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dominant class. The writers of the middle ages speak of the Mordvins as being very cruel, and accuse them of cannibalism. They are now considered intelligent, industrious, and honest; they cultivate the soil, and raise cattle and bees; they live in huts with the door opening to the east; and though they profess to be Christians, they are still given to many superstitious practices. Their dialect is similar to that of the Tcheremisses, whose language is strongly intermixed with Tartar and Russian. The Tcheremisses are scattered over the governments of Viatka, Kazan, Nizhni-Novgorod, and Kostroma, and are estimated at 150,000. Those living on the right shore of the Volga are called highland Tcheremisses, and others Tcheremisses of the plain. The Tchuvashes number about 450,000, and live in Kazan, Simbirsk, Saratov, and Orenburg. Their religion is neither Christian, Mohammedan, nor pagan, but a mixture of the three, with paganism in the ascendant. The principal tribes among them are the Vereyal and the Kereyal, and their chief occupations are agriculture, bee culture, and cattle raising. The abodes of the Ugric branch are widely distributed. The Ugrian tribe proper and the Ostiaks live in the neighborhood of the Samoyeds, in the Siberian government of Tobolsk. They are half savages, and, though nominally Christians, adhere to Shamanism. Their language is a primitive Finnic dialect mingled with Tartar, and resembles closely that of their neighbors the Voguls, who inhabit the eastern slope of the Ural, number about 2,000, and are similar to the Calmucks. They live in villages of four or five yurts (tents of felt), dress in caftans, and are peaceable, jovial, lazy, and poor. Their principal occupations are hunting and fishing. The Bashkirs are also now considered to belong to the Finnic race. (See Bashkirs.) The Finnic tribe of Meshtcheriaks has adopted a Turkish dialect and the Mohammedan faith. For the most important division of the Ugric branch, and of the whole race, the Magyars, see Hungary.—The following are valuable recent works of reference on the subject: Schnitzler, L'Empire des tsars au point actuel de la science (Paris, 1862); Cuno, Forschungen im Gebiete der alten Völkerkunde (Berlin, 1871 et seq.); Koskinen, Finnische Geschichte von den frühesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipsic, 1873); also the periodical Archiv für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland, published in Berlin.
FINSTERAARHORN, the loftiest peak of the Bernese Alps, 14,106 (or according to another measurement 14,026) ft. high, situated W. of the Grimsel, and visible from the new carriage road completed since 1867 over the Furca pass. The summit is accessible from the Faulberg hut, 5 m. from Lake Merjelen. Although the mountain is surrounded by stupendous glaciers, the highest point is said to be free from snow and ice, owing to its needle-like formation, whence it is called the Nadel; it is about 20 ft. long. The S. part of the mountain is called also Schwarzhorn, on account of the dark appearance of the rocks. Various attempts to scale the summit have been made during the last 60 years, with varied success; those made most recently have been most successful.
FIORELLI, Giuseppe, an Italian archæologist, born in the province of Naples about 1823. He early became one of the directors of the excavations at Pompeii, but being denounced as a liberal, he was removed and subjected to privations and persecutions, despite the protection of the count of Syracuse, brother of the king of Naples, and not restored until the occupation of the kingdom by Victor Emanuel in 1860. He has since been the chief superintendent at Pompeii, and has made considerable progress in the restoration of the excavated buildings, and in the prosecution of new excavations, an annual allowance of 60,000 francs being granted by the government for that purpose. He has published one of the best maps of the uncovered portions of the city, and a chronological history of the discoveries (1860 et seq.), and edits the Giornale del scavi, a journal containing a daily record of the excavations, from their beginning.
FIORENTINO, Pier-Angelo, an Italian author, born in Naples in 1806, died in Paris, May 31, 1864. He early published novels, poems, and dramas, including La Fornarina and Il medico di Parma. Alexandre Dumas père, while at Naples, induced him to settle in Paris, and to aid him in the preparation of works relating to Italian life, some of which, especially Jeanne de Naples, were regarded as the exclusive production of Fiorentino. He wrote French with the same facility and elegance as Italian. He went to Paris with 150 francs, and left 600,000 francs, acquired by literary labors.
FIR, the popular name of several species of trees of the genus abies. Some botanical authors class the trees known as firs, spruces, and hemlock spruces in the one genus abies, while some others make three genera: abies for the spruces, picea for the firs, and tsuga for the hemlock spruces. In a botanical view, however, it seems better to group them all under abies, and consider the picea and tsuga as subgenera of abies proper. The firs are more closely related to the pines than are any other of the large family of coniferæ. While in the genus pinus the leaves are in clusters of two to five enclosed in a sheath, in abies they are scattered on the branches, and sometimes two-rowed. In abies proper, the spruces, the short, needle-shaped leaves are scattered around the branches and the cones nodding or pendent, with the scales persistent; in the section tsuga, the hemlocks or hemlock spruces, the flattened and petioled leaves are arranged as if in two rows; and in the section picea, the firs, the leaves are somewhat in two rows, the cones at maturity are erect, and the scales fall away from the supporting axis. In the present article we confine ourselves to the last named division. —
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