BISSAGOS-BITCHE

that of the ox in having a sort of venison flavour. much employed in medicine, both internally and The hump, in particular, is esteemed a delicacy.- externally, in hemorrhages and many other comPemmican (q. v.), so much the food of fur-hunters plaints. B. is a native of meadows in Europe, and and northern voyageurs, is made of the flesh and fat

BITHOOR-BITTERN.

miles east-south-east of Sarreguemines. Its citadel, which is built on a precipitous and isolated rock, in the middle of the town, is well supplied with water, defended by 80 cannon, has accommodation for a garrison of 1000 men, and is considered all but impregnable. The Prussians under the Duke of Brunswick attempted to surprise it in 1793, but failed. Pop. of town, 2456, who are engaged in the manufacture of paper, glass, and porcelain.

BITHOO'R, a town in India in the district of Cawnpore, and lieutenant-governorship of North-west Provinces, stands on the right bank of the Ganges, about 12 miles north-west of Cawnpore itself. B., particularly devoted to the worship of Brahma, has numerous pagodas. It is, of course, a favourite resort for pilgrims, who here, as at Benares and Bindraban, have access to the sacred stream for purposes of ablution, by means of elaborately constructed ghauts. During the mutiny of 1857, B. acquired an unenviable notoriety as the stronghold of Nena Sahib. Here also Havelock more than once exacted retribution, however inadequate, defeating the Nena in the field, and burning his fort. B. in 1871 contained 8322 inhabitants.

BITHY'NIA, an ancient division of Asia Minor, was separated from Europe by the Propontis (Sea of Marmora) and the Thracian Bosporus (Strait of Constantinople), and was bounded N. by the Euxine, and S. by Galatia, Phrygia, and Mysia. Its eastern limits were not very clearly defined, but they at least extended as far as Paphlagonia. It contained the famous Greek cities or colonies of Chalcedon, Heraclea, &c.; and at later periods, Nicomedia, Nicæa, and Prusa, were flourishing cities of Bithynia. The inhabitants of B. were supposed to be of Thracian origin. The country was subdued (560 B. C.) by Croesus of Lydia, and five years later, fell under the Persian dominion. But about 440 or 430 B. C., it became an independent kingdom under a dynasty of native princes, who made Nicomedia their capital. The last king, Nicomedes III., made the Romans his heirs, and with a large addition from the Pontic king dom, B. became a province of the empire (74 B. C.). Under Trajan, B. was governed by Pliny the Younger, whose letters to the emperor on the administration and condition of the province contain the well-known passage respecting the Christians. The Emperor Diocletian made Nicomedia his habitual residence. In 1298, Osman the Turk broke into the country; and in 1328, Prusa, or Brusa, then the chief town of B., became the capital of the kingdom of the Osmanli.

BITLI'S, a town of Asiatic Turkey, in the pashalic of West Van, in lat. 38° 24′ N., and long. 42° 5' E., about 120 miles south-east from Erzrum. It is situated at an elevation of 5156 feet above the level of the sea, in a deep ravine traversed by the river Bitlis, one of the head streams of the Tigris. B. is a straggling, irregular place, covering a large surface of ground, and surrounded by bare limestone mountains, rising to a height of about 2000 feet above the valley, which is filled with orchards and gardens, and watered by numerous streams and springs. It has 3 mosques, about 12 convents belonging to the howling dervishes, who appear to have made B. their head-quarters, several well-stocked bazaars, and extensive manufactures of cotton cloths, which are celebrated for their bright red dye. It has also a very extensive trade. The import of British goods is small. The population consists of about 2000 Mohammedan, and 1000 Armenian families. The Persians defeated Solyman the Magnificent near B. in 1554.

BITO'NTO (ancient Butuntum), a town of Italy, in the province of Bari, and 10 miles west-southwest of the city of Bari. It is situated in a fruitful plain about 5 miles from the sea, is well built, is, conjointly with Ruvo, the see of a bishop, and has a fine cathedral, monasteries, and a nunnery. Pop. 16,000, who carry on an extensive trade in a wine called Zagarello, which is largely cultivated in the environs. B. is the birthplace of Giordani, the mathematician. In its vicinity, the Spaniards, under Count de Montemar, gained a splendid victory over the Austrians on the 25th of May 1734, the result of

which was that Spain re-obtained possession of the kingdom of Naples.

BITTER CRESS. See CRESS.

BITTER KING (Soulaurea amaʼra), a shrub or small,tree of the natural order Polygalaceæ (q. v.), a native of the Indian Archipelago, which has received its name from its intense bitterness. The genus differs from the usual structure of the order in its regular flowers. The B. K. has large oval leaves and axillary racemes of flowers. It is used medicinally in fevers and other diseases.

BITTER SPAR, a name given to Dolomite (q. v.), from the magnesia contained in it, which the Germans call Bitter Salt.

BITTER VETCH. See OROBUS.

BITTERN (Botaurus), according to some modern ornithologists, a genus of the Heron (q. v.) family (Ardeida); but regarded by others as a mere subgenus of Heron (Ardea), and not a very well defined one. Bitterns are indeed chiefly distinguished from herons by the long, loose plumage of the neck, which they have the power of erecting at pleasure, along with the rest of their clothing feathers, so as greatly to increase their apparent size. The back of the neck, however, is merely downy, or almost bare, the long feathers being on the front and sides. Bitterns also differ from herons in the greater length of their toes, the middle toe being as long as the shank. They are almost all solitary birds, inhabiting reedy and marshy places, where they lie hid during the day, and will almost allow themselves to be trodden upon ere they take wing; they feed during the night, and then, also, often rise spirally to a great height into the air, and emit loud resounding cries. Their food consists chiefly of frogs, and partly, also, of fish, lizards, water-insects, &c., and even of small birds and quadrupeds. The claw of the middle toe is serrated on the inner edge, probably to aid in securing slippery prey.-The COMMON B. (B. stellaris, or Ardea stellaris) is a bird very widely diffused over the old world, being found in almost all, at least of the temperate, parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, which are sufficiently marshy for its manner of life. It is now rare in Britain, owing to drainage; but was formerly more common, and in the days of falconry, was carefully protected by law in England, on account of the sport which it afforded. Its flesh also was in high esteem, and is not rank and fishy, like that of the herons generally. In size, it is rather less than the common heron; the bill is about four inches long, the feathers on the crown of the head are greenish black, and the plumage in general of a dull yellow colour, beautifully and irregularly marked and mottled with black. The B. makes a rude nest of sticks, reeds, &c., in its marshy haunts, and lays four or five greenish-brown eggs. It has a peculiar bellowing cry, which has obtained for it such English provincial names as Mire-drum, Bull of the Bog, &c., and many of its appellations in other languages, perhaps even its name B. (Bitour, Botur, Botaurus). Some naturalists used to assert that the booming cry of the B. was produced by the bird inserting its bill into a

BITTERN-BITTERSWEET.

BITTERWOOD-BIVALVE SHELLS.

twigs, collected in autumn after the leaves are fallen, are used in medicine as a diaphoretic and diuretic, and as a remedy for leprosy and other cutaneous disorders. See SOLANUM.

BITTERWOOD, a name given to certain species of the genus Xylopia, trees and shrubs remarkable for the bitterness of their wood, particularly the West Indian X. glabra. Furniture made of this wood is safe from the attacks of insects.-The genus Xylopia belongs to the natural order Anonaceae (q. v.). The fruit of some of the species, particularly X. sericea, is highly aromatic and pungent like pepper. X. sericea is a large tree, a native of Brazil; its bark is used for making cordage, which is excellent.

B. is also the name of Pierana excelsa (formerly Quassia excelsa), a tree of the natural order Simarubaceae (q. v.), a native of Jamaica, the wood of which is used in medicine for the same purposes as Quassia (q. v.), and often under that name; indeed, it is probable that all the present quassia of the shops is really this wood. It is, botanically, very nearly allied to the true quassia, and possesses very similar properties, containing the crystallisable bitter principle called Quassite or Quassin. The wood, which is intensely bitter, is a very useful stomachic and tonic; an infusion of it is a well-known and useful fly-poison; and it appears to act as a powerful narcotic on many quadrupeds.

knife. Its colour is blackish, reddish, or yellowishbrown; and its specific gravity is sometimes a little less, and sometimes a little more than that of water. It has a strong bituminous odour, and burns with a sooty flame.

BITU'MINOUS COAL is a term applied to the varieties of coal which contain a large percentage of volatile matter. They yield, on their destructive distillation, a considerable quantity of gas, remarkably pure, and with good illuminating qualities, and are consequently largely used for that purpose. See

COAL

BITU'MINOUS LIMESTONES are limestones impregnated and sometimes deeply coloured with bituminous matter, obtained from decaying vegetables, or, more probably, from the decomposed remains of those animals, the hard parts of which form so large an amount of the rock.

BITU'MINOUS SHALES are indurated beds of

clay occurring in the coal-measures, and containing such an amount of carbon and volatile matter that they are able to keep up combustion when mixed with but a little coal. They are indeed impure coal, with a large percentage of ash or earthy matter, which after burning retains the original form. See COAL.

BITZIUS, ALBERT, better known under the nom de plume of Jeremias Gotthelf, a Swiss author, BITU'MEN, a mineral substance, remarkable was born at Morat, in the canton of Freiburg, 4th for its inflammability and its strong peculiar odour; October 1797. He was educated for the church; generally, however, supposed to be of vegetable and after holding several cures, was appointed, in origin. The name, which was in use among the 1832, pastor of Lützelflüh, in Emmenthal, canton of ancient Romans, is variously employed, sometimes Bern, which office he retained till his death. His to include a number of the substances called Mineral first work was entitled The Mirror of Peasants Resins (see RESINS), particularly the liquid mineral (Burgsdorf, 1836). It is the touching history of a substances called Naphtha (q. v.) and Petroleum poor villager, Jeremias Gotthelf, which pseudonym (q. v.) or Mineral Oil, and the solid ones called B. ever after retained. In 1838 appeared his Sorrows Mineral Pitch, Asphalt (q. v.), Mineral Caoutchouc, &c. and Joys of a Schoolmaster; in 1839, Dursli, the -sometimes in a more restricted sense it is applied Brandy-drinker, and How Five Maidens miserably by mineralogists only to some of these, and by some perish in Brandy; in 1842-1846, Scenes and Tradimineralogists to the solid, by others to the liquid tions of the Swiss, in six vols., in which B. narrates, ones. All these substances are, however, closely with great art, the old national legends, among allied to each other. Naphtha and petroleum consist which the most remarkable is the Reconciliation. essentially of carbon and hydrogen alone, 84-88 The best and most popular of his stories, however, per cent. being carbon; the others contain also are Grandmother Katy (Berlin, 1848); Uli, the Farma little oxygen, which is particularly the case in servant (Berlin, 2d edition, 1850); its continuation, asphalt, the degree of their solidity appearing to Uli, the Farmer (2d edition, Berlin, 1850); and depend upon the proportion of oxygen which they Stories and Pictures of Popular Life in Switzerland contain, which amounts in some specimens of (Berlin, 1851). Subsequently, he wrote several asphalt to 10 per cent. Asphalt also contains a pamphlets against the German democrats, without, little nitrogen. Bituminous substances are generally however, violating those popular sympathies and found in connection with carboniferous rocks, in dis- liberal convictions which pervade his writings, and tricts where there is, or evidently has been, volcanic which at an earlier period led him vehemently to agency. See the articles already referred to. oppose the family government of the Bernese arisIndeed, most kinds of coal contain B., and a sub-tocracy. His last work was The Clergyman's Wife, stance essentially the same is produced from all kinds of coal by distillation; and whether before existing actually formed in the coal, or produced at the time by the action of heat, B. may often be seen bubbling from pieces of coal after they have begun to burn on an ordinary fire. Some of the shales of the coal-measures are very bituminous, as is also a kind of marl-slate abundant in some parts of the continent of Europe. See SHALE and MARL.-One of the most interesting of the bituminous minerals is that called Mineral Caoutchouc or Elastic B., and for which the new name of Elaterite has been devised, as if to support the dignity of its exaltation to the rank of a distinct mineral species. It is a very rare mineral, only three localities being known for it in the world -the Odin lead-mine in Derbyshire; a coal-mine at Montrelais, near Angers, in France; and a coal-mine near South Bury, in Massachusetts. It is elastic and flexible like caoutchouc, and may be used, like it, for effacing pencil-marks. It is easily cut with a

which appeared in 1854. Its author died on the 224 October of the same year. B.'s writings are greatly relished in Switzerland. They are characterised by simplicity, inventiveness, a wonderful fidelity in the delineation of manners and habits, great vigour of description, and raciness of humour, while their tone is strictly moral and Christian.

BI'VALVE SHELLS, or BIVALVES, are those testaceous coverings of mollusks which consist of two concave plates or valves, united by a hinge. So long as molluscous animals, provided with shells, were considered by naturalists almost exclusively with respect to these, the order of B. S., originally established by Aristotle, retained its place (see CONCHOLOGY); and indeed the external character upon which it is founded is closely connected with some of the important structural characters according to which mollusks are now classified. See MOLLUSCA. A vast majority of recent B. S. belong to Cuvier's Testaceous order of Acephalous Mollusca, the Lamel

BIVOUAC-BLACK.

libranchiate (q. v.) Mollusca of Owen, although with them are classed some which were placed among Multivalves (q. v.) by conchologists, on account of accessory valves which they possess, and some which have a calcareous tube superadded to the true valves, or even taking their place as the chief covering of the animal. There are also mollusks of the class Brachiopoda (q. v.), or Palliobranchiata, which possess B. S., as the Terebratula, or Lamp-shells (q. v.), &c. The structure of the shell, however, when closely examined, is found to be different in these two classes (see SHELL), although its general appearance is much the same. A very large proportion of the B. S. of the older fossiliferous rocks belong to the class Brachiopoda.

was afterwards imitated by the other armies of Europe, though less by the English. Soldiers in B. light fires, and improvise, where it is possible, huts of straw, branches, &c. But this mode of encampment, though favourable to celerity of movement, is purchased at the expense of the soldiers' health, besides being destructive of discipline, by leading to plundering and destroying of houses, fruit-trees, &c., in the vicinity. Accordingly, the tent is again coming into use, and for permanent encampments, regularly constructed wooden huts have been introduced. There are still, however, many cases where the B. is the only resource.

BIXA. See ARNOTTO.

In the Brachiopoda, one valve is ventral, and the Diarrhytus, or Zaritus), a seaport town of Tunis, at BIZE'RTA, or BENZERTA (ancient Hippo other dorsal; in the Lamellibranchiata, the one is the bottom of a deep gulf or bay of the Mediterapplied to the right side, and the other to the left side of the animal. The valves of ordinary B. S. ranean, and at the mouth of a lagoon, united to the consist of layers, of which the outermost is always town in Africa, being about 38 miles north-west of gulf by a narrow channel. It is the most northerly the smallest; and each inner one extends a little beyond it, so that the shell becomes thicker and Tunis, in lat. 37° 17 N., and long. 9° 51' E. It is surrounded by walls, and defended by two castles; stronger as it increases in length and breadth. The which, however, as they are commanded by the valves are connected at the hinge by an elastic liga- neighbouring heights, are quite useless against a ment; and in general this consists of two parts, land-attack. Its port, formerly one of the best in more or less distinct-one on the outside, to which the Mediterranean, has been suffered to fill up, until the name ligament is sometimes restricted, and now only small vessels can be admitted, though very which is stretched by the closing of the valves; little labour is required to give a uniform depth of another, sometimes called the spring, more internal, 5 or 6 fathoms to the channel leading to the inner which is compressed by the closing of the valves, harbour or lagoon, which has a depth varying from and tends to open them when the compressing force 10 to 50 fathoms, and is extensive enough to afford of the adductor muscle or muscles is removed, the accommodation to the largest navies. The adjacent effect of which is to be country is remarkably fertile, but its cultivation is seen in the gaping of the neglected. Pop. variously estimated at from 8000 shell when the animal is to 14,000. Agathocles, between the years 310 and dead. The hinge is often 307 B.C., fortified and provided B. with a new furnished with teeth which harbour; and under the Romans, it was a free city. lock into each other; BIZIU'RA. See MUSK DUCK. sometimes it is quite destitute of them; sometimes the hinge-line is curved, sometimes straight. Conchological classification has been much founded upon characters taken from this part. The valves of some B. S. are equal and symmetrical, in others they are different from one another, particularly in those mollusks which, like the oyster, attach themselves permanently by one valve to some fixed substance, as a rock. Sometimes the valves of B. S. close completely at the pleasure of the animal; those of others always gape somewhere.

Pecten.

A bivalve shell,

The point at the hinge, from which the formation of each valve has proceeded, is called the umbo. On the side of the umbo opposite to the ligament there is usually a small depression called the lunule. The marks, familiar to every one, upon the inside of a bivalve shell, are the impressions of the mantle of the (lamellibranchiate) mollusk, and of the adductor muscle or muscles.

BIVOUAC (from the German beiwacht, or bewachen, to watch over) is the encampment of soldiers in the open air, without tents, where every one remains dressed, and with his weapons by him. Even during the Seven Years' War it was no uncommon thing for the whole army, when in the vicinity of the enemy, to pass the night in their ranks, each lying down in his place, in order to be ready to stand to their arms at a moment's notice. But the French revolutionary armies introduced the practice of dispensing with tents altogether, and regularly passing the night en bivouac. Hence in a great measure that rapidity in their motions which long made them uniformly successful; and the practice

BJÖRNSTJERNA, MAGNUS FRIEDRICH FERDINAND, COUNT, a Swedish statesman and author, was born 10th October 1779 at Dresden, where his father then resided as secretary to the Swedish legation. He received his education in Germany, and entered Sweden for the first time in 1793 to join the army. In 1813 he was appointed lieutenant in the Swedish army that went to aid the allies in Germany; took part in the conflicts at Grossbeeren and Dennewitz; was present at Leipsic, and concluded the formularies of capitulation with the French at Lübeck and Maestricht. Subsequently, he fought in Holstein, and in Norway, where he concluded the treaty that united that country with Sweden. In 1826, he received the title of count; and in 1828 was appointed ambassador to the court of Great Britain, which office he held till 1846, when he returned to Stockholm, where he died, 6th October 1847. As a politician, B.'s opinions were liberal. In addition to some political writings, he published a work on the Theogony, Philosophy, and Cosmogony of the Hindus in 1843.

BLACK may be considered as the negation of colour, resulting from the absorption of the rays of light by certain substances. Painters produce it by an unequal combination of the three primary colours. In medieval art, B. was symbolical of evil, error, and woe; thus we find Christ, when the old illuminators wished to represent him as wrestling against the Spirit of Evil, arrayed in black drapery; and Byzantine painters, to express the sorrow of the Virgin Mary, gave her a black complexion. All faces shall gather blackness,' is the expression of Joel, when he wishes to convey the idea of the trouble of the people when the calamities which, with prophetic eye, he sees brooding over Jerusalem, should come to pass. B. clothing