BLACK BEETLE-BLACKCAP TITMOUSE.

The B. I. is easily reduced. It does not, however, | spinning-jenny in 1767. He was driven out of the yield a first-class iron when smelted by itself, and is therefore generally mixed with a small quantity of hematite (red iron ore), which communicates strength and hardness to the iron obtained.

BLACK CHALK-BLACK DEATH.

BLACK CHALK is a variety of Clay-slate (q. v.), containing a considerable proportion of carbon. It is used for drawing, and is also ground down to form a black paint. It is found as a rock of a slaty texture and bluish-black colour in the island of Islay and in Caernarvonshire, also in Spain, and other parts of the world.

BLA'CKCOCK, HEA'TH-FOWL, or BLACK GROUSE (Tetrao Tetrix), a species of Grouse (q.v.), abundant in Britain wherever there are moors of considerable extent, and more particularly where there are bogs and morasses with rank herbage, or, adjacent to the moors, natural woods or young plantations of pine and fir. Comparatively rare in the south of England, the B. becomes more common towards the north, and is very plentiful in the mountainous parts of Scotland. It is found in some of the Hebrides, but not in the Orkney or Shetland Isles. On the continent of Europe, it occurs both in mountainous and marshy countries, as on the Alps and in Holland; it is found as far south as the Apennines, and as far north as the forests of Lapland; it abounds in most parts of Scandinavia, where it is carefully protected, the males only being killed, great numbers of which are sent to the London market; it is diffused over almost all parts of Russia, and is found in Siberia. The male is much larger than the female, sometimes weighing as much as four pounds, whilst the female weighs only about two pounds; they also differ very much in plumage. The male is of a shining bluish-black colour, with a conspicuous white bar on the wings below the ends of the great wing-covers, and a mixture of black and white on the legs; there is a piece of bare scarlet skin over the eye; the outer feathers on each side of the tail are elongated and curve outwards, giving it a very peculiar appearance. The female, called the Gray Ilen, is of a rust colour,

darkest on the upper parts, everywhere barred and mottled with a darker colour; the tail is straight and even at the end. The young males resemble the females in plumage. The shank in this species is feathered, but not the toes. It is a gregarious bird, the different sexes, however, in winter, generally keeping in flocks by themselves. In spring, the males resort to elevated and open spots, where they crow, and also make a sound which has been likened to the whetting of a scythe, thus inviting the females to repair to them; they strut and trail their wings like turkey-cocks, and fierce contests often take place among them. They are polygamous, and pay no attention to the females during incubation, nor do they take any part in rearing the young. The nest is of the simplest construction, a few straws or

the like, placed together among tall heath, or under the shelter of a low thick bush. The eggs, six to eight in number, are yellowish-white, speckled with orange-brown, and about two inches long. The food of the B. consists of the seeds of rushes and other plants, berries, insects, the tender shoots of heath, leaves, &c.; it sometimes visits cornfields and stubbles to feed on corn; is frequently to be found in turnip-fields in the neighbourhood of plantations in hilly districts; and, at least in winter, eats the young shoots of pines, firs, birches, and alders. It is highly esteemed for the table.

It seems to be well established that hybrids are occasionally produced between the B. and other species of grouse; and also between the B. and the pheasant; but this subject, although regarded with much interest by some of the greatest naturalists, has not yet received the investigation which it deserves, and nothing appears to be known concerning any offspring of such hybrids. See Yarrell's British Birds, ii. 289-314. It can only be deemed probable, not certain, that the bird called Tetrao hybridus, sometimes found in the Scandinavian peninsula and other parts of Europe, is a hybrid between the B. and the Capercailzie (q. v.).

BLACK DEATH was one of the names given. to an oriental plague marked by inflammatory boils and tumours, which in the 14th c. desolated the world. It took this name from the black spots, symptomatic of a putrid decomposition, which, at one of its stages, appeared upon the skin.

Our information as to the symptoms and course of this terrible malady is far from perfect. So much is clear, that they varied somewhat from case to case, and in different countries, and greatly changed towards the close of the period of its ravages in Europe (1348-1351). Among them may be noticed great imposthumes on the thighs and arms-what are called buboes, and smaller boils on the arms and face; in many cases, black spots all over the body; and in some, affection of the head, stupor, and palsy of the tongue, which became black as if suffused with blood; burning and unslakable thirst; putrid inflammation of the lungs, attended by acute pains in the chest, the expectoration of blood, and a fetid pestiferous breath. On the first appearance of the plague in Europe, fever, the evacuation of blood, and carbuncular affection of the lungs, brought death before the other symptoms could be developed; afterwards, boils and buboes characterised its fatal course in Europe as in the East. In almost all cases its victims perished in two or three days after being attacked. Its spots and tumours were the seals of a doom which medicine had no power to avert, and which in despair many anticipated by self-slaughter.

If the symptoms of the B. D. have been only imperfectly handed down to us, the history of its rise and progress is still more obscure. But while fable enters largely into its history, it would seem to be safe to assign its birth-place to China; and there is a strong concurrence of testimony, that the causes which co-operated to produce it are to be sought for as far back as 1333-15 years before its outbreak in Europe-in a series of great convulsions of the earth's structure, which commenced in that year, and which, for 26 years thereafter, continued powerfully to affect the conditions of animal and vegetable The precise date of the appearance of the life. plague in China is unknown, but from 1333 till 1348, that great country suffered a terrible mortality from droughts, famines, floods, earthquakes which swallowed mountains, and swarms of innumerable locusts; and in the last few years of that period, from the plague. During the same time Europe manifested sympathy with the changes

BLACK DEATH.

means

which affected the East. The order of the seasons shores on which winds or the tide chanced to cast seemed at various times to be inverted; storms them. of thunder and lightning were frequent in the dead The mortality caused by the plague was, however, of winter, and there occurred great earthquakes only one of the evils to which it gave rise. Its and eruptions of volcanoes conceived to have become moral effects on the survivors and the frame of extinct. The theory is, that this great tellurian society were no less momentous. Many died of activity, accompanied by the decomposition of vast fear, which among the living dissolved the ties organic masses, myriads of bodies of men, brutes, of kindred; mothers forsook their plague-stricken and locusts, produced some change in the atmos- children; the worldly became quickened to a madphere unfavourable to life; and some writers, speak- dening sense of sin; the religious fixed their eyes ing of the established progress of the plague from more steadily on futurity; all rushed to sacrifice East to West, say that the impure air was actually their means to the church, while the ecclesiastics visible, as it approached with its burden of death. drew back from the gold showered over their walls, 'A dense and awful fog was seen in the heavens, as being tainted with death. Superstition finally rising in the East, and descending upon Italy' banded multitudes together by common (Mansfeld Chronicle in Cyriac Spangenberg, chap. to work out the common safety. In Hungary, 287, fol. 336). With this view of the plague is to and afterwards in Germany, rose the brotherhood be conjoined another regarding the causes which of the Flagellants, who undertook to expiate the produced a predisposition of the inhabitants of sins of the people, and avert the pestilence by selfEurope to become its victims, and which are referred imposed sufferings. Originally of the lower classes, to the effects on the popular health partly of they gathered to their order, as it extended, crowds scarcity, and partly of the prevalent bad habits of of the highest, both men and women, and marched living. There is much probability in the theory, from city to city, robed in sombre garments, with that the plague was owing to an atmospheric poison red crosses on the breast, back, and cap, and with acting on the organs of respiration, which, it will be their heads covered as far as the eyes; they went recollected, were always those first attacked. But chanting in solemn procession with banners, with while impurity of the air and the state of the public down-turned faces, and bearing triple scourges health may have largely contributed to the mor- with points of iron, with which, at stated times. tality, it may be doubted whether the disease did they lacerated their bodies. They at last pervaded not owe its extension almost wholly to infection nearly all Europe; Germany, Hungary, Poland, and contagion, whatever causes may have originally Bohemia, Silesia, and Flanders did them homage. produced it. It appears that the pestilence had in a This, however, is not the place to give their history, milder form appeared in Europe in 1342, but it had for which the reader will refer to the article under passed away, and there is little reason for holding the head FLAGELLANTS. Suffice it that the order that, in the interval, it remained merely latent. The was not suppressed till the pope, at the instigation invasion of 1348 may actually be tracked from of several crowned heads, prohibited throughout China in its advance by the various caravan routes Christendom their pilgrimages, on pain of excomtowards the West. The nothern coast of the Black munication. While the wanderings of the Flagellants Sea sent the plague by contagion to Constantinople. threw society into confusion, and helped to spread By contagion it reached the seaports of Italy, and the plague, the horrors of the time were further thence, as from so many foci of contagion it soon heightened by the fearful persecutions to which established itself over Europe. Its advance may the Jews were subjected, from a popular belief that be traced through Germany and France to England, the pestilence was owing to their poisoning the from which it was transmitted to Sweden. It was public wells. The people rose to exterminate the three years from its appearance at Constantinople, Hebrew race, of whom, in Mayence alone, 12,000 before it crept, by a great circle, to the Russian were cruelly murdered. They were killed by fire territories. This fact of its spread by contagion has and by torture wherever they could be found, led to speculations as to whether, by rigid rules of and for them, to the terrors of the plague were quarantine, it might not have been excluded from added those of a populace everywhere infuriated Europe. Such rules are now at many points in against them. In some places, the Jewish people force as securities against oriental plagues. immolated themselves in masses; in others, not a soul of them survived the assaults of their enemies. No adequate notion can be conveyed of these horrors. To aggravate the pestilence, the poisonpanic made the people shut up their wells. With terror of poison and of plague in a state of society rude at the best, but now disorganised, what means were available to mitigate or prevent the sufferings of the people were rendered altogether nugatory.

There are no proper materials for estimating the mortality which this plague produced, for it occurred before the value of statistics was appreciated. But in China, 13,000,000 are said to have died, and in the rest of the East nearly 24,000,000. These numbers appal the imagination. Coming to Europe, the horror is increased by the greater exactness of the details. London alone lost over 100,000 souls; 15 European cities lost among them about 300,000; Germany is calculated to have lost 1,244,434; Italy, one half of its population. On a moderate calculation, it may be assumed that there perished in Europe 25,000,000 human beings. Africa suffered with the rest of the known world. Everywhere was death. All animal life was threatened. Rivers were consecrated to receive corpses, for which none dared perform the rites of burial, and which in other places were cast in thousands into huge pits made for their reception. Death was on the sea, too, as well as on the land, and the imagination is quickened to the realisation of the terrible mortality by accounts of ships without crews-the crews dead and putrefying on the decks of the aimless hulls drifting through the Mediterranean, the Black and the North Seas, and cursing with the contagion the

It would be useless to attempt to give any notion of the effects on society of this plague; how during it some, like people in sieges, came to be callous, and some, like thieves under the gallows, to regard the desolation only as it afforded opportunities for plunder and indulgence. The whole The whole phenomena would form a fine study for the social philosopher and psychologist. We must content ourselves here with referring the reader to the Decameron of Boccaccio for a description of the plague at Florence, which, for vividness and particularity of observation, almost equals Thucydides's account of the plague at Athens. In Bulwer's Rienzi, also, an account of the plague will be found. reader should also consult Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages, translated for the Sydenham

The

BLACKFISH-BLACKIE.

Society. Accounts of the plague have been left | prosecuted with much greater success. This and

us by the physicians Guy de Chauliac and Chalin de Vinaro. But perhaps Boccaccio's is the best of the whole. The B. D. afterwards more than once appeared in Europe, but never with the same virulence or duration.

BLACKFISH (Centro'lophus Moris), a fish of the family of the Scombe'rida (q. v.) very nearly allied to the beautiful Coryphenes (q. v.), so frequently called dolphins. It is found both in the Mediterranean Sea and on the western coasts of Europe, occasionally on the southern coasts of Britain, but is everywhere rare, perhaps because it is an inhabitant chiefly of deep waters. It is known to attain a length of more than thirty inches, and a weight of fourteen pounds. The general form is not unlike that of a perch; there is a single elongated dorsal fin with short rays, rising from a thin elevated ridge; the body is covered with minute scales, the skin is tough and can be stripped off like that of an eel; there is no air bladder. The B. of the American coast, prized for the table, is the Tautoga onitis, of the family Labridae. A species of whale is also called B.

BLACK FLUX is prepared by heating in a covered crucible ordinary or crude cream of tartar, or the bitartrate of potash (KO,HO,C,II4O10), when the tartaric acid (CH4010) is decomposed, and charred, forming carbonic acid (CO2), which remains in combination with the potash (KO) as carbonate of potash (KO,CO2), accompanied by much free carbon. This very intimate mixture of carbonate of potash and carbon, otherwise called B. F., is a fine black powder of great service in the fluxing of metallic ores, as of lead (q. v.), and the separation of the metal therefrom. The B. F. is likewise employed as the raw material from which, on the application of heat in iron vessels, the metal potassium can be obtained.

BLACK FOREST (Ger. Schwarzwald), a wooded mountain-chain in Baden and Würtemberg, running from south to north along the western side of Swabia, parallel with the course of the Rhine after its great bend near Basel, and often only a few miles distant from it. The Rhine also bounds it on the south, and the level country between the Enz and the confluence of the Neckar with the Rhine borders it on the north; lat. 47° 30' 49° 30′ N., long. 7° 40'-9° E. The chief rivers rising in the B. F. are the Danube, Neckar, Murg, Kinzig, Elz, Euz, and Wiessen. The B. F. attains its greatest elevation in the Feldberg (variously stated at from 4600 to 4892 feet high), which rises near the source of the Wiessen and the celebrated Hölle (Hell) Pass, a narrow valley shut in by mountains in the vicinity of Neustadt. The great mass called the Kaiserstuhl (Emperor's Chair), situated near Breisach, is quite isolated. As to the geological character of the B. F., primitive granite and gneiss form its core, porphyry is found on its sides, and sandstone along its highest ridges, as well as at its base. Silver, copper, cobalt lead, and, iron are found in greater or less quantity in its principal chain, which is luxuriantly wooded, its name Schwarzwald being derived from the dark-tinted foliage and immense number of fir-trees. The B. F. is also rich in mineral waters, as e. g., the baths of Baden-Baden and Wildbad (q. v.). On the Rhine side, the descent is precipitous, but towards the Danube and the Neckar it is gradual. Among its numerous valleys, the Murgthal is the most famous for its natural beauties. The western slopes are studded with vineyards. Summer rye, oats, and potatoes are cultivated in some parts of the B. F.; but it is with difficulty, and the rearing of cattle is

the manufacture of articles of wood, forms the chief industry of the inhabitants. Above 180,000 wooden clocks alone, many of them of an ingenious automatical character, are made every year in the B. F. and exported to all parts of Europe and America, their value being estimated at half a million gulden, or about £40,000.

Two of the passes of the B. F., the Kniebis and the Hölle, acquired considerable celebrity during the wars of the French Revolution. The first, situated on the borders between Baden and Würtemberg, at the source of the Murg, was taken by the French in 1796 and in 1797; the Hölle is known in connection with Moreau's retreat in 1796.

BLACKHEATH, a high-lying open common, in the county of Kent, five miles south-east of London, near Greenwich Park. It commands a fine view of great extent, and being a healthy tract, many villas have been built on its margin. It is a favourite holiday resort for Londoners. The Roman road to Dover crossed it. B. is one of the few places in England where the ancient Scottish game of golf is practised. On it stands Morden College, founded in 1695 by Sir J. Morden for decayed merchants, and with a revenue of £5000. B. was formerly the scene of several insurrections, including those of Wat Tyler, 1381, and Jack Cade, 1450. Here the Danes encamped in 1011; the Londoners welcomed Henry V. from Agincourt; and Charles II., on his way from Dover, met the army of the Restoration. B. was also a noted place for highwaymen.

BLACK HOLE, an appellation familiarly given to a dungeon or dark cell in a prison, and which is associated in the public mind with a horrible catastrophe in the history of British India-namely, the cruel confinement of a party of English in an apartment called the 'Black Hole of Calcutta,' on the night of the 18th of June 1756. The garrison of the fort connected with the English factory at Calcutta, having been captured by the nabob Suraja Dowlah, this barbarian caused the whole of the prisoners taken, 146 in number, to be confined in an apartment 20 feet square. This cell had only two small windows, and these were obstructed by a veranda. The crush of the unhappy sufferers was dreadful; and after a night of excruciating agony from pressure, heat, thirst and want of air, there were in the morning only 23 survivors, the ghastliest forms ever seen on earth. See HINDUstan.

BLACKIE, JOHN STUART, Professor of Greek in the university of Edinburgh, was born in Glasgow in 1809, but received his early education in Aberdeen, where his father was agent for a bank. After going through the usual course of a Scotch university education-partly at Marischal College, Aberdeen, partly at Edinburgh-with a view to the church, he went in 1829 to Germany, and studied for some time both at Göttingen and Berlin. He then proceeded to Rome, where he spent more than a year. During this period, he acquired a mastery of German and Italian, and an acquaintance more extensive than ordinary with the literature of those countries, especially with that of Germany. On his return from the continent, having abandoned the thought of entering the church, he began the study of law, and passed as advocate at the Edinburgh bar in 1834. But he soon found the practice of the profession uncongenial, and devoted himself henceforth to literary pursuits. Among his earliest productions was his translation, in English verse, of Goethe's Faust, which, notwithstanding considerable ruggedness, is preferred by G. H. Lewes to any other of the metrical translations.

He

1852.

BLACKING-BLACK LETTER.

wrote also about this period numerous articles, however, ought, perhaps, to be regarded as an unforin the Foreign Quarterly Review, the Westminster, tunate one, as no lead enters into the composition Blackwood, and Tait, chiefly on German subjects. of the mineral. It sometimes occurs crystallised In 1841, he was appointed by the crown to the in short imbedded hexagonal prisms; but generally chair of Humanity in Marischal College, which he massive, and more or less radiated, foilated, scaly, held until, in 1852, he was elected to the Greek or compact. It is of a grayish-black colour, chair in the university of Edinburgh. Ever since with a somewhat metallic lustre, and is perfectly he became professor, he has been incessant, by opaque. It is greasy to the touch, and is a perfect means of pamphlets, lectures, and addresses, in call- conductor of electricity. It is found in primary and ing public attention in Scotland to the importance of transition rocks, as in gneiss, mica-slate, quartzeducational reform, more especially to the necessity rock, greenstone, and clay-slate, and pretty abundof raising the standard of the schools preparatory to antly in various parts of the world. It is much the universities. He took an active part in the more incombustible than even anthracite (or blindmovement that led in 1859 to the remodelling of the coal), burning with much difficulty even before Scottish universities. Of works of a professional and the blow-pipe, on which account it is much used for philological kind may be mentioned two lectures On the manufacture of crucibles or 'melting-pots the Studying and Teaching of Languages; a contri- which withstand a great heat. These are not, bution to the Classical Museum, published separ- however, made of mere B. L., but of B. L. in ately, On the Rhythmical Declamation of the Ancients; powder, mixed with half its weight of clay. B. L. The Pronunciation of Greek; Accent and Quantity, is employed for making pencils (q. v.). It is Perhaps the most matured and scholarly also extensively employed to give a black gloss to of B.'s productions is his metrical translation, with iron grates, stoves, railings, &c., and to diminish notes, of the dramas of Eschylus, published in 1850. the friction of the belts and other parts of machinB. has also contributed the articles Eschylus' and 'Homer' to the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 1853, he paid a visit to Greece, and spent above three months in Athens, acquiring a complete mastery of the language as now spoken; and as fruits of the visit, there appeared an introductory BLACK LETTER lecture On the Living Language of Greece, together name commonly given in this country to (Black Letter), the with articles in the North British and Westminster types which on the continent are most generally Reviews. Not content with educational and philo- known as Gothic. logical subjects, the versatile activity of Professor B. tated every peculiarity of the contemporary manuThe first printed books imihas led him to make incursions into the fields both scripts; and as printing was first practised in of abstract speculation and of poetry. Besides an Germany and the Netherlands, the first types essay on 'The Philosophy of Plato,' in the Edinburgh were copies of the letters in use in those countries Essays, 1856, he published in 1858 a treatise on in the middle of the 15th c. Two sorts of letters Beauty, in refutation of Lord Jeffrey's association have been employed in the writings of Western theory, and containing an exposition of the æsthet- Christendom. What have been called Roman ical philosophy of Plato. In 1857 appeared Lays letters prevailed from the 5th to about the close and Legends of Ancient Greece, with other Poems; of the 12th c., when they gradually began to and in 1860, Lyrical Poems. In 1866 B. published In 1866 B. published pass into what have been called Gothic letters, Homer and the Iliad, with critical Dissertations which continued till the 16th c., when, in most and Notes, Philological and Archæological.

BLACKING is the material employed for producing a black glazed shining surface on leather. The main ingredient in the various kinds of B. is bone-black (q. v.), which is mixed with an oil, some sugar, and a little sulphuric acid. The materials in Day and Martin's B. are finely powdered bone-black ground with sperm-oil, raw sugar or molasses, a little vinegar, and some concentrated sulphuric acid (specific gravity 1850). The substances are incorporated together one by one in the order in which they are stated, and the action of the sulphuric acid is to convert much of the lime in the bone-black into sulphate of lime, which causes a thickening of the mixture, and a tenacious paste results. This paste, diluted with weak vinegar, is put, while warm, in stoneware bottles, and is then ready for the market.

BLACK JACK, the name given by miners to Blende (q. v.). It was also the name applied in former times to a kind of drinking flagon.-B. J. (tree), see OAK.-B. J. or NIGGER CATERPILLAR,

see TURNIP SAWFLY.

BLACK LEAD, GRA'PHITE, or PLUMBA'GO, a mineral consisting chiefly of carbon, but containing also more or less of alumina, silica, lime, iron, &c., to the extent of 1 to 47 per cent., apparently mixed rather than chemically combined. B. L. is the popular name, and that by which it is generally known in the arts; Graphite is.that generally preferred by mineralogists.-The name B. L.,

ery. Lately it has been suggested as a lubricating agent in the cartridges of rifles, instead of lard or tallow.-B. L. is obtained at Borrowdale in Cumberland, Eng., and at Sturbridge, Mass., Ticonderoga, N. Y., Brandon, Vt., and elsewhere.

the

European countries, they were superseded by Roman letters. The first types, as has been said, were Gothic, and they spread with the art of printing into various European states. In France and Italy, they were slightly modified by cutting off some of their rougher points; and when thus trimmed, they came to be known in the former country as lettres de somme, being so called, it is said, from their use in an edition of the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas. The classic taste of Italy could not long tolerate the Gothic character even of the lettres de somme; and they were still further modified, until they assumed the shape to which the name of Roman letters has since been given. The first works printed with these new types were two beautiful editions of Pliny's Natural History: the one by John of Spira at Venice in 1469; and the other by his disciple, Nicholas Jenson, also at Venice, in 1472. Another Venetian printer-the first Aldus Manutius-attempted in 1501 to supersede the Roman letters by what have been called Aldine (q. v.), or Venetian, scarcely be said to have come into much more than temporary or exceptional use; but the Roman letters in no long time spread from Venice all over the west of Europe. Although thus supplanted in general use, the Gothic or B. L. was long retained for special purposes, such as, in this country, the printing of Bibles, prayer-books, proclamations, and acts of parliament. Books in B. L. being the earliest, are highly prized by antiquaries and bibliomaniacs, who are hence sometimes spoken of as 'blackletter' devotees. Thus, Matthias, in his Pursuits of

but are best known as Italic characters. These can