BURUJIRD,a province of Persia, bounded W. by Luristan, N. by Nehavend and Malayir, E. by Irak and S. by Isfahan. It is divided into the following administrative divisions:—(1) town of Burujird with villages in immediate neighbourhood; (2) Silakhor (upper and lower); (3) Japalak (with Sarlek and Burbarud); (4) nomad Bakhtiari. It has a population of about 250,000 or 300,000, and pays a yearly revenue of about £16,000. It is very fertile and produces much wheat, barley, rice and opium. With improved means of transport, which would allow the growers to export, the produce of cereals could easily be trebled. The province is sometimes joined with that of Luristan.
The town Burujird, the capital of the province, is situated in the fertile Silakhor plain on the river Tahīj, a tributary of the Dizful river (Ab i Diz), 70 m. by road from Hamadan and 212 m. from Isfahan, in 33° 55′ N. and 48° 55′ E., and at an elevation of 5315 ft. Pop. about 25,000. It manufactures various cotton stuffs (coarse prints, carpet covers) and felts (principally hats and caps for Lurs and Bakhtiaris). It has post and telegraph offices.
BURY, JOHN BAGNELL(1861- ), British historian, was born on the 16th of October 1861, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1885. A fine Greek scholar, he edited Pindar'sNemeanandIsthmian Odes; but he devoted himself chiefly to the study of history, and was chosen professor of modern history at Dublin in 1893, becoming regius professor of Greek in 1898. He resigned both positions in 1902, when he was elected regius professor of modern history in the university of Cambridge. His historical work was mainly concerned with the later Roman empire, and his edition of Gibbon'sDecline and Fall, with a masterly introduction and valuable notes (1896-1900), is the standard text of this history. He also wrote aHistory of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great(1900);History of the Later Roman Empire, 395-800(1889);History of the Roman Empire 27B.C.-180A.D.(1893);Life of St Patrick and his Place in History(1905), &c. He was elected a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and received honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Durham.
BURY,a market-town and municipal, county and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, on the river Irwell,195 m. N.W. by W. from London, and 10½ N. by W. from Manchester, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway and the Manchester & Bolton canal. Pop. (1891) 57,212; (1901) 58,029. The church of St Mary is of early foundation, but was rebuilt in 1876. Besides numerous other places of worship, there are a handsome town hall, athenaeum and museum, art gallery and public library, various assembly rooms, and several recreation grounds. Kay's free grammar school was founded in 1726; there are also municipal technical schools. The cotton manufacture is the principal industry; there are also calico printing, dyeing and bleaching works, machinery and iron works, woollen manufactures, and coal mines and quarries in the vicinity. Sir Robert Peel was born at Chamber Hall in the neighbourhood, and his father did much for the prosperity of the town by the establishment of extensive print-works. A monument to the statesman stands in the market-place. The parliamentary borough returns one member (since 1832). The county borough was created in 1888. The corporation consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors. Area, 5836 acres.
Bury, of which the name is derived from the Anglo-Saxonburhg,birigorbyrig(town, castle or fortified place), was the site of a Saxon station, and an old English castle stood in Castle Croft close to the town. It was a member of the Honour of Clitheroe and a fee of the royal manor of Tottington, which soon after the Conquest was held by the Lacys. The local family of Bury held lands here during the 13th century, and at least for a short time the manor itself, but before 1347 it passed by marriage to the Pilkingtons of Pilkington, with whom it remained till 1485, when on the attainder of Sir Thomas Pilkington it was granted to the first earl of Derby, whose descendants have since held it. Under a grant made by Edward IV. to Sir Thomas Pilkington, fairs are still held on March 5, May 3, and September 18, and a market was formerly held under the same grant on Thursday, which has, however, been long replaced by a customary market on Saturday. The woollen trade was established here through the agency of Flemish immigrants in Edward III.'s reign, and in Elizabeth's time this industry was of such importance that an aulneger was appointed to measure and stamp the woollen cloth. But although the woollen manufacture is still carried on, the cotton trade has been gradually superseding it since the early part of the 18th century. The family of the Kays, the inventors, belonged to this place, and Robert Peel's print-works were established here in 1770. The cognate trades of bleaching, dyeing and machine-making have been long carried on. A court-leet and view of frank pledge used to be held half-yearly at Easter and Michaelmas, and a court-baron in May. Until 1846 three constables were chosen annually at the court-leet to govern the place, but in that year the inhabitants obtained authority from parliament to appoint twenty-seven commissioners to undertake the local government. A charter of incorporation was granted in 1876. The well-known Bury Cooperative Society was established in 1856. There was a church here at the time of the Domesday Survey, and the earliest mention of a rector is found in the year 1331-1332. One-half of the town is glebe belonging to the rectory.
BURY ST EDMUNDS,a market town and municipal and parliamentary borough of Suffolk, England, on the Lark, an affluent of the Great Ouse; 87 m. N.E. by N. from London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 16,255. It is pleasantly situated on a gentle eminence, in a fertile and richly cultivated district. The tower or church-gate, one of the finest specimens of early Norman architecture in England, and the western gate, a beautiful structure of rich Decorated work, together with ruined walls of considerable extent, are all that remains of the great abbey. St Mary's church, with a beautifully carved roof, was erected in the earlier part of the 15th century, and contains the tomb of Mary Tudor, queen of Louis XII. of France. St James's church is also a fine Perpendicular building, with a modern chancel, and without a tower. All these splendid structures, fronting one of the main streets in succession, form, even without the abbey church, a remarkable memorial of the wealth of the foundation. Behind them lie picturesque gardens which contain the ruins, the plan of which is difficult to trace, though the outlines of some portions, as the chapter-house, have been made clear by excavation. There is a handsome Roman Catholic church of St Edmund. The so-called Moyses Hall (perhaps a Jew's House, of which there is a parallel example at Lincoln) retains transitional Norman work. The free grammar school, founded by Edward VI., has two scholarships at Cambridge, and six exhibitions to each university, and occupies modern buildings. The Church Schools Company has a school. There are large agricultural implement works, and the agricultural trade is important, cattle and corn markets being held. In the vicinity is Ickworth, the seat of the marquess of Bristol, a great mansion of the end of the 18th century. The parliamentary borough, which returns one member, is coextensive with the municipal borough. The town is governed by a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 2947 acres.
Bury St Edmunds (Beodricesworth, St Edmund's Bury), supposed by some to have been the Villa Faustina of the Romans, was one of the royal towns of the Saxons. Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here about 633, which in 903 became the burial place of King Edmund, who was slain by the Danes about 870, and owed most of its early celebrity to the reputed miracles performed at the shrine of the martyr king. By 925 the fame of St Edmund had spread far and wide, and the name of the town was changed to St Edmund's Bury. Sweyn, in 1020, having destroyed the older monastery and ejected the secular priests, built a Benedictine abbey on its site. In 942 or 945 King Edmund had granted to the abbot and convent jurisdiction over the whole town, free from all secular services, and Canute in 1020 freed it from episcopal control. Edward the Confessor made the abbot lord of the franchise. By various grants from the abbots, the town gradually attained the rank of a borough. Henry III. in 1235 granted to the abbot two annual fairs, one in December (which still survives), the other the great St Matthew's fair, which was abolished by the Fairs Act of 1871. Another fair was granted by Henry IV. in 1405. Elizabeth in 1562 confirmed the charters which former kings had granted to the abbots, and James I. in 1606 granted a charter of incorporation with an annual fair in Easter week and a market. Further charters were granted by him in 1608 and 1614, and by Charles II. in 1668 and 1684. The reversion of the fairs and two markets on Wednesday and Saturday were granted by James I. in fee farm to the corporation. Parliaments were held here in 1272, 1296 and 1446, but the borough was not represented until 1608, when James I. conferred the privilege of sending two members. The Redistribution Act 1885 reduced the representation to one. There was formerly a large woollen trade.
See Richard Yates,Hist. and Antiqs. of the Abbey of St Edmund's Bury(2nd ed., 1843); H.R. Barker,History of Bury St Edmunds.
BUSBECQ, OGIER GHISLAIN DE[Augerius Gislenius] (1522-1592), Flemish writer and traveller, was born at Comines, and educated at the university of Louvain and elsewhere. Having served the emperor Charles V. and his son, Philip II. of Spain, he entered the service of the emperor Ferdinand I., who sent him as ambassador to the sultan Suleiman I. the Magnificent. He returned to Vienna in 1562 to become tutor to the sons of Maximilian II., afterwards emperor, subsequently taking the position of master of the household of Elizabeth, widow of Charles IX., king of France, and daughter of Maximilian. Busbecq was an excellent scholar, a graceful writer and a clever diplomatist. He collected valuable manuscripts, rare coins and curious inscriptions, and introduced various plants into Germany. He died at the castle of Maillot near Rouen on the 28th of October 1592. Busbecq wroteItinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum(Antwerp, 1581), a work showing considerable insight into Turkish politics. This was published in Paris in 1589 asA.G. Busbequii legationis Turcicae epistolae iv., and has been translated into several languages. He was a frequent visitor to France, and wroteEpistolae ad Rudolphum II. Imperatorem e Gallia scriptae(Louvain, 1630), an interesting account of affairs at the French court. His works were publishedat Leiden in 1633 and at Basel in 1740. An English translation of theItinerawas published in 1744.
See C.T. Forster and F.H.B. Daniel,Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq(London, 1881); Viertel,Busbecks Erlebnisse in der Turkei(Gottingen, 1902).
BUSBY, RICHARD(1606-1695), English clergyman, and head master of Westminster school, was born at Lutton in Lincolnshire in 1606. He was educated at the school which he afterwards superintended for so long a period, and first signalized himself by gaining a king's scholarship. From Westminster Busby proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1628. In his thirty-third year he had already become renowned for the obstinate zeal with which he supported the falling dynasty of the Stuarts, and was rewarded for his services with the prebend and rectory of Cudworth, with the chapel of Knowle annexed, in Somersetshire. Next year he became head master of Westminster, where his reputation as a teacher soon became great. He himself once boasted that sixteen of the bishops who then occupied the bench had been birched with his "little rod". No school in England has on the whole produced so many eminent men as Westminster did under the régime of Busby. Among the more illustrious of his pupils may be mentioned South, Dryden, Locke, Prior and Bishop Atterbury. He wrote and edited many works for the use of his scholars. His original treatises (the best of which are his Greek and Latin grammars), as well as those which he edited, have, however, long since fallen into disuse. Busby died in 1695, in his ninetieth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his effigy is still to be seen.
BUSBY,the English name for a military head-dress of fur. Possibly the original sense of a "busby wig" came from association with Dr Busby of Westminster; but it is also derived from "buzz", in the phrase "buzz wig". In its first Hungarian form the military busby was a cylindrical fur cap, having a "bag" of coloured cloth hanging from the top; the end of this bag was attached to the right shoulder as a defence against sword-cuts. In Great Britain "busbies" are of two kinds: (a) the hussar busby, cylindrical in shape, with a bag; this is worn by hussars and the Royal Horse Artillery; (b) the rifle busby, a folding cap of astrachan, in shape somewhat resembling a "Glengarry" but taller. Both have straight plumes in the front of the headdress. The word "busby" is also used colloquially to denote the tall bear-and-raccoon-skin "caps" worn by foot-guards and fusiliers, and the full dress feather bonnet of Highland infantry. Cylindrical busbies were formerly worn by the artillery engineers and rifles, but these are now obsolete in the regular army, though still worn by some territorial and colonial troops of these arms.
BUSCH, JULIUS HERMANN MORITZ(1821-1899), German publicist, was born at Dresden on the 13th of February 1821. He entered the university of Leipzig in 1841 as a student of theology, but graduated as doctor philosophiae, and from 1847 devoted himself entirely to journalism and literature. In 1851 he went to America, but soon returned disillusioned to Germany, and published an account of his travels. During the next years he travelled extensively in the East and wrote books on Egypt, Greece and Palestine. From 1856 he was employed at Leipzig on theGrenzboten, one of the most influential German periodicals, which, under the editorship of Gustav Freytag, had become the organ of the Nationalist party. In 1864 he became closely connected with the Augustenburg party in Schleswig-Holstein, but after 1866 he transferred his services to the Prussian government, and was employed in a semi-official capacity in the newly conquered province of Hanover. From 1870 onwards he was one of Bismarck's press agents, and was at the chancellor's side in this capacity during the whole of the campaign of 1870-71. In 1878 he published the first of his works on Bismarck—a book entitledBismarck und seine Leute, während des Krieges mit Frankreich, in which, under the form of extracts from his diary, he gave an account of the chancellor's life during the war. The vividness of the descriptions and the cleverness with which the conversations were reported ensured a success, and the work was translated into several languages. This was followed in 1885 by another book,Unser Reichskanzler, chiefly dealing with the work in the foreign office in Berlin. Immediately after Bismarck's death Busch published the chancellor's famous petition to the emperor William II. dated the 18th of March 1890, requesting to be relieved of office. This was followed by a pamphletBismarck und sein Werk; and in 1898 in London and in English, by the famous memoirs entitledBismarck: some Secret Pages of his History(German by Grunow, under titleTagebuchblätter), in which were reprinted the whole of the earlier works, but which contains in addition a considerable amount of new matter, passages from the earlier works which had been omitted because of the attacks they contained on people in high position, records of later conversations, and some important letters and documents which had been entrusted to him by Bismarck. Many passages were of such a nature that it could not be safely published in Germany; but in 1899 a far better and more complete German edition was published at Leipzig in three volumes and consisting of three sections. Busch died at Leipzig on the 16th of November 1899.
See Ernst Goetz, inBiog. Jahrbuch(1900).
BUSCH, WILHELM(1832-1908), German caricaturist, was born at Wiedensahl in Hanover. After studying at the academies of Düsseldorf, Antwerp and Munich, he joined in 1859 the staff ofFliegende Blätter, the leading German comic paper, and was, together with Oberländer, the founder of modern German caricature. His humorous drawings and caricatures are remarkable for the extreme simplicity and expressiveness of his pen-and-ink line, which record with a few rapid scrawls the most complicated contortions of the body and the most transitory movement. His humorous illustrated poems, such asMax und Moritz, Der heilige Antonius von Padua, Die Fromme Helene, Hans HuckebeinandDie Erlebnisse Knopps des Junggesellen, play, in the German nursery, the same part that Edward Lear's nonsense verses do in England. The types created by him have become household words in his country. He invented the series of comic sketches illustrating a story in scenes without words, which have inspired Caran d'Ache and other leading caricaturists.
BÜSCHING, ANTON FRIEDRICH(1724-1793), German theologian and geographer, was born at Stadthagen in Schaumburg-Lippe, on the 27th of September 1724. In 1748 he was appointed tutor in the family of the count de Lynars, who was then going as ambassador to St Petersburg. On this journey he resolved to devote his life to the improvement of geographical science. Leaving the count's family, he went to reside at Copenhagen, and devoted himself entirely to this new pursuit. In 1752 he published hisDescription of the Counties of Schleswig and Holstein. In 1754 he removed to Göttingen, where in 1757 he was appointed professor of philosophy; but in 1761 he accepted an invitation to the German congregation at St Petersburg. There he organized a school which, under him, soon became one of the most flourishing in the north of Europe, but a disagreement with Marshal Münich led him, in spite of the empress's offers of high advancement, to return to central Europe in 1765. He first went to live at Altona; but next year he was called to superintend the famous "Greyfriars Gymnasium" (Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster), which had been formed at Berlin by Frederick the Great. He died of dropsy on the 28th of May 1793, having by writing and example given a new impulse to education throughout Prussia. While at Göttingen he married the poetess, Christiana Dilthey.
Büsching's works (on geography, history, education and religion) amount to more than a hundred. The first class comprehends those upon which his fame chiefly rests; for although he did not possess the genius of D'Anville, he may be regarded as the creator of modern Statistical Geography. Hismagnum opusis theErdebeschreibung, in seven parts, of which the first four, comprehending Europe, were published in 1754-1761, and have been translated into several languages (e.g.into English with a preface by Murdoch, in six volumes, London, 1762). In 1768 the fifth part was published, being the first volume upon Asia, containing Asiatic Turkey and Arabia. It displays an immense extent of research, and is generally considered as hismasterpiece. Büsching was also the editor of a valuable collection entitledMagazin für d. neue Historie und Geographie(23 vols. 4to, 1767-1793); also ofWochentl. Nachrichten von neuen Landkarten(Berlin, 1773-1787). His works on education enjoyed great repute. In biography he wrote a number of articles for the above-mentionedMagazin, and a valuable collection ofBeiträge zur Lebensgeschichte merkwürdiger Personen(6 vols., 1783-1789), including an elaborate life of Frederick the Great.
BUSENBAUM(orBusembaum),HERMANN(1600-1668), Jesuit theologian, was born at Nottelen in Westphalia. He attained fame as a master of casuistry, and out of his lectures to students at Cologne grew his celebrated bookMedulla theologiae moralis, facili ac perspicua methodo resolvens casus conscientiae(1645). The manual obtained a wide popularity and passed through over two hundred editions before 1776. Pierre Lacroix added considerably to its bulk, and editions in two folio volumes appeared in both Germany (1710-1714) and France (1729). In these sections on murder and especially on regicide were much amplified, and in connexion with Damien's attempt on the life of Louis XV. the book was severely handled by the parlement of Paris. At Toulouse in 1757, though the offending sections were repudiated by the heads of the Jesuit colleges, theMedullawas publicly burned, and the episode undoubtedly led the way to the duc de Choiseul's attack on the society. Busenbaum also wrote a book on the ascetic life,Lilium inter spinas. He became rector of the Jesuit college at Hildesheim and then at Münster, where he died on the 31st of January 1668, being at the time father-confessor to Bishop Bernard of Galen.
BUSH.(1) (A word common to many European languages, meaning "a wood", cf. the Ger.Busch, Fr.bois, Ital.boscoand the med. Lat.boscus), a shrub or group of shrubs, especially of those plants whose branches grow low and thick. Collectively "the bush" is used in British colonies, particularly in Australasia and South Africa, for the tract of country covered with brushwood not yet cleared for cultivation. From the custom of hanging a bush as a sign outside a tavern comes the proverb "Good wine needs no bush." (2) (From a Teutonic word meaning "a box", cf. the Ger.Rad-büchse, a wheel box, and the termination of "blunderbuss" and "arquebus"; the derivation from the Fr.bouche, a mouth, is not correct), a lining frequently inserted in the bearings of machinery. When a shaft and the bearing in which it rotates are made of the same metal, the two surfaces are in certain cases apt to "seize" and abrade each other. To prevent this, bushes of some dissimilar metal are employed; thus a shaft of mild steel or wrought iron may be made to run in hard cast steel, cast iron, bronze or Babbitt metal. The last, having a low melting point, may be cast about the shaft for which it is to form a bearing.
Female Bushbuck.Female Bushbuck.
BUSHBUCK(Boschbok,) the South African name of a medium-sized red antelope (q.v.), marked with white lines and spots, belonging to a local race of a widely spread species,Tragelaphus scriptus. The males alone have rather small, spirally twisted horns. There are several allied species, sometimes known as harnessed antelopes, which are of a larger size. Some of these such as the situtunga (T. spekei) have the hoofs elongated for walking on swampy ground, and hence have been separated asLimnotragus.
BUSHEL(from the O. Fr.boissiel, cf. med. L.bustellus, busellus, a little box), a dry measure of capacity, containing 8 gallons or 4 pecks. It has been in use for measuring corn, potatoes, &c., from a very early date; the value varying locally and with the article measured. The "imperial bushel", legally established in Great Britain in 1826, contains 2218.192 cub.in., or 80 lb of distilled water, determined at 62° F., with the barometer at 30 in. Previously, the standard bushel used was known as the "Winchester bushel", so named from the standard being kept in the town hall at Winchester; it contained 2150.42 cub. in. This standard is the basis of the bushel used in the United States and Canada; but other "bushels" for use in connexion with certain commodities have been legalized in different states.
BUSHIDO(Japanese for "military-knight-ways"), the unwritten code of laws governing the lives of the nobles of Japan, equivalent to the European chivalry. Its maxims have been orally handed down, together with a vast accumulation of traditional etiquette, the result of centuries of feudalism. Its inception is associated with the uprise of feudal institutions under Yoritomo, the first of the Shoguns, late in the 12th century, but bushido in an undeveloped form existed before then. The samurai or nobles of Japan entertained the highest respect for truth. "Abushihas no second word" was one of their mottoes. And their sense of honour was so high as to dictate suicide where it was offended.
See Inazo Nitobe,Bushido: The Soul of Japan(1905); alsoJapan:Army.
BUSHIRE,orBander Bushire, a town of Persia, on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf, in 28° 59′ N., 50° 49′ E. The name is pronounced Boosheer, and not Bew-shire, or Bus-hire; modern Persians write it Bushehr and, yet more incorrectly, Abushehr, and translate it as "father of the city," but it is most probably a contraction of Bokht-ardashir, the name given to the place by the first Sassanian monarch in the 3rd century. In a similar way Riv-ardashir, a few miles south of Bushire, has become Rishire (Reesheer). In the first half of the 18th century, when Bushire was an unimportant fishing village, it was selected by Nadir Shah as the southern port of Persia and dockyard of the navy which he aspired to create in the Persian Gulf, and the British commercial factory of the East India Company, established at Gombrun, the modern Bander Abbasi, was transferred to it in 1759. At the beginning of the 19th century it had a population of 6000 to 8000, and it is now the most important port in the Persian Gulf, with a population of about 25,000. It used to be under the government of Fars, but is (since about 1892) the seat of the governor of the Persian Gulf ports, who is responsible to the central government, and has under his jurisdiction the principal ports of the Gulf and their dependencies. The town, which is of a triangular form, occupies the northern extremity of a peninsula 11 m. long and 4 broad, and is encircled by the sea on all sides except the south. It is fortified on the land side by a wall with 12 round towers. The houses being mostly built of a white conglomerate stone of shells and coral which forms the peninsula, gives the city when viewed from a distance a clean and handsome appearance, but on closer inspection the streets are found to be very narrow, irregular, ill-paved and filthy. Almost the only decent buildings are the governor's palace, the British residency and the houses of some well-to-do merchants. The sea immediately east of the town has a considerable depth, but its navigation is impeded by sand-banks and a bar north and west of the town, which can be passed only by vessels drawing not more than 9 ft. of water, except at spring tides, when there is a rise of from 8 to 10 ft. Vessels drawing more than 9 ft. must anchor in the roads miles away to the west. The climate is very hot in the summer months and unhealthy. The water is very bad, and that fit for drinking requires to be brought from wells distant 1½ to 3 m. from the city wall.
Bushire carries on a considerable trade, particularly with India, Java and Arabia. Its principal imports are cotton and woollen goods, yarn, metals, sugar, coffee, tea, spices, cashmere shawls, &c., and its principal exports opium, wool, carpets, horses, grain, dyes and gums, tobacco, rosewater, &c. The importance of Bushire has much increased since about 1862. It is now not only the headquarters of the English naval squadron in the Persian Gulf, and the land terminus of the Indo-European telegraph, but it also forms the chief station in the Gulf of the British Indian Steam Navigation Company, which runs its vessels weekly between Bombay and Basra. Consulates of Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Turkey and several European mercantile houses are established at Bushire, andnotwithstanding the drawbacks of bad roads to the interior, insufficient and precarious means of transport, and want of security, the annual value of the Bushire trade since 1890 averaged about £1,500,000 (one-third being for exports, two-thirds for imports), and over two-thirds of this was British. Of the 278,000 tons of shipping which entered the port in 1905, 244,000 were British.
During the war with Persia (1856-57) Bushire surrendered to a British force and remained in British occupation for some months. At Rishire, some miles south of Bushire and near the summer quarters of the British resident and the British telegraph buildings, there are extensive ruins among which bricks with cuneiform inscriptions have been found, showing that the place was a very old Elamite settlement.
(A. H.-S.)
BUSHMEN,orBosjesmans, a people of South Africa, so named by the British and Dutch colonists of the Cape. They often call themselvesSaan[Sing.Sá], but this appears to be the Hottentot name. If they have a national name it isKhuai, probably "small man," the title of one group. ThisKhuaihas, however, been translated as the Bushman word fortablier égyptien(see below), adopted as the racial name because that malformation is one of their physical characteristics. The Kaffirs call them Abatwa, the Bechuana Masarwa (Maseroa). There is little reason to doubt that they constitute the aboriginal element of the population of South Africa, and indications of their former presence have been found as far north at least as the Nyasa and Tanganyika basins. "It would seem," writes Sir H.H. Johnston (British Central Africa, p. 52), "as if the earliest known race of man inhabiting what is now British Central Africa was akin to the Bushman-Hottentot type of negro. Rounded stones with a hole through the centre, similar to those which are used by the Bushmen in the south for weighting their digging-sticks (thegraaf stockof the Boers), have been found at the south end of Lake Tanganyika." The dirty yellow colour of the Bushmen, their slightly slanting eyes and prominent cheek-bones had induced early anthropologists to dwell on their resemblance to the Mongolian races. This similarity has been now recognized as quite superficial. More recently a connexion has been traced between the Bushmen and the Pygmy peoples inhabiting the forests of Central Africa. Though the matter cannot be regarded as definitely settled, the latest researches rather tend to discredit this view. In fact it would appear that the two peoples have little in common save diminutive proportions and a nomadic and predatory form of existence. Owing to the discovery of steatopygous figurines in Egyptian graves, a theory has been advanced that the Egyptians of the early dynasties were of the same primitive pygmy negroid stock as the Bushmen. But this is highly speculative. The physical characteristics of Egyptian skulls have nothing of the Bushman in them. Of the primitive pygmy negroid stock the Hottentots (q.v.), once considered the parent family, are now regarded as an offshoot of mixed Bantu-Bushman blood from the main Bushman race.
It seems probable that the Bushmen must be regarded as having extended considerably to the north of the area occupied by them within the memory of white men. Evidence has been produced of the presence of a belated Hottentot or Hottentot-Bushman group as far north as the district between Kilimanjaro and Victoria Nyanza. They were probably driven south by the Bantu tribes, who eventually outflanked them and confined them to the less fertile tracts of country. Before the arrival of Europeans in South Africa the Bushman race appears to have been, what it so essentially is to-day, a nomadic race living in widely scattered groups. The area in which the Bushmen are now found sporadically may be defined as extending from the inner ranges of the mountains of Cape Colony, through the central Kalahari desert to near Lake Ngami, and thence north-westward to the districts about the Ovambo river north of Damaraland. In short, they have been driven by European and Kaffir encroachments into the most barren regions of South Africa. A few remain in the more inaccessible parts of the Drakensberg range about the sources of the Vaal. Only in one or two districts are they found in large numbers, chiefly in Great Bushman Land towards the Orange river. A regularly planned and wholesale destruction of the Bushmen on the borders of Cape Colony in the earlier years of European occupation reduced their numbers to a great extent; but this cruel hunting of the Bushmen has ceased. In retaliation the Bushmen were long the scourge of the farms on the outer borders of the colony, making raids on the cattle and driving them off in large numbers. On the western side of the deserts they are generally at enmity with the Koranna Hottentots, but on the eastern border of the Kalahari they have to some extent fraternized with the earliest Bechuana migrants. Their language, which exists in several dialects, has in common with Hottentot, but to a greater degree, the peculiar sounds known as "clicks." The Hottentot language is more agglutinative, the Bushman more monosyllabic; the former recognizes a gender in names, the latter does not; the Hottentots form the plural by a suffix, the Bushmen by repetition of the name; the former count up to twenty, the latter can only number two, all above that being "many." F.C.Selous records that Koranna Hottentots were able to converse fluently with the Bushmen of Bechuanaland.
The most striking feature of the Bushman's physique is shortness of stature. Gustav Fritsch in 1863-1866 found the average height of six grown men to be 4 ft. 9 in. Earlier, but less trustworthy, measurements make them still shorter. Among 150 measured by Sir John Barrow during the first British occupation of Cape Colony the tallest man was 4 ft. 9 in., the tallest woman 4 ft. 4 in. The Bushmen living in Bechuanaland measured by Selous in the last quarter of the 19th century were, however, found to be of nearly average height. Few persons were below 5 ft.; 5 ft. 4 in. was common, and individuals of even 6 ft. were not unknown. No great difference in height appears to exist between men and women. Fritsch's average from five Bushman women was one-sixth of an inch more than for the men. The Bushmen, as already stated, are of a dirty yellow colour, and of generally unattractive countenance. The skull is long and low, the cheek-bones large and prominent. The eyes are deeply set and crafty in expression. The nose is small and depressed, the mouth wide with moderately everted lips, and the jaws project. The teeth are not like badly cut ivory, as in Bantu, but regular and of a mother-of-pearl appearance. In general build the Bushman is slim and lean almost to emaciation. Even the children show little of the round outlines of youth. The amount of fat under the skin in both sexes is remarkably small; hence the skin is as dry as leather and falls into strong folds around the stomach and at the joints. The fetor of the skin, so characteristic of the negro, is not found in the Bushman. The hair is weak in growth, in age it becomes grey, but baldness is rare. Bushmen have little body-hair and that of a weak stubbly nature, and none of the fine down usual on most skins. On the face there is usually only a scanty moustache. A hollowed back and protruding stomach are frequent characteristics of their figure, but many of them are well proportioned, all being active and capable of enduring great privations and fatigue. Considerable steatopygy often exists among the women, who share with the Hottentot women the extraordinary prolongation of the nymphae which is often called "the Hottentot apron" ortablier. Northward the Bushmen appear to improve both in general condition and in stature, probably owing to a tinge of Bantu blood. The Bushman's clothing is scanty: a triangular piece of skin, passed between the legs and fastened round the waist with a string, is often all that is worn. Many men, however, and nearly all the women, wear thekaross, a kind of pelisse of skins sewn together, which is used at night as a wrap. The bodies of both sexes are smeared with a native ointment,buchu, which, aided by accretions of dust and dirt, soon forms a coating like a rind. Men and women often wear sandals of hide or plaited bast. They are fond of ornament, and decorate the arms, neck and legs with beads, iron or copper rings, teeth, hoofs, horns and shells, while they stick feathers or hares' tails in the hair. The women sometimes stain their faces with red pigment. They carry tobacco in goats' horns or in the shell of a land tortoise, while boxes of ointmentor amulets are hung round neck or waist. A jackal's tail mounted on a stick serves the double purpose of fan and handkerchief. For dwellings in the plains they have low huts formed of reed mats, or occupy a hole in the earth; in the mountain districts they make a shelter among the rocks by hanging mats on the windward side. Of household utensils they have none, except ostrich eggs, in which they carry water, and occasionally rough pots. For cooking his food the Bushman needs nothing but fire, which he obtains by rubbing hard and soft wood together.
Bushmen do not possess cattle, and have no domestic animals except a few half-wild dogs, nor have they the smallest rudiments of agriculture. Living by hunting, they are thoroughly acquainted with the habits and movements of every kind of wild animal, following the antelope herds in their migrations. Their weapon is a bow made of a stout bough bent into a sharp curve. It is strung with twisted sinew. The arrow, which is neatly made of a reed, the thickness of a finger, is bound with thread to prevent splitting, and notched at the end for the string. At the point is a head of bone, or stone with a quill barb; iron arrow-blades obtained from the Bantu are also found. The arrow is usually 2 to 3 ft. long. The distance at which the Bushman can be sure of hitting is not great, about twenty paces. The arrows are always coated with a gummy poisonous compound which kills even the largest animal in a few hours. The preparation is something of a mystery, but its main ingredients appear to be the milky juice of theAmaryllis toxicaria, which is abundant in South Africa, or of theEuphorbia arborescens, generally mixed with the venom of snakes or of a large black spider of the genusMygale; or the entrails of a very deadly caterpillar, called N'gwa or 'Kaa, are used alone. One authority states that the Bushmen of the western Kalahari use the juice of a chrysalis which they scrape out of the ground. From their use of these poisons the Bushmen are held in great dread by the neighbouring races. They carry, too, a club some 20 in. long with a knob as big as a man's fist. Assegais and knives are rare. No Bushman tribe south of Lake Ngami is said to carry spears. A rude implement, called by the Boersgraaf stockor digging stick, consisting of a sharpened spike of hard wood over which a stone, ground to a circular form and perforated, is passed and secured by a wedge, forms part of the Bushman equipment. This is used by the women for uprooting the succulent tuberous roots of the several species of creeping plants of the desert, and in digging pitfalls. These perforated stones have a special interest in indicating the former extension of the Bushmen, since they are found, as has been said, far beyond the area now occupied by them. The Bushmen are famous as hunters, and actually run down many kinds of game. Living a life of periodical starvation, they spend days at a time in search of food, upon which when found they feed so gluttonously that it is said five of them will eat a whole zebra in a few hours. They eat practically anything. The meat is but half cooked, and game is often not completely drawn. The Bushman eats raw such insects as lice and ants, the eggs of the latter being regarded as a great delicacy. In hard times they eat lizards, snakes, frogs, worms and caterpillars. Honey they relish, and for vegetables devour bulbs and roots. Like the Hottentot, the Bushman is a great smoker.
The disposition of the Bushman has been much maligned; the cruelty which has been attributed to him is the natural result of equal brutalities practiced upon him by the other natives and the early European settlers. He is a passionate lover of freedom, and, like many other primitive people, lives only for the moment. Unlike the Hottentot he has never willingly become a slave, and will fight to the last for his personal liberty. He has been described as the "anarchist of South Africa." Still, when he becomes a servant, he is usually trustworthy. His courage is remarkable, and Fritsch was told by residents who were well qualified to speak that supported by a dozen Bushmen they would not be afraid of a hundred Kaffirs. The terror inspired by the Bushmen has indeed had an effect in the deforestation of parts of Cape Colony, for the colonists, to guard against stealthy attacks, cut down all the bush far round their holdings. Mission-work among the Bushmen has been singularly unsuccessful. But in spite of his savage nature, the Bushman is intelligent. He is quick-witted, and has the gift of imitating extraordinarily well the cries of bird and beast. He is musical, too, and makes a rough instrument out of a gourd and one or more strings. He is fond of dancing; besides the ordinary dances are the special dances at certain stages of the moon, &c. One of the most interesting facts about the Bushman is his possession of a remarkable delight in graphic illustration; the rocks of the mountains of Cape Colony and of the Drakensberg and the walls of caves anciently inhabited by them have many examples of Bushman drawings of men, women, children and animals characteristically sketched. Their designs are partly painted on rock, with four colours, white, black, red and yellow ochre, partly engraved in soft sandstone, partly chiselled in hard stone. Rings, crosses and other signs drawn in blue pigment on some of the rocks, and believed to be one or two centuries old, have given rise to the erroneous speculation that these may be remains of a hieroglyphic writing. A discovery of drawings of men and women with antelope heads was made in the recesses of the Drakensberg in 1873 (J.M. Orpen inCape Monthly Magazine, July 1874). A few years later Selous discovered similar rock-paintings in Mashonaland and Manicaland.
Little is known of the family life of the Bushmen. Marriage is a matter merely of offer and acceptance ratified by a feast. Among some tribes the youth must prove himself an expert hunter. Nothing is known of the laws of inheritance. The avoidance of parents-in-law, so marked among Kaffirs, is found among Bushmen. Murder, adultery, rape and robbery are offences against their code of morals. As among other African tribes the social position of the women is low. They are beasts of burden, carrying the children and the family property on the journeys, and doing all the work at the halting-place. It is their duty also to keep the encampment supplied with water, no matter how far it has to be carried. The Bushman mother is devoted to her children, who, though suckled for a long time, yet are fed within the first few days after birth upon chewed roots and meat, and taught to chew tobacco at a very early age. The child's head is often protected from the sun by a plaited shade of ostrich feathers. There is practically no tribal organization. Individual families at times join together and appoint a chief, but the arrangement is never more than temporary. The Bushmen have no concrete idea of a God, but believe in evil spirits and supernatural interference with man's life. All Bushmen carry amulets, and there are indications of totemism in their refusal to eat certain foods. Thus one group will not eat goat's flesh, though the animal is the commonest in their district. Others reverence antelopes or even the caterpillar N'gwa. The Bushman cuts off the joints of the fingers as a sign of mourning and sometimes, it seems, as an act of repentance. Traces of a belief in continued existence after death are seen in the cairns of stone thrown on the graves of chiefs. Evil spirits are supposed to hide beneath these sepulchral mounds, and the Bushman thinks that if he does not throw his stone on the mounds the spirits will twist his neck. The whole family deserts the place where any one has died, after raising a pile of stones. The corpse's head is anointed, then it is smoke-dried and laid in the grave at full length, stones or earth being piled on it. There is a Bushman belief that the sun will rise later if the dead are not buried with their faces to the east. Weapons and other Bushman treasures are buried with the dead, and the hut materials are burnt in the grave.
The Bushmen have many animal myths, and a rich store of beast legends. The most prominent of the animal mythological figures is that of the mantis, around which a great cycle of myths has been formed. He and his wife have many names. Their adopted daughter is the porcupine. In the family history an ichneumon, an elephant, a monkey and an eland all figure. The Bushmen have also solar and lunar myths, and observe and name the stars. Canopus alone has five names. Some of the constellations have figurative names. Thus they call Orion's Belt "three she-tortoises hanging on a stick," and Castor andPollux "the cow-elands." The planets, too, have their names and myths, and some idea of the astonishing wealth of this Bushman folklore and oral literature may be formed from the fact that the materials collected by Bleek and preserved in Sir George Grey's library at Cape Town form eighty-four stout MS. volumes of 3600 pages. They comprise myths, fables, legends and even poetry, with tales about the sun and moon, the stars, the crocodile and other animals; legends of peoples who dwelt in the land before the Bushmen arrived from the north; songs, charms, and even prayers, or at least incantations; histories, adventures of men and animals; tribal customs, traditions, superstitions and genealogies. A most curious feature in Bushman folklore is the occurrence of the speeches of various animals, into which the relater of the legend introduces particular "clicks," supposed to be characteristic of the animals in whose mouths they are placed.
See G.W. Stow,The Native Races of South Africa(London, 1905); Mark Hutchinson, "Bushman Drawings," inJour. Anthrop. Instit., 1882, p. 464; Sir H.H. Johnston,Jour. Anthrop. Inst., 1883, p. 463; Dr H. Welcker,Archiv f. Anthrop.xvi.; G. Bertin, "The Bushmen and their Language,"Jour. R. Asial. Soc.xviii. part i.; Gustav Fritsch,Die Eingeborenen Südafrikas(Breslau, 1872); W.H.I. Bleek,Bushman Folklore(1875); J.L.P. Erasmus,The Wild Bushman, MS. note (1899); F.C. Selous,African Nature Notes and Reminiscences(1908), chap. xx.; S. Passarge,Die Buschmanner der Kalahari(Berlin, 1907).
BUSHNELL, HORACE(1802-1876), American theologian, was born in the village of Bantam, township of Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 14th of April 1802. He graduated at Yale in 1827, was associate editor of the New YorkJournal of Commercein 1828-1829, and in 1829 became a tutor at Yale. Here he at first took up the study of law, but in 1831 he entered the theological department of Yale College, and in 1833 was ordained pastor of the North Congregational church in Hartford, Conn., where he remained until 1859, when on account of long-continued ill-health he resigned his pastorate. Thereafter he had no settled charge, but, until his death at Hartford on the 17th of February 1876, he occasionally preached and was diligently employed as an author. While in California in 1856, for the restoration of his health, he took an active interest in the organization, at Oakland, of the college of California (chartered in 1855 and merged in the university of California in 1869), the presidency of which he declined. As a preacher, Dr Bushnell was a man of remarkable power. Not a dramatic orator, he was in high degree original, thoughtful and impressive in the pulpit. His theological position may be said to have been one of qualified revolt against the Calvinistic orthodoxy of his day. He criticized prevailing conceptions of the Trinity, the atonement, conversion, and the relations of the natural and the supernatural. Above all, he broke with the prevalent view which regarded theology as essentially intellectual in its appeal and demonstrable by processes of exact logical deduction. To his thinking its proper basis is to be found in the feelings and intuitions of man's spiritual nature. He had a vast influence upon theology in America, an influence not so much, possibly, in the direction of the modification of specific doctrines as in "the impulse and tendency and general spirit which he imparted to theological thought." Dr Munger's estimate may be accepted, with reservations, as the true one: "He was a theologian as Copernicus was an astronomer; he changed the point of view, and thus not only changed everything, but pointed the way toward unity in theological thought. He was not exact, but he put God and man and the world into a relation that thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully with ever growing knowledge. Other thinkers were moving in the same direction; he led the movement in New England, and wrought out a great deliverance. It was a work of superb courage. Hardly a theologian in his denomination stood by him, and nearly all pronounced against him." Four of his books were of particular importance:Christian Nurture(1847), in which he virtually opposed revivalism and "effectively turned the current of Christian thought toward the young";Nature and the Supernatural(1858), in which he discussed miracles and endeavoured to "lift the natural into the supernatural" by emphasizing the super-naturalness of man;The Vicarious Sacrifice(1866), in which he contended for what has come to be known as the "moral view" of the atonement in distinction from the "governmental" and the "penal" or "satisfaction" theories; andGod in Christ(1849) (with an introductory "Dissertation on Language as related to Thought"), in which he expressed, it was charged, heretical views as to the Trinity, holding, among other things, that the Godhead is "instrumentally three—three simply as related to our finite apprehension, and the communication of God's incommunicable nature." Attempts, indeed, were made to bring him to trial, but they were unsuccessful, and in 1852 his church unanimously withdrew from the local "consociation," thus removing any possibility of further action against him. To his critics Bushnell formally replied by writingChrist in Theology(1851), in which he employs the important argument that spiritual facts can be expressed only in approximate and poetical language, and concludes that an adequate dogmatic theology cannot exist. That he did not deny the divinity of Christ he proved inThe Character of Jesus, forbidding his possible Classification with Men(1861). He also publishedSermons for the New Life(1858);Christ and his Salvation(1864);Work and Play(1864);Moral Uses of Dark Things(1868);Women's Suffrage, the Reform against Nature(1869);Sermons on Living Subjects(1872); andForgiveness and Law(1874). Dr Bushnell was greatly interested in the civic interests of Hartford, and was the chief agent in procuring the establishment of the public park named in his honour by that city.
An edition of his works, in eleven volumes, appeared in 1876-1881; and a further volume, gathered from his unpublished papers, asThe Spirit in Man: Sermons and Selections, in 1903. New editions of hisNature and the Supernatural, Sermons for the New Life, andWork and Play, were published the same year. A full bibliography, by Henry Barrett Learned, is appended to hisSpirit in Man. Consult Mrs M.B. CheneysLife and Letters of Horace Bushnell(New York, 1880; new edition, 1903), and Dr Theodore T. MungersHorace Bushnell, Preacher and Theologian(Boston, 1899); also a series of papers in theMinutes of the General Association of Connecticut(Bushnell Centenary) (Hartford, 1902).
(W. Wr.)
BŪṢĪRĪ[Abū 'Abdallāh Muhammad ibn Sa'īdul-Būṣīrī] (1211-1294), Arabian poet, lived in Egypt, where he wrote under the patronage of Ibn Hinna, the vizier. His poems seem to have been wholly on religious subjects. The most famous of these is the so-called "Poem of the Mantle." It is entirely in praise of Mahomet, who cured the poet of paralysis by appearing to him in a dream and wrapping him in a mantle. The poem has little literary value, being an imitation of Ka'b ibn Zuhair's poem in praise of Mahomet, but its history has been unique (cf. I. Goldziher inRevue de l'histoire des religions, vol. xxxi. pp. 304 ff.). Even in the poet's lifetime it was regarded as sacred. Up to the present time its verses are used as amulets; it is employed in the lamentations for the dead; it has been frequently edited and made the basis for other poems, and new poems have been made by interpolating four or six lines after each line of the original. It has been published with English translation by Faizullabhai (Bombay, 1893), with French translation by R. Basset (Paris, 1894), with German translation by C.A. Ralfs (Vienna, 1860), and in other languages elsewhere.
For long list of commentaries, &c., cf. C. Brockelmann'sGesch. der Arab. Litteratur(Weimar, 1898), vol. i. pp. 264-267.
(G. W. T.)
BUSIRIS,in a Greek legend preserved in a fragment of Pherecydes, an Egyptian king, son of Poseidon and Lyssianassa. After Egypt has been afflicted for nine years with famine, Phrasius, a seer of Cyprus, arrived in Egypt and announced that the cessation of the famine would not take place until a foreigner was yearly sacrificed to Zeus or Jupiter. Busiris commenced by sacrificing the prophet, and continued the custom by offering a foreigner on the altar of the god. It is here that Busiris enters into the circle of the myths andparergaof Heracles, who had arrived in Egypt from Libya, and was seized and bound ready to be killed and offered at the altar of Zeus in Memphis. Heracles burst the bonds which bound him, and, seizing his club, slew Busiris with his son Amphidamas and his herald Chalbes.This exploit is often represented on vase paintings from the 6th centuryB.C.and onwards, the Egyptian monarch and his companions being represented as negroes, and the legend is referred to by Herodotus and later writers. Although some of the Greek writers made Busiris an Egyptian king and a successor of Menes, about the sixtieth of the series, and the builder of Thebes, those better informed by the Egyptians rejected him altogether. Various esoterical explanations were given of the myth, and the name not found as a king was recognized as that of the tomb of Osiris. Busiris is here probably an earlier and less accurate Graecism than Osiris for the name of the Egyptian god Usiri, like Bubastis, Buto, for the goddesses Ubasti and Uto. Busiris, Bubastis, Buto, more strictly represent Pusiri, Pubasti, Puto, cities sacred to these divinities. All three were situated in the Delta, and would be amongst the first known to the Greeks. All shrines of Osiris were calledP-usiri, but the principal city of the name was in the centre of the Delta, capital of the 9th (Busirite) nome of Lower Egypt; another one near Memphis (now Abusir) may have helped the formation of the legend in that quarter. The name Busiris in this legend may have been caught up merely at random by the early Greeks, or they may have vaguely connected their legend with the Egyptian myth of the slaying of Osiris (as king of Egypt) by his mighty brother Seth, who was in certain aspects a patron of foreigners. Phrasius, Chalbes and Epaphus (for the grandfather of Busiris) are all explicable as Graecized Egyptian names, but other names in the legend are purely Greek. The sacrifice of foreign prisoners before a god, a regular scene on temple walls, is perhaps only symbolical, at any rate for the later days of Egyptian history, but foreign intruders must often have suffered rude treatment at the hands of the Egyptians, in spite of the generally mild character of the latter.
See H. v. Gartringen, in Pauly-Wissowa,Realencyclopadie, for the evidence from the side of classical archaeology.
(F.Ll.G.)
BUSK, GEORGE(1807-1886), British surgeon, zoologist and palaeontologist, son of Robert Busk, merchant of St Petersburg, was born in that city on the 12th of August 1807. He studied surgery in London, at both St Thomas's and St Bartholomew's hospitals, and was an excellent operator. He was appointed assistant-surgeon to the Greenwich hospital in 1832, and served as naval surgeon first in theGrampus, and afterwards for many years in theDreadnought; during this period he made important observations on cholera and on scurvy. In 1855 he retired from service and settled in London, where he devoted himself mainly to the study of zoology and palaeontology. As early as 1842 he had assisted in editing theMicroscopical Journal; and later he edited theQuarterly Journal of Microscopical Science(1853-1868) and theNatural History Review(1861-1865). From 1856 to 1859 he was Hunterian professor of comparative anatomy and physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons, and he became president of the college in 1871. He was elected F.R.S. in 1850, and was an active member of the Linnean, Geological and other societies, and president of the Anthropological Institute (1873-1874); he received the Royal Society's Royal medal and the Geological Society's Wollaston and Lyell medals. Early in life he became the leading authority on the Polyzoa; and later the vertebrate remains from caverns and river-deposits occupied his attention. He was a patient and cautious investigator, full of knowledge, and unaffectedly simple in character. He died in London on the 10th of August 1886.
BUSKEN-HUET, CONRAD(1826-1886), Dutch literary critic, was born at the Hague on the 28th of December 1826. He was trained for the Church, and, after studying at Geneva and Lausanne, was appointed pastor of the Walloon chapel in Haarlem in 1851. In 1863 conscientious scruples obliged him to resign his charge, and Busken-Huet, after attempting journalism, went out to Java in 1868 as the editor of a newspaper. Before this time, however, he had begun his career as a polemical man of letters, although it was not until 1872 that he was made famous by the first series of hisLiterary Fantasies, a title under which he gradually gathered in successive volumes all that was most durable in his work as a critic. His one novel,Lidewijde, was written under strong French influences. Returning from the East Indies, Busken-Huet settled for the remainder of his life in Paris, where he died in April 1886. For the last quarter of a century he had been the acknowledged dictator in all questions of Dutch literary taste. Perfectly honest, desirous to be sympathetic, widely read, and devoid of all sectarian obstinacy, Busken-Huet introduced into Holland the light and air of Europe. He made it his business to break down the narrow prejudices and the still narrower self-satisfaction of his countrymen, without endangering his influence by a mere effusion of paradox. He was a brilliant writer, who would have been admired in any language, but whose appearance in a literature so stiff and dead as that of Holland in the 'fifties was dazzling enough to produce a sort of awe and stupefaction. The posthumous correspondence of Busken-Huet has been published, and adds to our impression of the vitality and versatility of his mind.
(E. G.)
BUSKIN(a word of uncertain origin, existing in many European languages, as Fr.brousequin, Ital.borzacchino, Dutchbrozeken, and Span,borceguí), a half-boot or high shoe strapped under the ankle, and protecting the shins; especially the thick-soled boot orcothurnusin the ancient Athenian tragedy, used to increase the stature of the actors, as opposed to thesoccus, "sock," the light shoe of comedy. The term is thus often used figuratively of a tragic style.
BUSLAEV, FEDOR IVANOVICH(1818-1898), Russian author and philologist, was born on the 13th of April 1818 at Kerensk, where his father was secretary of the district tribunal. He was educated at Penza and Moscow University. At the end of his academical course, 1838, he accompanied the family of Count S.G. Strogonov on a tour through Italy, Germany and France, occupying himself principally with the study of classical antiquities. On his return he was appointed assistant professor of Russian literature at the university of Moscow. A study of Jacob Grimm's great dictionary had already directed the attention of the young professor to the historical development of the Russian language, and the fruit of his studies was the bookOn the Teaching of the National Language(Moscow, 1844 and 1867), which even now has its value. In 1848 he produced his workOn the Influence of Christianity on the Slavonic Language, which, though subsequently superseded by Franz von Miklosich'sChristliche Terminologie, is still one of the most striking dissertations on the development of the Slavonic languages. In this work Buslaev proves that long before the age of Cyril and Methodius the Slavonic languages had been subject to Christian influences. In 1855 he publishedPalaeographical and Philological Materials for the History of the Slavonic Alphabets, and in 1858Essay towards an Historical Grammar of the Russian Tongue, which, despite some trivial defects, is still a standard work, abounding with rich material for students, carefully collected from an immense quantity of ancient records and monuments. In close connexion with this work in hisHistorical Chrestomathy of the Church-Slavonic and Old Russian Tongues(Moscow, 1861). Buslaev also interested himself in Russian popular poetry and old Russian art, and the result of his labours is enshrined inHistorical Sketches of Russian Popular Literature and Art(St Petersburg, 1861), a very valuable collection of articles and monographs, in which the author shows himself a worthy and faithful disciple of Grimm. HisPopular Poetry(St Petersburg, 1887) is a valuable supplement to theSketches. In 1881 he was appointed professor of Russian literature at Moscow, and three years later published hisAnnotated Apocalypsewith an atlas of 400 plates, illustrative of ancient Russian art.
See S.D. Sheremetev,Memoir of F.I. Buslaev(Moscow, 1899).
(R. N. B.)
BUSS, FRANCES MARY(1827-1894), English schoolmistress, was born in London in 1827, the daughter of the painter-etcher R.W. Buss, one of the original illustrators ofPickwick. She was educated at a school in Camden Town, and continued there as a teacher, but soon joined her mother in keeping a school in Kentish Town. In 1848 she was one of the original attendants at lectures at the new Queen's College for Ladies. In 1830 herschool was moved to Camden Street, and under its new name of the North London Collegiate School for Ladies it rapidly increased in numbers and reputation. In 1864 Miss Buss gave evidence before the Schools Inquiry Commission, and in its report her school was singled out for exceptional commendation. Indeed, under her influence, what was then pioneer work of the highest importance had been done to put the education of girls on a proper intellectual footing. Shortly afterwards the Brewers' Company and the Clothworkers' Company provided funds by which the existing North London Collegiate School was rehoused and a Camden School for Girls founded, and both were endowed under a new scheme, Miss Buss continuing to be principal of the former. She and Miss Beale of Cheltenham became famous as the chief leaders in this branch of the reformed educational movement; she played an active part in promoting the success of the Girls' Public Day School Company, encouraging the connexion of the girls' schools with the university standard by examinations, working for the establishment of women's colleges, and improving the training of teachers; and her energetic personality was a potent force among her pupils and colleagues. She died in London on the 24th of December 1894.
BUSSA,a town in the British protectorate of Northern Nigeria, on the west bank of the Niger, in 10° 9′ N., 4° 40′ E. It is situated just above the rapids which mark the limit of navigability of the Niger by steamer from the sea. Here in 1806 Mungo Park, in his second expedition to trace the course of the Niger, was attacked by the inhabitants, and drowned while endeavouring to escape. During 1894-1898 its possession was disputed by Great Britain and France, the last-named country acknowledging by the convention of June 1898 the British claim, which carried with it the control of the lower Niger. It is now the capital of northern Borgu (seeNigeria, andBorgu).
BUSSACO(orBusaco),SERRA DE, a mountain range on the frontiers of the Aveiro, Coimbra, and Vizeu districts of Portugal, formerly included in the province of Beira. The highest point in the range is the Ponta de Bussaco (1795 ft.), which commands a magnificent view over the Serra da Estrella, the Mondego valley and the Atlantic Ocean. Luso (pop. 1661), a village celebrated for its hot mineral springs, is the nearest railway station, on the Guarda-Figueira da Foz line, which skirts the northern slopes of the Serra. Towards the close of the 19th century the Serra de Bussaco became one of the regular halting-places for foreign, and especially for British, tourists, on the overland route between Lisbon and Oporto. Its hotel, built in the Manoellian style—a blend of Moorish and Gothic—encloses the buildings of a secularized Carmelite monastery, founded in 1268. The convent woods, now a royal domain, have long been famous for their cypress, plane, evergreen oak, cork and other forest trees, many of which have stood for centuries and attained an immense size. A bull of Pope Gregory XV. (1623), anathematizing trespassers and forbidding women to approach, is inscribed on a tablet at the main entrance; another bull, of Urban VIII. (1643), threatens with excommunication any person harming the trees. In 1873 a monument was erected, on the southern slopes of the Serra, to commemorate the battle of Bussaco, in which the French, under Marshal Masséna, were defeated by the British and Portuguese, under Lord Wellington, on the 27th of September 1810.
BUSSY, ROGER DE RABUTIN,Comte de(1618-1693), commonly known asBussy-Rabutin, French memoir-writer, was born on the 13th of April 1618 at Epiry, near Autun. He represented a family of distinction in Burgundy (seeSévigné, Madame de), and his father, Léonor de Rabutin, was lieutenant-general of the province of Nivernais. Roger was the third son, but by the death of his elder brothers became the representative of the family. He entered the army when he was only sixteen and fought through several campaigns, succeeding his father in the office ofmestre de camp. He tells us himself that his two ambitions were to become "honnête homme" and to distinguish himself in arms, but the luck was against him. In 1641 he was sent to the Bastille by Richelieu for some months as a punishment for neglect of his duties in his pursuit of gallantry. In 1643 he married a cousin, Gabrielle de Toulongeon, and for a short time he left the army. But in 1645 he succeeded to his father's position in the Nivernais, and served under Condé in Catalonia. His wife died in 1646, and he became more notorious than ever by an attempt to abduct Madame de Miramion, a rich widow. This affair was with some difficulty settled by a considerable payment on Bussy's part, and he afterwards married Louise de Rouville. When Condé joined the party of the Fronde, Bussy joined him, but a fancied slight on the part of the prince finally decided him for the royal side. He fought with some distinction both in the civil war and on foreign service, and buying the commission ofmestre de campin 1655, he went to serve under Turenne in Flanders. He served there for several campaigns and distinguished himself at the battle of the Dunes and elsewhere; but he did not get on well with his general, and his quarrelsome disposition, his overweening vanity and his habit of composing libellouschansonsmade him eventually the enemy of most persons of position both in the army and at court. In the year 1659 he fell into disgrace for having taken part in an orgy at Roissy near Paris during Holy Week, which caused great scandal. Bussy was ordered to retire to his estates, and beguiled his enforced leisure by composing, for the amusement of his mistress, Madame de Montglas, his famousHistoire amoureuse des Gaules. This book, a series of sketches of the intrigues of the chief ladies of the court, witty enough, but still more ill-natured, circulated freely in manuscript, and had numerous spurious sequels. It was said that Bussy had not spared the reputation of Madame, and the king, angry at the report, was not appeased when Bussy sent him a copy of the book to disprove the scandal. He was sent to the Bastille on the 17th of April 1665, where he remained for more than a year, and he was only liberated on condition of retiring to his estates, where he lived in exile for seventeen years. Bussy felt the disgrace keenly, but still bitterer was the enforced close of his military career. In 1682 he was allowed to revisit the court, but the coldness of his reception there made his provincial exile seem preferable, and he returned to Burgundy, where he died on the 9th of April 1693.
TheHistoire amoureuseis in its most striking passages adapted from Petronius, and, except in a few portraits, its attractions are chiefly those of the scandalous chronicle. But hisMémoires, published after his death, are extremely lively and characteristic, and have all the charm of a historical romance of the adventurous type. His voluminous correspondence yields in variety and interest to few collections of the kind, except that of Madame de Sévigné, who indeed is represented in it to a great extent, and whose letters first appeared in it. The literary and historical student, therefore, owes Bussy some thanks.
The best edition of theHistoire amoureuse des Gaulesis that of Paul Boiteau in the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne (3 vols., Paris, 1856-1859). TheMémoires(2 vols., 1857) andCorrespondance(6 vols., 1858-1859) were edited by Ludovic Lalanne. Bussy wrote other things, of which the most important, hisGenealogy of the Rabutin Family, remained in MS. till 1867, while hisConsidérations sur la guerrewas first published in Dresden in 1746. He also wrote, for the use of his children, a series of biographies, in which his own life serves a moral purpose.
BUSTARD(corrupted from the Lat.Avis tarda, though the application of the epithet[1]is not easily understood), the largest British land-fowl, and theOtis tardaof Linnaeus, which formerly frequented the champaign parts of Great Britain from East Lothian to Dorsetshire, but of which the native race is now extirpated. Its existence in the northern locality just named rests upon Sir Robert Sibbald's authority (circa1684), and though Hector Boethius (1526) unmistakably described it as an inhabitant of the Merse, no later writer than the former has adduced any evidence in favour of its Scottish domicile. The last examples of the native race were probably two killed in 1838 near Swaffham, in Norfolk, a district in which for some years previously a few hen-birds of the species, the remnant of a plentiful stock, had maintained their existence, though no cock-bird had latterly been known to bear them company. In Suffolk, where the neighbourhood of Icklingham formed its chief haunt, anend came to the race in 1832; on the wolds of Yorkshire about 1826, or perhaps a little later; and on those of Lincolnshire about the same time. Of Wiltshire, George Montagu, author of anOrnithological Dictionary, writing in 1813, says that none had been seen in their favourite haunts on Salisbury Plain for the last two or three years. In Dorsetshire there is no evidence of an indigenous example having occurred since that date, nor in Hampshire nor Sussex since the opening of the 19th century. From other English counties, as Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Berkshire, it disappeared without note being taken of the event, and the direct cause or causes of its extermination can only be inferred from what, on testimony cited by Henry Stevenson (Birds of Norfolk, ii. pp. 1-42), is known to have led to the same result in Norfolk and Suffolk. In the latter the extension of plantations rendered the country unfitted for a bird whose shy nature could not brook the growth of covert that might shelter a foe, and in the former the introduction of improved agricultural implements, notably the corn-drill and the horse-hoe, led to the discovery and generally the destruction of every nest, for the bird's chosen breeding-place was in wide fields—"brecks," as they are locally called—of winter-corn. Since the extirpation of the native race the bustard is known to Great Britain only by occasional wanderers, straying most likely from the open country of Champagne or Saxony, and occurring in one part or another of the United Kingdom some two or three times every three or four years, and chiefly in midwinter.
An adult male will measure nearly 4 ft. from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail, and its wings have an expanse of 8 ft. or more,—its weight varying (possibly through age) from 22 to 32 lb. This last was that of one which was recorded by the younger Naumann, the best biographer of the bird (Vögel Deutschlands, vii. p. 12), who, however, stated in 1834 that he was assured of the former existence of examples which had attained the weight of 35 or 38 lb. The female is considerably smaller. Compared with most other birds frequenting open places, the bustard has disproportionately short legs, yet the bulk of its body renders it a conspicuous and stately object, and when on the wing, to which it readily takes, its flight is powerful and sustained. The bill is of moderate length, but, owing to the exceedingly flat head of the bird, appears longer than it really is. The neck, especially of the male in the breeding-season, is thick, and the tail, in the same sex at that time of year, is generally carried in an upright position, being, however, in the paroxysms of courtship turned forwards, while the head and neck are simultaneously reverted along the back, the wings are lowered, and their shorter feathers erected. In this posture, which has been admirably portrayed by Joseph Wolf (Zool. Sketches, pl. 45), the bird presents a very strange appearance, for the tail, head and neck are almost buried amid the upstanding feathers before named, and the breast is protruded to a remarkable extent. The bustard is of a pale grey on the neck and white beneath, but the back is beautifully barred with russet and black, while in the male a band of deep tawny-brown—in some examples approaching a claret-colour—descends from either shoulder and forms a broad gorget on the breast. The secondaries and greater wing-coverts are white, contrasting vividly, as the bird flies, with the black primaries. Both sexes have the ear-coverts somewhat elongated—whence doubtless is derived the nameOtis(Gr.ὠτίς)—and the male is adorned with a tuft of long, white, bristly plumes, springing from each side of the base of the mandible. The food of the bustard consists of almost any of the plants natural to the open country it loves, but in winter it will readily forage on those which are grown by man, and especially coleseed and similar green crops. To this vegetable diet much animal matter is added when occasion offers, and from an earthworm to a field-mouse little that lives and moves seems to come amiss to its appetite.