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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Azamgarh

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​AZAMGARH, or Azimgarh, a city and district of British India, in the Gorakhpur division of the United Provinces. The town is situated on the river Tons, and has a railway station. It is said to have been founded about 1665 by a powerful landholder named Azim Khan, who owned large estates in this part of the country. Pop. (1901) 18,835.
The area of the district is 2207 sq. m. It is bounded on the N. by the river Gogra, separating it from Gorakhpur district; on the E. by Ghazipur district and the river Ganges; on the S. by the districts of Jaunpur and Ghazipur; and on the W. by Jaunpur and Fyzabad. The portion of the district lying along the banks of the Gogra is a low-lying tract, varying considerably in width; south of this, however, the ground takes a slight rise. The slope of the land is from north-west to south-east, but the general drainage is very inadequate. Roughly speaking, the district consists of a series of parallel ridges, whose summits are depressed into beds or hollows, along which the rivers flow; while between the ridges are low-lying rice lands, interspersed with numerous natural reservoirs. The soil is fertile, and very highly cultivated, bearing magnificent crops of rice, sugar-cane and indigo. There are several indigo factories. A branch of the Bengal & North-Western railway to Azamgarh town was opened in 1898. In 1901 the population was 1,529,785, showing a decrease of 11% in the decade. The district was ceded to the Company in 1801 by the wazirs of Lucknow. In 1857 it became a centre of mutiny. On the 3rd of June 1857 the 17th Regiment of Native Infantry mutinied at Azamgarh, murdered some of their officers, and carried off the government treasure to Fyzabad. The district became a centre of the fighting between the Gurkhas and the rebels, and was not finally cleared until October 1858 by Colonel Kelly.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Balalaïka

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​BALALAÏKA, a stringed instrument said to have retained its primitive form unchanged, very popular in Russia among the peasants, more especially in Ukraine. The instrument has a triangular soundboard to which is glued a vaulted back, forming a body having a triangular base, enabling it to stand upright. To the body is added a fretted neck strung with two, three or four strings, generally so tuned as to produce a minor chord when sounded together. The strings are generally plucked with the fingers, but the peasants obtain charming “glissando” effects by sweeping the strings lightly one after the other with the fingers or side of the hand. The Balalaïka is common to the Slav races, who use it to accompany their folk-songs and dances. It is also to be seen in the hands of gipsies at rural festivities and fairs.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Balash

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​BALASH (in the Greek authors, Balas; the later form of the name Vologaeses), Sassanian king in A.D. 484-488, was the brother and successor of Pērōz, who had died in a battle against the Hephthalites (White Huns) who invaded Persia from the east. He put down the rebellion of his brother Zareh, and is praised as a mild and generous monarch, who made concessions to the Christians. But as he did nothing against his enemies, he was, after a reign of four years, deposed and blinded, and his nephew, Kavadh I., raised to the throne. (Ed. M.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Balance

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​BALANCE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. bilantia, an apparatus for weighing, from bi, two, and lanx, a dish or scale), a term originally used for the ordinary beam balance or weighing machine with two scale pans, but extended to include (with or without adjectival qualification) other apparatus for measuring and comparing weights and forces. In addition to beam and spring balances (see Weighing Machines), apparatus termed “torsion balances,” in which forces are measured or compared by their twisting moment on a wire, are used, especially in gravitational, electrostatic and magnetic experiments (see Gravitation and Electrometer). The term also connotes the idea of equality or equalization; e.g. in the following expressions: “balance,” in bookkeeping, the amount which equalizes the debit and credit accounts; “balance wheel,” ​in horology, a device for equalizing the relaxing of a watch or clock spring (see Clock); the “balancing of engines,” the art of minimizing the total vibrations of engines when running, and consisting generally in the introduction of masses which induce vibrations opposed to the vibrations of the essential parts of the engine.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Balard, Antoine Jerôme

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​BALARD, ANTOINE JERÔME (1802–1876), French chemist, was born at Montpellier on the 30th of September 1802. He started as an apothecary, but taking up teaching he acted as chemical assistant at the faculty of sciences of his native town, and then became professor of chemistry at the royal college and school of pharmacy and at the faculty of sciences. In 1826 he discovered in sea-water a substance which he recognized as a previously unknown element and named bromine. The reputation brought him by this achievement secured his election as successor to L. J. Thénard in the chair of chemistry at the faculty of sciences in Paris, and in 1851 he was appointed professor of chemistry at the Collège de France, where he had M. P. E. Berthelot first as pupil, then as assistant and finally as colleague. He died in Paris on the 30th of April 1876. While the discovery of bromine and the preparation of many of its compounds was his most conspicuous piece of work, Balard was an industrious chemist on both the pure and applied sides. In his researches on the bleaching compounds of chlorine he was the first to advance the view that bleaching-powder is a double compound of calcium chloride and hypochlorite; and he devoted much time to the problem of economically obtaining soda and potash from sea-water, though here his efforts were nullified by the discovery of the much richer sources of supply afforded by the Stassfurt deposits. In organic chemistry he published papers on the decomposition of ammonium oxalate, with formation of oxamic acid, on amyl alcohol, on the cyanides, and on the difference in constitution between nitric and sulphuric ether.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barfurush

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​BARFURUSH, a town of Persia, in the province of Mazandaran in 36° 32′ N., and 52° 42′ E., and on the left bank of the river Bawul [Babul], which is here crossed by a bridge of eight arches, about 15 m. distant from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, where the small town of Meshed i Sar serves as a port. It is the commercial capital of Mazandaran, and 26 m. distant from Sari and 90 m. from Teheran. Pop. about 50,000. Built in a low and swampy country and approached by deep and almost impassable roads, Barfurush would not seem at all favourably situated for the seat of an extensive inland trade; it is, however, peopled entirely by merchants and tradesmen, and is wholly indebted for its present size and importance to its commercial prosperity. The principal articles of its trade are rice and cotton, some sugar cane (nai shakar), flax (Katūn) and hemp (Kanab) are also grown. The town is of peculiar structure and aspect, being placed in the midst of a forest of tall trees, by which the buildings are so separated from one another, and so concealed, that, except in the bazars, it has no appearance of a populous town. The streets are broad and neat, though generally unpaved, and kept in good order. No ruins are to be seen as in other Persian towns; the houses are comfortable, in good repair, roofed with tiles and enclosed by substantial walls. There are no public buildings of any importance, and the only places of interest are the bazars, which extend fully a mile in length, and consist of substantially built ranges of shops covered with roofs of wood and tiles, and well stored with commodities. There are about ten commodious caravanserais and a number of colleges (medresseh), the place being as much celebrated for learning as for commerce. On an island in a small lake east of the town is a garden, called Bagh i Shah (garden of the Shah), with ruined palaces and baths. At Meshed i Sar, the port, or roadstead of Barfurush, the steamers of the Caucasus and Mercury Company call weekly, and a brisk shipping trade is carried on between it and other Caspian ports.
Barfurush was formerly called Māmatīr. The present name is from a settlement called Barfurush-deh, which was added to the old city A.D. 1012.  (A. H.-S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bargeboard

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​BARGEBOARD (probably from Med. Lat. bargus, or barcus, a scaffold, and not from the now obsolete synonym “vergeboard”), the boards fastened to the projecting gables of a roof to give strength to the same and to mask or hide the horizontal timbers of the roof to which they were attached. Bargeboards are sometimes moulded only or carved, but as a rule the lower edges were cusped and had tracery in the spandrels besides being otherwise elaborated. The richest example is one at Ockwells in Berkshire, England, which is moulded and carved as if it were intended for internal work.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barham, Richard Harris

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​BARHAM, RICHARD HARRIS (1788–1845), English humourist, better known by his nom de plume of Thomas Ingoldsby, was born at Canterbury on the 6th of December 1788. At seven years of age he lost his father, who left him a small estate, part of which was the manor of Tappington, so frequently mentioned in the Legends. At nine he was sent to St Paul’s school, but his studies were interrupted by an accident which shattered his arm and partially crippled it for life. Thus deprived of the power of bodily activity, he became a great reader and diligent student. In 1807 he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, intending at first to study for the profession of the law. Circumstances, however, induced him to change his mind and to enter the church. In 1813 he was ordained and took a country curacy; he married in the following year, and in 1821 removed to London on obtaining the appointment of minor canon of St Paul’s cathedral. Three years later he became one of the priests in ordinary of the King’s Chapel Royal, and was appointed to a city living. In 1826 he first contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine; and on the establishment of Bentley’s Miscellany in 1837 he began to furnish the series of grotesque metrical tales known as The Ingoldsby Legends. These became very popular, were published in a collected form and have since passed through numerous editions. In variety and whimsicality of rhymes these verses have hardly a rival since the days of Hudibras. But beneath this obvious popular quality there lies a store of solid antiquarian learning, the fruit of patient enthusiastic research, in out-of-the-way old books, which few readers who laugh over his pages detect. His life was grave, dignified and highly honoured. His sound judgment and his kind heart made him the trusted counsellor, the valued friend and the frequent peacemaker; and he was intolerant of all that was mean and base and false. In politics he was a Tory of the old school; yet he was the lifelong friend of the liberal Sydney Smith, whom in many respects he singularly resembled. Theodore Hook was one of his most intimate friends. Barham was a contributor to the Edinburgh Review and the Literary Gazette; he wrote articles for Gorton’s Biographical Dictionary; and a novel, My Cousin Nicholas (1834). He retained vigour and freshness of heart and mind to the last, and his last verses (“As I laye a-thynkynge”) show no signs of decay. He died in London after a long, painful illness, on the 17th of June 1845.
A short memoir, by his son, was prefixed to a new edition of Ingoldsby in 1847, and a fuller Life and Letters, from the same hand, was published in 2 vols. in 1870.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barghest

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​BARGHEST, Barguest or Bargest, the name given in the north of England, especially in Yorkshire, to a monstrous goblin-dog with huge teeth and claws. The spectre-hound under various names is familiar in folk-lore. The Demon of Tedworth, the Black Dog of Winchester and the Padfoot of Wakefield all shared the characteristics of the Barghest of York. In Wales its counterpart was Gwyllgi, “the Dog of Darkness,” a frightful apparition of a mastiff with baleful breath and blazing red eyes. In Lancashire the spectre-hound is called Trash or Striker. In Cambridgeshire and on the Norfolk coast it is known as Shuck or Shock. In the Isle of Man it is styled Mauthe Doog. It is mentioned by Sir Walter Scott in “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”—
“For he was speechless, ghastly, wan Like him of whom the story ran Who spoke the spectre hound in Man.”
A Welsh variant is the Cwn Annwn, or “dogs of hell.” The barghest was essentially a nocturnal spectre, and its appearance was regarded as a portent of death. Its Welsh form is confined to the sea-coast parishes, and on the Norfolk coast the creature is supposed to be amphibious, coming out of the sea by night and travelling about the lonely lanes. The derivation of the word barghest is disputed. “Ghost” in the north of England is pronounced “guest,” and the name is thought to be burh-ghest, “town-ghost.” Others explain it as German Berg-geist, “mountain demon,” or Bar-geist, “bear-demon,” in allusion to its alleged appearance at times as a bear. The barghest has a kinsman in the Rongeur d’Os of Norman folklore. A belief in the spectre-hound still lingers in the wild parts of the north country of England, and in Nidderdale, Yorkshire, nurses frighten children with its name.
See Wirt Sikes, British Goblins (1880); Notes and Queries, first series, ii. 51; Joseph Ritson, Fairy Tales (Lond. 1831), p. 58; Lancashire Folklore (1867); Joseph Lucas, Studies in Nidderdale (Pateley Bridge, 1882).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bari (tribe)

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​BARI, a tribe of Nilotic negroes, living on the banks of the upper Nile some 200 m. N. of Albert Nyanza. They have as neighbours the Dinka to the north, the Madi to the south, and the Galla to the east. The men are tall and thin, the women fat and under middle height. Their colour is a deep dead brown. The men and unmarried girls go practically naked, the married women wearing a goatskin dyed red. The body is ornamented with red clay and the lower incisors are often extracted. Their sole wealth is cattle and their chief food milk and blood; meat is only eaten when a cow happens to die. They live in round grass huts with conical roofs. Twins are considered unlucky, the mother is divorced by her husband and her family must refund part of the marriage-price. The dead are buried in the hut; a square grave is dug in which the body is arranged in a sitting position with the hands tied behind the back. The most important men in the country are the rainmakers, who are reverenced even more than the chiefs, and, indeed, are famous among the surrounding tribes. The Bari warriors have been much recruited for the Egyptian army and were formerly used as slave-hunters by the Arab traders.
See Sir Samuel Baker, The Albert N’yanza (London, 1866); Friedrich Muller, Die Sprache der Bari (Vienna, 1864); G. Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria (London, 1891); W. Junker, Travels in Africa (English ed., 1890–1892); R. C. Owen, Bari Grammar (1908).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bargain and Sale

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​BARGAIN AND SALE, in English law, a contract whereby property, real or personal, is transferred from one person—called the bargainer—to another—called the bargainee—for a ​valuable consideration; but the term is more particularly used to describe a mode of conveyance of lands. The disabilities under which a feudal owner very frequently lay gave rise to the practice of conveying land by other methods than that of feoffment with livery of seisin, that is, a handing over of the feudal possession. That of “bargain and sale” was one. Where a man bargained and sold his land to another for pecuniary consideration, which might be merely nominal, and need not necessarily be actually paid, equity held the bargainer to be seised of the land to the use of the bargainee. The Statute of Uses (1535), by converting the bargainee’s interest into a legal estate, had an effect contrary to the intention of its framers. It made bargain and sale an easy means of secret or private conveyance, a policy to which the law was opposed. To remedy this defect, a statute (called the Statute of Enrolments) was passed in the same year, which provided that every conveyance by bargain and sale of freehold lands should be enrolled in a court of record or with the custos rotulorum of the county within six months of its date. The Statute of Enrolments applied only to estates of inheritance or for life, so that a bargain and sale of an estate for years might be made without enrolment. This in turn was the foundation of another mode of conveyance, namely, lease and release, which took the place of the deed of bargain and sale, so far as regards freehold. Bargain and sale of copyhold estates, which operates at common law, is still a mode of conveyance in England in the case of a sale by executors, where a testator has directed a sale of his estate to be made, instead of devising it to trustees upon trust to sell.
See also Conveyancing.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barge

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​BARGE (Med. Lat. barca, possibly connected with Lat. baris, Gr. βᾶρις, a boat used on the Nile), formerly a small sailing vessel, but now generally a flat-bottomed boat used for carrying goods on inland navigations. On canals barges are usually towed, but are sometimes fitted with some kind of engine; the men in charge of them are known as bargees. On tidal rivers barges are often provided with masts and sails (“sailing barges”), or in default of being towed, they drift with the current, guided by a long oar or oars (“dumb-barges”). Barges used for unloading, or loading, the cargo of ships in harbours are sometimes called “lighters” (from the verb “to light” = to relieve of a load). A state barge was a heavy, often highly ornamented vessel used for carrying passengers on occasions of state ceremonials. The college barges at Oxford are houseboats moored in the river for the use of members of the college rowing clubs. In New England the word barge frequently means a vehicle, usually covered, with seats down the side, used for picnic parties or the conveyance of passengers to or from piers or railway stations.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bari (town)

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​BARI (anc. Barium), a seaport and archiepiscopal see of Apulia, Italy, capital of the province of Bari, situated on a small peninsula projecting into the Adriatic, 69 m. N.W. of Brindisi by rail. Pop. (1901) 77,478. The town consists of two parts, the closely built old town on the peninsula to the N., and the new town to the S., which is laid out on a rectangular plan. The former contains the cathedral of S. Sabino, begun in 1035 but not completed till 1171: the exterior preserves in the main the fine original architecture (notably the dome and campanile), but the interior has been modernized. Not far off is the church of S. Nicola, founded in 1087 to receive the relics of this saint, which were brought from Myra in Lycia, and now lie beneath the altar in the crypt. The façade is fine, and the interior, divided into three naves by columns, with galleries over the aisles, has fortunately not been restored; the vaulting of the crypt has, however, been covered with modern stucco. The church is one of the four Palatine churches of Apulia (the others being the cathedrals of Acquaviva and Altamura, and the church of Monte S. Angelo sul Gargano). Adjacent is the small church of S. Gregorio, belonging also to the 11th century. The castle, built in 1169, and strengthened in 1233, lies on the W. side of the old town: it is now used as a prison. The old harbour lies on the E. side of the peninsula, and the new on the W. In the new town is the Ateneo, containing the provincial museum, with a large collection of vases found in the district, in which the pre-Hellenic specimens are especially important (M. Mayer in Römische Mitteilungen, 1897, 201; 1899, 13; 1904, 188, 276). Bari is the seat of the command of the IX. army corps, and the most important commercial town in Apulia. It manufactures olive oil, soap, carbon sulphide and playing-cards, and has a large iron foundry.
Barium does not seem to have been a place of great importance in early antiquity; only bronze coins struck by it have been found. In Roman times it was the point of junction between the coast road and the Via Traiana; there was also a branch road to Tarentum from Barium. Its harbour, mentioned as early as 181 B.C., was probably the principal one of the district in ancient times, as at present, and was the centre of a fishery. But its greatest importance dates from the time when it became, in 852, a seat of the Saracen power, and in 885, the residence of the Byzantine governor. In 1071 it was captured by Robert Guiscard. In 1095 Peter the Hermit preached the first crusade there. In 1156 it was razed to the ground, and has several times suffered destruction. In the 14th century it became an ​independent duchy, and in 1558 was left by Bona Sforza to Philip II. of Spain and Naples.  (T. As.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barili

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​BARILI, a town of the province of Cebu, island of Cebu, Philippine Islands, on the Barili river, 2 m. from its mouth and about 35 m. S.W. of Cebu, the capital. Pop. (1903) 31,617. It has a relatively cool and healthful climate. Its people are agriculturists and raise Indian corn, sibucao, hemp, cacao and coffee. The language is Cebu-Visayan.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barbary Ape

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​BARBARY APE, a tailless monkey inhabiting Algeria, Morocco, and the rock of Gibraltar (where it may have been introduced), and referable to the otherwise Asiatic group of macaques, in which it alone represents the subgenus Inuus. This monkey, Macacus inuus, is light yellowish-brown above and yellowish-white below, with the naked part of the face flesh-coloured. It is entirely terrestrial in habits, at least on Gibraltar, and goes about in droves.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barb

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​BARB. (1) (From Lat. barba, a beard), a term used in various senses, of the folds of mucous membrane under the tongue of horses and cattle, and of a disease affecting that part, of the wattles round the mouth of the barbel, of the backward turned points of an arrow and of the piece of folded linen worn over the neck by nuns. (2) (From Fr. barbe, meaning “from Barbary”), a name applied to a breed of horses imported by the Moors into Spain from Barbary, and to a breed of pigeons.