LAKANAL', JosEmr, 1762-1845; b. France. Educated fo'r the priesthood, but not ordained, he became a teacher, an enthusiastic participant in the great reforms of time French revolution, and one of the founders of a system of free education which was then decreed. An enthusiast for'the transformation of society which he thought would result from the principles, of the revolution, and moving wills the turbulent tide of revolutionary ideas, he voted for the death of Louis XVI. in 1732. Soon after he was made a member of the committee of public instruction, of which his energy soon made him head. He initiated most of the important reforms in the direction of universal edu cation in France. In 1793 lie procured decrees for the protection of the academy of science, for the regulation of property in literary and artistic works. for the establishment of the telegraph invented by Chappe, which up to that time had been neglected and opposed. In 1794-95 he proposed and obtained the laws for the organization of the normal school; the school for oriental languages; the bureau of longitudes; and the general system of prinu•y and central schools. Through his efforts the jardin des plants was preserved and made a national museum of natural hi Elected to the council of 500 after the fall of Robespierre. he lost no time in sul flitting a plan for the organiza tion of the national institute. which is now an honor to France; and was charged to designate the 48 original members who would elect the others. Lakanal was chosen by these to act with Sicyes to draw the rules for its government. In 1798 be was made corn missary-general of the departments of the Rhine,to reform abuses and laxity of admin istration that had become shameful. His energy anti probity justified the confidence in his administrative ability; and his extraordinary activity in provisioning and otherwise preparing Mayence and the Rhine for an efficient defense against the allies was warmly recognized by the French directory. After Napoleon's assumptions of power Lakanal occupied subordinate positions in educational institutions. On the accession of Louis NV III. lie was proscribed as a regicide, and came to the United States. President Jef ferson gave him a distinguished welcome. Congress voted him 500 acres of land, and lie was offered and accepted the presidency of the state university of Louisiana. In 1825 he resigned to retire to a plantation on the shore of Mobile bay, being the land given him by the government. On the accession of Louis Philippe in 1830 Lakanal offered his services to the new government, but was no recognized until several years later, when, on the motion of Gcoffroy de St. Hilaire, as. was restored to membership in the French academy; and returned to Paris in 1837. His literary works are few, his talent being more administrative than scholastic.
LAKE (Lat. laces) is a portion of water surrounded by land. There are (1) some lakes which neither receive nor emit streams; (2) some, fed by springs, emit, but as net receive streams: (3) others, as the Caspian and Aral seas, receive rivers, but have no visible out let; but (4) by far the greater number both receive and emit streams. Almost the whole of the lakes coming under the third class are salt or brackish; lake Tchad, in central Africa, forming one of the most prominent exceptions.
LAKE (ante). The lake on land is what the island is in the sea; the one being sur rounded by water, the other by land. Lakes differ from lagoons (q.v.) in their origin; and from ponds iu being fed by streams, either flowing at the surface, or subterraneous; while a pond, however large, is only the accumulation of water in a hollow: if it be regularly fed it becomes a lake, though small. The principal difference in lakes consists in the processes by which they receive and distribute their waters. Some have no appar ent affluents nor outlet, others have affluents without any visible outlet, some have an outlet without nny visible affluents, and others, again, have affluents and outlet, both visible. Lakes without outlets have the level of their waters horizontal, that is, parallel to the curvature of the earth: while those which have affluents and outlets are, on the contrary, more or less out of the horizontal level, sometimes, as in the case of Lago Mag giore, as much as 3 in. in a mile. The sheets of water which are so numerous in the country n. of the Caspian sea, in the plains between the 'Ural mountains and the Irtish river, and in the great steppe between the latter stream and the Oh, are most of them ponds, formed by accumulated rain-water and melted snow, though some of them are 10 or 12 m. in circumference. Lakes' or ponds of this character sometimes occur in the craters of extinct volcanoes, as in the case of one near Mendoza in the state of La Plata, which is 4.000 or 5,000 ft. above the sea, and is in some way connected with tile active volcano of Antuco, since it frequently, when the latter is in eruption, pours a stream of muddy water over the adjacent district. The small lake of Nemi, about 20 in. from Rome, is undoubtedly in the crater of an extinct volcano; as are also the cele brated lake of Averno, and those of Bolsena and Bracciano. It is even believed that London stands on the site of what was once a lake of large size. The Caspian, the sea of Aral, and the Dead sea are instances of lakes which are fed by of without pos sessing any visible outlet. It is believed that the Arid sea or lake once communicated with the Caspian, and it is a frequent phenomenon for lakes whose affluents have dimin ished or disappeared, to continue supplied with water from unseen sources; while in other instances more water is received into certain lakes than can be accounted for in their visible outlets. In the latter case evaporation has been assumed by Halley and others to be a sufficient explanation. In the case of the lak?, Neusiedel, which formerly with the Danube by means of the Raab, into which it emptied its waters, it now has no communication except by a mere swamp. 'inch lakes as are without a visible affluent are fed by subaqueous springs. Such bodi 3 of water are usually situ
ated at considerable elevations above the level of the sea. one on Monte Rotondo, in Corsica, being at an elevation of 9,069 ft.; while lake Tahoe, in California, is said to be more than 6,000 ft. above the level of the sea, lake Titicaca,. in the Bolivian Andes, 12,000 ft. above the sea-level, and even the surface of lake Superior 600 ft. above the sea. On the question as to the origin of the saltness of certain lakes, authorities differ. Some have thought that these bodies of water must owe their saltness to receiving the saline impurities of their affluents; but there are many salt lakes without affluents, and their saltness is doubtless due to their being fed by salt springs at their beds. The most com mon as well as the largest lakes are those which receive one or more tributary streams, and have a visible outlet. Such are the lakes of Switzerland and northern Italy; lakes Ladoga, Onega, Peipus, and Proem in Russia; others in Finland, Sweden, Lapland, etc.; the African lakes, the Tchad, the Ngami, Nyassa, and Victoria Nyanza; and the great lakes of North America, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. The origin of lakes differs as materially as their nature. Some occur through the sinking of the soil by the falling in of subterraneous caverns; and of this kind lake Baikal is an illustration. Others are formed by the action of earthquakes, as occurred in the province of Quito in 1797. The Oschenen-see, in the canton of Berne, was caused by the fall of a mountain; and the lakes Aidat and Cassiere, in Auvergne, France, by lava currents damming up a stream. Finally, it is believed that many are the remains of the universal ocean which once o v ered the earth. There are many curious phenomena connected with lakes. Some have floating islands upon them, as occurs in the case of a small lake near St. Omer; and in lake Gerdass, iu Prussia, which has a floating island on which a hundred head of cattle may be seen pasturing; lake Kolk, in Osnabruck, Prussia, on which fine elms are grow ; and lake Ralang, in Smolend, Sweden, where, it is said, a small island appeared and ten successive times between 1696 and 1766. At Jemtia, in Sweden, there is 611ili to be a lake having a double bottom, whose alternate rise and fall changes the appar ent depth of the lake. In Poland there is a lake supposed to be impregnated with salphureted hydrogen, which is said to turn to a brown color the skin of those who bathe in it. Certain lakes are intermittent, a condition arise from a play of natural siphons which act as their feeders, as occurs in the case of intermittent springs. The lake of Geneva is sometimes affected by a subaqueous wind, known as the Vau daige.. which rises to the surface and so disturbs it as to endanger navigation; and near Boleslaw, in Bohemia, there is a lake whose depth has never been sounded, from the bottom of which rise iu winter fierce gusts of wind, having sufficient force to send into the air masses of ice weighing several hundred pounds. The lake of Geneva and other Swiss and Italian lakes experience another phenomenon, called the Beeches, which con sists in a movement of the water in the nature of a tidal wave, rising sometimes to the height of 5 feet. Water-spouts are not infrequent on lakes, notably on the lakes of Zurich and Geneva. In lake Huron there is a bay over which electrical clouds are perpetually hovering, and it is alleged that thunder there is constant. This phenomenon is attributed to the proximity of the locality of the American magnetic pole. Near Beja, in Portugal, there is a lake which is said to announce the approach of a thunder-storm by a portentous rumbling; and in Siberia, Roaring lake is so named from a similar characteristic, not, however, connected with Atmospheric disturbance.' Certain lakes deposit carbonate of lime ou objects immersed in them, producing the condition known as incrustation; others have the property of inducing petrifaction. The lake of Zurich displays at times a curious phenomenon, known as the flowering of the lake, when its surface becomes covered with a yellow scum or froth, examination of which has discov ered it to be minute vegetation. But perhaps a phenomenon of still more remarkable peculiarity is that which is found to occur in certain lakes of Canada, in the strange adhesive property of the mud which forms their beds, and which appears absolutely to amount to attraction. In such instances it becomes nearly impossible to propel a boat, the mud clinging to its sides with such force as to overcome the influence of the paddles; loaded boats arc said to be often in danger of sinking from this cause, and have to be towed over the dangerous spots by those that are lighter. Lake temperature varies greatly in different instances; loch Ness, in Scotland, 810 ft. in depth in its deepest part, is never known to freeze. Some lakes are remarkable for the transparency of their waters; lake Superior being a remarkable instance of this quality—so pellucid that fish and rocks are visible to an almost incredible depth. The Norwegian lakes exhibit also this peculiarity, the bed with its covering of shells or pebbles being plainly visible at a depth of 100 to 120 feet: in lake Wetter, also, in Sweden, it is said that a coin the size of an American cent can be seen at the depth of 120 feet. But the value of lakes to man kind does not lie in their eccentricities, or even in their beauty as natural objects. They perform most important functions in the economy of the earth: acting as reservoirs of water in districts where the rain-fall is irregular; supplying moisture to the atmosphere through evaporation, and thus favoring vegetation in their neighborhood; and, in some cases, furnishing fisheries of great value: Many lakes are navigable, and are most important media of communication and transportation in thickly settled countries; while others, as the source of rivers that are invaluable to commerce, could illy be spared from the economy of civilization, as well as that of nature.