OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bregenz

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​BREGENZ (anc. Brigantium), the capital of the Austrian province of Vorarlberg, as well as of the administrative district of Bregenz. In 1900 its population was 7595, German-speaking and Roman Catholic. It is situated at the south-east angle of the Lake of Constance, and, besides communications by water with the other towns on the shores of that lake, is connected by: rail with Feldkirch on the Arlberg line (24 m.) and with Munich. The old town is on a hillock, crowned by the ancient castle, while the new town is built on the level ground at the foot of the hill. The fine parish church (dedicated to St Gall) stands on another mound more to the south. In the local museum are collections of various kinds, especially of the Roman antiquities which have been dug up on the site of the old town. The position of the town on the lake has always made it an important port and commercial centre. Nowadays the main trade is in grain, but much is done also in cattle and in the products of the cotton-spinning factories of Vorarlberg.
We hear of counts of Bregenz as early as the 10th century, their heirs in the early 13th century being the counts of Montfort (a castle north of Feldkirch), who gradually acquired most of the surrounding country (including Feldkirch and Bludenz). But little by little the Habsburgers, counts of Tirol since 1363 ​bought from them most of their domains—first Feldkirch in 1375, next Bludenz and the Montafon valley in 1394, finally the county of Bregenz in two parts, acquired in 1451 and 1523. In 1408 the Appenzellers were defeated before Bregenz, while in 1647, during the Thirty Years’ War, the town was sacked by the Swedes under Wrangel. (W. A. B. C.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Breislak, Scipione

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​BREISLAK, SCIPIONE (1748–1826), Italian geologist of German parentage, was born at Rome in 1748. He early distinguished himself as professor of mathematical and mechanical philosophy in the college of Ragusa; but after residing there for several years he returned to his native city, where he became a professor in the Collegio Nazareno, and began to form the fine mineralogical cabinet in that institution. His leisure was dedicated to geological researches in the papal states. His account of the aluminous district of Tolfa and adjacent hills, published in 1786, gained for him the notice of the king of Naples, who invited him to inspect the mines and similar works in that kingdom, and appointed him professor of mineralogy to the royal artillery. The vast works for the refining of sulphur in the volcanic district of Solfatara were erected under his direction. He afterwards made many journeys through the ancient Campania to illustrate its geology, and published in 1798 his Topografia fisica della Campania, which contains the results of much accurate observation. Breislak also published an essay on the physical condition of the seven hills of Rome, which he regarded as the remains of a local volcano,—an opinion shown to be erroneous by the later researches of G. B. Brocchi. The political convulsions of Italy in 1799 brought Breislak to Paris, where he remained until 1802, when, being appointed inspector of the saltpetre and powder manufactories near Milan, he removed to that city. The mineral Breislakite was named after him. He died on the 15th of February 1826. His other publications include:—Introduzione alla geologia (1811, French ed. 1819); Traité sur la structure extérieure du globe, 3 vols. and atlas (Milan, 1818, 1822); Descrizione geologica della provincia di Milano (1822).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Breeds and Breeding

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​BREEDS AND BREEDING. Breeds may be defined as domestic varieties of animals or plants which man has been able to bring into existence and to maintain in existence. The process of breeding includes all the modifying influences which man may bring to bear on a wild stock for the purpose, conscious or unconscious, of establishing and maintaining breeds. Charles Darwin’s Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868) was the starting-point of exact knowledge on this subject; when it appeared, it contained not only the best collection of empirical facts, but the only rational theory of the facts. The first relations between man and domesticated animals and plants were due to unconscious or accidental selection of wild stocks that tolerated the vicinity of man and that were useful or attractive to him. The new conditions must have produced modifications in these stocks, whether these were caused by a survival in each generation of individuals with the power of response to the new environment, or were due to a conscious selection of individuals capable of such favourable response. The essence of the process, however, came to be a conscious selection in each generation of the best individuals, that is to say, of those individuals that seemed to man to be most adapted to his wants. The possibility of establishing a breed depended, therefore, in the first place on the natural variability of wild animals and plants, then on the variations induced in animals and plants under subjection to the new conditions brought about by man’s interference, next on the extent to which these variations, natural or artificial, persisted through the series of generations, and finally on man’s intelligence in altering or maintaining the conditions of the environment, and in selective mating. The theory of breeds and breeding depends, in fact, on knowledge of variation, of modification by the environment, and of heredity. Any attempt to give an account of what actually has been done by man in establishing breeds would be little more than an imperfect summary of Darwin’s work. The articles Heredity, Mendelism and Variation and Selection show that what may be called the theoretical and experimental knowledge of variation and heredity is far in advance of the practical art of breeding. Even horticulturists, who have been much more successful than those who deal with animals, are still far from being able to predict the result of their selections and crossings. None the less it may be stated definitely that such prediction is already so nearly within the power of the practical breeder that it would be a waste of time to give a summary of the existing rule-of-thumb methods. The art of breeding is so immediately destined to become a science of breeding that existing knowledge and conceptions must be dismissed as of no more than historical interest. (P. C. M.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Breeze

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​BREEZE. (1) A current of air generally taken as somewhat less than a “wind,” which in turn is less than a “gale.” The term is particularly applied to the light wind blowing landwards by day, “sea-breeze,” and the counter wind, blowing off the land at night, “land-breeze.” The word appears in Fr. brise (admitted by the Academy in 1762). The Span, brisa, Port. briza, and Ital. brezza are used for a wind blowing from the north or north-east. According to Cotgrave, Rabelais uses brize in the sense of bise, the name of a dry north or north-east wind prevalent in Switzerland and the bordering parts of France, Italy and Germany. The word is first used in English as applied to the cool sea-breeze blowing usually from the east or north-east in the West Indies and Atlantic sea-coast of Central America. It was then applied to sea-breezes from any quarter, and also to the land-breeze, and so to any light wind or current of air. (2) Fine ashes or cinders, the refuse of coal, coke and charcoal burning. This is probably from the O. Fr. brese, modern braise, a word connected with braser, whence Eng. brazier, a pan for burning coals, charcoal, &c.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Buchan, Elspeth

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​BUCHAN, ELSPETH (1738–1791), founder of a Scottish religious sect known as the Buchanites, was the daughter of John Simpson, proprietor of an inn near Banff. Having quarrelled with her husband, Robert Buchan, a potter of Greenock, she settled with her children in Glasgow, where she was deeply impressed by a sermon preached by Hugh White, minister of the Relief church at Irvine. She persuaded White and others that she was a saint with a special mission, that in fact she was the woman, and White the man-child, described in Revelation xii. White was condemned by the presbytery, and the sect, which ultimately numbered forty-six adherents, was expelled by the magistrates in 1784 and settled in a farm, consisting of one room and a loft, known as New Cample in Dumfriesshire. Mrs Buchan claimed prophetic inspiration and pretended to confer the Holy Ghost upon her followers by breathing upon them; they believed that the millennium was near, and that they would not die, but be translated. It appears that they had community of wives and lived on funds provided by the richer members. Robert Burns, the poet, in a letter dated August 1784, describes the sect as idle and immoral. In 1785 White and Mrs Buchan published a Divine Dictionary, but the sect broke up on the death of its founder in spite of White’s attempts to prove that she was only in a trance. Even White was eventually undeceived. Andrew Innes, the last survivor, died in 1848.
See J. Train, The Buchanites from First to Last (Edinburgh, 1846).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Buchanan, Claudius

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​BUCHANAN, CLAUDIUS (1766–1815), English divine, was born at Cambuslang, near Glasgow, and educated at the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. He was ordained in 1795, and after holding a chaplaincy in India at Barrackpur (1797–1799) was appointed Calcutta chaplain and vice-principal of the college of Fort William. In this capacity he did much to advance Christianity and native education in India, especially by organizing systematic translations of the Scriptures. An account of his travels in the south and west of India, which added considerably to our knowledge of nature life, is given in his Christian Researches in Asia (Cambridge, 1811). After his return to England in 1808, he still took an active part in matters connected with India, and by his book entitled Colonial Ecclesiastical Establishment (London, 1813), he assisted in settling the controversy of 1813, which ended in the establishment of the Indian episcopate.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Buchan, Earls of

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​BUCHAN, EARLS OF. The earldom of Mar and Buchan was one of the seven original Scottish earldoms; later, Buchan was separated from Mar, and among the early earls of Buchan were Alexander Comyn (d. 1289), John Comyn (d. c. 1313), both constables of Scotland, and Henry Beaumont (d. 1340), who had married a Comyn. John Comyn’s wife, Isabel, was the countess of Buchan who crowned Robert the Bruce king at Scone in 1306, and was afterwards imprisoned at Berwick; not, however, in a cage hung on the wall of the castle. About 1382 Sir Alexander Stewart (d. c. 1404), the “wolf of Badenoch,” a son of King Robert II., became earl of Buchan, and the Stewarts appear to have held the earldom for about a century and a half, although not in a direct line from Sir Alexander. Among the most celebrated of the Stewart earls were the Scottish regent, Robert, duke of Albany, and his son John, who was made constable of France and was killed at the battle of Verneuil in 1424. In 1617 the earldom came to James Erskine (d. 1640), a son of John Erskine, 2nd (or 7th) earl of Mar, whose wife Mary had inherited it from her father, James Douglas (d. 1601), and from that time it has been retained by the Erskines.
Perhaps the most celebrated of the later earls of Buchan was the eccentric David Steuart Erskine, 11th earl (1742–1829), a son of Henry David, 10th earl (d. 1767), and brother of Henry Erskine (q.v.), and of Thomas, Lord Erskine (q.v.). His pertinacity was instrumental in effecting a change in the method of electing Scottish representative peers, and in 1780 he succeeded in founding the Scottish Society of Antiquaries. Among his correspondents was Horace Walpole, and he wrote an Essay on the Lives of Fletcher of Saltoun and the Poet Thomson (1792), and other writings. He died at his residence at Dryburgh in April 1829, leaving no legitimate children, and was followed as 12th earl by his nephew Henry David (1783–1857), the ancestor of the present peer. The 11th earl’s natural son, Sir David Erskine (1772–1837), who inherited his father’s unentailed estates, was an antiquary and a dramatist.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Buchan, Peter

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​BUCHAN, PETER (1790–1854), Scottish editor, was born at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, in 1790. In 1816 he started in business as a printer at Peterhead, and was successful enough to be able eventually to retire and devote himself to the collection and editing of Scottish ballads. His Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland (1828) contained a large number of hitherto unpublished ballads, and newly discovered versions of existing ones. Another collection made by him was published by the Percy Society, under the title Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads (1845). Two unpublished volumes of Buchan’s ballad collections are in the British Museum. He died on the 19th of September 1854.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bucephalus

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​BUCEPHALUS (Gr. βουκεφαλος), the favourite Thracian horse of Alexander the Great, which died in 326 B.C., either of wounds received in the battle on the Hydaspes, or of old age. In commemoration Alexander built the city of Bucephala (Boukephala), the site of which is almost certainly to be identified with a mound on the bank of the river opposite the modern Jhelum.
See especially Arrian v. 20; other stories in Plutarch, Alex. 6; Curtius vi. 8. For the identification of Bucephala, Vincent A. Smith, Early Hist. of India (2nd ed., 1908), pp. 65, 66 note.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bucer, Martin

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​BUCER (or Butzer), MARTIN (1491–1551), German Protestant reformer, was born in 1491 at Schlettstadt in Alsace. In 1506 he entered the Dominican order, and was sent to study at Heidelberg. There he became acquainted with the works of Erasmus and Luther, and was present at a disputation of the latter with some of the Romanist doctors. He became a convert to the reformed opinions, abandoned his order by papal dispensation in 1521, and soon afterwards married a nun. In 1522 he was pastor at Landstuhl in the palatinate, and travelled hither and thither propagating the reformed doctrine. After his excommunication in 1523 he made his headquarters at Strassburg, where he succeeded Matthew Zell. Henry VIII of England asked his advice in connexion with the divorce from Catherine of Aragon. On the question of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Bucer’s opinions were decidedly Zwinglian, but he was anxious to maintain church unity with the Lutheran party, and constantly endeavoured, especially after Zwingli’s death, to formulate a statement of belief that would unite Lutheran, south German and Swiss reformers. Hence the charge of ambiguity and obscurity which has been laid against him. In 1548 he was sent for to Augsburg to sign the agreement, called the Interim, between the Catholics and Protestants. His stout opposition to this project exposed him to many difficulties, and he was glad to accept Cranmer’s invitation to make his home in England. On his arrival in 1549 he was appointed regius professor of divinity at Cambridge. Edward VI. and the protector Somerset showed him much favour and he was consulted as to the revision of the Book of Common Prayer. But on the 27th of February 1551 he died, and was buried in the university church, with great state. In 1557, by Mary’s commissioners, his body was dug up and burnt, and his tomb demolished; it was subsequently reconstructed by order of Elizabeth. Bucer is said to have written ninety-six treatises, among them a translation and exposition of the Psalms and a work Deregno Christi. His name is familiar in English literature from the use made of his doctrines by Milton in his divorce treatises.
A collected edition of his writings has never been published. A volume known as the Tomus Anglicanus (Basel, 1577) contains those written in England. See J. W. Baum, Capito and Butzer (Strassburg, 1860); A. Erichson, Martin Butzer (1891); and the articles in the Dict. Nat. Biog. (by A. W. Ward), and in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (by Paul Grünberg).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Combe

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​COMBE, or Coomb, a term particularly in use in south-western England for a short closed-in valley, either on the side of a down or running up from the sea. It appears in place-names as a termination, e.g. Wiveliscombe, Ilfracombe, and as a prefix, e.g. Combemartin. The etymology of the word is obscure, but “hollow” seems a common meaning to similar forms in many languages. In English “combe” or “cumb” is an obsolete word for a “hollow vessel,” and the like meaning attached to Teutonic forms kumm and kumme. The Welsh cwm, in place-names, means hollow or valley, with which may be compared cum in many Scots place-names. The Greek κύμβη also means a hollow vessel, and there is a French dialect word combe meaning a little valley.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Combe, Andrew

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​COMBE, ANDREW (1797–1847), Scottish physiologist, was born in Edinburgh on the 27th of October 1797, and was a younger brother of George Combe. He served an apprenticeship in a surgery, and in 1817 passed at Surgeons’ Hall. He proceeded to Paris to complete his medical studies, and whilst there he investigated phrenology on anatomical principles. He became convinced of the truth of the new science, and, as he acquired much skill in the dissection of the brain, he subsequently gave additional interest to the lectures of his brother George, by his practical demonstrations of the convolutions. He returned to Edinburgh in 1819 with the intention of beginning practice; but being attacked by the first symptoms of pulmonary disease, he was obliged to seek health in the south of France and in Italy during the two following winters. He began to practise in 1823, and by careful adherence to the laws of health he was enabled to fulfil the duties of his profession for nine years. During that period he assisted in editing the Phrenological Journal and contributed a number of articles to it, defended phrenology before the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, published his Observations on Mental Derangement (1831), and prepared the greater portion of his Principles of Physiology Applied to Health and Education, which was issued in 1834, and immediately obtained extensive public favour. In 1836 he was appointed physician to Leopold I., king of the Belgians, and removed to Brussels, but he speedily found the climate unsuitable and returned to Edinburgh, where he resumed his practice. In 1836 he published his Physiology of Digestion, and in 1838 he was appointed one of the physicians extraordinary to the queen in Scotland. Two years later he completed his Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy, which he believed to be his best work and it was his last. His latter years were mostly occupied in seeking at various health resorts some alleviation of his disease; he spent two winters in Madeira, and tried a voyage to the United States, but was compelled to return within a few weeks of the date of his landing at New York. He died at Gorgie, near Edinburgh, on the 9th of August 1847.
His biography, written by George Combe, was published in 1850.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Combination

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​COMBINATION (Lat. combinare, to combine), a term meaning an association or union of persons for the furtherance of a common object, historically associated with agreements amongst workmen for the purpose of raising their wages. Such a combination was for a long time expressly prohibited by statute. See Trade Unions; also Conspiracy and Strikes and Lock Outs.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Combes, Émile

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​COMBES, [JUSTIN LOUIS] ÉMILE (1835– ), French statesman, was born at Roquecourbe in the department of the Tarn. He studied for the priesthood, but abandoned the idea before ordination, and took the diploma of doctor of letters (1860), ​then he studied medicine, taking his degree in 1867, and setting up in practice at Pons in Charente-Inférieure. In 1881 he presented himself as a political candidate for Saintes, but was defeated. In 1885 he was elected to the senate by the department of Charente-Inférieure. He sat in the Democratic left, and was elected vice-president in 1893 and 1894. The reports which he drew up upon educational questions drew attention to him, and on the 3rd of November 1895 he entered the Bourgeois cabinet as minister of public instruction, resigning with his colleagues on the 21st of April following. He actively supported the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry, and upon its retirement in 1903 he was himself charged with the formation of a cabinet. In this he took the portfolio of the Interior, and the main energy of the government was devoted to the struggle with clericalism. The parties of the Left in the chamber, united upon this question in the Bloc republicain, supported Combes in his application of the law of 1901 on the religious associations, and voted the new bill on the congregations (1904), and under his guidance France took the first definite steps toward the separation of church and state. He was opposed with extreme violence by all the Conservative parties, who regarded the secularization of the schools as a persecution of religion. But his stubborn enforcement of the law won him the applause of the people, who called him familiarly le petit père. Finally the defection of the Radical and Socialist groups induced him to resign on the 17th of January 1905, although he had not met an adverse vote in the Chamber. His policy was still carried on; and when the law of the separation of church and state was passed, all the leaders of the Radical parties entertained him at a noteworthy banquet in which they openly recognized him as the real originator of the movement.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beechey, Sir William

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​BEECHEY, SIR WILLIAM (1753–1839), English portrait-painter, was born at Burford. He was originally meant for a conveyancer, but a strong love for painting induced him to become a pupil at the Royal Academy in 1772. Some of his smaller portraits gained him considerable reputation; he began to be employed by the nobility, and in 1793 became associate of the Academy. In the same year he was made portrait-painter to Queen Charlotte. He painted the portraits of the members of the royal family, and of nearly all the most famous or fashionable persons of the time. What is considered his finest production is a review of cavalry, a large composition, in the foreground of which he introduced portraits of George III., the prince of Wales and the duke of York, surrounded by a brilliant staff on horseback. It was painted in 1798, and obtained for the artist the honour of knighthood, and his election as R.A.