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

See also Chacma baboon on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CHACMA, the Hottentot name of the Cape baboon, Papio porcarius, a species inhabiting the mountains of South Africa as far north as the Zambezi. Of the approximate size of an English mastiff, this powerful baboon is blackish grey in colour with a tinge of green due to the yellow rings on most of the hairs. Unlike most of its tribe, it is a good climber; and where wooded cliffs are not available, will take up its quarters in tall trees. Chacmas frequently strip orchards and fruit-gardens, break and devour ostrich eggs, and kill lambs and kids for the sake of the milk in their stomachs.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bedworth

See also Bedworth on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BEDWORTH, a manufacturing town in the Nuneaton parliamentary division of Warwickshire, England; on the Nuneaton-Coventry branch of the London & North Western railway, 100 m. north-west from London. Pop. (1900) 7169. A tramway connects with Coventry, and the Coventry canal passes through. Coal and ironstone are mined; there are iron-works, and bricks, hats, ribbons and tape and silk are made. Similar industries are pursued in the populous district (including the villages of Exhall and Foleshill) which extends southward towards Coventry.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beecher, Charles Emerson

See also Charles Emerson Beecher on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BEECHER, CHARLES EMERSON (1856–1904), American palaeontologist, was born at Dunkirk, New York, on the 9th of October 1856. He graduated at the university of Michigan in 1878, and then became assistant to James Hall in the state museum at Albany. Ten years later he was appointed to the charge of the invertebrate fossils in the Peabody Museum, New Haven, under O. C. Marsh, whom he succeeded in 1899 as curator. Meanwhile in 1889 he received the degree of Ph.D. from Yale University for his memoir on the Brachiospongidae, a remarkable ​group of Silurian sponges; later on he did good work among the fossil corals, and other groups, being ultimately regarded as a leading authority on fossil crustacea and brachiopoda; his researches on the development of the brachiopoda, and on the Trilobites Triarthrus and Trinudeus, were especially noteworthy. In 1892 he was appointed professor of palaeontology in Yale University. He died on the 14th of February 1904.
Memoir by C. Schuchert in Amer. Journ. Science, vol. xvii., June 1904 (with portrait and bibliography).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bedlington

See also Bedlington on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BEDLINGTON, an urban district of Northumberland, England, within the parliamentary borough of Morpeth, 5 m. S.E. of that town on a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 18,766. It lies on high ground above the river Blyth, 21/2 m. above its mouth. The church of St Cuthbert shows good transitional Norman details. Its dedication recalls the transportation of the body of the saintly bishop of Lindisfarne from its shrine at Durham by the monks of that foundation to Lindisfarne, when in fear of attack from William the Conqueror. They rested here with the coffin. The modern growth of the town is attributable to the valuable collieries of the neighbourhood, and to manufactures of nails and chains. It is one of the most populous mining centres in the county. On the south bank of the river is the township and urban district of Cowpen (pop. 17,879), with collieries and glass works; coal is shipped from this point by river.
Bedlington (Betlingtun) and the hamlets belonging to it were bought by Cutheard, bishop of Durham, between 900 and 915, and although locally situated in the county of Northumberland became part of the county palatine of Durham over which Bishop Walcher was granted royal rights by William the Conqueror. When these rights were taken from Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of Durham, in 1536, Bedlington among his other property lost its special privileges, but was confirmed to him in 1541 with the other property of his predecessors. Together with the other lands of the see of Durham, Bedlington was made over to the ecclesiastical commissioners in 1866. Bedlingtonshire was made part of Northumberland for civil purposes by acts of parliament in 1832 and 1844.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bedmar, Alphonso Bella Cueva

See also Alfonso de la Cueva, 1st Marquis of Bedmar on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BEDMAR, ALPHONSO BELLA CUEVA, Marquis of (1572–1655), Spanish diplomatist, became ambassador to the republic of Venice in 1667. This was a very important position owing to the amount of information concerning European affairs which passed through the hands of the representative of Spain. When Bedmar took up this appointment, Venice had just concluded an alliance with France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, to counterbalance the power of Spain, and the ambassador was instructed to destroy this league. Assisted by the duke of Ossuna, viceroy of Naples, he formed a plan to bring the city into the power of Spain, and the scheme was to be carried out on Ascension Day 1618. The plot was, however, discovered; and Bedmar, protected by his position from arrest, left Venice and went to Flanders as president of the council. In 1622 he was made a cardinal, and soon afterwards became bishop of Oviedo, a position which he retained until his death, which occurred at Oviedo on the 2nd of August 1655. The authorship of an anonymous work, Squitinio della libertà Veneta, published at Mirandola in 1612, has been attributed to him.
Some controversy has arisen over the Spanish plot of 1618, and some historians have suggested that it only existed in the minds of the Venetian senators, and was a ruse for forcing Bedmar to leave Venice. From what is known, however, of the policy of Spain at this time, it is by no means unlikely that such a scheme was planned.
See C. V. de Saint-Réal, Œuvres, tome iv. (Paris, 1745); P. J. Grosley, Discussion historique et critique sur la conjuration de Venise (Paris, 1756); P. A. N. B. Daru, Histoire de la république de Venise (Paris, 1853); A. Baschet, Histoire de la chancellerie secrète à Venise (Paris, 1870).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bedsore

See also Pressure ulcer on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BEDSORE, a form of ulceration or sloughing, occasioned in people who, through sickness or old age, are confined to bed, resulting from pressure or the irritation of sweat and dirt. Bedsores usually occur when there is a low condition of nutrition of the tissues. The more helpless the patient the more liable he is to bedsores, and especially when he is paralysed, delirious or insane, or when suffering from one of the acute specific fevers. They may occur wherever there is a pressure, more especially when any moisture is allowed to remain on the bedding; and thus lack of cleanliness is an important factor in the production of this condition. In large hospitals a bedsore is now a great rarity, and this, considering the helplessness of many of the patients treated, shows what good nursing can do. The bed must be made with a firm smooth mattress; the undersheet and blanket must be changed whenever they become soiled; the drawsheet is spread without creases, and changed the moment it becomes soiled. Preventive treatment must be followed from the first day of the illness. This consists in the most minute attention to cleanliness, and constant variation in the position of the patient. All parts subjected to pressure or friction must be frequently washed with soap and hot water, then thoroughly dried with a warm soft towel. The part should next be bathed in a solution of corrosive sublimate in spirits of wine, and finally dusted with an oxide of zinc and starch powder. This routine should be gone through not less than four times in the twenty-four hours in any case of prolonged illness. The pressure may be relieved over bony prominences by a water-pillow or by a piece of thick felt cut into a ring. Signs of impending bedsores must constantly be watched for. Where one threatens, the skin loses its proper colour, becoming either a deadly white or a dusky red, ​and the redness does not disappear on pressure. The surrounding tissues become oedematous, and pain is often severe, except in a case of paralysis. As the condition progresses further the pain ceases. The epidermis now becomes raised as in a blister, and finally becomes detached, forming an excoriation and exposing the papillae. Even at this late stage an actual ulceration can still be prevented if proper care is taken; but failing this, the skin sloughs and an ulcer forms. In treating this, the position of the patient must be such that no pressure is ever allowed on the sloughing tissue. A hot boracic pad under oil-silk should be applied, the affected part being first dusted with iodoform. If, however, the slough is very large, it is safer to avoid wet applications, and the parts should be dusted with animal charcoal and iodoform, and protected with a dry dressing. When the slough has separated and the sore is clean, friar’s balsam will hasten the healing process. In any serious illness the formation of a bedsore makes the prognosis far more grave, and may even bring about a fatal issue, either directly or indirectly.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bedloe, William

See also William Bedloe on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BEDLOE, WILLIAM (1650–1680), English informer, was born at Chepstow on the 20th of April 1650. He appears to have been well educated; he was certainly clever, and after coming to London in 1670 he became acquainted with some Jesuits and was occasionally employed by them. Calling himself now Captain Williams, now Lord Gerard or Lord Newport or Lord Cornwallis, he travelled from one part of Europe to another; he underwent imprisonments for crime, and became an expert in all kinds of duplicity. Then in 1678, following the lead of Titus Gates, he gave an account of a supposed popish plot to the English government, and his version of the details of the murder of Sir E.B. Godfrey was rewarded with £500. Emboldened by his success he denounced various Roman Catholics, married an Irish lady, and having become very popular lived in luxurious fashion. Afterwards his fortunes waned, and he died at Bristol on the 20th of August 1680. His dying depositions, which were taken by Sir Francis North, chief justice of the common pleas, revealed nothing of importance. Bedloe wrote a Narrative and impartial discovery of the horrid Popish Plot (1679), but all his statements are extremely untrustworthy.
See J. Pollock, The Popish Plot (1903).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Crossen

See also Krosno Odrzańskie on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer. (Part of Poland since 1945.)
​CROSSEN, or Krossen, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Prussia, on the Oder, here crossed by a bridge, at the influx of the Bober, 31 m. S.E. of Frankfort-on-Oder by rail. Pop. (1900) 7369. Of the churches in the town three are Protestant ​and one Roman Catholic. Besides the modern school (Realprogymnasium), there are a technical school for viniculture and fruit-growing and a dairy school. There are manufactories of copper and brass ware, cloth, &c., while in the surrounding country the chief industries are fruit and grape growing. There is a brisk shipping trade, mainly in wine, fruit and fish. Crossen was founded in 1005 and was important during the middle ages as a point of passage across the Oder. It attained civic rights in 1232, was for a time the capital of a Silesian duchy, which, on the death of Barbara of Brandenburg, widow of the last duke, passed to Brandenburg (1482). In May 1886 the town was devastated by a whirlwind.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Crosskey, Henry William

See also Henry William Crosskey on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CROSSKEY, HENRY WILLIAM (1826–1893), English geologist and Unitarian minister, was born at Lewes in Sussex, on the 7th of December 1826. After being trained for the ministry at Manchester New College (1843–1848), he became pastor of Friargate chapel, Derby, until 1852, when he accepted charge of a Unitarian congregation in Glasgow. In 1869 he removed to Birmingham, where until the close of his life he was pastor of the Church of the Messiah. While in Glasgow his interest was awakened in geology by the perusal of A. C. Ramsay’s Geology of the Isle of Arran, and from 1855 onwards he devoted his leisure to the pursuit of this science. He became an authority on glacial geology, and wrote much, especially in conjunction with David Robertson, on the post-tertiary fossiliferous beds of Scotland (Trans. Geol. Soc. Glasgow). He also prepared for the British Association a valuable series of Reports (1873–1892) on the erratic Blocks of England, Wales and Ireland. In conjunction with David Robertson and G. S. Brady he wrote the Monograph of the Post Tertiary Entomostraca of Scotland, &c. for the Palaeontographical Society (1874); and he edited H. Carvill Lewis’ Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland, issued posthumously (1894). He died at Edgbaston, Birmingham, on the 1st of October 1893.
See H. W. Crosskey: his Life and Work, by R. A. Armstrong (with chapter on his geological work by Prof. C. Lapworth, 1895).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Crotch, William

See also William Crotch on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CROTCH, WILLIAM (1775–1847), English musician, was born in Green’s Lane, Norwich, on the 5th of July 1775. His father was a master carpenter. The child was extraordinarily precocious, and when scarcely more than two years of age he played upon an organ of his parent’s construction something like the tune of “God save the King.” At the age of four he came to London and gave daily recitals on the organ in the rooms of a milliner in Piccadilly. The precocity of his musical intuition was almost equalled by a singularly early aptitude for drawing. In 1786 he went to Cambridge as assistant to Dr Randall the organist. His oratorio The Captivity of Judah was played at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, on the 4th of June 1789. He was then only fourteen years of age. His intention of entering the church carried him to Oxford in 1788, but the superior attractions of a musical career acquired an increasing influence over him, and in 1790 he was appointed organist of Christ Church. At the early age of twenty-two he was appointed professor of music in the university of Oxford, and there in 1799 he took his degree of doctor in that art. In 1800 and the four following years he read lectures on music at Oxford. Next he was appointed lecturer on music to the Royal Institution, and subsequently, in 1822, principal of the London Royal Academy of Music. His last years were passed at Taunton in the house of his son, the Rev. W. R. Crotch, where he died suddenly on the 29th of December 1847. He published a number of vocal and instrumental compositions, of which the best is his oratorio Palestine, produced in 1812. In 1831 appeared an 8vo volume containing the substance of his lectures on music, delivered at Oxford and in London. Previously, he had published three volumes of Specimens of Various Styles of Music. Among his didactic works is Elements of Musical Composition and Thorough-Bass (London, 1812). The oratorio bearing the title The Captivity of Judah, and produced on the occasion of the installation of the duke of Wellington as chancellor of the university of Oxford in 1834, is a totally different work from that which he wrote upon the same subject as a boy of fourteen. He arranged for the pianoforte a number of Handel’s oratorios and operas, besides symphonies and quartetts of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The great expectations excited by his infant precocity were not fulfilled; for he manifested no extraordinary genius for musical composition. But he was an industrious student and a sound artist, and his name remains familiar in English musical history.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cross River

See also Cross River (Nigeria) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CROSS RIVER, a river of West Africa, over 500 m. long. It rises in 6° N, 10° 30′ E. in the mountains of Cameroon, and flows at first N.W. In 8° 48′ E., 5° 50′ N. are a series of rapids; below this point the river is navigable for shallow-draught boats. At 8° 20′ E., 6° 10′ N., its most northern point, the river turns S.W. and then S., entering the Gulf of Guinea through the Calabar estuary. The Calabar river, which rises about 5° 30′ N., 8° 30′ E., has a course parallel to, and 10 to 20 m. east of, the Cross river. Near its mouth, on its east bank, is the town of Calabar (q.v.). It enters the estuary in 4° 45′ N. The Cross, Calabar, Kwa and other streams farther east, which rise on the flanks of the Cameroon Mountains, form a large delta. The Calabar and Kwa rivers are wholly within the British protectorate of Southern Nigeria, as is the Cross river from its mouth to the rapids mentioned. The upper course of the river is in German territory.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cross Springer

See also Cross Springer on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CROSS SPRINGER, in architecture, the block from which the diagonal ribs of a vault spring or start: the top of the springer is known as the skewback (see Arch).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Crossing

See also Crossing (architecture) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CROSSING, in architecture, the term given to the intersection of the nave and transept, frequently surmounted by a tower or by a dome on pendentives.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Crotchet

See also Crochet on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CROTCHET (from the Fr. croche, a hook; whence also the Anglicized “crochet,” pronounced as in French, for the knitting-work done with a hook instead of on pins), properly a small hook, and so used of the hook-like setae or bristles found in certain worms which burrow in sand. In music, a “crotchet” is a note of half the value of a minim and double that of a quaver; it is marked by a round black head and a line without a tail or hook; the French croche is used of a “quaver” which has a tail, but in ancient music the semiminima, the modern crotchet, is marked by an open note with a hook. Derived either from an old French proverbial phrase, il a des crochues en teste, or from a meaning of twist or turn, as in the similar expression “crank,” comes the sense of a whim, fancy or perverse idea, seen also in the adjective “crotchety” of a fussy unreasonable person.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Builth

See also Builth Wells on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BUILTH, or Builth Wells, a market town of Brecknockshire, Wales. Pop. of urban district (1901), 1805. It has a station on the Cambrian line between Moat Lane and Brecon, and two others (high and low levels) at Builth Road about 13/4 m. distant where the London & North-Western and the Cambrian cross one another. It is pleasantly situated in the upper valley of the Wye, in a bend of the river on its right bank below the confluence of its tributary the Irfon. During the summer it is a place of considerable resort for the sake of its waters—saline, chalybeate and sulphur—and it possesses the usual accessories of pump-rooms, baths and a recreation ground. The scenery of the Wye valley, including a succession of rapids just above the town, also attracts many tourists. The town is an important agricultural centre, its fairs for sheep and ponies in particular being well attended.
The town, called in Welsh Llanfair (yn) Muallt, i.e. St Mary’s in Builth, took its name from the ancient territorial division of Buallt in which it is situated, which was, according to Nennius, an independent principality in the beginning of the 9th century, and later a cantrev, corresponding to the modern hundred of Builth. Towards the end of the 11th century, when the tide of Norman invasion swept upwards along the Wye valley, the district became a lordship marcher annexed to that of Brecknock, but was again severed from it on the death of William de Breos, when his daughter Matilda brought it to her husband, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore. Its castle, built probably in Newmarch’s time, or shortly after, was the most advanced outpost of the invaders in a wild part of Wales where the tendency to revolt was always strong. It was destroyed in 1260 by Llewellyn ab Gruffydd, prince of Wales, with the supposed connivance of Mortimer, but its site was reoccupied by the earl of Lincoln in 1277, and a new castle at once erected. It was with the expectation that he might, with local aid, seize the castle, that Llewellyn invaded this district in December 1282, when he was surprised and killed by Stephen de Frankton in a ravine called Cwm Llewellyn on the left bank of the Irfon, 21/2 m. from the town. According to local tradition he was buried at Cefn-y-bedd (“the ridge of the grave”) close by, but it is more likely that his headless trunk was taken to Abbey Cwmhir. No other important event was associated with the castle, of which not a stone is now standing. The lordship remained in the marches till the Act of Union 1536, when it was grouped with a number of others so as to form the shire of Brecknock. The town was governed by a local board from 1866 until the establishment of an urban district council in 1894; the urban district was then made conterminous with the civil parish, and in 1898 it was re-named Builth Wells.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bukhārī

See also Muhammad al-Bukhari on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BUKHĀRĪ [Mahommed ibn Ismāʽīl al-Bukhārī] (810–872), Arabic author of the most generally accepted collection of traditions (ḥadīth) from Mahomet, was born at Bokhara (Bukhārā), of an Iranian family, in A.H. 194 (A.D. 810). He early distinguished himself in the learning of traditions by heart, and when, in his sixteenth year, his family made the pilgrimage to Mecca, he gathered additions to his store from the authorities along the route. Already, in his eighteenth year, he had devoted himself to the collecting, sifting, testing and arranging of traditions. For that purpose he travelled over the Moslem world, from Egypt to Samarkand, and learned (as the story goes) from over a thousand men three hundred thousand traditions, true and false. He certainly became the acknowledged authority on the subject, and developed a power and speed of memory ​which seemed miraculous, even to his contemporaries. His theological position was conservative and anti-rationalistic; he enjoyed the friendship and respect of Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal. In law, he appears to have been a Shāfiʽite. After sixteen years’ absence he returned to Bokhara, and there drew up his Ṣaḥīḥ, a collection of 7275 tested traditions, arranged in chapters so as to afford bases for a complete system of jurisprudence without the use of speculative law, the first book of its kind (see Mahommedan Law). He died in A.H. 256, in banishment at Kartank, a suburb of Samarkand. His book has attained a quasi-canonicity in Islām, being treated almost like the Koran, and to his grave solemn pilgrimages are made, and prayers are believed to be heard there.
See F. Wüstenfeld, Schāfi’iten, 78 ff.; M$^c$G. de Slane’s transl. of Ibn Khallikan, i. 594 ff.; I. Goldziher, Mohammedanische Studien, ii. 157 ff.; Nawawi, Biogr. Dict. 86 ff.  (D. B. Ma.)