pnugues/EB7 huggingface dataset:
BUTTON, an article in dress, the form and use of which are too well known to need description.

Mxtal Buttons. The metal with which the moulds are intended to be covered is first cast into small ingots, and then flatted into thin plates or leaves, of the thickness intended, at the flattening mills; after which it is cut into small round pieces proportional to the size of the mould they are intended to cover, by means of proper punches, on a block of wood covered with a thick plate of lead. Each piece of metal thus cut out of the plate is reduced into the form of a button by beating it successively in several cavities, or concave moulds, of a spherical form, with a convex puncheon of iron, always beginning with the shallowest cavity of the mould, and proceeding to the deeper, till the plate has acquired the intended form ļ and the better to manage so thin a plate, ten, twelve, and sometimes even twenty-four, are formed to the cavities, or concave moulds, at once; often nealing the metal during the operation, to make it more ductile. This plate is generally called by workmen the cop of the button.

The form being thus given to the plates or caps, the intended impression is struck on the convex side, by means of a similar iron puncheon, in a kind of mould engraven en creux, either by the hammer or the press used in coining. The cavity or mould in which the impression is to be made is of a diameter and depth suitable to the sort of button intended to be struck in it; each kind requiring a particular mould. Between the puncheon and the plate is placed a thin piece of lead, called by workmen a hob, which greatly contributes to take off all the strokes of the engraving; the lead, by reason of its softness, easily giving way to the parts which have relief, and as easily insinuating itself into the traces or indentures.

The plate thus prepared makes the cap or shell of the button. The lower part is formed of another plate, in the same manner, but much flatter, and without any impression. To the last or under plate is soldered a small eye, made of wire, by which the button is to be fastened.

The two plates being thus finished, they are soldered together with soft solder, and then turned in a lathe. Generally indeed they use a wooden mould instead of the under plate; and in order to fasten it, they pass a thread or gut across through the middle of the mould, and fill the cavity between the mould and the cap with cement, in order to render the button firm and solid; for the cement entering all the cavities formed by the relief of the other side, sustains it, prevents its flattening, and preserves its bosse or design.

Button’s Bay, the name of the northern part of Hudson’s Bay, in North America, by which Sir Thomas Button attempted to find out a north-west passage to the East Indies. It lies between long. 80° and 100° west, and between lat. 60° and 66° north.
BUTTOOL, a small district of Hindustan, in the northern extremity of the province of Oude, ceded to the British by the treaty concluded in 1801 with the nabob of Oude. On the north it is separated by hills and forests from the territories of the Goorkhali rajah of Nepaul.
BUTTRESS, a kind of abutment built archwise, or a mass of stone or brick, serving to prop or support the sides of a building or wall on the outside, where it is either very high, or has any considerable load to sustain on the other side, as a bank of earth, or the like. Buttresses are used against the angles of steeples and other buildings of stone, on the outside and along the walls of such buildings as have great and heavy roofs, which· would be subject to thrust out the walls, unless very thick, if no buttresses were placed against them. They are also placed for a support and abutment against the feet of some arches that are turned across great halls in old palaces, abbeys, and the like.
BUTZOW, a city in the grand duchy of Mecklenburg Schwerin. It is situated near a lake on the river Warnow, and is the seat of a provincial judicature. The inhabitants amount to 2964, who are employed mostly in linen manufactures.
BUXTEHUDE, a small city in the province of Bremen, and kingdom of Hanover. It is situated on the river Este, is walled, and contains about 1700 inhabitants, who find employment in making soap, leather, snuff, hosiery, and some baize.
BUXAR, a town of Hindustan, in the province of Bahar, district of Shahabad, situated on the south bank of the Ganges. The fort, which, though of small size, commands the Ganges, is now dismantled. At this place every boat navigating the river, as well as every land traveller, is obliged to stop and produce a pass; and the police is very strict. This place is distinguished by a celebrated victory gained here in 1764 by the British forces under Major, afterwards Sir Hector Munro, over the united armies of Sujah ud Dowlah and Cossim Ali Khan. Travelling distance from Benares seventy miles; from Calcutta by Moorshedabad 485, and by Birboom 408 miles. Long. 83. 58. E. Lat. 25. 35. N.
BUXTORF, John, a learned professor of Hebrew at Basel, who, in the seventeenth century, acquired the highest reputation for his knowledge of the Hebrew and Chaldee languages. He died of the plague at Basel in 1629, aged sixty-five. His principal works are, 1. A small but excellent Hebrew Grammar, the best edition of which is that of Leyden in 1701, revised by Leusden; 2. A treasure of the Hebrew Grammar; 3. A Hebrew Concordance, and several Hebrew Lexicos; 4. Institutio epistolaris Hebraica ; 5. De Abbreviaturis Hebraeorum, &c.

Buxtorf, John, the son of the former, and a learned professor of the oriental languages at Basel, distinguished himself, like his father, by his knowledge of the Hebrew language, and his rabbinical learning. He died at Basel in 1664, aged sixty-five years. His principal works are, L His translation of the More Nevochim and the Cozri ; 2. A Chaldee and Syriac Lexico; 3. An Anti-critique against Cappel; 4. A treatise on the Hebrew Points and Accents, against the same Cappel.
BUYING, the act of making a purchase, or of acquiring the property of a thing for a certain price.

Buying the Pefusal is giving money for the right or liberty of purchasing a thing at a fixed price in a certain time to come, and is chiefly used in dealing for shares in stock. This is sometimes also called by a cant name, buying the bear. Buying the Small Pox, is an appellation given to a method of procuring that disease by an operation similar to inoculation. It was performed either by rubbing some of the pus taken out of a pustule of a variolous person on the skin, or by making a puncture in the skin with a pin dipped in such pus.
BUZOT, a town of the province of Valencia, in Spain, about ten miles from Alicant, in a most romantic situation. It is 'celebrated for its warm baths, and for the kermes collected from the quercus coccifera.
BUZZARD. See Ornithology, Index.
BYROM, John, an ingenious poet of Manchester, born in 1691. His first poetical essay appeared in the Spectator, No. 603, beginning, “My time, 0 ye Muses, was happily spent which, with two humorous letters on dreams, are to be found in the eighth volume. He was admitted a member of the Royal Society in 1724; and having originally entertained thoughts of practising physic, to which the title of doctor is incident, that was the appellation by which he was always known; but reducing himself to narrow circumstances by a precipitate marriage, he supported himself by teaching a new method of writing shorthand, of his own invention, until an estate devolved to him by the death of an elder brother. He was a man of lively wit; of which, whenever a favourable opportunity tempted him to indulge it, he gave many humorous specimens. He died in 1763; and a collection of his miscellaneous poems was printed at Manchester, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1773.
BYSSUS, or Byssum, a fine thready matter produced in India, Egypt, and the vicinity of Elis in Achaia, of which the richest apparel was anciently made, especially that worn by the priests, both Jewish and Egyptian. Some interpreters render the Greek βυαδoς, which occurs both in the Old and New Testament, by Jine linen. But other versions, as Calvin’s, and the Spanish one printed at Venice in 1556, explain the word by silk; and yet byssus must have been different from our silk, as appears from a multitude of ancient writers, and particularly from Julius Pollux. Μ. Simon, who renders the word by fine linen, adds a note to explain it, bearing “that there was a fine kind of linen very dear, which the great lords alone wore in this country as well as in Egypt;” an account which agrees perfectly well with that given by Hesychius, as well as with the observation of Bochart, that the byssus was a finer kind of linen, which was frequently dyed of a purple colour. Some authors will have the byssus to be the same with our cotton; others take it for the linum asbestinum ; and a third class conceive it to have been the lock or bunch of silky hair found adhering to the pinna marina, by which the latter fastens itself to neighbouring bodies. Authors usually distinguish two sorts of byssus; that of Elis, and that of Judaea, which was the finest. Of this latter the priestly ornaments were made. Bonfrerius remarks, that there must have been two sorts of byssus, one finer than ordinary, by reason there are two Hebrew words used in Scripture to denote byssus; one of which is always used in speaking of the habit of the priests, and the other in alluding to that of the Levites.
BZOVIUS, Abraham, one of the most celebrated writers[7:5:762] in the seventeenth century, in as far as respects the number of pieces composed by him. His chief work is the continuation of Baronius’s Annals. He was a native of Poland, and a Dominican friar. Upon his arrival at Rome he was received with open arms by the Pope, and had an apartment assigned him in the Vatican. He merited that reception, for he has imitated Baronius to admiration, in his design of making all things conspire to enhance the power and glory of the papal see. He died in 1630, aged seventy.
C, THE third letter, and second consonant, of the alphabet, is pronounced like k before the vowels a, o, and u, and like s before e, i, and y. C is formed, according to Scaliger, from the κ of the Greeks, by retrenching the stem or upright line; though others derive it from the ב of the Hebrews, which has in effect the same form; only, that as the Hebrews read towards the left, and the Latins and other western nations towards the right, each, turned the letter their own way. However, the C not being the same as to sound with the Hebrew caph, ב, and it being certain that the Romans did not borrow their letters immediately from the Hebrews or other orientals, but from the Greeks, the derivation from the Greek κ is upon the whole the more probable. Indeed Montfaucon, in his Paloeographia, gives some forms of the Greek κ which approach very near to that of our C; and Suidas calls the C the Roman kappa. Before the first Punic war C held the place which is now occupied by G, as appears from the Duilian Column, where we meet with acnam for agnam, lccionern for legionem, and exfociont for effugiunt. The second sound of C resembles that of the Greek 2; and many instances occur of ancient inscriptions, in which Σ has the same form with’ our C. Grammarians are pretty generally agreed that the Romans pronounced their Q like our C, and their C like our K. Mabillon informs us that Charles the Great was the first who wrote his name with a C; whereas all his predecessors of the same name wrote it with a K; and the same difference is observable in their coins. As an abbreviature, C stands for Caius, Carolus, Caesar, condemno, &c., and CC represent consulibus. As a numeral, C signifies 100, CC 200, and so on. C, in Music, placed after the cleff, intimates that the music is in common time, which is either quick or slow as it is joined with allegro or adagio; but if alone, it is usually adagio. If the C be crossed or turned, the first, requires the air to be played quick, and the last very quick.
CAABA, or Caabah, properly signifies a square stone building, but it is particularly applied by the Mahommedans to the temple at Mecca, built, as they pretend, by Abraham and his son Ishmael. This temple enjoys the privilege of an asylum for all sorts of criminals; but it is most remarkable for the pilgrimages made to it by the devout Moslemins, who pay it so great a veneration that they account a single sight of its sacred walls, without any particular act of devotion, as meritorious in the sight of God, as the most careful discharge of one’s duty, for the space of a whole year, in any other temple.
CAANA, or Kaana, a town in Upper Egypt, seated on the eastern bank of the river Nile, whence corn and pulse are carried for the supply of Mecca in Arabia. Here are several monuments of antiquity yet remaining, adorned with hieroglyphics. Long. 32. 23. E. Lat. 24. 30. N.
CAB, a Hebrew dry measure, being the sixth part of a seah or satum, and the eighteenth part of an ephah. A cab contained 2∣∙ pints of our old corn measure.
CABAL, a name aptly given to the infamous ministry of Charles II. composed of five persons, Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale, the first letters of whose names, in this order, furnished the appellation by which they were distinguished.
CABALLARIA, in middle-age writers, lands held by the tenure of furnishing a horseman with suitable equipage during war, or when the lord had occasion for him.
CABALLEROS, or Cavalleros, are Spanish wools, of which there is a pretty considerable trade at Bayonne in France, and other places.
CABALLINE denotes something belonging to horses. Thus caballine aloes is so called, from its being chiefly used for purging horses; and common brimstone is called sulphur caballinum, for a similar reason.
CABBAGE. See Horticulture.
CABBALA, according to the Hebrew style, has a very distinct signification from that in which we understand it in our language. The Hebrew cabbala signifies tradition; and the rabbin, who are called cabbalists, study principally the combination of particular words, letters, and numbers, by which means they pretend to discover what is to come, and to see clearly into the sense of many difficult passages of Scripture. There are no sure principles of this knowledge, which in fact depends upon some particular traditions of the ancients; for which reason it is termed cabbala. The cabbalists have abundance of names which they call sacred, and not only make use of in invoking spirits, but imagine that they derive great light from them. They tell us that the secrets of the cabbala were discovered to Moses on Mount Sinai; and that these have been delivered down to them from father to son without interruption, and without any use of letters; for to write them down is what they are by no means permitted to do. This is likewise termed the oral law, because it passed from father to son, in order to distinguish it from the written law. There is another cabbala, called artificial, which consists in searching for abstruse and mysterious significations of a word in Scripture, from which are borrowed certain explanations, by combining the letters which compose it. This cabbala is divided into three kinds, the gematric, the notarico, and the themora or themura. The first, or gematric, [7:5:765]consists in taking the letters of a Hebrew word for ciphers or arithmetical numbers, and explaining every word by the arithmetical value of the letters of which it is composed; the second, called notarico, consists in taking every particular letter of a word for an entire diction; and the third, called themura, or change, consists in making different transpositions or changes of letters, placing one for the other, or one before the other. Among the Christians, likewise, a certain sort of magic is, by mistake, called cabbala, and consists in using improperly certain passages of Scripture for magical operations, or in forming magical characters or figures with stars and talismans. Some visionaries among the Jews believe that Jesus Christ wrought his miracles by virtue of the ridiculous mysteries of the cabbala.
CABBALISTS, the Jewish doctors who profess the study of the cabbala. In the opinion of these men, there is not a word, letter, nor accent in the law, without some mystery in it. The Jews are divided into two general sects; the Karaites, who refuse to receive either tradition or the Talmud, or any thing but the pure texts of Scripture; and the Rabbinists, or Talmudists, who besides this receive the traditions of the ancients, and follow the Talmud. The latter are again divided into two other sects; pure rabbinists, who explain the Scripture in its natural sense, by grammar, history, and tradition; and cabbalists, who, to discover hidden and mystical senses, which they suppose God to have couched therein, make use of the cabbala and the mystical methods above mentioned.
CABECA, or Cabess, a name given to the finest silks in the East Indies, while those from fifteen to twenty per cent, inferior to them are called barina. The Indian workmen endeavour to pass them off one with the other; for which reason the more experienced European merchants take care to open the bales, and to examine all the skaines one after another. The Dutch distinguish two sorts of cabecas, namely, the moor cabeça and the common cabeça.
CABELLO, or Cavello Porto, a sea-port of Venezuela, in South America, with an excellent harbour and bay. It is situated a league to the west of the harbour of Bon-burata, and has become the centre of the commerce and navigation of the province of Venezuela. The bay is exceedingly commodious, safe, and well defended from the prevailing winds. The trade of Cabello is considerable, and principally carried on with the ports of the same continent and with the neighbouring colonies; but only a few vessels are employed in that trade with the mother country. Population 8000. Long. 10. 20. E. Lat. 34. N.
CABENDA, a great emporium on the western coast of Africa, situated a little to the north of the river Zaire, in the district of Cacongo. From the remarkable beauty and fertility of its situation, it has been called the Paradise of the coast. The bay is very commodious for trade, wooding, and watering. Long. 12. 30. E. Lat. 5. 40. S.
CABEZA DE BUEY, a town in the Spanish province of Estremadura, with 3500 souls. There is carried on here a cloth manufactory, which employs 1666 workmen.
CABEZZO. See Angola.
CABIDOS, or Cavidos, a long measure used at Goa, and other places of the East Indies belonging to the Portuguese, to measure stuffs, linens, and the like, and equal to four-sevenths of the Paris ell.
CABIN, a room or apartment in a ship, where any of the officers usually reside. There are many of these in a large ship, the principal of which is designed for the captain or commander. The apartments where the inferior officers or common sailors sleep and mess are usually called berths.
CABINET, the most retired place in the finest part of a building, set apart for writing, studying, or preserving any thing that is precious.

Cabinet also denotes a piece of joiner’s workmanship, being a kind of press or chest, with several doors and drawers. There are common cabinets of oak or of chestnut varnished, cabinets of China and Japan, cabinets of inlaid work, and cabinets of ebony, or other precious woods.

Cabinet is also used in speaking of the more select and secret councils of princes. Thus, we say the secrets, the intrigues of the cabinet. To avoid the inconveniences of a numerous council, the policy of Italy and the practice of France first introduced cabinet councils.

Cabinet-Making. See Joinery.
CABIRI, a term in the theology of the ancient Pagans, signifying great and powerful gods, and being a name given to the gods of Samothracia. They were also worshipped in other parts of Greece, as Lemnos and Thebes, where the Cabiria were celebrated in honour of them. These gods are said to have been in number four, namely, Axieros, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus.
CABIRIA, festivals in honour of the Cabiri, celebrated in Thebes and Lemnos, but especially in Samothracia, an island consecrated to the Cabiri. All persons initiated in the mysteries of these gods were thought to be thereby secure against storms at sea, and all other dangers. The ceremony of initiation was performed by placing the candidate, crowned with olive branches, and girded about the loins with a purple riband, on a kind of throne, about which danced the priests and persons previously initiated.
CABLE, a thick, large, strong rope, commonly of hemp, which serves to keep a ship at anchor.

Cable is also applied to ropes which are used to raise heavy loads by the help of cranes, pulleys, and other engines. The name cable is usually given to such as are at least three inches in circumference; those which are less are only called ropes, of different names, according to their use. See Rope-making. Sheet Anchor Cable is the greatest cable belonging to a ship.

Stream Cable, a hawser or rope, used to moor the ship in a river or haven sheltered from the wind and sea.

Cable s Length, a measure of 120 fathoms, or of the usual length of the cable.
CABRA, a town of Central Africa, situated on the Niger, and serving as a port to Timbuctoo, from which it is about twelve miles distant. It is represented as consisting of one long row of about 1200 houses along the river; the ground is wet and marshy. The people are entirely employed in trade.
CABRERA, an island belonging to Spain, in the Mediterranean Sea, to the south of Majorca. There is a castle, and a presidio to which delinquents are transported, and kept to hard labour, from the neighbouring ports of the peninsula. It is provided with excellent springs of water, and the harbour is of great capacity, and has good anchorage, with from fifteen to twenty fathoms of water, so that the largest ships of war can enter. The centre of the island is in long. 3. 31. 26. E. and lat. 39. 7. 30. N.
CABYNA, a small island in the Eastern Seas, about twenty-one miles in length by fiffeen in breadth, lying due south of the eastern extremity of Celebes. Long. 121. 53. E. Lat. 5. 18. S.
CACAVONE, a town of Italy, in the Neapolitan province Molese, with 2247 inhabitants.
CACCAMO, a city in the intendancy of Palermo, in the island of Sicily. It is situated on the shore, and contains 6420 inhabitants.
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CACERES, a town of Spain, in the province of Estremadura. It is situated on the left bank of the Tagus, between Alcantara and Truxillo, and principally known from giving its name to a particular kind of Merino wool, or a second or third rate fineness. It contains 8000 inhabitants, and has twenty-six tanneries, which employ sixty-two workmen, and complete 16,680 pieces; it has also three potteries, seven rope-walks, and four dyeing houses.
CACHALONG, a name given by mineralogists to a peculiar variety of calcedony. It is commonly of a milk-white colour, and translucent, occurring imbedded in the trap rocks of Iceland and Faro, along with calcedony. It is met with also on the borders of the river Cach in Bukharia; whence its designation.