Part 1
# Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bent, James" to "Bibirine": Volume 3, Slice 6 ### By Various
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Transcriber's notes:
(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an underscore, like C_n.
(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.
(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective paragraphs.
(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not inserted.
(5) [root] stands for the root symbol; [alpha], [beta], etc. for greek letters.
(6) The following typographical errors have been corrected:
ARTICLE BERKELEY, SIR WILLIAM: "His first term as governor, during which he seems to have been extremely popular with the majority of the colonists, was notable principally for his religious intolerance and his expulsion of the Puritans, who were in a great minority." 'expulsion' amended from 'expulson'.
ARTICLE BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXIUS PETROVICH: "To prevent underground intrigues, Bestuzhev now proposed the erection of a council of ministers, to settle all important affairs ..." 'underground' amended from 'undergound'.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME III, SLICE VI
Bent, James to Bibirine
ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:
BENT, JAMES THEODORE BERRYER, ANTOINE PIERRE BENT BERSERKER BENTHAM, GEORGE BERT, PAUL BENTHAM, JEREMY BERTANI, AGOSTINO BENTINCK, LORD WILLIAM BERTAT BENTINCK, LORD WILLIAM CAVENDISH BERTAUT, JEAN BENTIVOGLIO, GIOVANNI BERTH BENTIVOGLIO, GUIDO BERTHELOT, MARCELLIN PIERRE EUGENE BENTLEY, RICHARD (scholar) BERTHIER, LOUIS ALEXANDRE BENTLEY, RICHARD (publisher) BERTHOLLET, CLAUDE LOUIS BENTON, THOMAS HART BERTHON, EDWARD LYON BENTON HARBOR BERTHOUD, FERDINAND BENUE BERTILLON, LOUIS ADOLPHE BEN VENUE BERTIN BENZALDEHYDE BERTINORO, OBADIAH BENZENE BERTINORO BENZIDINE BERTOLD BENZOIC ACID BERTOLD VON REGENSBURG BENZOIN (ketone-alcohol) BERTRAM, CHARLES BENZOIN (balsamic resin) BERTRAND, HENRI GRATIEN BENZOPHENONE BERTRICH BENZYL ALCOHOL BERULLE, PIERRE DE BEOTHUK BERVIE BEOTHY, ODON BERWICK, JAMES FITZJAMES BEOWULF BERWICKSHIRE BEQUEST BERWICK-UPON-TWEED BERAIN, JEAN BERYL BERANGER, PIERRE JEAN DE BERYLLIUM BERAR BERYLLONITE BERARD, JOSEPH FREDERIC BERZELIUS, JONS JAKOB BERAT BES BERAUN BESANCON BERBER BESANT, SIR WALTER BERBERA BESENVAL DE BRONSTATT, PIERRE VICTOR BERBERINE BESKOW, BERNHARD VON BERBERS BESNARD, PAUL ALBERT BERCEUSE BESOM BERCHEM, NICOLAAS BESSARABIA BERCHTA BESSARION, JOHANNES BERCHTESGADEN BESSBOROUGH, EARLS OF BERCK BESSEGES BERDICHEV BESSEL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM BERDYANSK BESSEL FUNCTION BEREA BESSEMER, SIR HENRY BEREKHIAH NAQDAN BESSEMER BERENGARIUS BESSIERES, JEAN BAPTISTE BERENGER, ALPHONSE THOMAS BESSUS BERENICE (princesses) BEST, WILLIAM THOMAS BERENICE (seaport of Egypt) BESTIA BERESFORD, LORD DE LA POER BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXIUS PETROVICH BERESFORD, JOHN BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, MIKHAIL PETROVICH BERESFORD, WILLIAM BERESFORD BET and BETTING BEREZINA BETAINE BEREZOV BETEL NUT BEREZOVSK BETHANY BERG BETHEL BERGAMASK BETHENCOURT, JEAN DE BERGAMO BETHESDA (Jerusalem) BERGAMOT, OIL OF BETHESDA (Wales) BERGEDORF BETH-HORON BERGEN BETHLEHEM (Palestine) BERGEN-OP-ZOOM BETHLEHEM (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) BERGERAC BETHLEHEMITES BERGHAUS, HEINRICH BETHLEN, GABRIEL BERGK, THEODOR BETHNAL GREEN BERGLER, STEPHAN BETHUNE {family) BERGMAN, TORBERN OLOF BETHUNE, CONON DE BERGSCHRUND BETHUNE (town of France) BERGUES BETROTHAL BERHAMPUR (Bengal, India) BETTERMENT BERHAMPUR (Madras, India) BETTERTON, THOMAS BERI-BERI BETTIA BERING, VITUS BETTINELLI, SAVERIO BERING ISLAND, SEA and STRAIT BETTWS Y COED BERING SEA ARBITRATION BETTY, WILLIAM HENRY WEST BERIOT, CHARLES AUGUSTE DE BETUL BERJA BETWA BERKA BEUDANT, FRANCOIS SULPICE BERKELEY (English family) BEUGNOT, JACQUES CLAUDE BERKELEY, GEORGE BEULE, CHARLES ERNEST BERKELEY, MILES JOSEPH BEURNONVILLE, PIERRE DE RUEL BERKELEY, SIR WILLIAM BEUST, FRIEDRICH FERDINAND VON BERKELEY (California, U.S.A.) BEUTHEN (Niederbeuthen) BERKELEY (town of England) BEUTHEN (Oberbeuthen) BERKHAMPSTEAD BEVEL BERKSHIRE, THOMAS HOWARD BEVERLEY, WILLIAM ROXBY BERKSHIRE BEVERLEY BERLAD BEVERLY BERLICHINGEN, GOETZ BEVIS OF HAMPTON BERLIN, ISAIAH BEWDLEY BERLIN (German city) BEWICK, THOMAS BERLIN (New Hampshire, U.S.A.) BEXHILL BERLIN (Ontario, Canada) BEXLEY, NICHOLAS VANSITTART BERLIN (carriage) BEXLEY BERLIOZ, HECTOR BEY BERM BEYBAZAR BERMONDSEY BEYLE, MARIE HENRI BERMUDAS BEYRICH, HEINRICH ERNST VON BERMUDEZ BEYSCHLAG, WILLIBALD BERN (Swiss canton) BEZA, THEODORE BERN (Swiss city) BEZANT BERNARD, SAINT BEZANTEE BERNARD OF CHARTRES BEZBORODKO, ALEKSANDER ANDREEVICH BERNARD, CHARLES DE BEZEL BERNARD, CLAUDE BEZIQUE BERNARD, JACQUES BEZWADA BERNARD, MOUNTAGUE BHAGALPUR BERNARD, SIMON BHAMO BERNARD, SIR THOMAS BHANDARA BERNARDIN OF SIENA, ST BHANG BERNAUER, AGNES BHARAHAT BERNAY BHARAL BERNAYS, JAKOB BHARATPUR BERNBURG BHATGAON BERNERS, JOHN BOURCHIER BHATTIANA BERNERS, JULIANA BHAU DAJI BERNHARD OF SAXE-WEIMAR BHAUNAGAR BERNHARDT, SARAH BHEESTY BERNHARDY, GOTTFRIED BHERA BERNI, FRANCESCO BHILS BERNICIA BHIMA BERNICIAN SERIES BHIWANI BERNINI, GIOVANNI LORENZO BHOPAL BERNIS, FRANCOIS PIERRE DE BHOPAWAR BERNKASTEL BHOR BERNOULLI BHUJ BERNSTEIN, AARON BHUTAN BERNSTORFF, ANDREAS PETER BIANCHINI, FRANCESCO BERNSTORFF, CHRISTIAN GUNTHER BIARRITZ BERNSTORFF, JOHANN HARTWIG ERNST BIAS (Sage of Greece) BEROSSUS BIAS (something oblique) BERRY, CHARLES ALBERT BIBACULUS, MARCUS FURIUS BERRY, CHARLES FERDINAND BIBER, HEINRICH JOHANN FRANZ VON BERRY, JOHN BIBERACH BERRY BIBIRINE
BENT, JAMES THEODORE (1852-1897), English traveller, was the son of James Bent of Baildon House, near Leeds, Yorkshire, where he was born on the 30th of March 1852. He was educated at Repton school and Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1875. In 1877 he married Mabel, daughter of R.W. Hall-Dare of Newtownbarry, Co. Wexford, and she became his companion in all his travels. He went abroad every year and became thoroughly acquainted with Italy and Greece. In 1879 he published a book on the republic of San Marino, entitled _A Freak of Freedom_, and was made a citizen of San Marino; in the following year appeared _Genoa: How the Republic Rose and Fell_, and in 1881 a _Life of Giuseppe Garibaldi_. He spent considerable time in the Aegean archipelago, of which he wrote in _The Cyclades: or Life among the Insular Greeks_ (1885). From this period Bent devoted himself particularly to archaeological research. The years 1885-1888 were given up to investigations in Asia Minor, his discoveries and conclusions being communicated to the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_ and other magazines and reviews. In 1889 he undertook excavations in the Bahrein Islands of the Persian Gulf, and found evidence that they had been a primitive home of the Phoenician race. After an expedition in 1890 to Cilicia Trachea, where he obtained a valuable collection of inscriptions, Bent spent a year in South Africa, with the object, by investigation of some of the ruins in Mashonaland, of throwing light on the vexed question of their origin and on the early history of East Africa. He made the first detailed examination of the Great Zimbabwe. Bent described his work in _The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland_ (1892). In 1893 he investigated the ruins of Axum and other places in the north of Abyssinia, partially made known before by the researches of Henry Salt and others, and _The Sacred City of the Ethiopians_ (1893) gave an account of this expedition. Bent now visited at considerable risk the almost unknown Hadramut country (1893-1894), and during this and later journeys in southern Arabia he studied the ancient history of the country, its physical features and actual condition. On the Dhafar coast in 1894-1895 he visited ruins which he identified with the Abyssapolis of the frankincense merchants. In 1895-1896 he examined part of the African coast of the Red Sea, finding there the ruins of a very ancient gold-mine and traces of what he considered Sabean influence. While on another journey in South Arabia (1896-1897), Bent was seized with malarial fever, and died in London on the 5th of May 1897, a few days after his return. Mrs Bent, who had contributed by her skill as a photographer and in other ways to the success of her husband's journeys, published in 1900 _Southern Arabia, Soudan and Sakotra_, in which were given the results of their last expedition into that region. The conclusions at which Bent arrived as to the Semitic origin of the ruins in Mashonaland have not been accepted by archaeologists, but the value of his pioneer work is undeniable (see ZIMBABWE).
BENT. 1. (From "to bend"), primarily the result of bending; hence any inclination from the straight, as in curved objects like a hook or a bow; this survives in the modern phrase "to follow one's own bent," i.e. to pursue a certain course in a direction deviating from the normal, as also in such phrases as Chaucer's "Downward on a hill under a bent," indicating a hollow or declivity in the general configuration of the land. From the bending of a bow comes the idea of tension, as in Hamlet, "they fool me to the top of my bent," i.e. to the utmost of my capacity. 2. (From the O. Eng. _beonet_, a coarse, rushy grass growing in wet places; cf. the Ger. _Binse_, a reed), the name ("bent" or "bennet") popularly applied to several kinds of grass and surviving in the form "bent-grass."
BENTHAM, GEORGE (1800-1884), English botanist, was born at Stoke near Portsmouth on the 22nd of September 1800. His father, Sir Samuel Bentham (1757-1831), was the only brother of Jeremy Bentham, the publicist, and of scarcely inferior ability though in a different direction. Devoting himself in early life to the study of naval architecture, Sir Samuel went to Russia to visit the naval establishments in the Baltic and Black Seas. He was induced to enter the service of the empress Catherine II., built a flotilla of gunboats and defeated the Turkish fleet. For this he was made, in addition to other honours, colonel of a cavalry regiment. On the death of the empress he returned to England to be employed by the admiralty, and was sent (1805-1807) again to Russia to superintend the building of some ships for the British navy. He attained the rank, under the admiralty, of inspector-general of naval works. He introduced a multitude of improvements in naval organization, and it was largely through his recommendation that M.I. Brunel's block-making machinery was installed at Portsmouth.
George Bentham had neither a school nor a college education, but early acquired the power of giving sustained and concentrated attention to any subject that occupied him--one essential condition of the success he attained as perhaps the greatest systematic botanist of the 19th century. Another was his remarkable linguistic aptitude. At the age of six to seven he could converse in French, German and Russian, and he learnt Swedish during a short residence in Sweden when little older. At the close of the war with France, the Benthams made a long tour through that country, staying two years at Montauban, where Bentham studied Hebrew and mathematics in the Protestant Theological School. They eventually settled in the neighbourhood of Montpellier where Sir Samuel purchased a large estate.
The mode in which George Bentham was attracted to the botanical studies which became the occupation of his life is noteworthy; it was through the applicability to them of the logical methods which he had imbibed from his uncle's writings, and not from any special attraction to natural history pursuits. While studying at Angouleme a copy of A.P. de Candolle's _Flore francaise_ fell into his hands and he was struck with the analytical tables for identifying plants. He immediately proceeded to test their use on the first that presented itself. The result was successful and he continued to apply it to every plant he came across. A visit to London in 1823 brought him into contact with the brilliant circle of English botanists. In 1826, at the pressing invitation of his uncle, he agreed to act as his secretary, at the same time entering at Lincoln's Inn and reading for the bar. He was called in due time and in 1832 held his first and last brief. The same year Jeremy Bentham died, leaving his property to his nephew. His father's inheritance had fallen to him the previous year. He was now in a position of modest independence, and able to pursue undistractedly his favourite studies. For a time these were divided between botany, jurisprudence and logic, in addition to editing his father's professional papers. Bentham's first publication was his _Catalogue des plantes indigenes des Pyrenees et du Bas Languedoc_ (Paris, 1826), the result of a careful exploration of the Pyrenees in company with G.A. Walker Arnott (1799-1868), afterwards professor of botany in the university of Glasgow. It is interesting to notice that in it Bentham adopted the principle from which he never deviated, of citing nothing at second-hand. This was followed by articles on various legal subjects: on codification, in which he disagreed with his uncle, on the laws affecting larceny and on the law of real property. But the most remarkable production of this period was the _Outline of a New System of Logic, with a Critical Examination of Dr Whately's Elements of Logic_ (1827). In this the principle of the quantification of the predicate was first explicitly stated. This Stanley Jevons declared to be "undoubtedly the most fruitful discovery made in abstract logical science since the time of Aristotle." Before sixty copies had been sold the publisher became bankrupt and the stock went for wastepaper. The book passed into oblivion, and it was not till 1873 that Bentham's claims to priority were finally vindicated against those of Sir William Hamilton by Herbert Spencer. In 1836 he published his _Labiatarum genera et species_. In preparing this work he visited, between 1830-1834, every European herbarium, several more than once. The following winter was passed in Vienna, where he produced his _Commentationes de Leguminosarum generibus_, published in the annals of the Vienna Museum. In 1842 he removed to Pontrilas in Herefordshire. His chief occupation for some succeeding years was his contributions to the _Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis_, which was being carried on by his friend, A.P. deCandolle. In all these dealt with some 4730 species.
In 1854 he found the maintenance of a herbarium and library too great a tax on his means. He therefore offered them to the government on the understanding that they should form the foundation of such necessary aids to research in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. At the same time he contemplated the abandonment of botanical work. Fortunately, he yielded to the persuasion of Sir William Hooker, John Lindley and other scientific friends. In 1855 he took up his residence in London, and worked at Kew for five days a week, with a brief summer holiday, from this time onwards till the end of his life. As his friend Asa Gray wrote: "With such methodical habits, with freedom from professional or administrative functions, which consume the time of most botanists, with steady devotion to his chosen work, and with nearly all authentic material and needful appliances at hand or within reach, it is not so surprising that he should have undertaken and have so well accomplished such a vast amount of work, and he has the crowning merit and happy fortune of having completed all that he undertook." The government, in 1857, sanctioned a scheme for the preparation of a series of Floras or descriptions in the English language of the indigenous plants of British colonies and possessions. Bentham began with the _Flora Hongkongensis_ in 1861, which was the first comprehensive work on any part of the little-known flora of China. This was followed by the _Flora Australiensis_, in seven volumes (1863-1878), the first flora of any large continental area that had ever been finished. His greatest work was the _Genera Plantarum_, begun in 1862, and concluded in 1883 in collaboration with Sir Joseph Hooker, "the greater portion being," as Sir Joseph Hooker tells us, "the product of Bentham's indefatigable industry." As age gradually impaired his bodily powers, he seemed at last only to live for the completion of this monumental work.
When the last revise of the last sheet was returned to the printer, the stimulus was withdrawn, and his powers seemed suddenly to fail him. He began a brief autobiography, but the pen with which he had written his two greatest works broke in his hand in the middle of a page. He accepted the omen, laid aside the unfinished manuscript and patiently awaited the not distant end. He died on the both of September 1884, within a fortnight of his 84th birthday.
The scientific world received the _Genera Plantarum_ with as unanimous an assent as was accorded to the _Species Plantarum_ of Linnaeus. Bentham possessed, as Professor Daniel Oliver remarked, "an insight of so special a character as to deserve the name of genius, into the relative value of characters for practical systematic work, and as a consequence of this, a sure sifting of essentials from non-essentials in each respective grade." His preparation for his crowning work had been practically lifelong. There are few parts of the world upon the botany of which he did not touch. In the sequence and arrangement of the great families of flowering plants, different views from those of Bentham may be adopted. But Bentham paved the way by an intimate and exact statement of the structural facts and their accurate relationship, which is not likely to be improved. In method and style, in descriptive work, Bentham was a supreme master. This, to quote Professor Oliver again, is "manifest not only in its terseness, aptness and precision, but especially in the judicious selection of diagnostic marks, and in the instinctive estimate of probable range in variation, which long experience and innate genius for such work could alone inspire." (W. T. T.-D.)
BENTHAM, JEREMY (1748-1832), English philosopher and jurist, was born on the 15th of February 1748 in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, London, in which neighbourhood his grandfather and father successively carried on business as attorneys. His father, who was a wealthy man and possessed at any rate a smattering of Greek, Latin and French, was thought to have demeaned himself by marrying the daughter of an Andover tradesman, who afterwards retired to a country house near Reading, where young Jeremy spent many happy days. The boy's talents justified the ambitious hopes which his parents entertained of his future. When three years old he read eagerly such works as Rapin's _History_ and began the study of Latin. A year or two later he learnt to play the violin and to speak French. At Westminster school he obtained a reputation for Greek and Latin verse writing; and he was only thirteen when he was matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford, where his most important acquisition seems to have been a thorough acquaintance with Sanderson's logic. He became a B.A. in 1763, and in the same year entered at Lincoln's Inn, and took his seat as a student in the queen's bench, where he listened with rapture to the judgments of Lord Mansfield. He managed also to hear Blackstone's lectures at Oxford, but says that he immediately detected the fallacies which underlay the rounded periods of the future judge.
Bentham's family connexions would naturally have given him a fair start at the bar, but this was not the career for which he was preparing himself. He spent his time in making chemical experiments and in speculating upon legal abuses, rather than in reading Coke upon Littleton and the Reports. On being called to the bar he "found a cause or two at nurse for him, which he did his best to put to death," to the bitter disappointment of his father, who had confidently looked forward to seeing him upon the woolsack. The first fruits of Bentham's studies, the _Fragment on Government_, appeared in 1776. This masterly attack upon Blackstone's praises of the English constitution was variously attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden and Lord Ashburton. One important result of its publication was that, in 1781, Lord Shelburne (afterwards first marquess of Lansdowne) called upon its author in his chambers at Lincoln's Inn. Henceforth Bentham was a frequent guest at Bowood, where he saw the best society and where he met Miss Caroline Fox (daughter of the second Lord Holland), to whom he afterwards made a proposal of marriage. In 1785 Bentham started, by way of Italy and Constantinople, on a visit to his brother, Samuel Bentham, a naval engineer, holding the rank of colonel in the Russian service; and it was in Russia that he wrote his _Defence of Usury_. Disappointed after his return to England in 1788 in the hope which he had entertained, through a misapprehension of something said by Lord Lansdowne, of taking a personal part in the legislation of his country, he settled down to the yet higher task of discovering and teaching the principles upon which all sound legislation must proceed. The great work, upon which he had been engaged for many years, the _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, was published in 1789. His fame spread widely and rapidly. He was made a French citizen in 1792; and his advice was respectfully received in most of the states of Europe and America, with many of the leading men of which he maintained an active correspondence. In 1817 he became a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. His ambition was to be allowed to prepare a code of laws for his own or some foreign country. During nearly a quarter of a century he was engaged in negotiations with the government for the erection of a "Panopticon," for the central inspection of convicts; a plan suggested to him by a building designed by his brother Samuel, for the better supervision of his Russian shipwrights. This scheme, which it was alleged would render transportation unnecessary, was eventually abandoned, and Bentham received in 1813, in pursuance of an act of parliament, L23,000 by way of compensation. It was at a later period of his life that he propounded schemes for cutting canals through the isthmus of Suez and the isthmus of Panama. In 1823 he established the _Westminster Review_. Emboldened perhaps by the windfall of 1813, Bentham in the following year took a lease of Ford Abbey, a fine mansion with a deer-park, in Dorsetshire; but in 1818 returned to the house in Queen's Square Place which he had occupied since the death of his father in 1792. It was there that he died on the 6th of June 1832 in his eighty-fifth year. In accordance with his directions, his body was dissected in the presence of his friends, and the skeleton is still preserved in University College, London.
Bentham's life was a happy one of its kind. His constitution, weakly in childhood, strengthened with advancing years so as to allow him to get through an incredible amount of sedentary labour, while he retained to the last the fresh and cheerful temperament of a boy. An ample inherited fortune permitted him to pursue his studies undistracted by the necessity for earning a livelihood, and to maximize the results of his time and labour by the employment of amanuenses and secretaries. He was able to gather around him a group of congenial friends and pupils, such as the Mills, the Austins and Bowring, with whom he could discuss the problems upon which he was engaged, and by whom several of his books were practically rewritten from the mass of rough though orderly memoranda which the master had himself prepared. Thus, for instance, was the _Rationale of Judicial Evidence_ written out by J.S. Mill and the _Book of Fallacies_ by Bingham. The services which Dumont rendered in recasting as well as translating the works of Bentham were still more important.