sow, &c. though sometimes the feminine is formed by varying the termination of the male into ess; as in abbot, abbess, &c.

FEM'ORAL, adj. Lat. femoralis. Belonging to the thigh.

The largest crooked needle should be used in taking up the femoral arteries in amputation. Sharp.

FEMORIS os, the thigh bone, a long cylindrical bone, situated between the pelvis and tibia. Its upper extremity affords three considerable processes; the head, the trochanter major, and trochanter minor. The head, which forms about two-thirds of a sphere, is turned inwards, and is received into the acetabulum of the os innominatum. It is covered by a cartilage, which is thickest in the middle, but which is wanting in its lower internal part, where its place is supplied by a round spongy fossa, to which the strong ligament, usually called the round ligament, is attached. This is about an inch in length, flattish, and of a triangular shape, having its narrow extremity attached to the fossa, while the broader end is fixed obliquely to the rough surface near the inner and anterior edge

of the acetabulum of the os innominatum. The

head of the os femoris is supported obliquely, with respect to the rest of the bone, by a smaller part, called the cervix, which, in the generality of subjects, is about an inch in length. The lower extremity of the os femoris is larger than the upper one, and flattened, so as to form two surfaces, of which the anterior one is broad and convex, and the posterior narrower and slightly concave. This end of the bone terminates in two large protuberances, called condyles, which are united before so as to form a pulley, but are separated behind by a considerable cavity, in which the crural vessels and nerves are secured from the compression to which they would other wise be exposed in the action of bending the leg.

FEN, n. s. Saxon, fenn; Goth. and FEN BERRY, Welsh, fen; Teut. fenn; BelFEN'EORN, adj.gic, veen; Fr. fange; Italian, FEN'NY, adj. fango. A marsh; bog; low, FEN'SUCKED. flat ground. Fenberry is a kind of blackberry: fenny, belonging to, or inhabiting fens. Fenn-sucked, 'drawn out of the

fens.'

FEN. See DRAINING. Fens are either made up of a congeries of bogs, or consist of a multitude of pools or lakes, with dry spots of land intermixed like so many little islands. The fens in Lincolnshire and elsewhere in England, bring many advantages to the inhabitants. Fowls and eels are large and easily caught, but they are fish are very plentiful in them. The pikes and usually coarse. Ducks, mallards, and teals, are in such plenty as is scarcely to be conceived. They are taken by decoys in prodigious flocks; but imthese ancient distinctions of the fen districts. provements in drainage are annually banishing The people have another very great advantage from these birds, in their feathers and quills.

Oats grow very well in many of the fen countries, and in good seasons bring great advantage to the owners. There is also another vegetable great profit to them, i. e. the brassica napus; the seed of which they call cole seed; and make an oil from it of great use in trade.

of

In Cambridgeshire the fen lands occupy perhaps a third of the whole surface of the county: the soil here is rich, black, and deep. In the neighbourhood of Wisbeach it consists of a mixture of sand and clay, or silt, and the uplands of chalk, gravel, loam, and clay. Agues were once very common here; but are much diminished of late years.

The former state of the fen lands, and their

degradation to their present state, are given at length in the Agricultural Report, chiefly from an able pamphlet by lord Hardwicke, a great proprietor here. It was the opinion of Atkins, a commissioner of sewers in the reign of James I. 1604, that these fens, a space of upwards of 280,000 acres, were once of the nature of landmeadows, fruitful, healthy, and very gainful to the inhabitants, and yielded much relief to the highland counties in time of great droughts.' Sir W. Dugdale, who was born 1605, and died 1686, was of the same opinion, adding as a proof, 'that great numbers of timber trees (oaks, firs, &c.) formerly grew there, as is plain from many being found in digging canals and drains, some of them severed from their roots, the roots standing as they grew, in firm earth, below the moor.' In 1635 the workmen, on deepening the channel of Wisbeach river, at eight feet below the then bottom, discovered a second bottom, which was stony, with seven boats lying in it, covered with silt. And at Whittlesea, on digging through the moor at eight feet deep, a perfect soil was found with swards of grass lying on it as they were at first mown. Henry of Hunting

don, who lived in the reign of Stephen, 1135, described this fenny country as pleasant and agreeable to the eye; watered by many rivers which run through it, diversified by many large and small lakes, and adorned by many woods and islands.' And William of Malmsbury, who lived in the first year of Henry II. 1154, has painted the state of the land round Thorney in the most glowing colors: he says, 'it is a very paradise, in pleasure and delight it resembles heaven itself; the very marshes abounding in trees, whose length without knots do emulate the stars. The plain there is as level as the sea, which, with the flourishing of the grass, allureth the eye; in some parts there are apple-trees, in others vines.' It appears then, on the authority of the authors quoted, that the fens were formerly wood and pasture. The engineers were of opinion that the country in question formerly meadow and wood, now fen, became so from partial embankments preventing the waters from the uplands going to the sea by their natural outfalls; want of proper and sufficient drains to convey these waters into the Ouse; neglect of such drains as were made for that purpose; and that these evils increased from the not embanking the river Ouse, and the erection of sluices across it preventing the flux and reflux of the sea; the Dot widening and deepening, where wanted, the river Ouse; and from not removing the gravels, weeds, &c., which have from time to time accumulated in it.

The first attempt at draining any part of the fens appears to have been made in the time of Edward I. (1272, &c.); many others with various success followed. The famous John of Gaunt, or Ghent, who died in 1393, and Margaret, countess of Richmond, were amongst the draining adventurers; but Gough, in his addition to Camden, says the reign of Elizabeth may be properly fixed on as the period when the level began to become immediately a public case. Many plans were proposed and abandoned between that time and 1634, when king Charles I. granted a charter of incorporation to Francis, earl of Bedford, and thirteen gentlemen adventurers with him, who jointly undertook to drain the level on a condition that they ahould have granted to them, as a recompense, 95,000 acres (about one-third of the level). In 1649 this charter was confirmed to William, earl of Bedford, and his associates, by the convention parliament; and in 1653, the level being declared completely drained, the 95,000 acres were conveyed to the adventurers, who had expended £400,000, which is almost £4 4s. per acre on the 95,000 acres, and about £1 8s. on the whole breadth, if the whole level contain 285,000 acres, and it is generally supposed to contain 300,000 acres. In 1664 the corporation called Conservators of the great level of the fens was established. This body was empowered to levy taxes on the 95,000 acres, to defray whatever expenses might arise in their preservation; but only 83,000 acres were vested in the corporation, in trust for the earl of Bedford and his associates; the remaining 12,000 were allotted, 10,000 to the king, and 2000 to the earl of Portland. At first the levy was an equal acre tax, but upon

its being deemed unjust, a gradual one was adopted, which is now acted upon. In the year 1697 the Bedford level was divided into three districts, north, middle, and south; having one surveyor for each of the former, and two for the latter. In 1753 the north level was separated by act of parliament from the rest. In addition to the public acts obtained for draining the fens, several private ones have been granted, for draining separate districts with their limits, notwithstanding which, and the vast sums expended, much remains to be done; a great part of the fens is now (1806) in danger of inundation; this calamity has visited them many times, producing effects distressing and extensive beyond conception, indeed many hundred acres of valuable land now drowned, the misfortune aggravated by the proprietors being obliged to continue to pay a heavy tax, notwithstanding the loss of their land.

The interior drainage is performed in most places by windmills, which are very uncertain in their effects. Steam has been tried, and there can be no doubt would be incomparably preferable, as working in all weathers.

Embanking may be considered a necessary accompaniment of draining on the fen-lands. The fens are divided into three large levels, and each of these are subdivided into numerous districts by banks; but as these banks are made of fen-moor, and other light materials, whenever the rivers are swelled with waters or any one district is deluged, either by rain, a breach of banks, or any other cause, the waters speedily pass through these bright, moory, porous banks, and drown all the circumjacent districts. The fens have sometimes sustained £20,000 or £30,000 damage by a breach of banks; but these accidents seldom happen in the same district twice in twenty years; the water however, soaks through all fen banks every year in every district; and when the water-mills have lifted the waters up out of the fens into the rivers in a windy day, a great part of the water soaks back through the porous banks in the night upon the same land again. This water that soaks through the bank, drowns the wheat in the winter, washes the manure into the dykes, destroys the best natural and artificial grasses, and prevents the fens from being sown till too late in the season. This stagnant water, lying on the surface, causes also fen agues, &c.; thus the waters that have soaked through the porous fen banks have done the fertile fens more real injury than all the other floods that have ever come upon them. The remedy for the soaking through of the water is obviously that of forming a puddle wall in the middle, which appears to have been first thought of among the fen bank-makers by Smith of Chatteris, a professed embanker. See our article EMBANKMENTS. With respect to embanking from the sea, Vancouver is of opinion that the ground ought to be covered by nature with samphire or other plants, or with grass, before an attempt is made to embank it: there is particular danger in being too grasping. If the sea has not raised the salt marsh to its fruitful level, all expectation of benefit is vain, the soil being immature, and not ripened for e.closure; and if again,

with a view of grasping a great extent of salt marsh, the banks or sea wall be pushed farther outwards than where there is a firm and secure foundation for it to stand upon, the bank will blow up, and in both cases great losses and disappointments will ensue.'

Paring and burning land is every where approved of, and considered the sine qua non of the fen districts, in breaking up turf. Without it corn crops are destroyed by the grub and wire-worm. Colonel Adeane, of Barbraham, has 300 acres of meadows, which have been irrigated from the time of queen Elizabeth. Pallavicino, who was collector of Peter's pence in England, at the death of queen Mary, having £30,000 or £40,000 in his hands, had the art to turn Protestant on the accession of queen Elizabeth, and appropriated the money to his own use; he bought with it an estate at Barbraham and other lands near Bournbridge; and procuring a grant from the crown, of the river which passes through them, was enabled legally to build a sluice across it, and throw as much of the water as was necessary into a new canal of irrigation, which he dug to receive it in the method so well known, and commonly practised in Italy long before that period. The canals and the sluices are all well designed, and are the work of a man evidently well acquainted with the practice; but, in taking the waters from them for spreading it by small channels over the meadows, there does not seem to be the least intelligence or knowledge of the husbandry of watering. No other art is exerted but that merely of opening in the bank of the river small cuts for letting the water flow on to the meadows always laterally, and never longitudinally, so necessary in works of this kind. The water then finds its own distribution, and so irregularly, that many parts receive too much, and others none at all. From the traces left of small channels in different parts of the meadows, it would appear that the ancient dis tribution formed under Pallavicino is lost, and that we see nothing at present but the miserable patch-work of workmen ignorant of the business. Irrigation has not spread from this example, but might be extensively practised on the banks of all the rivers.

FENCE, n. s., v. a. & v. n.
FENCE'LESS, adj.

FENCE'FUL,

FEN CER, n. s.

FENCIBLE, adj.

FENCING, n. s. FENCING-MASTER, FENCING-SCHOOL.

:

Latin, fendo, to drive away. Guard; defence; security; enclosure; the art or skill of defending one's self. Το J fence is to enclose

or guard as a neuter verb, to practise the art of fencing; to guard against: fenceful, affording protection fenceless, exposed; without defence: fencer and fercing-masters, are professors of the art of fencing: fencible, capable of defence: fencing, the art of using weapons for defence and occasional assault: fencing-school, a place where the use of such weapons is taught.

Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews. Job x. 11.

He went about to make a bridge to a strong city, which was fenced about with walls. 2 Mac. xii. 13.

Fairfax.

Calmness is great advantage; he that lets Another chafe, may warm him at his fire, Mark all his wand'rings, and enjoy his frets; As cunning fencers suffer heat to tire. Herbert.

the foil will be in your bosom when you thought it a A nimble fencer will put in a thrust so quick, that yard off. Digby.

So much of adders' wisdom I have learnt, To fence my ear against thy sorceries. Milton. Are not the fences of discipline cast down? Is there conscience made of violating laws?

any

Barrow.

A beauteous heifer in the wood is bred; The stooping warriors aiming head to head, Engage their clashing horns; with dreadful sound The forest rattles, and the rocks rebound; They fence and push, and, pushing, loudly roar, Their dewlaps and their sides are bath'd in gore. Dryden.

Shall I mention make

Of the vast mound that binds the Lucrine lake? Or the disdainful sea, that, shut from thence, Roars round the structure, and invades the fence. Id.

With love to friend, the impatient lover went, Fenc'd with the thorns, and trod the deep descent.

Id.

There's no fence against inundations, earthquakes, or hurricanes. L'Estrange. A man that cannot fence will keep out of bullies and gamesters' company. Locke.

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it; into which a young gentleman should be entered by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he can be in safe and skilful Id. hands to guide him.

If a man be to prepare his son for duels, I had rather mine should be a good wrestler than an ordinary fencer, which is the most a gentleman can attain to, unless he will be constantly in the fencingschool, and every day exercising.

Id.

While a man is learning to fence, he practises both on friend and foe; but when he is a master in the art he never exerts it but on what he thinks the right side. Id. Spectator. See that the churchyard be fenced in with a decent rail or other inclosure. Ayliffe's Parergon.

Minerva Taught artists first the carving tool to wield, Chariots with brass to arm, and form the fence ful Congreve.

shield. These, being polemical arts, could no more be learned alone than fencing or cudgelplaying.

Arbuthnot and Pope.

FENCE, in gardening and husbandry, wall, ditch, bank, or other enclosure, made round gardens, fields, woods, &c. In hot climates, where they have no occasion for walls to ripen their fruit, their gardens lie open, where they can have a water fence, and prospects; or else they are bounded with groves, which are much more pleasing to the sight than dead walls; but, in cold countries, we are obliged to have walls to shelter and ripen our fruit, although they take away much from the pleasant prospect of the garden. Brick walls are accounted the best and warmest for fruit; and these being built pannel-wise, with pillars at equal distances, save a great deal of expense, as they can be built thinner than if they were made plain without the pannels; and besides, these pannels make the walls look the bandsomer. Stone walls, however, on account of their durability, are to be preferred to brick, especially those of square hewn stones. Those that are made of rough stones, though they are very dry and warm, yet, by their unevenness, are inconvenient to nail up trees to, unless pieces of timber be laid in them here and there for that purpose. But, in large gardens, it is better to have the prospect open to the pleasure garden; which should be surrounded with a fosse, that from the garden the adjacent country may be viewed. Where the fosses are made round a gardeu which is situated in a park, they are extremely proper; because hereby the prospect of the park will be obtained in the garden, which renders those gardens much more agreeable than those that are confined. In making these fosses there have been many inventions: but, Miller, in his Gardener's Dictionary, reckons none preferable to those which have an upright wall next the garden, which (where the soil will admit of a deep trench) should be five or six feet high; and, from the foot of this wall, the ground on the outside should rise with a gradual easy slope, to the distance of eighteen or twenty feet; and, where it can be allowed, if it slopes much farther it will be easier, and less perceptible as a ditch, to the eye, when viewed at a distance; but if the ground is naturally wet, so as not to admit a

deep fosse, then, in order to make a fence against cattle, if the wall be four feet high, and slight posts of three feet high are placed just behind the wall, with a small chain carried on from post to post, no cattle or deer will ever attempt to jump against it; therefore it will be a secure fence against them; and if, these are painted green they will not be discerned at a distance, and at the same time the chain will secure persons walking in the garden from falling over. In places where there are no good prospects to be obtained from a garden, it is common to make the enclosure of park-pailing; which, if well performed, will last many years, and has a much better appearance than a wall: and this pale may be hid from the sight within, by plantations of shrubs and evergreens; or there may be a quick hedge planted within the pale, which may be trained up, so as to be an excellent fence by he time the pales begin to decay. Fences round parks are generally of paling; which if well made of winter fallen oak, will last many years. But a principal thing to be observed is, not to make them too heavy, else their own weight will make them decay; therefore the pales should be cleft thin; and the rails should be cut triangular, to prevent the wet lodging upon them; and the posts should be good, and not placed too far asunder. One of these pales will thus last upwards of forty years. The common way of making these fences is, to have every other pale nine or ten inches above the intermediate ones; so that the fence may be six feet and a half high, which is enough for fallow deer; but, where there are red deer, the fence should be one foot higher, otherwise they will leap over. Some enclose their parks with brick walls; and, in countries where stone is cheap, the walls are built with this material; some with, and others without, mortar. A kitchen garden if rightly contrived, will contain walling enough to afford a supply of such fruits as require the assistance of walls, for any family: and being situated on one side, and quite out of sight of the house, may be surrounded with walls which will screen the kitchen garden from the sight of persons in the pleasure garden; and, being locked up, the fruit will be much better preserved than it can be in the public garden. Too great a quantity of walling is often the occasion that so many ill-managed trees are to be seen in large gardens. The height of garden walls should be twelve feet, which is a moderate proportion; and, if the soil be good, it may in time be well furnished with bearing wood in every part, especially that part planted with pears, notwithstanding the branches being trained horizontally from the bottom of the walls. See HORTICULTURE.

Dr. Anderson, in his Essays on Agriculture, &c., observes, that, The fences that are most universally employed, are either stone dikes or hedges. Dikes, if well built, as effectually preserve a field from the intrusion of domestic animals, as any other kind of fence whatever; but they afford little warmth or shelter to the fields: whereas hedges, if good, answer both these purposes equally well. But the most material distinction between dikes and hedges is, that dikes are in the highest degree of perfection as soon as