being consequently right angles: and, as the general has developed some useful ideas concerning the interior defence of a place, though no existing fortification affords an example of the method, a short description of it may with propriety be given. Three parallel ramparts of earth, of the form above indicated, and separated from one another by wet ditches, surround the place: the berme at the foot of the first and third is protected by a simple wall, and that at the foot of the middle rampart is covered by a loop-holed gallery on its whole length. Beyond the outer ditch is the coveredway, whose re-entering angles are fortified by strong redoubts. In the re-entering angles of the two interior ramparts are formed casemated batteries, the fires from which would sweep the surfaces of the ditches in front, in the directions of their lengths; and, within the enceinte of the place, a circular redoubt, or tower, of brick-work, carrying several tiers of guns, is intended to defend the interior rampart, if, at length, it should be forced. The merit of this system is supposed to consist chiefly in the powerful fire which the casemates would afford, as from their situation, they would scarcely be injured by the enemy; in the difficulty which the latter would experience in getting over the detached walls; and in the great force which the defenders, by means of the spacious communications, might bring up to oppose the assailants. During the existence of the French empire, the celebrated Carnot proposed to restore the balance between the attack and defence of fortresses, which the inventions of Vauban had made to preponderate greatly in favour of the former, by means of powerful sorties from the place and an abundant discharge of stones and balls from mortars fired at considerable angles of elevation; thus annoying the besiegers in their trenches, and either putting great numbers of their men hors de combat, or compelling them to recur to the slow process of blinding their approaches. Adopting, in his method of fortifying places, the proportions of Cormontaingne for the plan of his bastions, but making the whole length of his front of fortification equal to 480 yards, he detached the bastions from the enceinte, which he made to consist of a simple polygonal rampart of earth. In rear of the tenaille between the bastions he placed a faussebraye, whose exterior side was to be protected by a casemated tower at each extremity; and, behind the gorge of each bastion, he formed a row of casemate vaults, in which the mortars were to be placed for throwing stones, &c. into that work when gained by the enemy. Adopting also the ideas of Montalembert respecting detached walls, he proposed to surround the enceinte by one, which was to be loop-holed in order that a fire of musketry might be made from it, and to construct a similar wall before the faces and flanks of the bastions. The bastions were to be covered by narrow counterguards; a cavalier, or lofty redoubt, in front of the tenaille, was to defend the collateral faces of both bastions and counterguards; large ravelins were to cover the central parts of the fronts of fortification and afford crossing fires on the ground before the bastions; while mortars placed on the faces of the work and on the barbettes at the angles were to discharge their missiles over the parapets. A ditch surrounds the whole, and its exterior side is made with a gentle slope from the bottom to the level of the natural ground in front, for the purpose of facilitating the sorties; the corresponding facility which the enemy might have for descending into the ditch being disregarded on account of the supposed impossibility of maintaining himself there under the hail of stones and shot from the works. It was supposed that the detached wall, being covered as before mentioned, would present an impassable obstacle to the assailants; but an experiment made at Woolwich in 1824 has proved the possibility of breaching it by a fire of shot and shells, directed over the parapet of the counterguard, from artillery of great calibre, at the distance of 400 yards from the latter work. The efficiency of the vertical fire, as it is called, of stones and shot from the works has also been controverted; and experiments have been made which seem to prove that the momentum acquired by the missiles in their descent would not be sufficient to do serious injury to a man on whom they might fall, if he were protected by a proper head-piece. Plan of a Front of Fortification according to the Method of Cormontaingue. A, Solid Bastion. B, Hollow ditto. X, Retrencament. P. Tenaille. G, Caponniere. QQ, Ravelin, Y, Redoubt in ditto. LL, Re-entering places of VOL. X.-3 C Soon after the commencement of the revolution, Bousmard, a French officer, who had entered the service of the king of Prussia, proposed to curve the faces of bastions on the plan, in order to diminish or prevent the effect of the ricochet, and to build casemates in the flanks of the tenailles for the purpose of more effectually defending the main ditch. But his principal improvement consisted in extending the covered way and glacis along the whole of the enceinte, and in placing the ravelin with its proper covered way and glacis on the exterior; in consequence of which disposition it would become impossible for the besiegers to breach the bastion by firing along the ditch of the ravelin, while the latter would possess all the advantages attending the greatest possible saliency. The ideas of Bousmard respecting the disposition of the ravelin were adopted by General Chasseloup de Labat, in the works which he executed, by order of Napoleon, to strengthen the fortifications of Alessandria; and the same engineer constructed a strong polygonal redoubt of earth in each of the places of arms before the flanked angles of the bastions and ravelins, in order to increase the quantity of crossing and reverse fires in front of the works. The last modification of the bastion system which it will be necessary to mention, is that proposed by Choumara, who, partly to diminish the pressure of the parapets on the escarp revetment, and render the formation of a practicable breach more difficult, and partly to procure a close fire of musketry into the covered-way, suggests that a terreplein, like the old chemin des rondes, but with a slender breastwork to protect the defenders, should be left on the exterior of the parapets. The same engineer recommends that the flanks of the bastions should be lengthened by continuing them within the line of the curtain, and that they should have a greater relief than the latter, in order that a fire of artillery might be directed over it against the works of the enemy: he proposes also that a glacis of earth should be raised in the main ditch, high enough to mask the foot of the escarp revetment, and prevent it from being battered by a fire of artillery on the crest of the covered-way. It is scarcely probable that any existing fortresses will be demolished for the sake of the advantages which would result from a re-construction according to any of the methods which have been proposed since the time of Vauban; but, on any future occasion which may present itself for fortifying a town or military post of importance, it may be found convenient to adopt some improvements in the construction of the works. Thus, the general system of Vauban, with the modifications proposed by Cormontaingne, being retained as the basis, casemates, like those of Montalembert, might be formed in the re-entering angles of the enceinte or tenailles; and detached, walls or galleries for musketry in some of the dry ditches: detached ravelins, as proposed by Bousmard, may be constructed beyond those of the ordinary kind, in order to prevent the enceinte from being breached at the first crowning of the glacis; and a direct defence of the covered-way may be obtained from galleries formed within, or on the exterior of, the parapets along the faces of the works. In the open attack of a fortified place it is evident that the loss of life would be so much the greater as the defensive works are stronger and better combined; and, in consequence, the necessity of making the approaches under cover to the last moment of the siege would become more urgent. he was appointed secretary to the papal nuncio in Spain, and on his return to Rome, in consequence of his ill-health, had a situation as one of his chamberlains bestowed upon him by Clement XI. in 1712, and was likewise made a canon of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. By another pope (Clement XII.) he expected to be raised to the dignit of cardinal; but although an encourager of both poetry and poets, that pontiff evaded from time to time the fulfilment of the promise which he appears to have made, until Fortaguerra was lying on his death-bed, when he rejected the honour then proffered him in terms the reverse of courtly. Monsignor Fortiguerra's lyric poetry, in which he showed himself an imitator of Petrarch, is now forgotten; his fame rests entirely upon his 'Ricciardetto,' an heroico-comic poem in thirty cantos. This production, which was first published with its author's name Grecianized into Carteromaco, was begun by him without any plan, merely by way of proving with what facility he could imitate Ariosto, Pulci, and Berni, both in regard to their style and their fertile invention of incidents; when, at the instance of those friends for whom the first canto was hit off as a specimen, he was induced to proceed till he completed the whole, at the rate, we are assured, of a canto per day. Little, therefore, is it to be wondered at that the plot should be so desultory and the incidents so extravagant. Yet, notwithstanding the grotesqueness of the characters and events, and likewise the occasional carelessness of the style, this long improvi satore poem abounds with so much comic humour, droil satire, and happy burlesque, that it has long taken its place as a classical work of its kind, and has gone through numerous editions. There are two French translations of it; and a German one by Gries, the translator of Ariosto and Tasso, was published 1831-3. In English we have no more than a poetical version of the first canto, with an introduction and notes, by the late Lord Glenbervie (1822). Ricciardetto' was not published till after the author's death, which happened in 1735, the date of the first edition being 1738. Fortiguerra was probably aware that, however it might contribute to his fame as a poet, it was not likely to advance him in the church, since many of the descriptions are more spirited than decorous; nor has he been at all sparing of his satire on the monks." FORTIS, ABBATE, an Italian, born in 1740, died in 1803, wrote many works on various branches of natural philosophy; but his reputation was established by hus travels in Dalmatia, 'Viaggio di Dalmazia:' they have been translated into many languages, but the English translation, published at London, in 1778, is not only the best, but even preferable to the original, on account of the Appendix, various plates, and several other additions, which appeared for the first time with this translation. FORTUNATE ISLANDS. [CANARIES.] FORTUNE, in the Roman mythology, was a goddess who was supposed to dispose, at her caprice, of the destinies of men. She was represented as blind, with winged feet, resting on a wheel. This deity did not figure in the more antient systems of theosophy; Homer does not mention her in the Iliad, but refers the events of this world to the decrees of Jupiter and of Fate. Fortune however was wor shipped in Italy of old; by the Etruscans at Volsmi, under the name of Nursia; by the Latins at Præneste; and by it Volsci at Antium, where a splendid temple was dedicate i to her, in which a sort of oracles were delivered. She i also temples at Rome. (Horace, Od. i. 35; Martial, ep. 1.) For the works occasionally constructed beyond the glacis of a fortress, see FLECHE, HORN-WORK, LUNETTES, and FORUM, a large open space in antient Roman cities TENAILLONS. (corresponding to the Agora of the Greeks), usually sur Of the works which fall under the denomination of field-rounded with public buildings, where the citizens met e fortifications, BRIDGE-HEADS have been already mentioned. REDANS, REDOUBTS, and STAR-FORTS are described under those words; and the combinations of works which serve for the protection of armies, under LINES OF ENTRENCHMENT. Small forts with bastions are frequently considered as field-fortifications: their plan is similar to that of the enceinte of a fortress; but they differ from the latter in their size, in having low relief, and in the sides of their ditches being unreveted, or only faced with sods. FORTIGUERRA, NI'COLO, an Italian prelate, whose writings display little of the austerity or seriousness of a churchman, was born at Pistoja, November 7th, 1674. In his youth he studied jurisprudence, and afterwards distinguished himself by his attainments in Greek. Having Published a funeral discourse in honour of Innocent XII., transact business, and where, previous to the erection of Basilica, causes were tried. From this last circumstance the word forum is used metaphorically for a place of justice. Nardini is of opinion, though without any show of auth rity, that the first forum, or Forum Romanum, at Rome, was placed on the Palatine hill. The Greeks made their Agora square, with a double colonnade, or ambulatory, above and below, but in Italy the width of the forum was m.de less than the length by a third, and the columns set wide apart, as the gladiatorial shows were formerly given in the forum. (Vitruvius, lib. v., 1.) The Roman fora were of two kinds, Fora Civilia and Venalia: the former were for law and political affairs, the latter for the purposes of trade. Rome contained nineteen fora of iniportancethe Forum Antonini, Archęmorium, Argentarium, Au gusti, Boarium, Caesaris, Cupidinis, Nerve, Olitorium, | Stator, still remain. Nardini places on the side of the PaPiscarium, Piscatorium, Pistorium, Romanum, Sallustii, latine hill, in success on, the Fabian arch, Græcostasis, SenaSuarium, Tauri, Trajani, Transitorium, and Vespasiani. lum, Basilica Opimia, Edicula of Concord, Temple of RoOf these the Forum Romanum, Nervæ, Trajani, Boarium, mulus, Temple of the Dii Penates, Curia Ostilia, near which and Piscatorium, alone retain any traces of the splendid was the Comitium, Basilica Portia, Temples of Julius Cæsar, edifices with which they were once adorned. The Forum and Castor and Pollux. On the side towards the Tiber stood Romanum is situated in a narrow valley, not far from the the Temples of Jupiter Stator, Temple and Atrium of Vesta, Tiber, between the Palatine and Capitoline hills. It sweeps Basilica Julia, house of Lucius Tarquinius, and the Temple round towards the Fora of Cæsar and Augustus, which are of Victory. On the side of the capitol was the arch of between it and the larger Fora of Nerva and Trajan, all Tiberius, the temples of Saturn, of Concord, and of Vespawhich, looking at their relative situations, were, no doubt, sian, the school of Xanthus, the arch of Severus, which still connected with it on the north. On the south it extended remains, and the Tullian prisons. On the north side of the nearly to the Fora Boarium and Piscatorium, which were forum was the office of the secretary to the senate, and the near the Pons Palatinus, now called Ponte Rotto. The Basilica of Paulus Emilius. There are however but few reexact limits of the Forum Romanum are very uncertain; mains existing of a small number of these numerous buildNardini (vol. ii., p. 138) endeavours to point out its bounda- ings, and the greater part have entirely disappeared. A ries. It was decorated with temples, statues, basilicæ, cu- single monumental column stands near the Comitium, called riæ, rostra, triumphal columns and arches, which usurped the Column of Phocas. Besides these buildings there are the place of shops, schools, and even private houses, that remains of the temples of Fortune, Jupiter Tonans, Jupiter originally stood in this forum. In the forum were the Capitolinus, and the Tabularium, though these are perhaps rostra, or pulpits, decorated with the beaks of ships, whence not within the boundaries of the forum. (See plates in Narthe orators harangued. According to Appian the rostra dini's Rome, vol. ii. lib. v., c. 1.) A very beautiful restored were placed in the middle of the forum, and he states that view of the Forum Romanum was made by Mr. C. R. CockerSulla caused the head of young Marius to be hung up be- ell, and a reduced view was engraved and published, with fore the rostra in the middle of the forum. Varro, in his his permission, in the second volume of the Pompeii,' pubfourth book, De Lingua Latina,' places the rostra before lished by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the curia, which was near the Comitium, so that the orators to which we refer our readers for an accurate notion of the would stand with their faces towards the capitol; but Plu- splendour of the accumulated architecture of the Forum and tarch, in speaking of the Gracchi, states the reverse to be the Capitol, and its vicinity. the case. The forum at Pompeii, which was constructed in the Greek style, cannot however be altogether considered, if we are guided by the authority of Vitruvius, a truly Greek Agora, which this author states was to be made square in form. It has however many Greek features. The Pompeian forum is of an oblong shape, surrounded on three sides with rows of columns, forming, with the advanced columns of the various buildings, a colonnade or ambulatory; above this there was a second, if we may judge from the remains of stairs at several places at the back of the colonnade. The fourth side of the forum is inclosed with two arches placed on each side of a large hypæethral temple, called the Temple of Jupiter. On the west side are the prisons and the granary, with an enclosed court before it and the prisons; the Temple of Venus and the Basilica [BASILICA]; and on the narrow side, opposite the Temple of Jupiter, are three buildings generally considered to be the Curia and Erarium: on the east side is an enclosure, the use of which has not been determined, the Chalcidicum [CHALCIDICUM], the Temple of Mercury, the Senaculum, and a building supposed to be a large eating-house, generally known by the name of the Pantheon, in front of which are the Taberna Argentariæ. The enclosed area of the forum was paved with large square pieces of marble, and the sides of the area were adorned with statues. Opposite the curia and a short way from them is a small triumphal arch. The forum was closed at night with iron-barred gates, and it does not appear that chariots were admitted into it, as the pavement of the streets terminates at the back of the colonnade. The columns of the ambulatory are of the Greek Doric order, and were being restored in the same style, though with better materials, at the time the city was destroyed. The columns were aræostyle, and the architraves were most probably of wood, as we may infer from their 100 1, 1, Curia; 2, Æranum ; 3, Chalcidicum; 4, Temple of Mercury; 5, SenacuTum; 6, Pantheon; 7. Temple of Jupiter; 8, Prison; 9, Granary; 10, Temple of Venus; 11, Basilica. Construction in wood and stone of the aræostyle portico of the Forum. a, holes for the joists of the upper floor. The Comitium was placed near the Curia; three columns of the former, commonly called the Temple of Jupiter being destroyed, while the frieze and cornice of stone re main. The frontispiece to the first volume of the 'Pompeii' is a restored view of the forum, which gives an idea of the double colonnade, or upper and under ambulatory mentioned by Vitruvius as a characteristic of a Greek Agora. FO'SCOLO, UGO, was born at Zante about the year 1777, of a Venetian family settled in the Ionian Islands. When yet a boy he lost his father, who was a physician and inspector of the hospitals at Spalatro in Dalmatia, and he returned with his mother to Venice, from whence he was sent to study at Padua. Having left that university without having made up his mind to any particular profession, he returned to Venice, and wrote a tragedy, Il Tieste,' which was performed in January, 1797. In that same year the antient aristocracy of Venice fell by the hands of Bonaparte, and Foscolo, who, like others of his countrymen, had expected the establishment of a new and popular republic, felt bitterly disappointed at the conqueror giving up Venice to Austria. At Milan and Florence he gave vent to his excited feelings in the Lettere di due Amanti,' afterwards published under the name of 'Lettere di Ortis.' This work, of litle value as a novel, possesses a higher sort of interest from the political allusions, the bursts of invective, and the picture of society in those disjointed times, which it contains. The language is beautiful and the tone affecting, though perhaps too querulous and desponding; but as such it was in harmony with the then prevailing feeling. The 'Lettere di Ortis' had a prodigious success in Italy; but all the editions were mutilated except a private one printed at Venice in 1802, and that of 1814, which Foscolo himself published | at Zürich with the date of London, which alone contains, among several passages left out in the other editions, the letter dated 17th of March, 1798, in which Foscolo clearly | expressed his opinion of Bonaparte's character. Foscolo served as a volunteer in the Lombard Legion through the disastrous campaign of 1799, and followed the French in their retreat to Genoa, where he remained during the siege of that city till June, 1800, when the garrison capitulated, and was carried to France by the English ships. Meantime the battle of Marengo took place, Lombardy was reconquered, and Foscolo repaired to Milan peace being concluded soon after, he returned to private life and to his literary pursuits. In 1802, Bonaparte having called together at Lyon a meeting of Italian deputies in order to devise a new constitution for the Cisalpine republic, Foscolo was requested by some individuals then in office, to write an address to the First Consul, with an exposition of the state of the country, and the wishes of the people. He did write it, but in a very different strain from what they expected: he wrote it in the style of the Philippics, or the Verrine Orations of Cicero; he drew an eloquent but fearful retrospect of the oppressions, the depredations, the injuries of every kind which the people of Italy had suffered at the hands of the various military and civil authorities appointed by the French since 1796; the disgraceful persecution of the clergy and the so-called aristocrats, and other abuses of party triumph. This oration was, of course, never read to the First Consul, but it was published some time after at Milan-Orazione à Buonaparte pel Congresso di Lione:' it forms an important memorial of the times, and an honourable testimonial of the uncompromising spirit of Foscolo, who seems to have taken Dante and Alfieri for his models. Foscolo remained for some years quietly at Milan under the mild administration of the vice-president Melzi. He published an Italian version of Callimachus De Coma Berenices,' with interesting notes and commentaries. In 1805 we find him again serving in an Italian regiment which formed part of the army assembled near the coast of the British Channel for the intended invasion of England. Being stationed at St. Omer he there attempted an Italian translation of Sterne's Sentimental Journey,' in which he was most successful. When a few months after the "amp of Boulogne was broken up, Foscolo went back to Milan, and did not return into active service. He lived for some time near Brescia, where he wrote his poem, Dei Sepolcri,' 1807, deprecating certain harsh regulations which forbade any monument or memorial being raised over the tombs of the dead. This beautiful little poem, full of lofty thoughts and lyric power, was dedicated by the author to a brother poet, Ippolito Pindemonte of Verona, and it secured to Foscolo a distinguished rank among the Italian poets. It was commented on, imitated, and even transiated into Latin hexameters. In 1808, Foscolo being appointed professor of Italian eloquence at Pavia, was privately urged by some official persons to begin his course by some tribute of praise to the emperor Napoleon, according to the received custom; and it was hinted to him that the decoration of the Legion of Honour would be the reward of his compliance. Foscolo remained unmoved: he took as the subject of his inaugural oration the origin and the object of literature-Dell'Origine e dell' Ufficio della Letteratura;' and descanted on the moral and civil duties of literary men; on the nobleness of their calling when conscientiously exercised; and he exhorted the Italian youth to devote themselves to literature for its own sake; to study above all the history of thear country, and the lives and works of Dante, Machiavelli Galileo, and Tasso; to bend over their tombs and learn from those illustrious dead how they fed the sacred fire of genius through persecutions, torments, and exile, in the gloom of dungeons and amidst the squalidness of domestic poverty, and how they were supported in their trials by the love of their country, of truth, and of fame, which en abled them to leave to posterity the rich legacy of their works and the benefit of their example.' This address, delivered before a numerous audience, produced a thrilling sensation, and was followed by bursts of applause. Not a word had Foscolo said about emperor or prince, government or minister. A few months after the chair of Italian eloquence was suppressed in all the universities of the kingdom of Italy, and Foscolo retired to Borgo di Vico, near Como, where he enjoyed the society of Count Giova and his family. He there wrote his tragedy of Ajax,' which was performed at Milan, and not only proved a failure, but involved him in a sort of ministerial persecution, because he was suspected to have alluded in his play to Napoleon's ambition. At the same time certain academicians whose pedantry he had ridiculed in another work. expressed their opinion in the Poligrafo, a literary journal, that whoever sneers at the labours of professors, academ cians, and librarians, taxes thereby with ignorance the monarch who protects them, and becomes, by so doing. guilty of treason.' Foscolo however had some influential friends, and he was merely banished from Milan. At Florence, where he fixed his residence, he completed his translation of Sterne: Viaggio Sentimentale di Yorick lungo la Francia, traduzione di Didimo Chierico;' and wrote another tragedy entitled 'Ricciarda,' a Hymn to the Graces, and other compositions. In 1813 he was allowed to return to Milan, and in the following year, when the French abandoned the country and a provisional government was formed, Foscolo was appointed major on the staff, and endeavoured, though ineffectu ally, to save the ex-minister Prina from the fury of the mob. When the Austrians took possession of Milan, Fos colo drew up a protest in the name of the inhabitants of Lombardy addressed to the Allied Powers. He remained however still at Milan, and had the offer from some of the Austrian authorities of the editorship of a new literary journal; but having learnt that he was charged by the może rigid patriots of being a turncoat, he, all on a sudden, disappeared from Milan towards the end of 1814, and repa›re-l to Switzerland, where he resided for almost two years, chiefly at Hottingen, near Zürich, where he published correct edition of his Lettere di Ortis,' and also a satire a Latin prose, entitled Didymi Clerici Propheta Minun. Hypercalypseos,' in which he lashed his Milan enemies of the literary and courtly coteries who had annoyed ha about his Ajax.' Not finding sufficient encouragement in Switzerland for his literary labours as a means of subsistence, he came to England about the end of 1816, and was introduced to some of the best society of the meto polis: he formed literary connexions, and wrote articles both for the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Reviews. It London he published his Ricciarda,' the Essays on Pe trarch and Dante, which are among his best compositions, the Discorso Storico sul testo del Decamerone,' and the Discorso Storico sul testo di Dante,' which is a work ful of erudition. He had engaged to superintend a new edition of Dante, with ample commentaries, but he did not live to finish this work. Want of order and of judgment in money matters involved him in embarrassments, which, joined to his fretful temper and assiduous application, shortened his days. He died of the dropsy on the 10th of October, 1827, at Turnham Green, near London, being about fifty years of age. and was buried in Chiswick churchyard, with a plain marble slab and inscription over his tomb. Notwithstanding his eccentricities he secured wherever he lived some warm and lasting friends, who felt his death as a loss. The life of Foscolo derives a peculiar importance from the times he lived in, and the political scenes in which he mixed. He had the merit of standing aloof, one of the few, amidst the general prostration of mankind before the shrine of Napoleon. His unconquerable silence,' observes a by no means partial biographer, amidst the strains of vulgar adulation, deserves to be recorded in history. If amidst the Asiatic idolatry towards Napoleon, any kind of opposition can be said to have existed in Italy, Foscolo must be considered as the leader of it. Among a crowd of literati who prostituted their character, he alone succeeded Alfieri in gathering around him those youths who felt the love of study and independence, and without uselessly challenging an irresistible power, he tempered with his principles and his example their souls for present dignity and future resistance.' (Pecchio, Vita di Ugo Foscolo.) When the reaction came he refused likewise to associate with those who would not restore his country to national independence. But his sentiments, as expressed in his works, are never those of a partizan ; he deals out with an impartial hand to all; his thoughts are generous and pure, his learning is real and unaffected, and he has added a fresh vigour to Italian prose. His dramas are the weakest of his productions. To his compositions already mentioned, may be added an Italian version of some cantos of the Iliad, Alcuni scritti e trattati inediti,' Lugano, 1829, including some of his lectures at Pavia, and various poetical effusions. (Opere Scelte di Ugo Foscolo, 2 vols. 8vo; Fiesole, 1833, and an article on Foscolo and his Times, in No. XVIII. of the Foreign Quarterly Review, May, 1832.) FOSS, or FOSS-WAY, an antient Roman road in Britain, one of the best ascertained of any. It extended from the coast of Lincolnshire, on the north-east, to the coast of Devonshire on the south-west. It is supposed to have derived its name from the circumstance of its having had a ditch (fossa) on each side (Camden; Pointer's Britannia Romana), and appears, from a Roman milliare or mile-stone found by its side near Leicester, and now set up in a public place in that town, to have been formed or at least improved by the Romans in the reign of Hadrian, and probably at or about the time of that emperor's visit to Britain. It has retained its name among all classes of people better than any of the Roman roads. cipal street: from Ischalis, Stukeley supposed that it ran to Moridunum, now Seaton, in Devonshire: but others have conjectured that the Roman road between the river Ax and Honiton, of which there are plain vestiges to be discerned, is a continuation of the Foss; and that it ran through Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter) across the Teign to Totness, which, according to some early accounts of this road, stood at one extremity of it. Beyond Ilchester some of the original pavement may yet be traced, composed of flat stones laid edgewise, and so close as to look like a wall fallen down. There are tumuli along some parts of the foss. The branches of this road, if any, are not ascertained. (Reynolds's Iter Britanniarum.) FOSSA'NO, a town and bishop's see of Piedmont, in the province of Coni, is situated in a fine plain on the northern base of the maritime Alps, near the river Stura, and on the road from Mondovi to Savigliano. A canal, called Naviglio Nuovo, which leaves the Stura at Coni, and joins the Po at Carmagnola, passes by Fossano. The town carried on a considerable trade in corn, silk, hemp, and cattle, and has manufactories of leather, and also for spinning silk. It is a walled town, with 12,500 inhabitants, has an old castle, four churches, several convents, a royal college, with professors of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology, and a college for boarders, kept by the fathers Sornaschi Fossano lies 15 miles north-east of Coni, 15 east of Saluzzo, 12 north-west of Mondovi, and 35 south of Turin. [CONI.] FOSSIL COPAL was first found in the blue clay at Highgate, near London; it occurs also at Wochlow in Moravia. It occurs in irregular pieces or small nodular masses. Its colour is yellowish or dull brown; nearly opaque; lustre resinous; fracture conchoidal; specific gravity 1046. When heated it yields an aromatic odour, and melts into a limpid fluid; it burns with a yellow flame and much smoke: when strongly heated in contact with the air, it is totally dissipated. It does not appear to have been analyzed. FOSSILS. The term Fossil,' in its general acceptation, signifies that which may be dug out of the earth. In this sense, antiquities, as well as natural metallic and mineral bodies, may be said to be fossils. But the word is generally used among geologists and mineralogists to designate, sometimes, simple and compound mineral bodies, such as earths, salts, bitumens, and metals, but, more generally, the petrified forms of plants and animals which occur in the strata that compose the surface of our globe. Most of these fossil species, many of the genera, and some of the families, are extinct; and all of them were considered in the darker ages to owe their origin to the plastic power of the earth. They were named Lapides idiomorphi, Lapides figurati, and, as their organic nature began to be suspected, Lapides diluviani. Superstition was, in old times, busy with some of them, the Belemnites and Ammonites, example. This road first shows itself between Lincoln and the sea. It commenced probably from a Roman station somewhere on the coast between Saltfleet and Grimsby, and ran to Lindum (Lincoln), a Roman station of considerable importance, where it crossed another Roman or British road, the Ermine-street. Near its intersection with Ermine-street some pavement remained in Stukeley's time of flag-stones set edgewise. From Lindum the Foss runs south-south-for west to Aqua Solis (Bath), passing through the heart of the country. The sixth Iter of Antoninus partly coincides with this road, on which appear to have been the stations Crocolana (Brough or Bruffs, on the border of Lincolnshire and Notts, not far from Newark-on-Trent, and on the present road from Lincoln to that town), Ad Pontem (Farndon or Thorpe on the Trent above Newark), Margidunum (at or near East Bridgeford, Notts, on the road from Newark to Leicester), Verometum (near Willoughby, Notts, near the border of Leicestershire), Rata (Leicester), and Venona (High Cross, near Claybrook, on the border of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, at the intersection of the Watling-street and the Foss-way); the remainder of the road to Aqua Solis (Bath) does not coincide with any Iter of Antoninus. In one part, between Newark and Leicester, the antient pavement is visible, composed of great blue flag-stones, jaid edgewise very carefully, taken from quarries by the side of the hill: the breadth of it one hundred feet or more.' In other parts the way has been entirely paved with red flints, seemingly brought from the sea-coast. Near Venona (High Cross) part of the road lies open, like a ditch, either never having been filled with stones or gravel, or else owing to these having been removed for the re-instance, depend in a great degree upon the proportionate pair of more modern roads, or some other purpose. Between Venona and Aqua Solis the road passes through Durocornovium (Cirencester), where it crossed the road from Loudinium (London) to Glevum (Gloucester). From Aquæ Solis th Foss-way continued its course in a pretty direct line to Ischalis (Ilchester), of which town it forms the prin The appellation Petrifacta, petrifactions, soon became common in books and catalogues of cabinets, and then Sir John Hill's proposition to denominate such petrified bodies extraneous, or adventitious fossils, was adopted by many naturalists. Parkinson objected to Petrifactions' as a general term, and distinguished Fossils' by employing the expression Primary Fossils to denote those mineral substances which are supposed to have been native, or, in other words, to have existed primitively in the earth; and by applying the appellation Secondary Fossils' to the petrified exuvia of plants and animals. Though the terms of this last-mentioned writer are now no longer adopted, he must always be considered as one of the fathers of this branch of geology, a branch which William Smith first effectively used as the key to the stratification. In the steps of Smith the first writers on this subject have since trod; and the study of Organic Remains,' by which name the animal and vegetable bodies penetrated by or converted into mineral substances are now known as a whole, has become of first-rate importance in deciphering the history of the lithological structure of the earth's crust. The wellknown Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods of Lyell, for absence or presence of living species among the organie remains which have hitherto been discovered in certain groups of strata of comparatively modern origin. Some notices of the fossil plants and animals, when such are known, are given in the articles which relate to existing families, genera, or species; and extinct families, |