VOLUME IV SLICE I Bisharin to Bohea (continued 9)

For the applications of the blowpipe in chemical analysis see Chemistry: Analytical.

BLÜCHER, GEBHARD LEBERECHT VON (1742-1819), Prussian general field marshal, prince of Wahlstadt in Silesia, was born at Rostock on the 16th of December 1742. In his fourteenth year he entered the service of Sweden, and in the Pomeranian campaign of 1760 he was taken prisoner by the Prussians. He was persuaded by his captors to enter the Prussian service. He took part in the later battles of the Seven Years’ War, and as a hussar officer gained much experience of light cavalry work. In peace, however, his ardent spirit led him into excesses of all kinds, and being passed over for promotion he sent in his resignation, to which Frederick replied, “Captain Blücher can take himself to the devil” (1773). He now settled down to farming, and in fifteen years he had acquired an honourable independence. But he was unable to return to the army until after the death of Frederick the Great. He was then reinstated as major in his old regiment, the Red Hussars. He took part in the expedition to Holland in 1787, and in the following year became lieutenant-colonel. In 1789 he received the order pour le mérite, and in 1794 he became colonel of the Red Hussars. In 1793 and 1794 he distinguished himself in cavalry actions against the French, and for his success at Kirrweiler he was made a major-general. In 1801 he was promoted lieutenant-general.

He was one of the leaders of the war party in Prussia in 1805-1806, and served as a cavalry general in the disastrous campaign of the latter year. At Auerstädt Blücher repeatedly charged at the head of the Prussian cavalry, but without success. In the retreat of the broken armies he commanded the rearguard of Prince Hohenlohe’s corps, and upon the capitulation of the main body of Prenzlau he carried off a remnant of the Prussian army to the northward, and in the neighbourhood of Lübeck he fought a series of combats, which, however, ended in his being forced to surrender at Ratkau (November 7, 1806). His adversaries testified in his capitulation that it was caused by “want of provisions and ammunition.” He was soon exchanged for General Victor, and was actively employed in Pomerania, at Berlin, and at Königsberg until the conclusion of the war. After the war, Blücher was looked upon as the natural leader of the patriot party, with which he was in close touch during the period of Napoleonic domination. His hopes of an alliance with Austria in the war of 1809 were disappointed. In this year he was made general of cavalry. In 1812 he expressed himself so openly on the alliance of Russia with France that he was recalled from his military governorship of Pomerania and virtually banished from the court.

When at last the Napoleonic domination was ended by the outbreak of the War of Liberation in 1813, Blücher of course was at once placed in high command, and he was present at Lützen and Bautzen. During the armistice he worked at the organization of the Prussian forces, and when the war was resumed Blücher became commander-in-chief of the Army of Silesia, with Gneisenau and Müffling as his principal staff officers, and 40,000 Prussians and 50,000 Russians under his control. The autumn campaign of 1813 will be found described in the article Napoleonic Campaigns, and it will here be sufficient to say that the most conspicuous military quality displayed by Blücher was his unrelenting energy. The irresolution and divergence of interests usual in allied armies found in him a restless opponent, and the knowledge that if he could not induce others to co-operate he was prepared to attempt the task in hand by himself often caused other generals to follow his lead. He defeated Marshal Macdonald at the Katzbach, and by his victory over Marmont at Möckern led the way to the decisive overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig, which place was stormed by Blücher’s own army on the evening of the last day of the battle. On the day of Mockern (October 16, 1813) Blücher was made a general field marshal, and after the victory he pursued the routed French with his accustomed energy. In the winter of 1813-1814 Blücher, with his chief staff officers, was mainly instrumental in inducing the allied sovereigns to carry the war into France itself. The combat of Brienne and the battle of La Rothière were the chief incidents of the first stage of the celebrated campaign of 1814, and they were quickly followed by the victories of Napoleon over Blücher at Champaubert, Vauxchamps and Montmirail. But the courage of the Prussian leader was undiminished, and his great victory of Laon (March 9 to 10) practically decided the fate of the campaign. After this Blücher infused some of his own energy into the operations of Prince Schwarzenberg’s Army of Bohemia, and at last this army and the Army of Silesia marched in one body direct upon Paris. The victory of Montmartre, the entry of the allies into the French capital, and the overthrow of the First Empire were the direct consequences. Blücher was disposed to make a severe retaliation upon Paris for the calamities that Prussia had suffered from the armies of France had not the allied commanders intervened to prevent it. Blowing up the bridge of Jena was said to be one of his contemplated acts. On the 3rd of June 1814 he was made prince of Wahlstadt (in Silesia on the Katzbach battlefield), and soon afterwards he paid a visit to England, being received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm.

After the peace he retired to Silesia, but the return of Napoleon soon called him to further service. He was put in command of the Army of the Lower Rhine with General Gneisenau as his chief of staff (see Waterloo Campaign). In the campaign of 1815 the Prussians sustained a very severe defeat at the outset at Ligny (June 16), in the course of which the old field marshal was ridden over by cavalry charges, his life being saved only by the devotion of his aide-de-camp, Count Nostitz. He was unable to resume command for some hours, and Gneisenau drew off the defeated army. The relations of the Prussian and the English headquarters were at this time very complicated, and it is uncertain whether Blücher himself was responsible for the daring resolution to march to Wellington’s assistance. This was in fact done, and after an incredibly severe march Blücher’s army intervened with decisive and crushing effect in the battle of Waterloo. The great victory was converted into a success absolutely decisive of the war by the relentless pursuit of the Prussians, and the allies re-entered Paris on the 7th of July. Prince Blücher remained in the French capital for some months, but his age and infirmities compelled him to retire to his Silesian residence at Krieblowitz, where he died on the 12th of September 1819, aged seventy-seven. He retained to the end of his life that wildness of character and proneness to excesses which had caused his dismissal from the army in his youth, but however they may be regarded, these faults sprang always from the ardent and vivid temperament which made Blücher a dashing leader of horse. The qualities which made him a great general were his patriotism and the hatred of French domination which inspired every success of the War of Liberation. He was twice married, and had, by his first marriage, two sons and a daughter. Statues were erected to his memory at Berlin, Breslau and Rostock.

Of the various lives of Prince Blücher, that by Varnhagen von Ense (1827) is the most important. His war diaries of 1793-1794, together with a memoir (written in 1805) on the subject of a national army, were edited by Golz and Ribbentrop (Campagne Journal 1793-4 von Gl. Lt. v. Blücher).

BLUE (common in different forms to most European languages), the name of a colour, used in many colloquial phrases. From the fact of various parties, political and other, having adopted the colour blue as their badge, various classes of people have come to be known as “blue” or “blues”; thus “true blue” meant originally a staunch Presbyterian, the Covenanters having adopted blue as their colour as opposed to red, the royal colour; similarly, in the navy, there was in the 18th century a “Blue Squadron,” Nelson being at one time “Rear-Admiral of the Blue”; again, in 1690, the Royal Horse Guards were called the “Blues” from their blue uniforms, or, from their leader, the earl of Oxford, the “Oxford Blues”; also, from the blue ribbon worn by the knights of the Garter comes the use of the phrase as the highest mark of distinction that can be worn, especially applied on the turf to the winning of the Derby. The “blue Peter” is a rectangular blue flag, with a white square in the centre, hoisted at the top of the foremast as a signal that a vessel is about to leave port. At Oxford and Cambridge a man who represents his university in certain athletic sports is called a “blue” from the “colours” he is then entitled to wear, dark blue for Oxford and light blue for Cambridge.

BLUEBEARD, the monster of Charles Perrault’s tale of Barbe Bleue, who murdered his wives and hid their bodies in a locked room. Perrault’s tale was first printed in his Histoires et contes du temps passé (1697). The essentials of the story—Bluebeard’s prohibition to his wife to open a certain door during his absence, her disobedience, her discovery of a gruesome secret, and her timely rescue from death—are to be found in other folklore stories, none of which, however, has attained the fame of Bluebeard. A close parallel exists in an Esthonian legend of a husband who had already killed eleven wives, and was prevented from killing the twelfth, who had opened a secret room, by a gooseherd, the friend of her childhood. In “The Feather Bird” of Grimm’s Hausmärchen, three sisters are the victims, the third being rescued by her brothers. Bluebeard, though Perrault does not state the number of his crimes, is generally credited with the murder of seven wives. His history belongs to the common stock of folklore, and has even been ingeniously fitted with a mythical interpretation. In France the Bluebeard legend has its local habitation in Brittany, but whether the existing traditions connecting him with Gilles de Rais (q.v.) or Comorre the Cursed, a Breton chief of the 6th century, were anterior to Perrault’s time, we have no means of determining. The identification of Bluebeard with Gilles de Rais, the bête d’extermination of Michelet’s forcible language, persists locally in the neighbourhood of the various castles of the baron, especially at Machecoul and Tiffauges, the chief scenes of his infamous crimes. Gilles de Rais, however, had only one wife, who survived him, and his victims were in the majority of cases young boys. The traditional connexion may arise simply from the not improbable association of two monstrous tales. The less widespread identification of Bluebeard with Comorre is supported by a series of frescoes dating only a few years later than the publication of Perrault’s story, in a chapel at St Nicolas de Bieuzy dedicated to St Tryphine, in which the tale of Bluebeard is depicted as the story of the saint, who in history was the wife of Comorre. Comorre or Conomor had his original headquarters at Carhaix, in Finistère. He extended his authority by marriage with the widow of Iona, chief of Domnonia, and attempted the life of his stepson Judwal, who fled to the Frankish court. About 547 or 548 he obtained in marriage, through the intercession of St Gildas, Tryphine, daughter of Weroc, count of Vannes. The pair lived in peace at Castel Finans for some time, but Comorre, disappointed in his ambitions in the Vannetais, presently threatened Tryphine. She took flight, but her husband found her hiding in a wood, when he gave her a wound on the skull and left her for dead. She was tended and restored to health by St Gildas, and after the birth of her son retired to a convent of her own foundation. Eventually Comorre was defeated and slain by Judwal. In legend St Tryphine was decapitated and miraculously restored to life by Gildas. Alain Bouchard (Grandes croniques, Nantes, 1531) asserts that Comorre had already put several wives to death before he married Tryphine. In the Légendes bretonnes of the count d’Amezeuil the church legend becomes a charming fairy tale.

See also E.A. Vizetclly, Bluebeard (1902); E. Sidney Hartland, “The Forbidden Chamber,” in Folklore, vol. iii. (1885); and the editions of the Contes of Charles Perrault (q.v.). Cf. A. France, Les Sept Femmes de Barbe Bleue (1909).

BLUE-BOOK, the general name given to the reports and other documents printed by order of the parliament of the United Kingdom, so called from their being usually covered with blue paper, though some are bound in drab and others have white covers. The printing of its proceedings was first adopted by the House of Commons in 1681, and in 1836 was commenced the practice of selling parliamentary papers to the public. All notices of questions, resolutions, votes and proceedings in both Houses of Parliament are issued each day during the session; other publications include the various papers issued by the different government departments, the reports of committees and commissions of inquiry, public bills, as well as returns, correspondence, &c., specially ordered to be printed by either house. The papers of each session are so arranged as to admit of being bound up in regular order, and are well indexed. The terms upon which blue-books, single papers, &c., are issued to the general public are one halfpenny per sheet of four pages, but for an annual subscription of £20 all the parliamentary publications of the year may be obtained; but subscriptions can be arranged so that almost any particular class of publication can be obtained—for example, the daily votes and proceedings can be obtained for an annual subscription of £3, the House of Lords papers for £10, or the House of Commons papers for £15. Any publication can also be purchased separately.

Most foreign countries have a distinctive colour for the binding of their official publications. That of the United Slates varies, but foreign diplomatic correspondence is bound in red. The United States government publications are not only on sale (as a rule) but are widely supplied gratis, with the result that important publications soon get out of print, and it is difficult to obtain access to many valuable reports or other information, except at a public library. German official publications are bound in white; French, in yellow; Austrian, in red; Portuguese, in white; Italian, in green; Spanish, in red; Mexican, in green; Japanese, in grey; Chinese, in yellow.

BLUESTOCKING, a derisive name for a literary woman. The term originated in or about 1750, when Mrs Elizabeth Montagu (q.v.) made a determined effort to introduce into society a healthier and more intellectual tone, by holding assemblies at which literary conversation and discussions were to take the place of cards and gossip. Most of those attending were conspicuous by the plainness of their dress, and a Mr Benjamin Stillingfleet specially caused comment by always wearing blue or worsted stockings instead of the usual black silk. It was in special reference to him that Mrs Montagu’s friends were called the Bluestocking Society or Club, and the women frequenting her house in Hill Street came to be known as the “Bluestocking Ladies” or simply “bluestockings.” As an alternative explanation, the origin of the name is attributed to Mrs Montagu’s deliberate adoption of blue stockings (in which fashion she was followed by all her women friends) as the badge of the society she wished to form. She is said to have obtained the idea from Paris, where in the 17th century there was a revival of a social reunion in 1590 on the lines of that formed in 1400 at Venice, the ladies and men of which wore blue stockings. The term had been applied in England as early as 1653 to the Little Parliament, in allusion to the puritanically plain and coarse dress of the members.

BLUFF (a word of uncertain origin; possibly connected with an obsolete Dutch word, blaf, broad), an adjective used of a ship, meaning broad and nearly vertical in the bows; similarly, of a cliff or shore, presenting a bold and nearly perpendicular front; of a person, good-natured and frank, with a rough or abrupt manner. Another word “bluff,” perhaps connected with German verblüffen, to baffle, meant originally a horse’s blinker, the corresponding verb meaning to blindfold: it survives as a term in such games as poker, where “to bluff” means to bet heavily on a hand so as to make an opponent believe it to be stronger than it is; hence such phrases as “the game of bluff,” “a policy of bluff.”

BLUM, ROBERT FREDERICK (1857-1903), American artist, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 9th of July 1857. He was employed for a time in a lithographic shop, and studied at the McMicken Art School of Design in Cincinnati, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, but he was practically self-taught, and early showed great and original talent. He settled in New York in 1879, and his first published sketches—of Japanese jugglers—appeared in St Nicholas. His most important work is a large frieze in the Mendelssohn Music Hall, New York, “Music and the Dance” (1895). His pen-and-ink work for the Century magazine attracted wide attention, as did his illustrations for Sir Edwin Arnold’s Japonica. In the country and art of Japan he had been interested for many years. “A Daughter of Japan,” drawn by Blum and W.J. Baer, was the cover of Scribner’s Magazine for May 1893, and was one of the earliest pieces of colour-printing for an American magazine. In Scribner’s for 1893 appeared also his “Artist’s Letters from Japan.” He was an admirer of Fortuny, whose methods somewhat influenced his work. Blum’s Venetian pictures, such as “A Bright Day at Venice” (1882), had lively charm and beauty. He died on the 8th of June 1903 in New York City. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, being elected after his exhibition in 1892 of “The Ameya”; and was president of the Painters in Pastel. Although an excellent draughtsman and etcher, it was as a colourist that he chiefly excelled.

BLUMENBACH, JOHANN FRIEDRICH (1752-1840), German physiologist and anthropologist, was born at Gotha on the 11th of May 1752. After studying medicine at Jena, he graduated doctor at Göttingen in 1775, and was appointed extraordinary professor of medicine in 1776 and ordinary professor in 1778. He died at Göttingen on the 22nd of January 1840. He was the author of Institutiones Physiologicae (1787), and of a Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie (1804), both of which were very popular and went through many editions, but he is best known for his work in connexion with anthropology, of which science he has been justly called the founder. He was the first to show the value of comparative anatomy in the study of man’s history, and his craniometrical researches justified his division of the human race into several great varieties or families, of which he enumerated five—the Caucasian or white race, the Mongolian or yellow, the Malayan or brown race, the Negro or black race, and the American or red race. This classification has been very generally received, and most later schemes have been modifications of it. His most important anthropological work was his description of sixty human crania published originally in fasciculi under the title Collectionis suae craniorum diversarum gentium illustratae decades (Göttingen, 1790-1828).

BLUMENTHAL, LEONHARD, Count von (1810-1900), Prussian field marshal, son of Captain Ludwig von Blumenthal (killed in 1813 at the battle of Dennewitz), was born at Schwedt-on-Oder on the 30th of July 1810. Educated at the military schools of Culm and Berlin, he entered the Guards as 2nd lieutenant in 1827. After serving in the Rhine provinces, he joined the topographical division of the general staff in 1846. As lieutenant of the 31st foot he took part in 1848 in the suppression of the Berlin riots, and in 1849 was promoted captain on the general staff. The same year he served on the staff of General von Bonin in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, and so distinguished himself, particularly at Fredericia, that he was appointed chief of the staff of the Schleswig-Holstein army. In 1850 he was general staff officer of the mobile division under von Tietzen in Hesse-Cassel. He was sent on a mission to England in that year (4th class of Red Eagle), and on several subsequent occasions. Having attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel, he was appointed personal adjutant to Prince Frederick Charles in 1859. In 1860 he became colonel of the 31st, and later of the 71st, regiment. He was chief of the staff of the III. army corps when, on the outbreak of the Danish War of 1864, he was nominated chief of the general staff of the army against Denmark, and displayed so much ability, particularly at Düppel and the passage to Alsen island, that he was promoted major-general and given the order pour le mérite. In the war of 1866 Blumenthal occupied the post of chief of the general staff to the crown prince of Prussia, commanding the 2nd army. It was upon this army that the brunt of the fighting fell, and at Königgrätz it decided the fortunes of the day. Blumenthal’s own part in these battles and in the campaign generally was most conspicuous. On the field of Königgrätz the crown prince said to his chief of staff, “I know to whom I owe the conduct of my army,” and Blumenthal soon received promotion to lieutenant-general and the oak-leaf of the order pour le mérite. He was also made a knight of the Hohenzollern Order. From 1866 to 1870 he commanded the 14th division at Düsseldorf. In the Franco-German War of 1870-71 he was chief of staff of the 3rd army under the crown prince. Blumenthal’s soldierly qualities and talent were never more conspicuous than in the critical days preceding the battle of Sedan, and his services in the war have been considered as scarcely less valuable and important than those of Moltke himself. In 1871 Blumenthal represented Germany at the British manoeuvres at Chobham, and was given the command of the IV. army corps at Magdeburg. In 1873 he became a general of infantry, and ten years later he was made a count. In 1888 he was made a general field marshal, after which he was in command of the 4th and 3rd army inspections. He retired in 1896, and died at Quellendorf near Köthen on the 21st of December 1900.

Blumenthal’s diary of 1866 and 1870-1871 has been edited by his son, Count Albrecht von Blumenthal (Tagebuch des G.F.M. von Blumenthal), 1902; an English translation (Journals of Count von Blumenthal) was published in 1903.

BLUNDERBUSS (a corruption of the Dutch donder, thunder, and the Dutch bus; cf. Ger. Büchse, a box or tube, hence a thunder-box or gun), an obsolete muzzle-loading firearm with a bell-shaped muzzle. Its calibre was large so that it could contain many balls or slugs, and it was intended to be fired at a short range, so that some of the charge was sure to take effect. The word is also used by analogy to describe a blundering and random person or talker.

BLUNT, JOHN HENRY (1823-1884), English divine, was born at Chelsea in 1823, and before going to the university of Durham in 1850 was for some years engaged in business as a manufacturing chemist. He was ordained in 1852 and took his M.A. degree in 1855, publishing in the same year a work on The Atonement. He held in succession several preferments, among them the vicarage of Kennington near Oxford (1868), which he vacated in 1873 for the crown living of Beverston in Gloucestershire. He had already gained some reputation as an industrious theologian, and had published among other works an annotated edition of the Prayer Book (1867), a History of the English Reformation (1868), and a Book of Church Law (1872), as well as a useful Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology (1870). The continuation of these labours was seen in a Dictionary of Sects and Heresies (1874), an Annotated Bible (3 vols., 1878-1879), and a Cyclopaedia of Religion (1884), and received recognition in the shape of the D.D. degree bestowed on him in 1882. He died in London on the 11th of April 1884.

BLUNT, JOHN JAMES (1794-1855), English divine, was born at Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, and educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he took his degree as fifteenth wrangler and obtained a fellowship (1816). He was appointed a Wort’s travelling bachelor 1818, and spent some time in Italy and Sicily, afterwards publishing an account of his journey. He proceeded M.A. in 1819, B.D. 1826, and was Hulsean Lecturer in 1831-1832 while holding a curacy in Shropshire. In 1834 he became rector of Great Oakley in Essex, and in 1839 was appointed Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge. In 1854 he declined the see of Salisbury, and he died on the 18th of June 1855. His chief book was Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings both of the Old and New Testaments (1833; fuller edition, 1847). Some of his writings, among them the History of the Christian Church during the First Three Centuries and the lectures On the Right Use of the Early Fathers, were published posthumously.

A short memoir of him appeared in 1856 from the hand of William Selwyn, his successor in the divinity professorship.

BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN (1840- ), English poet and publicist, was born on the 17th of August 1840 at Petworth House, Sussex, the son of Francis Scawen Blunt, who served in the Peninsular War and was wounded at Corunna. He was educated at Stonyhurst and Oscott, and entered the diplomatic service in 1858, serving successively at Athens, Madrid, Paris and Lisbon. In 1867 he was sent to South America, and on his return to England retired from the service on his marriage with Lady Anne Noel, daughter of the earl of Lovelace and a grand-daughter of the poet Byron. In 1872 he succeeded, by the death of his elder brother, to the estate of Crabbet Park, Sussex, where he established a famous stud for the breeding of Arab horses. Mr and Lady Anne Blunt travelled repeatedly in northern Africa, Asia Minor and Arabia, two of their expeditions being described in Lady Anne’s Bedouins of the Euphrates (2 vols., 1879) and A Pilgrimage to Nejd (2 vols., 1881). Mr Blunt became known as an ardent sympathizer with Mahommedan aspirations, and in his Future of Islam (1888) he directed attention to the forces which afterwards produced the movements of Pan-Islamism and Mahdism. He was a violent opponent of the English policy in the Sudan, and in The Wind and the Whirlwind (in verse, 1883) prophesied its downfall. He supported the national party in Egypt, and took a prominent part in the defence of Arabi Pasha. Ideas about India (1885) was the result of two visits to that country, the second in 1883-1884. In 1885 and 1886 he stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a Home Ruler; and in 1887 he was arrested in Ireland while presiding over a political meeting in connexion with the agitation on Lord Clanricarde’s estate, and was imprisoned for two months in Kilmainham. His best-known volume of verse, Love Sonnets of Proteus (1880), is a revelation of his real merits as an emotional poet. The Poetry of Wilfrid Blunt (1888), selected and edited by W.E. Henley and Mr George Wyndham, includes these sonnets, together with “Worth Forest, a Pastoral,” “Griselda” (described as a “society novel in rhymed verse”), translations from the Arabic, and poems which had appeared in other volumes.

BLUNTSCHLI, JOHANN KASPAR (1808-1881), Swiss jurist and politician, was born at Zürich on the 7th of March 1808, the son of a soap and candle manufacturer. From school he passed into the Politische Institut (a seminary of law and political science) in his native town, and proceeding thence to the universities of Berlin and Bonn, took the degree of doctor juris in the latter in 1829. Returning to Zurich in 1830, he threw himself with ardour into the political strife which was at the time unsettling all the cantons of the Confederation, and in this year published Über die Verfassung der Stadt Zürich (On the Constitution of the City of Zurich). This was followed by Das Volk und der Souverän (1830), a work in which, while pleading for constitutional government, he showed his bitter repugnance of the growing Swiss radicalism. Elected in 1837 a member of the Grosser Rath (Great Council), he became the champion of the moderate conservative party. Fascinated by the metaphysical views of the philosopher Friedrich Rohmer (1814-1856), a man who attracted little other attention, he endeavoured in Psychologische Studien über Staat und Kirche (1844) to apply them to political science generally, and in particular as a panacea for the constitutional troubles of Switzerland. Bluntschli, shortly before his death, remarked, “I have gained renown as a jurist, but my greatest desert is to have comprehended Rohmer.” This philosophical essay, however, coupled with his uncompromising attitude towards both radicalism and ultramontanism, brought him many enemies, and rendered his continuance in the council, of which he had been elected president, impossible. He resigned his seat, and on the overthrow of the Sonderbund in 1847, perceiving that all hope of power for his party was lost, took leave of Switzerland with the pamphlet Stimme eines Schweizers über die Bundesreform (1847), and settled at Munich, where he became professor of constitutional law in 1848.

At Munich he devoted himself with energy to the special work of his chair, and, resisting the temptation to identify himself with politics, published Allgemeines Staatsrecht (1851-1852); Lehre vom modernen Staat (1875-1876); and, in conjunction with Karl Ludwig Theodor Brater (1819-1869), Deutsches Staats-wörterbuch (II vols., 1857-1870: abridged by Edgar Loening in 3 vols., 1869-1875). Meanwhile he had assiduously worked at his code for the canton of Zürich, Privatrechtliches Gesetzbuch für den Kanton Zürich (4 vols., 1854-1856), a work which was much praised at the time, and which, particularly the section devoted to contracts, served as a model for codes both in Switzerland and other countries. In 1861 Bluntschli received a call to Heidelberg as professor of constitutional law (Staatsrecht), where he again entered the political arena, endeavouring in his Geschichte des allgemeinen Staatsrechts und der Politik (1864) “to stimulate,” as he said, “the political consciousness of the German people, to cleanse it of prejudices and to further it intellectually.” In his new home, Baden, he devoted his energies and political influence, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, towards keeping the country neutral. From this time Bluntschli became active in the field of international law, and his fame as a jurist belongs rather to this province than to that of constitutional law. His Das moderne Kriegsrecht (1866); Das moderns Völkerrecht (1868), and Das Beuterecht im Krieg (1878) are likely to remain invaluable text-books in this branch of the science of jurisprudence. He also wrote a pamphlet on the “Alabama” case.

Bluntschli was one of the founders, at Ghent in 1873, of the Institute of International Law, and was the representative of the German emperor at the conference on the international laws of war at Brussels. During the latter years of his life he took a lively interest in the Protestantenverein, a society formed to combat reactionary and ultramontane views of theology. He died suddenly at Karlsruhe on the 21st of October 1881. His library was acquired by Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, U.S.A.

Among his works, other than those before mentioned, may be cited Deutsches Privatrecht (1853-1854); Deutsche Staatslehre für Gebildete (1874); and Deutsche Staatslehre und die heutige Staatenwelt (1880).

For notices of Bluntschli’s life and works see his interesting autobiography, Denkwurdiges aus meinem Leben (1884); von Holtzendorff, Bluntschli und seine Verdienste um die Staatswissenschaften (1882); Brockhaus, Konversations-Lexicon (1901); and a biography by Meyer von Kronau, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie.

BLYTH, a market town and seaport of Northumberland, England, in the parliamentary borough of Morpeth, 9 m. E.S.E. of that town, at the mouth of the river Blyth, on a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5472. This is the port for a considerable coal-mining district, and its harbour, on the south side of the river, is provided with mechanical appliances for shipping coal. There are five dry docks, and upwards of 1 ½ m. of quayage. Timber is largely imported. Some shipbuilding and the manufacture of rope, sails and ship-fittings are carried on, and the fisheries are valuable. Blyth is also in considerable favour as a watering-place; there are a pleasant park, a pier, protecting the harbour, about 1 m. in length, and a sandy beach affording sea-bathing. The river Blyth rises near the village of Kirkheaton, and has an easterly course of about 25 m. through a deep, well-wooded and picturesque valley.

B’NAI B’RITH (or Sons of the Covenant), INDEPENDENT ORDER OF, a Jewish fraternal society. It was founded at New York in 1843 by a number of German Jews, headed by Henry Jones, and is the oldest as well as the largest of the Jewish fraternal organizations. Its membership in 1908 was 35,870, its 481 lodges and 10 grand lodges being distributed over the United States, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Rumania, Egypt and Palestine. Its objects are to promote a high morality among Jews, regardless of differences as to dogma and ceremonial customs, and especially to inculcate the supreme virtues of charity and brotherly love. Political and religious discussions were from the first excluded from the debates of the order. In 1851 the first grand lodge was established at New York; in 1856, the number of district lodges having increased, the supreme authority was vested in a central body consisting of one member from each lodge; and by the present constitution, adopted in 1868, this authority is vested in a president elected for five years, an executive committee and court of appeals (elected as before). The first lodge in Germany was instituted at Berlin in 1883. A large number of charitable and other public institutions have been established in the United States and elsewhere by the order, of which may be mentioned the large orphan asylum in Cleveland, the home for the aged and infirm at Yonkers, N.Y., the National Jewish hospital for consumptives at Denver, and the Maimonides library in New York City. The B’nai B’rith society has also co-operated largely with other Jewish philanthropic organizations in succouring distressed Israelites throughout the world.

See the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1902), s.v.

BOA, a name formerly applied to all large serpents which, devoid of poison fangs, kill their prey by constriction; but now confined to that subfamily of the Boidae which are devoid of teeth in the praemaxilla and are without supraorbital bones. The others are known as pythons (q.v.). The true boas comprise some forty species; most of them are American, but the genus Eryx inhabits North Africa, Greece and south-western Asia; the genus Enygrus ranges from New Guinea to the Fiji; Casarea dussumieri is restricted to Round Island, near Mauritius; and two species of Boa and one of Corallus represent this subfamily in Madagascar, while all the other boas live in America, chiefly in tropical parts. All Boidae possess vestiges of pelvis and hind limbs, appearing externally as claw-like spurs on each side of the vent, but they are so small that they are practically without function in climbing. The usually short tail is prehensile.

One of the commonest species of the genus Boa is the Boa constrictor, which has a wide range from tropical Mexico to Brazil. The head is covered with small scales, only one of the preoculars being enlarged. The general colour is a delicate pale brown, with about a dozen and a half darker cross-bars, which are often connected by a still darker dorso-lateral streak, enclosing large oval spots. On each side is a series of large dark brown spots with light centres. On the tail the markings become bolder, brick red with black and yellow. The under parts are yellowish with black dots. This species rarely reaches a length of more than 10 ft. It climbs well, prefers open forest in the neighbourhood of water, is often found in plantations where it retires into a hole in the ground, and lives chiefly on birds and small mammals. Like most true boas, it is of a very gentle disposition and easily domesticates itself in the palm or reed thatched huts of the natives, where it hunts the rats during the night.

The term “boa” is applied by analogy to a long article of women’s dress wound round the neck.

BOABDIL (a corruption of the name Abu Abdullah), the last Moorish king of Granada, called el chico, the little, and also el zogoybi, the unfortunate. A son of Muley Abu’l Hassan, king of Granada, he was proclaimed king in 1482 in place of his father, who was driven from the land. Boabdil soon after sought to gain prestige by invading Castile. He was taken prisoner at Lucena in 1483, and only obtained his freedom by consenting to hold Granada as a tributary kingdom under Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Castile and Aragon. The next few years were consumed in struggles with his father and his uncle Abdullah ez Zagal. In 1491 Boabdil was summoned by Ferdinand and Isabella to surrender the city of Granada, and on his refusal it was besieged by the Castilians. Eventually, in January 1492, Granada was surrendered, and the king spent some time on the lands which he was allowed to hold in Andalusia. Subsequently he crossed to Africa, and is said to have been killed in battle fighting for his kinsman, the ruler of Fez. The spot from which Boabdil looked for the last time on Granada is still shown, and is known as “the last sigh of the Moor” (el ultimo suspire del Moro).

See J.A. Conde, Dominácion de los Arabes en España (Paris, 1840), translated into English by Mrs J. Foster (London, 1854-1855); Washington Irving, The Alhambra (New York, ed. 1880).

BOADICEA, strictly Boudicca, a British queen in the time of the emperor Nero. Her husband Prasutagus ruled the Icĕni (in what is now Norfolk) as an autonomous prince under Roman suzerainty. On his death (A.D. 61) without male heir, his dominions were annexed, and the annexation was carried out brutally. He had by his will divided his private wealth between his two daughters and Nero, trusting thereby to win imperial favour for his family. Instead, his wife was scourged (doubtless for resisting the annexation), his daughters outraged, his chief tribesmen plundered. The proud, fierce queen and her people rose, and not alone. With them rose half Britain, enraged, for other causes, at Roman rule. Roman taxation and conscription lay heavy on the province; in addition, the Roman government had just revoked financial concessions made a few years earlier, and L. Annaeus Seneca, who combined the parts of a moralist and a money-lender, had abruptly recalled large loans made from his private wealth to British chiefs. A favourable chance for revolt was provided by the absence of the governor-general, Suetonius Paulinus, and most of his troops in North Wales and Anglesey. All south-east Britain joined the movement. Paulinus rushed back without waiting for his troops, but he could do nothing alone. The Britons burnt the Roman municipalities of Verulam and Colchester, the mart of London, and several military posts, massacred “over 70,000” Romans and Britons friendly to Rome, and almost annihilated the Ninth Legion marching from Lincoln to the rescue. At last Paulinus, who seems to have rejoined his army, met the Britons in the field. The site of the battle is unknown. One writer has put it at Chester; others at London, where King’s Cross had once a narrow escape of being christened Boadicea’s Cross, and actually for many years bore the name of Battle Bridge, in supposed reference to this battle. Probably, however, it was on Watling Street, between London and Chester. In a desperate soldiers’ battle Rome regained the province. Boadicea took poison; thousands of Britons fell in the fight or were hunted down in the ensuing guerrilla. Finally, Rome adopted a kindlier policy, and Britain became quiet. But the scantiness of Romano-British remains in Norfolk may be due to the severity with which the Icĕni were crushed.

See Tacitus, Annals, xiv.; Agric. xv.; Dio lxii. The name Boudicca seems to mean in Celtic much the same as Victoria.

(F. J. H.)

BOAR (O. Eng. bār; the word is found only in W. Ger. languages, cf. Dutch beer, Ger. Eber), the name given to the un-castrated male of the domestic pig (q.v.), and to some wild species of the family Suidae (see Swine). The European wild boar (Sus scrofa) is distributed over Europe, northern Africa, and central and northern Asia. It has long been extinct in the British Isles, where it once abounded, but traces have been found of its survival in Chartley Forest, Staffordshire, in an entry of 1683 in an account-book of the steward of the manor, and it possibly remained till much later in the more remote parts of Scotland and Ireland (J.E. Harting, Extinct British Animals, 1880). The wild boar is still found in Europe, in marshy woodland districts where there is plenty of cover, and it is fairly plentiful in Spain, Austria, Russia and Germany, particularly in the Black Forest.

From the earliest times, owing to its great strength, speed, and ferocity when at bay, the boar has been one of the favourite beasts of the chase. Under the old forest laws of England it was one of the “beasts of the forest,” and, as such, under the Norman kings the unprivileged killing of it was punishable by death or the loss of a member. It was hunted in England and in Europe on foot and on horseback with dogs, while the weapon of attack was always the spear. In Europe the wild boar is still hunted with dogs, but the spear, except when used in emergencies and for giving the coup de grâce, has been given up for the gun. It is also shot in great forest drives in Austria, Germany and Russia. The Indian wild boar (Sus cristatus) is slightly taller than Sus scrofa, standing some 30 to 40 in. at the shoulder. It is found throughout India, Ceylon and Burma. Here the horse and spear are still used, and the sport is one of the most popular in India. (See Pig-sticking.)

The boar is one of the four heraldic beasts of venery, and was the cognizance of Richard III., king of England. As an article of food the boar’s head was long considered a special delicacy, and its serving was attended with much ceremonial. At Queen’s College, Oxford, the dish is still brought on Christmas day in procession to the high-table, accompanied by the singing of a carol.

BOARD (O. Eng. bord), a plank or long narrow piece of timber. The word comes into various compounds to describe boards used for special purposes, or objects like boards (drawing-board, ironing-board, sounding-board, chess-board, cardboard, back-board, notice-board, scoring-board). The phrase “to keep one’s name on the boards,” at Cambridge University, signifies to remain a member of a college; at Oxford it is “on the books.” In bookbinding, pasteboard covers are called boards. Board was early used of a table, hence such phrases as “bed and board,” “board and lodging”; or of a gaming-table, as in the phrase “to sweep the board,” meaning to pocket all the stakes, hence, figuratively, to carry all before one. The same meaning leads to “Board of Trade,” “Local Government Board,” &c.

From the meaning of border or side, and especially ship’s side, comes “sea-board,” meaning sea-coast, and the phrases “aboard” (Fr. abord), “over-board,” “by the board”; similarly “weather-board,” the side of a ship which is to windward; “larboard and starboard” (the former of uncertain origin, Mid. Eng. laddeboard or latheboard; the latter meaning “steering side,” O. Eng. steorbord, the rudder of early ships working over the steering side), signifying (to one standing at the stern and looking forward) the left and right sides of the ship respectively.

BOARDING-HOUSE, a private house in which the proprietor provides board and lodging for paying guests. The position of a guest in a boarding-house differs in English law, to some extent, on the one hand from that of a lodger in the ordinary sense of the term, and on the other from that of a guest in an inn. Unlike the lodger, he frequently has not the exclusive occupation of particular rooms. Unlike the guest in an inn, his landlord has no lien upon his property for rent or any other debt due in respect of his board (Thompson v. Lacy, 1820, 3 B. and Ald. 283). The landlord is under an obligation to take reasonable care for the safety of property brought by a guest into his house, and is liable for damages in case of breach of this obligation (Scarborough v. Cosgrove, 1905, 2 K.B. 803). Again, unlike the innkeeper, a boarding-house keeper does not hold himself out as ready to receive all travellers for whom he has accommodation, for which they are ready to pay, and of course he is entitled to get rid of any guest on giving reasonable notice (see Lamond v. Richard, 1897, I Q.B. 541, 548). What is reasonable notice depends on the terms of the contract; and, subject thereto, the course of payment of rent is a material circumstance (see Landlord and Tenant). Apparently the same implied warranty of fitness for habitation at the commencement of the tenancy which exists in the case of furnished lodgings (see Lodger and Lodgings) exists also in the case of boarding-houses; and the guest in a boarding-house, like a lodger, is entitled to all the usual and necessary conveniences of a dwelling-house.

The law of the United States is similar to English law.

Under the French Code Civil, claims for subsistence furnished to a debtor and his family during the last year of his life by boarding-house keepers (maîtres de pension) are privileged over the generality of moveables, the privilege being exerciseable after legal expenses, funeral expenses, the expenses of the last illness, and the wages of servants for the year elapsed and what is due for the current year (art. 2101 (5)). Keepers of taverns (aubergistes) and hotels (hôteliers) are responsible for the goods of their guests—the committal of which to their custody is regarded as a deposit of necessity (dépôt nécessaire). They are liable for the loss of such goods by theft, whether by servants or strangers, but not where the loss is due to force majeure (arts. 1952-1954). Their liability for money and bearer securities not actually deposited is limited to 1000 francs (law of 18th of April 1889). These provisions are reproduced in substance in the Civil Codes of Quebec (arts. 1814, 1815, 1994, 2006) and of St Lucia (art. 1889). In Quebec, boarding-house keepers have a lien on the goods of their guests for the value or price of any food or accommodation furnished to them, and have also a right to sell their baggage and other property, if the amount remains unpaid for three months, under conditions similar to those imposed on innkeepers in England (art. 1816 A; and see Inns and Innkeepers); also in the Civil Code of St Lucia (arts. 1578, 1714, 1715)

(A. W. R.)

BOARDING-OUT SYSTEM, in the English poor law, the boarding-out of orphan or deserted children with suitable foster-parents. The practice was first authorized in 1868, though for many years previously it had been carried out by some boards of guardians on their own initiative. Boarding-out is governed by two orders of the Local Government Board, issued in 1889. The first permits guardians to board-out children within their own union, except in the metropolis. The second governs the boarding-out of children in localities outside the union. The sum payable to the foster-parents is not to exceed 4s. per week for each child. The system has been much discussed by authorities on the administration of the poor law. It has been objected that few working-men with an average-sized family can afford to devote such an amount for the maintenance of each child, and that, therefore, boarded-out children are better off than the children of the independent (Fawcett, Pauperism). Working-class guardians, also, do not favour the system, being suspicious as to the disinterestedness of the foster-parents. On the other hand, it is argued that from the economic and educational point of view much better results are obtained by boarding-out children; they are given a natural life, and when they grow up they are without effort merged in the general population (Mackay, Hist. Eng. Poor Law). See also Poor Law.

The “boarding-out” of lunatics is, in Scotland, a regular part of the lunacy administration. It has also been successfully adopted in Belgium. (See Insanity.)

BOARDMAN, GEORGE DANA (1801-1831), American Baptist missionary, was born at Livermore, Me., and educated at Waterville College and Andover Theological Seminary. In 1825 he went to India as a missionary, and in 1827 to Burma, where his promising work among the Karens was cut short by his early death. His widow married another well-known Burmese missionary, Adoniram Judson.

His son, George Dana Boardman, the younger (1828-1903), made the voyage from Burma to America alone when six years of age. He graduated in 1852 at Brown University, and from the Newton Theological Institution in 1855. He held Baptist pastorates at Rochester (1856-1864), and at Philadelphia, and was president of the American Baptist Missionary Union, 1880-1884. At Philadelphia he is said to have taken his congregation through every verse of the New Testament in 643 Wednesday evening lectures, which occupied nearly eighteen years, and afterwards to have begun on the Old Testament in similar fashion. Among his published works are Studies in the Model Prayer (1879), and Epiphanies of the Risen Lord (1879).

BOASE, HENRY SAMUEL (1799-1883), English geologist, the eldest son of Henry Boase (1763-1827), banker, of Madron, Cornwall, was born in London on the 2nd of September 1799. Educated partly at Tiverton grammar-school, and partly at Dublin, where he studied chemistry, he afterwards proceeded to Edinburgh and took the degree of M.D. in 1821. He then settled for some years as a medical practitioner at Penzance; there geology engaged his particular attention, and he became secretary of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. The results of his observations were embodied in his Treatise on Primary Geology (1834), a work of considerable merit in regard to the older crystalline and igneous rocks and the subject of mineral veins. In 1837 he removed to London, where he remained for about a year, being elected F.R.S. In 1838 he became partner in a firm of bleachers at Dundee. He retired in 1871, and died on the 5th of May 1883.

BOAT (O. Eng. bât; the true etymological connexion with Dutch and Ger. boot, Fr. bateau, Ital. battello presents great difficulties; Celtic forms are from O. Eng.), a comparatively small open craft for conveyance on water, usually propelled by some form of oar or sail.

The origin of the word “boat” is probably to be looked for in the A.S. bât = a stem, a stick, a piece of wood. If this be so, the term in its inception referred to the material of which the primitive vessel was constructed, and in this respect may well be contrasted with the word “ship,” of which the primary idea was the process by which the material was fashioned and adapted for the use of man.

We may assume that primitive man, in his earliest efforts to achieve the feat of conveying himself and his belongings by water, succeeded in doing so—(1) by fastening together a quantity of material of sufficient buoyancy to float and carry him above the level of the water; (2) by scooping out a fallen tree so as to obtain buoyancy enough for the same purpose. In these two processes is to be found the genesis of both boat and ship, of which, though often used as convertible terms, the former is generally restricted to the smaller type of vessel such as is dealt with in this article. For the larger type the reader is referred to Ship.

Great must have been the triumph of the man who first discovered that the rushes or the trunks he had managed to tie together would, propelled by a stick or a branch (cf. ramus and remus) used as pole or paddle, convey him safely across the river or lake, which had hitherto been his barrier. But use multiplies wants, discovers deficiencies, suggests improvements. Man soon found out that he wanted to go faster than the raft would move, that the water washed over and up through it, and this need of speed, and of dry carrying power, which we find operative throughout the history of the boat down to the present day, drove him to devise other modes of flotation as well as to try to improve his first invention.

The invention of the hollowed trunk, of the “dug-out” (monoxylon), however it came about, whenever and wherever it came into comparison with the raft, must have superseded the latter for some purposes, though not by any means for all. It was superior to the raft in speed, and was, to a certain extent, water-tight. On the other hand it was inferior in carrying power and stability. But the two types once conceived had come to stay, and to them severally, or to attempts to combine the useful properties of both, may be traced all the varieties of vessel to which the name of boat may be applied.

The development of the raft is admirably illustrated in the description, given us by Homer in the Odyssey, of the construction by the hero Ulysses of a vessel of the kind. Floating timber is cut down and carefully shaped and planed with axe and adze, and the timbers are then exactly fitted face to face and compacted with trenails and dowels, just as the flat floor of a lump or lighter might be fashioned and fitted nowadays. A platform is raised upon the floor and a bulwark of osiers contrived to keep out the wash of the waves (cf. infra, Malay boats). It seems as if the poet, who was intimately acquainted with the sea ways of his time, intended to convey the idea of progress in construction, as illustrated by the technical skill of his hero, and the use of the various tools with which he supplies him.

On the other hand the dug-out had its limitations. The largest tree that could be thrown and scooped out afforded but a narrow space for carrying goods, and presented problems as to stability which must have been very difficult to solve. The shaping of bow and stern, the bulging out of the sides, the flattening of the bottom, the invention of a keel piece, the attempt to raise the sides by building up with planks, all led on towards the idea of constructing a boat properly so called, or perhaps to the invention of the canoe, which in some ways may be regarded as the intermediate stage between dug-out and boat.

Meanwhile the raft had undergone improvements such as those which Homer indicates. It had arrived at a floor composed of timbers squared and shaped. It had risen to a platform, the prototype of a deck. It was but a step to build up the sides and turn up the ends, and at this point we reach the genesis of ark and punt, of sanpan and junk, or, in other words, of all the many varieties of flat-bottomed craft.

When once we have reached the point at which the improvements in the construction of the raft and dug-out bring them, as it were, within sight of each other, we can enter upon the history of the development of boats properly so called, which, in accordance with the uses and the circumstances that dictated their build, may be said to be descended from the raft or the dug-out, or from the attempt to combine the respective advantages of the two original types.

Uses and circumstances are infinite in variety and have produced an infinite variety of boats. But we may safely say that in all cases the need to be satisfied, the nature of the material available, and the character of the difficulties to be overcome have governed the reason and tested the reasonableness of the architecture of the craft in use.

It is not proposed in this article to enter at any length into the details of the construction of boats, but it is desirable, for the sake of clearness, to indicate certain broad distinctions in the method of building, which, though they run back into the far past, in some form or other survive and are in use at the present day.

The tying of trunks together to form a raft is still not unknown in the lumber trade of the Danube or of North America, nor was it in early days confined to the raft. It extended to many boats properly so called, even to many of those built by the Vikings of old. It may still be seen in the Madras surf boats, and in those constructed out of driftwood by the inhabitants of Easter Island in the south Pacific. Virgil, who was an archaeologist, represents Charon’s boat on the Styx as of this construction, and notes the defect, which still survives, in the craft of the kind when loaded—

“Gemuit sub pondere cymba Sutilis, et multam accepit rimosa paludem!” Aen. vi. 303.

Next to the raft, and to be counted in direct descent from it, comes the whole class of flat-bottomed boats including punts and lighters. As soon as the method of constructing a solid floor, with trenails and dowels, had been discovered, the method of converting it into a water-tight box was pursued, sides were attached plank fashion, with strong knees to stiffen them, and cross pieces to yoke or key (cf. ζύγον κληίς) them together. These thwarts once fixed naturally suggested seats for those that plied the paddle or the oar. The ends of the vessel were shaped into bow or stern, either turned up, or with the side planking convergent in stem or stern post, or joined together fore and aft by bulkheads fitted in, while interstices were made water-tight by caulking, and by smearing with bitumen or some resinous material.

The evolution of the boat as distinct from the punt, or flat-bottomed type, and following the configuration of the dug-out in its length and rounded bottom, must have taxed the inventive art and skill of constructors much more severely than that of the raft. It is possible that the coracle or the canoe may have suggested the construction of a framework of sufficient stiffness to carry a water-tight wooden skin, such as would successfully resist the pressure of wind and water. And in this regard two methods were open to the builder, both of which have survived to the present day: (1) the construction first of the shell of the boat, into which the stiffening ribs and cross ties were subsequently fitted; (2) the construction first of a framework of requisite size and shape, on to which the outer skin of the boat was subsequently attached.

Further, besides the primitive mode of tying the parts together, two main types of build must be noticed, in accordance with which a boat is said to be either carvel-built or clinker-built. (1) A boat is carvel-built when the planks are laid edge to edge so that they present a smooth surface without. (2) A boat is clinker-built when each plank is laid on so as to overlap the one below it, thus presenting a series of ledges running longitudinally.

The former method is said to be of Mediterranean, or perhaps of Eastern origin. The latter was probably invented by the old Scandinavian builders, and from them handed down through the fishing boats of the northern nations to our own time.

The accounts of vessels used by the Egyptians and Phoenicians generally refer to larger craft which naturally fall under the head of Ship (q.v.). The Nile boats, however, described by Herodotus (ii. 60), built of acacia wood, Ancient boats. were no doubt of various sizes, some of them quite small, but all following the same type of construction, built up brick fashion, the blocks being fastened internally to long poles secured by cross pieces, and the interstices caulked with papyrus. The ends rose high above the water, and to prevent hogging were often attached by a truss running longitudinally over crutches from stem to stern.

The Assyrian and Babylonian vessels described by Herodotus (i. 194), built up of twigs and boughs, and covered with skins smeared with bitumen, were really more like huge coracles and hardly deserve the name of boats.

The use of boats by the Greeks and Romans is attested by the frequent reference to them in Greek and Latin literature, though, as regards such small craft, the details given are hardly enough to form the basis of an accurate classification.

We hear of small boats attendant on a fleet (κελήτιον, Thuc. i. 53), and of similar craft employed in piracy (Thuc. iv. 9), and in one case of a sculling boat, or pair oar (ἀκάτιον ἀμφηρικόν, Thuc. iv. 67), which was carted up and down between the town of Megara and the sea, being used for the purpose of marauding at night. We are also familiar with the passage in the Acts (xxvii.) where in the storm they had hard work “to come by the boat”; which same boat the sailors afterwards “let down into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship,” and would have escaped to land in her themselves, leaving the passengers to drown, if the centurion and soldiers acting upon St Paul’s advice had not cut off the ropes of the boat and let her fall off.

There can be little doubt that boat races were in vogue among the Greeks (see Prof. Gardner, Journal of Hellenic Studies, ii. 91 ff.), and probably formed part of the Panathenaic and Isthmian festivals. It is, however, difficult to prove that small boats took part in these races, though it is not unlikely that they may have done so. The testimony of the coins, such as it is, points to galleys, and the descriptive term (νεῶν ἅμιλλα) leads to the same conclusion.

It is hardly possible now to define the differences which separated ἄκατος, ἀκάτιον, from κέλης, κελήτιον, or from λέμβος or κάραβος. They seem all to have been rowing boats, probably carvel-built, some with keels (acatii modo carinata, Plin. ix. 19), and to have varied in size, some being simply sculling boats, and others running up to as many as thirty oars.

Similarly in Latin authors we have frequent mention of boats accompanying ships of war. Of this there is a well-known instance in the account of Caesar’s invasion of Britain (B.G. iv. 26), when the boats of the fleet, and the pinnaces, were filled with soldiers and sent to assist the Legionaries who were being fiercely attacked as they waded on to the shore. There is also an instance in the civil war, which is a prototype of a modern attack of torpedo boats upon men of war, when Antonius manned the pinnaces of his large ships to the number of sixty, and with them attacked and defeated an imprudent squadron of Quadriremes (B.C. iii. 24). The class of boats so frequently mentioned as actuariae seems to have contained craft of all sizes, and to have been used for all purposes, whether as pleasure boats or as despatch vessels, or for piracy. In fact the term was employed vaguely just as we speak of craft in general.

The lembus, which is often referred to in Livy and Polybius, seems to have been of Illyrian origin, with fine lines and sharp bows. The class contained boats of various sizes and with a variable number of oars (biremis, Livy xxiv. 40, sexdecim, Livy xxxiv. 35); and it is interesting to note the origin in this case, as the invention of the light Liburnian galleys, which won the battle of Actium, and altered the whole system of naval construction, came from the same seaboard.

Besides these, the piratical myoparones (see Cic. In Verrem), and the poetical phaselus, deserve mention, but here again we are met with the difficulty of distinguishing boats from ships. There is also an interesting notice in Tacitus (Hist. iii. 47) of boats hastily constructed by the natives of the northern coast of Asia Minor, which he describes as of broad beam with narrow sides (probably meaning that the sides “tumbled home”), joined together without any fastenings of brass or iron. In a sea-way the sides were raised with planks added till they were cased in as with a roof, whence their name camarae, and so they rolled about in the waves, having prow and stern alike and convertible rowlocks, so that it was a matter of indifference and equally safe, or perhaps unsafe, whichever way they rowed.

Similar vessels were constructed by Germanicus in his north German campaign (Ann. ii. 6) and by the Suiones (Ger. 44). These also had stem and stern alike, and remind us of the old Norse construction, being rowed either way, having the oars loose in the rowlock, and not, as was usual in the south, attached by a thong to the thowl pin.

Lastly, as a class of boat directly descended from the raft, we may notice the flat-bottomed boats or punts or lighters which plied on the Tiber as ferry-boats, or carrying goods, which were called codicariae from caudex, the old word for a plank.

It is difficult to trace any order of development in the construction of boats during the Byzantine period, or the middle ages. Sea-going vessels according to their size carried one or more boats, some of them small boats with two or four oars, others boats of a larger size fitted with masts and sail as well as with oars. We find lembus and phaselus as generic names in the earlier period, but the indications as to size and character are vague and variable. The same may be said of the batelli, coquets, chaloupes, chalans, gattes, &c., of which, in almost endless number and variety, the nautical erudition of M. Jal has collected the names in his monumental works, Archéologie navale and the Glossaire nautique.

It is clear, however, that in many instances the names, originally applied to boats properly so called, gradually attached themselves to larger vessels, as in the case of chaloupe and others, a fact which leads to the conclusion that the type of build followed originally in smaller vessels was often developed on a larger scale, according as it was found useful and convenient, while the name remained the same. Many of these types still survive and may be found in the Eastern seas, or in the Mediterranean or in the northern waters, each of which has its own peculiarities of build and rig.

It would be impossible within our limits to do justice to the number and variety of existing types in sea-going boats, and for more detailed information concerning them the reader Existing types. would do well to consult Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia, by H. Warington Smyth, an excellent and exhaustive work, from which much of the information which follows regarding them has been derived.

In the Eastern seas the Chinese sanpan is ubiquitous. Originally a small raft of three timbers with fore end upturned, it grew into a boat in very early times, and has given its name to a very large class of vessels. With flat bottom, and considerable width in proportion to its length, the normal sanpan runs out into two tails astern, the timbers rounding up, and the end being built in like a bulkhead, with room for the rudder to work between it and the transom which connects the two projecting upper timbers of the stern. Some of them are as much as 30 ft. in length and 8 to 10 ft. in beam. They are good carriers and speedy under sail.

The Chinese in all probability were the earliest of all peoples to solve the chief problems of boat building, and after their own fashion to work out the art of navigation, which for them has now been set and unchanged for thousands of years. They appear to have used the lee-board and centre-board in junks and sanpans, and to have extended their trade to India and even beyond, centuries before anything like maritime enterprise is heard of in the north of Europe.

As regards the practice of long boat racing on rivers or tidal waters the Chinese are easily antecedent in time to the rest of the world. On great festivals in certain places the Dragon boat race forms part of the ceremony. The Dragon boats are just over 73 ft. long, with 4 ft. beam, and depth 21 in. The rowing or paddling space is about 63 ft. and the number of thwarts 27, thus giving exactly the same number of rowers as that of the Zygites in the Greek trireme. The two extremities of the boat are much cambered and rise to about 2 ft. above the water. At about 15 ft. from each end the single plank gives place to three, so as to offer a concave surface to the water. The paddle blade is spade-like in form and about 6½ in. broad.

Both in Siam and Burma there is a very large river population, and boat racing is on festival days a common amusement. The typical craft, however, is the Duck-boat, which in the shape of hull is in direct contrast to the dug-out form, and primarily intended for sailing. It is interesting to note that the Siamese method of slinging and using quarter rudders is the oldest used by men in sailing craft, being in fact the earliest development from the simple paddle rudder, which has in all ages been the first method of steering boats. The king of Siam’s state barge, we are told, is steered by long paddles, precisely in the same way as is figured in the case of the Egyptian boats of the 3rd dynasty (6000 B.C.). On the other hand the slung quarter rudders are the same in fashion as those used by Roman and Greek merchantmen, by Norsemen and Anglo-Saxons, and by medieval seamen down to about the 14th century.

The Malays have generally the credit of being expert boat-builders, but the local conditions are not such as to favour the construction of a good type of boat. “Small displacement, hollow lines, V-shaped sections, shallow draught and lack of beam” result in want of stability and weatherliness. But it is among them that the ancient process of dug-out building still survives and flourishes, preserving all the primitive and ingenious methods of hollowing the tree trunk, of forcing its sides outwards, and in many cases building them up with added planks, so that from the dug-out a regular boat is formed, with increased though limited carrying power, increased though still hardly sufficient stability.

To ensure this last very necessary quality many devices and contrivances are resorted to.

In some cases (just as Ulysses is described as doing by Homer, Od. v. 256) the boatman fastens bundles of reeds or of bamboos all along the sides of his boat. These being very buoyant not only act as a defence against the wash of the waves, but are sufficient to keep the boat afloat in any sea.

But the most characteristic device is the outrigger, a piece of floating wood sharpened at both ends, which is fixed parallel to the longer axis of the boat, at a distance of two or three beams, by two or more poles laid at right angles to it. This, while not interfering materially with the speed of the boat, acts as a counterpoise to any pressure on it which would tend, owing to its lack of stability, to upset it, and makes it possible for the long narrow dug-out to face even the open sea. It is remarkable that this invention, which must have been seen by the Egyptians and Phoenicians in very early times, was not introduced by them into the Mediterranean. Possibly this was owing to the lack of large timber suitable for dug-outs, and the consequent evolution by them of boat from raft, with sufficient beam to rely upon for stability.

On the other hand in the boats of India the influence of Egyptian and Arab types of build is apparent, and the dinghy of the Hugli is cited as being in form strangely like the ancient Egyptian model still preserved in the Ghizeh museum. Coming westward the dominant type of build is that of the Arab dhow, the boat class of which has all the characteristics of the larger vessel developed from it, plenty of beam, overhanging stem and transom stern. The planking of the shell over the wooden frame has a double thickness which conduces to dryness and durability in the craft.

On the Nile it is interesting to find the naggar preserving, in its construction out of blocks of acacia wood pinned together, the old-world fashion of building described by Herodotus. The gaiassa and dahabiah are too large to be classed as boats, but they and their smaller sisters follow the Arab type in build and rig.

It is noteworthy that nothing apparently of the ancient Egyptian or classical methods of build survives in the Mediterranean, while the records of the development of boat-building in the middle ages are meagre and confusing. The best illustrations of ancient methods of construction, and of ancient seamanship, are to be found, if anywhere, in the East, that conservative storehouse of types and fashions, to which they were either communicated, or from which they were borrowed, by Egyptians or Phoenicians, from whom they were afterwards copied by Greeks and Romans.

In the Mediterranean the chief characteristics of the types belonging to it are “carvel-build, high bow, round stern and deep rudder hung on stern post outside the vessel.”

In the eastern basin the long-bowed wide-sterned caique of the Bosporus is perhaps the type of boat best known, but both Greek and Italian waters abound with an unnumbered variety of boats of “beautiful lines and great carrying power.” In the Adriatic, the Venetian gondola, and the light craft generally, are of the type developed from the raft, flat-bottomed, and capable of navigating shallow waters with minimum of draught and maximum of load.

In the western basin the majority of the smaller vessels are of the sharp-sterned build. Upon the boats of the felucca class, long vessels with easy lines and low free-board, suitable for rowing as well as sailing, the influence of the long galley of the middle ages was apparent. In Genoese waters at the beginning of the 19th century there were single-decked rowing vessels, which preserved the name of galley, and were said to be the descendants of the Liburnians that defeated the many-banked vessels of Antonius at Actium. But the introduction of steam vessels has already relegated into obscurity these memorials of the past.

Along the Riviera and the Spanish coast a type of boat is noticeable which is peculiar for the inward curve of both stem and stern from a keel which has considerable camber, enabling them to be beached in a heavy surf.

On the Douro, in Portugal, it is said that the boats which may be seen laden with casks of wine, trailing behind them an enormously long steering paddle, are of Phoenician ancestry, and that the curious signs, which many of them have painted on the cross board over the cabin, are of Semitic origin though now undecipherable.

Coming to the northern waters, as with men, so with boats, we meet with a totally different type. Instead of the smooth exterior of the carvel-build, we have the more rugged form of clinker-built craft with great beam, and raking sterns and stems, and a wide flare forward. In the most northern waters the strakes of the sea-going boats are wide and of considerable thickness, of oak or fir, often compacted with wooden trenails, strong and fit to do battle with the rough seas and rough usage which they have to endure.

In most of these the origin of form and character is to be sought for in the old Viking vessels or long keeles of the 5th century A.D., with curved and elevated stem and stern posts, and without decks or, at the most, half decked.

In the Baltic and the North Sea most of the fishing boats follow this type, with, however, considerable variety in details. It is noticeable that here also, as in other parts of the world, and at other times, the pressing demand for speed and carrying power has increased the size in almost all classes of boats till they pass into the category of ships. At the same time the carvel-build is becoming more common, while, in the struggle for life, steam and motor power are threatening to obliterate the old types of rowing and sailing boats altogether.

Next to the Norse skiff and its descendants, perhaps the oldest type of boat in northern waters is to be found in Holland, where the conditions of navigation have hardly altered for centuries. It is to the Dutch that we chiefly owe the original of our pleasure craft, but, though we have developed these enormously, the Dutch boats have remained pretty much the same. The clinker-build and the wide rounded bow are now very much of the same character as they are represented in the old pictures of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The development of boat-building in the British Isles during the 19th century has been unceasing and would need a treatise to itself to do it justice. The expansion of the fishing industry and the pressure of competition have stimulated constant improvement in the craft engaged, and here also are observable the same tendencies to substitute carvel, though it is more expensive, for clinker build, and to increase the length and size of the boats, and the gradual supersession of sail and oar by steam power. Under these influences we hear of the fifie and the skaffie classes, old favourites in northern waters, being superseded by the more modern Zulu, which is supposed to unite the good qualities of both; and these in turn running to such a size as to take them outside the category of boats. But even in the case of smaller boats the Zulu model is widely followed, so that they have actually been imported to the Irish coast for the use of the crofter fishermen in the congested districts.

For the Shetland sexern and the broad boats of the Orkneys, and the nabbies of the west coast of Scotland, the curious will do well to refer to H. Warington Smyth’s most excellent account.

On the eastern coast of England the influence of the Dutch type of build is manifest in many of the flat-bottomed and mostly round-ended craft, such as the Yorkshire Billyboy, and partly in the coble, which latter is interesting as built for launching off beaches against heavy seas, and as containing relics of Norse influence, though in the main of Dutch origin.

The life-boats of the eastern coast are in themselves an admirable class of boat, with fine lines, great length, and shallow draught, wonderful in their daring work in foul weather and heavy seas, in which as a rule their services are required. Here, however, as in the fishing boats, the size is increasing, and steam is appropriating to itself the provinces of the sail and the oar.

The wherry of the Norfolk Broads has a type of its own, and is often fitted out as a pleasure boat. It is safe and comfortable for inland waters, but not the sort of boat to live in a sea-way in anything but good weather.

The Thames and its estuary rejoice in a great variety of boats, of which the old Peter boat (so called after the legend of the foundation of the abbey on Thorney Island) preserved a very ancient type of build, shorter and broader than the old Thames pleasure wherry. But these and the old hatch boat have now almost disappeared. Possibly survivors may still be seen on the upper part of the tidal river. Round the English coast from the mouth of the Thames southwards the conditions of landing and of hauling up boats above high-water mark affect the type, demanding strong clinker-build and stout timbers. Hence there is a strong family resemblance in most of the short boats in use from the North Foreland round to Brighton. Among these are the life-boats of Deal and the other Channel ports, which have done and are still doing heroic work in saving life from wrecks upon the Goodwins and the other dangerous shoals that beset the narrowing sleeve of the English Channel.

Farther down, along the southern coast, and to the west, where harbours are more frequent, a finer and deeper class of boats, chiefly of carvel-build, is to be found. The Cornish ports are the home of a great boat-building industry, and from them a large number of the finest fishing boats in the world are turned out annually. Most of them are built with stem and stern alike, with full and bold quarters, and ample floor.

It is not possible here to enumerate, much less to describe in detail, the variety of types in sea-going boats which have been elaborated in England and in America. For this purpose reference should be made to the list of works given at the end of the article.

The following is a list of the boats at present used in the royal navy. They have all of them a deep fore foot, and with the exception of the whalers and Berthon boats, upright stems and transom sterns. The whalers have a raking stem and a sharp stern, and a certain amount of sheer in the bows.

Length. Feet. Beam. Ft. In. Depth. Ft. In.

1a. Dinghy. Freeboard about 9 in. Weight 3 cwt. 2 qr. Between thwarts 2 ft. 9 in. Elm. 13½ 4′ 8″ 2′ 2″

1b. Skiff dinghy for torpedo boats. Freeboard about 9 in. Carry about ten men in moderate weather. Between thwarts 2 ft. 7½ in. Weight 3 cwt. 4 ℔ Yellow pine. 16 4′ 6″ 1′ 10″

2a. Whaler for destroyers. 5 in. sheer. Yellow pine. 25 5′ 6″ 2′

2b. Whaler. Between thwarts 2 ft. 10 in. Freeboard about 12 in. Weight, 8 cwt. Strakes No. 13. Lap ¾ in. Elm. 27 5′ 6″ 2′ 2″

(All have bilge strakes with hand-holes.)

3. Gig. Between thwarts 2 ft. 9½ in. Weight 8 cwt. 2 qr. 15 ℔ 13 Strakes. Elm. 30 5′ 6″ 2′ 2″

4. Cutter. Between thwarts 3 ft. 1 in. To carry 49 men. Carvel built. 30 8′ 1″ 2′ 8½″

5. Pinnace. Between thwarts 3 ft. Carvel-built. Elm. 36 10′ 2″ 3′ 5″

6. Launch. Between thwarts 3 ft. 1 in. To carry 140 men. Double skin diagonal. Teak. 42 11′ 6″ 4′ 6″

7. Berthon collapsible boats weighing 7 cwt. for destroyers.

With the exception of the larger classes, viz. cutters, pinnaces and launches, the V-shape of bottom is still preserved, which does not tend to stability, and it is difficult to see why the smaller classes have not followed the improvement made in their larger sisters.

Though the number and variety of sea-going boats is of much greater importance, no account of boats in general would be complete without reference to the development of pleasure craft upon rivers and inland waters, especially in Pleasure boats and racing. England, during the past century. There is a legend, dating from Saxon times, which tells of King Edgar the Peaceable being rowed on the Dee from his palace in Chester to the church of St John, by eight kings, himself the ninth, steering this ancient 8-oar; but not much is heard of rowing in England until 1453, when John Norman, lord mayor of London, set the example of going by water to Westminster, which, we are told, made him popular with the watermen of his day, as in consequence the use of pleasure boats by the citizens became common. Thus it was that the old Thames pleasure wherry, with its high bows and low sharp stern and V-shaped section, and the old skiff came into vogue, both of which have now given way to boats, mostly of clinker-build, but with rounder bottoms and greater depth, safer and more comfortable to row in.

In 1715 Thomas Doggett (q.v.) founded a race which is still rowed in peculiar sculling boats, straked, and with sides flaring up to the sill of the rowlock. Strutt tells us of a regatta in 1775 in which watermen contended in pair-oared boats or skiffs.

At the beginning of the 19th century numerous rowing clubs flourished on the upper tidal waters of the Thames, and we hear of four-oared races from Westminster to Putney, and from Putney to Kew, in what we should now consider large and heavy boats, clinker-built, with bluff entry.

Longer boats, 8-oars, and 10-oars, seem to have been existent at the end of the 18th century. Eton certainly had one 10-oar, and three 8-oars, and two 6-oars, before 1811. The record of 8-oar races at Oxford begins in 1815, at Cambridge in 1827. Pair-oar and sculling races in lighter boats seem to have come in soon after 1820, and the first Oxford and Cambridge eight-oared race was rowed in 1829, in which year also Eton and Westminster contended at Putney.

Henley regatta was founded in 1839, and since that date the building of racing boats, eights, fours, pairs, and sculling boats, has made great progress. The products of the present time are such, in lightness of build and swiftness of propulsion, as would have been thought impossible between 1810 and 1830.

In the middle of the 19th century the long boats in use were mostly clinker-built with a keel. At Oxford the torpids were rowed, as now, in clinker-built craft, but the summer races were rowed in carvel-built boats, which also had a keel.

In 1855 the first keelless 8-oar made its appearance at Henley, built by Mat Taylor for the Royal Chester Rowing Club. The new type was constructed on moulds, bottom upwards, a cedar skin bent and fitted on to the moulds, and the ribs built in after the boat had been turned over.

In 1857 Oxford rowed in a similar boat at Putney, 55 ft. long, 25 in. beam. From that time the keelless racing boat has held its own, fours and pairs and sculling boats all following suit. But with the introduction of sliding seats racing eights have developed in length to 63 ft. or more, with considerable camber, and a beam of 23-24 in. There are, however, still advocates of the shorter type with broader beam, and it is noticeable that the Belgian boat that won the Grand Challenge at Henley in 1906 did not exceed 60 ft. The boat in which Oxford won the University race in 1901 was 56 ft. long with 27 in. of beam.

In sculling boats the acceptance of the Australian type of build has led to the construction of a much shorter boat with broader beam than that which was in vogue twenty years ago. The same tendency has not shown itself so pronouncedly in pair oars, but will no doubt be manifest in time as the build improves. In fact we may expect the controversy between long and short racing boats, and the proper method of propelling them respectively, to be carried a step farther. The tendency, with the long slide, and long type of boat, is to try to avoid “pinch” by adopting the scullers’ method of easy beginning, and strong drive with the legs, and sharp finish to follow, but it remains to be seen whether superior pace is not to be obtained in a shorter boat by sharp beginning at a reasonable angle to the boat’s side, and a continuous drive right out to the finish of the stroke.

Appended is a list of pleasure boats in use (1909) on the Thames, with their measurements (in feet and inches).

Class of Boat. Length. Beam. Depth.

Racing eight 56′ to 63′ 23″ to 27″ 9″ to 10″

Clinker eight 56′ to 60′ 24″ to 27″ 9″ to 10″

Clinker four 38′ to 42′ 23″ to 24″ 8″ to 9″

Tub fours 30′ to 32′ 3′8″-3′10″ 13″ from keel to top of stem

Outrigger pair 30′ to 34′ 14″ to 16″ 7″ to 8″

Outrigger sculls 25′ to 30′ 10″ to 13″ 5½” to 6″

Coaching gigs 26′ to 28′ 3′ to 3′4″ 10½” to 14″

Skiffs (Thames) 24′ to 26′ 3′9″ to 4′ 12″

Skiffs (Eton) 27′ 2′3″ 9½”

Gigs (pleasure) 24′ to 36′ 4′ 15″ to 16″

Randans 27′ to 30′ 4′ to 4′6″ 13″ from keel to top of stem

Whiffs 20′ to 23′ 1′4″ to 1′6″ 6″ from keel to top of stem

Whiff Gigs 19′ to 20′ 2′8″ to 2′10″ 12″ over all

Punts racers 30′ to 34′ 1′3″ to 1′6″ 6″ to 7″

” semi racers 28′ to 30′ 2′ 9″ to 10½”

” pleasure 26′ to 28′ 2′9″ to 3′ 12″ to 13″

Authorities.—For ancient boats: Dict. Ant., “Navis”; C. Torr, Ancient Ships; Smith, Voyage and Shipwreck of St Paul; Graser, De re navali; Breusing, Die Nautik der Alten; Contre-amiral Serre, La Marine des anciens; Jules Var, L’Art nautique dans l’antiquité. Medieval: Jal, Archéologie navale, and Glossaire nautique; Marquis de Folin, Bateaux et navires, progrès de la construction navale; W.S. Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce. Modern: H. Warington Smyth, Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia; Dixon Kempe, Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing; H.C. Folkhard, The Sailing Boat; F.G. Aflato, The Sea Fishing Industry of England and Wales; R.C. Leslie, Old Sea Wings, &c.

(E. Wa.)

BOATSWAIN (pronounced “bo’sun”; derived from “boat” and “swain,” a servant), the warrant officer of the navy who in sailing-ships had particular charge of the boats, sails, rigging, colours, anchors and cordage. He superintended the rigging of the ship in dock, and it was his duty to summon the crew to work by a whistle. The office still remains, though with functions modified by the introduction of steam. In a merchant ship the boatswain is the foreman of the crew and is sometimes also third or fourth mate.

BOBBILI, a town of British India, in the Vizagapatam district of Madras, 70 m. north of Vizagapatam town. Pop. (1901) 17,387. It is the residence of a raja of old family, whose estate covers an area of 227 sq. m.; estimated income, £40,000; permanent land revenue, £9000.

The attack on the fort at Bobbili made by General Bussy in 1756 is one of the most memorable episodes in Indian history. There was a constant feud between the chief of Bobbili and the raja of Vizianagram; and when Bussy marched to restore order the raja persuaded him that the fault lay with the chief of Bobbili and joined the French with 11,000 men against his rival. In spite of the fact that the French field-pieces at once made practicable breaches in the mud walls of the fort, the defenders held out with desperate valour. Two assaults were repulsed after hours of hand-to-hand fighting; and when, after a fresh bombardment, the garrison saw that their case was hopeless, they killed their women and children, and only succumbed at last to a third assault because every man of them was either killed or mortally wounded. An old man, however, crept out of a hut with a child, whom he presented to Bussy as the son of the dead chief. Three nights later four followers of the chief of Bobbili crept into the tent of the raja of Vizianagram and stabbed him to death. The child, Chinna Ranga Rao, was invested by Bussy with his father’s estate, but during his minority it was seized by his uncle. After a temporary arrangement of terms with the raja of Vizianagram the old feud broke out again, and the Bobbili chief was forced to take refuge in the nizam’s country. In 1794, however, on the break-up of the Vizianagram estate, Chinna Ranga Rao was restored by the British, and in 1801 a permanent settlement was made with his son. The title of raja was recognized as hereditary in the family; that of maharaja was conferred as a personal distinction on Sir Venkataswetachalapati Ranga Rao, K.C.I.E., the adopted great-great-grandson of Chinna Ranga Rao.

For the siege see Imp. Gazetteer of India (Oxford, 1908), s.v. “Bobbili Estate.”

BOBBIO, a town and episcopal see of Lombardy, Italy, in the province of Pavia, 32½ m. S.W. of Piacenza by road. Pop. (1901) 4848. Its most important building is the church dedicated to St Columban, who became first abbot of Bobbio in 595 or 612, and died there in 615. It was erected in Lombard style in the 11th or 12th century (to which period the campanile belongs) and restored in the 13th. The cathedral is also interesting. Bobbio was especially famous for the manuscripts which belonged to the monastery of St Columban, and are now dispersed, the greater part being in the Vatican library at Rome, and others at Milan and Turin. The cathedral archives contain documents of the 10th and 11th centuries.

See M. Stokes, Six Months in the Apennines (London, 1892), 154 seq.; C. Cipolla, in L’Arte (1904), 241.

BOBER, a river of Germany, the most considerable of the left bank tributaries of the Oder; it rises at an altitude of 2440 ft., on the northern (Silesian) side of the Riesengebirge. In its upper course it traverses a higher plateau, whence, after passing the town of Landeshut, it descends through a narrow and fertile valley to Kupferberg. Here its romantic middle course begins, and after dashing through a deep ravine between the towns of Hirschberg and Löwenberg, it gains the plain. In its lower course it meanders through pleasant pastures, bogland and pine forests in succession, receives the waters of various mountain streams, passes close by Bunzlau and through Sagan, and finally, after a course of 160 m., joins the Oder at Crossen. Swollen by the melting of the winter snows and by heavy rains in the mountains, it is frequently a torrent, and is thus, except in the last few miles, unnavigable for either boats or rafts.

BOBRUISK, a town and formerly a first-class fortress of Russia, in the government of Minsk, and 100 m. by rail S.E. of the town of Minsk, in 53° 15′ N. lat. and 28° 52′ E. long., on the right bank of the Berezina river, and on the railway from Libau and Vilna to Ekaterinoslav. Pop. (1860) 23,761; (1897) 35,177, of whom one-half were Jews. In the reign of Alexander I. there was erected here, at the confluence of the Bobruiska with the Berezina, nearly a mile from the town, a fort, which successfully withstood a bombardment by Napoleon in 1812, and was made equal to the best in Europe by the emperor Nicholas I. It was demolished in 1897, the defences being antiquated. The town has a military hospital and a departmental college. There are ironworks and flour-mills; and corn and timber are shipped to Libau. The town was half burnt down in 1902.