of a sheaf being in the other presented as a loaf of bread:  OF PURIM, a feast in commemoration of the preservation of the Jews from the wholesale threatened massacre of the race in Persia at the instigation of Haman:  OF TABERNACLES, a festival of eight days in memory of the wandering tentlife of the people in the wilderness, observed by the people dwelling in bowers made of branches erected on the streets or the roofs of the house; it was the Feast of Ingathering as well.

FEBRUARY, the second month of the year, was added along with January by Numa to the end of the original Roman year of 10 months; derived its name from a festival offered annually on the 15th day to Februus, an ancient Italian god of the nether world; was assigned its present position in the calendar by Julius Caesar, who also introduced the intercalary day for leap-year.

FECAMP (13), a seaport in the dep. of Seine-Inferieure, 25 m.  NE. of Havre; has a fine Gothic Benedictine church, a harbour and lighthouse, hardware and textile factories; fishing and sugar refineries also flourish; exports the celebrated Benedictine liqueurs.

FECHNER, GUSTAV THEODOR, physicist and psychophysicist, born at Gross-Saerchen, in Lower Lusatia; became professor of Physics in Leipzig, but afterwards devoted himself to psychology; laid the foundations of the science of psychophysics in his “Elements of Pyschophysics”; wrote besides on the theory of colour and galvanism, as well as poems and essays (1801-1887).

FECHTER, CHARLES ALBERT, a famous actor, born in London, his father of German extraction and his mother English; made his debut in Paris at the age of 17; after a tour through the European capitals established himself in London as the lessee of the Lyceum Theatre in 1863; became celebrated for his original impersonations of Hamlet and Othello; removed to America in 1870, where he died (1824-1879).

FECIALES, a college of functionaries in ancient Rome whose duty it was to make proclamation of peace and war, and confirm treaties.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, in modern parlance is the political system which a number of independent and sovereign States adopt when they join together for purposes of domestic and especially International policy; local government is freely left with the individual States, and only in the matter of chiefly foreign relations is the central government paramount, but the degree of freedom which each State enjoys is a matter of arrangement when the contract is formed, and the powers vested in the central authority may only be permitted to work through the local government, as in the German Confederation, or may bear directly upon the citizens throughput the federation, as in the U.S. of America, and since 1847 in Switzerland.

FEDERALIST, a name in the United States for a supporter of the Union and its integrity as such; a party which was formed in 1788, but dissolved in 1820; has been since applied to a supporter of the integrity of the Union against the South in the late Civil War.