Part 34

BOUVARDIA, a genus of handsome evergreen greenhouse shrubs, belonging to the natural order Rubiaceae, and a native of tropical America. The flowers are in terminal generally many-flowered clusters; the corolla has a large tube and a spreading four-rayed limb. The cultivated forms include a number of hybrids. The plants are best increased by cuttings taken off in April, and placed in a brisk heat in a propagating frame with a close atmosphere. When rooted they should be potted singly into 3-in. pots in fibrous peat and loam, mixed with one-fourth leaf-mould and a good sprinkling of sand, and kept in a temperature of 70 deg. by night and 80 deg. during the day; shade when required; syringe overhead in the afternoon and close the house with sun-heat. The plants should be topped to ensure a bushy habit, and as they grow must be shifted into 6-in. or 7-in. pots. After midsummer move to a cool pit, where they may remain till the middle of September, receiving plenty of air and space. They should then be removed to a house, and some of the plants put at once in a temperature of about 70 deg. at night, with a few degrees higher in the daytime, to bring them into flower. Others are moved into heat to supply flowers in succession through the winter and spring.

BOUVET, FRANCOIS JOSEPH (1753-1832), French admiral, son of a captain in the service of the French East India Company, was born on the 23rd of April 1753. He went to sea at the age of twelve with his father. Bouvet served in the East Indies in the famous campaign of 1781-83 under the command of Suffren, but only in a subordinate rank. On the outbreak of the French Revolution he very naturally took the anti-royalist side. Murder and exile had removed the great majority of the officers of the monarchy, and the services of a man of Bouvet's experience were valuable. He was promoted captain and received the command of the "Audacieux" (80) in the first great fleet collected by the republic. In the same year (1793) he was advanced to rear-admiral, and he commanded a division in the fleet which fought the battle of the 1st of June 1794 against Lord Howe. Until the close of 1796 he continued in command of a squadron in the French Channel fleet. In the December of that year he was entrusted with the van division of the fleet which was sent from Brest to attempt to land General Hoche with an expeditionary force in the south of Ireland. The stormy weather which scattered the French as soon as they left Brest gave Bouvet a prominence which he had not been designed to enjoy. Bouvet, who found himself at daybreak on the 17th of December separated with nine sail of the line from the rest of the fleet, opened his secret orders, and found that he was to make his way to Mizen Head. He took a wide course to avoid meeting British cruisers, and on the 19th had the good luck to fall in with a considerable part of the rest of the fleet and some of the transports. On the 21st of December he arrived off Dursey Island at the entry to Bantry Bay. On the 24th he anchored near Bear Island with part of his fleet. The continued storms which blew down Bantry Bay, and the awkwardness of the French crews, made it impossible to land the troops he had with him. On the evening of the 25th the storm increased to such a pitch of violence that the frigate in which Bouvet had hoisted his flag was blown out to sea. The wind moderated by the 29th, but Bouvet, being convinced that none of the ships of his squadron could have remained at the anchorage, steered for Brest, where he arrived on the 1st of January 1797. His fortune had been very much that of his colleagues in this storm-tossed expedition, and on the whole he had shown more energy than most of them. He was wrong, however, in thinking that all his squadron had failed to keep their anchorage in Bantry Bay. The government, displeased by his precipitate return to Brest, dismissed him from command soon afterwards. He was compelled to open a school to support himself. Napoleon restored him to the service, and he commanded the squadron sent to occupy Guadaloupe during the peace of Amiens, but he had no further service, and lived in obscurity till his death on the 21st of July 1832.

Tronde, _Batailles navales de la France_, vols. ii. and iii., and James, _Naval History_, vols. i. and ii., give accounts of the 1st of June and the expedition to Ireland. There is a vigorous account of the expedition in Tronde's _English in Ireland_, and it is dealt with in Admiral Colomb's _Naval Warfare_. (D. H.)

BOUVIER, JOHN (1787-1851), American jurist, was born in Codogno, France, in 1787. In 1802 his family, who were Quakers (his mother was a member of the well-known Benezet family), emigrated to America and settled in Philadelphia, and after varied experiences as proprietor of a book shop and as a country editor he was admitted to the bar in 1818, having become a citizen of the United States in 1812. He attained high standing in his profession, was recorder of Philadelphia in 1836, and from 1838 until his death was an associate justice of the court of criminal sessions in that city. He is best known for his able legal writings. His _Law Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America and of the Several States of the American Union_ (1839, revised and brought up to date by Francis Rawle, under the title of _Bouvier's Law Dictionary_, 2 vols., 1897) has always been a standard. He published also an edition of _Bacon's Abridgement of the Law_ (10 vols., 1842-1846), and a compendium of American law entitled _The Institutes of American Law_ (4 vols., 1851; new ed. 2 vols., 1876).

BOUVINES, a village on the French-Belgian frontier between Lille and Tournay, the scene of one of the greatest battles of the middle ages, fought on the 27th of July 1214, between the forces of Philip Augustus, king of France, and those of the coalition formed against him, of which the principal members were the emperor and King John of England. The plan of campaign seems to have been designed by King John, who was the soul of the alliance; his general idea was to draw the French king to the southward against himself, while the emperor Otto IV., the princes of the Netherlands and the main army of the allies should at the right moment march upon Paris from the north. John's part in the general strategy was perfectly executed; the allies in the north moved slowly. While John, after two inroads, turned back to his Guienne possessions on the 3rd of July, it was not until three weeks later that the emperor concentrated his forces at Valenciennes, and in the interval Philip Augustus had countermarched northward and concentrated an army at Peronne. Philip now took the offensive himself, and in manoeuvring to get a good cavalry ground upon which to fight he offered battle (July 27), on the plain east of Bouvines and the river Marque--the same plain on which in 1794 the brilliant cavalry action of Willems was fought. The imperial army accepted the challenge and drew up facing south-westward towards Bouvines, the heavy cavalry on the wings, the infantry in one great mass in the centre, supported by the cavalry corps under the emperor himself. The total force is estimated at 6500 heavy cavalry and 40,000 foot. The French army (about 7000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry) took ground exactly opposite to the enemy and in a similar formation, cavalry on the wings, infantry, including the _milice des communes_, in the centre, Philip with the cavalry reserve and the Oriflamme in rear of the foot. The battle opened with a confused cavalry fight on the French right, in which individual feats of knightly gallantry were more noticeable than any attempt at combined action. The fighting was more serious between the two centres; the infantry of the Low Countries, who were at this time almost the best in existence, drove in the French; Philip led the cavalry reserve of nobles and knights to retrieve the day, and after a long and doubtful fight, in which he himself was unhorsed and narrowly escaped death, began to drive back the Flemings. In the meanwhile the French feudatories on the left wing had thoroughly defeated the imperialists opposed to them, and William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, the leader of this corps, was unhorsed and taken prisoner by the warlike bishop of Beauvais. Victory declared itself also on the other wing, where the French at last routed the Flemish cavalry and captured Count Ferdinand of Flanders, one of the leaders of the coalition. In the centre the battle was now between the two mounted reserves led respectively by the king and the emperor in person. Here too the imperial forces suffered defeat, Otto himself being saved only by the devotion of a handful of Saxon knights. The day was already decided in favour of the French when their wings began to close inwards to cut off the retreat of the imperial centre. The battle closed with the celebrated stand of Reginald of Boulogne, a revolted vassal of King Philip, who formed a ring of seven hundred Brabancon pikemen, and not only defied every attack of the French cavalry, but himself made repeated charges or sorties with his small force of knights. Eventually, and long after the imperial army had begun its retreat, the gallant schiltron was ridden down and annihilated by a charge of three thousand men-at-arms. Reginald was taken prisoner in the _melee_; and the prisoners also included two other counts, Ferdinand and William Longsword, twenty-five barons and over a hundred knights. The killed amounted to about 170 knights of the defeated party, and many thousands of foot on either side, of whom no accurate account can be given.

See Oman, _History of the Art of War_, vii. pp. 457-480; also Kohler, _Kriegsgeschichte, &c_., i. 140, and Delpech, _Tactique au XIII siecle_, 127.

BOVEY BEDS, in geology, a deposit of sands, clays and lignite, 200-300 ft. thick, which lies in a basin extending from Bovey Tracey to Newton Abbot in Devonshire, England. The deposit is evidently the result of the degradation of the neighbouring Dartmoor granite; and it was no doubt laid down in a lake. O. Heer, who examined the numerous plant remains from these beds, concluded that they belonged to the same geological horizon as the Molasse or Oligocene of Switzerland. Starkie Gardiner, however, who subsequently examined the flora, showed that it bore a close resemblance to that of the Bournemouth Beds or Lower Bagshot; in this view he is supported by C. Reid. Large excavations have been made for the extraction of the clays, which are very valuable for pottery and similar purposes. The lignite or "Bovey Coal" has at times been burned in the local kilns, and in the engines and workmen's cottages, but it is not economical.

See S. Gardiner, _Q. J. G. S._ London, xxxv., 1879; W. Pengelly and O. Heer, _Phil. Trans._, 1862; C. Reid, _Q. J. G. S._ lii., 1896, p. 490, and _loc. cit._ liv., 1898, p. 234. An interesting general account is given by A.W. Clayden, _The History of Devonshire Scenery_ (London, 1906), pp. 159-168.

BOVIANUM, the name of two ancient Italian towns, (1) UNDECIMANORUM [_Boiano_], the chief city of the Pentri Samnites, 9 m. N.W. of Saepinum and 18 m. S.E. of Aesernia, on the important road from Beneventum to Corfinium, which connected the Via Appia and the Via Valeria. The original city occupied the height (Civita) above the modern town, where remains of Cyclopean walls still exist, while the Roman town (probably founded after the Social War, in which Bovianum was the seat of the Samnite assembly) lay in the plain. It acquired the name _Undecimanorum_ when Vespasian settled the veterans of the Legio XI. Claudia there. Its remains have been covered by over 30 ft. of earth washed down from the mountains. Comparatively few inscriptions have been discovered. (2) VETUS (near Pietrabbondante, 5 m. S. of Agnone and 19 m. N.W. of Campobasso), according to Th. Mommsen (_Corpus Inscrip. Lat._ ix. Berlin, 1883, p. 257) the chief town of the Caraceni. It lay in a remote situation among the mountains, and where Bovianum is mentioned the reference is generally to Bovianum Undecimanorum. Remains of fortifications and lower down of a temple and a theatre (cf. _Romische Mitteilungen_, 1903, 154)--the latter remarkable for the fine preservation of the stone seats of the three lowest rows of the auditorium--are to be seen. No less than eight Oscan inscriptions have been found. (T. As.)

BOVIDAE, the name of the family of hollow-horned ruminant mammals typified by the common ox (_Bos taurus_), and specially characterized by the presence on the skulls of the males or of both sexes of a pair of bony projections, or cores, covered in life with hollow sheaths of horn, which are never branched, and at all events after a very early stage of existence are permanently retained. From this, which is alone sufficient for diagnostic purposes, the group is often called the Cavicornia. For other characteristics see PECORA. The _Bovidae_ comprise a great number of genera and species, and include the oxen, sheep, goats, antelopes and certain other kinds which come under neither of these designations. In stature they range from the size of a hare to that of a rhinoceros; and their horns vary in size and shape from the small and simple spikes of the oribi and duiker antlers to the enormous and variously shaped structures borne respectively by buffaloes, wild sheep and kudu and other large antelopes. In geographical distribution the _Bovidae_ present a remarkable contrast to the deer tribe, or _Cervidae_. Both of these families are distributed over the whole of the northern hemisphere, but whereas the Cervidae are absent from Africa south of the Sahara and well represented in South America, the Bovidae are unknown in the latter area, but are extraordinarily abundant in Africa. Neither group is represented in Australasia; Celebes being the eastern limit of the _Bovidae_. The present family doubtless originated in the northern half of the Old World, whence it effected an entrance by way of the Bering Strait route into North America, where it has always been but poorly represented in the matter of genera and species.

The _Bovidae_ are divided into a number of sections, or subfamilies, each of which is briefly noticed in the present article, while fuller mention of some of the more important representatives of these is made in other articles.

The first section is that of the _Bovinae_, which includes buffaloes, bison and oxen. The majority of these are large and heavily-built ruminants, with horns present in both sexes, the muzzle broad, moist and naked, the nostrils lateral, no face-glands, and a large dewlap often developed in the males; while the tail is long and generally tufted, although in one instance longhaired throughout. The horns are of nearly equal size in both sexes, are placed on or near the vertex of the skull, and may be either rounded or angulated, while their direction is more or less outwards, with an upward direction near the tips, and conspicuous knobs or ridges are never developed on their surface. The tall upper molars have inner columns. The group is represented throughout the Old World as far east as Celebes, and has one living North American representative. All the species may be included in the genus _Bos_, with several subgeneric divisions (see ANOA, AUROCHS, BANTIN, BISON, BUFFALO, GAUR, GAYAL, OX and YAK).

The second group, or _Caprinae_, includes the sheep and goats, which are smaller animals than most of the _Bovidae_, generally with horns in both sexes, but those of the females small. In the males the horns are usually compressed and triangular, with transverse ridges or knobs, and either curving backwards or spiral. The muzzle is narrow and hairy; and when face-glands are present these are small and insignificant; while the tail is short and flattened. Unlike the _Bovinae_, there are frequently glands in the feet; and the upper molar teeth differ from those of that group in their narrower crowns, which lack a distinct inner column. When a face-pit is present in the skull it is small. The genera are _Ovis_ (sheep), _Capra_ (goats) and _Hemitragus_ (tahr). Sheep and goats are very nearly related, but the former never have a beard on the chin of the males, which are devoid of a strong odour; and their horns are typically of a different type. There are, however, several more or less transitional forms. Tahr are short-horned goats. The group is unknown in America, and in Africa is only represented in the mountains of the north, extending, however, some distance south into the Sudan and Abyssinia. All the species are mountain-dwellers. (See UDAD, ARGALI, GOAT, IBEX, MOUFLON, SHEEP and TAHR.)

The musk-ox (_Ovibos moschatus_) alone represents the family _Ovibovinae_, which is probably most nearly related to the next group (see MUSK-OX).

Next come the _Rupicaprinae_, which include several genera of mountain-dwelling ruminants, typified by the European chamois (_Rupicapra_); the other genera being the Asiatic serow, goral and takin, and the North American Rocky Mountain goat. These ruminants are best described as goat-like antelopes. (See ANTELOPE, CHAMOIS, GORAL, ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT, SEROW and TAKIN.)

Under the indefinable term "antelope" (q.v.) may be included the seven remaining sections, namely _Tragelaphinae_ (kudu and eland), _Hippotraginae_ (sable antelope and oryx), _Antilopinae_ (black-buck, gazelles, &c.), _Cervicaprinae_ (reedbuck and waterbuck), _Neotraginae_ (klipspringer and steinbok), _Cephalophinae_ (duikers and four-horned antelopes) and _Bubalinae_ (hartebeests and gnus). (R. L.*)

BOVILL, SIR WILLIAM (1814-1873), English judge, a younger son of Benjamin Bovill, of Wimbledon, was born at All-hallows, Barking, on the 26th of May 1814. On leaving school he was articled to a firm of solicitors, but entering the Middle Temple he practised for a short time as a special pleader below the bar. He was called in 1841 and joined the home circuit. His special training in a solicitor's office, and its resulting connexion, combined with a thorough knowledge of the details of engineering, acquired through his interest in a manufacturing firm in the east end of London, soon brought him a very extensive patent and commercial practice. He became Q.C. in 1855, and in 1857 was elected M.P. for Guildford. In the House of Commons he was very zealous for legal reform, and the Partnership Law Amendment Act 1865, which he helped to pass, is always referred to as Bovill's Act. In 1866 he was appointed solicitor-general, an office which he vacated on becoming chief justice of the common pleas in succession to Sir W. Erie in November of the same year. He died at Kingston, Surrey, on the 1st of November 1873. As a barrister he was unsurpassed for his remarkable knowledge of commercial law; and when promoted to the bench his painstaking labour and unswerving uprightness, as well as his great patience and courtesy, gained for him the respect and affection of the profession.

BOVILLAE, an ancient town of Latium, a station on the Via Appia (which in 293 B.C. was already paved up to this point), 11 m. S.E. of Rome. It was a colony of Alba Longa, and appears as one of the thirty cities of the Latin league; after the destruction of Alba Longa the _sacra_ were, it was held, transferred to Bovillae, including the cult of Vesta (in inscriptions _virgines Vestales Albanae_ are mentioned, and the inhabitants of Bovillae are always spoken of as _Albani Longani Bovillenses_) and that of the _gens Iulia_. The existence of this hereditary worship led to an increase in its importance when the Julian house rose to the highest power in the state. The knights met Augustus's dead body at Bovillae on its way to Rome, and in A.D. 16 the shrine of the family worship was dedicated anew,[1] and yearly games in the circus instituted, probably under the charge of the _sodales Augustales_, whose official calendar has been found here. In history Bovillae appears as the scene of the quarrel between Milo and Clodius, in which the latter, whose villa lay above the town on the left of the Via Appia, was killed. The site is not naturally strong, and remains of early fortifications cannot be traced. It may be that Bovillae took the place of Alba Longa as a local centre after the destruction of the latter by Rome, which would explain the deliberate choice of a strategically weak position. Remains of buildings of the imperial period--the circus, a small theatre, and edifices probably connected with the post-station--may still be seen on the south-west edge of the Via Appia.

See L. Canina, _Via Appia_ (Rome, 1853), i. 202 seq.; T. Ashby in _Melanges de l'ecole francaise de Rome_ (1903), p. 395. (T. As.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] It is not likely that any remains of it now exist.

BOW (pronounced "bo"), a common Teutonic word for anything bent[1] (O. Eng. _boezha_; cf. O. Sax. and O.H.G. _bogo_, M.H.G. _boge_, Mod. Ger. _bogen_; from O. Teut. stem _bug_- of _beugan_, Mod. Ger. _biegen_, to bend). Thus it is found in English compound words, e.g. "elbow," "rainbow," "bow-net," "bow-window," "bow-knot," "saddle-bow," and by itself as the designation of a great variety of objects. The Old English use of "bow," or stone-bow, for "arch," now obsolete, survives in certain names of churches and places, e.g. Bow church (St Mary-in-Arcubus) in Cheapside, and Stratford-le-Bow (the "Stratford-atte-Bowe" of Chaucer). "Bow," however, is still the designation of objects so various as an appliance for shooting arrows (see ARCHERY), a necktie in the form of a bow-knot (i.e. a double-looped knot), a ring or hoop forming a handle (e.g. the bow of a watch), certain instruments or tools consisting of a bent piece of wood with the ends drawn together by a string, used for drilling, turning, &c., in various crafts, and the stick strung with horsehair by means of which the strings of instruments of the violin family are set in vibration. It is with this last that the present article is solely concerned.