BENJAMIN OF TUDELA-BEN-RHYDDING. war with the eleven other tribes of Israel, on while some of the beautiful Perthshire lochs are account of refusing to deliver up to justice the seen. Gibeonitish ruffians who had brutally abused the BEN MACDHU'I, a lofty mountain of Aberdeenconcubine of an Ephraimite. The result was dread-shire, belonging to the Grampian range, at one time ful. All the male descendants of B. were put to regarded as the highest in Great Britain, but now the sword (Judges xx. and xxi.), excepting 600, ascertained to be the second-its elevation being towards whom the hearts of their brethren finally relented. Saul, the first king of Israel, was of the tribe of B., which remained loyal to his son, Ishbosheth. After the death of Solomon, B., along with Judah, formed the kingdom of Judah; and on the return from the Captivity, these two constituted the principal element of the new Jewish nation. views, BENJAMIN OF TUDE'LA, a Jewish rabbi, was born in Navarre, Spain. He was the first European traveller who gave information respecting the distant East. Partly with commercial and partly to trace the remnants of the lost tribes,' he made a journey, in the years 1159-1173, from Saragossa, through Italy and Greece, to Palestine, Persia, and the borders of China, returning by way of Egypt and Sicily. He died in 1173, the last year of his travels. His notes of foreign lands originally written in Hebrew, and frequently republished in Latin, English, Dutch, and French-are occasionally concise and valuable; but on the whole must be accepted with qualifications. Like all the early travellers, B. had a greedy ear for the marvellous. His errors are also numerous. The latest edition by Asher (London, 1841) contains the original text, with an English translation and learned annotations. BE'NJAMIN TREE. See BENZOIN. BEN LAW'ERS, a mountain in Perthshire, Scotland, about 32 miles west-north-west of Perth, on the west side of Loch Tay. This mountain, which is easy of ascent, is rich in specimens of Alpine plants, and a magnificent view is commanded from its summit, which has an elevation of 3945 feet. Ore of titanium is found in the mountain. BEN LEDI, a mountain also of Perthshire, 4 miles west-north-west of Callander, with an elevation of 2863 feet. It received its name from the Druids, who are supposed to have had a place of worship on its summit-the Gaelic words Beinnle-Dia, signifying Hill of God.' This mountain is celebrated in Scott's Lady of the Lake. BEN-LO'MOND, a celebrated Scottish mountain in the north-west of Stirlingshire, on the east side of Loch Lomond, and about 27 miles west-northwest of Stirling. This mountain, forming the south extremity of the Grampians or Central Scottish Highlands, is 3192 feet high, and consists of mica slate, with veins of quartz, greenstone, and felspar porphyry. The summit is precipitous on the north side, with a gentle declivity on the south-east; it is covered with vegetation to the top. Though considerably surpassed in height by several other Scottish mountains, none are more imposing. Seen from Loch Lomond, it appears a truncated cone, and from between Stirling and Aberfoyle, a regular pyramid. It has perhaps been ascended by a greater number of tourists than any other of the Highland mountains. The magnificent view from the top, in clear weather, includes the whole length (30 miles) of Loch Lomond, with its diversified isles, and wooded and cultivated shores, the rich plains of Stirlingshire and the Lothians, the windings of the Forth, the castles of Stirling and Edinburgh, the heights of Lanarkshire, the vales of Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, Firth of Clyde, Isles of Arran and Bute, the Irish coast, Kintyre, and the Atlantic. The north semicircle of the horizon is bounded by Bens Lawers, Voirlich, Ledi, Cruachan, and Nevis; 4296 feet. BEN NEVIS, the highest mountain in Great Britain, is situated in the county of Inverness, Scotland. It has a height of 4406 feet, is exceedingly difficult of ascent, with a tremendous precipice of 1500 feet in depth on the north-east side. snow remains throughout the year. Granite and gneiss form the base of the mountain, which in its upper part is composed of porphyry. Here BENNETT, WILLIAM STERNDALE, a modern English pianist and composer, was born at Sheffield, April 13, 1816. After studying under Crotch, Holmes, Potter, and other professors in the Royal Academy, London, he attracted the notice of Mendelssohn at the Düsseldorf Musical Festival, appeared with success at Leipsic in the winter of 1837-1838, and was received with great applause when he returned to London. In 1838, he was elected member of the Royal Society of Music. Besides a great number of compositions for the pianoforte, solo and with other instruments, B. has written quartetts for stringed instruments, concertos, and overtures in Mendelssohn's style. He has also published a work entitled Classical Practice for Pianoforte Students (Lond. 1841). BENNIGSEN, LEVIN AUG. THEOPHILUS, COUNT, at Brunswick, February 10, 1745. one of the most famous Russian generals, was born His father was an officer in the Brunswick Guards; and B. himself entered the Hanoverian service for a time; but having squandered the property left him, he joined the Russian army in 1773, and in the Turkish war soon attracted the notice of the empress, Catherine, who employed him to carry out her designs against Poland. He was one of the leaders of the conspiracy against the Emperor Paul (1801); though he is said not to have been present at the catastrophe, but to have prevented the Empress Maria from rushing to her husband when she heard his cries. He fought with considerable success in the battle of Pultusk (1806), and held the chief command in the obstinate and murderous struggle at Eylau (1807). When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, B. commanded the Russian centre on the bloody field of Borodino, and gave his voice for fighting a second battle before the walls of Moscow. Before the French began their retreat, he gained a brilliant victory over Murat at Woronowa (18th October). Differences with Kutusov, who would not adopt B.'s plan to prevent the French from crossing the Beresina, made him retire from the army; but after Kutusov's death, he took the command of the Russian army of reserve, which entered Saxony in July 1813, fought victoriously at the battle of Leipsic, and was created Count by the When Leipsic Emperor Alexander on the field. was taken, it was he that was commissioned by the allies to announce to the king of Saxony that he was a prisoner. Failing health made him retire from the Russian service in 1818 to his paternal estate in Hanover, where he died October 3, 1826.-His son, ALEX. LEVIN B., is now a leading Hanoverian statesman. BEN-RHY'DDING, a celebrated hydropathic establishment in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in a beautiful situation on the right bank of the river Wharf, 16 miles north-west of Leeds. The building, erected 15 years ago at the cost of nearly £30,000, is BENSHIE-BENTHAM. a very imposing pile, on an eminence midway up the side of the valley. There is accommodation for 80 -100 patients and visitors, and extensive pleasuregrounds around. In addition to the usual appliances of the water-cure, and a variety of gymnastic exercises, Dr M'Leod has introduced the Compressedair Bath (q. v.); and quite recently a sumptuous Turkish bath has been added to the other attractions of the establishment. BE'NSHIE, or BA'NSHEE, an imaginary being in the superstitions of the Irish. The B. is a female, who is called the wife of the fairies, and she makes herself known by wailings and shrieks, premonitory of a death in the family over which she is presumed to exercise a kind of guardianship. The name of this tutelary demon is supposed to be from the Irish Celtic ben or bean, a woman; and sighe, a fairy. A similar superstition prevailed, and is perhaps not yet extinct, in the Highlands of Scotland. BENT GRASS (Agrostis), a genus of grasses, distinguished by a loose panicle of small, one-flowered, laterally compressed spikelets; the glumes unequal, awnless, and longer than the palea, which are also unequal, and of which the inner one is sometimes wanting, and the outer sometimes has and sometimes has not an awn; the seed free. (For explanation of these terms, see GRASSES.) The species are numerous, and are found in almost all countries and climates; several are natives of Britain. All of them are grasses of a slender and delicate appear ance. Some are very useful as pasture-grasses and for hay, upon account of their adaptation to certain kinds of soil, although none of them is regarded as very nutritious.-The COMMON B. G. (A. vulgaris) Bent Grass (Agrostis vulgaris). forms a principal part of the pasture in almost all the elevated districts of Britain, and is equally abundant in many parts of the continent of Europe. It resists drought better than almost any other grass, but is only sown by agriculturists on soils unsuitable for the more luxuriant grasses. It is also regarded as very suitable for lawns; but in light, dry, cultivated grounds, it is often a troublesome weed, known as Black Squitch, or Quick-grass, and frequent harrowing is resorted to for the removal of its creeping perennial roots. It is as frequent on wet as on dry soils, and varies much in size and appearance.-The MARSH B. G. (A. alba), also very common in Britain, forming a large part of the natural pasture in many moist situations, is very similar to the species just described, but generally taller and stouter. Of this also there are many varieties, but in all of them, the ligule (the little membranous tongue at the junction of the blade of the leaf with its sheathing base) is elongated and acute, whilst in A. vulgaris it is very short, and appears as if cut off. A variety, so little different as scarcely to deserve the name, but with somewhat broader leaves and more luxuriant habit of growth, was at one time much celebrated among agricul turists, under the name of FIORIN GRASS, or Agrostis stolonifera. It was unduly lauded, and the consequent disappointment led to its being unduly disparaged. It is a useful grass in moist grounds, The first three or four joints of the culms lie flat on newly reclaimed bogs, or land liable to inundation. the damp soil, emitting roots in abundance, and it was formerly propagated by chopping these into pieces, and scattering them, but now generally by United States, with broader leaves than either of the seed.-HERD GRASS (A. dispar) is a native of the preceding species, very creeping roots, and large panicles almost level at top. It was at one time strongly recommended for cultivation, but has gone esteemed in France, particularly upon account of out of repute in Britain. It is, however, more highly the great crop which it yields on deep sand and on moist calcareous soils.-BROWN B. G. (A. canina), a heaths and moorish grounds, is valuable for mixing common perennial British grass, abundant in moist with other grasses to form permanent pasture on poor wet peaty soils.-SILKY B. G. (A. Spica venti) is a beautiful grass, with very slender branches to its ample panicle, which, as it waves in the wind, has a glossy and silky appearance. It is a rare native of sandy grounds in England, common in Southern and Central Europe; an annual grass, occasionally sown in spring to fill up blanks in grass-fields. BENTHAM, JEREMY, an eccentric but eminent writer on ethics and jurisprudence, was the son of a wealthy solicitor in London, where he was born (in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch) on the 15th February 1748. He received his early education at Westminster School; and when yet a boy, being little more than twelve years of age, he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where he took his Master's degree in 1766. But though his years were so tender, he appears not to have been so unprepared as might be supposed to benefit by the university; for before entering it, he had already, by his precocious tendencies to speculation, acquired the title of 'philosopher.' On graduating, his father, who expected his son to become Lord Chancellor, set him to the study of the law at Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar in 1772. He never practised in his profession, however, for which he had a strong distaste, which is paraded in many of his writings. Turning from the practice of law to its theory, he became the greatest critic of legislation and government in his day. His first publication, A Fragment on Government, 1776, was an acutely hypercritical examination of a passage in Blackstone's Commentaries, prompted, as he has himself explained, by a passion for improvement in those shapes in which the lot of mankind is meliorated by it.' The Fragment abounds in fine, original, and just observation; it contains the germs of most of his after-writings, and must be highly esteemed, if we look away from its disproportion to its subject and the writer's disregard of method. The Fragment procured him the acquaintance of BENTHAMIA-BENTINCK. codification and reconstruction of the laws; and insisted, among other changes, on those which came at a later day to be popularly demanded as the points of the 'Charter'-viz., universal suffrage, annual parliaments, vote by ballot, and paid representatives. However impossible some of these schemes were, it cannot be denied that B. did more to rouse the spirit of modern reform and improvement in laws and politics, than any other writer of his day. Many of his schemes have been, and many more are, in the course of being slowly realised; the end and object of them all was the general welfare, and his chief error changes which he proposed-lay in conceiving that organic changes are possible through any other process than that of growth and modification of the popular wants and sentiments. It was this error that led the philosopher, in his closet in London, to devise codes of laws for Russia (through which country he made a tour in 1785) and America, the adoption of which would have been equivalent to revolutions in these countries, and then bitterly to bewail the folly of mankind when his schemes were rejected. In ethics, as in politics, he pressed his doctrines to extremes. It has been said that his doctrine of utility was so extended that it would have been practically dangerous, but for the incapacity of the bulk of mankind for acting on a speculative theory. Lord Lansdowne, in whose society at Bowood he afterwards passed perhaps the most agreeable hours of his life. It was in the Bowood society that he conceived an attachment to Miss Caroline Fox (Lord Holland's sister), who was still a young lady, when B., in the 54th year of his age, offered her his heart and hand, and was rejected with all respect.' In 1778, he published a pamphlet on The Hard Labour Bill, recommending an improvement in the mode of criminal punishment; which he followed in 1811 by A Theory of Punishments and Rewards. In these two works, B. did more than any other writer of his time to rationalise the theory of punish--apart from his over-estimate of the value of some ments by consideration of their various kinds and effects, their true objects, and the conditions of their efficiency. He published in 1787 Letters on Usury; in 1789, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; in 1802, Discourses on Civil and Penal Legislation; in 1813, A Treatise on Judicial Evidence; in 1817, Paper Relative to Codification and Public Instruction; in 1824, The Book of Fallacies. These were followed by other works of less consequence. His whole productions have been collected and edited by Dr Bowring and Mr John Hill Burton, and published in eleven volumes. It is well, however, for B.'s reputation, that it does not rest wholly on his collected works; and that he found in M. Dumont, Mr James Mill, and Sir Samuel Romilly, generous disciples to diffuse his principles and promote his fame. In his early works, his style was clear, free, spirited, and often eloquent; but in his later works, it became repulsive, through being overloaded and darkened with technical terms. It is in regard to these more especially that M. Dumont has most materially served his master by arranging and translating them into French, through the medium of which language B.'s doctrines were propagated throughout Europe, till they became more popular abroad than at home. Mr James Mill, himself an independent thinker, did much in his writings to extend the application in new directions of B.'s principles, a work in which, apart from his original efforts, he has achieved a lasting monument of his own subtilty and vigour of mind. Criticisms of B.'s writings will be found in the Edinburgh Review, by Sir Samuel Romilly; and in the Ethical Dissertation, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, by Sir James Mackintosh. most valuable contribution in English to his reputation is unquestionably Benthamiana, by Mr John Hill Burton, advocate, containing a memoir, selections of all the leading and important passages from his various writings, and an appendix embracing an essay on his system, and a brief clear view of all his leading doctrines. But the In all B.'s ethical and political writings, the doctrine of utility is the leading and pervading principle; and his favourite vehicle for its expression is the phrase, the greatest happiness of the greatest number,' which was first coined by Priestley, though its prominence in politics has been owing to Bentham. In this phrase,' he says, 'I saw delineated for the first time a plain as well as a true standard for whatever is right or wrong, useful, useless, or mischievous, in human conduct, whether in the field of morals or politics.' It need scarcely be remarked, that the phrase affords no guidance as to how the benevolent end pointed at is to be attained; and is no more than a quasi-concrete expression of the objects of true benevolence. In considering how to compass these objects, B. arrived at various conclusions, which he advocated irrespective of the conditions of society in his day, and of the laws of social growth which, indeed, neither he nor his contemporaries understood. He demanded nothing less than the immediate remodelling of the government, and the By the death of his father in 1792, B. succeeded to property in London, and to farms in Essex, yielding from £500 to £600 a year. He lived frugally, but with elegance, in one of his London houses (Queen Square, Westminster); and, employing young men as secretaries, corresponded and wrote daily. By a life of temperance and industry, with great self-complacency, in the society of a few devoted friends (who, says Sir James Mackintosh, more resembled the hearers of an Athenian philosopher than the proselytes of a modern writer), the eccentric savant attained to the age of eighty-four. order Cornacea (q. v.), consisting of Asiatic trees or BENTHA'MIA, a genus of plants of the natural shrubs, of which the fruit is formed of many small drupes grown together. B. frugifera, a native of Nepaul, is a small tree, with lanceolate leaves, and a reddish fruit, not unlike a mulberry, but larger; not south of England, and will probably be found to unpleasant to the taste. It has ripened fruit in the succeed in the open air, wherever the winters are so mild that fuchsias are not cut down by frost. The flowers are fragrant. BENTINCK, LORD WILLIAM GEORGE FREDERICK CAVENDISH, commonly called Lord George B., at one time the leader of the agricultural Protection party, third son of the fourth Duke of Portland, was born 27th February 1802, and entering the army when young, eventually attained the rank of major. He subsequently became private secretary to his uncle, the Right Hon. George Canning. Elected in 1826 M.P. for Lynn-Regis, he sat for that borough till his death. At first, attached to no party, he voted for Catholic Emancipation and for the principle of the Reform Bill, but against several of its most important details, and in favour of the celebrated Chandos Clause (q. v.). On the formation of Sir Robert Peel's ministry in December 1834, he and his friend Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby, with some adherents, formed a separate section in the House of Commons. On the resignation of Sir Robert Peel in April following, Lord George openly joined the great Conservative party, which acknowledged that statesman as its head, and adhered to it for nearly eleven years. On Peel's return to power in 1841, Lord George received an offer of office, which he BENTINCK-BENUE. declined, being at that time deeply interested in the sports of the field and the race-course. When Peel introduced his free-trade measures in 1845, a large portion of his supporters joined the Protection party then formed, of which Lord George became the head, and a leading speaker in the debates. His speeches in the session of 1845-1846 were most damaging to the government of Sir Robert Peel, and contributed in no small degree to hasten its downfall in July of the latter year. Lord George supported the bill for the removal of the Jewish disabilities, and recommended the payment of the Roman Catholic clergy by the landowners of Ireland. In the sporting world he is understood to have realised very considerable gains, and he shewed the utmost zeal at all times to suppress the dishonest practices of the turf. He died suddenly of a spasm of the heart, 21st September 1848, while crossing his father's park at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire. Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. He entered the church, and owed to the patronage of the Bishop of Worcester various good ecclesiastical appointments, and through the same influence became librarian of the King's Library at St James's. In 1690, he published his Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris, which established his reputation throughout Europe, and may be said to have commenced a new era in scholarship. The principles of historical criticism were then unknown, and their first application to establish that the socalled Epistles of Phalaris, which professed to have been written in the 6th c. B. C., were the forgery of a period some eight centuries later, filled the learned world with astonishment. In 1700, B. was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; and in the following year, he married Mrs Joanna Bernard, the daughter of a Huntingdonshire knight. The history of B.'s BENTINCK, LORD WILLIAM HENRY CAVENDISH, broken series of quarrels and litigations, provoked Mastership of Trinity is the narrative of an una general officer and statesman, uncle of the pre- by his arrogance and rapacity, for which, it must be ceding, and second son of the third Duke of Port- confessed, he was fully as well known during his land, was born 14th September 1774, and became an lifetime as for his learning. He contrived, neverensign in the Coldstream Guards in 1791. Having theless, to get himself appointed Regius Professor of served with distinction in Flanders, Italy, and Egypt, Divinity, and, by his boldness and perseverance, he was in 1803 appointed governor of Madras, managed to pass scathless through all his controwhere he advocated several useful reforms; but his versies. Notwithstanding that at one time the Bishop proscription of beards and the wearing of turbans of Ely, the visitor of Trinity, pronounced sentence and earrings by the sepoys when on duty, led to the depriving him of his mastership, and that at another mutiny and massacre of Vellore, and his own imme- the senate of the university pronounced a similar diate recall. In August 1808, he was placed on sentence of his academic honours, he remained in full the staff of the army in Portugal under Sir Harry possession of both the former and the latter till the Burrard. Subsequently selected to proceed on an day of his death. This stormy life did not impair important mission to the supreme Junta of Spain, he his literary activity. He edited various classicsaccompanied the army under Sir John Moore in its among others, the works of Horace-upon which retreat, and at Corunna commanded a brigade. He he bestowed vast labour. He is, however, more next commanded a division of Lord Wellington's celebrated for what he proposed than for what army, and shortly after was sent as British minister he actually performed. The proposal to print an to the court of Sicily, and commander-in-chief of the edition of the Greek New Testament, in which the British forces in that island. At the head of an received text should be corrected by a careful comexpedition, he landed in Catalonia in July 1813, parison with all the existing MSS., was then singupenetrated to Valencia, and afterwards laid siege to larly bold, and evoked violent opposition. He Tarragona, but was repulsed at Villa Franca. Early failed in carrying out his proposal: but the prinin 1814, quitting Sicily, he repaired to Tuscany, pub-ciples of criticism which he maintained have since lished at Florence a proclamation inviting the Italians to shake off the French yoke, and afterwards made himself master of Genoa. Between 1796 and 1826, he held a seat in parliament as member for Camelford, Nottinghamshire, and Ashburton. In 1827, he was appointed governor-general of India, and sworn a privy-councillor. His policy in India was pacific and popular, and his viceroyship was marked by the abolition of Sutti (q. v.), and by the opening up of the internal communication, as well as the establishment of the overland route. After his return in 1835, he was elected M.P. for Glasgow. He died at Paris, June 17, 1839. BENTLEY, RICHARD, a distinguished classical scholar, was born at Oulton, in Yorkshire, January 27, 1662. In 1676, he entered St John's College, Cambridge, in the humble capacity of subsizar. Little is known of his university career, except that he shewed early a strong taste for the cultivation of ancient learning. At the usual time, he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts; and on leaving the university, he was appointed head-master of the grammar-school of Spalding, Lincolnshire. About a year afterwards, he resigned this situation to become tutor to the son of Dr Stillingfleet, then Dean of St Paul's, and subsequently Bishop of Worcester. B. accompanied his pupil to Oxford, where he had full scope for the cultivation of classical studies; and, that he succeeded in acquiring there some local reputation, is evinced by his having been twice appointed to deliver the Boyle Lectures on the been triumphantly established, and have led to important results in other hands. He is to be regarded as the founder of that school of classical criticism of which Porson afterwards exhibited the chief excellences, as well as the chief defects; and which, though it was itself prevented by too strict attention to minute verbal detail from ever achieving much, yet diligently collected many of the facts which men of wider views are now grouping together, to form the modern science of comparative philology. B. died in 1742, leaving behind him one son, Richard, who inherited much of his father's taste with none of his energy, and several daughters, one of whom, Joanna, married, and was the mother of Richard Cumberland the dramatist.-Monk's Life of Richard Bentley, 1830. BE'NUÉ, or BI'NUÉ, or, as Dr Barth prefers to spell it, BE'NUWE, called also Chadda and Tchadda; an important river of Central Africa, forming the eastern branch of the Quorra or Niger, which it joins about 230 miles above the mouth of that river in the Gulf of Guinea. At its junction with the Faro, in lat. about 9° 33′ N., long. 12° 40′ E., the point where Dr Barth crossed, he describes the B. as being 800 yards across, with a general depth in its channel of 11 feet, and 'a liability to rise under ordinary circumstances at least 30 feet, or even at times 50 feet higher.' In 1854, an expedition under the command of Dr Baikie explored the B. as far as Dulti, a place about 350 miles above its confluence with the Niger, and BENYOWSKY-BENZOIN. some 80 or 100 miles from where Dr Barth crossed. Dr Barth regards this river as offering the best channel for the introduction of civilisation into the heart of Central Africa. If not actually connected in some way with the Shari (q. v.), and consequently with Lake Tsad, 'the breadth of the water-parting between these two basins [the Niger and the Tsad], at the utmost, cannot exceed 20 miles, consisting of an entirely level flat, and probably of alluvial soil.... The level of the Tsad, and that of the river B. near Gewe, where it is joined by the Mayo Kebbi, seem to be almost the same; at least, according to all appearance, the B., at the place mentioned, is not more than 850 or 900 feet above the level of the sea.' A second expedition to explore the B. has been undertaken by Dr Baikie. Palus and Sisara Palus, two lakes within the dominions of Tunis, from which town they are about 30 miles distant, in a north-west direction. They are each about 9 miles long, and the larger one, which is clear and salt, is about 5 miles broad; the smaller, which is turbid and fresh, 34. They are about two miles apart, but united by a channel with a general depth of 6 feet and breadth of 75. Tunis is supplied with fish mainly from these lakes. So valuable is the fishing, that a wealthy Arab rents it from the Bey of Tunis for £4000 per annum. BE'NZILE, BE'NZOILE, or BENZOYLE, is the radicle or root of the group of substances which comprehends as members the hydride of benzoyle (oil of bitter almonds), benzoic acid, benzoin, and benzole. It is prepared by passing a stream of chlorine gas through fused benzoin, or by heating one part of benzoin with two parts of concentrated nitric acid. B. floats to the upper part of the liquid mixture as a liquid oil, which solidifies on cooling. B. is a tasteless solid, insoluble in water, but readily dissolved by ether and alcohol, and on concentration of the ethereal or alcoholic solution, the B. crystallises in regular six-sided prisms, of a yellow colour. When heated to 194° to 198°, it fuses. Its composition is expressed by the chemical formula C2sH1004, and many chemists name the substance possessing this formula benzile, reserving the title benzoile, or benzoyle, for a substance polymeric (see POLYMERISM) with benzile, which has not yet been isolated, but which may be represented by C14H ̧02. 141 28 BENZOIC ACID, or the Flowers of Benzoin and Benjamin, occurs naturally in many balsamiferous plants, and especially in Benzoin (q. v.), from which it may be readily obtained by several processes, which it is not necessary here to describe. B. A. is always in the form of snow-white, glistening, feathery crystals, with a fairy aspect of lightness. It has a very fragrant and pleasant aromatic odour, due to the presence of a trace of an essential oil, and a hot bitter taste. It is readily dissolved by alcohol and ether, but sparingly soluble in water. B. A. is one of the materials present in Tinctura Camphora Composita, and has been administered in chronic bronchial affections; but the benefit derivable from its use in such cases is questionable. B. A. taken into the stomach, increases within 3 or 4 hours the quantity of hippuric acid in the urine. It forms a numerous class of compounds with the oxides of the metals, lime, &c., called benzoates. The chemical formula for crystallised B. A. is HO,C,,H,O,. BENYOWSKY, MAURICE AUGUSTUS, COUNT DE, a man of remarkable character and extraordinary fortunes, was born at Verbowa, in Hungary, 1741. He served in the Seven Years' War, and during his youth displayed that restless love of adventure which marked his subsequent career. He went to Dantzic for the purpose of studying navigation, and from thence made several voyages to Hamburg and Plymouth. When about to start for the East Indies in 1767, he received a pressing invitation to join the Polish Confederation, with which he complied, and shared most of the dangers and glories of the campaign against the Russians until he was taken prisoner in May 1769. After being transferred from one Russian prison to another, he was, in December 1769, banished to Siberia, and from thence, in a few months, to Kamtchatka. During the voyage, his exertions and skill saved the vessel that carried him. This recommended the prisoner to the governor, Nilov, who was further pleased by B.'s skill as a chess-player, and made him tutor in his family. In this capacity he gained the affections of Aphanasia, daughter of the governor, by whom he was assisted in his plans for escape; which, however, was not effected without a struggle, in which the governor was killed. B.,, with ninety-six companions, in a ship well armed and provisioned, and with a considerable amount of treasure, set sail from Kamtchatka in May 1771. Having visited some of the islands of Japan and Formosa, B. arrived at Macao on the 22d of September, where he remained until the 14th January, and then sailed for France. He had not been here long when the French government proposed that he should found a colony at Madagascar, and he at once acquiesced. B. arrived on the island in February 1774, and was made king| in 1776 by the chiefs in conclave, he adopting the native costume. Returning to Europe with a view BE'NZOIN, BE'NJAMIN, or BENZO'IC GUM, to establish commercial relations between France a fragrant resinous substance, formed by the drying and Madagascar, B. met with a very cold reception of the milky juice of the Benzoin or Benjamin Tree from the French government, and returned to the (Styrax, or Lithocarpus Benzoin), a tree of the service of Austria, in the hope that the emperor which produces STORAX (q. v.), a native of Siam, and natural order Styracaceae, and a congener of that would assist him in his schemes-a hope not fulfilled. He next made unsuccessful overtures to the British of Sumatra and other islands of the Indian Archigovernment, but at length receiving assistance from pelago. The tree grows to nearly two feet in diameprivate persons in England and America, departed ter; the smaller branches are covered with a whitish again for Madagascar, where he arrived in 1785; rusty down; the leaves are oblong, acuminate, and and, involving himself in contention with the French entire, downy and white beneath; the flowers are B. comes to us in reddishgovernment of the Isle of France, was killed in in compound racemes. battle, May 23, 1786. B. was a man of remark- yellow transparent pieces. Different varieties, said able resources, great decision of character, courage, different price; the whitest, said to be the produce of to depend upon the age of the trees, are of very and sagacity. He was particularly well versed in the youngest trees, being the best. There is a variety human nature, a knowledge which proved of essential service to him during his brief but most which contains whitish almond-like tears diffused known in commerce as Amygdaloidal Benzoin, remarkable career.-Memoirs and Travels of Count de Benyowsky, Written by Himself, and Edited by W. through its substance, and is said to be the produce Nicholson (2 vols 4to. London. 1790). of the younger trees. B. is obtained by making longitudinal or oblique incisions in the stem of the BENZERTA, LAKES OF, the ancient Hipponitis tree: the liquid which exudes soon hardens by 14 |