Articles in This Slice

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BISHÂRÎN (the anc. Ichthyophagi), a nomad tribe of African “Arabs,” of Hamitic origin, dwelling in the eastern part of the Nubian desert. In the middle ages they were known as Beja (q.v.), and they are the most characteristic of the Nubian “Arabs.” With the Abâbda and Hadendoa they represent the Blemmyes of classical writers. Linguistically and geographically the Bishârîn form a connecting link between the Hamitic populations and the Egyptians. Nominally they are Mahommedans. They, however, preserve some non-Islamic religious practices, and exhibit traces of animal-worship in their rule of never killing the serpent or the partridge, which are regarded as sacred.

BISHOP, SIR HENRY ROWLEY (1786-1855), English musical composer, was born in London on the 18th of November 1786. He received his artistic training from Francisco Bianchi, and in 1804 wrote the music to a piece called Angelina, which was performed at Margate. His next composition was the music to the ballet of Tamerlan et Bajazet, produced in 1806 at the King’s theatre. This proved successful, and was followed within two years by several others, of which Caractacus, a pantomimic ballet, written for Drury Lane, may be named. In 1809 his first opera, The Circassian’s Bride, was produced at Drury Lane; but unfortunately the theatre was burned down after one performance, and the score of the work perished in the flames. His next work of importance, the opera of The Maniac, written for the Lyceum in 1810, established his reputation, and probably secured for him an appointment for three years as composer for Covent Garden theatre. The numerous works—operas, burlettas, cantatas, incidental music to Shakespeare’s plays, &c.—which he composed while in this position, are in great part forgotten. The most successful were—The Virgin of the Sun (1812), The Miller and his Men (1813), Guy Mannering and The Slave (1816), Maid Marian and Clari, introducing the well-known air of “Home, Sweet Home” (1822). In 1825 Bishop was induced by Elliston to transfer his services from Covent Garden to the rival house in Drury Lane, for which he wrote with unusual care the opera of Aladdin, intended to compete with Weber’s Oberon, commissioned by the other house. The result was a failure, and with Aladdin Bishop’s career as an operatic composer may be said to close. On the formation of the Philharmonic Society (1813) Bishop was appointed one of the directors, and he took his turn as conductor of its concerts during the period when that office was held by different musicians in rotation. In 1830 he was appointed musical director at Vauxhall; and it was in the course of this engagement that he wrote the popular song “My Pretty Jane.” His sacred cantata, The Seventh Day, was written for the Philharmonic Society and performed in 1833. In 1839 he was made bachelor in music at Oxford. In 1841 he was appointed to the Reid chair of music in the university of Edinburgh, but he resigned the office in 1843. He was knighted in 1842, being the first musician who ever received that honour. In 1848 he succeeded Dr Crotch in the chair of music at Oxford. The music for the ode on the occasion of the installation of Lord Derby as chancellor of the university (1853) proved to be his last work. He died on the 30th of April 1855 in impoverished circumstances, though few composers ever made more by their labours. Bishop was twice married: to Miss Lyon and Miss Anne Rivière. Both he and his wives were singers. His name lives in connexion with his numerous glees, songs and smaller compositions. His melodies are clear, flowing, appropriate and often charming; and his harmony is always pure, simple and sweet.

BISHOP, ISABELLA (1832-1904), English traveller and author, daughter of the Rev. Edward Bird, rector of Tattenhall, Cheshire, was born in Yorkshire on the 15th of October 1832. Isabella Bird began to travel when she was twenty-two. Her first book, The Englishwoman in America (1856), consisted of her correspondence during a visit to Canada undertaken for her health. She visited the Rocky Mountains, the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, producing some brightly written books of travel. But her reputation was made by the records of her extensive travels in Asia: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (2 vols., 1880), Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan (2 vols., 1891), Among the Tibetans (1894), Korea and her Neighbours (2 vols., 1898), The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899), Chinese Pictures (1900). She married in 1881 Dr John Bishop, an Edinburgh physician, and was left a widow in 1886. In 1892 she became the first lady fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and in 1901 she rode a thousand miles in Morocco and the Atlas Mountains. She died in Edinburgh on the 7th of October 1904.

BISHOP (A.S. bisceop, from Lat. episcopus, Gr. ἐπίσκοπος, “overlooker” or “overseer”), in certain branches of the Christian Church, an ecclesiastic consecrated or set apart to perform certain spiritual functions, and to exercise oversight over the lower clergy (priests or presbyters, deacons, &c.). In the Catholic Church bishops take rank at the head of the sacerdotal hierarchy, and have certain spiritual powers peculiar to their office, but opinion has long been divided as to whether they constitute a separate order or form merely a higher degree of the order of priests (ordo sacerdotium).

In the Roman Catholic Church the bishop belongs to the highest order of the hierarchy, and in this respect is the peer even of the pope, who addresses him as “venerable brother.” By the decree of the council of Trent he must be thirty Roman Catholic. years of age, of legitimate birth, and of approved learning and virtue. The method of his selection varies in different countries. In France, under the Concordat, the sovereign—and under the republic the president—had the right 2 of nomination. The same is true of Austria (except four sees), Bavaria, Spain and Portugal. In some countries the bishop is elected by the cathedral chapter (as in Württemberg), or by the bishops of the provinces (as in Ireland). In others, as in Great Britain, the United States of America and Belgium, the pope selects one out of a list submitted by the chapter. In all cases the nomination or election is subject to confirmation by the Holy See. Before this is granted the candidate is submitted to a double examination as to his fitness, first by a papal delegate at his place of residence (processus informativus in partibus electi), and afterwards by the Roman Congregation of Cardinals assigned for this purpose (processus electionis definitivus in curia). In the event of both processes proving satisfactory, the bishop-elect is confirmed, preconized, and so far promoted that he is allowed to exercise the rights of jurisdiction in his see. He cannot, however, exercise the functions proper to the episcopal order (potestas ordinis) until his consecration, which ordinarily takes place within three months of his confirmation. The bishop is consecrated, after taking the oath of fidelity to the Holy See, and subscribing the profession of faith, by a bishop appointed by the pope for the purpose, assisted by at least two other bishops or prelates, the main features of the act being the laying on of hands, the anointing with oil, and the delivery of the pastoral staff and other symbols of the office. After consecration the new bishop is solemnly enthroned and blesses the assembled congregation.

The potestas ordinis of the bishop is not peculiar to the Roman Church, and, in general, is claimed by all bishops, whether Oriental or Anglican, belonging to churches which have retained the Catholic tradition in this respect. Besides the full functions of the presbyterate, or priesthood, bishops have the sole right (1) to confer holy orders, (2) to administer confirmation, (3) to prepare the holy oil, or chrism, (4) to consecrate sacred places or utensils (churches, churchyards, altars, &c.), (5) to give the benediction to abbots and abbesses, (6) to anoint kings. In the matter of their rights of jurisdiction, however, Roman Catholic bishops differ from others in their peculiar responsibility to the Holy See. Some of their powers of legislation and administration they possess motu proprio in virtue of their position as diocesan bishops, others they enjoy under special faculties granted by the Holy See; but all bishops are bound, by an oath taken at the time of their consecration, to go to Rome at fixed intervals (visitare sacra limina apostolorum) to report in person, and in writing, on the state of their dioceses.

The Roman bishop ranks immediately after the cardinals; he is styled reverendissimus, sanctissimus or beatissimus. In English the style is “Right Reverend”; the bishop being addressed as “my lord bishop.”

The insignia (pontificalia or pontificals) of the Roman Catholic bishop are (1) a ring with a jewel, symbolizing fidelity to the church, (2) the pastoral staff, (3) the pectoral cross, (4) the vestments, consisting of the caligae, stockings and sandals, the tunicle, and purple gloves, (5) the mitre, symbol of the royal priesthood, (6) the throne (cathedra), surmounted by a baldachin or canopy, on the gospel side of the choir in the cathedral church.

The spiritual function and character of the Anglican bishops, allowing for the doctrinal changes effected at the Reformation, are similar to those of the Roman. They alone can administer the rite of confirmation, ordain priests and deacons, and exercise a certain dispensing power. In Anglican. the established Church of England the appointment of bishops is vested effectively in the crown, though the old form of election by the cathedral chapter is retained. They must be learned presbyters at least thirty years of age, born in lawful wedlock, and of good life and behaviour. The mode of appointment is regulated by 25 Henry VIII. c. 20, re-enacted in 1 Elizabeth c. 1 (Act of Supremacy 1558). On a vacancy occurring, the dean and chapter notify the king thereof in chancery, and pray leave to make election. A licence under the Great Seal to proceed to the election of a bishop, known as the congé d’eslire, together with a letter missive containing the name of the king’s nominee, is thereupon sent to the dean and chapter, who are bound under the penalties of Praemunire to proceed within twelve days to the election of the person named in it. In the event of their refusing obedience or neglecting to elect, the bishop may be appointed by letters patent under the Great Seal without the form of election. Upon the election being reported to the crown, a mandate issues from the crown to the archbishop and metropolitan, requesting him and commanding him to confirm the election, and to invest and consecrate the bishop-elect. Thereupon the archbishop issues a commission to his vicar-general to examine formally the process of the election of the bishop, and to supply by his authority all defects in matters of form, and to administer to the bishop-elect the oaths of allegiance, of supremacy and of canonical obedience (see Confirmation of Bishops). In the disestablished and daughter Churches the election is by the synod of the Church, as in Ireland, or by a diocesan convention, as in the United States of America.

In the Church of England the potestas ordinis is conferred by consecration. This is usually carried out by an archbishop, who is assisted by two or more bishops. The essential “form” of the consecration is in the simultaneous “laying on of hands” by the consecrating prelates. After this the new bishop, who has so far been vested only in a rochet, retires and puts on the rest of the episcopal habit, viz. the chimere. After consecration the bishop is competent to exercise all the spiritual functions of his office; but a bishopric in the Established Church, being a barony, is under the guardianship of the crown during a vacancy, and has to be conferred afresh on each new holder. A bishop, then, cannot enter into the enjoyment of the temporalities of his see, including his rights of presentation to benefices, before doing homage to the king. This is done in the ancient feudal form, surviving elsewhere only in the conferring of the M.A. degree at Cambridge. The bishop kneels before the king, places his hands between his, and recites an oath of temporal allegiance; he then kisses hands.

Besides the functions exercised in virtue of their order, bishops are also empowered by law to exercise a certain jurisdiction over all consecrated places and over all ordained persons. This jurisdiction they exercise for the most part through their consistorial courts, or through commissioners appointed under the Church Discipline Act of 1840. By the Clergy Discipline Act of 1892 it was decreed that the trial of clerks accused of unfitness to exercise the cure of souls should be before the consistory court with five assessors. Under the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874, which gave to churchwardens and aggrieved parishioners the right to institute proceedings against the clergy for breaches of the law in the conduct of divine service, a discretionary right was reserved to the bishop to stay proceedings.

The bishops also exercise a certain jurisdiction over marriages, inasmuch as they have by the canons of the Church of England a power of dispensing with the proclamation of banns before marriage. These dispensations are termed marriage licences, and their legal validity is recognised by the Marriage Act of 1823. The bishops had formerly jurisdiction over all questions touching the validity of marriages and the status of married persons, but this jurisdiction has been transferred from the consistorial courts of the bishops to a court of the crown by the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. They have in a similar manner been relieved of their jurisdiction in testamentary matters, and in matters of defamation and of brawling in churches; and the only jurisdiction which they continue to exercise over the general laity is with regard to their use of the churches and churchyards. The churchwardens, who are representative officers of the parishes, are also executive officers of the bishops in all matters touching the decency and order of the churches and of the churchyards, and they are responsible to the bishops for the due discharge of their duties; but the abolition of church rates has relieved the churchwardens of the most onerous part of their duties, which was connected with the stewardship of the church funds of their parishes.

The bishops are still authorized by law to dedicate and set apart buildings for the solemnization of divine service, and grounds for the performance of burials, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England; and such buildings 3 and grounds, after they have been duly consecrated according to law, cannot be diverted to any secular purpose except under the authority of an act of parliament.

The bishops of England have also jurisdiction to examine clerks who may be presented to benefices within their respective dioceses, and they are bound in each case by the 95th canon of 1604 to inquire and inform themselves of the sufficiency of each clerk within twenty-eight days, after which time, if they have not rejected him as insufficiently qualified, they are bound to institute him, or to license him, as the case may be, to the benefice, and thereupon to send their mandate to the archdeacon to induct him into the temporalities of the benefice. Where the bishop himself is patron of a benefice within his own diocese he is empowered to collate a clerk to it,—in other words, to confer it on the clerk without the latter being presented to him. Where the clerk himself is patron of the living, the bishop may institute him on his own petition. (See Benefice.)

As spiritual peers, bishops of the Church of England have (subject to the limitations stated below) seats in the House of Lords, though whether as barons or in their spiritual character has been a matter of dispute. The latter, however, would seem to be the case, since a bishop was entitled to his writ of summons after confirmation and before doing homage for his barony. Doubts having been raised whether a bishop of the Church of England, being a lord of parliament, could resign his seat in the Upper House, although several precedents to that effect are on record, a statute of the realm, which was confined to the case of the bishops of London and Durham, was passed in 1856, declaring that on the resignation of their sees being accepted by their respective metropolitans, those bishops should cease to sit as lords of parliament, and their sees should be filled up in the manner provided by law in the case of the avoidance of a bishopric. In 1869 the Bishops’ Resignation Act was passed. It provided that, on any bishop desiring to retire on account of age or incapacity, the sovereign should be empowered to declare the see void by an order in council, the retiring bishop of archbishop to be secured the use of the episcopal residence for life and a pension of one-third of the revenues of the see, or £2000, whichever sum should prove the larger. Other sections defined the proceedings for proving, in case of need, the incapacity of a bishop, provided for the appointment of coadjutors and defined their status (Phillimore i. 82).

In view of the necessity for increasing the episcopate in the 19th century and the objection to the consequent increase of the spiritual peers in the Upper House, it was finally enacted by the Bishoprics Act of 1878 that only the archbishops and the bishops of London, Winchester and Durham should be always entitled to writs summoning them to the House of Lords. The rest of the twenty-five seats are filled up, as a vacancy occurs, according to seniority of consecration.

Bishops of the Church of England rank in order of precedency immediately above barons. They may marry, but their wives as such enjoy no title or precedence. Bishops are addressed as “Right Reverend” and have legally the style of “Lord,” which, as in the case of Roman Catholic bishops in England, is extended to all, whether suffragans or holders of colonial bishoprics, by courtesy.

The insignia of the Anglican bishop are the rochet and the chimere, and the episcopal throne on the gospel side of the chancel of the cathedral church. The use of the mitre, pastoral staff and pectoral cross, which had fallen into complete disuse by the end of the 18th century, has been now very commonly, though not universally, revived; and, in some cases, the interpretation put upon the “Ornaments rubric” by the modern High Church school has led to a more complete revival of the pre-Reformation vestments.

In the Orthodox Church of the East and the various communions springing from it, the potestas ordinis of the bishop is the same as in the Western Church. Among his qualifications the most peculiar is that he must be unmarried, which, since the secular priests are compelled to Orthodox Eastern. marry, entails his belonging to the “black clergy” or monks. The insignia of an oriental bishop, with considerable variation in form, are essentially the same as those of the Catholic West.

Besides bishops presiding over definite sees, there have been from time immemorial in the Christian Church bishops holding their jurisdiction in subordination to the bishop of the diocese. (1) The oldest of these were the chorepiscopi Subordinate bishops. (τῆς χώρας ἐπίσκοποι), i.e. country bishops, who were delegated by the bishops of the cities in the early church to exercise jurisdiction in the remote towns and villages as these were converted from paganism. Their functions varied in different times and places, and by some it has been held that they were originally only presbyters. In any case, this class of bishops, which had been greatly curtailed in the East in A.D. 343 by the council of Laodicea, was practically extinct everywhere by the 10th century. It survived longest in Ireland, where in 1152 a synod, presided over by the papal legate, decreed that, after the death of the existing holders of the office, no more should be consecrated. Their place was taken by arch-presbyters and rural deans. (2) The Episcopi regionarii, or gentium, were simply missionary bishops without definite sees. Such were, at the outset, Boniface, the apostle of Germany, and Willibrord, the apostle of the Frisians. (3) Bishops in partibus infidelium were originally those who had been expelled from their sees by the pagans, and, while retaining their titles, were appointed to assist diocesan bishops in their work. In later times the custom arose of consecrating bishops for this purpose, or merely as an honorary distinction, with a title derived from some place once included within, but now beyond the bounds of Christendom. (4) Coadjutor bishops are such as are appointed to assist the bishop of the diocese when incapacitated by infirmity or by other causes from fulfilling his functions alone. Coadjutors in the early church were appointed with a view to their succeeding to the see; but this, though common in practice, is no longer the rule. In the Church of England the appointment and rights of coadjutor bishops were regulated by the Bishops’ Resignation Act of 1869. Under this act the coadjutor bishop has the right of succession to the see, or in the case of the archiepiscopal sees and those of London, Winchester and Durham, to the see vacated by the bishop, translated from another diocese to fill the vacancy. (5) Suffragan bishops (episcopi sufraganei or auxiliares) are those appointed to assist diocesan bishops in their pontifical functions when hindered by infirmity, public affairs or other causes. In the Roman Church the appointment of the suffragan rests with the pope, on the petition of the bishop, who must prove that such is the custom of the see, name a suitable priest and guarantee his maintenance. The suffragan is given a title in partibus, but never that of archbishop, and the same title is never given to two suffragans in succession. In the Church of England the status of suffragan bishops was regulated by the Act 26 Henry VIII. c. 14. Under this statute, which, after long remaining inoperative, was amended and again put into force by the Suffragans’ Nomination Act of 1888, every archbishop and bishop, being disposed to have a suffragan to assist him, may name two honest and discreet spiritual persons for the crown to give to one of them the title, name, style and dignity of a bishop of any one of twenty-six sees enumerated in the statute, as the crown may think convenient. The crown, having made choice of one of such persons, is empowered to present him by letters patent under the great seal to the metropolitan, requiring him to consecrate him to the same name, title, style and dignity of a bishop; and the person so consecrated is thereupon entitled to exercise, under a commission from the bishop who has nominated him, such authority and jurisdiction, within the diocese of such bishop, as shall be given to him by the commission, and no other.

The title of bishop survived the Reformation in certain of the Lutheran churches of the continent, in Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Transylvania; it was temporarily restored in Prussia in 1701, for the coronation Lutheran churches. of King Frederick I., again between 1816 and 1840 by Frederick William III., and in Nassau in 1818. In these latter 4 cases, however, the title bishop is equivalent to that of “superintendent,” the form most generally employed. The Lutheran bishops, as a rule, do not possess or claim unbroken “apostolic succession”; those of Finland and Sweden are, however, an exception. The Lutheran bishops of Transylvania sit, with the Roman and Orthodox bishops, in the Hungarian Upper House. In some cases the secularization of episcopal principalities at the Reformation led to the survival of the title of bishop as a purely secular distinction. Thus the see of Osnabrück (Osnaburgh) was occupied, from the peace of Westphalia to 1802, alternately by a Catholic and a Protestant prince. From 1762 to 1802 it was held by Frederick, duke of York, the last prince-bishop. Similarly, the bishopric of Schwerin survived as a Protestant prince-bishopric until 1648, when it was finally secularized and annexed to Mecklenburg, and the see of Lübeck was held by Protestant “bishops” from 1530 till its annexation to Oldenburg in 1803.1

In other Protestant communities, e.g. the Moravians, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Mormons, the office and title of bishop have survived, or been created. Their functions and status will be found described in the accounts of the several churches.

BISHOP AUCKLAND, a market town in the Bishop Auckland parliamentary division of Durham, England, 11 m. S.S.W. of the city of Durham, the junction of several branches of the North Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 11,969. It is beautifully situated on an eminence near the confluence of the Wear and the Gaunless. The parish church is 1 m. distant, at Auckland St Andrews, a fine cruciform structure, formerly collegiate, in style mainly Early English, but with earlier portions. The palace of the bishops of Durham, which stands at the north-east end of the town, is a spacious and splendid, though irregular pile The site of the palace was first chosen by Bishop Anthony Beck, in the time of Edward I. The present building covers about 5 acres, and is surrounded by a park of 800 acres. On the Wear 1½ m. above Bishop Auckland there is a small and very ancient church at Escomb, massively built and tapering from the bottom upward. It is believed to date from the 7th century, and some of the stones are evidently from a Roman building, one bearing an inscription. These, no doubt, came from Binchester, a short distance up stream, where remains of a Roman fort (Vinovia) are traceable. It guarded the great Roman north road from York to Hadrian’s wall. The industrial population of Bishop Auckland is principally employed in the neighbouring collieries and iron works.

BISHOP’S CASTLE, a market town and municipal borough in the southern parliamentary division of Shropshire, England; the terminus of the Bishop’s Castle light railway from Craven Arms. Pop. (1901) 1378. It is pleasantly situated in a hilly district to the east of Clun Forest, climbing the flank and occupying the summit of an eminence. Of the castle of the bishops of Hereford, which gave the town its name, there are only the slightest fragments remaining. The town has some agricultural trade. It is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 1867 acres.

BISHOP STORTFORD, a market town in the Hertford parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England; 30½ m. N.N.E. from London by the Cambridge line of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 7143. It lies on the river Stort, close to the county boundary with Essex, and has water-communication with London through the Lea and Stort Navigation. The church of St Michael, standing high above the valley, is a fine embattled Perpendicular building with western tower and spire. The high school, formerly the grammar school, was founded in the time of Elizabeth. Here were educated Sir Henry Chauncy, an early historian of Hertfordshire (d. 1719), and Cecil Rhodes, who was born at Bishop Stortford in 1853. There are a Nonconformist grammar school, a diocesan training college for mistresses, and other educational establishments. The industries include brewing and malting, coach-building, lime-burning and founding, and there are important horse and cattle markets.

BISKRA, a town of Algeria, in the arrondissement of Batna, department of Constantine, 150 m. S.W. of the city of Constantine and connected with it and with Philippeville by rail. It lies in the Sahara 360 ft. above the sea, on the right bank of the Wad Biskra, a river which, often nearly dry for many months in the year, becomes a mighty torrent after one or two days’ rain in winter. The name Biskra applies to a union of five or six villages of the usual Saharan type, scattered through an oasis 3 m. in length by less than 1 m. broad, and separated by huge gardens full of palm and olive trees. The houses are built of hardened mud, with doors and roof of palm wood. The foreign settlement is on the north of the oasis; it consists of a broad main street, the rue Berthe (from which a few side streets branch at right angles), lined with European houses, the whole in the style of a typical French winter resort, a beautiful public garden, with the church in the centre, an arcade, a pretentious mairie in pseudo-Moorish style with entrance guarded by terra-cotta lions, some good shops, a number of excellent hotels and cafes, a casino, clubs, and, near by, a street of dancing and singing girls of the tribe of Walad-Nail. East of the public garden is Fort St Germain, named after an officer killed in the insurrection of the Zaatcha in 1849; it is capable of resisting any attack of the Arabs, and extensive enough to shelter the whole of the civil population, who took refuge therein during the rebellion of 1871. It contains barracks, hospital and government offices. To the south-east lies the Villa Landon with magnificent gardens filled with tropical plants. The population (1906) of the chief settlement was 4218, of the whole oasis 10,413.

From November to April the climate of Biskra is delightful. Nowhere in Algeria can be found more genial temperature or clearer skies, and while in summer the thermometer often registers 110° F. in the shade, and 90° at night, the pure dryness of the air in this practically rainless region makes the heat 5 endurable. The only drawback to the climat is the prevalence of high cold winds in winter. These winds cause temperatures as low as 36°, but the mean reading, on an average of ten years, is 73°.

In the oasis are some 200,000 fruit trees, of which about 150,000 are date-palms, the rest being olives, pomegranates and apricots. In the centre of the oasis is the old kasbah or citadel.

In 1844 the duc d’Aumale occupied this fort, and here, on the night of the 12th of May of that year, the 68 men who formed the French garrison were, with one exception, massacred by Arabs. In the fort are a few fragments of Roman work—all that remains of the Roman post Ad Piscinam.

Biskra is the capital of the Ziban (plural of Zab), a race of mixed Berber and Arab origin, whose villages extend from the southern slopes of the Aures to the Shat Melrir. These villages, built in oases dotted over the desert, nestle in groves of date-palms and fruit trees and waving fields of barley. The most interesting village is that of Sidi Okba, 12 m. south-east of Biskra. It is built of houses of one story made of sun-dried bricks. The mosque is square, with a flat roof supported on clay columns, and crowned by a minaret. In the north-west corner of the mosque is the tomb of Sidi Okba, the leader of the Arabs who in the 1st century of the Hegira conquered Africa for Islam from Egypt to Tangier. Sidi Okba was killed by the Berbers near this place in A.D. 682. On his tomb is the inscription in Cufic characters, “This is the tomb of Okba, son of Nafi. May God have mercy upon him.” No older Arabic inscription is known to exist in Africa.

BISLEY, a village of Surrey, England, 3½ m. N.W. of Woking. The ranges of the National Rifle Association were transferred from Wimbledon here in 1890. (See Rifle.)

BISMARCK, OTTO EDUARD LEOPOLD VON, Prince, duke of Lauenburg (1815-1898), German statesman, was born on the 1st of April 1815, at the manor-house of Schönhausen, his father’s seat in the mark of Brandenburg. The family has, since the 14th century, belonged to the landed gentry, and many members had held high office in the kingdom of Prussia. His father (d. 1845), of whom he always spoke with much affection, was a quiet, unassuming man, who retired from the army in early life with the rank of captain of cavalry (Rittmeister). His mother, a daughter of Mencken, cabinet secretary to the king, was a woman of strong character and ability, who had been brought up at Berlin under the “Aufklärung.” Her ambition was centred in her sons, but Bismarck in his recollections of his childhood missed the influences of maternal tenderness. There were several children of the marriage, which took place in 1806, but all died in childhood except Bernhard (1810-1893), Otto, and one sister, Malvina (b. 1827), who married in 1845 Oscar von Arnim. Young Bismarck was educated in Berlin, first at a private school, then at the gymnasium of the Graue Kloster (Grey Friars). At the age of seventeen he went to the university of Göttingen, where he spent a little over a year; he joined the corps of the Hannoverana and took a leading part in the social life of the students. He completed his studies at Berlin, and in 1835 passed the examinations which admitted him to the public service. He was intended for the diplomatic service, but spent some months at Aix-la-Chapelle in administrative work, and then was transferred to Potsdam and the judicial side. He soon retired from the public service; he conceived a great distaste for it, and had shown himself defective in discipline and regularity. In 1839, after his mother’s death, he undertook, with his brother, the management of the family estates in Pomerania; at this time most of the estate attached to Schönhausen had to be sold. In 1844, after the marriage of his sister, he went to live with his father at Schönhausen. He and his brother took an active part in local affairs, and in 1846 he was appointed Deichhauptmann, an office in which he was responsible for the care of the dykes by which the country, in the neighbourhood of the Elbe, was preserved from inundation. During these years he travelled in England, France and Switzerland. The influence of his mother, and his own wide reading and critical character, made him at one time inclined to hold liberal opinions on government and religion, but he was strongly affected by the religious revival of the early years of the reign of Frederick William IV.; his opinions underwent a great change, and under the influence of the neighbouring country gentlemen he acquired those strong principles in favour of monarchical government as the expression of the Christian state, of which he was to become the most celebrated exponent. His religious convictions were strengthened by his marriage to Johanna von Puttkamer, which took place in 1847.

In the same year he entered public life, being chosen as substitute for the representative of the lower nobility of his district in the estates-general, which were in that year summoned to Berlin. He took his seat with Parliamentary career. extreme right, and distinguished himself by the vigour and originality with which he defended the rights of the king and the Christian monarchy against the Liberals. When the revolution broke out in the following year he offered to bring the peasants of Schönhausen to Berlin in order to defend the king against the revolutionary party, and in the last meeting of the estates voted in a minority of two against the address thanking the king for granting a constitution. He did not sit in any of the assemblies summoned during the revolutionary year, but took a very active part in the formation of a union of the Conservative party, and was one of the founders of the Kreuzzeitung, which has since then been the organ of the Monarchical party in Prussia. In the new parliament which was elected at the beginning of 1849, he sat for Brandenburg, and was one of the most frequent and most incisive speakers of what was called the Junker party. He took a prominent part in the discussions on the new Prussian constitution, always defending the power of the king. His speeches of this period show great debating skill, combined with strong originality and imagination. His constant theme was, that the party disputes were a struggle for power between the forces of revolution, which derived their strength from the fighters on the barricades, and the Christian monarchy, and that between these opposed principles no compromise was possible. He took also a considerable part in the debates on the foreign policy of the Prussian government; he defended the government for not accepting the Frankfort constitution, and opposed the policy of Radowitz, on the ground that the Prussian king would be subjected to the control of a non-Prussian parliament. The only thing, he said, that had come out of the revolutionary year unharmed, and had saved Prussia from dissolution and Germany from anarchy, was the Prussian army and the Prussian civil service; and in the debates on foreign policy he opposed the numerous plans for bringing about the union of Germany, by subjecting the crown and Prussia to a common German parliament. He had a seat in the parliament of Erfurt, but only went there in order to oppose the constitution which the parliament had framed. He foresaw that the policy of the government would lead it into a position when it would have to fight against Austria on behalf of a constitution by which Prussia itself would be dissolved, and he was, therefore, one of the few prominent politicians who defended the complete change of front which followed the surrender of Olmütz.

It was probably his speeches on German policy which induced the king to appoint him Prussian representative at the restored diet of Frankfort in 1851. The appointment was a bold one, as he was entirely without diplomatic experience, Diplomatic career. but he justified the confidence placed in him. During the eight years he spent at Frankfort he acquired an unrivalled knowledge of German politics. He was often used for important missions, as in 1852, when he was sent to Vienna. He was entrusted with the negotiations by which the duke of Augustenburg was persuaded to assent to the arrangements by which he resigned his claims to Schleswig and Holstein. The period he spent at Frankfort, however, was of most importance because of the change it brought about in his own political opinions. When he went to Frankfort he was still under the influence of the extreme Prussian Conservatives, men like the Gerlachs, who regarded the maintenance of the principle of the 6 Christian monarchy against the revolution as the chief duty of the Prussian government. He was prepared on this ground for a close alliance with Austria. He found, however, a deliberate intention on the part of Austria to humble Prussia, and to degrade her from the position of an equal power, and also great jealousy of Prussia among the smaller German princes, many of whom owed their thrones to the Prussian soldiers, who, as in Saxony and Baden, had crushed the insurgents. He therefore came to the conclusion that if Prussia was to regain the position she had lost she must be prepared for the opposition of Austria, and must strengthen herself by alliances with other powers. The solidarity of Conservative interests appeared to him now a dangerous fiction. At the time of the Crimean War he advocated alliance with Russia, and it was to a great extent owing to his advice that Prussia did not join the western powers. Afterwards he urged a good understanding with Napoleon, but his advice was met by the insuperable objection of King Frederick William IV. to any alliance with a ruler of revolutionary origin.

The change of ministry which followed the establishment of a regency in 1857 made it desirable to appoint a new envoy at Frankfort, and in 1858 Bismarck was appointed ambassador at St Petersburg, where he remained for four years. During this period he acquired some knowledge of Russian, and gained the warm regard of the tsar, as well as of the dowager-empress, herself a Prussian princess. During the first two years he had little influence on the Prussian government; the Liberal ministers distrusted his known opinions on parliamentary government, and the monarchical feeling of the prince regent was offended by Bismarck’s avowed readiness for alliance with the Italians and his disregard of the rights of other princes. The failure of the ministry, and the estrangement between King William and the Liberal party, opened to him the way to power. Roon, who was appointed minister of war in 1861, was an old friend of his, and through him Bismarck was thenceforward kept closely informed of the condition of affairs in Berlin. On several occasions the prospect of entering the ministry was open to him, but nothing came of it, apparently because he required a free hand in foreign affairs, and this the king was not prepared to give him. When an acute crisis arose out of the refusal of parliament, in 1862, to vote the money required for the reorganization of the army, which the king and Roon had carried through, he was summoned to Berlin; but the king was still unable to make up his mind to appoint him, although he felt that Bismarck was the only man who had the courage and capacity for conducting the struggle with parliament. He was, therefore, in June, made ambassador at Paris as a temporary expedient. There he had the opportunity for renewing the good understanding with Napoleon which had been begun in 1857. He also paid a short visit to England, but it does not appear that this had any political results. In September the parliament, by a large majority, threw out the budget, and the king, having nowhere else to turn for help, at Roon’s advice summoned Bismarck to Berlin and appointed him minister president and foreign minister.

Bismarck’s duty as minister was to carry on the government against the wishes of the lower house, so as to enable the king to complete and maintain the reorganized army. The opposition of the House was supported by the country Ministry. and by a large party at court, including the queen and crown prince. The indignation which his appointment caused was intense; he was known only by the reputation which in his early years he had won as a violent ultra-Conservative, and the apprehensions were increased by his first speech, in which he said that the German question could not be settled by speeches and parliamentary decrees, but only by blood and iron. His early fall was predicted, and it was feared that he might bring down the monarchy with him. Standing almost alone he succeeded in the task he had undertaken. For four years he ruled without a budget, taking advantage of an omission in the constitution which did not specify what was to happen in case the crown and the two Houses could not agree on a budget. The conflict of the ministers and the House assumed at times the form of bitter personality hostility; in 1863 the ministers refused any longer to attend the sittings, and Bismarck challenged Virchow, one of his strongest opponents, to a duel, which, however, did not take place. In 1852 he had fought a duel with pistols against Georg von Vindre, a political opponent. In June 1863, as soon as parliament had risen, Bismarck published ordinances controlling the liberty of the press, which, though in accordance with the letter, seemed opposed to the intentions of the constitution, and it was on this occasion that the crown prince, hitherto a silent opponent, publicly dissociated himself from the policy of his father’s ministers. Bismarck depended for his position solely on the confidence of the king, and the necessity for defending himself against the attempts to destroy this confidence added greatly to the suspiciousness of his nature. He was, however, really indispensable, for his resignation must be followed by a Liberal ministry, parliamentary control over the army, and probably the abdication of the king. Not only, therefore, was he secure in the continuance of the king’s support, but he had also the complete control of foreign affairs. Thus he could afford to ignore the criticism of the House, and the king was obliged to acquiesce in the policy of a minister to whom he owed so much.

He soon gave to the policy of the monarchy a resolution which had long been wanting. When the emperor of Austria summoned a meeting of the German princes at Frankfort to discuss a reform of the confederation, Bismarck Foreign policy. insisted that the king of Prussia must not attend. He remained away, and his absence in itself made the congress unavailing. There can be no doubt that from the time he entered on office Bismarck was determined to bring to an issue the long struggle for supremacy in Germany between the house of Habsburg and the house of Hohenzollern. Before he was able to complete his preparations for this, two unforeseen occurrences completely altered the European situation, and caused the conflict to be postponed for three years. The first was the outbreak of rebellion in Poland. Bismarck, an inheritor of the older Prussian traditions, and recollecting how much of the greatness of Prussia had been gained at the expense of the Poles, offered his help to the tsar. By this he placed himself in opposition to the universal feeling of western Europe; no act of his life added so much to the repulsion with which at this time he was regarded as an enemy of liberty and right. He won, however, the gratitude of the tsar and the support of Russia, which in the next years was to be of vital service to him. Even more serious were the difficulties arising in Denmark. On the death of King Frederick VII. in 1863, Prince Frederick of Augustenburg came forward as claimant to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which had hitherto been joined to the crown of Denmark. He was strongly supported by the whole German nation and by many of its princes. Bismarck, however, once more was obliged to oppose the current of national feeling, which imperiously demanded that the German duchies should be rescued from a foreign yoke. Prussia was bound by the treaty of London of 1852, which guaranteed the integrity of the Danish monarchy; to have disregarded this would have been to bring about a coalition against Germany similar to that of 1851. Moreover, he held that it would be of no advantage to Prussia to create a new German state; if Denmark were to lose the duchies, he desired that Prussia should acquire them, and to recognize the Augustenburg claims would make this impossible. His resistance to the national desire made him appear a traitor to his country. To check the agitation he turned for help to Austria; and an alliance of the two powers, so lately at variance, was formed. He then falsified all the predictions of the opposition by going to war with Denmark, not, as they had required, in support of Augustenburg, but on the ground that the king of Denmark had violated his promise not to oppress his German subjects. Austria continued to act with Prussia, and, after the defeat of the Danes, at the peace of Vienna the sovereignty of the duchies was surrendered to the two allies—the first step towards annexation by Prussia. There is no part of Bismarck’s diplomatic work which deserves such careful study as these 7 events. Watched as he was by countless enemies at home and abroad, a single false step would have brought ruin and disgrace on himself; the growing national excitement would have burst through all restraint, and again, as fifteen years before, Germany divided and unorganized would have had to capitulate to the orders of foreign powers (see Schleswig-Holstein Question).

The peace of Vienna left him once more free to return to his older policy. For the next eighteen months he was occupied in preparing for war with Austria. For this war the was alone responsible; he undertook it deliberately War with Austria. as the only means of securing Prussian ascendancy in Germany. The actual cause of dispute was the disposition of the conquered duchies, for Austria now wished to put Augustenburg in as duke, a plan to which Bismarck would not assent. In 1865 a provisional arrangement was made by the treaty of Gastein, for Bismarck was not yet ready. He would not risk a war unless he was certain of success, and for this he required the alliance of Italy and French support; both he secured during the next year. In October 1865 he visited Napoleon at Biarritz and Paris. No formal treaty was made, but Napoleon promised to regard favourably an extension of Prussian power in Germany; while Bismarck led the emperor to believe that Prussia would help him in extending the frontier of France. A treaty of alliance with Italy was arranged in the spring of 1866; and Bismarck then with much difficulty overcame the reluctance of the king to embark in a war with his old ally. The results of the war entirely justified his calculations. Prussia, though opposed by all the German states except a few principalities in the north, completely defeated all her enemies, and at the end of a few weeks the whole of Germany lay at her feet.

The war of 1866 is more than that of 1870 the crisis of modern German history. It finally settled the controversy which had begun more than a hundred years before, and left Prussia the dominant power in Germany. It determined Settlement of 1866. that the unity of Germany should be brought about not by revolutionary means as in 1848, not as in 1849 had been attempted by voluntary agreement of the princes, not by Austria, but by the sword of Prussia. This was the great work of Bismarck’s life; he had completed the programme foreshadowed in his early speeches, and finished the work of Frederick the Great. It is also the turning-point in Bismarck’s own life. Having secured the dominance of the crown in Prussia and of Prussia in Germany, he could afford to make a reconciliation with the parties which had been his chief opponents, and turn to them for help in building up a new Germany. The settlement of 1866 was peculiarly his work. We must notice, first, how in arranging the terms of peace he opposed the king and the military party who wished to advance on Vienna and annex part of Austrian Silesia; with greater foresight he looked to renewing the old friendship with Austria, and insisted (even with the threat of resignation) that no territory should be demanded. The southern states he treated with equal moderation, and thereby was able to arrange an offensive and defensive alliance with them. On the other hand, in order to secure the complete control of North Germany, which was his immediate object, he required that the whole of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Nassau and the city of Frankfort, as well as the Elbe duchies, should be absorbed in Prussia. He then formed a separate confederation of the North German states, but did not attempt to unite the whole of Germany, partly because of the internal difficulties which this would have produced, partly because it would have brought about a war with France. In the new confederation he became sole responsible minister, with the title Bundes-Kanzler; this position he held till 1890, in addition to his former post of premier minister. In 1871 the title was altered to Reichs-Kanzler.

The reconciliation with the Prussian parliament he effected by bringing in a bill of indemnity for the money which had been spent without leave of parliament. The Radicals still continued their opposition, but he thereby made possible the formation of a large party of moderate Liberals, who thenceforward supported him in his new Nationalist policy. He aslo, in the constitution for the new confederation, introduced a parliament (Bundestag) elected by universal suffrage. This was the chief demand of the revolutionists in 1848; it was one to which in his early life he had been strongly opposed. His experience at Frankfort had diminished his dislike of popular representation, and it was probably to the advice of Lassalle that his adoption of universal suffrage was due. He first publicly proposed it just before the war; by carrying it out, notwithstanding the apprehensions of many Liberal politicians, he placed the new constitution on a firmer base than would otherwise have been possible.

Up to 1866 he had always appeared to be an opponent of the National party in Germany, now he became their leader. His next task was to complete the work which was half-finished, and it was this which brought about the second of the great wars which he undertook.

The relations with Napoleon III. form one of the most interesting but obscurest episodes in Bismarck’s career. We have seen that he did not share the common prejudice against co-operation with France. He found Napoleon Bismarck and France. willing to aid Prussia as he had aided Piedmont, and was ready to accept his assistance. There was this difference, that he asked only for neutrality, not armed assistance, and it is improbable that he ever intended to alienate any German territory; he showed himself, however, on more than one occasion, ready to discuss plans for extending French territory, on the side of Belgium and Switzerland. Napoleon, who had not anticipated the rapid success of Prussia, after the battle of Königgratz at the request of Austria came forward as mediator, and there were a few days during which it was probable that Prussia would have to meet a French attempt to dictate terms of peace. Bismarck in this crisis by deferring to the emperor in appearance avoided the danger, but he knew that he had been deceived, and the cordial understanding was never renewed. Immediately after an armistice had been arranged, Benedetti, at the orders of the French government, demanded as recompense a large tract of German territory on the left bank of the Rhine. This Bismarck peremptorily refused, declaring that he would rather have war. Benedetti then made another proposal, submitting a draft treaty by which France was to support Prussia in adding the South German states to the new confederation, and Germany was to support France in the annexation of Luxemburg and Belgium. Bismarck discussed, but did not conclude the treaty; he kept, however, a copy of the draft in Benedetti’s handwriting, and published it in The Times in the summer of 1870 so as to injure the credit of Napoleon in England. The failure of the scheme made a contest with France inevitable, at least unless the Germans were willing to forgo the purpose of completing the work of German unity, and during the next four years the two nations were each preparing for the struggle, and each watching to take the other at a disadvantage.

It is necessary, then, to keep in mind the general situation in considering Bismarck’s conduct in the months immediately preceding the war of 1870. In 1867 there was a dispute regarding the right to garrison Luxemburg. Bismarck then produced the secret treaties with the southern states, an act which was, as it were, a challenge to France by the whole of Germany. During the next three years the Ultramontane party hoped to bring about an anti-Prussian revolution, and Napoleon was working for an alliance with Austria, where Beust, an old opponent of Bismarck’s, was chancellor. Bismarck was doubtless well informed as to the progress of the negotiations, for he had established intimate relations with the Hungarians. The pressure at home for completing the work of German unity was so strong that he could with difficulty resist it, and in 1870 he was much embarrassed by a request from Baden to be admitted to the confederation, which he had to refuse. It is therefore not surprising that he eagerly welcomed the opportunity of gaining the goodwill of Spain, and supported by all the means in his power the offer made by Marshal Prim that Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern should be chosen king of that country. It was only by his urgent and repeated representations that the prince was persuaded against his will to accept. The negotiations were 8 carried out with the greatest secrecy, but as soon as the acceptance was made known the French government intervened and declared that the project was inadmissable. Bismarck was away at Varzin, but on his instructions the Prussian foreign office in answer to inquiries denied all knowledge or responsibility. This was necessary, because it would have caused a bad impression in Germany had he gone to war with France in support of the prince’s candidature. The king, by receiving Benedetti at Ems, departed from the policy of reserve Bismarck himself adopted, and Bismarck (who had now gone to Berlin) found himself in a position of such difficulty that he contemplated resignation. The French however, by changing and extending their demands enabled him to find a cause of war of such nature that the The Ems telegram. whole of Germany would be united against French agression. France asked for a letter of apology, and Benedetti personally requested from the king a promise that he would never allow the candidature to be resumed. Bismarck published the telegram in which this information and the refusal of the king were conveyed, but by omitting part of the telegram made it appear that the request and refusal had both been conveyed in a more abrupt form than had really been the case.1 But even apart from this, the publication of the French demand, which could not be complied with, must have brought about a war.

In the campaign of 1870-71 Bismarck accompanied the headquarters of the army, as he had done in 1866. He was present at the battle of Gravelotte and at the surrender of Sedan, and it was on the morning of the 2nd of September that he had his famous meeting with Napoleon after the surrender of the emperor. He accompanied the king to Paris, and spent many months at Versailles. Here he was occupied chiefly with the arrangments for admitting the southern states to the confederation, and the establishment of the empire. He also underwent much anxiety lest the efforts of Thiers to bring about an interference by the neutral powers might be successful. He had to carry on the negotiations with the French preliminary to the surrender of Paris, and to enforce upon them the German terms of peace.

For Bismarck’s political career after 1870 we must refer to the article Germany, for he was thenceforward entirely absorbed in the affairs of his country. The foreign policy he controlled absolutely. As chancellor he was responsible After 1870. for the whole internal policy of the empire, and his influence is to be seen in every department of state, especially, however, in the great change of policy after 1878. During the earlier period the estrangement from the Conservatives, which had begun in 1866, became very marked, and brought about a violent quarrel with many of his old friends, which culminated in the celebrated Arnim trial. He incurred much criticism during the struggle with the Roman Catholic Church, and in 1873 he was shot at and slightly wounded by a youth called Rullmann, who professed to be an adherent of the Clerical party. Once before, in 1866, just before the outbreak of war, his life had been attempted by a young man called Cohen, a native of Württemberg, who wished to save Germany from a fratricidal war. In 1872 he retired from the presidency of the Prussian ministry, but returned after a few months. On several occasions he offered to retire, but the emperor always refused his consent, on the last time with the word “Never.” In 1877 he took a long leave of absence for ten months. His health at this time was very bad. In 1878 he presided over the congress of Berlin. The following years were chiefly occupied, besides foreign affairs, which were always his first care, with important commercial reforms, and he held at this time also the office of Prussian minister of trade in addition to his other posts. During this period his relations with the Reichstag were often very unsatisfactory, and at no time did he resort so freely to prosecutions in the law-courts in order to injure his opponents, so that the expression Bismarck-Beleidigung was invented. He was engaged at this time in a great struggle with the Social-Democrats, whom he tried to crush by exceptional penal laws. The death of the emperor William in 1888 made a serious difference in his position. He had been bound to him by a long term of loyal service, which had been rewarded with equal loyalty. For his relations to the emperors Frederick and William II., and for the events connected with his dismissal from office in March 1890, we must refer to the articles under those names.

After his retirement he resided at Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg, a house on his Leuenburg estates. His criticisms of the government, given sometimes in conversation, sometimes in the columns of the Hamburger Nachrichten, caused an open breach between him and the emperor; and the new chancellor, Count Caprivi, in a circular despatch which was afterwards published, warned all German envoys that no real importance must be attached to what he said. When he visited Vienna for his son’s wedding the German ambassador, Prince Reuss, was forbidden to take any notice of him. A reconciliation was effected in 1893. In 1895 his eightieth birthday was celebrated with great enthusiasm: the Reichstag alone, owing to the opposition of the Clericals and the Socialists, refused to vote an address. In 1891 he had been elected a member of the Reichstag, but he never took his seat. He died at Friedrichsruh on the 31st of July 1898.

Bismarck was made a count in 1865; in 1871 he received the rank of Fürst (prince). On his retirement the emperor created him duke of Lauenburg, but he never used the title, which was not inherited by his son. In 1866 he received £60,000 as his share of the donation voted by the Reichstag for the victorious generals. With this he purchased the estate of Varzin in Pomerania, which henceforth he used as a country residence in preference to Schönhausen. In 1871 the emperor presented him with a large part of the domains of the duchy of Lauenburg. On his seventieth birthday a large sum of money (£270,000) was raised by public subscription, of which half was devoted to repurchasing the estate of Schönhausen for him, and the rest was used by him to establish a fund for the assistance of schoolmasters. As a young man he was an officer in the Landwehr and militia, and in addition to his civil honours he was eventually raised to the rank of general. Among the numerous orders he received we may mention that he was the first Protestant on whom the pope bestowed the order of Christ; this was done after the cessation of the Kulturkampf and the reference of the dispute with Spain concerning the Caroline Islands to the arbitration of the pope.

Bismarck’s wife died in 1894. He left one daughter and two sons. Herbert (1840-1904), the elder, was wounded at Mars-le-Tour, afterwards entered the foreign office, and acted as private secretary to his father (1871-1881). In 1882 he became councillor to the embassy at London, in 1884 was transferred to St Petersburg, and in 1885 became under-secretary of state for foreign affairs. In 1884 he had been elected to the Reichstag, but had to resign his seat when, in 1886, he was made secretary of state for foreign affairs and Prussian minister. He conducted many of the negotiations with Great Britain on colonial affairs. He retired in 1890 at the same time as his father, and in 1893 was again elected to the Reichstag. He married Countess Margarete Hoyos in 1892, and died on the 18th of September 1904. He left two daughters and three sons, of whom the eldest, Otto Christian Archibald (b. 1897), succeeded to the princely title. The second son, Wilhelm, who was president of the province of Prussia, died in 1901. By his wife, Sybilla von Arnim-Kröchlendorff, he left three daughters and a son, Count Nikolaus (b. 1896).

BISMARCK, the capital of North Dakota, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Burleigh county, on the E. bank of the Missouri river, in the S. central part of the state. Pop. (1890) 2186, (1900) 3319, of whom 746 were foreign-born, (1905) 4913, (1910) 5443. It is on the main line of the Northern Pacific, and on the Minneapolis, St Paul & Sault Ste Marie railways; and steamboats run from here to Mannhaven, Mercer county, and Fort Yates, Morton county. The city is about 1650 ft. above sea-level. It contains the state capitol, the state penitentiary, a U.S. land office, a U.S. surveyor-general’s office, a U.S. Indian school and a U.S. weather station; about a mile S. of the city is Fort Lincoln, a United States army post. Bismarck is the headquarters for navigation of the upper Missouri river, is situated in a good agricultural region, and has a large wholesale trade, shipping grain, hides, furs, wool and coal. It was founded in 1873, and was chartered as a city in 1876; from 1883 to 1889 it was the capital of Dakota Territory, on the division of which it became the capital of North Dakota.

BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO, the collective name of a large number of islands lying N. and N.E. of New Guinea, between 1° and 7° S., and 146° and 153° E., belonging to Germany. The largest island is New Pomerania, and the archipelago also includes New Mecklenburg, New Hanover, with small attendant islands, the Admiralty Islands and a chain of islands off the coast of New Guinea, the whole system lying in the form of a great amphitheatre of oval shape. The archipelago was named in honour of the first chancellor of the German empire, after a German protectorate had been declared in 1884. (See Admiralty Islands, New Mecklenburg, New Pomerania, New Guinea.)

BISMILLAH, an Arabic exclamation, meaning “in the name of God.”

BISMUTH, a metallic chemical element; symbol Bi, atomic weight 208.5 (O = 16). It was probably unknown to the Greeks and Romans, but during the middle ages it became quite familiar, notwithstanding its frequent confusion with other metals. In 1450 Basil Valentine referred to it by the name “wismut,” and characterized it as a metal; some years later Paracelsus termed it “wissmat,” and, in allusion to its brittle nature, affirmed it to be a “bastard” or “half-metal”; Georgius Agricola used the form “wissmuth,” latinized to “bisemutum,” and also the term “plumbum cineareum.” Its elementary nature was imperfectly understood; and the impure specimens obtained by the early chemists explain, in some measure, its confusion with tin, lead, antimony, zinc and other metals; in 1595 Andreas Libavius confused it with antimony, and in 1675 Nicolas Lemery with zinc. These obscurities began to be finally cleared up with the researches of Johann Heinrich Pott (1692-1777), a pupil of Stahl, published in his Exercitationes chemicae de Wismutho (1769), and of N. Geoffroy, son of Claude Joseph Geoffroy, whose contribution to our knowledge of this metal appeared in the Mémoires de l’académie française for 1753. Torbern Olof Bergman reinvestigated its properties and determined its reactions; his account, which was published in his Opuscula, contains the first fairly accurate description of the metal.

Ores and Minerals.—The principal source of bismuth is the native metal, which is occasionally met with as a mineral, usually in reticulated and arborescent shapes or as foliated and granular masses with a crystalline fracture. Although bismuth is readily obtained in fine crystals by artificial means, yet natural crystals are rare and usually indistinct; they belong to the rhombohedral system and a cube-like rhombohedron with interfacial angles of 92° 20′ is the predominating form. There is a perfect cleavage perpendicular to the trigonal axis of the crystals; the fact that only two (opposite) corners of the cube-like crystals can be truncated by cleavage at once distinguishes them from true cubes. When not tarnished, the mineral has a silver-white colour with a tinge of red, and the lustre is metallic. Hardness 2-2½; specific gravity 9.70-9.83. The slight variations in specific gravity are due to the presence of small amounts of arsenic, sulphur or tellurium, or to enclosed impurities.

Bismuth occurs in metalliferous veins traversing gneiss or clay-slate, and is usually associated with ores of silver and cobalt. Well-known localities are Schneeberg in Saxony and Joachimsthal in Bohemia; at the former it has been found as arborescent groups penetrating brown jasper, which material has occasionally been cut and polished for small ornaments. The mineral has been found in some Cornish mines and is fairly abundant in Bolivia (near Sorata, and at Tasna in Potosi). It is the chief commercial source of bismuth.

The oxide, bismuth ochre, Bi2O3, and the sulphide, bismuth glance or bismuthite, are also of commercial importance. The former is found, generally mixed with iron, copper and arsenic oxides, in Bohemia, Siberia, Cornwall, France (Meymac) and other localities; it also occurs admixed with bismuth carbonate and hydrate. The hydrated carbonate, bismutite, is of less importance; it occurs in Cornwall, Bolivia, Arizona and elsewhere.

Of the rarer bismuth minerals we may notice the following:—the complex sulphides, copper bismuth glance or wittichenite, BiCu3S3, silver bismuth glance, bismuth cobalt pyrites, bismuth nickel pyrites or saynite, needle ore (patrinite or aikinite), BiCuPbS3, emplectite, CuBiS2, and kobellite, BiAsPb3S6; the sulphotelluride tetradymite; the selenide guanajuatite, Bi2Se3, 10 the basic tellurate montanite, Bi2(OH)4TeOe; the silicates eulytite and agricolite, Bi4(SiO2)3; and the urnayl arsenate walpurgite, Bi(UO2),(OH)24(A3O4)4.

BISMUTHITE, a somewhat rare mineral, consisting of bismuth trisulphide, Bi2S3. It crystallizes in the orthorhombic system and is isomorphous with stibnite (Sb2S3), which it closely resembles in appearance. It forms loose interlacing aggregates of acicular crystals without terminal faces (only in a single instance has a terminated crystal been observed), or as masses with a foliated or fibrous structure. An important character is the perfect cleavage in one direction parallel to the length of the needles. The colour is lead-grey inclining to tin-white and often with a yellowish or iridescent tarnish. The hardness is 2; specific gravity 6.4-6.5. Bismuthite occurs at several localities in Cornwall and Bolivia, often in association with native bismuth and tin-ores. Other localities are known; for instance, Brandy Gill in Caldbeck Fells, Cumberland, where with molybdenite and apatite it is embedded in white quartz. The mineral was known to A. Cronstedt in 1758, and was named bismuthine by F.S. Beudant in 1832. This name, which is also used in the forms bismuthite and bismuthinite, is rather unfortunate, since it is readily confused with bismite (bismuth oxide) and bismutite (basic bismuth carbonate), especially as the latter has also been used in the form bismuthite. The name bismuth-glance or bismutholamprite for the species under consideration is free from this objection.

BISMYA, a group of ruin mounds, about 1 m. long and ½ m. wide, consisting of a number of low ridges, nowhere exceeding 40 ft. in height, lying in the Jezireh, somewhat nearer to the Tigris than the Euphrates, about a day’s journey to the south-east of Nippur, a little below 32° N. and about 45° 40′ E. Excavations conducted here for six months, from Christmas of 1903 to June 1904, for the university of Chicago, by Dr Edgar J. Banks, proved that these mounds covered the site of the ancient city of Adab (Ud-Nun), hitherto known only from a brief mention of its name in the introduction to the Khammurabi code (c. 2250 B.C.). The city was divided into two parts by a canal, on an island in which stood the temple, E-mach, with a ziggurat, or stage tower. It was evidently once a city of considerable importance, but deserted at a very early period, since the ruins found close to the surface of the mounds belong to Dungi and Ur Gur, kings of Ur in the earlier part of the third millennium B.C. Immediately below these, as at Nippur, were found the remains of Naram-Sin and Sar-gon, c. 3000 B.C. Below these there were still 35 ft. of stratified remains, constituting seven-eighths of the total depth of the ruins. Besides the remains of buildings, walls, graves, &c., Dr Banks discovered a large number of inscribed clay tablets of a very early period, bronze and stone tablets, bronze implements and the like. But the two most notable discoveries were a complete statue in white marble, apparently the most ancient yet found in Babylonia (now in the museum in Constantinople), bearing the inscription—“E-mach, King Da-udu, King of Ud-Nun”; and a temple refuse heap, consisting of great quantities of fragments of vases in marble, alabaster, onyx, porphyry and granite, some of which were inscribed, and others engraved and inlaid with ivory and precious stones.

BISON, the name of the one existing species of European wild ox, Bos (Bison) bonasus, known in Russian as zubr. Together with the nearly allied New World animal known in Europe as the (North) American bison, but in its own country as “buffalo,” and scientifically as Bos (Bison) bison, the bison represents a group of the ox tribe distinguished from other species by the greater breadth and convexity of the forehead, superior length of limb, and the longer spinal processes of the dorsal vertebrae, which, with the powerful muscles attached for the support of the massive head, form a protuberance or hump on the shoulders. The bisons have also fourteen pairs of ribs, while the common ox has only thirteen. The forehead and neck of both species are covered with long, shaggy hair of a dark brown colour; and in winter the whole of the neck, shoulders and hump are similarly clothed, so as to form a curly, felted mane. This mane in the European species disappears in summer; but in the American bison it is to a considerable extent persistent.

The bison is now the largest European quadruped, measuring about 10 ft. long, exclusive of the tail, and standing nearly 6 ft. high. Formerly it was abundant throughout Europe, as is proved by the fossil remains of this or a closely allied form found on the continent and in England, associated with those of the extinct mammoth and rhinoceros. Caesar mentions the bison as abounding, along with the extinct aurochs or wild ox, in the forests of Germany and Belgium, where it appears to have been occasionally captured and afterwards exhibited alive in the Roman amphitheatres. At that period, and long after, it seems to have been common throughout central Europe, as we learn from the evidence of Herberstein in the 16th century. Nowadays bison are found in a truly wild condition only in the forests of the Caucasus, where they are specially protected by the Russian government. There is, however, a herd, somewhat in the condition of park-animals, in the forest of Byelovitsa, in Lithuania, where it is protected by the tsar, but nevertheless is gradually dying out. In 1862 the Lithuanian bisons numbered over 1200, but by 1872 they had diminished to 528, and in 1892 there were only 491. The prince of Pless has a small herd at Promnitz, his Silesian estate, founded by the gift of a bull and three cows by Alexander II. in 1855, his herd being the source of the menagerie supply.

Bison feed on a coarse aromatic grass, and browse on the leaves, shoots, bark and twigs of trees.

The American bison is distinguished from its European cousin by the following among other features: The hind-quarters are weaker and fall away more suddenly, while the withers are proportionately higher. Especially characteristic is the great mass of brown or blackish brown hair clothing the head, neck and forepart of the body. The shape of the skull and horns is also different; the horns themselves being shorter, thicker, blunter and more sharply curved, while the forehead of the skull is more convex and the sockets of the eyes are more distinctly tubular. This species formerly ranged over a third of North America in countless numbers, but is now practically extinct. The great herd was separated into a northern and 12 southern division by the completion of the Union Pacific railway, and the annual rate of destruction from 1870 to 1875 has been estimated at 2,500,000 head. In 1880 the completion of the Northern Pacific railway led to an attack upon the northern herd. The last of the Dakota bisons were destroyed by Indians in 1883, leaving then less than 1000 wild individuals in the United State.

A count which was concluded at the end of February 1903, put the number of captive bisons at 1119, of which 969 were in parks and zoological gardens in the United States, 41 in Canada and 109 in Europe. At the same time it was estimated that there were 34 wild bison in the United States and 600 in Canada.

In England small herds are kept by the duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, and by Mr C.J. Leyland at Haggerston Castle, Northumberland.

Two races of the American bison have been distinguished—the typical prairie form, and the woodland race, B. bison athabascae; but the two are very similar.

BISQUE (a French word of unknown origin, formerly spelt in English “bisk”), a term for odds given in the games of tennis, lawn tennis, croquet and golf; in the two former a bisque is one point to be taken at any time during a “set” at the choice of the receiver of the odds, while in croquet and golf it is one extra stroke to be taken similarly during a game. The name is given, in cookery, to a thick soup, made particularly of crayfish or lobsters.

BISSELL, GEORGE EDWIN (1839-  ), American sculptor, son of a quarryman and marble-cutter, was born at New Preston, Connecticut, on the 16th of February 1839. During the Civil War he served as a private in the 23rd Connecticut volunteers in the Department of the Gulf (1862-1863), and on being mustered out became acting assistant paymaster in the South Atlantic squadron. At the close of the war he joined his father in business. He studied the art of sculpture abroad in 1875-1876, and lived much in Paris during the years 1883-1896, with occasional visits to America. Among his more important works are the soldiers’ and sailors’ monument, and a statue of Colonel Chatfield, at Waterbury, Connecticut; and statues of General Gates at Saratoga, New York, of Chancellor John Watts in Trinity churchyard, New York City; of Colonel Abraham de Peyster in Bowling Green, New York City; of Abraham Lincoln at Edinburgh; of Burns and “Highland Mary,” in Ayr, Scotland; of Chancellor James Kent, in the Congressional library, Washington; and of President Arthur in Madison Square, New York City.

BISSEXT, or Bissextus (Lat. bis, twice; sextus, sixth), the day intercalated by the Julian calendar in the February of every fourth year to make up the six hours by which the solar year was computed to exceed the year of 365 days. The day was inserted after the 24th of February, i.e. the 6th day before the calends (1st) of March; there was consequently, besides the sextus, or sixth before the calends, the bis-sextus or “second sixth,” our 25th of February. In modern usage, with the exception of ecclesiastical calendars, the intercalary day is added for convenience at the end of the month, and years in which February has 29 days are called “bissextile,” or leap-years.

BISTRE, the French name of a brown paint made from the soot of wood, now largely superseded by Indian ink.

BIT (from the verb “to bite,” either in the sense of a piece bitten off, or an act of biting, or a thing that bites or is bitten), generally, a piece of anything; the word is, however, used in various special senses, all derivable from its origin, either literally or metaphorically. The most common of these are (1) its use as the name of various tools, e.g. centre-bit; (2) a horse’s “bit,” or the metal mouth-piece of the bridle; (3) in money, a small sum of money of varying value (e.g. threepenny-bit), especially in the West Indies and southern United States.

BITHUR, a town in the Cawnpore district of the United Provinces of India, 12 m. N.W. of Cawnpore city. Pop. (1901) 7173. It is chiefly notable for its connexion with the mutiny of 1857. The last of the peshwas, Baji Rao, was banished to Bithur, and his adopted son, the Nana Sahib, made the town his head-quarters. It was captured by Havelock on the 19th of July 1857, when the Nana’s palaces were destroyed.

BITHYNIA (Βιθυνία), an ancient district in the N.W. of Asia Minor, adjoining the Propontis, the Thracian Bosporus and the Euxine. According to Strabo it was bounded on the E. by the river Sangarius; but the more commonly received division extended it to the Parthenius, which separated it from Paphlagonia, thus comprising the district inhabited by the Mariandyni. On the W. and S.W. it was separated from Mysia by the river Rhyndacus; and on the S. it adjoined Phrygia Epictetus and Galatia. It is in great part occupied by mountains and forests, but has valleys and districts near the sea-coast of great fertility. The most important mountain range is the (so-called) “Mysian” Olympus (7600 ft.), which towers above Brusa and is clearly visible as far away as Constantinople (70 m.). Its summits are covered with snow for a great part of the year. East of this the range now called Ala-Dagh extends far above 100 m. from the Sangarius to Paphlagonia. Both of these ranges belong to that border of mountains which bounds the great tableland of Asia Minor. The country between them and the coast, covered with forests and traversed by few lines of route, is still imperfectly known. But the broad tract which projects towards the west as far as the shores of the Bosporus, though hilly and covered with forests—the Turkish Aghatch Denizi, or “The Ocean of Trees”—is not traversed by any mountain chain. The west coast is indented by two deep inlets, (1) the northernmost, the Gulf of Ismid (anc. Gulf of Astacus), penetrating between 40 and 50 m. into the interior as far as Ismid (anc. Nicomedia), separated by an isthmus of only about 25 m. from the Black Sea; (2) the Gulf of Mudania or Gemlik (Gulf of Cius), about 25 m. long. At its extremity is situated the small town of Gemlik (anc. Cius) at the mouth of a valley, communicating with the lake of Isnik, on which was situated Nicaea.

The principal rivers are the Sangarius (mod. Sakaria), which traverses the province from south to north; the Rhyndacus, which separated it from Mysia; and the Billaeus (Filiyas), which rises in the Ala-Dagh, about 50 m. from the sea, and after flowing by Boli (anc. Claudiopolis) falls into the Euxine, close to the ruins of the ancient Tium, about 40 m. north-east of Heraclea, having a course of more than 100 m. The Parthenius (mod. Bartan), the boundary of the province towards the east, is a much less considerable stream.

The natural resources of Bithynia are still imperfectly developed. Its vast forests would furnish an almost inexhaustible supply of timber, if rendered accessible by roads. Coal also is known to exist near Eregli (Heraclea). The valleys towards the Black Sea abound in fruit trees of all kinds, while the valley of the Sangarius and the plains near Brusa and Isnik (Nicaea) are fertile and well cultivated. Extensive plantations of mulberry trees supply the silk for which Brusa has long been celebrated, and which is manufactured there on a large scale.

According to ancient authors (Herodotus, Xenophon, Strabo, &c.), the Bithynians were an immigrant Thracian tribe. The existence of a tribe called Thyni in Thrace is well attested, and the two cognate tribes of the Thyni and Bithyni appear to have settled simultaneously in the adjoining parts of Asia, where they expelled or subdued the Mysians, Caucones, and other petty tribes, the Mariandyni alone maintaining themselves in the north-east. Herodotus mentions the Thyni and Bithyni as existing side by side; but ultimately the latter must have become the more important, as they gave their name to the country. They were incorporated by Croesus with the Lydian monarchy, with which they fell under the dominion of Persia (546 B.C.), and were included in the satrapy of Phrygia, which comprised all the countries up to the Hellespont and Bosporus. But even before the conquest by Alexander the Bithynians appear to have asserted their independence, and successfully maintained it under two native princes, Bas and Zipoetes, the last of whom transmitted his power to his son Nicomedes I., the first to assume the title of king. This monarch founded Nicomedia, which soon rose to great prosperity, and during his long reign (278-250 B.C.), as well as those of his successors, Prusias I., 13 Prusias II. and Nicomedes II. (149-91 B.C.), the kingdom of Bithynia held a considerable place among the minor monarchies of Asia. But the last king, Nicomedes III., was unable to maintain himself against Mithradates of Pontus, and, after being restored to his throne by the Roman senate, he bequeathed his kingdom by will to the Romans (74 B.C.). Bithynia now became a Roman province. Its limits were frequently varied, and it was commonly united for administrative purposes with the province of Pontus. This was the state of things in the time of Trajan, when the younger Pliny was appointed governor of the combined provinces (103-105 A.D.), a circumstance to which we are indebted for valuable information concerning the Roman provincial administration. Under the Byzantine empire Bithynia was again divided into two provinces, separated by the Sangarias, to the west of which the name of Bithynia was restricted.

The most important cities were Nicomedia and Nicaea, which disputed with one another the rank of capital. Both of these were founded after Alexander the Great; but at a much earlier period the Greeks had established on the coast the colonies of Cius (afterwards Prusias, mod. Gemlik); Chalcedon, at the entrance of the Bosporus, nearly opposite Constantinople; and Heraclea Pontica, on the Euxine, about 120 m. east of the Bosporus. All these rose to be flourishing places of trade, as also Prusa at the foot of M. Olympus (see Brusa). The only other places of importance at the present day are Ismid (Nicomedia) and Scutari.

BITLIS, or Betlis (Arm. Paghesh), the chief town of a vilayet of the same name in Asiatic Turkey, situated at an altitude of 4700 ft. in the deep, narrow valley of the Bitlis Chai, a tributary of the Tigris. The main part of the town and the bazaars are crowded alongside the stream, while suburbs with scattered houses among orchards and gardens extend up two tributary streams. The houses are massive and well built of a soft volcanic tufa, and with their courtyards and gardens climbing up the hillsides afford a striking picture. At the junction of two streams in the centre of the town is a fine old castle, partly ruined, which, according to local tradition, occupies the site of a fortress built by Alexander the Great. It is apparently an Arab building, as Arabic inscriptions appear on the walls, but as the town stands on the principal highway between the Van plateau and the Mesopotamian plain it must always have been of strategic importance. The bazaars are crowded, covered across with branches in summer, and typical of a Kurdish town. The population numbers 35,000, of whom about 12,000 are Armenians and the remainder are Kurds or of Kurdish descent.

Kurdish beys and sheids have much influence in the town and wild mountain districts adjoining, while the Sasun mountains, the scene of successive Armenian revolutions of late years, are not far off to the west. The town was ruled by a semi-independent Kurdish bey as late as 1836. There are some fine old mosques and medresses (colleges), and the Armenians have a large monastery and churches. There are British, French and Russian consuls in the town, and a branch of the American Mission with schools is established also. The climate is healthy and the thermometer rarely falls below 0° Fahr., but there is a heavy snowfall and the narrow streets are blocked for some five months in the year.

A good road runs southward down the pass, passing after a few miles some large chalybeate and sulphur springs. Roads also lead north to Mush and Erzerum and along the lake to Van. Postal communication is through Erzerum with Trebizond. Tobacco of an inferior quality is largely grown, and the chief industry is the weaving of a coarse red cloth. Manna and gum tragacanth are also collected. Fruit is also plentiful, and there are many vineyards close by.

The Bitlis vilayet comprises a very varied section of Asiatic Turkey, as it includes the Mush plain and the plateau country west of Lake Van, as well as a large extent of wild mountain districts inhabited by turbulent Kurds and Armenians on either side of the central town of Bitlis, also some of the lower country about Sairt along the left bank of the main stream of the Tigris. The mountains have been little explored, but are believed to be rich in minerals, iron, lead, copper, traces of gold and many mineral springs are known to exist.

BITONTO (anc. Butunti), a town and episcopal see of Apulia, Italy, in the province of Bari, 10 m. west by steam tramway from Bari. Pop. (1901) 30,617. It was a place of no importance in classical times. Its medieval walls are still preserved. Its cathedral is one of the finest examples of the Romanesque architecture of Apulia, and has escaped damage from later restorations. The palazzo Sylos-Labini has a fine Renaissance court of 1502.

BITSCH (Fr. Bitche), a town of Germany, in Alsace-Lorraine, on the Horn, at the foot of the northern slope of the Vosges between Hagenau and Saargemund. Pop. (1905) 4000. There are a Roman Catholic and a Protestant church, a classical school and an academy of forestry. The industries include shoe-making and watch-making, and there is some trade in grain and timber. The town of Bitsch, which was formed out of the villages of Rohr and Kaltenhausen in the 17th century, derives its name from the old stronghold (mentioned in 1172 as Bytis Castrum) standing on a rock some 250 ft. above the town. This had long given its name to the countship of Bitsch, which was originally in the possession of the dukes of Lorraine. In 1297 it passed by marriage to Eberhard I. of Zweibrücken, whose line became extinct in 1569, when the countship reverted to Lorraine. It passed with that duchy to France in 1766. After that date the town rapidly increased in population. The citadel, which had been constructed by Vauban on the site of the old castle after the capture of Bitsch by the French in 1624, had been destroyed when it was restored to Lorraine in 1698. This was restored and strengthened in 1740 into a fortress that proved impregnable in all succeeding wars. The attack upon it by the Prussians in 1793 was repulsed; in 1815 they had to be content with blockading it; and in 1870, though it was closely invested by the Germans after the battle of Wörth, it held out until the end of the war. A large part of the fortification is excavated in the red sandstone rock, and rendered bomb-proof; a supply of water is secured to the garrison by a deep well in the interior.

BITTER, KARL THEODORE FRANCIS (1867-  ), American sculptor, was born in Vienna on the 6th of December 1867. After studying art there, in 1889 he removed to the United States, where he became naturalized. In America he gained great popularity as a sculptor, and in 1906-1907 was president of the National Sculpture Society, New York. Among his principal works are: the Astor memorial gates, Trinity church, New York; “Elements Controlled and Uncontrolled,” on the Administration Building at the Chicago Exposition; a large relief, “Triumph of Civilization,” in the waiting-room of the Broad Street station of the Pennsylvania railway in Philadelphia; decorations for the Dewey Naval Arch in New York City; the “Standard Bearers,” at the Pan-American Exposition grounds; a sitting statue and a bust of Dr Pepper, provost of the University of Pennsylvania; and the Villard and Hubbard memorials in the New York chamber of commerce.

BITTERFELD, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Saxony, 26 m. N. from Leipzig by rail, on the river Mulde, and an important junction of railways from Leipzig and Halle to Berlin. Pop. (1900) 11,839. It manufactures drain-pipes, paper-roofing and machinery, and has saw-mills. Several coal-mines are in the vicinity. The town was built by a colony of Flemish immigrants in 1153. It was captured by the landgrave of Meissen in 1476, and belonged thenceforth to Saxony, until it was ceded to Prussia in 1815. Owing to its pleasant situation and accessibility, it has become a favourite residence of business men of Leipzig and Halle.

BITTERLING (Rhodeus amarus), a little carp-like fish of central Europe, belonging to the Cyprinid family. In it we have a remarkable instance of symbiosis. The genital papilla of the female acquires a great development during the breeding season and becomes produced into a tube nearly as long as the 14 fish itself; this acts as an ovipositor by means of which the comparatively few and large eggs (3 millimetres in diameter) are introduced through the gaping valves between the branchiae of pond mussels (Unio and Anodonta), where, after being inseminated, they undergo their development, the fry leaving their host about a month later. The mollusc reciprocates by throwing off its embryos on the parent fish, in the skin of which they remain encysted for some time, the period of reproduction of the fish and the mussel coinciding.

BITTERN, a genus of wading birds, belonging to the family Ardeidae, comprising several species closely allied to the herons, from which they differ chiefly in their shorter neck, the back of which is covered with down, and the front with long feathers, which can be raised at pleasure. They are solitary birds, frequenting countries possessing extensive swamps and marshy grounds, remaining at rest by day, concealed among the reeds and bushes of their haunts, and seeking their food, which consists of fish, reptiles, insects and small quadrupeds, in the twilight. The common bittern (Botaurus stellaris) is nearly as large as the heron, and is widely distributed over the eastern hemisphere. Formerly it was common in Britain, but extensive drainage and persecution have greatly dimished its numbers and it is now only an uncertain visitor. Not a winter passes without its appearing in some numbers, when its uncommon aspect, its large size, and beautifully pencilled plumage cause it to be regarded as a great prize by the lucky gun-bearer to whom it falls a victim. Its value as a delicacy for the table, once so highly esteemed, has long vanished. The old fable of this bird inserting its beak into a reed or plunging it into the ground, and so causing the booming sound with which its name will always be associated, is also exploded, and nowadays indeed so few people in Britain have ever heard its loud and awful voice, which seems to be uttered only in the breeding-season, and is therefore unknown in a country where it no longer breeds, that incredulity as to its booming at all has in some quarters succeeded the old belief in this as in other reputed peculiarities of the species. The bittern in the days of falconry was strictly preserved, and afforded excellent sport. It sits crouching on the ground during the day, with its bill pointing in the air, a position from which it is not easily roused, and even when it takes wing, its flight is neither swift nor long sustained. When wounded it requires to be approached with caution, as it will then attack either man or dog with its long sharp bill and its acute claws. It builds a rude nest among the reeds and flags, out of materials which surround it, and the female lays four or five eggs of a brownish olive. During the breeding season it utters a booming noise, from which it probably derives its generic name, Botaurus, and which has made it in many places an object of superstitious dread. Its plumage for the most part is of a pale buff colour, rayed and speckled with black and reddish brown. The American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus) is somewhat smaller than the European species, and is found throughout the central and southern portions of North America. It also occurs in Britain as an occasional straggler. It is distinguishable by its uniform greyish-brown primaries, which want the tawny bars that characterize B. stellaris. Both species are good eating.

BITTERN (from “bitter”), the mother liquor obtained from sea-water or brines after the separation of the sodium chloride (common salt) by crystallization. It contains various magnesium salts (sulphate, chloride, bromide and iodide) and is employed commercially for the manufacture of Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) and bromine. The same term is applied to a mixture of quassia, iron sulphate, cocculus indicus, liquorice, &c., used in adulterating beer.

BITTERS, the name given to aromatized (generally alcoholic) beverages containing a bitter substance or substances, used as tonics, appetizers or digestives. The bitterness is imparted by such substances as bitter orange rind, gentian, rhubarb, quassia, cascarilla, angostura, quinine and cinchona. Juniper, cinnamon, carraway, camomile, cloves and other flavouring agents are also employed in conjunction with the bitter principles, alcohol and sugar. Some bitters are prepared by simple maceration and subsequent filtration (see Liqueurs), others by the more complicated distillation process. Those prepared by the latter process are the finer commercial articles. Bitters are usually sold under the name of the substance which has been used to give them the predominant flavour, such as orange, angostura or peach bitters, &c. The alcoholic strength of bitters varies, but is generally in the neighbourhood of 40% of alcohol. Some bitters, although possessing tonic properties, may be regarded as beverages pure and simple, notwithstanding the fact that they are seldom consumed in an undiluted state; others again, are obviously medicinal preparations and should be treated as such.

BITUMEN, the name applied by the Romans to the various descriptions of natural hydrocarbons, the word petroleum not being used in classical Latin. In its widest sense it embraces the whole range of these substances, including natural gas, the more or less liquid descriptions of petroleum, and the solid forms of asphalt, albertite, gilsonite or uintahite, elaterite, ozokerite and hatchettite. To distinguish bitumen intermediate in consistency between asphalt and the more liquid kinds of crude petroleum, the term maltha (Latin) is frequently employed. The bitumens of chief commercial importance may be grouped under the three headings of (1) natural gas, (2) petroleum, and (3) asphalt, and will be found fully described under these titles. In the scriptures there are numerous references to bitumen, among which the following may be quoted:—In Genesis ix. 3, we are told that in the building of the tower of Babel “slime had they for mortar,” and in Genesis xiv. 10, that the vale of Siddim “was full of slime-pits,” the word slime in the latter quotation from our version appearing as bitumen in the Vulgate. Herodotus alludes to the use of the bitumen brought down by the Is, a tributary of the Euphrates, as mortar in building the walls of Babylon. Diodorus, Curtius, Josephus, Bochart and others make similar mention of this use of bitumen, and Vitruvius tells us that it was employed in admixture with clay.

In its various forms, bitumen is one of the most widely distributed of substances. It occurs, though sometimes only in small quantity, in almost every part of the globe, and throughout the whole range of geological strata, from the Laurentian rocks to the most recent members of the Quaternary period. Although the gaseous and liquid forms of bitumen may be regarded as having been formed in the strata in which they are found or as having been received into such strata shortly after formation, the semi-solid and solid varieties may be considered to have been produced by the oxidation and evaporation of 15 liquid petroleum escaping from underlying or better preserved deposits into other strata, or into fissures where atmospheric action and loss of the more volatile constituents can take place. It should, however, be stated that there is some difference of opinion as to the precise manner of production of some of the solid forms of bitumen, and especially of ozokerite.

BITURIGES, a Celtic people, according to Livy (v. 34) the most powerful in Gaul in the time of Tarquinius Priscus. At some period unknown they split up into two branches—Bituriges Cubi and Bituriges Vivisci. The name is supposed to mean either “rulers of the world” or “perpetual kings.”

The Bituriges Cubi, called simply Bituriges by Caesar, in whose time they acknowledged the supremacy of the Aedui, inhabited the modern diocese of Bourges, including the departments of Cher and Indre, and partly that of Allier. Their chief towns were Avaricum (Bourges), Argentomagus (Argenton-sur-Creuse), Neriomagus (Néris-les-Bains), Noviodunum (perhaps Villate). At the time of the rebellion of Vercingetoix (52 B.C.), Avaricum, after a desperate resistance, was taken by assault, and the inhabitants put to the sword. In the following year, the Bituriges submitted to Caesar, and under Augustus they were incorporated (in 28 B.C.) in Aquitania. Pliny (Nat. Hist. iv. 109) speaks of them as liberi, which points to their enjoying a certain amount of independence under Roman government. The district contained a number of iron works, and Caesar says they were skilled in driving galleries and mining operations.

The Biturgies Vivisci occupied the strip of land between the sea and the left bank of the Garonne, comprising the greater part of the modern department of Gironde. Their capital was Burdigala (Bordeaux), even then a place of considerable importance and a wine-growing centre. Like the Cubi, they also are called liberi by Pliny.

BITZIUS, ALBRECHT (1797-1854), Swiss novelist, best known by his pet name of “Jeremias Gotthelf,” was born on the 4th of October 1797 at Morat, where his father was pastor. In 1804 the home was moved to Utzenstorf, a village in the Bernese Emmenthal. Here young Bitzius grew up, receiving his early education and consorting with the boys of the village, as well as helping his father to cultivate his glebe. In 1812 he went to complete his education at Bern, and in 1820 was received as a pastor. In 1821 he visited the university of Göttingen, but returned home in 1822 to act as his father’s assistant. On his father’s death (1824) he went in the same capacity to Herzogenbuchsee, and later to Bern (1829). Early in 1831 he went as assistant to the aged pastor of the village of Lützelflüh, in the Upper Emmenthal (between Langnau and Burgdorf), being soon elected his successor (1832) and marrying one of his granddaughters (1833). He spent the rest of his life there, dying on the 22nd of October 1854, and leaving three children (the son was a pastor, the two daughters married pastors). His first work, the Bauernspiegel, appeared in 1837. It purported to be the life of Jeremias Gotthelf, narrated by himself, and this name was later adopted by the author as his pen name. It is a living picture of Bernese (or, strictly speaking, Emmenthal) village life, true to nature, and not attempting to gloss over its defects and failings. It is written (like the rest of his works) in the Bernese dialect of the Emmenthal, though it must be remembered that Bitzius was not (like Auerbach) a peasant by birth, but belonged to the educated classes, so that he reproduces what he had seen and learnt, and not what he had himself personally experienced. The book was a great success, as it was a picture of real life, and not of fancifully beribboned 18th-century villagers. Among his later tales are the Leiden und Freuden eines Schulmeisters (1838-1839), Uli der Knecht (1841), with its continuation, Uli der Pachter (1849), Anne Babi Jowager (1843-1844), Käthi die Grossmutter (1847), Die Käserei in der Vehfreude (1850), and the Erlebnisse eines Schuldenbauers (1854). He published also several volumes of shorter tales. One slight drawback to some of his writings is the echo of local political controversies, for Bitzius was a Whig and strongly opposed to the Radical party in the canton, which carried the day in 1846.

BIVOUAC (a French word generally said to have been introduced during the Thirty Years’ War, perhaps derived from Beiwacht, extra guard), originally, a night-watch by a whole army under arms to prevent surprise. In modern military parlance the word is used to mean a temporary encampment in the open field without tents, as opposed to “billets” or “cantonment” on the one hand and “camp” on the other. The use of bivouacs permits an army to remain closely concentrated for all emergencies, and avoids the necessity for numerous wagons carrying tents. Constant bivouacs, however, are trying to the health of men and horses, and this method of quartering is never employed except when the military situation demands concentration and readiness. Thus the outposts would often have to bivouac while the main body of the army lay in billets.

BIWA, a lake in the province of Omi, Japan. It measures 36 m. in length by 12 m. in extreme breadth, has an area of 180 sq. m., is about 330 ft. above sea-level, and has an extreme depth of some 300 ft. There are a few small islands in the lake, the principal being Chikubu-shima at the northern end.

Tradition alleges that Lake Biwa and the mountain of Fuji were produced simultaneously by an earthquake in 286 B.C. On the west of the lake the mountains Hiei-zan and Hira-yama slope down almost to its margin, and on the east a wide plain extends towards the boundaries of the province of Mino. It is drained by a river flowing out of its southern end, and taking its course into the sea at Osaka. This river bears in succession the names of Seta-gawa, Uji-gawa and Yodo-gawa. The lake abounds with fish, and the beauty of its scenery is remarkable. Small steamboats ply constantly to the points of chief interest, and around its shores are to be viewed the Omi-no-hakkei, or “eight landscapes of Omi”; namely, the lake silvering under an autumn moon as one looks down from Ishi-yama; the snow at eve on Hira-yama; the glow of sunset at Seta; the groves and classic temple of Mii-dera as the evening bell sounds; boats sailing home from Yabase; cloudless peaks at Awazu; rain at nightfall over Karasaki; and wild geese sweeping down to Katata. The lake is connected with Kyoto by a canal constructed in 1890, and is thus brought into water communication with Osaka.

BIXIO, NINO (1821-1873), Italian soldier, was born on the 2nd of October 1821. While still a boy he was compelled by his parents to embrace a maritime career. After numerous adventures he returned to Italy in 1846, joined the Giovine Italia, and, on 4th November 1847, made himself conspicuous at Genoa by seizing the bridle of Charles Albert’s horse and crying, “Pass the Ticino, Sire, and we are all with you.” He fought through the campaign of 1848, became captain under Garibaldi at Rome in 1849, taking prisoners an entire French battalion, and gaining the gold medal for military valour. In 1859 he commanded a Garibaldian battalion, and gained the military cross of Savoy. Joining the Marsala expedition in 1860, he turned the day in favour of Garibaldi at Calatafimi, was wounded at Palermo, but recovered in time to besiege Reggio in Calabria (21st of August 1860), and, though again wounded, took part in the battle of Volturno, where his leg was broken. Elected deputy in 1861, he endeavoured to reconcile Cavour and Garibaldi. In 1866, at the head of the seventh division, he covered the Italian retreat from Custozza, ignoring the Austrian summons to surrender. Created senator in February 1870, he was in the following September given command of a division during the movement against Rome, took Cività Vecchia, and participated in the general attack upon Rome (20th September 1870). He died of cholera at Achin Bay in Sumatra en route for Batavia, whither he 16 had gone in command of a commercial expedition (16th December 1873).

BIZERTA (properly pronounced Ben Zert; Fr. Bizerte), a seaport of Tunisia, in 37° 17′ N., 9° 50′ E. Pop. about 12,000. Next to Toulon, Bizerta is the most important naval port of France in the Mediterranean. It occupies a commanding strategical position in the narrowest part of the sea, being 714 m. E. of Gibraltar, 1168 m. W.N.W. of Port Said, 240 m. N.W. of Malta, and 420 m. S. by E. of Toulon. It is 60 m. by rail N.N.W. of Tunis. The town is built on the shores of the Mediterranean at the point where the Lake of Bizerta enters the sea through a natural channel, the mouth of which has been canalized. The modern town lies almost entirely on the north side of the canal. A little farther north are the ancient citadel, the walled “Arab” town and the old harbour (disused). The present outer harbour covers about 300 acres and is formed by two converging jetties and a breakwater. The north jetty is 4000 ft. long, the east jetty 3300 ft., and the breakwater—which protects the port from the prevalent north-east winds—2300 ft. long. The entrance to the canal is in the centre of the outer harbour. The canal is 2600 ft. long and 787 ft. wide on the surface. Its banks are lined with quays, and ships drawing 26 ft. of water can moor alongside. At the end of the canal is a large commercial harbour, beyond which the channel opens into the lake—in reality an arm of the sea—roughly circular in form and covering about 50 sq. m., two-thirds of its waters having a depth of 30 to 40 ft. The lake, which merchant vessels are not allowed to enter, contains the naval port and arsenal. There is a torpedo and submarine boat station on the north side of the channel at the entrance to the lake, but the principal naval works are at Sidi Abdallah at the south-west corner of the lake and 10 m. from the open sea. Here is an enclosed basin covering 123 acres with ample quayage, dry docks and everything necessary to the accommodation, repair, revictualling and coaling of a numerous fleet. Barracks, hospitals and waterworks have been built, the military town, called Ferryville, being self-contained.

Fortifications have been built for the protection of the port. They comprise (a) the older works surrounding the town; (b) a group of coast batteries on the high ground of Cape Bizerta or Guardia, 4 m. north-north-west of the town; these are grouped round a powerful fort called Jebel Kebir, and have a command of 300 to 800 ft. above sea-level; (c) another group of batteries on the narrow ground between the sea and the lake to the east of the town; the highest of these is the Jebel Tuila battery 265 ft. above sea-level.

The Lake of Bizerta, called Tinja by the Arabs, abounds in excellent fish, especially mullets, the dried roe of which, called botargo, is largely exported, and the fishing industry employs a large proportion of the inhabitants. The western shore of the lake is low, and in many places is covered with olive trees to the water’s edge. The south-eastern shores are hilly and wooded, and behind them rises a range of picturesque hills. A narrow and shallow channel leads from the western side of the lake into another sheet of water, the Lake of Ishkul, so called from Jebel Ishkul, a hill on its southern bank 1740 ft. high. The Lake of Ishkul is nearly as large as the first lake, but is very shallow. Its waters are generally sweet.

Bizerta occupies the site of the ancient Tyrian colony, Hippo Zarytus or Diarrhytus, the harbour of which, by means of a spacious pier, protecting it from the north-east wind, was rendered one of the safest and finest on this coast. The town became a Roman colony, and was conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century. The place thereafter was subject either to the rulers of Tunis or of Constantine, but the citizens were noted for their frequent revolts. They threw in their lot (c. 1530) with the pirate Khair-ed-Din, and subsequently received a Turkish garrison. Bizerta was captured by the Spaniards in 1535, but not long afterwards came under the Tunisian government. Centuries of neglect followed, and the ancient port was almost choked up, though the value of the fisheries saved the town from utter decay. Its strategical importance was one of the causes which led to the occupation of Tunisia by the French in 1881. In 1890 a concession for a new canal and harbour was granted to a company, and five years later the new port was formally opened. Since then the canal has been widened and deepened, and the naval port at Sidi Abdallah created.

BIZET [Alexandre César Léopold] GEORGES (1838-1875), French musical composer, was born at Bougival, near Paris, on the 25th of October 1838, the son of a singing-master. He displayed musical ability at an early age, and was sent to the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Halévy and speedily distinguished himself, carrying off prizes for organ and fugue, and finally in 1857, after an ineffectual attempt in the previous year, the Grand Prix de Rome for a cantata called Cloris et Clotilde. A success of a different kind also befell him at this time. Offenbach, then manager of the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, had organized a competition for an operetta, in which young Bizet was awarded the first prize in conjunction with Charles Lecocq, each of them writing an operetta called Docteur Miracle. After the three years spent in Rome, an obligation imposed by the French government on the winners of the first prize at the Conservatoire, Bizet returned to Paris, where he achieved a reputation as a pianist and accompanist. On the 23rd of September 1863 his first opera, Les Pêcheurs de perles, was brought out at the Théâtre Lyrique, but owing possibly to the somewhat uninteresting nature of the story, the opera did not enjoy a very long run. The qualities displayed by the composer, however, were amply recognized, although the music was stated, by some critics, to exhibit traces of Wagnerian influence. Wagnerism at that period was a sort of spectre that haunted the imagination of many leading members of the musical press. It sufficed for a work to be at all out of the common for the epithet “Wagnerian” to be applied to it. The term, it may be said, was intended to be condemnatory, and it was applied with little understanding as to its real meaning. The score of the Pêcheurs de perles contains several charming numbers; its dreamy melodies are well adapted to fit a story laid in Eastern climes, and the music reveals a decided dramatic temperament. Some of its dances are now usually introduced into the fourth act of Carmen.

On the 3rd of June 1865 Bizet married a daughter of his old master, Halévy. His second opera, La Jolie Fitte de Perth, produced at the Théâtre Lyrique on 26th December 1867, was scarcely a step in advance. The libretto was founded on Sir Walter Scott’s novel, but the opera lacks unity of style, and its pages are marred by concessions to the vocalist. One number has survived, the characteristic Bohemian dance which has been interpolated into the fourth act of Carmen. In his third opera Bizet returned to an oriental subject. Djamileh, a one-act opera given at the Opéra Comique on the 22nd of May 1872, is certainly one of his most individual efforts. Again were accusations of Wagnerism hurled at the composer’s head, and Djamileh did not achieve the success it undoubtedly deserved. The composer was more fortunate with the incidental music he wrote to Alphonse Daudet’s drama, L’Arlésienne, produced in October 1872. Different numbers from this, arranged in the form of suites, have often been heard in the concert-room. Rarely have poetry and imagination been so well allied as in these exquisite pages, which seem to reflect the sunny skies of Provence.

Bizet’s masterpiece, Carmen, was brought out at the Opéra Comique on the 3rd of March 1875. It was based on a version by Meilhac and Halévy of a study by Prosper Mérimée—in which the dramatic element was obscured by much descriptive writing. The detection of the drama underlying this psychological narrative was in itself a brilliant discovery, and in reconstructing the story in dramatic form the authors produced one of the most famous libretti in the whole range of opera. Still more striking than the libretto was the music composed by Bizet, in which the peculiar use of the flute and of the lowest notes of the harp deserves particular attention.

On the 3rd of June, three months after the production of Carmen in Paris, the genial composer expired after a few hours’ illness from a heart affection. Before dying he had the satisfaction 17 of knowing that Carmen had been accepted for production at Vienna. After the Austrian capital came Brussels, Berlin and, in 1878, London, when Carmen was brought out at Her Majesty’s theatre with immense success. The influence exercised by Bizet on dramatic music has been very great, and may be discerned in the realistic works of the young Italian school, as well as in those of his own countrymen.

BJÖRNEBORG (Finnish, Pori), a district town of Finland, province of Åbo-Björneborg, on the E. coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, at the mouth of the Kumo. Lat. 51° 8′ N., long. 46° 0′ E. Pop. (1904) 16,053, mostly Swedes. Large vessels cannot enter its roadstead, and stop at Räfsö. The town has shipbuilding wharves, machine works, and several tanneries and brick-works, and has a total trade of over 16,000,000 marks, the chief export being timber.

BJÖRNSON, BJÖRNSTJERNE (1832-1910), Norwegian poet, novelist and dramatist, was born on the 8th of December 1832 at the farmstead of Björngen, in Kvikne, in Österdal, Norway. In 1837 his father, who had been pastor of Kvikne, was transferred to the parish of Noesset, in Romsdal; in this romantic district the childhood of Björnson was spent. After some teaching at the neighbouring town of Molde, he was sent at the age of seventeen to a well-known school in Christiania to study for the university; his instinct for poetry was already awakened, and indeed he had written verses from his eleventh year. He matriculated at the university of Christiania in 1852, and soon began to work as a journalist, especially as a dramatic critic. In 1857 appeared Synnöve Solbakken, the first of Björnson’s peasant-novels; in 1858 this was followed by Arne, in 1860 by A Happy Boy, and in 1868 by The Fisher Maiden. These are the most important specimens of his bonde-fortaellinger or peasant-tales—a section of his literary work which has made a profound impression in his own country, and has made him popular throughout the world. Two of the tales, Arne and Synnöve Solbakken, offer perhaps finer examples of the pure peasant-story than are to be found elsewhere in literature.

Björnson was anxious “to create a new saga in the light of the peasant,” as he put it, and he thought this should be done, not merely in prose fiction, but in national dramas or folke-stykker. The earliest of these was a one-act piece the scene of which is laid in the 12th century, Between the Battles, was written in 1855, but not produced until 1857. He was especially influenced at this time by the study of Baggesen and Ochlenschläger, during a visit to Copenhagen 1856-1857. Between the Battles was followed by Lame Hulda in 1858, and King Sverre in 1861. All these efforts, however, were far excelled by the splendid trilogy of Sigurd the Bastard, which Björnson issued in 1862. This raised him to the front rank among the younger poets of Europe. His Sigurd the Crusader should be added to the category of these heroic plays, although it was not printed until 1872.

At the close of 1857 Björnson had been appointed director of the theatre at Bergen, a post which he held, with much journalistic work, for two years, when he returned to the capital. From 1860 to 1863 he travelled widely throughout Europe. Early in 1865 he undertook the management of the Christiania theatre, and brought out his popular comedy of The Newly Married and his romantic tragedy of Mary Stuart in Scotland. Although Björnson has introduced into his novels and plays songs of extraordinary beauty, he was never a very copious writer of verse; in 1870 he published his Poems and Songs and the epic cycle called Arnljot Gelline; the latter volume contains the magnificent ode called “Bergliot,” Björnson’s finest contribution to lyrical poetry. Between 1864 and 1874, in the very prime of life, Björnson displayed a slackening of the intellectual forces very remarkable in a man of his energy; he was indeed during these years mainly occupied with politics, and with his business as a theatrical manager. This was the period of Björnson’s most fiery propaganda as a radical agitator. In 1871 he began to supplement his journalistic work in this direction by delivering lectures over the length and breadth of the northern countries. He possessed to a surprising degree the arts of the orator, combined with a magnificent physical prestige. From 1873 to 1876 Björnson was absent from Norway, and in the peace of voluntary exile he recovered his imaginative powers. His new departure as a dramatic author began with A Bankruptcy and The Editor in 1874, social dramas of an extremely modern and realistic cast.

The poet now settled on his estate of Aulestad in Gausdal. In 1877 he published another novel, Magnhild—an imperfect production, in which his ideas on social questions were seen to be in a state of fermentation, and gave expression to his republican sentiments in the polemical play called The King, to a later edition of which he prefixed an essay on “Intellectual Freedom,” in further explanation of his position. Captain Mansana, an episode of the war of Italian independence, belongs to 1878. Extremely anxious to obtain a full success on the stage, Björnson concentrated his powers on a drama of social life, Leonardo (1879), which raised a violent controversy. A satirical play, The New System, was produced a few weeks later. Although these plays of Björnson’s second period were greatly discussed, none of them (except A Bankruptcy) pleased on the boards. When once more he produced a social drama, A Gauntlet, in 1883, he was unable to persuade any manager to stage it, except in a modified form, though this play gives the full measure of his power as a dramatist. In the autumn of the same year, Björnson published a mystical or symbolic drama Beyond our Powers, dealing with the abnormal features of religious excitement with extraordinary force; this was not acted until 1899, when it achieved a great success.

Meanwhile, Björnson’s political attitude had brought upon him a charge of high treason, and he took refuge for a time in Germany, returning to Norway in 1882. Convinced that the theatre was practically closed to him, he turned back to the novel, and published in 1884, Flags are Flying in Town and Port, embodying his theories on heredity and education. In 1889 he printed another long and still more remarkable novel, In God’s Way, which is chiefly concerned with the same problems. The same year saw the publication of a comedy, Geography and Love, which continues to be played with success. A number of short stories, of a more or less didactic character, dealing with startling points of emotional experience, were collected in 1894; among them those which produced the greatest sensation were Dust, Mother’s Hands, and Absalom’s Hair. Later plays were a political tragedy called Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg (1898), a second part of Beyond our Powers (1895), Laboremus (1901), At Storhove (1902), and Daglannet (1904). In 1899, at the opening of the National theatre, Björnson received an ovation, and his saga-drama of Sigurd the Crusader was performed.

A subject which interested him greatly, and on which he occupied his indefatigable pen, was the question of the bonde-maal, the adopting of a national language for Norway distinct from the dansk-norsk (Dano-Norwegian), in which her literature has hitherto been written. Björnson’s strong and sometimes rather narrow patriotism did not blind him to the fatal folly of such a proposal, and his lectures and pamphlets against the maal-straev in its extreme form did more than anything else to save the language in this dangerous moment. Björnson was one of the original members of the Nobel committee, and was re-elected in 1900. In 1903 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Björnson had done as much as any other man to rouse Norwegian national feeling, but in 1903, on the verge of the rupture between Norway and Sweden, he preached conciliation and moderation to the Norwegians. He was an eloquent advocate of Pan-Germanism, and, writing to the Figaro in 1905, he outlined a Pan-Germanic alliance of northern Europe and North America. He died on the 26th of April 1910.

BLACHFORD, FREDERIC ROGERS, Baron (1811-1889), British civil servant, eldest son of Sir Frederick Leman Rogers, 7th Bart. (whom he succeeded in the baronetcy in 1851), was 18 born in London on the 31st of January 1811. He was educated at Eton and Oriel college, Oxford, where he had a brilliant career, winning the Craven University scholarship, and taking a double first-class in classics and mathematics. He became a fellow of Oriel (1833), and won the Vinerian scholarship (1834), and fellowship (1840). He was called to the bar in 1837, but never practised. At school and at Oxford he was a contemporary of W.E. Gladstone, and at Oxford he began a lifelong friendship with J.H. Newman and R.W. Church; his classical and literary tastes, and his combination of liberalism in politics with High Church views in religion, together with his good social position and interesting character, made him an admired member of their circles. For two or three years (1841-1844) he wrote for The Times, and he helped to found The Guardian in 1846; he also did a good deal to assist the Tractarian movement. But he eventually settled down to the life of a government official. He began in 1844 as registrar of joint-stock companies, and in 1846 became commissioner of lands and emigration. Between 1857 and 1859 he was engaged in government missions abroad, connected with colonial questions, and in 1860 he was appointed permanent under-secretary of state for the colonies. Sir Frederic Rogers was the guiding spirit of the colonial office under six successive secretaries of state, and on his retirement in 1871 was raised to the peerage as Baron Blachford of Wisdome, a title taken from his place in Devonshire. He died on the 21st of November 1889.

BLACK, ADAM (1784-1874), Scottish publisher, founder of the firm of A. & C. Black, the son of a builder, was born in Edinburgh on the 20th of February 1784. After serving his apprenticeship to the bookselling trade in Edinburgh and London, he began business for himself in Edinburgh in 1808. By 1826 he was recognized as one of the principal booksellers in the city; and a few years later he was joined in business by his nephew Charles. The two most important events connected with the history of the firm were the publication of the 7th, 8th and 9th editions of the Encyclopaedia Brittannica, and the purchase of the stock and copyright of the Waverley Novels. The copyright of the Encyclopaedia passed into the hands of Adam Black and a few friends in 1827. In 1851 the firm bought the copyright of the Waverley Novels for £27,000; and in 1861 they became the proprietors of De Quincey’s works. Adam Black was twice lord provost of Edinburgh, and represented the city in parliament from 1856 to 1865. He retired from business in 1865, and died on the 24th of January 1874. He was succeeded by his sons, who removed their business in 1895 to London. There is a bronze statue of Adam Black in East Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh.

BLACK, JEREMIAH SULLIVAN (1810-1883), American lawyer and statesman, was born in Stony Creek township, Somerset county, Pennsylvania, on the 10th of January 1810. He was largely self-educated, and before he was of age was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. He gradually became one of the leading American lawyers, and in 1851-1857 was a member of the supreme court of Pennsylvania (chief-justice 1851-1854). In 1857 he entered President Buchanan’s cabinet as attorney-general of the United States. In this capacity he successfully contested the validity of the “California land claims”—claims to about 19,000 sq. m. of land, fraudulently alleged to have been granted to land-grabbers and others by the Mexican government prior to the close of the Mexican War. From the 17th of December 1860 to the 4th of March 1861 he was secretary of state. Perhaps the most influential of President Buchanan’s official advisers, he denied the constitutionality of secession, and urged that Fort Sumter be properly reinforced and defended. “For ... the vigorous assertion at last in word and in deed that the United States is a nation,” says James Ford Rhodes, “for pointing out the way in which the authority of the Federal government might be exercised without infringing on the rights of the states, the gratitude of the American people is due to Jeremiah S. Black.” He became reporter to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1861, but after publishing the reports for the years 1861 and 1862 he resigned, and devoted himself almost exclusively to his private practice, appearing in such important cases before the Supreme Court as the one known as Ex-Parte Milligan, in which he ably defended the right of trial by jury, the McCardle case and the United States v. Blyew et al. After the Civil War he vigorously opposed the Congressional plan of reconstructing the late Confederate states, and himself drafted the message of President Johnson, vetoing the Reconstruction Act of the 2nd of March 1867. Black was also for a short time counsel for President Andrew Johnson, in his trial on the article of impeachment, before the United States Senate, and for William W. Belknap (1829-1890), secretary of war from 1869 to 1876, who in 1876 was impeached on a charge of corruption; and with others he represented Samuel J. Tilden during the contest for the presidency between Tilden and Hayes (see Electoral Commission). He died at Brockie, Pennsylvania, on the 19th of August 1883.

BLACK, JOSEPH (1728-1799), Scottish chemist and physicist, was born in 1728 at Bordeaux, where his father—a native of Belfast but of Scottish descent—was engaged in the wine trade. At the age of twelve he was sent to a grammar school in Belfast, whence he removed in 1746 to study medicine in Glasgow. There he had William Cullen for his instructor in chemistry, and the relation between the two soon became that of professor and assistant rather than of master and pupil. The action of lithontriptic medicines, especially lime-water, was one of the questions of the day, and through his investigations of this subject Black was led to the chemical discoveries associated with his name. The causticity of alkaline bodies was explained at that time as depending on the presence in them of the principle of fire, “phlogiston”; quicklime, for instance, was chalk which had taken up phlogiston, and when mild alkalis such as sodium or potassium carbonate were causticized by its aid, the phlogiston was supposed to pass from it to them. Black showed that on the contrary causticization meant the loss of something, as proved by loss of weight; and this something he found to be an “air,” which, because it was fixed in the substance before it was causticized, he spoke of as “fixed air.” Taking magnesia alba, which he distinguished from limestone with which it had previously been confused, he showed that on being heated it lost weight owing to the escape of this fixed air (named carbonic acid by Lavoisier in 1781), and that the weight was regained when the calcined product was made to reabsorb the fixed air with which it had parted. These investigations, by which Black not only gave a great impetus to the chemistry of gases by clearly indicating the existence of a gas distinct from common air, but also anticipated Lavoisier and modern chemistry by his appeal to the balance, were described in the thesis De humore acido a cibis orto, et magnesia alba, which he presented for his doctor’s degree in 1754; and a fuller account of them was read before the Medical Society of Edinburgh in June 1753, and published in the following year as Experiments upon magnesia, quicklime and some other alkaline substances.

It is curious that Black left to others the detailed study of this “fixed air” he had discovered. Probably the explanation is pressure of other work. In 1756 he succeeded Cullen as lecturer in chemistry at Glasgow, and was also appointed professor of anatomy, though that post he was glad to exchange for the chair of medicine. The preparation of lectures thus took up much of his time, and he was also gaining an extensive practice as a physician. Moreover, his attention was engaged on studies which ultimately led to his doctrine of latent heat. He noticed that when ice melts it takes up a quantity of heat without undergoing any change of temperature, and he argued that this heat, which as was usual in his time he looked upon as a subtle fluid, must have combined with the particles of ice and thus become latent in its substance. This hypothesis he verified quantitatively 19 by experiments, performed at the end of 1761. In 1764, with the aid of his assistant, William Irvine (1743-1787), he further measured the latent heat of steam, though not very accurately. This doctrine of latent heat he taught in his lectures from 1761 onwards, and in April 1762 he described his work to a literary society in Glasgow. But he never published any detailed account of it, so that others, such as J.A. Deluc, were able to claim the credit of his results. In the course of his inquiries he also noticed that different bodies in equal masses require different amounts of heat to raise them to the same temperature, and so founded the doctrine of specific heats; he also showed that equal additions or abstractions of heat produced equal variations of bulk in the liquid of his thermometers. In 1766 he succeeded Cullen in the chair of chemistry in Edinburgh, where he devoted practically all his time to the preparation of his lectures. Never very robust, his health gradually became weaker and ultimately he was reduced to the condition of a valetudinarian. In 1795 he received the aid of a coadjutor in his professorship, and two years later he lectured for the last time. He died in Edinburgh on the 6th of December 1799 (not on the 26th of November as stated in Robison’s life).

As a scientific investigator, Black was conspicuous for the carefulness of his work and his caution in drawing conclusions. Holding that chemistry had not attained the rank of a science—his lectures dealt with the “effects of heat and mixture”—he had an almost morbid horror of hasty generalization or of anything that had the pretensions of a fully fledged system. This mental attitude, combined with a certain lack of initiative and the weakness of his health, probably prevented him from doing full justice to his splendid powers of experimental research. Apart from the work already mentioned he published only two papers during his life-time—“The supposed effect of boiling on water, in disposing it to freeze more readily” (Phil. Trans., 1775), and “An analysis of the waters of the hot springs in Iceland” (Trans. Roy. Soc. Ed., 1794).

BLACK, WILLIAM (1841-1898), British novelist, was born at Glasgow on the 9th of November 1841. His early ambition was to be a painter, but he made no way, and soon had recourse to journalism for a living. He was at first employed in newspaper offices in Glasgow, but obtained a post on the Morning Star in London, and at once proved himself a descriptive writer of exceptional vivacity. During the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866 he represented the Morning Star at the front, and was taken prisoner. This paper shortly afterwards failed, and Black joined the editorial staff of the Daily News. He also edited the Examiner, at a time when that periodical was already moribund. After his first success in fiction, he gave up journalism, and devoted himself entirely to the production of novels. For nearly thirty years he was successful in retaining the popular favour. He died at Brighton on the 10th of December 1898, without having experienced any of that reaction of the public taste which so often follows upon conspicuous successes in fiction. Black’s first novel, James Merle, published in 1864, was a complete failure; his second, Love or Marraige (1868), attracted but very slight attention. In Silk Attire (1869) and Kilmeny (1870) marked a great advance on his first work, but in 1871 A Daughter of Heth suddenly raised him to the height of popularity, and he followed up this success by a string of favourites. Among the best of his books are The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton (1872); A Princess of Thule (1874); Madcap Violet (1876); Macleod of Dare (1878); White Wings (1880); Sunrise (1880); Shandon Bells (1883); Judith Shakespeare (1884); White Heather (1885); Donald Ross of Heimra (1891); Highland Cousins (1894); and Wild Eelin (1898). Black was a thoroughgoing sportsman, particularly fond of fishing and yachting, and his best stories are those which are laid amid the breezy mountains of his native land, or upon the deck of a yacht at sea off its wild coast. His descriptions of such scenery are simple and picturesque. He was a word-painter rather than a student of human nature. His women are stronger than his men, and among them are many wayward and lovable creatures; but subtlety of intuition plays no part in his characterization. Black also contributed a life of Oliver Goldsmith to the English Men of Letters series.

BLACK APE, a sooty, black, short-tailed, and long-faced representative of the macaques, inhabiting the island of Celebes, and generally regarded as forming a genus by itself, under the name of Cynopithecus niger, but sometimes relegated to the rank of a subgenus of Macacus. The nostrils open obliquely at some distance from the end of the snout, and the head carries a crest of long hair. There are several local races, one of which was long regarded as a separate species under the name of the Moor macaque, Macacus maurus. (See Primates.)

BLACKBALL, a token used for voting by ballot against the election of a candidate for membership of a club or other association. Formerly white and black balls about the size of pigeons’ eggs were used respectively to represent votes for and against a candidate for such election; and although this method is now generally obsolete, the term “blackball” survives both as noun and verb. The rules of most clubs provide that a stated proportion of “blackballs” shall exclude candidates proposed for election, and the candidates so excluded are said to have been “blackballed”; but the ballot (q.v.) is now usually conducted by a method in which the favourable and adverse votes are not distinguished by different coloured balls at all. Either voting papers are employed, or balls—of which the colour has no significance—are cast into different compartments of a ballot-box according as they are favourable or adverse to the candidate.

BLACKBERRY, or Bramble, known botanically as Rubus fruticosus (natural order Rosaceac), a native of the north temperate region of the Old World, and abundant in the British Isles as a copse and hedge-plant. It is characterized by its prickly stem, leaves with usually three or five ovate, coarsely toothed stalked leaflets, many of which persist through the winter, white or pink flowers in terminal clusters, and black or red-purple fruits, each consisting of numerous succulent drupels crowded on a dry conical receptacle. It is a most variable plant, exhibiting many more or less distinct forms which are regarded by different authorities as sub-species or species. In America several forms of the native blackberry, Rubus nigrobaccus (formerly known as R. villosus), are widely cultivated; it is described as one of the most important and profitable of bush-fruits.

BLACKBIRD (Turdus merula), the name commonly given to a well-known British bird of the Turdidae family, for which the ancient name was ousel (q.v.), Anglo-Saxon ósle, equivalent of the German Amsel, a form of the word found in several old English books. The plumage of the male is of a uniform black colour, that of the female various shades of brown, while the bill of the male, especially during the breeding season, is of a bright gamboge yellow. The blackbird is of a shy and restless disposition, courting concealment, and rarely seen in flocks, or otherwise than singly or in pairs, and taking flight when startled with a sharp shrill cry. It builds its nest in March, or early in April, in thick bushes or in ivy-clad trees, and usually rears at least two broods each season. The nest is a neat structure of coarse grass and moss, mixed with earth, and plastered internally with mud, and here the female lays from four to six eggs of a blue colour speckled with brown. The blackbird feeds chiefly on fruits, worms, the larvae of insects and snails, extracting the last from their shells by dexterously chipping them on stones; and though it is generally regarded as an enemy of the garden, it is probable that the amount of damage by it to the fruit is largely compensated for by its undoubted services as a vermin-killer. The notes of the blackbird are rich and full, but monotonous as compared with those of the song-thrush. Like many other singing birds it is, in the wild state, a 20 mocking-bird, having been heard to imitate the song of the nightingale, the crowing of a cock, and even the cackling of a hen. In confinement it can be taught to whistle a variety of tunes, and even to imitate the human voice.

The blackbird is found in every country of Europe, even breeding—although rarely—beyond the arctic circle, and in eastern Asia as well as in North Africa and the Atlantic islands. In most parts of its range it is migratory, and in Britain every autumn its numbers receive considerable accession from passing visitors. Allied species inhabit most parts of the world, excepting Africa south of the Sahara, New Zealand and Australia proper, and North America. In some of these the legs as well as the bill are yellow or orange; and in a few both sexes are glossy black. The ring-ousel, Turdus torquatus, has a dark bill and conspicuous white gorget, whence its name. It is rarer and more local than the common blackbird, and occurs in England only as a temporary spring and autumn visitor.

BLACK BUCK (Antilope cervicapra), the Indian Antelope, the sole species of its genus. This antelope, widely distributed in India, with the exception of Ceylon and the region east of the Bay of Bengal, stands about 32 in. high at the shoulder; the general hue is brown deepening with age to black; chest, belly and inner sides of limbs pure white, as are the muzzle and chin, and an area round the eyes. The horns are long, ringed, and form spirals with from three to five turns. The doe is smaller in size, yellowish-fawn above, and this hue obtains also in young males. These antelopes frequent grassy districts and are usually found in herds. Coursing black-buck with the cheeta (q.v.) is a favourite Indian sport.

BLACKBURN, COLIN BLACKBURN, Baron (1813-1896), British judge, was born in Selkirkshire in 1813, and educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking high mathematical honours in 1835. He was called to the bar in 1838, and went the northern circuit. His progress was at first slow, and he employed himself in reporting and editing, with T.F. Ellis, eight volumes of the highly-esteemed Ellis and Blackburn reports. His deficiency in all the more brilliant qualities of the advocate almost confined his practice to commercial cases, in which he obtained considerable employment in his circuit; but he continued to belong to the outside bar, and was so little known to the legal world that his promotion to a puisne judgeship in the court of queen’s bench in 1859 was at first ascribed to Lord Campbell’s partiality for his countrymen, but Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Wensleydale and Lord Cranworth came forward to defend the appointment. Blackburn himself is said to have thought that a county court judgeship was about to be offered him, which he had resolved to decline. He soon proved himself one of the soundest lawyers on the bench, and when he was promoted to the court of appeal in 1876 was considered the highest authority on common law. In 1876 he was made a lord of appeal and a life peer. Both in this capacity and as judge of the queen’s bench he delivered many judgments of the highest importance, and no decisions have been received with greater respect. In 1886 he was appointed a member of the commission charged to prepare a digest of the criminal law, but retired on account of indisposition in the following year. He died at his country residence, Doonholm in Ayrshire, on the 8th of January 1896. He was the author of a valuable work on the Law of Sales.

BLACKBURN, JONATHAN (c. 1700-c. 1765), American portrait painter, was born in Connecticut. He seems to have been the son of a painter, and to have had a studio in Boston in 1750-1765; among his patrons were many important early American families, including the Apthorps, Amorys, Bulfinches, Lowells, Ewings, Saltonstalls, Winthrops, Winslows and Otises of Boston. Some of his portraits are in the possession of the public library of Lexington, Massachusetts, and of the Massachusetts Historical Society, but most of them are privately owned and are scattered over the country, the majority being in Boston. John Singleton Copley was his pupil, and it is said that he finally left his studio in Boston, through jealousy of Copley’s superior success. He was a good portrait painter, and some of his pictures were long attributed to Copley.

BLACKBURN, a municipal, county and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, 210 m. N.W. by N. from London, and 24½ N.N.W. from Manchester, served by the Lancashire & Yorkshire and the London & North Western railways, with several lines from all parts of the county. Pop. (1891) 120,064; (1901) 127,626. It lies in the valley of a stream called in early times the Blackeburn, but now known as the Brook. The hills in the vicinity rise to some 900 ft., and among English manufacturing towns Blackburn ranks high in beauty of situation. Besides numerous churches and chapels the public buildings comprise a large town hall (1856), market house, exchange, county court, municipal offices, chamber of commerce, free library, and, outside the town, an infirmary. There are an Elizabethan grammar school, in modern buildings (1884) and an excellent technical school. The Corporation Park and Queen’s Park are well laid out, and contain ornamental waters. There is an efficient tramway service, connecting the town with Darwen, 5 m. south. The cotton industry employs thousands of operatives, the iron trade is also very considerable, and many are engaged in the making of machines; but a former woollen manufacture is almost extinct. Blackburn’s speciality in the cotton industry is weaving. Coal, lime and building stone are abundant in the neighbourhood. Blackburn received a charter of incorporation in 1851, and is governed by a mayor, 14 aldermen and 42 councillors. The county borough was created in 1888. The parliamentary borough, which returns two members, is coextensive with the municipal, and lies between the Accrington and Darwen divisions of the county. Area, 7432 acres.

Blackburn is of considerable antiquity; indeed, the 6th century is allocated to the original foundation of a church on the site of the present parish church. Of another church on this site Cranmer was rector after the Reformation. Blackburn was for some time the chief town of a district called Blackburnshire, and as early as the reign of Elizabeth ranked as a flourishing market town. About the middle of the 17th century it became famous for its “checks,” which were afterwards superseded by a similar linen-and-cotton fabric known as “Blackburn greys.” In the 18th century the ability of certain natives of the town greatly fostered its cotton industry; thus James Hargreaves here probably invented his spinning jenny about 1764, though the operatives, fearing a reduction of labour, would have none of it, and forced him to quit the town for Nottingham. He was in the employment of Robert Peel, grandfather of the prime minister of that name, who here instituted the factory system, and as the director of a large business carefully fostered the improvement of methods.

BLACKBURNE, FRANCIS (1782-1867), lord chancellor of Ireland, was born at Great Footstown, Co. Meath, Ireland, on the 11th of November 1782. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he was called to the English bar in 1805, and practised with great success on the home circuit. Called to the Irish bar in 1822, he vigorously administered the Insurrection Act in Limerick for two years, effectually restoring order in the district. In 1826 he became a serjeant-at-law, and in 1830, and again, in 1841, was attorney-general for Ireland. In 1842 he became master of the rolls in Ireland, in 1846 chief-justice of the queen’s bench, and in 1852 (and again in 1866) lord chancellor of Ireland. In 1856 he was made a lord justice of appeal in Ireland. He is remembered as having prosecuted O’Connell and presided at the trial of Smith O’Brien. He died on the 17th of September 1867.

BLACKCOCK (Tetrao tetrix), the English name given to a bird of the family Tetraonidae or grouse, the female of which is known as the grey hen and the young as poults. In size and plumage the two sexes offer a striking contrast, the male weighing about 4 ℔, its plumage for the most part of a rich glossy black shot with blue and purple, the lateral tail feathers curved outwards so as to form, when raised, a fan-like crescent, and the eyebrows destitute of feathers and of a bright vermilion red. The female, 21 on the other hand, weighs only 2 ℔, its plumage is of a russet brown colour irregularly barred with black, and its tail feathers are but slightly forked. The males are polygamous, and during autumn and winter associate together, feeding in flocks apart from the females; but with the approach of spring they separate, each selecting a locality for itself, from which it drives off all intruders, and where morning and evening it seeks to attract the other sex by a display of its beautiful plumage, which at this season attains its greatest perfection, and by a peculiar cry, which Selby describes as “a crowing note, and another similar to the noise made by the whetting of a scythe.” The nest, composed of a few stalks of grass, is built on the ground, usually beneath the shadow of a low bush or a tuft of tall grass, and here the female lays from six to ten eggs of a dirty-yellow colour speckled with dark brown. The blackcock then rejoins his male associates, and the female is left to perform the labours of hatching and rearing her young brood. The plumage of both sexes is at first like that of the female, but after moulting the young males gradually assume the more brilliant plumage of their sex. There are also many cases on record, and specimens may be seen in the principal museums, of old female birds assuming, to a greater or less extent, the plumage of the male. The blackcock is very generally distributed over the highland districts of northern and central Europe, and in some parts of Asia. It is found on the principal heaths in the south of England, but is specially abundant in the Highlands of Scotland.

BLACK COUNTRY, THE, a name commonly applied to a district lying principally in S. Staffordshire, but extending into Worcestershire and Warwickshire, England. This is one of the chief manufacturing centres in the United Kingdom, and the name arises from the effect of numerous collieries and furnaces, which darken the face of the district, the buildings and the atmosphere. Coal, ironstone and clay are mined in close proximity, and every sort of iron and steel goods is produced. The district extends 15 m. N.W. from Birmingham, and includes Smethwick, West Bromwich, Dudley, Oldbury, Sedgley, Tipton, Bilston, Wednesbury, Wolverhampton and Walsall as its most important centres. The ceaseless activity of the Black Country is most readily realized when it is traversed, or viewed from such an elevation as Dudley Castle Hill, at night, when the glare of furnaces appears in every direction. The district is served by numerous branches of the Great Western, London & North Western, and Midland railways, and is intersected by canals, which carry a heavy traffic, and in some places are made to surmount physical obstacles with remarkable engineering skill, as in the case of the Castle Hill tunnels at Dudley. Among the numerous branches of industry there are several characteristic of certain individual centres. Thus, locks are a specialty at Wolverhampton and Willenhall, and keys at Wednesfield; horses’ bits, harness-fittings and saddlery at Walsall and Bloxwich, anchors and cables at Tipton, glass at Smethwick, and nails and chains at Cradley.

BLACK DROP, in astronomy, an apparent distortion of the planet Mercury or Venus at the time of internal contact with the limb of the sun at the beginning or end of a transit. It has been in the past a source of much perplexity to observers of transits, but is now understood to be a result of irradiation, produced by the atmosphere or by the aberration of the telescope.

BLACKFOOT (Siksika), a tribe and confederacy of North American Indians of Algonquian stock. The name is explained as an allusion to their leggings being observed by the whites to have become blackened by marching over the freshly burned prairie. Their range was around the headwaters of the Missouri, from the Yellowstone northward to the North Saskatchewan and westward to the Rockies. The confederacy consisted of three tribes, the Blackfoot or Siksika proper, the Kaina and the Piegan. During the early years of the 19th century the Blackfoots were one of the strongest Indian confederacies of the north-west, numbering some 40,000. At the beginning of the 20th century there were about 5000, some in Montana and some in Canada.

BLACK FOREST (Ger. Schwarzwald; the Silva Marciana and Abnoba of the Romans), a mountainous district of south-west Germany, having an area of 1844 sq. m., of which about two-thirds lie in the grand duchy of Baden and the remaining third in the kingdom of Württemberg. Bounded on the south and west by the valley of the Rhine, to which its declivities abruptly descend, and running parallel to, and forming the counterpart of the Vosges beyond, it slopes more gently down to the valley of the Neckar in the north and to that of the Nagold (a tributary of the Neckar) on the north-east. Its total length is 100 m., and its breadth varies from 36 m. in the south to 21 in the centre and 13 in the north. The deep valley of the Kinzig divides it laterally into halves, of which the southern, with an average elevation of 3000 ft., is the wilder and contains the loftiest peaks, which again mostly lie towards the western side. Among them are the Feldberg (4898 ft.), the Herzogenhorn (4600), the Blössling (4260) and the Blauen (3820). The northern half has an average height of 2000 ft. On the east side are several lakes, and here the majority of the streams take their rise. The configuration of the hills is mainly conical and the geological formation consists of gneiss, granite (in the south) and red sandstone. The district is poor in minerals; the yield of silver and copper has almost ceased, but there are workable coal seams near Offenburg, where the Kinzig debouches on the plain. The climate in the higher districts is raw and the produce is mostly confined to hardy cereals, such as oats. But the valleys, especially those on the western side, are warm and healthy, enclose good pasture land and furnish fruits and wine in rich profusion. They are clothed up to a height of about 2000 ft. with luxuriant woods of oak and beech, and above these again and up to an elevation of 4000 ft., surrounding the hills with a dense dark belt, are the forests of fir which have given the name to the district. The summits of the highest peaks are bare, but even on them snow seldom lies throughout the summer.

The Black Forest produces excellent timber, which is partly sawn in the valleys and partly exported down the Rhine in logs. Among other industries are the manufactures of watches, clocks, toys and musical instruments. There are numerous mineral springs, and among the watering places Baden-Baden and Wildbad are famous. The towns of Freiburg, Rastatt, Offenburg and Lahr, which lie under the western declivities, are the chief centres for the productions of the interior.

The Black Forest is a favourite tourist resort and is opened up by numerous railways. In addition to the main lines in the valleys of the Rhine and Neckar, which are connected with the towns lying on its fringe, the district is intersected by the 22 Schwarzwaldbahn from Offenburg to Singen, from which various small local lines ramify.

BLACK HAWK [Ma‘katawimesheka‘ka, “Black Sparrow Hawk”], (1767-1838), American Indian warrior of the Sauk and Fox tribes, was born at the Sauk village on Rock river, near the Mississippi, in 1767. He was a member of the Thunder gens of the Sauk tribe, and, though neither an hereditary nor an elected chief, was for some time the recognized war leader of the Sauk and Foxes. From his youth he was intensely bloodthirsty and hostile to the Americans. Immediately after the acquisition of “Louisiana,” the Federal government took steps for the removal of the Sauk and Foxes, who had always been a disturbing element among the north-western Indians, to the west bank of the Mississippi river. As early as 1804, by a treaty signed at St Louis on the 3rd of November, they agreed to the removal in return for an annuity of $1000. British influences were still strong in the upper Mississippi valley and undoubtedly led Black Hawk and the chiefs of the Sauk and Fox confederacy to repudiate this agreement of 1804, and subsequently to enter into the conspiracy of Tecumseh and take part with the British in the war of 1812. The treaties of 1815 at Portage des Sioux (with the Foxes) and of 1816 at St Louis (with the Sauk) substantially renewed that of 1804. That of 1816 was signed by Black Hawk himself, who declared, however, when in 1823 Chief Keokuk and a majority of the two nations crossed the river, that the consent of the chiefs had been obtained by fraud. In 1830 a final treaty was signed at Prairie du Chien, by which all title to the lands of the Sauk and Foxes east of the Mississippi was ceded to the government, and provision was made for the immediate opening of the tract to settlers. Black Hawk, leading the party in opposition to Keokuk, at once refused to accede to this cession and threatened to retaliate if his lands were invaded. This precipitated what is known as the Black Hawk War. Settlers began pouring into the new region in the early spring of 1831, and Black Hawk in June attacked several villages near the Illinois-Wisconsin line. After massacring several isolated families, he was driven off by a force of Illinois militia. He renewed his attack in the following year (1832), but after several minor engagements, in most of which he was successful, he was defeated (21st of July) at Wisconsin Heights on the Wisconsin river, opposite Prairie du Sac, by Michigan volunteers under Colonels Henry Dodge and James D. Henry, and fleeing westward was again decisively defeated on the Mississippi at the mouth of the Bad Axe river (on the 1st and 2nd of August) by General Henry Atkinson. His band was completely dispersed, and he himself was captured by a party of Winnebagoes. At Fort Armstrong, Rock Island, on the 21st of September, a treaty was signed, by which a large tract of the Sauk and Fox territory was ceded to the United States; and the United States granted to them a reservation of 400 sq. m., the payment of $20,000 a year for thirty years, and the settlement of certain traders’ claims against the tribe. With several warriors Black Hawk was sent to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, where he was confined for a few weeks; afterwards he was taken by the government through the principal Eastern cities. On his release he settled in 1837 on the Sauk and Fox reservation on the Des Moines river, in Iowa, where he died on the 3rd of October 1838.

BLACKHEATH, an open common in the south-east of London, England, mainly in the metropolitan borough of Lewisham. This high-lying tract was crossed by the Roman Watling Street from Kent, on a line approximating to that of the modern Shooter’s Hill; and was a rallying ground of Wat Tyler (1381), of Jack Cade (1450), and of Audley, leader of the Cornish rebels, defeated and captured here by the troops of Henry VII. in 1497. It also witnessed the acclamations of the citizens of London on the return of Henry V. from the victory of Agincourt, the formal meeting between Henry VIII. and Anne of Cleves, and that between the army of the restoration and Charles II. The introduction into England of the game of golf is traditionally placed here in 1608, and attributed to King James I. and his Scottish followers. The common, the area of which is 267 acres, is still used for this and other pastimes. For the residential district to which Blackheath gives name, see Lewisham.

BLACK HILLS, an isolated group of mountains, covering an area of about 6000 sq. m. in the adjoining corners of South Dakota and Wyoming, U.S.A. They rise on an average some 2000 ft. above their base, the highest peak, Harney, having an altitude above the sea of 7216 ft. They are drained and in large part enclosed by the North (or Belle Fourche) and South forks of the Cheyenne river (at whose junction a fur-trading post was established about 1830); and are surrounded by semi-arid, alkaline plains lying 3000 to 3500 ft. above the sea. The mass has an elliptical shape, its long axis, which extends nearly N.N.W.-S.S.E., being about 120 m. and its shorter axis about 40 m. long. The hills are formed by a short, broad, anticlinal fold, which is flat or nearly so on its summit. From this fold the stratified beds have in large part been removed, the more recent having been almost entirely eroded from the elevated mass. The edges of these are now found encircling the mountains and forming a series of fairly continuous rims of hog-backs. The carboniferous and older stratified beds still cover the west half of the hills, while from the east half they have been removed, exposing the granite. Scientific exploration began in 1849, and systematic geological investigation about 1875. Rich gold placers had already been discovered, and in 1875 the Sioux Indians within whose territory the hills had until then been included, were removed, and the lands were open to white settlers. Subsequently low-grade quartz mines were found and developed, and have furnished a notable part of the gold supply of the country (about $100,000,000 from 1875 to 1901). The output is to-day relatively small in comparison with that of many other fields, but there are one or two permanent gold mines of great value working low-grade ore. The silver product from 1879 to 1901 was about $4,154,000. Deposits of copper, tin, iron and tungsten have been discovered, and a variety of other mineral products (graphite, mica, spodumene, coal, petroleum, &c.). In sharp contrast to the surrounding plains the climate is subhumid, especially in the higher Harney region. There is an abundance of fertile soil and magnificent grazing land. A third of the total area is covered with forests of pine and other trees, which have for the most part been made a forest-reserve by the national government. Jagged crags, sudden abysses, magnificent canyons, forests with open parks, undulating hills, mountain prairies, freaks of weathering and erosion, and the enclosing lines of the successive hog-backs afford scenery of remarkable variety and wild beauty. There are several interesting limestone caverns, and Sylvan Lake, in the high mountain district, is an important resort.

BLACKIE, JOHN STUART (1809-1895), Scottish scholar and man of letters, was born in Glasgow on the 28th of July 1809. He was educated at the New Academy and afterwards at the Marischal College, in Aberdeen, where his father was manager of the Commerical Bank. After attending classes at Edinburgh University (1825-1826), Blackie spent three years at Aberdeen as a student of theology. In 1829 he went to Germany, and after studying at Göttingen and Berlin (where he came under the influence of Heeren, Ottfried Müller, Schleiermacher, Neander and Böckh) he accompanied Bunsen to Italy and Rome. The years spent abroad extinguished his former wish to enter the Church, and at his father’s desire he gave himself up to the study of law. He had already, in 1824, been placed in a lawyer’s office, but only remained there six months. By the time he was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates (1834) he had acquired a strong love of the classics and a taste for letters in 23 general. A translation of Faust, which he published in 1834, met with considerable success. After a year or two of desultory literary work he was (May 1839) appointed to the newly-instituted chair of Humanity (Latin) in the Marischal College.

Difficulties arose in the way of his installation, owing to the action of the Presbytery on his refusing to sign unreservedly the Confession of Faith; but these were eventually overcome, and he took up his duties as professor in November 1841. In the following year he married. From the first his professorial lectures were conspicuous for the unconventional enthusiasm with which he endeavoured to revivify the study of the classics; and his growing reputation, added to the attention excited by a translation of Aeschylus which he published in 1850, led to his appointment in 1852 to the professorship of Greek at Edinburgh University, in succession to George Dunbar, a post which he continued to hold for thirty years. He was somewhat erratic in his methods, but his lectures were a triumph of influential personality. A journey to Greece in 1853 prompted his essay On the Living Language of the Greeks, a favourite theme of his, especially in his later years; he adopted for himself a modern Greek pronunciation, and before his death he endowed a travelling scholarship to enable students to learn Greek at Athens. Scottish nationality was another source of enthusiasm with him; and in this connexion he displayed real sympathy with Highland home life and the grievances of the crofters. The foundation of the Celtic chair at Edinburgh University was mainly due to his efforts. In spite of the many calls upon his time he produced a considerable amount of literary work, usually on classical or Scottish subjects, including some poems and songs of no mean order. He died in Edinburgh on the 2nd of March 1895. Blackie was a Radical and Scottish nationalist in politics, but of a fearlessly independent type; he was one of the “characters” of the Edinburgh of the day, and was a well-known figure as he went about in his plaid, worn shepherd-wise, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a big stick. His published works include (besides several volumes of verse) Homer and the Iliad (1866), maintaining the unity of the poems; Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism (1871); Essay on Self-Culture (1874); Horae Hellenicae (1874); The Language and Literature of the Scottish Highlands (1876); The Natural History of Atheism (1877); The Wise Men of Greece (1877); Lay Sermons (1881); Altavona (1882); The Wisdom of Goethe (1883); The Scottish Highlanders and the Land Laws (1885); Life of Burns (1888); Scottish Song (1889); Essays on Subjects of Moral and Social Interest (1890); Christianity and the Ideal of Humanity (1893). Amongst his political writings may be mentioned a pamphlet On Democracy (1867), On Forms of Government (1867), and Political Tracts (1868).

BLACK ISLE, The, a district in the east of the county of Ross and Cromarty, Scotland, bounded N. by Cromarty Firth, E. by Moray Firth, S. by Inner Moray Firth (or Firth of Inverness) and Beauly Firth, and W. by the river Conon and the parish of Urray. It is a diamond-shaped peninsula jutting out from the mainland in a north-easterly direction, the longer axis, from Muir of Ord station to the South Sutor at the entrance to Cromarty Firth, measuring 20 m., and the shorter, from Ferryton Point to Craigton-Point, due north and south, 12 m., and it has a coastline of 52 m. Originally called Ardmeanach (Gaelic ard, height; manaich, monk, “the monk’s height,” from an old religious house on the finely-wooded ridge of Mulbuie), it derived its customary name from the fact that, since snow does not lie in winter, the promontory looks black while the surrounding country is white. Within its limits are comprised the parishes of Urquhart and Logie Wester, Killearnan, Knockbain (Gaelic cnoc, hill; bàn, white), Avoch (pron. Auch), Rosemarkie, Resolis (Gaelic rudha or ros soluis, “cape of the light”) or Kirkmichael and Cromarty. The Black Isle branch of the Highland railway runs from Muir of Ord to Fortrose; steamers connect Cromarty with Invergordon and Inverness, and Fortrose with Inverness; and there are ferries, on the southern coast, at North Kessock (for Inverness) and Chanonry (for Fort George), and, on the northern coast, at Alcaig (for Dingwall), Newhallpoint (for Invergordon), and Cromarty (for Nigg). The principal towns are Cromarty and Fortrose. Rosehaugh, near Avoch, belonged to Sir George Mackenzie, founder of the Advocates’ library in Edinburgh, who earned the sobriquet of “Bloody” from his persecution of the Covenanters. Redcastle, on the shore, near Killearnan church, dates from 1179 and is said to have been the earliest inhabited house in the north of Scotland. On the forfeiture of the earldom of Ross it became a royal castle (being visited by Queen Mary), and afterwards passed for a period into the hands of the Mackenzies of Gairloch. The chief industries are agriculture—high farming flourishes owing to the great fertility of the peninsula—sandstone-quarrying and fisheries (mainly from Avoch). The whole district, though lacking water, is picturesque and was once forested. The Mulbuie ridge, the highest point of which is 838 ft. above the sea, occupies the centre and is the only elevated ground. Antiquarian remains are somewhat numerous, such as forts and cairns in Cromarty parish, and stone circles in Urquhart and Logie Wester and Knockbain parishes, the latter also containing a hut circle and rock fortress.

BLACKLOCK, THOMAS (1721-1791), Scottish poet, the son of a bricklayer, was born at Annan, in Dumfriesshire, in 1721. When not quite six months old he lost his sight by smallpox, and his career is largely interesting as that of one who achieved what he did in spite of blindness. Shortly after his father’s death in 1740, some of Blacklock’s poems began to be handed about among his acquaintances and friends, who arranged for his education at the grammar-school, and subsequently at the university of Edinburgh, where he was a student of divinity. His first volume of Poems was published in 1746. In 1754 he became deputy librarian for the Faculty of Advocates, by the kindness of Hume. He was eventually estranged from Hume, and defended James Beattie’s attack on that philosopher. Blacklock was among the first friends of Burns in Edinburgh, being one of the earliest to recognize his genius. He was in 1762 ordained minister of the church of Kirkcudbright, a position which he soon resigned; in 1767 the degree of doctor in divinity was conferred on him by Marischal College, Aberdeen. He died on the 7th of July 1791.

BLACKMAIL, a term, in English law, used in three special meanings, at different times. The usual derivation of the second half of the word is from Norman Fr. maille (medalia; cf. “medal”), small copper coin; the New English Dictionary derives from “mail” (q.v.), meaning rent or tribute. (1) The primary meaning of “blackmail” was rent paid in labour, grain or baser metal (i.e. money other than sterling money), called reditus nigri, in contradistinction to rent paid in silver or white money (mailles blanches). (2) In the northern counties of England (Northumberland, Westmorland and the bishopric of Durham) it signified a tribute in money, corn, cattle or other consideration exacted from farmers and small owners by freebooters in return for immunity from robbers or moss-troopers. By a statute of 1601 it was made a felony without benefit of clergy to receive or pay such tribute, but the practice lingered until the union of England and Scotland in 1707. (3) The word now signifies extortion of money or property by threats of libel, presecution, exposure, &c. See such headings as Coercion, Conspiracy, Extortion, and authorities quoted under Criminal Law.

BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD (c. 1650-1729), English physician and writer, was born at Corsham, in Wiltshire, about 1650. He was educated at Westminster school and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was for some time a schoolmaster, but finally, after graduating in medicine at Padua, he settled in practice as a physician in London. He supported the principles of the Revolution, and was accordingly knighted in 1697. He held the office of physician in ordinary both to William III. and Anne, and died on the 9th of October 1729. Blackmore had a 24 passion for writing epics. Prince Arthur, an Heroick Poem in X Books appeared in 1695, and was followed by six other long poems before 1723. Of these Creation ... (1712), a philosophic poem intended to refute the atheism of Vanini, Hobbes and Spinoza, and to unfold the intellectual philosophy of Locke, was the most favourably received. Dr Johnson anticipated that this poem would transmit the author to posterity “among the first favourites of the English muse,” while John Dennis went so far as to describe it as “a philosophical poem, which has equalled that of Lucretius in the beauty of its versification, and infinitely surpassed it in the solidity and strength of its reasoning.” These opinions have not been justified, for the poem, like everything else that Blackmore wrote, is dull and tedious. His Creation appears in Johnson’s and Anderson’s collections of the British poets. He left also works on medicine and on theological subjects.

BLACKMORE, RICHARD DODDRIDGE (1825-1900), English novelist, was born on the 7th of June 1825 at Longworth, Berkshire, of which village his father was curate in charge. He was educated at Blundell’s school, Tiverton, and Exeter College, Oxford, where he obtained a scholarship. In 1847 he took a second class in classics. Two years later he entered as a student at the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1852. His first publication was a volume of Poems by Melanter (1854), which showed no particular promise, nor did the succeeding volume, Epullia (1855), suggest that Blackmore had the makings of a poet. He was nevertheless enthusiastic in his pursuit of literature; and when, a few years later, the complete breakdown of his health rendered it clear that he must remove from London, he determined to combine a literary life in the country with a business career as a market-gardener. He acquired land at Teddington, and set earnestly to work, the literary fruits of his new surroundings being a translation of the Georgics, published in 1862. In 1864 he published his first novel, Clara Vaughan, the merits of which were promptly recognized. Cradock Nowell (1866) followed, but it was in 1869 that he suddenly sprang into fame with Lorna Doone. This fine story was a pioneer in the romantic revival; and appearing at a jaded hour, it was presently recognized as a work of singular charm, vigour and imagination. Its success could scarcely be repeated, and though Blackmore wrote many other capital stories, of which the best known are The Maid of Sker (1872), Christowell (1880), Perlycross (1894), Tales from the Telling House (1896) and Dariel (1897), he will always be remembered almost exclusively as the author of Lorna Doone. He continued his quiet country life to the last, and died at Teddington on the 20th of January 1900, in his seventy-fifth year. Lorna Doone has the true out-of-door atmosphere, is shot through and through with adventurous spirit, and in its dramatic moments shows both vigour and intensity. The heroine, though she is invested with qualities of faëry which are scarcely human, is an idyllic and haunting figure; and John Ridd, the bluff hero, is, both in purpose and achievement, a veritable giant of romance. The story is a classic of the West country, and the many pilgrimages that are made annually to the Doone Valley (the actual characteristics of which differ materially from the descriptions given in the novel) are entirely inspired by the buoyant imagination of Richard Blackmore. A memorial window and tablet to his memory were erected in Exeter cathedral in 1904.

BLACK MOUNTAIN, a mountain range and district on the Hazara border of the North-West Frontier Province of India. It is inhabited by Yusafzai Pathans. The Black Mountain itself has a total length of 25 to 30 m., and an average height of 8000 ft. above the sea. It rises from the Indus basin near the village of Kiara, up to its watershed by Bruddur; thence it runs north-west by north to the point on the crest known as Chittabut. From Chittabut the range runs due north, finally descending by two large spurs to the Indus again. The tribes which inhabit the western face of the Black Mountain are the Hassanzais (2300 fighting men), the Akazais (1165 fighting men) and the Chagarzais (4890 fighting men), all sub-sections of the Yusafzai Pathans. It was in this district that the Hindostani Fanatics had their stronghold, and they were responsible for much of the unrest on this part of the border.

The Black Mountain is chiefly notable for four British expeditions:—

1. Under Lieut.-Colonel F. Mackeson, in 1852-53, against the Hassanzais. The occasion was the murder of two British customs officers. A force of 3800 British troops traversed their country, destroying their villages and grain, &c.

2. Under Major-General A.T. Wilde, in 1868. The occasion was an attack on a British police post at Oghi in the Agror Valley by all three tribes. A force of 12,500 British troops entered the country and the tribes made submission.

3. The First Hazara Expedition in 1888. The cause was the constant raids made by the tribes on villages in British territory, culminating in an attack on a small British detachment, in which two English officers were killed. A force of 12,500 British troops traversed the country of the tribes, and severely punished them. Punishment was also inflicted on the Hindostani Fanatics of Palosi.

4. The Second Hazara Expedition of 1891. The Black Mountain tribes fired on a force within British limits. A force of 7300 British troops traversed the country. The tribesmen made their submission and entered into an agreement with government to preserve the peace of the border.

The Black Mountain tribes took no part in the general frontier rising of 1897, and after the disappearance of the Hindostani Fanatics they sank into comparative unimportance.

BLACKPOOL, a municipal and county borough and seaside resort in the Blackpool parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 46 m. N. of Liverpool, served by the Lancashire & Yorkshire, and London & North Western railways. Pop. (1891) 23,846; (1901) 47,346. The town, which is quite modern, contains many churches and chapels of all denominations, a town hall, public libraries, the Victoria hospital, three piers, theatres, ball-rooms, and other places of public amusement, including a lofty tower, resembling the Eiffel Tower of Paris. The municipality maintains an electric tram service. There are handsome promenades along the sea front, which command fine views. Extensive works upon these, affording a sea front unsurpassed by that of any English watering-place, were completed in 1905. The beach is sandy and the bathing good. The borough was created in 1876 (county borough, 1904), and is governed by a mayor, 12 aldermen and 36 councillors. Area, exclusive of foreshore, 3496 acres; including foreshore, 4244 acres.

BLACK ROD (more fully, “Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod “), an official of the House of Lords, instituted in 1350. His appointment is by royal letters patent, and his title is due to his staff of office, an ebony stick surmounted with a gold lion. He is a personal attendant of the sovereign in the Upper House, and is also usher of the order of the Garter, being doorkeeper at the meetings of the knights’ chapter. He is responsible for the maintenance of order in the House of Lords, and on him falls the duty of arresting any peer guilty of breach of privilege or other offence of which the House takes cognizance. But the duty which brings him most into prominence is that of summoning the Commons and their speaker to the Upper House to hear a speech from the throne or the royal assent given to bills. If the sovereign is present in parliament, Black Rod commands the attendance of the gentlemen of the Commons, but when lords commissioners represent the king, he only desires such attendance. Black Rod is on such occasions the central figure of a curious ceremony of much historic significance. As soon as the attendants of the House of Commons are aware of his approach, they close the doors in his face. Black Rod then strikes three times with his staff, and on being asked “Who is there?” replies “Black Rod.” Being then admitted he advances to the bar of the House, makes three obeisances and says, “Mr Speaker, the king commands this honourable House to attend his majesty immediately in the House of Lords.” This formality originated in the famous attempt of Charles I. to arrest the five members, Hampden, Pym, Holies, Hesilrige and Strode, in 1642. Indignant 25 at this breach of privilege, the House of Commons has ever since maintained its right of freedom of speech and uninterrupted debate by the closing of the doors on the king’s representative.

BLACK SEA (or Euxine; anc. Pontus Euxinus),1 a body of water lying almost entirely between the latitudes 41º and 45º N., but extending to about 47º N. near Odessa. It is bounded N. by the southern coast of Russia; W. by Rumania, Turkey and Bulgaria; S. and E. by Asia Minor. The northern boundary is broken at Kertch by a strait entering into the Sea of Azov, and at the junction of the western and southern boundary is the Bosporus, which unites the Black Sea with the Mediterranean through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles. The 100-fathom line is about 10 to 20 m. from the shore except in the north-west corner between Varna and Sevastopol, where it extends 140 m. seawards. The greatest depth is 1030 fathoms (1227 Russian fathoms) near the centre, there being only one basin. The steepest incline outside 100 fathoms is to the south-east of the Crimea and at Amastra; the incline to the greater depths is also steep off the Caucasus and between Trebizond and Batum. The conditions that prevail in the Black Sea are very different from those of the Mediterranean or any other sea. The existence of sulphuretted hydrogen in great quantities below 100 fathoms, the extensive chemical precipitation of calcium carbonate, the stagnant nature of its deep waters, and the absence of deep-sea life are conditions which make it impossible to discuss it along with the physical and biological conditions of the Mediterranean proper.

The depths of the Black Sea are lifeless, higher organic life not being known to exist below 100 fathoms. Fossiliferous remains of Dreissena, Cardium and other molluscs have, however, been dredged up, which help to show that conditions formerly existed in the Black Sea similar to those that exist at the present day in the Caspian Sea. According to N. Andrusov, when the union of the Black Sea with the Mediterranean through the Bosporus took place, salt water rushed into it along the bottom of the Bosporus and killed the fauna of the less saline waters. This gave rise to a production of sulphuretted hydrogen which is found in the deposits, as well as in the deeper waters.

Observations in temperature and salinity have only been taken during summer. During summer the surface salinity of the Black Sea is from 1.70 to 2.00% down to 50 fathoms, whereas in the greater depths it attains a salinity of 2.25%. The temperature is rather remarkable, there being an intermediate cold layer between 25 and 50 fathoms. This is due to the sinking of the cold surface water (which in winter reaches freezing-point) on to the top of the denser more saline water of the greater depths. There is thus a minimum circulation in the greater depths causing there uniformity of temperature, an absence of the circulation of oxygen by other means than diffusion, and a protection of the sulphuretted hydrogen from the oxidation which takes place in homologous situations in the open ocean. The temperature down to 25 fathoms is from 78.3º to 46.2º F., and in the cold layer, between 25 and 50 fathoms, is from 46.2º to 43.5º F., rising again in greater depths to 48.2º F.

The Sea of Marmora may be looked upon as an arm of the Aegean Sea and thus part of the Mediterranean proper. Its salinity is comparable to that of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, which is greater than that of the Black Sea, viz. 4%. Similar currents exist in the Bosporus to those of the Strait of Gibraltar. Water of less salinity flows outwards from the Black Sea as an upper current, and water of greater salinity from the Sea of Marmora flows into the Black Sea as an under-current. This under-current flows towards Cape Tarhangut, where it divides into a left and right branch. The left branch is appreciably noticed near Odessa and the north-west corner; the right branch sweeps past the Crimea, strikes the Caucasian shore (where it comes to the surface running across, but not into, the south-east corner of the Black Sea), and finally disperses flowing westwards along the northern coast of Asia Minor between Cape Jason and Sinope. This current causes a warmer climate where it strikes. So marked is this current that it has to be taken into account in the navigation of the Black Sea.

The Sea of Azov is exceedingly shallow, being only about 6 fathoms in its deepest part, and it is largely influenced by the river Don. Its water is considerably fresher than the Black Sea, varying from 1.55 to 0.68%. It freezes more readily and is not affected by the Mediterranean current.

BLACK SEA (Russ. Chernomorskaya), a military district of the province of Kuban, formerly an independent province of Transcaucasia, Russia; it includes the narrow strip of land along the N.E. coast of the Black Sea from Novorossiysk to the vicinity of Pitsunda, between the sea and the crest of the main range of the Caucasus. Area, 2836 sq. m. Pop. (1897) 54,228; (1906, estimate) 71,900. It is penetrated by numerous spurs of this range, which strike the sea abruptly at right angles to the coast, and in many cases plunge down into it sheer. Owing to its southern exposure, its sheltered position, and a copious rainfall, vegetation, in part of a sub-tropical character, grows in great profusion. In consequence, however, of the mountainous character of the region, it is divided into a large number of more or less isolated districts, and there is little intercourse with the country north of the Caucasus, the passes over the range being few and difficult (see Caucasus). But since the Russians became masters of this region, its former inhabitants (Circassian tribes) have emigrated in thousands, so that the country is now only thinly inhabited. It is divided into three districts—Novorossiysk, with the town (pop. in 1897, 16,208) of the same name, which acts as the capital of the Black Sea district; Velyaminovsk; and Sochi. Novorossiysk is connected by rail, at the west end of the Caucasus, with the Rostov-Vladikavkaz line, and a mountain road leads from Velyaminovsk (or Tuapse) to Maikop in the province of Kuban.

BLACKSTONE, SIR WILLIAM (1723-1780), English jurist, was born in London, on the 10th of July 1723. His parents having died when he was young, his early education, under the care of his uncle, Dr Thomas Bigg, was obtained at the Charterhouse, from which, at the age of fifteen, he was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford. He was entered in the Middle Temple in 1741. In 1744 he was elected a fellow of All Souls’ College. From this period he divided his time between the university and the Temple, where he took chambers in order to attend the law courts. In 1746 he was called to the bar. Though but little known or distinguished as a pleader, he was actively employed, during his occasional residences at the university, in taking part in the internal management of his college. In May 1749, as a small reward for his services, and to give him further opportunities of advancing the interests of the college, Blackstone was appointed steward of its manors. In the same year, on the resignation of his uncle, Seymour Richmond, he was elected recorder of the borough of Wallingford in Berkshire. In 1750 he became doctor of civil law. In 1753 he decided to retire from London work to his fellowship and an academical life, still continuing the practice of his profession as a provincial counsel.

His lectures on the laws of England appear to have been an early and favourite idea; for in the Michaelmas term immediately after he abandoned London, he entered on the duty of reading them at Oxford; and we are told by the author of his Life, that even at their commencement, the high expectations formed from the acknowledged abilities of the lecturer attracted to these lectures a very crowded class of young men of the first families, characters and hopes. Bentham, however, declares that he was a “formal, precise and affected lecturer—just what you would expect from the character of his writings—cold, reserved and wary, exhibiting a frigid pride.” It was not till the year 1758 that the lectures in the form they now bear were read in the university. Blackstone, having been unanimously elected to the newly-founded Vinerian professorship, on the 25th of October read his first introductory lecture, afterwards prefixed to the first volume of his celebrated Commentaries. It is doubtful 26 whether the Commentaries were originally intended for the press; but many imperfect and incorrect copies having got into circulation, and a pirated edition of them being either published or preparing for publication in Ireland, the author thought proper to print a correct edition himself, and in November 1765 published the first volume, under the title of Commentaries on the Laws of England. The remaining parts of the work were given to the world in the course of the four succeeding years. It may be remarked that before this period the reputation which his lectures had deservedly acquired for him had induced him to resume practice in London; and, contrary to the general order of the profession, he who had quitted the bar for an academic life was sent back from the college to the bar with a considerable increase of business. He was likewise elected to parliament, first for Hindon, and afterwards for Westbury in Wilts; but in neither of these departments did he equal the expectations which his writings had raised. The part he took in the Middlesex election drew upon him many attacks as well as a severe animadversion from the caustic pen of “Junius.” This circumstance probably strengthened the aversion he professed to parliamentary attendance, “where,” he said, “amidst the rage of contending parties, a man of moderation must expect to meet with no quarter from any side.” In 1770 he declined the place of solicitor-general; but shortly afterwards, on the promotion of Sir Joseph Yates to a seat in the court of common pleas, he accepted a seat on the bench, and on the death of Sir Joseph succeeded him there also. He died on the 14th of February 1780.

The design of the Commentaries is exhibited in his first Vinerian lecture printed in the introduction to them. The author there dwells on the importance of noblemen, gentlemen and educated persons generally being well acquainted with the laws of the country; and his treatise, accordingly, is as far as possible a popular exposition of the laws of England. Falling into the common error of identifying the various meanings of the word law, he advances from the law of nature (being either the revealed or the inferred will of God) to municipal law, which he defines to be a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong. On this definition he founds the division observed in the Commentaries. The objects of law are rights and wrongs. Rights are either rights of persons or rights of things. Wrongs are either public or private. These four headings form respectively the subjects of the four books of the Commentaries.

Blackstone was by no means what would now be called a scientific jurist. He has only the vaguest possible grasp of the elementary conceptions of law. He evidently regards the law of gravitation, the law of nature, and the law of England, as different examples of the same principle—as rules of action or conduct imposed by a superior power on its subjects. He propounds in terms the doctrine that municipal or positive laws derive their validity from their conformity to the so-called law of nature or law of God. “No human laws,” he says, “are of any validity if contrary to this.” His distinction between rights of persons and rights of things, implying, as it would appear, that things as well as persons have rights, is attributable to a misunderstanding of the technical terms of the Roman law. In distinguishing between private and public wrongs (civil injuries and crimes) he fails to seize the true principle of the division. Austin, who accused him of following slavishly the method of Hale’s Analysis of the Law, declares that he “blindly adopts the mistakes of his rude and compendious model; missing invariably, with a nice and surprising infelicity, the pregnant but obscure suggestions which it proffered to his attention, and which would have guided a discerning and inventive writer to an arrangement comparatively just.” By the want of precise and closely-defined terms, and his tendency to substitute loose literary phrases, he falls occasionally into irreconcilable contradictions. Even in discussing a subject of such immense importance as equity, he hardly takes pains to discriminate between the legal and popular senses of the word, and, from the small place which equity jurisprudence occupies in his arrangement, he would scarcely seem to have realized its true position in the law of England. Subject, however, to these strictures the completeness of the treatise, its serviceable if not scientific order, and the power of lucid exposition possessed by the author demand emphatic recognition. Blackstone’s defects as a jurist are more conspicuous in his treatment of the underlying principles and fundamental divisions of the law than in his account of its substantive principles.

Blackstone by no means confines himself to the work of a legal commentator. It is his business, especially when he touches on the framework of society, to find a basis in history and reason for all the most characteristic English institutions. There is not much either of philosophy or fairness in this part of his work. Whether through the natural conservatism of a lawyer, or through his own timidity and subserviency as a man and a politician, he is always found to be a specious defender of the existing order of things. Bentham accuses him of being the enemy of all reform, and the unscrupulous champion of every form of professional chicanery. Austin says that he truckled to the sinister interests and mischievous prejudices of power, and that he flattered the overweening conceit of the English in their own institutions. He displays much ingenuity in giving a plausible form to common prejudices and fallacies; but it is by no means clear that he was not imposed upon himself. More undeniable than the political fairness of the treatise is its merits as a work of literature. It is written in a most graceful and attractive style, and although no opportunity of embellishment has been lost, the language is always simple and clear. Whether it is owing to its literary graces, or to its success in flattering the prejudices of the public to which it was addressed, the influence of the book in England has been extraordinary. Not lawyers only, and lawyers perhaps even less than others, accepted it as an authoritative revelation of the law. It performed for educated society in England much the same service as was rendered to the people of Rome by the publication of their previously unknown laws. It is more correct to regard it as a handbook of the law for laymen than as a legal treatise; and as the first and only book of the kind in England it has been received with somewhat indiscriminating reverence. It is certain that a vast amount of the constitutional sentiment of the country has been inspired by its pages. To this day Blackstone’s criticism of the English constitution would probably express the most profound political convictions of the majority of the English people. Long after it has ceased to be of much practical value as an authority in the courts, it remains the arbiter of all public discussions on the law or the constitution. On such occasions the Commentaries are apt to be construed as strictly as if they were a code. It is curious to observe how much importance is attached to the ipsissima verba of a writer who aimed more at presenting a picture intelligible to laymen than at recording the principles of the law with technical accuracy of detail.

BLACK VEIL, in the Roman Catholic Church, the symbol of the most complete renunciation of the world and adoption of a nun’s life. On the appointed day the nun goes through all the ritual of the marriage ceremony, after a solemn mass at which all the inmates of the convent assist. She is dressed in bridal white with wreath and veil, and receives a wedding-ring, as spouse of the Church. Afterwards she presides at a wedding-breakfast, at which a bride-cake is cut. She thus bids adieu to all her friends, and having previously taken the white veil, the betrothal, she now assumes the black, and for ever forswears the world and its pleasures. Her hair is cut short, and her bridal robes are exchanged for the sombre religious habit. Her wedding-ring, however, she continues to wear, and it is buried with her.

BLACKWATER, the name of a number of rivers and streams in England, Scotland and Ireland. The Blackwater in Essex, which rises near Saffron Walden, has a course of about 40 m. to the North Sea. The most important river of the name is in southern Ireland, rising in the hills on the borders of the counties Cork and Kerry, and flowing nearly due east for the greater part of its course, as far as Cappoquin, where it turns abruptly southward, and discharges through an estuary into Youghal Bay. 27 The length of its valley (excluding the lesser windings of the river) is about 90 m., and the drainage area about 1300 sq. m. It is navigable only for a few miles above the mouth, but its salmon fisheries are both attractive to sportsmen and of considerable commercial value. The scenery of its banks is at many points very beautiful.

BLACKWATER FEVER, a disease occurring in tropical countries and elsewhere, which is often classed with malaria (q.v.). It is characterized by irregular febrile paroxysms, accompanied by rigors, bilious vomiting, jaundice and haemoglobinuria (Sambon). It has a wide geographical distribution, including tropical Africa, parts of Asia, the West Indies, the southern United States, and—in Europe—Greece, Sicily and Sardinia; but its range is not coextensive with malaria. Malarial parasites have occasionally been found in the blood. Some authorities believe it to be caused by the excessive use of quinine, taken to combat malaria. This theory has had the support of Koch, but it is not generally accepted. If it were correct, one would expect blackwater fever to be regularly prevalent in malarial countries and to be more or less coextensive with the use of quinine, which is not at all the case. It often resembles yellow fever, but the characteristic black vomit of yellow fever rarely occurs in blackwater fever, while the black urine from which the latter derives its name is equally rare in the former. According to the modern school of tropical parasitology, blackwater fever is neither a form of malaria nor produced by quinine, but a specific disease due to a protozoal parasite akin to that which causes the redwater fever of cattle.

BLACKWELL, THOMAS (1701-1757), Scottish classical scholar, was born at Aberdeen on the 4th of August 1701. He took the degree of M.A. at the Marischal College in 1718. He was appointed professor of Greek in 1723, and was principal of the institution from 1748 until his death on the 8th of March 1757. In 1735 his first work, An Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, was published anonymously. It was reprinted in 1736, and followed (in 1747) by Proofs of the Enquiry into Homer’s Life and Writings, a translation of the copious notes in foreign languages which had previously appeared. This work, intended to explain the causes of the superiority of Homer to all the poets who preceded or followed him, shows considerable research, and contains many curious and interesting details; but its want of method made Bentley say that, when he had gone through half of it, he had forgotten the beginning, and, when he had finished the reading of it, he had forgotten the whole. Blackwell’s next work (also published anonymously in 1748) was Letters Concerning Mythology. In 1752 he took the degree of doctor of laws, and in the following year published the first volume of Memoirs of the Court of Augustus; the second volume appeared in 1755, the third in 1764 (prepared for the press, after Blackwell’s death, by John Mills). This work shows considerable originality and erudition, but is even more unmethodical than his earlier writings and full of unnecessary digressions. Blackwell has been called the restorer of Greek literature in the north of Scotland; but his good qualities were somewhat spoiled by pomposity and affectation, which exposed him to ridicule.

BLACKWOOD, WILLIAM (1776-1834), Scottish publisher, founder of the firm of William Blackwood & Sons, was born of humble parents at Edinburgh on the 20th of November 1776. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a firm of booksellers in Edinburgh, and he followed his calling also in Glasgow and London for several years. Returning to Edinburgh in 1804, he opened a shop in South Bridge Street for the sale of old, rare and curious books. He undertook the Scottish agency for John Murray and other London publishers, and gradually drifted into publishing on his own account, removing in 1816 to Princes Street. On the 1st of April 1817 was issued the first number of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, which on its seventh number, bore the name of Blackwood’s as the leading part of the title. “Maga,” as this magazine soon came to be called, was the organ of the Scottish Tory party, and round it gathered a host of able writers. William Blackwood died on the 16th of September 1834, and was succeeded by his two sons, Alexander and Robert, who added a London branch to the firm. In 1845 Alexander Blackwood died, and shortly afterwards Robert.

A younger brother, John Blackwood (1818-1879), succeeded to the business; four years later he was joined by Major William Blackwood, who continued in the firm until his death in 1861. In 1862 the major’s elder son, William Blackwood (b. 1836), was taken into partnership. John Blackwood was a man of strong personality and great business discernment; it was in the pages of his magazine that George Eliot’s first stories, Scenes of Clerical Life, appeared. He also inaugurated the “Ancient Classics for English readers” series. On his death Mr William Blackwood was left in sole control of the business. With him were associated his nephews, George William and J.H. Blackwood, sons of Major George Blackwood, who was killed at Maiwand in 1880.

BLADDER (from A.S. blaēddre, connected with blāwan, to blow, cf. Ger. blase), the membranous sac in animals which receives the urine secreted from the kidneys. The word is also used for any similar sac, such as the gall-bladder, the swim-bladder in fishes, or the small vesicle in various seaweeds.

BLADDER AND PROSTATE DISEASES. The urinary bladder in man (for the anatomy see Urinary System), being the temporary reservoir of the renal secretion, and, as such, containing the urine for longer or shorter periods, is liable to various important affections. These are dealt with in the first part of this article. The diseases of the prostate are so intimately allied that they are best considered, as in the subsequent section, as part of the same subject.

Diseases of the Bladder.

Cystitis, or inflammation of the bladder, which may be acute or chronic, is due to the invasion of the mucous lining by micro-organisms, which gain access either from the urethra, the kidneys or the blood-stream. It is easy to see how Cystitis. the diplococci of gonorrhoea may infect the bladder-membrane by direct extension of the inflammation, and how the bacilli which are swarming in the neighbouring bowel may find access to the urethra or bladder when the intervening tissues have been rendered penetrable by a wound or by inflammation. Sometimes, however, especially in the female, the germs from the large intestine enter the bladder by way of the vulva and the urethra.

Any condition leading to disturbance of the function of the bladder, such as enlargement of the prostate, stricture of the urethra, stone, or injury, may cause cystitis by preparing the way for bacillary invasion. The bacilli of tuberculosis and of typhoid fever may set up cystitis by coming down into the bladder from the kidneys with the urine, or they reach it by the blood-stream, or invade it by the urethra. Another way of cystitis being set up is by the introduction of the germs of suppuration by a catheter or bougie sweeping them in from the urethra; or the instrument itself may be unsterilized and dirty and so may introduce them. It used formerly to be thought that wet or cold was enough to cause inflammation of the bladder, but the probability is that this acts only by lowering the resistance of the lining membrane of the bladder, and preparing it for the invasion of the germs which were merely waiting for an opportunity. In the same way, gout or injury may lead to the lurking bacilli being enabled to effect their attack. But in every case disease-germs are the cause of the trouble, and they may be found in the urine. The first effect of inflammation is to render the bladder irritable, so that as soon as a few drops of urine have collected, the individual has intense or uncontrollable desire to micturate. The effort may be very painful and may be accompanied by bleeding from the overloaded blood-vessels of the inflamed membrane. In addition to blood, pus is likely to be found in the urine, which by this time is alkaline and ammoniacal, and teeming with micro-organisms. As regards treatment, the patient should be at once sent to bed in a warm room, and should 28 sit several times a day in a very hot hip-bath. When he has got back to bed, a fomentation under oil-silk, or some other waterproof material, should be placed over the lower part of the abdomen. The diet should be milk (diluted with hot or cold water), barley-water, and bread and butter; no alcoholic drink should be allowed. If the urine is acid, bicarbonate of soda may be given, or citrate of soda; if alkaline, urotropine—a derivative of formic aldehyde—may prove a useful urinary disinfectant. If the straining and distress are great, a suppository of ¼ or ½ a grain of morphia may be introduced into the rectum every two or three hours. The bowels must be kept freely open. If the urine is foul, the bladder should be frequently washed out by a soft catheter and two or three feet of india-rubber tubing with a funnel at the other end, weak and abundant hot lotions of Sanitas or Condy’s fluid being used.

Chronic cystitis is the condition left when the acute symptoms have passed away, but it is liable at any moment to resume the acute condition. If the cystitis is very intractable, refusing to yield to hot irrigations, and to washings with nitrate of silver lotion, it may be advisable to open the bladder from the front, and to explore, treat, drain and rest it.

In tuberculous cystitis there is added to the symptoms the discovery of the bacilli of tuberculosis in the urine, and cystoscopic examination may reveal the presence of tubercles of the mucous membrane or even of ulceration. The patient is probably losing weight, and he may present foci of tuberculosis at the back of the testicle, the lung or kidney, or in a joint or bone, or in a lymphatic gland. Treatment is rebellious and unpromising. Washings and lotions give but temporary relief, and if the bladder is opened for rest, and for a more direct treatment, the germs of suppuration may enter, and, working in conjunction with the bacilli, may cause great havoc. Koch’s tuberculin treatment should certainly be given a trial. This consists of the injection into the body of an emulsion of dead tubercle bacilli which have been sterilized by heat. As a result of this injection the blood sets to work to form an “opsonin”—a protective material which so modifies the disease-germs as to render them attractive to the white corpuscles of the patient’s blood (phagocytes), which then seize upon and destroy them. Sir A.E. Wright has devised a delicate method of examination of the blood (the calculation of the opsonic index) which tells when the tuberculin injections should be resorted to and when withheld (see Blood).

Calculi and Gravel.—Uric acid is deposited from the urine either as small crystals resembling cayenne pepper, or else, in combination with soda and ammonia, as an amorphous “brick-dust” deposit, which, on cooling, leaves a red stain on Stone. the bottom of the vessel, soluble in hot water. These substances are derived from the disintegration of nitrogenized food taken in excess of demand, and from the breaking down of the human tissues. They occur therefore in fevers, in wasting diseases, and in the normal subject after excessive muscular exercises, especially if these exercises have been accompanied with so much perspiration that the excess of water from the blood has escaped by the skin rather than by the kidneys. The abundance of this deposit is in accordance with the amount of heat developed and work done in the body, and corresponds with the dust and ashes raked out of the fire-box of the locomotive after a long run. But supposing that the uric acid débris continues to be excessive, the risk of the formation of renal or vesical calculi becomes considerable, and it may be advisable to place the patient on a restricted nitrogenized diet, to induce him to drink large quantities of water, and to keep his bowels so loose with watery laxatives, such as Epsom salts or sulphate of soda, that the waste products of his body are made to escape by the bowels rather than by the kidneys. In addition to the salts just mentioned, an occasional dose of blue pill will prove helpful. A course of treatment at Contrexéville or Carlsbad may be taken with advantage.

Alkaline urine is unable to hold the phosphates of ammonia and magnesia in solution, so they are deposited in abundance either in the kidney or bladder. If the voided urine is allowed to stand in a tall glass they sink to the bottom with pus and mucus in a cloudy deposit. To remedy this condition it is necessary to treat the cystitis with which the bacterial decomposition of the urine is associated. It may be that a calculus of acid urine, such as one of uric acid or oxalate of lime, has been resting in the bladder and keeping up incessant irritation, and that the micro-organisms of decomposition or suppuration have found their way to the mucous lining of the bladder from either the bowel, the urethra or the blood-stream; undergoing cultivation there they break up the urea into carbonate of ammonia and so render the urine alkaline. This alkaline urine deposits its phosphates, which light upon the calculus and encrust it with a mortary shell, which may go on increasing in size until it may even fill the bladder. Sometimes the nucleus of a calculus is a chip of bone or a blood-clot, or some foreign substance which has been introduced into the bladder. Sooner or later the urine becomes alkaline and the calculus is encrusted with lime salts.

When urine contains a larger amount of chemical constituents than it can conveniently hold in solution, a certain quantity crystallizes out, and may be deposited in the kidney or in the bladder. If the crystals run together in the kidney the resulting concretion may either remain in that organ or may find its way into the bladder, where it may remain to form the nucleus of a larger vesical calculus, or, especially in the case of females, it may, while still small, escape from the bladder during micturition.

In children, in whom there is a rapid disintegration of nitrogenized tissues, a uric acid calculus in escaping from the bladder may block the urethra and give rise to sudden retention of urine. On introducing a metal “sound,” the surgeon may strike the stone, and if it happens to be near the bladder he may push it back and subsequently remove it by crushing. But if it has made its way some distance along the urethra, so that he can feel it from the outside, he should remove it by a clean incision.

A stone in the bladder worries the nerves of the mucous membrane, and, giving them the impression that the bladder contains much water, causes the desire and need for micturition to be constant. The irritation causes an excessive secretion of mucus, just as a piece of grit under the eyelid causes a constant running from the eye. So the urine, if allowed to stand, gives a copious deposit. During micturition the contracting bladder bruises its congested blood-vessels against the stone, so that towards the end of micturition blood appears in the urine. Lastly, cystitis occurs, and the urine contains fetid pus. A stone in the bladder gives rise to pain at the end of the penis, and it is apt suddenly to stop the flow of urine during micturition.

The association of any of these symptoms leads the surgeon to suspect the presence of a stone in the bladder, and he confirms his suspicions by introducing a slender steel rod, a “sound,” by which he strikes and feels the stone. Further confirmation may be obtained by the help of the X-rays, or, in the adult, by using a cystoscope. In a child the stone may often be felt by a finger in the rectum, the front of the bladder being pressed by a hand on the lower part of the abdomen. The cystoscope is a straight, hollow metal tube about the size of a long cedar pencil, which the surgeon introduces into the adult bladder, which has already been filled with warm boracic lotion. Down the tube run two fine wires which control a minute electric lamp at the bladder end of the instrument. At that end also is a small glass window which prevents the fluid escaping by the tube, and also a prism; at the other end of the tube is an eye-piece. By the use of this slender speculum the practised surgeon can recognize the presence of tubercle or tuberculous ulceration of the bladder, stone, or other foreign material, and innocent or malignant growths. He can also watch the urine entering the bladder by the openings of the ureters, and determine from which kidney blood or pus is coming.

The treatment of stone in the bladder is governed by various conditions. Speaking generally, the surgeon prefers to introduce a lithotrite and crush the stone into small fragments, and then to flush out the fragments by using a full-sized, hollow metal catheter and an india-rubber wash-bottle. Even in children this operation may generally be adopted with success, the stone being crushed to atoms and the fragments being washed out to 29 the last small chip. But if the stone is a very hard one (as are some of the oxalate of lime calculi), or if it is very large, or if the bladder or the prostate gland is in a state of advanced disease, or if the urethra is not roomy enough to admit instruments of adequate calibre, the crushing operation (lithotrity) must be deemed unsuitable, and the stone must be removed by a cutting operation (lithotomy).

Lithotomy.—Cutting for stone has been long practised; but up to the beginning of the 19th century it was performed only by a few men, who, bolder than their contemporaries, had specially worked at that operation and had attained celebrity as skilful lithotomists. Patients went long distances to be operated on by them, and certain of the older surgeons, as William Cheselden, performed a large number of operations with most excellent results. The operation was by an incision from the perineum, and is ordinarily spoken of as lateral lithotomy. It was splendidly designed, and gave good results, especially in children. But it is now a thing of the past, having almost entirely given place to the high or supra-pubic operation. In the high operation the patient, being duly prepared, is placed upon his back and the bladder is washed out with hot boracic lotion, and when the lotion returns quite clean a final injection is made until the bladder is felt rising above the pubes. Then the india-rubber tube is removed from the silver catheter by which the injection has been made, and the end of the catheter is plugged by a spigot. An incision is then made in the middle line of the abdomen over the bladder region. The incision must be kept as low as possible, so that the bladder may be reached below the peritoneum, which, higher up, gives it an external, serous coat. As the bladder is approached, a good many veins are seen to be in the way, some of which have to be wounded. The bladder-wall is recognized by its coarse network of pale muscular fibres, through which, on each side of the middle line, a strong suture is passed, so that when the bladder is opened and the lotion comes rushing out, the opening which has been made into the bladder may not sink into the depths of the pelvis. A finger introduced into the bladder makes out the exact size and position of the stone, or stones, and the removal is effected by special forceps. Bleeding having ceased, the bladder-wound is partly or entirely closed by sutures and allowed to fall into the pelvis, the catheter having been removed. It is advisable to leave a drainage tube in the abdominal wound for a while, so that if urine leaks from the bladder-wound it may find a ready escape to the dressings.

Litholapaxy.—Lithotrity consists of two parts—the crushing of the stone, and the removal of the detritus. The two stages are now carried out at one “sitting,” without an interval being allowed between them, as was formerly the practice, and the term “litholapaxy” designates this method. The patient having been anaesthetized, 10 oz. of hot boracic lotion are injected, and the crushing instrument, the lithotrite, is then passed into the bladder. The lithotrite has two blades, a “male” and a “female,” the latter fenestrated, the former solid with its surface notched. When the stone is fixed between the blades the screw is used, and great pressure is applied evenly, gradually and continuously to the stone. The lithotrite is made of very tough steel, so that hard stones may be crushed without danger of the instrument breaking or bending. Care must be taken not to catch the bladder-wall with the lithotrite. This danger is avoided by raising the point of the lithotrite immediately after grasping the stone and before crushing. The stone breaks into two or more pieces, and these fragments must be crushed, one by one, until they are powdered fine enough to escape by the large evacuating catheter. If the stone be large and hard, half an hour or longer may be required to crush it sufficiently fine. When the surgeon fails to catch any more large pieces, the presumption is that the stone has been thoroughly broken up. The lithotrite is then withdrawn and the detritus is washed out by an “aspirator,” which consists of a stiff elastic ball which is connected with a trap, into which fragments of stone fall so as not to pass out on the instrument being used at later periods in the operation. A large catheter, with the eye very near the end of the short curve, is passed into the bladder; the aspirator, full of boracic lotion, is attached to the catheter, and a few ounces of the fluid are expressed from the aspirator into the bladder by squeezing the rubber ball. When the pressure is taken off the ball, it dilates and draws the fluid out of the bladder, and with it some of the detritus, which falls into the trap. This is repeated until all the fragments have been removed. After the operation the patient sometimes suffers from discomfort. His urine should be drawn off by a soft catheter at regular intervals for a few days. If the pain be severe, it can generally be relieved by fomentations. The patient must be kept in bed after the operation, and in cases where the stone has been large and the bladder irritable, the surgeon should insist on his remaining there for at least a week; in those cases which go on favourably the patients are soon able to perform their ordinary duties. Fatal terminations, however, do now and again occur from suppression of urine, the result of the old-standing kidney disease which so often complicates these cases.

To Brigade-Surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel Dennis Francis Keegan, of the Indian Medical Service, is due the fact that the operation of crushing and promptly removing all fragments of a vesical calculus is as well suited for boys as for men. In entire opposition to long-standing European prejudices, Keegan’s operation is now firmly and permanently established. The old operation (Cheselden’s) of cutting a stone out through the bottom of a boy’s bladder is now seldom resorted to, and if a stone in a boy is found too large or too hard to lend itself to the crushing operation, it is removed by a vertical incision through the lower part of the anterior wall of the abdomen, as described above. For a successful performance of the crushing operation in a boy a small lithotrite has, of course, to be used, and it must be of the very best English make. The operation has to be done with the utmost gentleness and thoroughness, not a particle of the crushed stone being left in the bladder, since otherwise the piece left becomes the nucleus of a fresh stone and the trouble recurs.

The treatment of vesical calculi by other means than operative surgery is of little value. Attempts have been made to dissolve them by internal remedies, or by the injection of chemical agents into the bladder; but, although such methods have for a time been apparently successful, they have invariably been found worthless for removing calculi once actually formed. Nevertheless, much can be done towards preventing the formation of calculi in those who have a tendency to their formation, by attention to diet, by taking proper exercise, and by the internal administration of drugs.

Diseases of Prostate Gland.

The prostate gland may become acutely inflamed as the result of the backward extension of gonorrhoeal inflammation of the urethra; it may also be attacked by the germs of ordinary suppuration as well as by the bacilli of tuberculosis. A sudden enlargement of a large gland lying against the outlets of the bladder and the bowel renders micturition difficult, painful or impossible, and interferes with defaecation. Pressure of the seat of the chair upon the perineum also causes distress, so the man sits sideways and on the edge of the seat. If abscess forms, it should be incised from the perineum; if allowed to run its course it may burst into the bladder, the urethra or the rectum, and set up serious complication. The treatment of prostatitis (inflammation of the prostate) consists in rest in bed, sitz-baths and fomentations. If retention of urine takes place a soft catheter must be passed. In the early stage of an acute attack a dozen leeches upon the perineum may do good. The bowels must be kept freely open, and from time to time, as the pain demands, a morphia suppository may be introduced into the bowel.

Enlargement of the prostate exists in a considerable proportion of men of about sixty years of age and onward. It consists of an uncontrolled growth of the normal muscular and glandular tissue of the prostate, interfering with, or absolutely stopping, the outflow of the urine. Gently pushing the bladder upwards and backwards, it increases the length of the urethra, so that in order to draw off retained urine the catheter must be longer than ordinary, but inasmuch as there is no actual narrowing of the passage it may be of full calibre. The beak should be well turned up so that it may ride in front of, and surmount, the median enlargement. Because of the thick, ring-like mass of new tissue around the outlet of the bladder, there is difficulty in micturition, and because the muscular bladder wall is now unable to contract upon all its contents a certain amount of urine is retained. As the enlarged prostate bulges up in the floor of the bladder, a pouch or hollow forms behind it, from which the muscular wall is unable to dislodge the stagnant urine. This keeps up constant irritation, and if by chance the germs of decomposition find their way thither, cystitis sets in and the patient’s condition becomes serious, not only because of the risk to which his tired and irritated kidneys are submitted, but because of the possibility of a phosphatic stone being formed in the bladder. The seriousness of enlargement of the prostate does not depend upon the size of the growth so much as upon the inability of the patient to empty his bladder completely.

Operative Treatment.—It has long been known that large tumours of the uterus sometimes dwindle if the ovaries are removed by operation, and Professor William White of Philadelphia thought that prostatic growths might be similarly influenced by the removal of the testicles. Beyond question considerable improvement has followed this operation in cases of enlargement of the prostate, especially where the enlargement seemed to be general, soft and vascular. A similar though perhaps a slower effect is produced when the duct of the testis, the vas deferens, is divided on each side of the body. If there is no great urgency about the case this treatment may well be tried, the bladder being all the while duly emptied by catheter and washed by irrigation. But if the case is urgent, there being difficulty or bleeding with the passing of the catheter, the bladder being excessively irritable and the urine foul, a more radical measure is needed. The best operation is that upon the lines laid down by Robert McGill, who opened the bladder through the anterior abdominal wall and removed that part of the prostate gland which was blocking the water-way. McGill’s operation was improved upon by Eugene Fuller of New York, who, in 1895, published a full account of his procedure.1 Having opened the bladder from the front (as in supra-pubic lithotomy), he introduced his left index finger into the rectum and thrust the prostate gland towards the right index finger, which was then in the bladder. With the nail of that finger, or with the end of a pair of scissors, he made a rent in the mucous membrane of the bladder and the capsule of the gland, and then shelled out the mass of new tissue which had caused the prostatic enlargement. This operation is called “prostatectomy,” which means the removal of the prostate gland. The prostate gland, however, is not removed, but only a muscular and glandular mass (adenoma), which, growing within the prostatic capsule, encircles the urethra and squeezes the original gland tissue out of existence. Following on the lines of McGill and Fuller, P.J. Freyer has done excellent work in England towards placing this operation upon a sound basis.

Subsequently to the operation the bladder enjoys complete and needful rest, and the kidneys, which previously were in a condition of perpetual disturbance, improve in working power. The wound in the bladder and in the abdominal wall gradually closes; the function of the bladder returns, and the patient is soon able to go back to his usual occupation in greatly improved health and vigour. The operation is, necessarily, a serious one, and the age of the patient, the condition of his bladder, of his kidneys, and of his blood-vessels, require to be taken into consideration; still, the operation gives an excellent account of itself in statistics, and if a practical surgeon advises a patient to accept its risks his counsel may well be followed.

BLADDER-WORT, the name given to a submerged water plant, Utricularia vulgaris, with finely divided leaves upon which are borne small bladders provided with trap-door entrances which open only inwards. Small crustaceans and other aquatic animals push their way into the bladders and are unable to escape. The products of the decay of the organisms thus captured are absorbed into the plant by star-shaped hairs which line the interior of the bladder. In this way the plant is supplied with nitrogenous food from the animal kingdom. Bladder-wort bears small, yellow, two-lipped flowers on a stem which rises above the surface of the water. It is found in pools and ditches in the British Isles, and is widely distributed in the north temperate zone. The genus contains about two hundred species in tropical and temperate regions.

BLADES, WILLIAM (1824-1890), English printer and bibliographer, was born at Clapham, London, on the 5th of December 1824. In 1840 he was apprenticed to his father’s printing business in London, being subsequently taken into partnership. The firm was afterwards known as Blades, East & Blades. His interest in printing led him to make a study of the volumes produced by Caxton’s press, and of the early history of printing in England. His Life and Typography of William Caxton, England’s First Printer, was published in 1861-1863, and the conclusions which he set forth were arrived at by a careful examination of types in the early books, each class of type being traced from its first use to the time when, spoilt by wear, it passed out of Caxton’s hands. Some 450 volumes from the Caxton Press were thus carefully compared and classified in chronological order. In 1877 Blades took an active part in organizing the Caxton celebration, and strongly supported the foundation of the Library Association. He was a keen collector of old books, prints and medals. His publications relate chiefly to the early history of printing, the Enemies of Books, his most popular work, being produced in 1881. He died at Sutton in Surrey on the 27th of April 1890.

BLAENAVON, or Blaenafon, an urban district in the northern parliamentary division of Monmouthshire, England, 15 m. N. by W. of Newport, on the Great Western, London & North Western and Rhymney railways. Pop. (1901) 10,869. It lies in the uppermost part of the Afon Lwyd valley, at an elevation exceeding 1000 ft., in a wild and mountainous district, on the eastern 32 edge of the great coal and iron mining region of Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire. There are very extensive iron and steel works, with blast furnaces and rolling mills in the district, which employ the large industrial population.

BLAGOVYESHCHENSK, a town of East Siberia, chief town of the Amur government, on the left bank of the Amur, near its confluence with the Zeya in 50° 15′ N. lat. and 127° 38′ E. long., 610 m. by river above Khabarovsk. Founded in 1856, the town had, in 1900, 37,368 inhabitants, and is the seat of the bishop of Amur and Kamchatka. There are steam flour-mills and ironworks. It is a centre for tea exported to Russia, cattle brought from Transbaikalia and Mongolia for the Amur, and for grain.

BLAIKIE, WILLIAM GARDEN (1820-1899), Scottish divine, was born on the 5th of February 1820, at Aberdeen, where his father had been the first provost of the reformed corporation. After studying at the Marischal College, where Alexander Bain and David Masson were among his contemporaries, he went in 1839 to Edinburgh to complete his theological course under Thomas Chalmers. In 1842 he was presented to the living of Drumblade by Lord Kintore, with whose family he was connected. The Disruption controversy reached its climax immediately afterwards, and Blaikie, whose sympathies were entirely with Chalmers, was one of the 474 ministers who signed the deed of demission and gave up their livings. He was Free Church minister at Pilrig, between Edinburgh and Leith, from 1844 to 1868. Keenly interested in questions of social reform, his first publication was a pamphlet, which was afterwards enlarged into a book called Better Days for Working People. It received public commendation from Lord Brougham, and 60,000 copies were sold. He formed an association for providing better homes for working people, and the Pilrig Model Buildings were erected. He also undertook the editorship of the Free Church Magazine, and then that of the North British Review, which he carried on until 1863. In 1864 he was asked to undertake the Scottish editorship of the Sunday Magazine, and for this magazine much of his most characteristic literary work was done, especially in the editorial notes, then a new feature in magazine literature.

In 1868 Blaikie was called to the chair of apologetics and pastoral theology at New College, Edinburgh. In dealing with the latter subject he was seen at his very best. He had wide experience, a comprehensive grasp of facts, abundant sympathy, an extensive knowledge of men, and a great capacity for teaching. In 1870 he was one of two representatives chosen from the Free Church of Scotland to attend the united general assembly of the Presbyterian churches of the United States. He prolonged his visit to make a thorough acquaintance with American Presbyterianism, and this, followed by a similar tour in Europe, fitted him to become the real founder of the Presbyterian Alliance. Much of his strength in the later years of life was given to this work. In 1892 he was elected to the chairmanship of the general assembly, the last of the moderators who had entered the church before the disruption. In 1897 he resigned his professorship, and died on the 11th of June 1899.

Blaikie was an ardent philanthropist, and an active and intelligent temperance reformer, in days when this was far from easy. He raised £14,000 for the relief of the Waldensian churches. Although he took an active part in the affairs of his denomination, he was not a mere ecclesiastic. He had a keen eye for the evidences of spiritual growth or decline, and emphasized the need of maintaining a high level of spiritual life. He welcomed Moody to Scotland, and the evangelist made his headquarters with him during his first visit. His best books are The Work of the Ministry—A Manual of Homiletic and Pastoral Theology (1873); The Books of Samuel in the Expositors’ Bible Series (2 vols.); The Personal Life of David Livingstone (1880); After Fifty Years (1893), an account of the Disruption Movement in the form of letters of a grandfather; Thomas Chalmers (1896).

BLAINE, JAMES GILLESPIE (1830-1893), American statesman, was born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on the 31st of January 1830, of sturdy Scottish-Irish stock on the side of his father. He was the great-grandson of Colonel Ephraim Blaine (1741-1804), who during the War of Independence served in the American army, from 1778 to 1782 as commissary-general of the Northern Department. With many early evidences of literary capacity and political aptitude, J.G. Blaine graduated at Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1847, and subsequently taught successively in the Military Institute, Georgetown, Kentucky, and in the Institution for the Blind at Philadelphia. During this period, also, he studied law. Settling in Augusta, Maine, in 1854, he became editor of the Kennebec Journal, and subsequently of the Portland Advertiser. But his editorial work was soon abandoned for a more active public career. He was elected to the lower house of the state legislature in 1858, and served four years, the last two as speaker. He also became chairman of the Republican state committee in 1859, and for more than twenty years personally directed every campaign of his party.

In 1862 he was elected to Congress, serving in the House thirteen years (December 1863 to December 1876), followed by a little over four years in the Senate. He was chosen speaker of the House in 1869 and served three terms. The House was the fit arena for his political and parliamentary ability. He was a ready and powerful debater, full of resource, and dexterous in controversy. The tempestuous politics of the war and reconstruction period suited his aggressive nature and constructive talent. The measures for the rehabilitation of the states that had seceded from the Union occupied the chief attention of Congress for several years, and Blaine bore a leading part in framing and discussing them. The primary question related to the basis of representation upon which they should be restored to their full rank in the political system. A powerful section contended that the basis should be the body of legal voters, on the ground that the South could not then secure an increment of political power on account of the emancipated blacks unless these blacks were admitted to political rights. Blaine, on the other hand, contended that representation should be based on population instead of voters, as being fairer to the North, where the ratio of voters varied widely, and he insisted that it should be safeguarded by security for impartial suffrage. This view prevailed, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was substantially Blaine’s proposition. In the same spirit he opposed a scheme of military governments for the southern states, unless associated with a plan by which, upon the acceptance of prescribed conditions, they could release themselves from military rule and resume civil government. He was the first in Congress to oppose the claim, which gained momentary and widespread favour in 1867, that the public debt, pledged in coin, should be paid in greenbacks. The protection of naturalized citizens who, on return to their native land, were subject to prosecution on charges of disloyalty, enlisted his active interest and support, and the agitation, in which he was conspicuous, led to the treaty of 1870 between the United States and Great Britain, which placed adopted and native citizens on the same footing.

As the presidential election of 1876 approached, Blaine was clearly the popular favourite of his party. His chance for securing the nomination, however, was materially lessened by persistent charges which were brought against him by the Democrats that as a member of Congress he had been guilty of corruption in his relations with the Little Rock & Fort Smith and the Northern Pacific railways.1 By the majority of Republicans, at least, he was considered to have cleared himself completely, and in the Republican national convention he missed by only twenty-eight votes the nomination for president, being finally beaten by a combination of the supporters of all the other candidates. Thereupon he entered the Senate, where his activity was unabated. Currency legislation was especially prominent. Blaine, who had previously opposed greenback inflation now resisted depreciated silver coinage. He was the earnest champion of the advancement of American shipping, and advocated liberal subsidies, insisting that the policy of protection should be applied on sea as well as on land. The Republican national 33 convention of 1880, divided between the two nearly equal forces of Blaine and General U.S. Grant—John Sherman of Ohio also having a considerable following—struggled through thirty-six ballots, when the friends of Blaine, combining with those of Sherman, succeeded in nominating General James A. Garfield. In the new administration Blaine became secretary of state, but, owing to the assassination of President Garfield and the reorganization of the cabinet by President Chester A. Arthur, he held the office only until December 1881. His brief service was distinguished by several notable steps. In order to promote the friendly understanding and co-operation of the nations on the American continents he projected a Pan-American congress, which, after being arranged for, was frustrated by his retirement. He also sought to secure a modification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and in an extended correspondence with the British government strongly asserted the policy of an exclusive American control of any isthmian canal which might be built to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

With undiminished hold on the imagination and devotion of his followers he was nominated for president in 1884. After a heated canvass, in which he made a series of brilliant speeches, he was beaten by a narrow margin in New York. By many, including Blaine himself, the defeat was attributed to the effect of a phrase, “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,” used by a clergyman, Rev. Samuel D. Burchard (1812-1891), on the 29th of October 1884, in Blaine’s presence, to characterize what, in his opinion, the Democratic party stood for. The phrase was not Blaine’s, but his opponents made use of it to misrepresent his attitude toward the Roman Catholics, large numbers of whom are supposed, in consequence, to have withdrawn their support. Refusing to be a presidential candidate in 1888, he became secretary of state under President Harrison, and resumed his work which had been interrupted nearly eight years before. The Pan-American congress, then projected, now met in Washington, and Blaine, as its master spirit, presided over and guided its deliberation through its session of five months. Its most important conclusions were for reciprocity in trade, a continental railway and compulsory arbitration in international complications. Shaping the tariff legislation for this policy, Blaine negotiated a large number of reciprocity treaties which augmented the commerce of his country. He upheld American rights in Samoa, pursued a vigorous diplomacy with Italy over the lynching of eleven Italians, all except three of them American naturalized citizens, in New Orleans on the 14th of May 1891, held a firm attitude during the strained relations between the United States and Chile (growing largely out of the killing and wounding of American sailors of the U.S. ship “Baltimore” by Chileans in Valparaiso on the 16th of October 1891), and carried on with Great Britain a resolute controversy over the seal fisheries of Bering Sea,—a difference afterwards settled by arbitration. He resigned on the 4th of June 1892, on the eve of the meeting of the Republican national convention, wherein his name was ineffectually used, and he died at Washington, D.C., on the 27th of January 1803.

During his later years of leisure he wrote Twenty Years of Congress (1884-1886), a brilliant historical work in two volumes. Of singularly alert faculties, with a remarkable knowledge of the men and history of his country, and an extraordinary memory, his masterful talent for politics and state-craft, together with his captivating manner and engaging personality, gave him, for nearly two decades, an unrivalled hold upon the fealty and affection of his party.

BLAINVILLE, HENRI MARIE DUCROTAY DE (1777-1850), French naturalist, was born at Arques, near Dieppe, on the 12th of September 1777. About 1796 he went to Paris to study painting, but he ultimately devoted himself to natural history, and attracted the attention of Baron Cuvier, for whom he occasionally lectured at the Collège de France and at the Athenaeum. In 1812 he was aided by Cuvier to obtain the chair of anatomy and zoology in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris, but subsequently an estrangement grew up between the two men and ended in open enmity. In 1825 Blainville was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1830 he was appointed to succeed J.B. Lamarck in the chair of natural history at the museum. Two years later, on the death of Cuvier, he obtained the chair of comparative anatomy, which he continued to occupy for the space of eighteen years, proving himself no unworthy successor to his great teacher. He died at Paris on the 1st of May 1850. Besides many separate memoirs, he was the author of Prodrome d’une nouvelle distribution méthodique du règne animal (1816); Ostéographic ou description iconographique comparée du squelette, &c. (1839-1864); Faune française (1821-1830); Corns de physiologie générale et comparée (1833); Manuel de malacologie et de conchyliologie (1825-1827); Histoire des sciences de l’organisme (1845).

BLAIR, FRANCIS PRESTON (1791-1876), American journalist and politician, was born at Abingdon, Virginia, on the 12th of April 1791. He removed to Kentucky, graduated at Transylvania University in 1811, took to journalism, and was a contributor to Amos Kendall’s paper, the Argus, at Frankfort. In 1830, having become an ardent follower of Andrew Jackson, he was made editor of the Washington Globe, the recognized organ of the Jackson party. In this capacity, and as a member of Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet,” he long exerted a powerful influence; the Globe was the administration organ until 1841, and the chief Democratic organ until 1845; Blair ceased to be its editor in 1849. In 1848 he actively supported Martin Van Buren, the Free Soil candidate, for the presidency, and in 1852 he supported Franklin Pierce, but soon afterwards helped to organize the new Republican party, and presided at its preliminary convention at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in February 1856. He was influential in securing the nomination of John C. Frémont at the June convention (1856), and of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. After Lincoln’s re-election in 1864 Blair thought that his former close personal relations with the Confederate leaders might aid in bringing about a cessation of hostilities, and with Lincoln’s consent went unofficially to Richmond and induced President Jefferson Davis to appoint commissioners to confer with representatives of the United States. This resulted in the futile “Hampton Roads Conference” of the 3rd of February 1865 (see Lincoln, Abraham). After the Civil War Blair became a supporter of President Johnson’s reconstruction policy, and eventually rejoined the Democratic party. He died at Silver Spring, Maryland, on the 18th of October 1876.

His son, Montgomery Blair (1813-1883), politician and lawyer, was born in Franklin county, Kentucky, on the 10th of May 1813. He graduated at West Point in 1835, but, after a year’s service in the Seminole War, left the army, studied law, and began practice at St Louis, Missouri. After serving as United States district attorney (1839-1843), as mayor of St Louis (1842-1843), and as judge of the court of common pleas (1843-1849), he removed to Maryland (1852), and devoted himself to law practice principally in the Federal supreme court. He was United States solicitor in the court of claims from 1855 until 1858, and was associated with George T. Curtis as counsel for the plaintiff in the Dred Scott case in 1857. In 1860 he took an active part in the presidential campaign in behalf of Lincoln, in whose cabinet he was postmaster-general from 1861 until September 1864, when he resigned as a result of the hostility of the Radical Republican faction, who stipulated that Blair’s retirement should follow the withdrawal of Frémont’s name as a candidate for the presidential nomination in that year. Under his administration such reforms and improvements as the establishment of free city delivery, the adoption of a money order system, and the use of railway mail cars were instituted—the last having been suggested by George B. Armstrong (d. 1871), of Chicago, who from 1869 until his death was general superintendent of the United States railway mail service. Differing from the Republican party on the reconstruction policy, Blair gave his adherence to the Democratic party after the Civil 34 War. He died at Silver Spring, Maryland, on the 27th of July 1883.

Another son, Francis Preston Blair, jun. (1821-1875), soldier and political leader, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, on the 19th of February 1821. After graduating at Princeton in 1841 he practised law in St Louis, and later served in the Mexican War. He was ardently opposed to the extension of slavery and supported Martin Van Buren, the Free Soil candidate for the presidency in 1848. He served from 1852 to 1856 in the Missouri legislature as a Free Soil Democrat, in 1856 joined the Republican party, and in 1857-1860 and 1861-1862 was a member of Congress, where he proved an able debater. Immediately after South Carolina’s secession, Blair, believing that the southern leaders were planning to carry Missouri into the movement, began active efforts to prevent it and personally organized and equipped a secret body of 1000 men to be ready for the emergency. When hostilities became inevitable, acting in conjunction with Captain (later General) Nathaniel Lyon, he suddenly transferred the arms in the Federal arsenal at St Louis to Alton, Illinois, and a few days later (May 10, 1861) surrounded and captured a force of state guards which had been stationed at Camp Jackson in the suburbs of St Louis with the intention of seizing the arsenal. This action gave the Federal cause a decisive initial advantage in Missouri. Blair was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers in August 1862 and a major-general in November 1862. In Congress as chairman of the important military affairs committee his services were of the greatest value. He commanded a division in the Vicksburg campaign and in the fighting about Chattanooga, and was one of Sherman’s corps commanders in the final campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas. In 1866 like his father and brother he opposed the Congressional reconstruction policy, and on that issue left the Republican party. In 1868 he was the Democratic candidate for vice-president on the ticket with Horatio Seymour. In 1871-1873 he was a United States senator from Missouri. He died in St Louis, on the 8th of July 1875.

BLAIR, HUGH (1718-1800), Scottish Presbyterian divine, was born on the 7th of April 1718, at Edinburgh, where his father was a merchant. Entering the university in 1730 he graduated M.A. in 1739; his thesis, De Fundamentis et Obligations Legis Naturae, contains an outline of the moral principles afterwards unfolded in his sermons. He was licensed to preach in 1741, and a few months later the earl of Leven, hearing of his eloquence, presented him to the parish of Collessie in Fife. In 1743 he was elected to the second charge of the Canongate church, Edinburgh, where he ministered until removed to Lady Yester’s, one of the city churches, in 1754. In 1757 the university of St Andrews conferred on him the degree of D.D., and in the following year he was promoted to the High Church, Edinburgh, the most important charge in Scotland. In 1759 he began, under the patronage of Lord Kames, to deliver a course of lectures on composition, the success of which led to the foundation of a chair of rhetoric and belles lettres in the Edinburgh University. To this chair he was appointed in 1762, with a salary of £70 a year. Having long taken interest in the Celtic poetry of the Highlands, he published in 1763 a laudatory Dissertation on Macpherson’s Ossian, the authenticity of which he maintained. In 1777 the first volume of his Sermons appeared. It was succeeded by four other volumes, all of which met with the greatest success. Samuel Johnson praised them warmly, and they were translated into almost every language of Europe. In 1780 George III. conferred upon Blair a pension of £200 a year. In 1783 he retired from his professorship and published his Lectures on Rhetoric, which have been frequently reprinted. He died on the 27th of December 1800. Blair belonged to the “moderate” or latitudinarian party, and his Sermons have been criticized as wanting in doctrinal definiteness. His works display little originality, but are written in a flowing and elaborate style. He is remembered chiefly by the place he fills in the literature of his time. Blair’s Sermons is a typical religious book of the period that preceded the Anglican revival.

BLAIR, JAMES (1656-1743), American divine and educationalist, was born in Scotland, probably at Edinburgh, in 1656. He graduated M.A. at Edinburgh University in 1673, was beneficed in the Episcopal Church in Scotland, and for a time was rector of Cranston Parish in the diocese of Edinburgh. In 1682 he left Scotland for England, and three years later was sent by the bishop of London, Henry Compton, as a missionary to Virginia. He soon gained great influence over the colonists both in ecclesiastical and in civil affairs, and, according to Prof. Moses Coit Tyler, “probably no other man in the colonial time did so much for the intellectual life of Virginia.” He was the minister of Henrico parish from 1685 until 1694, of the Jamestown church from 1694 until 1710, and of Bruton church at Williamsburg from 1710 until his death. From 1689 until his death he was the commissary of the bishop of London for Virginia, the highest ecclesiastical position in the colony, his duties consisting “in visiting the parishes, correcting the lives of the clergy, and keeping them orderly.” In 1693, by the appointment of King William III., he became a member of the council of Virginia, of which he was for many years the president. Largely because of charges brought against them by Blair, Governor Sir Edmund Andros, Lieutenant-governor Francis Nicholson, and Lieutenant-governor Alexander Spotswood were removed in 1698, 1705 and 1722 respectively. Blair’s greatest service to the colony was rendered as the founder, and the president from 1693 until his death, of the College of William and Mary, for which he himself secured a charter in England. “Thus, James Blair may be called,” says Tyler, “the creator of the healthiest and most extensive intellectual influence that was felt in the Southern group of colonies before the Revolution.” He died on the 18th of April 1743, and was buried at Jamestown, Va. He published a collection of 117 discourses under the title Our Saviour’s Divine Sermon on the Mount (4 vols., 1722; second edition, 1732), and, in collaboration with Henry Hartwell and Edward Chilton, a work entitled The Present State of Virginia and the College (1727; written in 1693), probably the best account of the Virginia of that time.

BLAIR, ROBERT (1699-1746), Scottish poet, eldest son of the Rev. Robert Blair, one of the king’s chaplains, was born at Edinburgh in 1699. He was educated at Edinburgh University and in Holland, and in 1731 was appointed to the living of Athelstaneford in East Lothian. He married in 1738 Isabella, daughter of Professor William Law. The possession of a small fortune gave him leisure for his favourite pursuits, gardening and the study of English poets. He died at Athelstaneford on the 4th of February 1746. His only considerable work, The Grave (1743), is a poem written in blank verse of great vigour and freshness, and is much less conventional than its gloomy subject might lead one to expect. Its religious subject no doubt contributed to its great popularity, especially in Scotland; but the vogue it attained was justified by its picturesque imagery and occasional felicity of expression. It inspired William Blake to undertake a series of twelve illustrative designs, which were engraved by Louis Schiavonetti, and published in 1808.

BLAIR ATHOLL (Gaelic blair, “a plain”), a village and parish of Perthshire, Scotland, 35¼ m. N.W. of Perth by the Highland railway. Pop. (1901) 367; of parish, 1722. It is situated at the confluence of the Tilt and the Garry. The oldest part of Blair Castle, a seat of the duke of Atholl, dates from 1269; as restored and enlarged in 1869-1872 from the plans of David Bryce, R.S.A., it is a magnificent example of the Scottish baronial style. It was occupied by the marquess of Montrose prior to the battle of Tippermuir in 1644, stormed by the Cromwellians in 1653, and garrisoned on behalf of James II. in 1689. The Young Pretender stayed in it in 1743, and the duke of 35 Cumberland in 1746. The body of Viscount Dundee, conveyed hither from the battlefield of Killiecrankie, was buried in the church of Old Blair, in which a monument was erected to his memory in 1889 by the 7th duke of Atholl. The grounds surrounding the castle are among the most beautiful in the Highlands. A golf course has been laid down south-east of the village, between the railway and the Garry, and every September a great display of Highland games is held. Ben-y-gloe (3671 ft. high), the scene of the hunt given in 1529 by the earl of Atholl in honour of James V. and the queen dowager, may be climbed by way of Fender Burn, a left-hand tributary of the Tilt. The falls of Fender, near the old bridge of Tilt, are eclipsed by the falls of Bruar, 4 m. west of Blair Atholl, formed by the Bruar, which, rising in Ben Dearg (3304 ft.), flows into the Garry after an impetuous course of 10 m.

BLAIRGOWRIE, a police burgh of Perthshire, Scotland, situated on the Ericht. Pop. (1901) 3378. It is the terminus of a branch line of the Caledonian railway from Coupar Angus, from which it is 4¾ m. distant, and is 16 m. N. by E. of Perth by road. The town is entirely modern, and owes its progress to the water-power supplied by the Ericht for linen and jute factories. There are also sawmills, breweries and a large factory for bee appliances. Strawberries, raspberries and other fruits are largely grown in the neighbourhood. A park was presented to the town in 1892. On the left bank of the Ericht, opposite Blairgowrie, with which it is connected by a four-arched bridge, stands the town and police burgh of Rattray (pop. 2019), where there are flax and jute mills. Donald Cargill the Covenanter, who was executed at Edinburgh, was a native of the parish. Four miles west of Blairgowrie, on the coach road to Dunkeld, lies Loch Clunie, of some interest historically. On a crannog in the lake are the ruins of a small castle which belonged to James (“the Admirable”) Crichton, and the large mound near the loch was the site of the castle in which Edward I. lodged on one of his Scottish expeditions.

BLAKE, EDWARD (1833-  ), Irish-Canadian statesman, eldest son of William Hume Blake of Cashel Grove, Co. Galway, who settled in Canada in 1832, and there became a distinguished lawyer and chancellor of Ontario, was born on the 13th of October 1833 at Adelaide in Middlesex county, Ontario. Educated at Upper Canada College and the university of Toronto, Blake was called to the bar in 1856 and quickly obtained a good practice, becoming Q.C. in 1864. In 1867 he was elected member for West Durham in the Dominion parliament, and for South Bruce in the provincial legislature, in which he became leader of the Liberal opposition two years later. On the defeat of John Sandfield Macdonald’s government in 1871 Blake became prime minister of Ontario, but resigned this office the same year in consequence of the abolition of dual representation. He declined the leadership of the Liberal party in the Dominion parliament, but, having taken an active part in bringing about the overthrow of Sir John Macdonald’s ministry in 1873, joined the Liberal cabinet of Alexander Mackenzie, though without portfolio or salary. Impaired health soon compelled him to resign, and to take the voyage to Europe; on his return in 1875 he rejoined the cabinet as minister of justice, in which office it fell to him to take the chief part in framing the constitution of the supreme court of Canada. Continued ill-health compelled him in 1877 again to seek rest in Europe, having first exchanged the portfolio of justice for the less exacting office of president of the council. During his absence the Liberal government was driven from power by the elections of 1878; and Blake himself, having failed to secure re-election, was for a short time without a seat in parliament. From 1880 to 1887 he was leader of the opposition, being succeeded on his resignation of the position in the latter year by Mr (afterwards Sir) Wilfrid Laurier. In 1892 he became a member of the British House of Commons as an Irish Nationalist, being elected for South Longford. But he did not fulfil the expectations which had been formed on the strength of his colonial reputation; he took no very prominent part in debate, and gave little evidence of his undoubted oratorical gifts. In 1907 he retired from public life. In 1858 he had married Margaret, daughter of Benjamin Cronyn, first bishop of Huron.

BLAKE, ROBERT (1509-1657), English parliamentarian and admiral, was born at Bridgwater in Somersetshire. The day of his birth is not known, but he was baptized on the 27th of September 1599. Blake was the eldest son of a well-to-do merchant, and received his early education at the grammar school of Bridgwater. In 1615 he was sent to Oxford, entering at first St Alban’s Hall, but removing afterwards to Wadham College, then recently founded. He remained at the university till 1625, but failed to obtain any college preferment. Nothing is known of his life with certainty for the next fifteen years. An anonymous Dutch writer, in the Hollandische Mercurius (1652), represents him as saying that he had lived in Schiedam “for five or six years” in his youth. He doubtless engaged in trade, and apparently with success. When, after eleven years of kingship without parliaments, a parliament was summoned to meet in April 1640, Blake was elected to represent his native borough. This parliament, named “the Short,” was dissolved in three weeks, and the career of Blake as a politician was suspended. Two years later the inevitable conflict began. Blake declared for the Parliament, and served under Sir John Horner. In 1643 he was entrusted with the command of one of the forts of Bristol. This he stoutly held during the siege of the town by Prince Rupert, and earned the approval of parliament by refusing to surrender his post till duly informed of the capitulation. In 1644 he gained high distinction by the resolute defence of Lyme in Dorsetshire. The siege was raised on the 23rd of May, and on the 8th of July Blake took Taunton by surprise, and notwithstanding its imperfect defences and inadequate supplies, held the town for the Parliament against two sieges by the Royalists until July 1645, when it was relieved by Fairfax. In 1645 he re-entered parliament as member for Taunton, when the Royalist Colonel Windham was expelled.

He adhered to the Parliamentary party after the king’s death, and within a month (February 1649) was appointed, with Colonels Dean and Popham, to the command of the fleet, under the title of General of the Sea. In April he was sent in pursuit of Prince Rupert, who with the Royalist fleet had entered the harbour of Kinsale in Ireland. There he blockaded the prince for six months; and when the latter, in want of provisions, and hopeless of relief, succeeded in making his escape with the fleet and in reaching the Tagus, Blake followed him thither, and again blockaded him for some months. The king of Portugal refusing permission for Blake to attack his enemy, the latter made reprisals by falling on the Portuguese fleet, richly laden, returning from Brazil. He captured seventeen ships and burnt three, bringing his prizes home without molestation. After revictualling his fleet, he sailed again, captured a French man-of-war, and then pursued Prince Rupert, who had been asked to go away by the Portuguese and had entered the Mediterranean. In November 1650 Blake destroyed the bulk of the Royalist squadron near Cartagena. The thanks of parliament were voted to Blake, and he received a grant of £1000. He was continued in his office of admiral and general of the sea; and in May following he took, in conjunction with Ayscue, the Scilly Islands. For this service the thanks of parliament were again awarded him, and he was soon after made a member of the council of state.

In 1652 war broke out with the Dutch, who had made great preparations for the conflict. In March the command of the fleet was given to Blake for nine months; and in the middle of May the Dutch fleet of forty-five ships, led by their great admiral Tromp, appeared in the Downs. Blake, who had only twenty ships, sailed to meet them, and the battle took place off Dover on the 19th of May. The Dutch were defeated in an engagement of four or five hours, lost two ships, and withdrew under cover of darkness. Attempts at accommodation were made by the states, but they failed. Early in July war was formally declared, 36 and in the same month Blake captured a large part of the Dutch fishery-fleet and the twelve men-of-war that formed their convoy. On the 28th of September Blake and Penn again encountered the Dutch fleet, now commanded by De Ruyter and De Witt, off the Kentish Knock, defeated it, and chased it for two days. The Dutch took refuge in Goree. A third battle was fought near the end of November. By this time the ships under Blake’s command had been reduced in number to forty, and nearly the half of these were useless for want of seamen. Tromp, who had been reinstated in command, appeared in the Downs, with a fleet of eighty ships besides ten fireships. Blake, nevertheless, risked a battle off Dungeness, but was defeated, and withdrew into the Thames. The English fleet having been refitted, put to sea again in February 1653; and on the 18th Blake, at the head of eighty ships, encountered Tromp in the Channel. The Dutch force, according to Clarendon, numbered 100 ships of war, but according to the official reports of the Dutch, only seventy. The battle was severe, and continued through three days, the Dutch, however, retreating, and taking refuge in the shallow waters off the French coast. In this action Blake was severely wounded. The three English admirals put to sea again in May; and on the 3rd and 4th of June another battle was fought near the North Foreland. On the first day Dean and Monk were repulsed by Tromp; but on the second day the scales were turned by the arrival of Blake, and the Dutch retreated to the Texel.

Ill-health now compelled Blake to retire from the service for a time, and he did not appear again on the seas for about eighteen months; meanwhile he sat as a member of the Little Parliament (Barebones’s). In November 1654 he was selected by Cromwell to conduct a fleet to the Mediterranean to exact compensation from the duke of Tuscany, the knights of Malta, and the piratical states of North Africa, for wrongs done to English merchants. This mission he executed with his accustomed spirit and with complete success. Tunis alone dared to resist his demands, and Tunis paid the penalty of the destruction of its two fortresses by English guns. In the winter of 1655-1656, war being declared against Spain, Blake was sent to cruise off Cadiz and the neighbouring coasts, to intercept the Spanish shipping. One of his captains captured a part of the Plate fleet in September 1656. In April 1657 Blake, then in very ill health, suffering from dropsy and scurvy, and anxious to have assistance in his arduous duties, heard that the Plate fleet lay at anchor in the bay of Santa Cruz, in the island of Teneriffe. The position was a very strong one, defended by a castle and several forts with guns. Under the shelter of these lay a fleet of sixteen ships drawn up in crescent order. Captain Stayner was ordered to enter the bay and fall on the fleet. This he did. Blake followed him. Broadsides were poured into the castle and the forts at the same time; and soon nothing was left but ruined walls and charred fragments of burnt ships. The wind was blowing hard into the bay; but suddenly, and fortunately for the heroic Blake, it shifted, and carried him safely out to sea. “The whole action,” says Clarendon, “was so incredible that all men who knew the place wondered that any sober man, with what courage soever endowed, would ever have undertaken it; and they could hardly persuade themselves to believe what they had done; while the Spaniards comforted themselves with the belief that they were devils and not men who had destroyed them in such a manner.” The English lost one ship and 200 men killed and wounded. The thanks of parliament were voted to officers and men; and a very costly jewel (diamond ring) was presented to Blake, “as a testimony,” says Cromwell in his letter of 10th June, “of our own and the parliament’s good acceptance of your carriage in this action.” “This was the last action of the brave Blake.”

After again cruising for a time off Cadiz, his health failing more and more, he was compelled to make homewards before the summer was over. He died at sea, but within sight of Plymouth, on the 17th of August 1657. His body was brought to London and embalmed, and after lying in state at Greenwich House was interred with great pomp and solemnity in Westminster Abbey. In 1661 Charles II. ordered the exhumation of Blake’s body, with those of the mother and daughter of Cromwell and several others. They were cast out of the abbey, and were reburied in the churchyard of St Margaret’s. “But that regard,” says Johnson, “which was denied his body has been paid to his better remains, his name and his memory. Nor has any writer dared to deny him the praise of intrepidity, honesty, contempt of wealth, and love of his country.” Clarendon bears the following testimony to his excellence as a commander:—“He was the first man that declined the old track, and made it apparent that the science might be attained in less time than was imagined. He was the first man that brought ships to contemn castles on the shore, which had ever been thought very formidable, but were discovered by him to make a noise only, and to fright those who could be rarely hurt by them.”

BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827), English poet and painter, was born in London, on the 28th of November 1757. His father, James Blake, kept a hosier’s shop in Broad Street, Golden Square; and from the scanty education which the young artist received, it may be judged that the circumstances of the family were not very prosperous. For the facts of William Blake’s early life the world is indebted to a little book, called A Father’s Memoirs on a Child, written by Dr Malkin in 1806. Here we learn that young Blake quickly developed a taste for design, which his father appears to have had sufficient intelligence to recognize and assist by every means in his power. At the age of ten the boy was sent to a drawing school kept by Henry Pars in the Strand, and at the same time he was already cultivating his own taste by constant attendance at the different art sale rooms, where he was known as the “little connoisseur.” Here he began to collect prints after Michelangelo, and Raphael, Dürer and Heemskerk, while at the school in the Strand he had the opportunity of drawing from the antique. After four years of this preliminary instruction Blake entered upon another branch of art study. In 1777 he was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver of repute, and with him he remained seven years. His apprenticeship had an important bearing on Blake’s artistic education, and marks the department of art in which he was made technically proficient. In 1778, at the end of his apprenticeship, he proceeded to the school of the Royal Academy, where he continued his early study from the antique, and had for the first time an opportunity of drawing from the living model.

This is in brief all that is known of Blake’s artistic education. That he ever, at the academy or elsewhere, systematically studied painting we do not know; but that he had already begun the practice of water colour for himself is ascertained. So far, however, the course of his training in art schools, and under Basire, was calculated to render him proficient only as a draughtsman and an engraver. He had learned how to draw, and he had mastered besides the practical difficulties of engraving, and with these qualifications he entered upon his career. In 1780 he exhibited a picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition, conjectured to have been executed in water colours, and he continued to contribute to the annual exhibitions up to the year 1808. In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market-gardener at Battersea, with whom he lived always on affectionate terms, and the young couple after their marriage established themselves in Green Street, Leicester Fields. Blake had already become acquainted with some of the rising artists of his time, amongst them Stothard, Flaxman and Fuseli, and he now began to see something of literary society. At the house of the Rev. Henry Mathew, in Rathbone Place, he used to recite and sometimes to sing poems of his own composition, and it was through the influence of this gentleman, combined with that of Flaxman, that Blake’s first volume of poetry was printed and published in 1783. From this time forward the artist came before the world in a double capacity. By education as well as native 37 talent, he was pledged to the life of a painter, and these Poetical Sketches, though they are often no more than the utterances of a boy, are no less decisive in marking Blake as a future poet.

For a while the two gifts are exhibited in association. To the close of his life Blake continued to print and publish, after a manner of his own, the inventions of his verse illustrated by original designs, but there is a certain period in his career when the union of the two gifts is peculiarly close, and when their service to one another is unquestionable. In 1784 Blake, moving from Green Street, set up in company with a fellow-pupil, Parker, as print-seller and engraver next to his father’s house in Broad Street, Golden Square, but in 1787 this partnership was severed, and he established an independent business in Poland Street. It was from this house, and in 1787, that the Songs of Innocence were published, a work that must always be remarkable for beauty both of verse and of design, as well as for the singular method by which the two were combined and expressed by the artist. Blake became in fact his own printer and publisher. He engraved upon copper, by a process devised by himself, both the text of his poems and the surrounding decorative design, and to the pages printed from the copper plates an appropriate colouring was afterwards added by hand. The poetic genius already discernible in the first volume of Poetical Sketches is here more decisively expressed, and some of the songs in this volume deserve to take rank with the best things of their kind in our literature. In an age of enfeebled poetic style, when Wordsworth, with more weighty apparatus, had as yet scarcely begun his reform of English versification, Blake, unaided by any contemporary influence, produced a work of fresh and living beauty; and if the Songs of Innocence established Blake’s claim to the title of poet, the setting in which they were given to the world proved that he was also something more. For the full development of his artistic powers we have to wait till a later date, but here at least he exhibits a just and original understanding of the sources of decorative beauty. Each page of these poems is a study of design, full of invention, and often wrought with the utmost delicacy of workmanship. The artist retained to the end this feeling for decorative effect; but as time went on, he considerably enlarged the imaginative scope of his work, and decoration then became the condition rather than the aim of his labour.

Notwithstanding the distinct and precious qualities of this volume, it attracted but slight attention, a fact perhaps not very wonderful, when the system of publication is taken into account. Blake, however, proceeded with other work of the same kind. The same year he published The Book of Thel, more decidedly mystic in its poetry, but scarcely less beautiful as a piece of illumination; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell followed in 1790; and in 1793 there are added The Gates of Paradise, The Vision of the Daughters of Albion, and some other “Prophetic Books.” It becomes abundantly clear on reaching this point in his career that Blake’s utterances cannot be judged by ordinary rules. The Songs of Experience, put forth in 1794 as a companion to the earlier Songs of Innocence, are for the most part intelligible and coherent, but in these intervening works of prophecy, as they were called by the author, we get the first public expression of that phase of his character and of his genius upon which a charge of insanity has been founded. The question whether Blake was or was not mad seems likely to remain in dispute, but there can be no doubt whatever that he was at different periods of his life under the influence of illusions for which there are no outward facts to account, and that much of what he wrote is so far wanting in the quality of sanity as to be without a logical coherence. On the other hand, it is equally clear that no madness imputed to Blake could equal that which would be involved in the rejection of his work on this ground. The greatness of Blake’s mind is even better established than its frailty, and in considering the work that he has left we must remember that it is by the sublimity of his genius, and not by any mental defect, that he is most clearly distinguished from his fellows. With the publication of the Songs of Experience Blake’s poetic career, so far at least as ordinary readers are concerned, may be said to close. A writer of prophecy he continued for many years, but the works by which he is best known in poetry are those earlier and simpler efforts, supplemented by a few pieces taken from various sources, some of which were of later production. But although Blake the poet ceases in a general sense at this date, Blake the artist is only just entering upon his career. In the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and even in some of the earlier Books of Prophecy, the two gifts worked together in perfect balance and harmony; but at this point the supremacy of the artistic faculty asserts itself, and for the remainder of his life Blake was pre-eminently a designer and engraver. The labour of poetical composition continues, but the product passes beyond the range of general comprehension; while, with apparent inconsistency, the work of the artist gains steadily in strength and coherence, and never to the last loses its hold upon the understanding. It may almost be said without exaggeration that his earliest poetic work, The Songs of Innocence, and nearly his latest effort in design, the illustrations to The Book of Job, take rank among the sanest and most admirable products of his genius. Nor is the fact, astonishing enough at first sight, quite beyond a possible explanation. As Blake advanced in his poetic career, he was gradually hindered and finally overpowered by a tendency that was most serviceable to him in design. His inclination to substitute a symbol for a conception, to make an image do duty for an idea, became an insuperable obstacle to literary success. He endeavoured constantly to treat the intellectual material of verse as if it could be moulded into sensuous form, with the inevitable result that as the ideas to be expressed advanced in complexity and depth of meaning, his poetic gifts became gradually more inadequate to the task of interpretation. The earlier poems dealing with simpler themes, and put forward at a time when the bent of the artist’s mind was not strictly determined, do not suffer from this difficulty; the symbolism then only enriches an idea of no intellectual intricacy; but when Blake began to concern himself with profounder problems the want of a more logical understanding of language made itself strikingly apparent. If his ways of thought and modes of workmanship had not been developed with an intensity almost morbid, he would probably have been able to distinguish and keep separate the double functions of art and literature. As it is, however, he remains as an extreme illustration of the ascendancy of the artistic faculty. For this tendency to translate ideas into image, and to find for every thought, however simple or sublime, a precise and sensuous form, is of the essence of pure artistic invention. If this be accepted as the dominant bent of Blake’s genius, it is not so wonderful that his work in art should have strengthened in proportion as his poetic powers waned; but whether the explanation satisfies all the requirements of the case or not, the fact remains, and cannot be overlooked by any student of Blake’s career.

In 1796 Blake was actively employed in the work of illustration. Edwards, a bookseller of New Bond Street, projected a new edition of Young’s Night Thoughts, and Blake was chosen to illustrate the work. It was to have been issued in parts, but for some reason not very clear the enterprise failed, and only a first part, including forty-three designs, was given to the world. These designs were engraved by Blake himself, and they are interesting not only for their own merit but for the peculiar system by which the illustration has been associated with the text. It was afterwards discovered that the artist had executed original designs in water-colour for the whole series, and these drawings, 537 in number, form one of the most interesting records of Blake’s genius. Gilchrist, the painter’s biographer, in commenting upon the engraved plates, regrets the absence of colour, “the use of which Blake so well understood, to relieve his simple design and give it significance,” and an examination of the original water-colour drawings fully supports the justice of his criticism. Soon after the publication of this work Blake was introduced by Flaxman to the poet Hayley, and in the year 1801 he accepted the suggestion of the latter, that he should take up his residence at Felpham in Sussex. The mild and 38 amiable poet had planned to write a life of Cowper, and for the illustration of this and other works he sought Blake’s help and companionship. The residence at Felpham continued for three years, partly pleasant and partly irksome to Blake, but apparently not very profitable to the progress of his art. One of the annoyances of his stay was a malicious prosecution for treason set on foot by a common soldier whom Blake had summarily ejected from his garden; but a more serious drawback was the increasing irritation which the painter seems to have experienced from association with Hayley. In 1804 Blake returned to London, to take up his residence in South Moulton Street, and as the fruit of his residence in Felpham, he published, in the manner already described, the prophetic books called the Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion, and Milton. The first of these is a very notable performance in regard to artistic invention. Many of the designs stand out from the text in complete independence, and are now and then of the very finest quality.

In the years 1804-1805 Blake executed a series of designs in illustration of Robert Blair’s The Grave, of much beauty and grandeur, though showing stronger traces of imitation of Italian art than any earlier production. These designs were purchased from the artist by an adventurous and unscrupulous publisher, Cromek, for the paltry sum of £21, and afterwards published in a series of engravings by Schiavonetti. Despite the ill treatment Blake received in the matter, and the other evils, including a quarrel with his friend Stothard as to priority of invention of a design illustrating the Canterbury Pilgrims, which his association with Cromek involved, the book gained for him a larger amount of popularity than he at any other time secured. Stothard’s picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims was exhibited in 1807, and in 1809 Blake, in emulation of his rival’s success, having himself painted in water-colour a picture of the same subject, opened an exhibition, and drew up a Descriptive Catalogue, curious and interesting, and containing a very valuable criticism of Chaucer.

The remainder of the artist’s life is not outwardly eventful. In 1813 he formed, through the introduction of George Cumberland of Bristol, a valuable friendship with John Linnell and other rising water-colour painters. Amongst the group Blake seems to have found special sympathy in the society of John Varley, who, himself addicted to astrology, encouraged Blake to cultivate his gift of inspired vision; and it is probably to this influence that we are indebted for several curious drawings made from visions, especially the celebrated “ghost of a flea” and the very humorous portrait of the builder of the Pyramids. In 1821 Blake removed to Fountain Court, in the Strand, where he died on the 12th of August 1827. The chief work of these last years was the splendid series of engraved designs in illustration of the book of Job. Here we find the highest imaginative qualities of Blake’s art united to the technical means of expression which he best understood. Both the invention and the engraving are in all ways remarkable, and the series may fairly be cited in support of a very high estimate of his genius. None of his works is without the trace of that peculiar artistic instinct and power which seizes the pictorial element of ideas, simple or sublime, and translates them into the appropriate language of sense; but here the double faculty finds the happiest exercise. The grandeur of the theme is duly reflected in the simple and sublime images of the artist’s design, and in the presence of these plates we are made to feel the power of the artist over the expressional resources of human form, as well as his sympathy with the imaginative significance of his subject.

BLAKELOCK, RALPH ALBERT (1847-  ), American painter, was born in New York, on the 15th of October, 1847. He graduated at the College of the City of New York in 1867. In art he was self-taught and markedly original. Until ill-health necessitated the abandonment of his profession, he was a most prolific worker, his subjects including pictures of North American Indian life, and landscapes—notably such canvases as “The Indian Fisherman”; “Ta-wo-koka: or Circle Dance”; “Silvery Moonlight”; “A Waterfall by Moonlight”; “Solitude”; and “Moonlight on Long Island Sound.”

BLAKENEY, WILLIAM BLAKENEY, Baron (1672-1761), British soldier, was born at Mount Blakeney in Limerick in 1672. Destined by his father for politics, he soon showed a decided preference for a military career, and at the age of eighteen headed the tenants in defending the Blakeney estate against the Rapparees. As a volunteer he went to the war in Flanders, and at the siege of Venlo in 1702 won his commission. He served as a subaltern throughout Marlborough’s campaigns, and is said to have been the first to drill troops by signal of drum or colour. For many years after the peace of Utrecht he served unnoticed, and was sixty-five years of age before he became a colonel. This neglect, which was said to be due to the hostility of Lord Verney, ceased when the duke of Richmond was appointed colonel of Blakeney’s regiment, and thenceforward his advance was rapid. Brigadier-general in the Cartagena expedition of 1741, and major-general a little later, he distinguished himself by his gallant and successful defence of Stirling Castle against the Highlanders in 1745. Two years later George II. made him lieutenant-general and lieutenant-governor of Minorca. The governor of that island never set foot in it, and Blakeney was left in command for ten years.

In 1756 the Seven Years’ War was preluded by a swift descent of the French on Minorca. Fifteen thousand troops under marshal the duc de Richelieu, escorted by a strong squadron under the marquis de la Gallisonnière, landed on the island on the 18th of April, and at once began the siege of Fort St Philip, where Blakeney commanded at most some 5000 soldiers and workmen. The defence, in spite of crumbling walls and rotted gun platforms, had already lasted a month when a British fleet under vice-admiral the Hon. John Byng appeared. La Gallisonnière and Byng fought, on the 20th of May, an indecisive battle, after which the relieving squadron sailed away and Blakeney was left to his fate. A second expedition subsequently appeared off Minorca, but it was then too late, for after a heroic resistance of seventy-one days the old general had been compelled to surrender the fort to Richelieu (April 18-June 28, 1756). Only the ruined fortifications were the prize of the victors. Blakeney and his little garrison were transported to Gibraltar with absolute liberty to serve again. Byng was tried and executed; Blakeney, on his return to England, found himself the hero of the nation. Rewards came freely to the veteran. He was made colonel of the Enniskillen regiment of infantry, knight of the Bath, and Baron Blakeney of Mount Blakeney in the Irish peerage. A little later Van Most’s statue of him was erected in Dublin, and his popularity continued unabated for the short remainder of his life. He died on the 20th of September 1761, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

BLAKESLEY, JOSEPH WILLIAMS (1808-1885), English divine, was born in London on the 6th of March 1808, and was educated at St Paul’s school, London, and at Corpus Christi and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge. In 1831 he was elected a fellow, and in 1839 a tutor of Trinity. In 1833 he took holy orders, and from 1845 to 1872 held the college living of Ware, Hertfordshire. Over the signature “Hertfordshire Incumbent” he contributed a large number of letters to The Times on the leading social and political subjects of the day, and he also wrote many reviews of books for that paper. In 1863 he was made a canon of Canterbury, and in 1872 dean of Lincoln. Dean Blakesley was the 39 author of the first English Life of Aristotle (1839), an edition of Herodotus (1852-1854) in the Bibliotheca Classica, and Four Months in Algeria (1859). He died on the 18th of April 1885.

BLAMIRE, SUSANNA (1747-1794), English poet, daughter of a Cumberland yeoman, was born at Cardew Hall, near Dalston, in January 1747. Her mother died while she was a child, and she was brought up by her aunt, a Mrs Simpson of Thackwood, who sent her niece to the village school at Raughton Head. Susanna Blamire’s earliest poem is “Written in a Churchyard, on seeing a number of cattle grazing,” in imitation of Gray. She lived an uneventful life among the farmers of the neighbourhood, and her gaiety and good-humour made her a favourite in rustic society. In 1767 her elder sister Sarah married Colonel Graham of Gartmore. “An Epistle to her friends at Gartmore” gives a playful description of the monotonous simplicity of her life. To her Perthshire visits her songs in the Scottish vernacular are no doubt partly due. Her chief friend was Catharine Gilpin of Scaleby Castle. The two ladies spent the winters together in Carlisle, and wrote poems in common. Susanna Blamire died in Carlisle on the 5th of April 1794. The poems which were not collected during her lifetime, were first published in 1842 by Henry Lonsdale as The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire, “the Muse of Cumberland,” with a memoir by Mr Patrick Maxwell. Some of her songs rank among the very best of north-country lyrics. “And ye shall walk in silk attire” and “What ails this heart o’ mine,” are well known, and were included in Johnson’s Scots’ Musical Museum.

BLANC, (Jean Joseph Charles) LOUIS (1811-1882), French politician and historian, was born on the 29th of October 1811 at Madrid, where his father held the post of inspector-general of finance under Joseph Bonaparte. Failing to receive aid from Pozzo di Borgo, his mother’s uncle, Louis Blanc studied law in Paris, living in poverty, and became a contributor to various journals. In the Revue du progrès, which he founded, he published in 1839 his study on L’Organisation du travail. The principles laid down in this famous essay form the key to Louis Blanc’s whole political career. He attributes all the evils that afflict society to the pressure of competition, whereby the weaker are driven to the wall. He demanded the equalization of wages, and the merging of personal interests in the common good—“à chacun selon ses besoins, de chacun selon ses facultés.” This was to be effected by the establishment of “social workshops,” a sort of combined co-operative society and trade-union, where the workmen in each trade were to unite their efforts for their common benefit. In 1841 he published his Histoire de dix ans 1830-1840, an attack upon the monarchy of July. It ran through four editions in four years.

In 1847 he published the two first volumes of his Histoire de la Revolution Française. Its publication was interrupted by the revolution of 1848, when Louis Blanc became a member of the provisional government. It was on his motion that, on the 25th of February, the government undertook “to guarantee the existence of the workmen by work”; and though his demand for the establishment of a ministry of labour was refused—as beyond the competence of a provisional government—he was appointed to preside over the government labour commission (Commission du Gouvernement pour les travailleurs) established at the Luxembourg to inquire into and report on the labour question. On the 10th of May he renewed, in the National Assembly, his proposal for a ministry of labour, but the temper of the majority was hostile to socialism, and the proposal was again rejected. His responsibility for the disastrous experiment of the national workshops he himself denied in his Appel aux honnêtes gens (Paris, 1849), written in London after his flight; but by the insurgent mob of the 15th of May and by the victorious Moderates alike he was regarded as responsible. Between the sansculottes, who tried to force him to place himself at their head, and the national guards, who maltreated him, he was nearly done to death. Rescued with difficulty, he escaped with a false passport to Belgium, and thence to London; in his absence he was condemned by the special tribunal established at Bourges, in contumaciam, to deportation. Against trial and sentence he alike protested, developing his protest in a series of articles in the Nouveau Monde, a review published in Paris under his direction. These he afterwards collected and published as Pages de l’histoire de la revolution de 1848 (Brussels, 1850).

During his stay in England he made use of the unique collection of materials for the revolutionary period preserved at the British Museum to complete his Histoire de la Révolution Française 12 vols. (1847-1862). In 1858 he published a reply to Lord Normanby’s A Year of Revolution in Paris (1858), which he developed later into his Histoire de la révolution de 1848 (2 vols., 1870-1880). As far back as 1839 Louis Blanc had vehemently opposed the idea of a Napoleonic restoration, predicting that it would be “despotism without glory,” “the Empire without the Emperor.” He therefore remained in exile till the fall of the Second Empire in September 1870, after which he returned to Paris and served as a private in the national guard. On the 8th of February 1871 he was elected a member of the National Assembly, in which he maintained that the republic was “the necessary form of national sovereignty,” and voted for the continuation of the war; yet, though a member of the extreme Left, he was too clear-minded to sympathize with the Commune, and exerted his influence in vain on the side of moderation. In 1878 he advocated the abolition of the presidency and the senate. In January 1879 he introduced into the chamber a proposal for the amnesty of the Communists, which was carried. This was his last important act. His declining years were darkened by ill-health and by the death, in 1876, of his wife (Christina Groh), an Englishwoman whom he had married in 1865. He died at Cannes on the 6th of December 1882, and on the 12th of December received a state funeral in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise.

Louis Blanc possessed a picturesque and vivid style, and considerable power of research; but the fervour with which he expressed his convictions, while placing him in the first rank of orators, tended to turn his historical writings into political pamphlets. His political and social ideas have had a great influence on the development of socialism in France. His Discours politiques (1847-1881) was published in 1882. His most important works, besides those already mentioned, are Lettres sur l’Angleterre (1866-1867), Dix années de l’histoire de l’Angleterre (1879-1881), and Questions d’aujourd’hui et de demain (1873-1884).

BLANC, MONT, the culminating point (15,782 ft.) of the mountain range of the same name, which forms part of the Pennine Alps, and is divided unequally between France, Italy and Switzerland. The actual highest summit is wholly French and is the loftiest peak in the Alps, and in Europe also, if certain peaks in the Caucasus be excluded. At Geneva the mountain was in former days named the Montagne Maudite, but the present name seems to have been always used locally. On the north is the valley of Chamonix, and on the east the head of the valley of Aosta. Among the great glaciers which stream from the peak the most noteworthy are those of Bossons and Taconnaz (northern slope) and of Brenva and Miage (southern slope). The first ascent was made in 1786 by two Chamonix men, Jacques Balmat and Dr Michel Paccard, and the second in 1787 by Balmat with two local men. Later in 1787 H.B. de Saussure made the third ascent, memorable in many respects, and was followed a week later by Colonel Beaufoy, the first Englishman to gain the top. These ascents were all made from Chamonix, which is still the usual starting point, though routes have been forced up the peak from nearly every side, those on the Italian side being much steeper than that from Chamonix. The ascent from Chamonix is now frequently made in summer (rarely in winter also), but, owing to the great height of the mountain, the view is unsatisfactory, though very extensive (Lyons is visible). There is an inn at the Grands Mulets (9909 ft.). In 1890 M. Vallot built an observatory and shelter hut (14,312 ft.) on the Bosses du Dromadaire (north-west ridge of the mountain), and in 1893 T.J.C. Janssen constructed an observatory just below the very summit.

BLANCHARD, SAMUEL LAMAN (1804-1845), British author and journalist, the son of a painter and glazier, was born at Great Yarmouth on the 15th of May 1804. He was educated at St Olave’s school, Southwark, and then became clerk to a proctor in Doctors’ Commons. At an early age he developed literary tastes, contributing dramatic sketches to a paper called Drama. For a short time he was a member of a travelling dramatic company, but subsequently became a proof-reader in London, and wrote for the Monthly Magazine. In 1827 he was made secretary of the Zoological Society, a post which he held for three years. In 1828 he published Lyric Offerings, dedicated to Charles Lamb. He had a very varied journalistic experience, editing in succession the Monthly Magazine, the True Sun, the Constitutional, the Court Journal, the Courier, and George Cruikshank’s Omnibus; and from 1841 till his death he was connected with the Examiner. In 1846 Bulwer-Lytton collected a number of his prose-essays under the title Sketches of Life, to which a memoir of the author was prefixed. His verse was collected in 1876 by Blanchard Jerrold. Over-work broke down his strength, and, unnerved by the death of his wife, he died by his own hand on the 15th of February 1845.

His eldest son, Sidney Laman Blanchard, who was the author of Yesterday and To-day in India, died in 1883.

BLANCHE, JACQUES ÉMILE (1861-  ), French painter, was born in Paris. He enjoyed an excellent cosmopolitan education, and was brought up at Passy in a house once belonging to the princesse de Lamballe, which still retained the atmosphere of 18th-century elegance and refinement and influenced his taste and work. Although he received some instruction in painting from Gervex, he may be regarded as self-taught. He acquired a great reputation as a portrait painter; his art is derived from French and English sources, refined, sometimes super-elegant, but full of character. Among his chief works are his portraits of his father, of Pierre Louÿs, the Thaulow family, Aubrey Beardsley and Yvette Guilbert.

BLANCHE OF CASTILE (1188-1252), wife of Louis VIII. of France, third daughter of Alphonso VIII., king of Castile, and of Eleanor of England, daughter of Henry II., was born at Valencia. In consequence of a treaty between Philip Augustus and John of England, she was betrothed to the former’s son, Louis, and was brought to France, in the spring of 1200, by John’s mother Eleanor. On the 22nd of May 1200 the treaty was finally signed, John ceding with his niece the fiefs of Issoudun and Graçay, together with those that André de Chavigny, lord of Châteauroux, held in Berry, of the English crown. The marriage was celebrated the next day, at Portmort on the right bank of the Seine, in John’s domains, as those of Philip lay under an interdict.

Blanche first displayed her great qualities in 1216, when Louis, who on the death of John claimed the English crown in her right, invaded England, only to find a united nation against him. Philip Augustus refused to help his son, and Blanche was his sole support. The queen established herself at Calais and organized two fleets, one of which was commanded by Eustace the Monk, and an army under Robert of Courtenay; but all her resolution and energy were in vain. Although it would seem that her masterful temper exercised a sensible influence upon her husband’s gentler character, her role during his reign (1223-1226) is not well known. Upon his death he left Blanche regent and guardian of his children. Of her twelve or thirteen children, six had died, and Louis, the heir—afterwards the sainted Louis IX.,—was but twelve years old. The situation was critical, for the hard-won domains of the house of Capet seemed likely to fall to pieces during a minority. Blanche had to bear the whole burden of affairs alone, to break up a league of the barons (1226), and to repel the attack of the king of England (1230). But her energy and firmness overcame all dangers. There was an end to the calumnies circulated against her, based on the poetical homage rendered her by Theobald IV., count of Champagne, and the prolonged stay in Paris of the papal legate, Romano Bonaventura, cardinal of Sant’ Angelo. The nobles were awed by her warlike preparations or won over by adroit diplomacy, and their league was broken up. St Louis owed his realm to his mother, but he himself always remained somewhat under the spell of her imperious personality. After he came of age (1236) her influence upon him may still be traced. In 1248 she again became regent, during Louis IX.’s absence on the crusade, a project which she had strongly opposed. In the disasters which followed she maintained peace, while draining the land of men and money to aid her son in the East. At last her strength failed her. She fell ill at Melun in November 1252, and was taken to Paris, but lived only a few days. She was buried at Maubuisson.

BLANCH FEE, or Blanch Holding (from Fr. blanc, white), an ancient tenure in Scottish land law, the duty payable being in silver or white money in contradistinction to gold. The phrase was afterwards applied to any holding of which the quit-rent was merely nominal, such as a penny, a peppercorn, &c.

BLANDFORD, or Blandford Forum, a market town, and municipal borough in the northern parliamentary division of Dorsetshire, England, on the Stour, 19 m. N.W. of Bournemouth by the Somerset & Dorset railway. Pop. (1901) 3649. The town is ancient, but was almost wholly destroyed by fire in the 18th century. The church of St Peter and St Paul, a classical building, was built in 1732. There are a grammar-school (founded in 1521 at Milton Abbas, transferred to Blandford in 1775), a Blue Coat school (1729), and other educational charities. Remnants of a mansion of the 14th century, Damory Court, are seen in a farmhouse, and an adjoining Perpendicular chapel is used as a barn. There are numerous early earthworks on the chalk hills in the neighbourhood. The fine modern mansion of Bryanston, in the park adjoining the town, is the seat of Lord Portman. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 145 acres.

BLANDRATA, or Biandrata, GIORGIO (c. 1515-1588), Italian physician and polemic, who came of the De Blandrate family, powerful from the early part of the 13th century, was born at Saluzzo, the youngest son of Bernardino Blandrata. He graduated in arts and medicine at Montpellier in 1533, and specialized in the functional and nervous disorders of women. In 1544 he made his first acquaintance with Transylvania; in 1553 he was with Alciati in the Grisons; in 1557 he spent a year at Geneva, in constant intercourse with Calvin, who distrusted him. He attended the English wife (Jane Stafford) of Count Celso Massimiliano Martinengo, preacher of the Italian church at Geneva, and fostered anti-trinitarian opinions in that church. In 1558 he found it expedient to remove to Poland, where he became a leader of the heretical party at the synods of Pinczów (1558) and Ksionzh (1560 and 1562). His point was the suppression of extremes of opinion, on the basis of a confession literally drawn from Scripture. He obtained the position of court physician to the queen dowager, the Milanese Bona Sforza. She had been instrumental in the burning (1539) of Catharine Weygel, at the age of eighty, for anti-trinitarian opinions; but the writings of Ochino had altered her views, which were now anti-Catholic. In 1563 Blandrata transferred his services to the Transylvanian court, where the daughters of his patroness were married to ruling princes. He revisited Poland (1576) in the train of Stephen Báthory, whose tolerance permitted the propagation of heresies; and when (1579) Christopher Báthory introduced the Jesuits into Transylvania, Blandrata found means of conciliating them. Throughout his career he was accompanied by his two brothers, Ludovico and Alphonso, the former being canon of Saluzzo. In Transylvania, Blandrata co-operated with Francis Dávid (d. 1579), the anti-trinitarian bishop, but in 1578 two circumstances broke the 41 connexion. Blandrata was charged with “Italian vice”; Dávid renounced the worship of Christ. To influence Dávid, Blandrata sent for Faustus Socinus from Basel. Socinus was Dávid’s guest, but the discussion between them led to no result. At the instance of Blandrata, Dávid was tried and condemned to prison at Déva (in which he died) on the charge of innovation. Having amassed a fortune, Blandrata returned to the communion of Rome. His end is obscure. According to the Jesuit, Jacob Wujek, he was strangled by a nephew (Giorgio, son of Alphonso) in May 1588. He published a few polemical writings, some in conjunction with Dávid.

BLANE, SIR GILBERT (1740-1834), Scottish physician, was born at Blanefield, Ayrshire, on the 29th of August 1749. He was educated at Edinburgh university, and shortly after his removal to London became private physician to Lord Rodney, whom he accompanied to the West Indies in 1779. He did much to improve the health of the fleet by attention to the diet of the sailors and by enforcing due sanitary precautions, and it was largely through him that in 1795 the use of lime-juice was made obligatory throughout the navy as a preventive of scurvy. Enjoying a number of court and hospital appointments he built up a good practice for himself in London, and the government constantly consulted him on questions of public hygiene. He was made a baronet in 1812 in reward for the services he rendered in connexion with the return of the Walcheren expedition. He died in London on the 26th of June 1834. Among his works were Observations on the Diseases of Seamen (1795) and Elements of Medical Logic (1819).

BLANFORD, WILLIAM THOMAS (1832-1905), English geologist and naturalist, was born in London on the 7th of October 1832. He was educated in private schools in Brighton and Paris, and with a view to the adoption of a mercantile career spent two years in a business house at Civita Vecchia. On returning to England in 1851 he was induced to enter the newly established Royal School of Mines, which his younger brother Henry F. Blanford (1834-1893), afterwards head of the Indian Meteorological Department, had already joined; he then spent a year in the mining school at Freiburg, and towards the close of 1854 both he and his brother obtained posts on the Geological Survey of India. In that service he remained for twenty-seven years, retiring in 1882. He was engaged in various parts of India, in the Raniganj coalfield, in Bombay, and in the coalfield near Talchir, where boulders considered to have been ice-borne were found in the Talchir strata—a remarkable discovery confirmed by subsequent observations of other geologists in equivalent strata elsewhere. His attention was given not only to geology but to zoology, and especially to the land-mollusca and to the vertebrates. In 1866 he was attached to the Abyssinian expedition, accompanying the army to Mágdala and back; and in 1871-1872 he was appointed a member of the Persian Boundary Commission. The best use was made of the exceptional opportunities of studying the natural history of those countries. For his many contributions to geological science Dr Blanford was in 1883 awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London; and for his labours on the zoology and geology of British India he received in 1901 a royal medal from the Royal Society. He had been elected F.R.S. in 1874, and was chosen president of the Geological Society in 1888. He was created C.I.E. in 1904. He died in London on the 23rd of June 1905. His principal publications were: Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia (1870), and Manual of the Geology of India, with H.B. Medlicott (1879).

BLANK (from the Fr. blanc, white), a word used in various senses based on that of “left white,” i.e. requiring something to be filled in; thus a “blank cheque” is one which requires the amount to be inserted, an insurance policy in blank, where the name of the beneficiary is lacking, “blank verse” (q.v.) verse without rhyme, “blank cartridge” that contains only powder and no ball or shot. The word is also used, as a substantive, for a ticket in a lottery or sweepstake which does not carry a number or the name of a horse running or for an unstamped metal disc in coining.

BLANKENBERGHE, a seaside watering-place on the North Sea in the province of West Flanders, Belgium, 12 m. N.E. of Ostend, and about 9 m. N.W. of Bruges, with which it is connected by railway. It is more bracing than Ostend, and has a fine parade over a mile in length. During the season, which extends from June to September, it receives a large number of visitors, probably over 60,000 altogether, from Germany as well as from Belgium. There is a small fishing port as well as a considerable fishing-fleet. Two miles north of this place along the dunes is Zeebrugge, the point at which the new ship-canal from Bruges enters the North Sea. Fixed population (1904) 5925.

BLANKENBURG. (1) A town and health resort of Germany, in the duchy of Brunswick, at the N. foot of the Harz Mountains, 12 m. by rail S.W. from Halberstadt. Pop. (1901) 10,173. It has been in large part rebuilt since a fire in 1836, and possesses a castle, with various collections, a museum of antiquities, an old town hall and churches. There are pine-needle baths and a hospital for nervous diseases. Gardening is a speciality. In the vicinity is a cliff or ridge of rock called Teufelsmauer (Devil’s wall), from which fine views are obtained across the plain and into the deep gorges of the Harz Mountains.

(2) Another Blankenburg, also a health-resort, is situated in Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Thuringia, at the confluence of the rivers Rinne and Schwarza, and at the entrance of the Schwarzatal. Its environs are charming, and to the north of it, on an eminence, rise the fine ruins of the castle of Greifenstein, built by the German king Henry I., and from 1275 to 1583 the seat of a cadet branch of the counts of Schwarzburg.

BLANKETEERS, the nickname given to some 5000 operatives who on the 10th of March 1817 met in St Peter’s Field, near Manchester, to march to London, each carrying blankets or rugs. Their object was to see the prince regent and lay their grievances before him. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and the leaders were seized and imprisoned. The bulk of the demonstration yielded at once. The few stragglers who persisted in the march were intercepted by troops, and treated with considerable severity. Eventually the spokesmen had an interview with the ministers, and some reforms were the result.

BLANK VERSE, the unrhymed measure of iambic decasyllable in five beats which is usually adopted in English epic and dramatic poetry. The epithet is due to the absence of the rhyme which the ear expects at the end of successive lines. The decasyllabic line occurs for the first time in a Provençal poem of the 10th century, but in the earliest instances preserved it is already constructed with such regularity as to suggest that it was no new invention. It was certainly being used almost simultaneously in the north of France. Chaucer employed it in his Compleynte to Pitie about 1370. In all the literatures of western Europe it became generally used, but always with rhyme. In the beginning of the 16th century, however, certain Italian poets made the experiment of writing decasyllabics without rhyme. The tragedy of Sophonisba (1515) of G.G. Trissino (1478-1550) was the earliest work completed in this form; it was followed in 1525 by the didactic poem Le Api (The Bees), of Giovanni Rucellai (1475-1525), who announced his intention of writing ”Con verso Etrusco dalle rime sciolto,” in consequence of which expression this kind of metre was called versi sciolti or blank verse. In a very short time this form was largely adopted in Italian dramatic poetry, and the comedies of Ariosto, the Aminta of Tasso and the Pastor Fido of Guarini are composed in it. The iambic blank verse of Italy was, however, mainly hendecasyllabic, not decasyllabic, and under French influences the habit of rhyme soon returned.

Before the close of Trissino’s life, however, his invention had been introduced into another literature, where it was destined to enjoy a longer and more glorious existence. Towards the 42 close of the reign of Henry VIII., Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, translated two books of the Aeneid into English rhymeless verse, “drawing” them “into a strange metre.” Surrey’s blank verse is stiff and timid, permitting itself no divergence from the exact iambic movement:—

Surrey soon found an imitator in Nicholas Grimoald, and in 1562 blank verse was first applied to English dramatic poetry in the Gorboduc of Sackville and Norton. In 1576, in the Steel Glass of Gascoigne, it was first used for satire, and by the year 1585 it had come into almost universal use for theatrical purposes. In Lyly’s The Woman in the Moon and Peek’s Arraignment of Paris (both of 1584) we find blank verse struggling with rhymed verse and successfully holding its own. The earliest play written entirely in blank verse is supposed to be The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587) of Thomas Hughes. Marlowe now immediately followed, with the magnificent movement of his Tamburlaine (1589), which was mocked by satirical critics as “the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse” (Nash) and “the spacious volubility of a drumming decasyllable” (Greene), but which introduced a great new music into English poetry, in such “mighty lines” as

or:—

“See where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!”

Except, however, when he is stirred by a particularly vivid emotion, the blank verse of Marlowe continues to be monotonous and uniform. It still depends too exclusively on a counting of syllables. But Shakespeare, after having returned to rhyme in his earliest dramas, particularly in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, adopted blank verse conclusively about the time that the career of Marlowe was closing, and he carried it to the greatest perfection in variety, suppleness and fulness. He released it from the excessive bondage that it had hitherto endured; as Robert Bridges has said, “Shakespeare, whose early verse may be described as syllabic, gradually came to write a verse dependent on stress.” In comparison with that of his predecessors and successors, the blank verse of Shakespeare is essentially regular, and his prosody marks the admirable mean between the stiffness of his dramatic forerunners and the laxity of those who followed him. Most of Shakespeare’s lines conform to the normal type of the decasyllable, and the rest are accounted for by familiar and rational rules of variation. The ease and fluidity of his prosody were abused by his successors, particularly by Beaumont and Fletcher, who employed the soft feminine ending to excess; in Massinger dramatic blank verse came too near to prose, and in Heywood and Shirley it was relaxed to the point of losing all nervous vigour.

The later dramatists gradually abandoned that rigorous difference which should always be preserved between the cadence of verse and prose, and the example of Ford, who endeavoured to revive the old severity of blank verse, was not followed. But just as the form was sinking into dramatic desuetude, it took new life in the direction of epic, and found its noblest proficient in the person of John Milton. The most intricate and therefore the most interesting blank verse which has been written is that of Milton in the great poems of his later life. He reduced the elisions, which had been frequent in the Elizabethan poets, to law; he admitted an extraordinary variety in the number of stresses; he deliberately inverted the rhythm in order to produce particular effects; and he multiplied at will the caesurae or breaks in a line. Such verses as

are not mistaken in rhythm, nor to be scanned by forcing them to obey the conventional stress. They are instances, and Paradise Lost is full of such, of Milton’s exquisite art in ringing changes upon the metrical type of ten syllables, five stresses and a rising rhythm, so as to make the whole texture of the verse respond to his poetical thought. Writing many years later in Paradise Regained and in Samson Agonistes, Milton retained his system of blank verse in its general characteristics, but he treated it with increased dryness and with a certain harshness of effect. It is certainly in his biblical drama that blank verse has been pushed to its most artificial and technical perfection, and it is there that Milton’s theories are to be studied best; yet it must be confessed that learning excludes beauty in some of the very audacious irregularities which he here permits himself in Samson Agonistes. Such lines as

are constructed with perfect comprehension of metrical law, yet they differ so much from the normal structure of blank verse that they need to be explained, and to imitate them would be perilous. A persistent weakness in the third foot has ever been the snare of English blank verse, and it is this element of monotony and dulness which Milton is ceaselessly endeavouring to obviate by his wonderful inversions, elisions and breaks.

After the Restoration, and after a brief period of experiment with rhymed plays, the dramatists returned to the use of blank verse, and in the hands of Otway, Lee and Dryden, it recovered much of its magnificence. In the 18th century, Thomson and others made use of a very regular and somewhat monotonous form of blank verse for descriptive and didactic poems, of which the Night Thoughts of Young is, from a metrical point of view, the most interesting. With these poets the form is little open to licence, while inversions and breaks are avoided as much as possible. Since the 18th century, blank verse has been subjected to constant revision in the hands of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, the Brownings and Swinburne, but no radical changes, of a nature unknown to Shakespeare and Milton, have been introduced into it.

BLANQUI, JERÔME ADOLPHE (1798-1854), French economist, was born at Nice on the 21st of November 1798. Beginning life as a schoolmaster in Paris, he was attracted to the study of economics by the lectures of J.B. Say, whose pupil and assistant he became. Upon the recommendation of Say he was in 1825 appointed professor of industrial economy and of history at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. In 1833 he succeeded Say as professor of political economy at the same institution, and in 1838 was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. In 1838 appeared his most important work, Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe, depuis les anciens jusqu’à nos jours. He was indefatigable in research, and for the purposes of his economic inquiries travelled over almost the whole of Europe and visited Algeria and the East. He contributed much to our knowledge of the conditions of the working-classes, especially in France. Other works of Blanqui were De la situation économique et morale de l’Espagne en 1846; Résumé de l’histoire du commerce et de l’industrie (1826); Précis élémentaire d’économie politique (1826); Les Classes ouvrières en France (1848).

BLANQUI, LOUIS AUGUSTE (1805-1881), French publicist, was born on the 8th of February 1805 at Puget-Théniers, where his father, Jean Dominique Blanqui, was at that time sub-prefect. He studied both law and medicine, but found his real vocation in politics, and at once constituted himself a champion of the most advanced opinions. He took an active part in the revolution of July 1830, and continuing to maintain the doctrine of republicanism during the reign of Louis Philippe, was condemned to repeated terms of imprisonment. Implicated in the armed outbreak of the Société des Saisons, of which he was a 43 leading spirit, he was in the following year, 1840, condemned to death, a sentence that was afterwards commuted to imprisonment for life. He was released by the revolution of 1848, only to resume his attacks on existing institutions. The revolution, he declared, was a mere change of name. The violence of the Société républicaine centrale, which was founded by Blanqui to demand a modification of the government, brought him into conflict with the more moderate Republicans, and in 1849 he was condemned to ten years’ imprisonment. In 1865, while serving a further term of imprisonment under the Empire, he contrived to escape, and henceforth continued his propaganda against the government from abroad, until the general amnesty of 1869 enabled him to return to France. Blanqui’s leaning towards violent measures was illustrated in 1870 by two unsuccessful armed demonstrations: one on the 12th of January at the funeral of Victor Noir, the journalist shot by Pierre Bonaparte; the other on the 14th of August, when he led an attempt to seize some guns at a barrack. Upon the fall of the Empire, through the revolution of the 4th of September, Blanqui established the club and journal La patrie en danger. He was one of the band that for a moment seized the reins of power on the 31st of October, and for his share in that outbreak he was again condemned to death on the 17th of March of the following year. A few days afterwards the insurrection which established the Commune broke out, and Blanqui was elected a member of the insurgent government, but his detention in prison prevented him from taking an active part. Nevertheless he was in 1872 condemned along with the other members of the Commune to transportation; but on account of his broken health this sentence was commuted to one of imprisonment. In 1879 he was elected a deputy for Bordeaux; although the election was pronounced invalid, Blanqui was set at liberty, and at once resumed his work of agitation. At the end of 1880, after a speech at a revolutionary meeting in Paris, he was struck down by apoplexy, and expired on the 1st of January 1881. Blanqui’s uncompromising communism, and his determination to enforce it by violence, necessarily brought him into conflict with every French government, and half his life was spent in prison. Besides his innumerable contributions to journalism, he published an astronomical work entitled L’Éternité par les astres (1872), and after his death his writings on economic and social questions were collected under the title of Critique sociale (1885).

BLANTYRE, the chief town of the Nyasaland protectorate, British Central Africa. It is situated about 3000 ft. above the sea in the Shiré Highlands 300 m. by river and rail N.N.W. of the Chínde mouth of the Zambezi. Pop. about 6000 natives and 100 whites. It is the headquarters of the principal trading firms and missionary societies in the protectorate. It is also a station on the African trans-continental telegraph line. The chief building is the Church of Scotland church, a fine red brick building, a mixture of Norman and Byzantine styles, with lofty turrets and white domes. It stands in a large open space and is approached by an avenue of cypresses and eucalyptus. The church was built entirely by native labour. Blantyre was founded in 1876 by Scottish missionaries, and is named after the birthplace of David Livingstone.

BLANTYRE (Gaelic, “the warm retreat”), a parish of Lanarkshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 14,145. The parish lies a few miles south-east of Glasgow, and contains High Blantyre (pop. 2521), Blantyre Works (or Low Blantyre), Stonefield and several villages. The whole district is rich in coal, the mining of which is extensively carried on. Blantyre Works (pop. 1683) was the birthplace of David Livingstone (1813-1873) and his brother Charles (1821-1873), who as lads were both employed as piecers in a local cotton-mill. The scanty remains of Blantyre Priory, founded towards the close of the 13th century, stand on the left bank of the Clyde, almost opposite the beautiful ruins of Bothwell Castle. High Blantyre and Blantyre Works are connected with Glasgow by the Caledonian railway. Stonefield (pop. 7288), the most populous place in the parish, entirely occupied with mining, lies between High Blantyre and Blantyre Works, Calderwood Castle on Rotten Calder Water, near High Blantyre, is situated amid picturesque scenery.

BLARNEY, a small town of Co. Cork, Ireland, in the mid parliamentary division, 5 m. N.W. of the city of Cork on the Cork & Muskerry light railway. Pop. (1901) 928. There is a large manufacture of tweed. The name “blarney” has passed into the language to denote a peculiar kind of persuasive eloquence, alleged to be characteristic of the natives of Ireland. The “Blarney Stone,” the kissing of which is said to confer this faculty, is pointed out within the castle. The origin of this belief is not known. The castle, built c. 1446 by Cormac McCarthy, was of immense strength, and parts of its walls are as much as 18 ft. thick. To its founder is traced by some the origin of the term “blarney,” since he delayed by persuasion and promises the surrender of the castle to the lord president. Richard Millikin’s song, “The Groves of Blarney” (c. 1798), contributed to the fame of the castle, which is also bound up with the civil history of the county and the War of the Great Rebellion.

BLASHFIELD, EDWIN HOWLAND (1848-  ), American artist, was born on the 15th of December 1848 in New York City. He was a pupil of Bonnat in Paris, and became (1888) a member of the National Academy of Design in New York. For some years a genre painter, he later turned to decorative work, marked by rare delicacy and beauty of colouring. He painted mural decorations for a dome in the manufacturers’ building at the Chicago Exposition of 1893; for the dome of the Congressional library, Washington; for the capitol at St Paul, Minnesota; for the Baltimore court-house; in New York City for the Appellate court house, the grand ball-room of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the Lawyers’ club, and the residences of W.K. Vanderbilt and Collis P. Huntington; and in Philadelphia for the residence of George W. Drexel. With his wife he wrote Italian Cities (1900) and edited Vasari’s Lives of the Painters (1896), and was well known as a lecturer and writer on art. He became president of the Society of Mural Painters, and of the Society of American Artists.

BLASIUS (or Blaise), SAINT, bishop of Sebaste or Sivas in Asia Minor, martyred under Diocletian on the 3rd of February 316. The Roman Catholic Church holds his festival on the 3rd of February, the Orthodox Eastern Church on the 11th. His flesh is said to have been torn with woolcombers’ irons before he was beheaded, and this seems to be the only reason why he has always been regarded as the patron saint of woolcombers. In pre-Reformation England St Blaise was a very popular saint, and the council of Oxford in 1222 forbade all work on his festival. Owing to a miracle which he is alleged to have worked on a child suffering from a throat affection, who was brought to him on his way to execution, St Blaise’s aid has always been held potent in throat and lung diseases. The woolcombers of England still celebrate St Blaise’s day with a procession and general festivities. He forms one of a group of fourteen (i.e. twice seven) saints, who for their help in time of need have been associated as objects of particularly devoted worship in Roman Catholic Germany since the middle of the 15th century.

BLASPHEMY (through the Fr. from Gr. βλασφημία, profane language, slander, probably derived from root of βλάπτειν, to injure, and φήμη, speech), literally, defamation or evil speaking, but more peculiarly restricted to an indignity offered to the Deity by words or writing. By the Mosaic law death by stoning was the punishment for blasphemy (Lev. xxiv. 16). The 77th Novel of Justinian assigned death as the penalty, as did also the Capitularies. The common law of England treats blasphemy as an indictable offence. All blasphemies against God, as denying His being, or providence, all contumelious reproaches of Jesus Christ, all profane scoffing at the Holy Scriptures, or exposing any part thereof to contempt or ridicule, are punishable by the temporal courts with fine, imprisonment and also infamous corporal punishment. An act of Edward VI. (1547; repealed 44 1553 and revived 1558) enacts that persons reviling the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, by contemptuous words or otherwise, shall suffer imprisonment. Persons denying the Trinity were deprived of the benefit of the Act of Toleration by an act of 1688. An act of 1697-1698, commonly called the Blasphemy Act, enacts that if any person, educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion, should by writing, preaching, teaching or advised speaking, deny any one of the Persons of the Holy Trinity to be God, or should assert or maintain that there are more gods than one, or should deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of divine authority, he should, upon the first offence, be rendered incapable of holding any office or place of trust, and for the second incapable of bringing any action, of being guardian or executor, or of taking a legacy or deed of gift, and should suffer three years’ imprisonment without bail. It has been held that a person offending under the statute is also indictable at common law (Rex v. Carlisle, 1819, where Mr Justice Best remarks, “In the age of toleration, when that statute passed, neither churchmen nor sectarians wished to protect in their infidelity those who disbelieved the Holy Scriptures”). An act of 1812-1813 excepts from these enactments “persons denying as therein mentioned respecting the Holy Trinity,” but otherwise the common and the statute law on the subject remain as stated. In the case of Rex v. Woolston (1728) the court declared that they would not suffer it to be debated whether to write against Christianity in general was not an offence punishable in the temporal courts at common law, but they did not intend to include disputes between learned men on particular controverted points.

The law against blasphemy has practically ceased to be put in active operation. In 1841 Edward Moxon was found guilty of the publication of a blasphemous libel (Shelley’s Queen Mab), the prosecution having been instituted by Henry Hetherington, who had previously been condemned to four months’ imprisonment for a similar offence, and wished to test the law under which he was punished. In the case of Cowan v. Milbourn (1867) the defendant had broken his contract to let a lecture-room to the plaintiff, on discovering that the intended lectures were to maintain that “the character of Christ is defective, and his teaching misleading, and that the Bible is no more inspired than any other book,” and the court of exchequer held that the publication of such doctrine was blasphemy, and the contract therefore illegal. On that occasion the court reaffirmed the dictum of Chief Justice Hale, that Christianity is part of the laws of England. The commissioners on criminal law (sixth report) remark that “although the law forbids all denial of the being and providence of God or the Christian religion, it is only when irreligion assumes the form of an insult to God and man that the interference of the criminal law has taken place.” In England the last prominent prosecution for blasphemy was the case of R. v. Ramsey & Foote, 1883, 48 L.T. 739, when the editor, publisher and printer of the Freethinker were sentenced to imprisonment; but police court proceedings were taken as late as 1908 against an obscure Hyde Park orator who had become a public nuisance.

Profane cursing and swearing is made punishable by the Profane Oaths Act 1745, which directs the offender to be brought before a justice of the peace, and fined five shillings, two shillings or one shilling, according as he is a gentleman, below the rank of gentleman, or a common labourer, soldier, &c.

By the law of Scotland, as it originally stood, the punishment of blasphemy was death, but by an act of 1825, amended in 1837, blasphemy was made punishable by fine or imprisonment or both.

In France, blasphemy (which included, also, speaking against the Holy Virgin and the saints, denying one’s faith, or speaking with impiety of holy things) was from very early times punished with great severity. The punishment was death in various forms, burning alive, mutilation, torture or corporal punishment. In the United States the common law of England was largely followed, and in most of the states, also, statutes were enacted against the offence, but, as in England, the law is practically never put in force. In Germany, the punishment for blasphemy is imprisonment varying from one day to three years, according to the gravity of the offence. To constitute the offence, the blasphemy must be uttered in public, be offensive in character, and have wounded the religious susceptibilities of some other person. In Austria, whoever commits blasphemy by speech or writing is liable to imprisonment for any term from six months up to ten years, according to the seriousness of the offence.

BLASS, FRIEDRICH (1843-1907), German classical scholar, was born on the 22nd of January 1843 at Osnabrück. After studying at Göttingen and Bonn from 1860 to 1863, he lectured at several gymnasia and at the university of Königsberg. In 1876 he was appointed extraordinary professor of classical philology at Kiel, and ordinary professor in 1881. In 1892 he accepted a professorship at Halle, where he died on the 5th of March 1907. He frequently visited England, and was intimately acquainted with leading British scholars. He received an honorary degree from Dublin University in 1892, and his readiness to place the results of his labours at the disposal of others, together with the courtesy and kindliness of his disposition, won the respect of all who knew him. Blass is chiefly known for his works in connexion with the study of Greek oratory: Die griechische Beredsamkeit von Alexander bis auf Augustus (1865); Die attische Beredsamkeit (1868-1880; 2nd ed., 1887-1898), his greatest work; editions for the Teubner series of Andocides (1880), Antiphon (1881), Hypereides (1881, 1894), Demosthenes (Dindorf’s ed., 1885), Isocrates (1886), Dinarchus (1888), Demosthenes (Rehdantz’ ed., 1893), Aeschines (1896), Lycurgus, Leocrates (1902); Die Rhythmen der attischen Kunstprosa (1901); Die Rhythmen der asianischen und römischen Kunstprosa (1905). Among his other works are editions of Eudoxus of Cnidus (1887), the Άθηναίων πολιτεία (4th ed., 1903), a work of great importance, and Bacchylides (3rd. ed., 1904); Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch (1902; Eng. trans, by H. St John Thackeray, 1905); Hermeneutik und Kritik and Paläographie, Buchwesen, und Handschriftenkunde (vol. i. of Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 1891); Über die Aussprache des Griechischen (1888; Eng. trans, by W.J. Purton, 1890); Die Interpolationen in der Odyssee (1904); contributions to Collitz’s Sammlung der griechischen Dialektinschriften; editions of the texts of certain portions of the New Testament (Gospels and Acts). His last work was an edition of the Choephori (1906).

BLASTING, the process of rending or breaking apart a solid body, such as rock, by exploding within it or in contact with it some explosive substance. The explosion is accompanied by the sudden development of gas at a high temperature and under a tension sufficiently great to overcome the resistance of the enclosing body, which is thus shattered and disintegrated. Before the introduction of explosives, rock was laboriously excavated by hammer and chisel, or by the ancient process of “fire-setting,” i.e. building a fire against the rock, which, on cooling, splits and flakes off. To hasten disintegration, water was often applied to the heated rock, the loosened portion being afterwards removed by pick or hammer and wedge. In modern times blasting has become a necessity for the excavation of rock and other hard material, as in open surface cuts, quarrying, tunnelling, shaft-sinking and mining operations in general.

For blasting, a hole is generally drilled to receive the charge of explosive. The depth and diameter of the hole and the quantity of explosive used are all variable, depending on the character of the rock and of the explosive, the shape of the mass to be blasted, the presence or absence of cracks or fissures, and the position of the hole with respect to the free surface of the rock. The shock of a blast produces impulsive waves acting radially in all directions, the force being greatest at the centre of explosion and varying inversely as the square of the distance from the charge. This is evidenced by the observed facts. Immediately surrounding the explosive, the rock is often finely splintered and crushed. Beyond this is a zone in which it is completely broken and 45 displaced or projected, leaving an enveloping mass of more or less ragged fractured rock only partially loosened. Lastly, the diminishing waves produce vibrations which are transmitted to considerable distances. Theoretically, if a charge of explosive be fired in a solid material of perfectly homogeneous texture and at a proper distance from the free surface, a conical mass will be blown out to the full depth of the drill hole, leaving a funnel-shaped cavity. No rock, however, is of uniform mineralogical and physical character, so that in practice there is only a rough approximation to the conical crater, even under the most favourable conditions. Generally, the shape of the mass blasted out is extremely irregular, because of the variable texture of the rock and the presence of cracks, fissures and cleavage planes. The ultimate or resultant useful effect of the explosion of a confined charge is in the direction where the least resistance is presented. In the actual work of rock excavation it is only by trial, or by deductions based on experience, that the behaviour of a given rock can be determined and the quantity of explosive required properly proportioned.

Blasting, as usually carried on, comprises several operations: (1) drilling holes in the rock to be blasted; (2) placing in the hole the charge of explosive, with its fuze; (3) tamping the charge, i.e. compacting it and filling the remainder of the hole with some suitable material for preventing the charge from blowing out without breaking the ground; (4) igniting or detonating the charge; (5) clearing away the broken material. The holes for blasting are made either by hand, with hammer and drill or jumper, or by machine drill, the latter being driven by steam, compressed air, or electricity, or, in rare cases, by hydraulic power. Drill holes ordinarily vary in diameter from 1 to 3 in., and in depth from a few inches up to 15 or 20 ft. or more. The deeper holes are made only in surface excavation of rock, the shallower, to a maximum depth of say 12 ft., being suitable for tunnelling and mining operations.

BLAUBEUREN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Württemberg, 12 m. W. of Ulm, with which it is connected by railway. Pop. (1900) 3114. It is romantically situated in a wild and deep valley of the Swabian Alps at an altitude of 1600 ft. and is partly surrounded by ancient walls. Of the three churches (two Evangelical and one Roman Catholic) the most remarkable is the abbey church (Klosterkirche), a late Gothic building dating from 1465-1496, the choir of which contains beautiful 15th century carved choir-stalls and a fine high altar with a triptych (1496). The choir only is used for service (Protestant), the nave being used as a gymnasium. The town church (Stadtkirche) also has a fine altar with triptych. The Benedictine abbey, founded in 1095, was used after the Reformation as a school, and is now an Evangelical theological seminary. There are two hospitals in the town.

BLAVATSKY, HELENA PETROVNA (1831-1891), Russian theosophist, was born at Ekaterinoslav, on the 31st of July (O.S.) 1831, the daughter of Colonel Peter Hahn, a member of a Mecklenburg family, settled in Russia. She married in her seventeenth year a man very much her senior, Nicephore Blavatsky, a Russian official in Caucasia, from whom she was separated after a few months; in later days, when seeking to invest herself with a halo of virginity, she described the marriage as a nominal one. During the next twenty years Mme Blavatsky appears to have travelled widely in Canada, Texas, Mexico and India, with two attempts on Tibet. In one of these she seems to have crossed the frontier alone in disguise, been lost in the desert, and, after many adventures, been conducted back by a party of horsemen. The years from 1848 to 1858 were alluded to subsequently as “the veiled period” of her life, and she spoke vaguely of a seven years’ sojourn in “Little and Great Tibet,” or preferably of a “Himalayan retreat.” In 1858 she revisited Russia, where she created a sensation as a spiritualistic medium. About 1870 she acquired prominence among the spiritualists of the United States, where she lived for six years, becoming a naturalized citizen. Her leisure was occupied with the study of occult and kabbalistic literature, to which she soon added that of the sacred writings of India, through the medium of translations. In 1875 she conceived the plan of combining the spiritualistic “control” with the Buddhistic legends about Tibetan sages. Henceforth she determined to exclude all control save that of two Tibetan adepts or “mahatmas.” The mahatmas exhibited their “astral bodies” to her, “precipitated” messages which reached her from the confines of Tibet in an instant of time, supplied her with sound doctrine, and incited her to perform tricks for the conversion of sceptics. At New York, on the 17th of November 1875, with the aid of Colonel Henry S. Olcott, she founded the “Theosophical Society” with the object of (1) forming a universal brotherhood of man, (2) studying and making known the ancient religions, philosophies and sciences, (3) investigating the laws of nature and developing the divine powers latent in man. The Brahmanic and Buddhistic literature supplied the society with its terminology, and its doctrines were a curious amalgam of Egyptian, kabbalistic, occultist, Indian and modern spiritualistic ideas and formulas. Mme Blavatsky’s principal books were Isis Unveiled (New York, 1877), The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy (1888), The Key to Theosophy (1891). The two first of these are a mosaic of unacknowledged quotations from such books as K.R.H. Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Encyclopaedia, C.W. King’s Gnostics, Zeller’s Plato, the works on magic by Dunlop, E. Salverte, Joseph Ennemoser, and Des Mousseaux, and the mystical writings of Eliphas Levi (L.A. Constant). A Glossary of Theosophical Terms (1890-1892) was compiled for the benefit of her disciples. But the appearance of Home’s Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism (1877) had a prejudicial effect upon the propaganda, and Heliona P. Blavatsky (as she began to style herself) retired to India. Thence she contributed some clever papers, “From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan” (published separately in English, London, 1892) to the Russky Vyestnik. Defeated in her object of obtaining employment in the Russian secret service, she resumed her efforts to gain converts to theosophy. For this purpose the exhibition of “physical phenomena” was found necessary. Her jugglery was cleverly conceived, but on three occasions was exposed in the most conclusive manner. Nevertheless, her cleverness, volubility, energy and will-power enabled her to maintain her ground, and when she died on the 8th of May 1891 (White Lotus Day), at the theosophical headquarters in the Avenue Road, London, she was the acknowledged head of a community numbering not far short of 100,000, with journalistic organs in London, Paris, New York and Madras.

BLAYDES, FREDERICK HENRY MARVELL (1818-1908), English classical scholar, was born at Hampton Court Green, on the 29th of September 1818, being a collateral descendant of Andrew Marvell, the satirist and friend of Milton. He was educated at St Peter’s school, York, and Christ Church, Oxford. He was Hertford scholar in 1838, took a second class in literae humaniores in 1840, and was subsequently elected to a studentship at Christ Church. In 1842 he took orders, and from 1843 to 1886 was vicar of Harringworth in Northamptonshire. During a long life he devoted himself almost entirely to the study of the Greek dramatists. His editions and philological papers are remarkable for bold conjectural emendations of corrupt (and other) passages. His distinction was recognized by his being made an honorary LL.D. of Dublin, Ph.D. of the university of Buda Pest and a fellow of the royal society of letters at Athens. He died at Southsea on the 7th of September 1908.

BLAYDON, an urban district in the Chester-le-Street parliamentary division of Durham, England, on the Tyne, 4 m. W. of Newcastle by a branch of the North-Eastern railway. Pop. (1881) 10,687; (1901) 19,617. The chief industries are coal-mining, iron-founding, pipe, fire-brick, chemical manure and bottle manufactures. In the vicinity is the beautiful old mansion of Stella, and below it Stellaheugh, to which the victorious Scottish army crossed from Newburn on the Northumberland bank in 1640, after which they occupied Newcastle.

BLAYE-ET-STE LUCE, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gironde, on the right bank of the Gironde (here over 2 m. wide), 35 m. N. of Bordeaux by rail. Pop. (1906) of the town, 3423; of the commune, 4890. The town has a citadel built by Vauban on a rock beside the river, and embracing in its enceinte ruins of an old Gothic château. The latter contains the tomb of Caribert, king of Toulouse, and son of Clotaire II. Blaye is also defended by the Fort Pâté on an island in the river and the Fort Médoc on its left bank, both of the 17th century. The town is the seat of a sub-prefect, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce and a communal college. It has a small river-port, and carries on trade in wine, brandy, grain, fruit and timber. The industries include the building of small vessels, distilling, flour-milling, and the manufacture of oil and candles. Fine red wine is produced in the district.

In ancient times Blaye (Blavia) was a port of the Santones. Tradition states that the hero Roland was buried in its basilica, which was on the site of the citadel. It was early an important stronghold which played an important part in the wars against the English and the Religious Wars. The duchess of Berry was imprisoned in its fortress in 1832-1833.

BLAZE (A.-S. blaese, a torch), a fire or bright flame; more nearly akin to the Ger. blass, pale or shining white, is the use of the word for the white mark on the face of a horse or cow, and the American use for a mark made on a tree by cutting off a piece of the bark. The word “to blaze,” in the sense of to noise abroad, comes from the A.-S. blaesan, to blow, cf. the Ger. blasen; in sense, if not in origin, it is confused with “blazon” in heraldry.

BLAZON, a heraldic shield, a coat of arms properly “described” according to the rules of heraldry, hence a proper heraldic description of such a coat. The O. Fr. blason seems originally to have meant simply a shield as a means of defence and not a shield-shaped surface for the display of armorial bearings, but this is difficult to reconcile with the generally accepted derivation from the Ger. blasen, to blow, proclaim, English “blaze,” to noise abroad, to declare. In the 16th century the heraldic term, and “blaze” and “blazon” in the sense of proclaim, had much influence on each other.

BLEACHING, the process of whitening or depriving objects of colour, an operation incessantly in activity in nature by the influence of light, air and moisture. The art of bleaching, of which we have here to treat, consists in inducing the rapid operation of whitening agencies, and as an industry it is mostly directed to cotton, linen, silk, wool and other textile fibres, but it is also applied to the whitening of paper-pulp, bees’-wax and some oils and other substances. The term bleaching is derived from the A.-S. blaecan, to bleach, or to fade, from which also comes the cognate German word bleichen, to whiten or render pale. Bleachers, down to the end of the 18th century, were known in England as “whitsters,” a name obviously derived from the nature of their calling.

The operation of bleaching must from its very nature be of the same antiquity as the work of washing textures of linen, cotton or other vegetable fibres. Clothing repeatedly washed, and exposed in the open air to dry, gradually assumes a whiter and whiter hue, and our ancestors cannot have failed to notice and take advantage of this fact. Scarcely anything is known with certainty of the art of bleaching as practised by the nations of antiquity. Egypt in early ages was the great centre of textile manufactures, and her white and coloured linens were in high repute among contemporary nations. As a uniformly well-bleached basis is necessary for the production of a satisfactory dye on cloth, it may be assumed that the Egyptians were fairly proficient in bleaching, and that still more so were the Phoenicians with their brilliant and famous purple dyes. We learn, from Pliny, that different plants, and likewise the ashes of plants, which no doubt contained alkali, were employed as detergents. He mentions particularly the Struthium as much used for bleaching in Greece, a plant which has been identified by some with Gypsophila Struthium. But as it does not appear from John Sibthorp’s Flora Graeca, edited by Sir James Smith, that this species is a native of Greece, Dr Sibthorp’s conjecture that the Struthium of the ancients was the Saponaria officinalis, a plant common in Greece, is certainly more probable.

In modern times, down to the middle of the 18th century, the Dutch possessed almost a monopoly of the bleaching trade although we find mention of bleach-works at Southwark near London as early as the middle of the 17th century. It was customary to send all the brown linen, then largely manufactured in Scotland, to Holland to be bleached. It was sent away in the month of March, and not returned till the end of October, being thus out of the hands of the merchant more than half a year.

The Dutch mode of bleaching, which was mostly conducted in the neighbourhood of Haarlem, was to steep the linen first in a waste lye, and then for about a week in a potash lye poured over it boiling hot. The cloth being taken out of this lye and washed, was next put into wooden vessels containing buttermilk, in which it lay under a pressure for five or six days. After this it was spread upon the grass, and kept wet for several months, exposed to the sunshine of summer.

In 1728 James Adair from Belfast proposed to the Scottish Board of Manufactures to establish a bleachfield in Galloway; this proposal the board approved of, and in the same year resolved to devote £2000 as premiums for the establishment of bleachfields throughout the country. In 1732 a method of bleaching with kelp, introduced by R. Holden, also from Ireland, was submitted to the board; and with their assistance Holden established a bleachfield for prosecuting his process at Pitkerro, near Dundee.

The bleaching process, as at that time performed, was very tedious, occupying a complete summer. It consisted in steeping the cloth in alkaline lyes for several days, washing it clean, and spreading it upon the grass for some weeks. The steeping in alkaline lyes, called bucking, and the bleaching on the grass, called crofting, were repeated alternately for five or six times. The cloth was then steeped for some days in sour milk, washed clean and crofted. These processes were repeated, diminishing every time the strength of the alkaline lye, till the linen had acquired the requisite whiteness.

For the first improvement in this tedious process, which was faithfully copied from the Dutch bleachfields, manufacturers were indebted to Dr Francis Home of Edinburgh, to whom the Board of Trustees paid £100 for his experiments in bleaching. He proposed to substitute water acidulated with sulphuric acid for the sour milk previously employed, a suggestion made in consequence of the new mode of preparing sulphuric acid, contrived some time before by Dr John Roebuck, which reduced the price of that acid to less than one-third of what it had formerly been. When this change was first adopted by the bleachers, there was the same outcry against its corrosive effects as arose when chlorine was substituted for crofting. A great advantage was found to result from the use of sulphuric acid, which was that a souring with sulphuric acid required at the longest only twenty-four hours, and often not more than twelve; whereas, when sour milk was employed, six weeks, or even two 50 months, were requisite, according to the state of the weather. In consequence of this improvement, the process of bleaching was shortened from eight months to four, which enabled the merchant to dispose of his goods so much the sooner, and consequently to trade with less capital.

No further modification of consequence was introduced in the art till the year 1787, when a most important change was initiated by the use of chlorine (q.v.), an element which had been discovered by C.W. Scheele in Sweden about thirteen years before. The discovery that this gas possesses the property of destroying vegetable colours, led Berthollet to suspect that it might be introduced with advantage into the art of bleaching, and that it would enable practical bleachers greatly to shorten their processes. In a paper on chlorine or oxygenated muriatic acid, read before the Academy of Sciences at Paris in April 1785, and published in the Journal de Physique for May of the same year (vol. xxvi. p. 325), he mentions that he had tried the effect of the gas in bleaching cloth, and found that it answered perfectly. This idea is still further developed in a paper on the same substance, published in the Journal de Physique for 1786. In 1786 he exhibited the experiment to James Watt, who, immediately upon his return to England, commenced a practical examination of the subject, and was accordingly the person who first introduced the new method of bleaching into Great Britain. We find from Watt’s own testimony that chlorine was practically employed in the bleachfield of his father-in-law, Mr Macgregor, in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, in March 1787. Shortly thereafter the method was introduced at Aberdeen by Messrs Gordon, Barron & Co., on information received from De Saussure through Professor Patrick Copland of Aberdeen. Thomas Henry of Manchester was the first to bleach with chlorine in the Lancashire district, and to his independent investigations several of the early improvements in the application of the material were due.

In these early experiments, the bleacher had to make his own chlorine and the goods were bleached either by exposing them in chambers to the action of the gas or by steeping them in its aqueous solution. If we consider the inconveniences which must have arisen in working with such a pungent substance as free chlorine, with its detrimental effect on the health of the work-people, it will be readily understood that the process did not at first meet with any great amount of success. The first important improvement was the introduction in 1792 of eau de Javel, which was prepared at the Javel works near Paris by absorbing chlorine in a solution of potash (1 part) in water (8 parts) until effervescence began. The greatest impetus to the bleaching industry was, however, given by the introduction in 1799 of chloride of lime, or bleaching-powder, by Charles Tennant of Glasgow, whereby the bleacher was supplied with a reagent in solid form which contained up to one-third of its weight of available chlorine. Latterly frequent attempts have been made to replace bleaching-powder by hypochlorite of soda, which is prepared by the bleacher as required, by the electrolytic decomposition of a solution of common salt in specially constructed cells, but up to the present this mode of procedure has met with only a limited success (see Alkali Manufacture).

Bleaching of Cotton.

Cotton is bleached in the raw state, as yarn and in the piece. In the raw state, and as yarn, the only impurities present are those which are naturally contained in the fibres and which include cotton wax, fatty acids, pectic substances, colouring matters, albuminoids and mineral matter, amounting in all to some 5% of the weight of the material. Both in the raw state and in the manufactured condition cotton also contains small black particles which adhere firmly to the material and are technically known as “motes.” These consist of fragments of the cotton seed husk, which cannot be completely removed by mechanical means. The bleaching of cotton pieces is more complicated, since the bleacher is called upon to remove the sizing materials with which the manufacturer strengthens the warp before weaving (see below).

In principle, the bleaching of cotton is a comparatively simple process in which three main operations are involved, viz. (1) boiling with an alkali; (2) bleaching the organic colouring matters by means of a hypochlorite or some other oxidizing agent; (3) souring, i.e. treating with weak hydrochloric or sulphuric acid. For loose cotton and yarn these three operations are sufficient, but for piece goods a larger number of operations is usually necessary in order to obtain a satisfactory result.

Bleaching of Linen.

The bleaching of linen is a much more complicated and tedious process than the bleaching of cotton. This is due in part to the fact that in linen the impurities amount to 20% or more of the weight of the fibre, whereas in cotton they do not usually exceed 5%. Furthermore these impurities, which include colouring matter, intracellular substances and a peculiar wax known as “flax wax,” are more difficult to attack than those which are present in cotton, and the difficulty is still further enhanced in the case of piece goods owing to their dense or impervious character.

Till towards the end of the 18th century the bleaching of linen both in the north of Ireland and in Scotland was accomplished by bowking in cows’ dung and souring with sour milk, the pieces being exposed to light on the grass between these operations for prolonged periods. Subsequently potash and later on soda 54 was substituted for the cows’ dung, while sour milk was replaced by sulphuric acid. This “natural bleach” is still in use in Holland, a higher price being paid for linen bleached in this way than for the same material bleached with the aid of bleaching powder. In the year 1744 Dr. James Ferguson of Belfast received a premium of £300 from the Irish Linen Board for the application of lime in the bleaching of linen. Notwithstanding this reward, the use of lime in the bleaching of linen was for a long time afterwards forbidden in Ireland under statutory penalties, and so late as 1815 Mr Barklie, a respectable linen bleacher of Linen Vale, near Keady, was “prosecuted for using lime in the whitening of linens in his bleachyard.”

The methods at present employed for the bleaching of linen are, except in one or two unimportant particulars, the same as were used in the middle of the 19th century. In principle they resemble those used in cotton bleaching, but require to be frequently repeated, while an additional operation, which is a relic of the old-fashioned process, viz. that of “grassing” or “crofting,” is still essential for the production of the finest whites. Considerably more care has to be exercised in linen bleaching than is the case with cotton, and the process consequently necessitates a greater amount of manual labour. The practical result of this is that whereas cotton pieces can be bleached and finished in less than a week, linen pieces require at least six weeks. Many attempts have naturally been made to shorten and cheapen the process, but without success. The use of stronger reagents and more drastic treatment, which would at first suggest itself, incurs the risk of injury to the fibre, not so much in respect to actual tendering as to the destruction of its characteristic gloss, while if too drastic a treatment is employed at the beginning the colouring matter is liable to become set in the fibre, and it is then almost impossible to remove it. Among the many modern improvements which have been suggested, mention may be made of the use of hypochlorite of soda in place of bleaching powder, the use of oil in the first treatment in alkali (Cross & Parkes), while de Keukelaere suggests the use of sodium sulphide for this purpose. With the object of dispensing with the operation of grassing, which besides necessitating much manual labour is subject to the influences of the atmospheric conditions, Siemens & Halske of Berlin have suggested exposure of the goods in a chamber to the action of electrolytically prepared ozone. Jardin seeks to achieve the same object by steeping the linen in dilute nitric acid.

Since the qualities of linen which are submitted to the bleacher vary considerably, and the mode of treatment has to be varied accordingly, it is not possible to give more than a bare outline of linen bleaching.

Bleaching of other Vegetable Textile Fabrics.

Hemp may be bleached by a process similar to that used for linen, but this is seldom done owing to the expense entailed. China grass is bleached like cotton. Jute contains in its raw state a considerable amount of colouring matter and intracellular substance. Since the individual fibres are very short, the 55 complete removal of the latter would be attended by a disintegration of the material. Although it is possible to bleach jute white, this is seldom if ever carried out on a large scale owing to the great expense involved. A half-bleach on jute is obtained by steeping the goods alternately in bleaching powder (or hypochlorite of soda) and sulphuric acid, washing intervening. For a cream these treatments are repeated.

Bleaching of Straw.

In the Luton district, straw is bleached principally in the form of plait, in which form it is imported. The bleaching is effected by steeping the straw for periods varying from twelve hours to several days in fairly strong alkaline peroxide of hydrogen. The number of baths depends upon the quality of straw and the degree of whiteness required. Good whites are thus obtained, and no further process would be necessary if the hats had not subsequently to be “blocked” or pressed at a high temperature which brings about a deterioration of the colour. After bleaching with peroxide and drying, the straw consequently undergoes a further process of sulphuring, i.e. exposure to gaseous sulphurous acid. Panama hats are bleached after making up, but in this case only peroxide of hydrogen is used and a very lengthy treatment entailing sometimes fourteen days’ steeping is required.

Bleaching of Wool.

In the condition in which it is delivered to the manufacturers wool is generally a very impure article, even if it has been washed on the sheep’s back before shearing. The impurities which it contains consist in the main of the natural grease (in reality a kind of wax) exuded from the skin of the sheep and technically known as the “yolk,” the dried-up perspiration from the body of the sheep; technically called “suint,” and dust, dirt, burrs, &c., which mechanically adhere to the sticky surfaces of the fibres. In this condition wool is quite unfit for any manufacturing purposes and must be cleansed before any mechanical operations can be commenced. Formerly the washing was effected in stale urine, which owed its detergent properties mainly to the presence of ammonium carbonate. The stale urine or lant was diluted with four to five times its bulk of water, and in this liquor, heated to 40°-50° C., the washing was effected.

At the present day this method has been entirely abandoned, the washing or “scouring” being effected with soap, assisted by ammonia, potash, soda or silicate of soda. The finest qualities of wool are washed with soft soap and potash, while for inferior qualities, cheaper detergents are employed. The operation is in principle perfectly simple, the wool being submerged in the warm soap solution, where it is moved about with forks and then taken out and allowed to drain. A second treatment in weaker soap serves to complete the process. In dealing with large quantities, wool-washing machines are employed, which consist essentially of long cast-iron troughs which contain the soap solution. The wool to be washed is fed in at one end of the machine and is slowly propelled to the other end by means of a system of mechanically-driven forks or rakes. As it passes from the machine, it is squeezed through a pair of rollers. Three such machines are usually required for efficient washing, the first containing the strongest and the third the weakest soap.

The washing of wool is in the main a mechanical process, in which the water dissolves out the suint while the soap emulsifies the yolk and thus removes it from the fibre. The attendant earthy impurities pass mechanically into the surrounding liquid and are swilled away.

In some works the wool is washed first with water alone, the aqueous extract thus obtained being evaporated to dryness and the residue calcined. A very good quality of potash is thus obtained as a by-product. In many works in Yorkshire and elsewhere, the dirty soap liquors obtained in wool-washing are not allowed to run to waste, but are run into tanks and there treated with sulphuric acid. The effect of this treatment is to decompose the soap, and the fatty acids along with the wool-grease rise as a magma to the surface. The purified product is known in the trade as “Yorkshire grease.”

Attempts have been made from time to time to extract the natural grease from wool by means of organic solvents, such as carbon bisulphide, carbon tetrachloride, petroleum spirit, &c., but have not met with much success.

Worsted yarn spun on the English system, as well as woollen yarn and fabrics made from them, contain oil which has been incorporated with the wool to facilitate the spinning. This oil must be got rid of previous to bleaching, and this is effected by scouring in warm soap with or without the assistance of alkalis.

Bleaching of Silk.

In raw silk, the fibre proper is uniformly coated with a proteid substance known as silk-gum, silk-glue or sericine which amounts to 19-25% of the weight of the material, and it is only after the removal of this coating that the characteristic properties of the fibre become apparent. This is effected by the process of “discharging” or “boiling-off,” which consists in suspending the hanks of raw silk over poles or sticks in a vat containing a strong hot soap solution (30% of soap on the weight of the silk). The liquor is kept just below boiling point for two or three hours, the hanks being turned from time to time. During the process, the sericine at first swells up considerably, the fibres becoming slippery, but as the operation proceeds it passes into solution. It is important that only soft water should be used for boiling-off since calcareous impurities are liable to mar the lustre of the silk.

The silk is now rinsed in weak soda solution and wrung. In this condition it is suitable for being dyed, but if it is to be bleached, the hanks are tied up loosely with smooth tape, put into coarse linen bags to prevent the silk becoming entangled, and boiled again in soap solution which is half as strong as that used in the first operation. The hanks are now taken out, rinsed in a weak soda solution, washed in water and wrung.

The actual bleaching of silk is usually effected by stoving as in the case of wool, with this difference, that the operation is repeated several times and blueing or tinting with other colours is effected after bleaching. Silk may also be bleached with peroxide of hydrogen, but this method is only used for certain qualities of spun silk and for tussore.

BLEAK, or Blick (Alburnus lucidus), a small fish of the Cyprinid family, allied to the bream and the minnow, but with a more elongate body, resembling a sardine. It is found in European streams, and is caught by anglers, being also a favourite in aquariums. The well-known and important industry of “Essence Orientale” and artificial pearls, carried on in France and Germany with the crystalline silvery colouring matter of 56 the bleak, was introduced from China about the middle of the 17th century.

BLEEK, FRIEDRICH (1793-1859), German Biblical scholar, was born on the 4th of July 1793, at Ahrensbök, in Holstein, a village near Lübeck. His father sent him in his sixteenth year to the gymnasium at Lübeck, where he became so much interested in ancient languages that he abandoned his idea of a legal career and resolved to devote himself to the study of theology. After spending some time at the university of Kiel, he went to Berlin, where, from 1814 to 1817, he studied under De Wette, Neander and Schleiermacher. So highly were his merits appreciated by his professors—Schleiermacher was accustomed to say that he possessed a special charisma for the science of “Introduction”—that in 1818 after he had passed the examinations for entering the ministry he was recalled to Berlin as Repetent or tutorial fellow in theology, a temporary post which the theological faculty had obtained for him. Besides discharging his duties in the theological seminary, he published two dissertations in Schleiermacher’s and G.C.F. Lücke’s Journal(1819-1820,1822), one on the origin and composition of the Sibylline Oracles “Über die Entstehung und Zusammensetzung der Sibyllinischen Orakel,” and another on the authorship and design of the Book of Daniel, “Über Verfasser und Zweck des Buches Daniel.” These articles attracted much attention, and were distinguished by those qualities of solid learning, thorough investigation and candour of judgment which characterized all his writings. Bleek’s merits as a rising scholar were recognized by the minister of public instruction, who continued his stipend as Repetent for a third year, and promised further advancement in due time. But the attitude of the political authority underwent a change. De Wette was dismissed from his professorship in 1819, and Bleek, a favourite pupil, incurred the suspicion of the government as an extreme democrat. Not only was his stipend as Repetent discontinued, but his nomination to the office of professor extraordinarius, which had already been signed by the minister Karl Altenstein, was withheld. At length it was found that Bleek had been confounded with a certain Baueleven Blech, and in 1823 he received the appointment.

During the six years that Bleek remained at Berlin, he twice declined a call to the office of professor ordinarius of theology, once to Greifswald and once to Königsberg. In 1829, however, he was induced to accept Lücke’s chair in the recently-founded university of Bonn, and entered upon his duties there in the summer of the same year. For thirty years he laboured with ever-increasing success, due not to any attractions of manner or to the enunciation of novel or bizarre opinions, but to the soundness of his investigations, the impartiality of his judgments, and the clearness of his method. In 1843 he was raised to the office of consistorial councillor, and was selected by the university to hold the office of rector, a distinction which has not since been conferred upon any theologian of the Reformed Church. He died suddenly of apoplexy on the 27th of February 1859.

Bleek’s works belong entirely to the departments of Biblical criticism and exegesis. His views on questions of Old Testament criticism were “advanced” in his own day; for on all the disputed points concerning the unity and authorship of the books of the Old Covenant he was opposed to received opinion. But with respect to the New Testament his position was conservative. An opponent of the Tübingen school, his defence of the genuineness and authenticity of the gospel of St. John is among the ablest that have been written; and although on some minor points his views did not altogether coincide with those of the traditional school, his critical labours on the New Testament must nevertheless be regarded as among the most important contributions to the maintenance of orthodox opinions. His greatest work, his commentary on the epistle to the Hebrews (Brief an die Hebräer erläutert durch Einleitung, Übersetzung, und fortlaufenden Commentar, in three parts, 1828, 1836 and 1840) won the highest praise from men like De Wette and Fr. Delitzsch. This work was abridged by Bleek for his college lectures, and was published in that condensed form in 1868. In 1846 he published his contributions to the criticism of the gospels (Beiträge zur Evangelien Kritik, pt. i.), which contained his defence of St John’s gospel, and arose out of a review of J.H.A. Ebrard’s Wissenschaftliche Kritik der Evangelischen Geschichte (1842).

BLEEK, WILHELM HEINRICH IMMANUEL (1827-1875), German philologist, son of Friedrich Bleek, was born in 1827 at Berlin. He studied first at Bonn and afterwards at Berlin, where his attention was directed towards the philological peculiarities of the South African languages. In his doctor’s dissertation (Bonn, 1851), De nominum generibus linguarum Africae Australis, he endeavoured to show that the Hottentot language was of North African descent. In 1854 his health prevented him accompanying Dr W.B. Baikie in the expedition to the Niger; but in the following year he accompanied Bishop Colenso to Natal, and was enabled to prosecute his researches into the language and customs of the Kaffirs. Towards the close of 1856 he settled at Cape Town, and in 1857 was appointed interpreter by Sir George Grey. In 1859 he was compelled by ill health to visit Europe, and on his return in the following year he was made librarian of the valuable collection of books presented to the colony by Sir George Grey. In 1869 he visited England, where the value of his services was recognized by a pension from the civil list. He died at Cape Town on the 17th of August 1875. His works, which are of considerable importance for African and Australian philology, consist of the Vocabulary of the Mozambique Language (London, 1856); Handbook of African, Australian and Polynesian Philology (Cape Town and London, 3 vols., 1858-1863); Comparative Grammar of, the South African Languages (vol. i., London, 1869); Reynard the Fox in South Africa, or Hottentot Fables and Tales (London, 1864); Origin of Language (London, 1869).

BLENDE, or Sphalerite, a naturally occurring zinc sulphide, ZnS, and an important ore of zinc. The name blende was used by G. Agricola in 1546, and is from the German blenden, to blind, or deceive, because the mineral resembles lead ore in appearance but contains no lead, and was consequently often rejected as worthless. Sphalerite, introduced by E.F. Glocker in 1847, has the same meaning (σφαλερός, deceptive), and so have the miners’ terms “mock ore,” “false lead,” and “blackjack.” The term “blende” was at one time used in a generic sense, and as such enters into the construction of several old names of German origin; the species under consideration is therefore sometimes distinguished as zinc-blende.

Crystals of blende belong to that subclass of the cubic system in which there are six planes of symmetry parallel to the faces of the rhombic dodecahedron and none parallel to the cubic faces; in other words, the crystals are cubic with inclined hemihedrism, and have no centre of symmetry. The fundamental form is the tetrahedron. Fig. 1 shows a combination of two tetrahedra, in which the four faces of one tetrahedron are larger than the four faces of the other: further, the two sets of faces differ in surface 57 characters, those of one set being dull and striated, whilst those of the other set are bright and smooth. A common form, shown in fig. 2, is a combination of the rhombic dodecahedron with a three-faced tetrahedron y (311); the six faces meeting in each triad axis are often rounded together into low conical forms. The crystals are frequently twinned, the twin-axis coinciding with a triad axis; a rhombic dodecahedron so twinned (fig. 3) has no re-entrant angles. An important character of blende is the perfect dodecahedral cleavage, there being six directions of cleavage parallel to the faces of the rhombic dodecahedron, and angles between which are 60°.

When chemically pure, which is rarely the case, blende is colourless and transparent; usually, however, the mineral is yellow, brown or black, and often opaque, the depth of colour and degree of transparency depending on the amount of iron present. The streak, or colour of the powder, is brownish or light yellow, rarely white. The lustre is resinous to adamantine, and the index of refraction high (2.369 for sodium light). The substance is usually optically isotropic, though sometimes it exhibits anomalous double refraction; fibrous zinc sulphide which is doubly refracting is to be referred to the hexagonal species wurtzite. The specific gravity is 4.0, and the hardness 4. Crystals exhibit pyroelectrical characters, since they possess four uniterminal triad axes of symmetry.

Crystals of blende are of very common occurrence, but owing to twinning and distortion and curvature of the faces, they are often rather complex and difficult to decipher. For this reason the mineral is not always readily recognized by inspection, though the perfect dodecahedral cleavage, the adamantine lustre, and the brown streak are characters which may be relied upon. The mineral is also frequently found massive, with a coarse or fine granular structure and a crystalline fracture; sometimes it occurs as a soft, white, amorphous deposit resembling artificially precipitated zinc sulphide. A compact variety of a pale liver-brown colour and forming concentric layers with a reniform surface is known in Germany as Schalenblende or Leberblende.

A few varieties of blende are distinguished by special names, these varieties depending on differences in colour and chemical composition. A pure white blende from Franklin in New Jersey is known as cleiophane; snow-white crystals are also found at Nordmark in Vermland, Sweden. Black blende containing ferrous sulphide, in amounts up to 15 or 20% isomorphously replacing zinc sulphide, is known as marmatite (from Marmato near Guayabal in Colombia, South America) and christophite (from St Christophe mine at Breitenbrunn near Eibenstock in Saxony). Transparent blende of a red or reddish-brown colour, such as that found near Holywell in Flintshire, is known as “ruby-blende” or “ruby-zinc.” Přibramite is the name given to a cadmiferous blende from Přibram in Bohemia. Other varieties contain small amounts of mercury, tin, manganese or thallium. The elements gallium and indium were discovered in blende.

Blende occurs in metalliferous veins, often in association with galena, also with chalcopyrite, barytes, fluorspar, &c. In ore-deposits containing both lead and zinc, such as those filling cavities in the limestones of the north of England and of Missouri, the galena is usually found in the upper part of the deposit, the blende not being reached until the deeper parts are worked. Blende is also found sporadically in sedimentary rocks; for example, in nodules of clay-ironstone in the Coal Measures, in the cement-doggers of the Lias, and in the casts of fossil shells. It has occasionally been found on the old timbers of mines. In these cases the zinc sulphide has probably arisen from the reduction of sulphate by organic matter.

Localities for fine crystallized specimens are numerous. Mention may be made of the brilliant black crystals from Alston Moor in Cumberland, St Agnes in Cornwall and Derbyshire. Yellow crystals are found at Kapnik-Bánya, near Nagy-Bánya in Hungary. Transparent yellow cleavage masses of large size occur in limestone in the zinc mines at Picos de Europa in the province of Santander, Spain. Beautiful isolated tetrahedra of transparent yellow blende are found in the snow-white crystalline dolomite of the Binnenthal in the Valais, Switzerland.

BLENHEIM (Ger. Blindheim), a village of Bavaria, Germany, in the district of Swabia, on the left bank of the Danube, 30 m. N.E. from Ulm by rail, a few miles below Höchstädt. Pop. 700. It was the scene of the defeat of the French and Bavarians under Marshals Tallard and Marsin, on the 13th of August 1704, by the English and the Austrians under the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene. In consideration of his military services and especially his decisive victory, a princely mansion was erected by parliament for the duke of Marlborough near Woodstock in Oxfordshire, England, and was named Blenheim Palace after this place.

The battle of Blenheim is also called Höchstädt, but the title accepted in England has the advantage that it distinguishes this battle from that won on the same ground a year previously, by the elector of Bavaria over the imperial general Styrum (9-20 September 1703), and from the fighting between the Austrians under Krag and the French under Moreau in June 1800 (see French Revolutionary Wars). The ground between the hills and the marshy valley of the Danube forms a defile through which the main road from Donauwörth led to Ulm; parallel streams divide the narrow plain into strips. On one of these streams, the Nebel, the French and Bavarians (somewhat superior in numbers) took up their position facing eastward, their right flank resting on the Danube, their left in the under-features of the hilly ground, and their front covered by the Nebel, on which were the villages of Oberglau, Unterglau and Blenheim. The imperialist army of Eugene and the allies under Marlborough (52,000 strong) encamped 5 m. to the eastward along another stream, their flanks similarly protected. On the 2nd-13th of August 1704 Eugene and Marlborough set their forces in motion towards the hostile camps; several streams had to be crossed on the march, and it was seven o’clock (five hours after moving off) when the British of Marlborough’s left wing, next the Danube, deployed opposite Blenheim, which Tallard thereupon garrisoned with a large force of his best infantry, aided by a battery of 24-pounder guns. The French and Bavarians were taken somewhat by surprise, and were arrayed in two separate armies, each with its cavalry on the wings and its foot in the centre. Thus the centre of the combined forces consisted of the cavalry of Marsin’s right and of Tallard’s left.

Here was the only good ground for mounted troops, and Marlborough followed Tallard’s example when forming up to attack, but it resulted from the dispositions of the French marshal that this weak point of junction of his two armies was exactly that at which decisive action was to be expected. Tallard therefore had a few horse on his right between the Danube and Blenheim, a mass of infantry in his centre at Blenheim itself, and a long line of cavalry supported by a few battalions forming his left wing in the plain, and connecting with the right of Marsin’s army. This army was similarly drawn up. The cavalry right wing was in the open, the French infantry near Oberglau, which was strongly held, the Bavarian infantry next on the left, and finally the Bavarian cavalry with a force of foot on the extreme left in the hills. The elector of Bavaria commanded his own troops in person. Marlborough and Eugene on their part were to attack respectively Tallard and Marsin. The 58 right wing under Eugene had to make a difficult march over broken ground before it could form up for battle, and Marlborough waited, with his army in order of battle between Unterglau and Blenheim, until his colleague should be ready. At 12.30 the battle opened. Lord Cutts, with a detachment of Marlborough’s left wing, attacked Blenheim with the utmost fury. A third of the leading brigade (British) was killed and wounded in the vain attempt to break through the strong defences of the village, and some French squadrons charged upon it as it retired; a colour was captured in the mêlée, but a Hessian brigade in second line drove back the cavalry and retook the colour. After the repulse of these squadrons, in which some British cavalry from the centre took part, Cutts again moved forward. The second attack, though pressed even more fiercely, fared no better than the first, and the losses were heavier than before. The duke then ordered Cutts to observe the enemy in Blenheim, and concentrated all his attention on the centre. Here, between Unterglau and Blenheim, preparations were being made, under cover of artillery, for the crossing of the Nebel, and farther up-stream a corps was sent to attack Oberglau. This attack failed completely, and it was not until Marlborough himself, with fresh battalions, drove the French back into Oberglau that the allies were free to cross the Nebel.

In the meanwhile the first line of Marlborough’s infantry had crossed lower down, and the first line of cavalry, following them across, had been somewhat severely handled by Tallard’s cavalry. The squadrons under the Prussian general Bothmar, however, made a dashing charge, and achieved considerable temporary success. Eugene was now closely engaged with the elector of Bavaria, and both sides were losing heavily. But Eugene carried out his holding attack successfully. Marsin dared not reinforce Tallard to any extent, and the duke was preparing for the grand attack. His whole force, except the detachment of Cutts, was now across the Nebel, and he had formed it in several lines with the cavalry in front. Marlborough himself led the cavalry; the French squadrons received the attack at the halt, and were soon broken. Marsin’s right swung back towards its own army. Those squadrons of Tallard’s left which retained their order fell back towards the Danube, and a great gap was opened in the centre of the defence, through which the victorious squadrons poured. Wheeling to their left the pursuers drove hundreds of fugitives into the Danube, and Eugene was now pressing the army of Marsin towards Marlborough, who re-formed and faced northward to cut off its retreat. Tallard was already a prisoner, but in the dusk and confusion Marsin slipped through between the duke and Eugene. General Churchill, Marlborough’s brother, had meanwhile surrounded the French garrison of Blenheim; and after one or two attempts to break out, twenty-four battalions of infantry and four regiments of dragoons, many of them the finest of the French army, surrendered.

The losses of the allies are stated at 4500 killed and 7500 wounded (British 670 killed and 1500 wounded). Of the French and Bavarians 11,000 men, 100 guns and 200 colours and standards were taken; besides the killed and wounded, the numbers of which vere large but uncertain—many were drowned in the Danube. Marsin’s army, though it lost heavily, was drawn off in good order; Tallard’s was almost annihilated.

BLENNERHASSETT, HARMAN (1765-1831), Irish-American lawyer, son of an Irish country gentleman of English stock settled in Co. Kerry, was born on the 8th of October 1765. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1790 was called to the Irish bar. After living for several years on the continent, he married in 1796 his niece, Margaret Agnew, daughter of Robert Agnew, the lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Man. Ostracised by their families for this step the couple decided to settle in America, where Blennerhassett in 1798 bought an island in the Ohio river about 2 m. below Parkersburg, West Virginia. Here in 1805 he received a visit from Aaron Burr (q.v.), in whose conspiracy he became interested, furnishing liberal funds for its support, and offering the use of his island as a rendezvous for the gathering of arms and supplies and the training of volunteers. When the conspiracy collapsed, the mansion and island were occupied and plundered by the Virginia militia. Blennerhassett fled, was twice arrested and remained a prisoner until after Burr’s release. The island was then abandoned, and Blennerhassett was in turn a cotton planter in Mississippi, and a lawyer (1819-1822) in Montreal, Canada. After returning to Ireland, he died in the island of Guernsey on the 2nd of February 1831. His wife, who had considerable literary talent and who published The Deserted Isle (1822) and The Widow of the Rock and Other Poems (1824), returned to the United States in 1840, and died soon afterward in New York City while attempting to obtain through Congress payment for property destroyed on the island.

BLERA (mod. Bieda), an ancient Etruscan town on the Via Clodia, about 32 m. N.N.W. of Rome. It was of little importance, and is only mentioned by geographers and in inscriptions. It is situated on a long, narrow tongue of rock at the junction of two deep glens. Some remains of the town walls still exist, and also two ancient bridges, both belonging to the Via Clodia, and many tombs hewn in the rock—small chambers imitating the architectural forms of houses, with beams and rafters represented in relief. See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, i. 207. There was another Blera in Apulia, on the road from Venusia to Tarentum.

BLESSINGTON, MARGUERITE, Countess of (1789-1849), Irish novelist and miscellaneous writer, daughter of Edmund Power, a small landowner, was born near Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, on the 1st of September 1789. Her childhood was made unhappy by her father’s character and poverty,—and her early womanhood wretched by her compulsory marriage at the age of fifteen to a Captain Maurice St Leger Farmer, whose drunken habits brought him at last as a debtor to the king’s bench prison, where, in October 1817, he died. His wife had left him some time before, and in February 1818 she married Charles John Gardiner, earl of Blessington. Of rare beauty, charm and wit, she was no less distinguished for her generosity and for the extravagant tastes which she shared with her husband, which resulted in encumbering his estates with a load of debt. In the autumn of 1822 they went abroad, spent four months of the next year at Genoa in close intimacy with Byron, and remained on the continent till Lord Blessington’s death in May 1829. Some time before this they had been joined by Count D’Orsay, who in 1827 married Lady Harriet Gardiner, Lord Blessington’s only daughter by a former wife. D’Orsay, who had soon separated from his wife, now accompanied Lady Blessington to England and lived with her till her death. Their home, first at Seamore Place, and afterwards Gore House, Kensington, became a centre of attraction for whatever was distinguished in literature, learning, art, science and fashion. After her husband’s death she supplemented her diminished income by contributing to various periodicals as well as by writing novels. She was for some years editor of The Book of Beauty and The Keepsake, popular annuals of the day. In 1834 she published her Conversations with Lord Byron. Her Idler in Italy (1839-1840), and Idler in France (1841) were popular for their personal gossip and anecdote, descriptions of nature and sentiment. Early in 1849, Count D’Orsay left Gore House to escape his creditors; the furniture and decorations were sold, and Lady Blessington joined the count in Paris, where she died on the 4th of June 1849.

BLIDA, a town of Algeria, in the department of Algiers, 32 m. by railway S.W. from Algiers, on the line to Oran. Pop. (1906) 16,866. It lies surrounded with orchards and gardens, 630 ft. above the sea, at the base of the Little Atlas, on the southern edge of the fertile plain of the Metija, and the right bank of the Wad-el-Kebir affluent of the Chiffa. The abundant water of this stream provides power for large corn 59 mills and several factories, and also supplies the town, with its numerous fountains and irrigated gardens. Blida is surrounded by a wall of considerable extent, pierced by six gates, and is further defended by Fort Mimieh, crowning a steep hill on the left bank of the river. The present town, French in character, has well-built modern streets with many arcades, and numbers among its buildings several mosques and churches, extensive barracks and a large military hospital. The principal square, the place d’Armes, is surrounded by arcaded houses and shaded by trees. The centre of a fertile district, and a post on one of the main routes in the country, Blida has a flourishing trade, chiefly in oranges and flour. The orange groves contain over 50,000 trees, and in April the air for miles round is laden with the scent of the orange blossoms. In the public gardens is a group of magnificent olive trees. The products of the neighbouring cork trees and cedar groves are a source of revenue to the town. In the vicinity are the villages of Joinville and Montpensier, which owe their origin to military camps established by Marshal Valée in 1838; and on the road to Medea are the tombs of the marabout Mahommed-el-Kebir, who died in 1580, and his two sons.

Blida, i.e. boleida, diminutive of the Arab word belad, city, occupies the site of a military station in the time of the Romans, but the present town appears to date from the 16th century. A mosque was built by order of Khair-ed-din Barbarossa, and under the Turks the town was of some importance. In 1825 it was nearly destroyed by an earthquake, but was speedily rebuilt on a site about a mile distant from the ruins. It was not till 1838 that it was finally held by the French, though they had been in possession for a short time eight years before. In April 1906 it was chosen as the place of detention of Behanzin, the ex-king of Dahomey, who died in December of that year.

Blida is the chief town of a commune of the same name, having (1906) a population of 33,332.

BLIGH, WILLIAM (1754-1817), English admiral, was born of a good Cornish family in 1754. He accompanied Captain Cook in his second expedition (1772-1774) as sailing-master of the “Resolution.” During the voyage, the bread-fruit, already known to Dampier, was found by them at Otaheite; and after seeing service under Lord Howe and elsewhere, “Bread-fruit Bligh,” as he was nicknamed, was despatched at the end of 1787 to the Pacific in command of H.M.S. “Bounty,” for the purpose of introducing it into the West Indies from the South Sea Islands. Bligh sailed from Otaheite, after remaining there about six months; but, when near the Friendly Islands, a mutiny (April 28, 1789) broke out on board the “Bounty,” headed by Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate, and Bligh, with eighteen others, was set adrift in the launch. The mutineers themselves settled on Pitcairn Island (q.v.), but some of them were afterwards captured, brought to England and in three cases executed. This mutiny, which forms the subject of Byron’s Island, did not arise so much from tyranny on the part of Bligh as from attachments contracted between the seamen and the women of Otaheite. After suffering severely from hunger, thirst and storms, Bligh and his companions landed at Timor in the East Indies, having performed a voyage of about 4000 m. in an open boat. Bligh returned to England in 1790, and he was soon afterwards appointed to the “Providence,” in which he effected the purpose of his former appointment by introducing the bread-fruit tree into the West India Islands. He showed great courage at the mutiny of the Nore in 1797, and in the same year took part in the battle of Camperdown, where Admiral Duncan defeated the Dutch under De Winter. In 1801 he commanded the “Glatton” (54) at the battle of Copenhagen, and received the personal commendations of Nelson. In 1805 he was appointed “captain general and governor of New South Wales.” As he made himself intensely unpopular by the harsh exercise of authority, he was deposed in January 1808 by a mutiny headed by Major George Johnston of the 102nd foot, and was imprisoned by the mutineers till 1810. He returned to England in 1811, was promoted to rear-admiral in that year, and to vice-admiral in 1814. Major Johnston was tried by court martial at Chelsea in 1811, and was dismissed the service. Bligh, who was an active, persevering and courageous officer, died in London in 1817.

BLIND, MATHILDE (1841-1896), English author, was born at Mannheim on the 21st of March 1841. Her father was a banker named Cohen, but she took the name of Blind after her step-father, the political writer, Karl Blind (1826-1907), one of the exiled leaders of the Baden insurrection in 1848-1849, and an ardent supporter of the various 19th-century movements for the freedom and autonomy of struggling nationalities. The family was compelled to take refuge in England, where Mathilde devoted herself to literature and to the higher education of women. She produced also three long poems, “The Prophecy of St Oran” (1881), “The Heather on Fire” (1886), an indignant protest against the evictions in the Highlands, and “The Ascent of Man” (1888), which was to be the epic of the theory of evolution. She wrote biographies of George Eliot (1883) and Madame Roland (1886), and translated D.F. Strauss’s The Old Faith and the New (1873-1874) and the Memoirs of Marie Bashkirtseff (1890). She died on the 26th of November 1896, bequeathing her property to Newnham College, Cambridge.

BLIND HOOKEY, a game of chance, played with a full pack of cards. The deal, which is an advantage, is decided as at whist, the cards being shuffled and cut as at whist. The dealer gives a parcel of cards to each player including himself. Each player puts the amount of his stake on his cards, which he must not look at. The dealer has to take all bets. He then turns up his parcel, exposing the bottom card. Each player in turn does the same, winning or losing according as his cards are higher or lower than the dealer’s. Ties pay the dealer. The cards rank as at whist. The suits are of no importance, the cards taking precedence according to their face-value.

BLINDING, a form of punishment anciently common in many lands, being inflicted on thieves, adulterers, perjurers and other criminals. The inhabitants of Apollonia (Illyria) are said to have inflicted this penalty on their “watch” when found asleep at their posts. It was resorted to by the Roman emperors in their persecutions of the Christians. The method of destroying the sight varied. Sometimes a mixture of lime and vinegar, or barely scalding vinegar alone, was poured into the eyes. Sometimes a rope was twisted round the victim’s head till the eyes started out of their sockets. In the middle ages the punishment seems to have been changed from total blindness to a permanent injury to the eyes, amounting, however, almost to blindness, produced by holding a red-hot iron dish or basin before the face. Under the forest laws of the Norman kings of England blinding was a common penalty. Shakespeare makes King John order his nephew Arthur’s eyes to be burnt out.

BLINDMAN’S-BUFF (from an O. Fr. word, buffe, a blow, especially a blow on the cheek), a game in which one player is blindfolded and made to catch and identify one of the others, who in sport push him about and “buffet” him.

BLINDNESS, the condition of being blind (a common Teutonic word), i.e. devoid of sight (see also Vision; and Eye: Diseases). The data furnished in various countries by the census of 1901 showed generally a decrease in blindness, due to the progress in medical science, use of antiseptics, better sanitation, control of infectious diseases, and better protection in shops and factories. Blindness is much more common in hot countries than in temperate and cold regions, but Finland and Iceland are exceptions to the general rule.1 In hot countries the eyes are affected by the glaring sunlight, the dust and the dryness of the air. From statistics in Italy, France and Belgium, localities on the coast seem to have more blind persons than those at a distance from the sea.

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The following table gives the number of blind persons as reported in the census of each country. Unless otherwise stated, it refers to the statistics of 1900.

Causes and Prevention

There are many cases of complete or partial blindness which might have been prevented, and a knowledge of the best methods of prevention and cure should be spread as widely as possible. Magnus, Bremer, Steffen and Rössler are of opinion that 40% of the cases of blindness might have been prevented. Hayes gives 33.35% as positively avoidable, 38.75% possibly avoidable, and 46.27% as a conservative estimate. Cohn regards blindness as certainly preventable in 33%, as probably preventable in 43%, and as quite unpreventable in only 24%. If we take the lowest of these figures, and assume that 400 out of every 1000 blind persons might have been saved from such a calamity, we realize the importance of preventative measures. For the physiology and pathology of the eye generally, see Vision and Eye.

The great majority of these cases are due to infantile purulent ophthalmia. This arises from inoculation of the eyes with hurtful material at time of birth. If the contagious discharges are allowed to remain, violent inflammation Ophthalmia. is set up which usually ends in the loss of sight. It depends on the presence of a microbe, and the effective application of a weak solution of nitrate of silver is curative, if made in a proper manner at an early period of the case. In Germany, midwives are expressly prohibited by law from treating any affection of the eyes or eyelids of infants, however slight. On the appearance of the first symptoms, they are required to represent to the parents, or others in charge, that medical assistance is urgently needed, or, if necessary, they are themselves to report to the local authorities and the district doctor. Neglect of these regulations entails liability to punishment. Eleven of the United States of America have enacted laws requiring that, if one or both eyes of an infant should become inflamed, swollen or reddened at any time within two weeks of its birth, it shall be the duty of the midwife or nurse having charge of such infant to report in writing within six hours, to the health officer or some legally qualified physician, the fact that such inflammation, swelling or redness exists. The penalty for failure to comply is fine or imprisonment.

The following weighty words, from a paper prepared by Dr Park Lewis, of Buffalo, N.Y., for the American Medical Association, show that laws are not sufficient to prevent evil, unless supported by strong public sentiment:—

One of the most common diseases of the eye is trachoma, often called “granular lids,” because the inner surface of the lid seems to be covered with little granulations. The disease sometimes lasts for years without causing Trachoma. blindness, though it gives rise to great irritation. It is generally attended by a discharge, which is highly contagious, producing the same disease if it gets into other eyes. Want of cleanliness is one of the most important factors in the propagation of trachoma, hence its great prevalence in Oriental countries. Trachoma is very prevalent in Egypt, where those suffering from total or partial blindness are said to amount to 10% of the population. During Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, nearly every soldier, out of an army of 32,000 men, was affected. During the following twenty years the disease spread through almost all European armies. In the Belgian army, there was one trachomatous soldier out of every five, and up to 1834 no less than 4000 soldiers had lost both eyes and 10,000 one eye. It is a disease which is very common in workhouse schools, orphan asylums and similar establishments. Unlike ophthalmia of new-born children, it is difficult to cure, and a total separation of the diseased from the healthy children should be effected.

About one-half of those who are blinded by injuries lose the second eye by sympathetic ophthalmia. It is a constant source of danger to those who retain an eye blinded by Sympathetic inflammation. injury. Blindness from this cause can be prevented by the removal of the injured eye, but unfortunately the proposal often meets with opposition from the patient.

Glaucoma is a disease which almost invariably leads to total Glaucoma. blindness; but in most cases it can be arrested by a simple operation if the case is seen sufficiently early.

Myopia, or “short-sight,” makes itself apparent in children between the ages of seven and nine. Neglect of a year or two may do serious mischief. Short-sight, when not inherited, is produced by looking intently and continuously Short-sight. at near objects. Children should be encouraged to describe objects at a distance, with which they are unacquainted, and parents should choose out-door occupations and amusements for children who show a tendency to shortsightedness.

A report was issued in 1906, by the school board of Glasgow, as to an investigation by Dr H. Wright Thomas, ophthalmic surgeon, regarding the eyesight of school children, which includes the following passage. Dr Wright Thomas states that the teachers tested the visual acuteness of 52,493 children, and found 18,565, or 35%, to be below what is regarded as the normal standard. He examined the 18,565 defectives by retinoscopy, and found that 11,209, or 21% of the whole, had ocular defects. The proportion of these cases was highest in the poor and closely-built districts and in old schools, and was lowest in the better-class schools and those near the outskirts of the city. Defective vision, apart from ocular defect, seems to be due partly to want of training of the eyes for distant objects and partly to exhaustion of the eyes, which is easily induced when work is carried on in bad light, or the nutrition of the children is defective from bad feeding and unhealthy surroundings. Regarding training of the eyes for distant objects, much might be done in the infant department by the total abolition of sewing, which is definitely hurtful to such young eyes, and the substitution of competitive games involving the recognition of small objects at a distance of 20 ft. or more. An annual testing by the teachers, followed by medical inspection of the children found defective, would soon cause all existing defects to be corrected, and would lead to the detection of those which develop during school life.

History of Institutions

Although there is a record of a hospital established by St Basil at Caesarea, Cappadocia, in the 4th century, a refuge by the hermit St Lymnee (d. c. 455) at Syr, Syria, in the 5th century, and an institution by St Bertrand, bishop of Le Mans, in the 7th century, the first public effort to benefit the blind was the founding of a hospital at Paris, in 1260, by Louis IX., for 300 blind persons. The common legend is that he founded it as an asylum for 300 of his soldiers who had become blinded in the crusade in Egypt, but the statutes of the founder are preserved, and no mention is made of crusaders. This Hospice des Quinze-Vingts, increased by subsequent additions to its funds, still assists the adult blind of France. The pensioners are divided into two classes—those who are inmates of the hospital (300), and those who receive pensions in the form of out-door relief. All appointments to inmates or pensions are vested in the minister of the Interior, and applicants must be of French nationality, totally blind and not less than forty years of age.

From the time of St Louis to the 18th century, there are records of isolated cases of blind persons who were educated, and of efforts to devise tangible apparatus to assist them.

Girolamo Cardan, the 16th-century Italian physician, conceived the idea that the blind could be taught to read and write by means of touch. About 1517 Francesco Lucas in Spain, and Rampazetto in Italy, made use of large letters cut in wood for instructing the blind. In 1646 a book, on the condition of the blind, was written by an Italian, and published in Italian and French, under the title of L’Aveugle affligé et consolé. In 1670 a book was written on the instruction of the blind by Lana Terzi, the Jesuit. In 1676 Jacques Bernoulli, the Swiss savant, taught a blind girl to read, but the means of her instruction were not made known. In 1749 D. Diderot wrote his Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient, to show how far the intellectual and moral nature of man is modified by blindness. Dr S.G. Howe, who many years after translated and printed the “Letter” in embossed type, characterizes it as abounding with errors of fact and inference, but also with beauties and suggestions. The heterodox speculations contained in his “Letter on the Blind” caused Diderot to be imprisoned three months in the Bastille. He was released because his services were required for the forthcoming Encyclopaedia. Rousseau visited Diderot in prison, and is reported to have suggested a system of embossed printing. J. Locke, G.W. Leibnitz, Molineau and others discussed the effect of blindness on the human mind. In Germany, Weissembourg had used signs in relief and taught Mlle Paradis.

Prior to the 18th century, blind beggars existed in such numbers that they struggled for standing room in positions favourable for asking alms. Their very affliction led to their being used as spectacles for the amusement of the populace. The degraded state of the masses of the blind in France attracted the attention of Valentin Haüy. In 1771, at the annual fair of St Ovid, in Paris, an innkeeper had a group of blind men attired in a ridiculous manner, decorated with peacock tails, asses’ ears, and pasteboard spectacles without glasses, in which condition they gave a burlesque concert, for the profit of their employer. This sad scene was repeated day after day, and greeted with loud laughter by the gaping crowds. Among those who gazed at this outrage to humanity was the philanthropist Valentin Haüy, who left the disgraceful scene full of sorrow. “Yes,” he said to himself, “I will substitute truth for this mocking parody. I will make the blind to read, and they shall be enabled to execute harmonious music.” Haüy collected all the information he could gain respecting the blind, and began teaching a blind boy who had gained his living by begging at a church 62 door. Encouraged by the success of his pupil, Haüy collected other blind persons, and in 1785 founded in Paris the first school for the blind (the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles), and commenced the first printing in raised characters. In 1786, before Louis XVI. and his court at Versailles, he exhibited the attainments of his pupils in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and music, and in the same year published an account of his methods, entitled Essai sur l’education des aveugles. As the novelty wore off, contributions almost came to an end, and the Blind School must have ceased to exist, had it not been taken, in 1791, under the protection of the state.

The emperor of Russia, and later the dowager empress, having learned of Haüy’s work, invited him to visit St Petersburg for the purpose of establishing a similar institution in the Russian capital. On his journey Haüy was invited by the king of Prussia to Charlottenburg. He took part in the deliberations of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and as a result a school was founded there.

Edward Rushton, a blind man, was the projector of the first institution for the blind in England—the School for the Indigent Blind, Liverpool. In 1790 Rushton suggested to the literary and philosophical society of which he was a member, the establishment of a benefit club for the indigent blind. The idea was communicated to his friend, J. Christie, a blind musician, and the latter thought the scheme should also include the instruction of young blind persons. They circulated letters amongst individuals who would be likely to give their assistance, and the Rev. Henry Dannett warmly advocated the undertaking. It was mainly due to his co-operation and zeal that Messrs Rushton and Christie’s plan was carried out, and the Liverpool asylum was opened in 1791. Thomas Blacklock of Edinburgh, a blind poet and scholar, translated Haüy’s work on the Education of the Blind. He interested Mr David Millar, a blind gentleman, the Rev. David Johnston and others in the subject, and after Blacklock’s death the Edinburgh Asylum for the Relief of the Indigent and Industrious Blind was established (1793). Institutions were established in the United Kingdom in the following order:—

Many of the early institutions were asylums, and to the present day schools for the blind are regarded by the public as asylums rather than as educational establishments. With nearly all these schools workshops were connected. In 1856 Miss Gilbert, the blind daughter of the bishop of Chichester, established a workshop in Berners Street, London, and since that date workshops have been started in many of the provincial towns.

After the beginning of the 19th century, institutions for the blind were established in various parts of Europe. The institution at Vienna was founded in 1804 by Dr W. Klein, a blind man, and he remained at its head for fifty years. That of Berlin was established in 1806, Amsterdam, Prague and Dresden in 1808, Copenhagen in 1811. There are more than 150 on the European continent, most of them receiving aid from the government, and being under government supervision.

The first school for the blind in the United States was founded in Boston, Mass., chiefly through the efforts of Dr John D. Fisher, a young physician who visited the French school. It was incorporated in 1829, and in honour of T.H. Perkins (1764-1854) who gave his mansion to the institution was named the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum (now School) for the Blind. Aid was granted by the state from the beginning. In 1831 Dr Samuel G. Howe (q.v.) was appointed director, and held that position for nearly forty-four years; being succeeded by his son-in-law Michael Anagnos (d. 1906), who established a kindergarten for the blind at Jamaica Plain, in connexion with the Perkins Institution. Dr Howe was interested in many charitable and sociological movements, but his life-work was on behalf of the blind. One of his most notable achievements was the education of Laura Bridgman (q.v.) who was deaf, dumb and blind, and this has since led to the education of Helen Keller and other blind deaf-mutes. The New York Institution was incorporated in 1831, and the Pennsylvania Institution was founded at Philadelphia by the Society of Friends in 1833. The Ohio was founded at Columbus in 1837, Virginia at Staunton in 1839, Kentucky at Louisville in 1842, Tennessee at Nashville in 1844, and now every state in the Union makes provision for the education of the blind.

Statistics

In England and Wales the total number of persons returned in 1901 as afflicted with blindness was 25,317, being in the proportion of 778 per million living, or 1 blind person in every 1285 of the population. The following table England and Wales. shows that the proportion of blind persons to population has diminished at each successive enumeration since 1851, in which year particulars of those afflicted in this manner were ascertained for the first time. It will, however, be noted that, although the decrease in the proportion of blind in the latest intercensal period was still considerable, yet the rate of decrease which had obtained between 1871 and 1891 was not maintained.—

The following table, which gives the proportions of blind per million living at the earlier age-groups, shows that in the decennium 1891-1901, as also in recent previous intercensal periods, there was a decrease in the proportion of blind children in England and Wales generally; it thus lends support to the contention, in the General Report for 1891, that the decrease was due either to the lesser prevalence, or to the more efficient treatment, of purulent ophthalmia and other infantile maladies which may result in blindness.

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In 1886 a royal commission on the blind, deaf and dumb was appointed by the government, and, after taking much valuable evidence, issued an exhaustive and instructive report. Following on the practical recommendations submitted by this commission, the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act 1893, was passed, under which the education of the blind became for the first time compulsory. In terms of this statute, the school authorities were made responsible for the provision of suitable elementary education for blind children up to sixteen years of age, and grants of £3, 3s. for elementary subjects, and of £2, 2s. for industrial training, were contributed by the state towards the cost of educating children in schools certified as efficient within the meaning of the Elementary Education Act 1876. The principal aim of the Education Act of 1893 was to supply education in some useful profession or trade which will enable the blind to earn their livelihood and to become useful citizens; but the weak spot was that no provision was made therein for the completion of their education and industrial training after the age of sixteen.

In England and Wales, in 1907, there were twenty-four resident schools and forty-three workshops for the blind. In many of the large towns, day classes for the education of blind children have been established by local education authorities. There are forty-six home teaching societies, who send teachers to visit the blind in their homes, to teach adults who wish to learn to read, to act as colporteurs, to lend and exchange useful books, and to act as Scripture readers to those who are aged and infirm. All the home teaching societies for the blind and many public libraries lend embossed books. The public library at Oxford has nearly 400 volumes of classical works for the use of university students.

A society was instituted in 1847 by Dr W. Moon for stereotyping and embossing the Scriptures and other books in “Moon” type. The type has been adapted to over 400 languages and dialects. After Dr Moon’s death in 1884 the work was carried on by his daughter, Miss Adelaide Moon, and the books are much used by the adult blind.

In 1868 Dr T.R. Armitage, being aware of the great improvements which had been made in the education of the blind in other countries, founded the British and Foreign Blind Association. This association was formed for the purpose of promoting the education and employment of the blind, by ascertaining what had been done in these respects in various countries, by endeavouring to supply deficiencies where these were found to exist, and by attempting to bring about greater harmony of action between the different existing schools and institutions. It gave a new impetus to the education and training of the blind in the United Kingdom. At that time their education was in a state of chaos. The Bible, or a great part of it, had been printed in five different systems. The founders took as an axiom that the relative merits of the various methods of education through the sense of touch should be decided by those and those only who have to rely on this sense. The council, who were all totally or partially blind, spent two years in comparing the different systems of embossed print. In 1869 and 1870 Dr Armitage corresponded with Dr J.R. Russ in regard to the New York Point. No trouble was spared to arrive at a right conclusion. The Braille system was finally adopted, and the association at once became a centre for supplying frames for writing Braille, printed books, maps, music and other educational apparatus for the blind. All books printed by the association are printed from stereotyped plates embossed by blind copyists. About 3000 separate works, varying in length from 1 to 12 volumes, have been copied by hand to meet the requirements of public libraries and individuals. About 700 ladies, who give their services, make the first Braille copy of these books, and they are recopied by blind scribes, chiefly women and girls, who are paid for their work.

The National Lending library, London, was founded in 1882. It has over 5500 volumes in Braille and other types. Books are forwarded to all parts of the United Kingdom.

There are fourteen magazines published in embossed type in the United Kingdom.

There are thirty-six pension societies—the principal are Hetherington’s, Day’s, the Clothworkers’, the Cordwainers’, the National Blind Relief Society, Royal Blind Pension Society and Indigent Blind Visiting Society.

The Gardner Trust administers the income of £300,000 left by Henry Gardner in 1879. The income is used for instructing the blind in the profession of music, in suitable trades, handicrafts and professions other than music, for pensions, and free grants to institutions and individuals for special purposes.

In the United States the education of the blind is not regarded as a charity, but forms part of the educational system of the country, and is carried on at the public expense. According to the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education United States. for 1908, there were 40 state schools, with 4340 pupils. The value of apparatus, grounds and buildings was $9,201,161. For salaries and other expenditure, the aggregate was $1,460,732. The United States government appropriates $10,000 annually for printing embossed books, which are distributed among the different state schools for the blind. Beside these state schools, there are workshops for the blind subsidized by the state government or the municipality. Commissions composed of able men have recently been appointed in several of the states to take charge of the affairs of the blind from infancy to old age. The exhaustive summary of the 12th census enables these commissions to communicate with every blind person in their respective states.

At the 12th census a change was made in the plan for securing the returns, and the work of the enumerators was restricted to a brief preliminary return, showing only the name, sex, age, post office address, and nature of the existing defects in all persons alleged to be blind or deaf. Dr Alexander Graham Bell, of Washington, D.C., was appointed expert special agent of the census office for the preparation of a report on the deaf and blind. He was empowered to conduct in his own name a correspondence relating to this branch of the census inquiry. A circular containing eighteen questions was addressed to every blind person given in the census, and from the data contained in the replies the following tables (I., II., III., IV.) have been compiled.