Part 31

FELO DE SE (Lat., 'a felon in regard to himself'), in law, a person who, being of sound mind and of the age of discretion, deliberately causes his own death. Formerly, in England, the goods of such a person were forfeited to the Crown, and his body interred in an ignominious manner; that is, unless the coroner's jury gave a verdict of unsound mind; but these penalties have been abolished.

FEL'ONY, in law, includes generally all crimes below treason and of greater gravity than misdemeanours. Formerly it was applied to those crimes which entailed forfeiture of lands or goods as part of the punishment.

FELSITE, or FELSTONE, a hard, compact igneous rock of somewhat flinty appearance, composed usually of quartz and orthoclase felspar intimately mixed, but sometimes of less highly siliceous minerals.

FEL'SPAR, or FELDSPAR, a very important group of mineral silicates of aluminium, with potassium, sodium, or calcium, ranging from orthoclase, the potassium species, with 64.7 per cent of silica, to anorthite, the calcium species, with only 43.3. Albite, the sodium felspar, has 68.8 per cent of silica, and the species between this and anorthite are regarded as mixtures of albite and anorthite molecules. These molecules probably do not exist as such within the crystals; but the various characters of the species graduate into one another in agreement with the chemical constitution, so that the felspars form an admirable example of the relation of chemical composition, specific gravity, and crystalline and optical features. At the same time orthoclase and microcline are both potassium felspars; yet the former crystallizes in the monoclinic, and the latter in the triclinic system. All the sodium, sodium-calcium, and calcium species are triclinic, except the rare monoclinic sodium felspar barbierite. The forms throughout the felspar series are closely similar, and the hardness is uniform, being just below that of quartz, and about that of a steel file. Felspar is one of the principal constituents of almost all igneous rocks, such as granite, diorite, and basalt. The alkali species yield kaolin by alteration, and are thus the source of china-clay.

_Printed and bound in Great Britain_

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NOTES

[1] The use of gas, as already pointed out, had been forced on the British by its adoption by the Germans. Ultimately the methods invented by British chemists and physicists outgassed the Germans.

[2] Portugal was drawn into the war on the side of the Allies on 19th March, 1916, when Germany declared war on her, ostensibly because she had requisitioned German merchant ships lying in her harbours, but in reality because an invasion of Mozambique was then becoming necessary to Germany's hard-pressed troops in East Africa.

[3] Japan afterwards assisted the Allies with war supplies--particularly with heavy guns to Russia before the Bolshevik betrayal--subsequently helping to stem the tide of Bolshevism in the Far East, besides contributing with her ships to the defeat of the German submarine campaign in the Mediterranean.

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CHANGES MADE AGAINST PRINTED ORIGINAL

Page 324. "acquiring new territories": 'territorities' in original.