Bitumen.

BITTERS are prepared from an infusion of herbs containing bitter principles. The plant generally used for the purpose is archangelica officinalis, or the garden angelica. See ANGELICA. The roots or seeds, or both, are placed in water, and the whole is left to simmer for several days, when the infusion will be strong enough. The B. from angelica are not much used by physicians, having been superseded very much by infusions of gentian, etc.; but they are still used as a household medicine in town and country by elderly people. The chemical composition of the root is:

The medicinal properties of B. are mainly those of a mild tonic and pungent aromatic stimulant, and hence they are serviceable as a stomachic in cases of weakness of the digestive organs. The taste is at first sweetish, rapidly becoming hot, aromatic, and bitter, and the odor is rather pleasant. The angelica root yields a larger amount of the bitter principle than angelica seeds. Camomile flowers, coriander-seeds, and other vegetable tonics and stimulants, are occasionally employed in the preparation of bitters. BITTER SPAR, a name given to dolomite (q.v.), from the magnesia contained in it, which the Germans call bitter salt.

BITTERSWEET, or WOODY NIGHTSHADE (8olanum dulcamara), a plant found in hedges and thickets in Britain, and in most parts of Europe, also in Asia and in North America. The root is perennial; the annual stems climbing and shrubby, many feet in length; the leaves ovate-heart-shaped, the upper ones spear-shaped; the flowers purple, in drooping corymbs, much resembling those of its congener, the potato, but much smaller, followed by ovate red berries of tempting appearance, which, being poisonous, are not unfrequently the cause of serious accidents, particularly to children. The 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. BITTER VETCH. See OROBUS.

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 anonacea (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 simarubacea (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 crystallizable 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.

BITU'MEN, a mineral substance, remarkable for its inflammability and its strong peculiar odor; generally, however, supposed to be of vegetable origin. The name, which was in use among the ancient Romans, is variously employed, sometimes to include a number of the substances called mineral resins (see RESINS), particularly the liquid mineral substances called naphtha (q.v.) and petroleum (q.v.) or mineral oil, and the solid ones called mineral pitch, asphalt (q.v.), mineral caoutchouc, etc.; sometimes in a more restricted sense it is applied by mineralogists only to some of these, and by some mineralogists to the solid, by others to the liquid ones. All these substances are, however, closely allied to each other. Naphtha and petroleum consist essentially of carbon and hydrogen alone, 84 to 88 per cent. being carbon; the others contain also a little oxygen, which is particularly the case in asphalt, the degree of their solidity appearing to depend upon the proportion of oxygen which they contain, which amounts in some specimens of asphalt to 10 per cent. Asphalt also contains a little nitrogen. Bituminous substances are generally found in connection with carboniferous rocks, in districts where there is, or evidently has been, volcanic agency. See the articles already referred to. Indeed, most kinds of coal contain B., and a substance 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 pencilmarks. It is easily cut with a knife. Its color is blackish, reddish, or yellowish-brown; and its specific gravity is sometimes a little less and sometimes a little more than that of water. It has a strong bituminous odor, 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 considera ble quantity of gas, remarkably pure, and with good illuminating qualities, and are con sequently largely used for that purpose. See COAL.

BITU'MINOUS LIMESTONES are limestones impregnated and sometimes deeply colored 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, was b. at Morat, in the canton of Freiburg, 4th Oct., 1797. He was educated for the church; and after holding several cures, was appointed, in 1832, pastor of Lützelflüh, in Emmenthal, canton of Bern, which office he retained till his death. His first work was entitled The Mirror of Peasants (Burgsdorf, 1836). It is the touching history of a poor villager, Jeremias Gotthelf, which pseudonym B. ever after retained. In 1838 appeared his Sorrows and Joys of a Schoolmaster; in 1839, Dursli, the Brandy Drinker, and How Five Maidens Miserably Perish in Brandy; in 1842-46, Scenes and Traditions of the Swiss, in 6 vols., in which B. narrates, with great art, the old national legends, among which the most remarkable is the Reconciliation. The best and most popular of his stories, however, are Grandmother Katy (Berlin, 1848); Uli, the Farmservant (Berlin, 2d edition, 1850); and Stories and Pictures of Popular Life in Switzerland (Berlin, 1851.) Subsequently, he wrote several pamplets against the German democrats, without, however, violating those popular sympathies and liberal convictions which pervade his writings, and which at an earlier period led him to vehemently oppose the family government of the Bernese aristocracy. His last work was The Clergyman's Wife, which appeared in 1854. Its author died on the 22d Oct. of the same year. B.'s writings are greatly relished in Switzerland. They are characterized by simplicity, inventiveness, a wonderful fidelity in the delineation of manners and habits, great vigor of description, and raciness of humor, 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 lamellibranchiate (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.), palliobranchiata, which possess B. S., as the terebratula, or lamp-shells (q.v.), etc. 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.

In the brachiopoda, one valve is ventral, and the other dorsal; in the lamellibranchi ata, the one is applied to the right side, and the other to the left side of the animal. The valves of ordinary B. S. consist of layers, of which the outermost is always the smallest; and each inner one extends a little beyond it, so that the shell becomes thicker and stronger as it increases in length and breadth. The valves are connected at the hinge by an elastic ligament; and in general this consists of two parts, more or less distinct one on the outside, to which the name ligament is sometimes restricted, and which is stretched by the closing of the valves; another, sometimes called the spring, more internal, which is compressed by the closing of the valves, and tends to open them when the compressing force of the adductor muscle or muscles is removed, the effect of which is to be seen in the gaping of the shell when the animal is dead. The hinge is often

furnished with teeth which lock into each other; 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.

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 berwacht, 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 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, etc. But this mode of encampment, though favorable 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, etc., 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.

BIZER TA, or Benzer'ta (ancient Hippo Diarrhytus, or Zaritus), a seaport t. of Tunis, at the bottom of a deep gulf or bay of the Mediterranean, and at the mouth of a lagoon, united to the gulf by a narrow channel. It is the most northerly town in Africa, being about 38 m. n.w. of Tunis, in lat. 37° 17′ n., and long. 9° 51′ east. It is surrounded by walls, and defended by two castles; which, however, as they are commanded by the neighboring heights, are quite useless against a land attack. Its port, formerly one of the best in the Mediterranean, has been suffered to fill up, until now only small vessels can be admitted, though very little labor is required to give a uniform depth of 5 or 6 fathoms to the channel leading to the inner harbor or lagoon, which has a depth varying from 10 to 50 fathoms, and is extensive enough to afford accommodation to the largest navies. The adjacent country is remarkably fertile, but its cultivation is neglected. Pop. variously estimated at from 7000 to 8000. Agathocles, between the years 310 and 307 B.C., fortified and provided B. with a new harbor; and under the Romans, it was a free city.

BIZIU RA. See MUSK DUCK.

BJÖRNEBORG, or BIORNBORG, a t. or city in Finland, on the gulf of Bothnia, 72 m. n. of Abo; pop. 8718; has export trade in tar, pitch, lumber, etc. It was wholly burned in 1801.

BJÖRNSON, BJÖRNSTJERNE, b. 1832 in Norway; poet and novelist, first known by articles in a newspaper, Folkblad, in which he published sketches and stories. Later he issued Fædrelandet, Thrond, Arne, and Synnove Solbakken. His stories in English are Arne, Ovind, The Fisher Maiden, The Fishing Girl, The Happy Boy, The Newly Married Couple, Love and Life in Norway, and others of later date.

BJÖRNSTJERNA, MAGNUS FRIEDRICH FERDINAND, Count, a Swedish statesman and author, was born 10th Oct., 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 lieut. 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 Britian, which office he held till 1846, when he returned to Stockholm, where he died 6th Oct., 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.

BLACAS, PIERRE LOUIS JEAN CASIMIR, Duc de, 1771-1839; a member of the cabinet of Louis XVIII., and one of the confidential advisers of the bourbons. As ambassador in Rome he negotiated the concordat of 1817, and was afterwards minister at Naples. At the overthrow of Charles X. he went into exile, offering to the unfortunate king his for. tune, which, however, was not accepted.

BLACK may be considered as the negation of color, resulting from the absorption of the rays of light by certain substances. Painters produce it by an unequal combination of the three primary colors. 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. 66 '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 among some oriental nations was regarded as a badge of servitude, slavery, or low birth; among the Moors, it has several significations-obscurity, grief, despair, constancy. B. in blazonry, under the name of sable, denotes constancy, wisdom, and prudence. For B. as a funereal color, see FUNERALS and MOURNING.

BLACK PIGMENTS, used in painting, are derived principally from animal and vegetable substances. They are very numerous, and of different hues and degrees of transparency; but the most important are vegetable blue-black-obtained from beech-wood burned in close vessels-ivory-black, cork-black, and lamp-black, the principal constituent of all being charcoal or carbon. A fine-toned B. pigment is obtained by burning German or French Prussian blue. Combined with white, B. P., which are slow driers, yield grays of several tints.

BLACK, JEREMIAH S.: 1810-83: b. Penn.; began in the law, 1830; president of his judicial district in 1842; elected judge of the supreme court of the state in 1851; and was chosen chief-justice. In 1857, president Buchanan made him attorney-general of the United States, and in 1860 secretary of state. He retired from the office when Lin. coln's cabinet was appointed, and was actively engaged in his profession and in politics.

BLACK, JOHN, an eminent newspaper editor, and classical scholar of some reputa tion, was a native of Berwickshire, his father being a shepherd, or farm-laborer, in the Lammermoors, near Dunse. Born in 1783, and left an orphan at twelve years of age, B. commenced life in the office of a Dunse writer, but he soon left that place for Edinburgh, where he was engaged for several years as a writer's clerk. While in this capacity, B. was assiduous in the work of self-education; and besides considerable progress made in classical studies at this time, he acquired German from a German musician in an Edinburgh band, and Italian from a refugee. Finding Edinburgh too limited a sphere for his energies, he went to London about the year 1810, and was immediately engaged as a parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle, of which paper he afterwards became editor. Under his management the Morning Chronicle was celebrated for its independence and fearless advocacy of progress, and that at a time when subserviency was so common that it was regarded as little or no disgrace. He retired from the editorship in 1843, and continued to reside, until his death, which took place June 25, 1855, in a pleasant cottage on the Kentish estate of one of his friends. Among those who acted on the Morning Chronicle under Mr. Black was Mr. Charles Dickens, the eminent novelist. B. was author of a Life of Tasso, with a Historical and Critical Account of his Writings, 2 vols. (Edin. 1810), and the translator of the lectures of the brothers Schlegel on Dramatic Art and Literature (since republished by Bohn), and on the History of Litera ture Ancient and Modern, as well as of one or two works from the French and Italian. BLACK, ADAM, and CHARLES. See page 892.

BLACK, WILLIAM. See page 892.

BLACK, JOSEPH, an eminent chemist, was b. in 1728, at Bordeaux, where his father was engaged in the wine-trade. Both his parents were of Scotch descent, but natives of Belfast, to which their son was sent for his education in 1740. In 1746, he entered the university of Glasgow, and studied chemistry under Dr. Cullen. In 1751, he went to Edinburgh to complete his medical course, and in 1754 took his degree. His thesis on the nature of the causticity of lime and the alkalies, which he showed to be owing to the absence of the carbonic acid (called by him fixed air) present in limestone and in what are now called the carbonates of the alkalies, contained his first contribution to chemical science, and excited considerable attention. In 1756, on the removal of Cullen to Edinburgh, B. succeeded him as professor of anatomy (which branch he afterwards exchanged for medicine) and lecturer on chemistry in Glasgow. Between 1759 and 1763, he evolved that theory of "latent heat" on which his scientific fame chiefly rests, and which formed the immediate preliminary to the next great stride in discovery by his pupil and assistant James Watt. In 1766, Cullen was appointed to the chair of theoretical medicine in Edinburgh, and B. succeeded him in the chair of chemistry. Thenceforth he devoted himself chiefly to the elaboration of his lectures, in which he aimed at the utmost degree of perspicuity, and with perfect success. His class became one of the most popular in the university; it occasioned, however, some disappointment that one so capable of enlarging its territory made no further contributions to chemistry. Though of an extremely delicate constitution, he prolonged his life, by care and temperance, to the age of 71. He died on the 26th Nov., 1799. His lectures were published in 1803 (Edin., 2 vols., 4to), edited, with a biographical and critical preface, by prof. Robison.

BLACK ACTS are the acts of the Scottish parliament of the first five Jameses, those of queen Mary's reign, and of James VI., down to 1586 or 1587. They were called the B. A. because they were all printed in the black or Saxon characters. Several of these acts

were afterwards left out in the latter additions, most of them because they were private acts, and a few from reasons of state.

In English law-books, the expression "black act" is applied to the 9 Geo. I. c. 22, because it was occasioned by the outrages committed by persons with their faces blackened or otherwise disguised, and associated, as we are told in the preamble of the act, under the name of Blacks, who appeared in Epping forest, near Waltham in Essex, and destroyed the deer there, and committed other enormities. This act was, however, along with numerous other statutes, repealed in 1827, by the 7 and 8 Geo. IV. c. 27.

BLACK ART. See MAGIC.

BLACK ASSIZE', the popular name commemorative of an extraordinary and fatal pestilence which broke out at Oxford at the close of the assizes, July 6, 1577. The contemporary accounts describe it as having broken out in the court-house, immediately after the passing of sentence on Richard Jencks, a book-binder, condemned for alleged sedition to lose his ears. It was popularly interpreted as a divine judgment on the cruelty of the sentence, but the phenomenon is satisfactorily explained by the pestilential atmosphere of the adjoining jail, then, as it was until long after, a seat of misery, filth, and disease. From the 6th of July to the 12th of Aug., 510 persons are said to have died in Oxford and the neighborhood of this terrible malady, among whom were the chief officials who sat on the assize, most of the jury, and many members of the univer sity. Women, poor people, physicians, visitors, and children are said to have escaped the infection. A similar event is recorded as having taken place at Cambridge at the Lent assizes in 1521 (Holinshed's Chron., Stow's Annals, Wood's Athen. Oxon., etc.).

BLACK-BAND IRONSTONE is an ore of iron found very extensively in Scotland and elsewhere. It occurs in the carboniferous system of geologists, in regular bands, layers, or strata, and generally associated with coal and limestone. It is mainly a carbonate of iron accompanied by much coaly matter. The following is the composition of several samples:

A.

B.

C. 50.40 40.62

D.

E.

F.

3.76

Alumina.

0.74

.......

The B. I. is easily reduced. It does not, however, yield a first-class iron when smelted by itself, and is therefore generally mixed with a small quantity of hematite (red iron ore), which communicates strength and hardness to the iron obtained. BLACK BEETLE.

See BLAPS and COCKROACH.

BLACKBERRY. See BRAMBLE.

BLACKBIRD, or MERLE, Turdus merula of some naturalists, Merula vulgaris of others, a well-known species of thrush (q.v.), common in all parts of Britain, and throughout Europe generally; found also in the n. of Africa and in the Azores. In Asia, it gives place to a closely allied species, turdus pœcilopterus. In size, the B. is intermediate between the missel-thrush and the song-thrush or mavis. The plumage of the adult male is wholly of a deep black color, the bill and orbits of the eyes yellow; the female and the young are of a dark rusty brown, with dusky bill and eyelids. The B. frequents hedges, thickets, and woods; is shy, restless, and vigilant, keeping much under cover of evergreens or shrubs; and when disturbed, takes wing with a vociferous chattering of alarm, seeking refuge in some neighboring thicket. Its food consists of worms, snails, insects, berries, etc. Its fondness for fruit makes it often annoying to the gardener; but probably it would in general be better to protect cherries and pears by nets than to shoot the B., which is of great use as a destroyer of insect larvæ. Like some of the other thrushes, it also devours great numbers of small snails, dexterously breaking the shell against a stone. It is not usually a gregarious bird, although great flocks sometimes appear upon the British coasts in winter, on their passage from more northerly to more southerly countries (Selby, quoted by Yarrell). Otherwise, the B. is not in Britain a bird of passage. It pairs very early in spring; the male and female are indeed very often seen together during winter; it builds its nest early, and generally has two broods in the year. The nest is generally placed in some thick bush; it is of ruder workmanship than that of the song-thrush, which, however, it resembles, and is usually formed of strong stems of grass, with a finer lining of dry grass inside, and a massive plastering of clay outside. The eggs are four or five in number, of a pale blue color, generally speckled with brown. The voice of the B. is very powerful, and its song more mellow than that of the thrush, but with "much less variety, compass, or execution." The B. is often kept as a cage-bird, and would be much more frequently so, but for the too great loudness of its song: it is very susceptible of being trained,