinth is one of the clearest examples of the close relation between mythology and the early stages of the industrial arts. The word λαβύρινθος is derived from the λαύραι or passages of a mine the digamma before the ρ has become in the latter a vowel, while in the former it retains its consonantal value. The mines of Greece, like those of Thrace and the Ægean Islands, were probably first worked by the Phœnician traders; and the simple-minded natives regarded the strange holes in the ground with wonder and awe. To the natural fear of darkness was added the invariable tendency of the uneducated to regard as supernatural the power conferred by superior knowledge; moreover, the god of the riches of the lower world was also the god of death and the dead. Their fear expressed itself in tales of the extraordinary ramifications of the dark passages and of the danger to which any heedless intruder into them was exposed. The maze of passages was called a labyrinth; the word became a proper name and gained a life and meaning of its own in legend, quite unconnected with its original application. It retained a more antique form, as proper names frequently do, whereas the mining term λαύρα lost the older character of the digamma. It must have been comparatively late before the word labyrinth acquired this new independence and connotation. The best-known instance of its mythic character is found in the legends of Crete. It was interwoven with the tales, partly founded on historical events and partly derived from ancient religion, which clustered round the name of Minos. The skilful workman, Dædalus, who sums up all the legendary conceptions of skill in handicraft, made for King Minos a labyrinth, in the centre of which the Minotaur was placed. No one who entered this labyrinth could find his way out again; he became the prey of the monster. The seven youths and seven maidens sent regularly by the Athenians as tribute were thus devoured, until Theseus slew the Minotaur, and escaped out of the labyrinth by the help of the clue which Ariadne had given him.
Pliny says that there had been in Crete a building called the labyrinth, of which no remains existed in his time; but Hoek has proved quite certainly from the discrepancies and contradictions in accounts and in representations on coins that it had never a real existence. The rocks of Crete are full of winding caves, and these gave the first hint of the legendary labyrinth. This labyrinth is, by the
