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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)",
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    "chunk_id": "1911:labrador tea:e4dfeaae0d0a",
    "title": "LABRADOR TEA",
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    "verified_text": "labrador tea, the popular name for a species of _ledum_, a small evergreen shrub growing in bogs and swamps in greenland and the more northern parts of north america. the leaves are tough, densely covered with brown wool on the under face, fragrant when crushed and have been used as a substitute for tea. the plant is a member of the heath family (ericaceae). labrum (lat. for \"lip\"), the large vessel of the warm bath in the roman thermae. these were cut out of great blocks of marble and granite, and have generally an overhanging lip. there is one in the vatican of porphyry over 12 ft. in diameter. the term _labrum_ is used in zoology, of a lip or lip-like part; in entomology it is applied specifically to the upper lip of an insect, the lower lip being termed _labium_. la bruyere, jean de (1643-1696), french essayist and moralist, was born in paris on the 16th of august 1645, and not as was once the common statement, at dourdan (seine-et-oise) in 1639. his family was of the middle class, and his reference to a certain geoffroy de la bruyere, a crusader, is only a satirical illustration of a method of self-ennoblement common in france as in some other countries. indeed he himself always signed the name delabruyere in one word, thus avowing his _roture_. his progenitors, however, were of respectable position, and he could trace them back at least as far as his great-grandfather, who had been a strong leaguer. la bruyere's own father was controller-general of finance to the hotel de ville. the son was educated by the oratorians and at the university of orleans; he was called to the bar, and in 1673 bought a post in the revenue department at caen, which gave the status of noblesse and a certain income. in 1687 he sold this office. his predecessor in it was a relation of bossuet, and it is thought that the transaction was the cause of la bruyere's introduction to the great orator. bossuet, who from the date of his own preceptorship of the dauphin, was a kind of agent-general for tutorships in the royal family, introduced him in 1684 to the household of the great conde, to whose grandson henri jules de bourbon as well as to that prince's girl-bride mlle de nantes, one of louis xiv.'s natural children, la bruyere became tutor. the rest of his life was passed in the household of the prince or else at court, and he seems to have profited by the inclination which all the conde family had for the society of men of letters. very little is known of the events of this part--or, indeed, of any part--of his life. the impression derived from the few notices of him is of a silent, observant, but somewhat awkward man, resembling in manners joseph addison, whose master in literature la bruyere undoubtedly was. yet despite the numerous enemies which his book raised up for him, most of these notices are favourable--notably that of saint-simon, an acute judge and one bitterly prejudiced against _roturiers_ generally. there is, however, a curious passage in a letter from boileau to racine in which he regrets that \"nature has not made la bruyere as agreeable as he would like to be.\" his _caracteres_ appeared in 1688, and at once, as nicolas de malezieu had predicted, brought him \"bien des lecteurs et bien des ennemis.\" at the head of these were thomas corneille, fontenelle and benserade, who were pretty clearly aimed at in the book, as well as innumerable other persons, men and women of letters as well as of society, on whom the cap of la bruyere's fancy-portraits was fitted by manuscript \"keys\" compiled by the scribblers of the day. the friendship of bossuet and still more the protection of the condes sufficiently defended the author, and he continued to insert fresh portraits of his contemporaries in each new edition of his book, especially in the 4th (1689). those, however, whom he had attacked were powerful in the academy, and numerous defeats awaited la bruyere before he could make his way into that guarded hold. he was defeated thrice in 1691, and on one memorable occasion he had but seven votes, five of which were those of bossuet, boileau, racine, pellisson and bussy-rabutin. it was not till 1693 that he was elected, and even then an epigram, which, considering his admitted insignificance in conversation, was not of the worst, _haesit lateri_:-- \"quand la bruyere se presente pourquoi faut il crier haro? pour faire un nombre de quarante ne falloit il pas un zero?\" his unpopularity was, however, chiefly confined to the subjects of his sarcastic portraiture, and to the hack writers of the time, of whom he was wont to speak with a disdain only surpassed by that of pope. his description of the _mercure galant_ as \"_immediatement au dessous de rien_\" is the best-remembered specimen of these unwise attacks; and would of itself account for the enmity of the editors, fontenelle and the younger corneille. la bruyere's discourse of admission at the academy, one of the best of its kind, was, like his admission itself, severely criticized, especially by the partisans of the \"moderns\" in the \"ancient and modern\" quarrel. with the _caracteres_, the translation of theophrastus, and a few letters, most of them addressed to the prince de conde, it completes the list of his literary work, with the exception of a curious and much-disputed posthumous treatise. la bruyere died very suddenly, and not long after his admission to the academy. he is said to have been struck with dumbness in an assembly of his friends, and, being carried home to the hotel de conde, to have expired of apoplexy a day or two afterwards, on the 10th of may 1696. it is not surprising that, considering the recent panic about poisoning, the bitter personal enmities which he had excited and the peculiar circumstances of his death, suspicions of foul play should have been entertained, but there was apparently no foundation for them. two years after his death appeared certain _dialogues sur le quietisme_, alleged to have been found among his papers incomplete, and to have been completed by the editor. as these dialogues are far inferior in literary merit to la bruyere's other works, their genuineness has been denied. but the straightforward and circumstantial account of their appearance given by this editor, the abbe du pin, a man of acknowledged probity, the intimacy of la bruyere with bossuet, whose views in his contest with fenelon these dialogues are designed to further, and the entire absence, at so short a time after the alleged author's death, of the least protest on the part of his friends and representatives, seem to be decisive in their favour. although it is permissible to doubt whether the value of the _caracteres_ has not been somewhat exaggerated by traditional french criticism, they deserve beyond all question a high place. the plan of the book is thoroughly original, if that term may be accorded to a novel and skilful combination of existing elements. the treatise of theophrastus may have furnished the first idea, but it gave little more. with the ethical generalizations and social dutch painting of his original la bruyere combined the peculiarities of the montaigne essay, of the _pensees_ and _maximes_ of which pascal and la rochefoucauld are the masters respectively, and lastly of that peculiar 17th-century product, the \"portrait\" or elaborate literary picture of the personal and mental characteristics of an individual. the result was quite unlike anything that had been before seen, and it has not been exactly reproduced since, though the essay of addison and steele resembles it very closely, especially in the introduction of fancy portraits. in the titles of his work, and in its extreme desultoriness, la bruyere reminds the reader of montaigne, but he aimed too much at sententiousness to attempt even the apparent continuity of the great essayist. the short paragraphs of which his chapters consist are made up of maxims proper, of criticisms literary and ethical, and above all of the celebrated sketches of individuals baptized with names taken from the plays and romances of the time. these last are the great feature of the work, and that which gave it its immediate if not its enduring popularity. they are wonderfully piquant, extraordinarily life-like in a certain sense, and must have given great pleasure or more frequently exquisite pain to the originals, who were in many cases unmistakable and in most recognizable. but there is something wanting in them. the criticism of charpentier, who received la bruyere at the academy, and who was of the opposite faction, is in fact fully justified as far as it goes. la bruyere literally \"est [trop] descendu dans le particulier.\" he has neither, like moliere, embodied abstract peculiarities in a single life-like type, nor has he, like shakespeare, made the individual pass _sub speciem aeternitatis_, and serve as a type while retaining his individuality. he is a photographer rather than an artist in his portraiture. so, too, his maxims, admirably as they are expressed, and exact as their truth often is, are on a lower level than those of la rochefoucauld. beside the sculpturesque precision, the roman brevity, the profoundness of ethical intuition \"piercing to the accepted hells beneath,\" of the great frondeur, la bruyere has the air of a literary _petit-maitre_ dressing up superficial observation in the finery of _esprit_. it is indeed only by comparison that he loses, but then it is by comparison that he is usually praised. his abundant wit and his personal \"malice\" have done much to give him his rank in french literature, but much must also be allowed to his purely literary merits. with racine and massillon he is probably the very best writer of what is somewhat arbitrarily styled classical french. he is hardly ever incorrect--the highest merit in the eyes of a french academic critic. he is always well-bred, never obscure, rarely though sometimes \"precious\" in the turns and niceties of language in which he delights to indulge, in his avowed design of attracting readers by form, now that, in point of matter, \"tout est dit.\" it ought to be added to his credit that he was sensible of the folly of impoverishing french by ejecting old words. his chapter on \"les ouvrages de l'esprit\" contains much good criticism, though it shows that, like most of his contemporaries except fenelon, he was lamentably ignorant of the literature of his own tongue. the editions of la bruyere, both partial and complete, have been extremely numerous. _les caracteres de theophraste traduits du grec, avec les caracteres et les moeurs de ce siecle_, appeared for the first time in 1688, being published by michallet, to whose little daughter, according to tradition, la bruyere gave the profits of the book as a dowry. two other editions, little altered, were published in the same year. in the following year, and in each year until 1694, with the exception of 1693, a fresh edition appeared, and, in all these five, additions, omissions and alterations were largely made. a ninth edition, not much altered, was put forth in the year of the author's death. the academy speech appeared in the eighth edition. the quietist dialogues were published in 1699; most of the letters, including those addressed to conde, not till 1867. in recent times numerous editions of the complete works have appeared, notably those of walckenaer (1845), servois (1867, in the series of _grands ecrivains de la france_), asselineau (a scholarly reprint of the last original edition, 1872) and finally chassang (1876); the last is one of the most generally useful, as the editor has collected almost everything of value in his predecessors. the literature of \"keys\" to la bruyere is extensive and apocryphal. almost everything that can be done in this direction and in that of general illustration was done by edouard fournier in his learned and amusing _comedie de la bruyere_ (1866); m. paul morillot contributed a monograph on la bruyere to the series of _grands ecrivains francais_ in 1904. (g. sa.) labuan (a corruption of the malay word _labuh-an_, signifying an \"anchorage\"), an island of the malay archipelago, off the north-west coast of borneo in 5° 16 n., 115° 15 e. its area is 30.23 sq. m.; it is distant about 6 m. from the mainland of borneo at the nearest point, and lies opposite to the northern end of the great brunei bay. the island is covered with low hills rising from flats near the shore to an irregular plateau near the centre. about 1500 acres are under rice cultivation, and there are scattered patches of coco-nut and sago palms and a few vegetable gardens, the latter owned for the most part by chinese. for the rest labuan is covered over most of its extent by vigorous secondary growth, amidst which the charred trunks of trees rise at frequent intervals, the greater part of the forest of the island having been destroyed by great accidental conflagrations. labuan was ceded to great britain in 1846, chiefly through the instrumentality of sir james brooke, the first raja of sarawak, and was occupied two years later. at the time of its cession the island was uninhabited, but in 1881 the population numbered 5731, though it had declined to 5361 in 1891. the census returns for 1901 give the population at 8411. the native population consists of malay fishermen, chinese, tamils and small shifting communities of kadayans, tutongs and other natives of the neighbouring bornean coast. there are about fifty european residents. at the time of its occupation by great britain a brilliant future was predicted for labuan, which it was thought would become a second singapore. these hopes have not been realized. the coal deposits, which are of somewhat indifferent quality, have been worked with varying degrees of failure by a succession of companies, one of which, the labuan & borneo ltd., liquidated in 1902 after the collapse of a shaft upon which large sums had been expended. it was succeeded by the labuan coalfields ltd. the harbour is a fine one, and the above-named company possesses three wharves capable of berthing the largest eastern-going ocean steamers. to-day labuan chiefly exists as a trading depot for the natives of the neighbouring coast of borneo, who sell their produce--beeswax, edible birds-nests, camphor, gutta, trepang, &c.,--to chinese shopkeepers, who resell it in singapore. there is also a considerable trade in sago, much of which is produced on the mainland, and there are three small sago-factories on the island where the raw product is converted into flour. the eastern extension telegraph company has a central station at labuan with cables to singapore, hong-kong and british north borneo. monthly steam communication is maintained by a german firm between labuan, singapore and the philippines. the colony joined the imperial penny postage union in 1889. there are a few miles of road on the island and a metre-gauge railway from the harbour to the coal mines, the property of the company. there is a roman catholic church with a resident priest, an anglican church, visited periodically by a clergyman from the mainland, two native and chinese schools, and a sailors' club, built by the roman catholic mission. the bishop of singapore and sarawak is also bishop of labuan. the european graveyard has repeatedly been the scene of outrages perpetrated, it is believed, by natives from the mainland of borneo, the graves being rifled and the hair of the head and other parts of the corpses being carried off to furnish ornaments to weapons and ingredients in the magic philtres of the natives. pulau dat, a small island in the near neighbourhood of labuan, is the site of a fine coco-nut plantation whence nuts and copra are exported in bulk. the climate is hot and very humid. until 1869 the expenditure of the colony was partly defrayed by imperial grants-in-aid, but after that date it was left to its own resources. a garrison of imperial troops was maintained until 1871, when the troops were withdrawn after many deaths from fever and dysentery had occurred among them. since then law and order have been maintained without difficulty by a small mixed police force of punjabis and malays. from the 1st of january 1890 to the 1st of january 1906 labuan was transferred for administrative purposes to the british north borneo company, the governor for the time being of the company's territories holding also the royal commission as governor of labuan. this arrangement did not work satisfactorily and called forth frequent petitions and protests from the colonists. labuan was then placed under the government of the straits settlements, and is administered by a deputy governor who is a member of the straits civil service.",
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