_Lavandula Stoechas_, a species extending from the Canaries to Asia Minor, is distinguished from the above plants by its blackish purple flowers, and shortly stalked spikes crowned by conspicuous purplish sterile bracts. The flowers were official in the London pharmacopoeia as late as 1746. They are still used by the Arabs as an expectorant and antispasmodic. The Stoechades (now called the isles of Hyères near Toulon) owed their name to the abundance of the plant growing there.
Other species of lavender are known, some of which extend as far east as to India. A few which differ from the above in having divided leaves, as _L. dentata_, _L. abrotanoides_, _L. multifolia_, _L. pinnata_ and _L. viridis_, have been cultivated in greenhouses, &c., in England.
Sea lavender is a name applied in England to several species of _Statice_, a genus of littoral plants belonging to the order _Plumba gineae_. Lavender cotton is a species of the genus _Santolina_, small, yellow-flowered, evergreen undershrubs of the Composite order.
LAVERDY, CLÉMENT CHARLES FRANÇOIS DE (1723-1793), French statesman, was a member of the parlement of Paris when the case against the Jesuits came before that body in August 1761. He demanded the suppression of the order and thus acquired popularity. Louis XV. named him controller-general of the finances in December 1763, but the burden was great and Laverdy knew nothing of finance. Three months after his nomination he forbade anything of any kind whatever to be printed concerning his administration, thus refusing advice as well as censure. He used all sorts of expedients, sometimes dishonest, to replenish the treasury, and was even accused of having himself profited from the commerce in wheat. A court intrigue led to his sudden dismissal on the 1st of October 1768. Henceforward he lived in retirement until, during the Revolution, he was involved in the charges against the financiers of the old régime. The Revolutionary tribunal condemned him to death, and he was guillotined on the 24th of November 1793.
See A. Jobez, _La France sous Louis XV_ (1869).
LAVERNA, an old Italian divinity, originally one of the spirits of the underworld. A cup found in an Etruscan tomb bears the inscription "Lavernai Pocolom," and in a fragment of Septimius Serenus Laverna is expressly mentioned in connexion with the _di inferi_. By an easy transition, she came to be regarded as the protectress of thieves, whose operations were associated with darkness. She had an altar on the Aventine hill, near the gate called after her Lavernalis, and a grove on the Via Salaria. Her aid was invoked by thieves to enable them to carry out their plans successfully without forfeiting their reputation for piety and honesty (Horace, _Ep._ i. 16, 60). Many explanations have been given of the name: (1) from _latere_ (Schol. on Horace, who gives _laternio_ as another form of _lavernio_ or robber); (2) from _lavare_ (Acron on Horace, according to whom thieves were called _lavatores_, perhaps referring to bath thieves); (3) from _levare_ (cf. shop-lifters). Modern etymologists connect it with _lu-crum_, and explain it as meaning the goddess of gain.