VOLUME III, SLICE V

Bedlam to Benson, George

ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:

BEDLAM BELLENDEN, JOHN BEDLINGTON BELLENDEN, WILLIAM BEDLOE, WILLIAM BELLEROPHON BEDMAR, ALPHONSO BELLA CUEVA BELLES-LETTRES BED-MOULD BELLEVILLE (Ontario, Canada) BEDOUINS BELLEVILLE (Illinois, U.S.A.) BEDSORE BELLEY BEDWORTH BELLI, GIUSEPPE GIOACHINO BEE BELLIGERENCY BEECH BELLINGHAM, SIR EDWARD BEECHER, CHARLES EMERSON BELLINGHAM BEECHER, HENRY WARD BELLINI BEECHER, LYMAN BELLINI, LORENZO BEECHEY, FREDERICK WILLIAM BELLINI, VINCENZO BEECHEY, SIR WILLIAM BELLINZONA BEECHING, HENRY CHARLES BELLMAN, KARL MIKAEL BEECHWORTH BELLO, ANDRES BEEF BELLO-HORIZONTE BEEFSTEAK CLUB BELLONA BEELZEBUB BELLOT, JOSEPH RENE BEER BELLOWS, ALBERT F. BEERSHEBA BELLOWS, HENRY WHITNEY BEESLY, EDWARD SPENCER BELLOWS and BLOWING MACHINES BEET BELLOY, DORMONT DE BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN BELL or INCHCAPE ROCK BEETLE BELLUNO BEETS, NIKOLAAS BELMONT, AUGUST BEFANA BELOIT BEFFROY DE REIGNY, LOUIS ABEL BELOMANCY BEGAS, KARL BELON, PIERRE BEGAS, REINHOLD BELPER BEGGAR BELSHAM, THOMAS BEGGAR-MY-NEIGHBOUR BELSHAZZAR BEGONIA BELT, THOMAS BEGUINES BELT BEHAIM, MARTIN BELTANE BEHAR BELUGA BEHA UD-DIN BELVEDERE (architectural structure) BEHA UD-DIN ZUHAIR BELVIDERE (Illinois, U.S.A.) BEHBAHAN BELZONI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA BEHEADING BEM, JOSEF BEHEMOTH BEMA BEHISTUN BEMBERG, HERMAN BEHN, APHRA BEMBO, PIETRO BEHR, WILLIAM JOSEPH BEMBRIDGE BEDS BEIRA (seaport of East Africa) BEMIS, EDWARD WEBSTER BEIRA (province of Portugal) BEMONT, CHARLES BEIRUT BEN BEIT, ALFRED BENARES BEJA (tribe) BENBOW, JOHN BEJA (city) BENCE-JONES, HENRY BEJAN BENCH BEJART BENCH-MARK BEK, ANTONY BENCH TABLE BEKE, CHARLES TILSTONE BEND BESKESCSABA BENDA BEKKER, AUGUST IMMANUEL BENDER BEKKER, BALTHASAR BENDIGO BEKKER, ELIZABETH BENDL, KAREL BEL BENEDEK, LUDWIG BELA III. BENEDETTI, VINCENT BELA IV. BENEDICT BELA (capital of Las Bela) BENEDICT OF ALIGNAN BELA (town of India) BENEDICT OF NURSIA, SAINT BELAY BENEDICT, SIR JULIUS BELCHER, SIR EDWARD BENEDICT BISCOP BELDAM BENEDICTINE BELESME, ROBERT OF BENEDICTINES BELFAST (Ireland) BENEDICTION BELFAST (Maine, U.S.A.) BENEDICTUS BELFORT (division of France) BENEDICTUS ABBAS BELFORT (town of France) BENEDIX, JULIUS RODERICH BELFRY BENEFICE BELGAE BENEFICIARY BELGARD BENEKE, FRIEDRICH EDUARD BELGAUM BENETT, ETHELDRED BELGIAN CONGO BENEVENTO BELGIUM BENEVOLENCE BELGRADE BENFEY, THEODOR BELHAVEN AND STENTON, JOHN BENGAL BELISARIUS BENGAL, BAY OF BELIT BENGALI BELIZE BENGAZI BELJAME, ALEXANDRE BENGEL, JOHANN ALBRECHT BELKNAP, JEREMY BENGUELLA BELKNAP, WILLIAM WORTH BENI (river of Bolivia) BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM BENI (department of Bolivia) BELL, ALEXANDER MELVILLE BENI-AMER BELL, ANDREW BENI-ISRAEL BELL, SIR CHARLES BENIN BELL, GEORGE JOSEPH BENITOITE BELL, HENRY BENJAMIN BELL, HENRY GLASSFORD BENJAMIN OF TUDELA BELL, JACOB BENJAMIN, JUDAH PHILIP BELL, JOHN (Scottish traveller) BEN LEDI BELL, JOHN (Scottish anatomist) BENLLIURE Y GIL, JOSE BELL, JOHN (American politician) BEN LOMOND BELL, ROBERT BENLOWES, EDWARD BELL BEN MACDHUI BELLABELLA BENNETT, CHARLES EDWIN BELLACOOLA BENNETT, JAMES GORDON BELLADONNA BENNETT, JOHN BELLAGIO BENNETT, JOHN HUGHES BELLAIRE BENNETT, SIR WILLIAM STERNDALE BELLAMY, EDWARD BEN NEVIS BELLAMY, GEORGE ANNE BENNIGSEN, LEVIN AUGUST BELLAMY, JOSEPH BENNIGSEN, RUDOLF VON BELLARMINE, ROBERTO ROMOLO BENNINGTON BELLARY BENNO BELL-COT BENOIT, PETER LEONARD LEOPOLD BELLEAU, REMY BENOIT DE SAINTE-MORE BELLECOUR BENSERADE, ISAAC DE BELLEFONTAINE BENSLEY, ROBERT BELLEGARDE BENSON, EDWARD WHITE BELLEGARDE, HEINRICH JOHANNES BENSON, FRANCIS ROBERT BELLE-ILE-EN-MER BENSON, FRANK WESTON BELLE-ISLE, CHARLES FOUQUET BENSON, GEORGE BELLE ISLE, STRAIT OF

BEDLAM, or BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, the first English lunatic asylum, originally founded by Simon FitzMary, sheriff of London, in 1247, as a priory for the sisters and brethren of the order of the Star of Bethlehem. It had as one of its special objects the housing and entertainment of the bishop and canons of St Mary of Bethlehem, the mother-church, on their visits to England. Its first site was in Bishopsgate Street. It is not certain when lunatics were first received in Bedlam, but it is mentioned as a hospital in 1330 and some were there in 1403. In 1547 it was handed over by Henry VIII. with all its revenues to the city of London as a hospital for lunatics. With the exception of one such asylum in Granada, Spain, the Bethlehem Hospital was the first in Europe. It became famous and afterwards infamous for the brutal ill-treatment meted out to the insane (see INSANITY: _Hospital Treatment_). In 1675 it was removed to new buildings in Moorfields and finally to its present site in St George's Fields, Lambeth. The word "Bedlam" has long been used generically for all lunatic asylums.

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, 2-1/2 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.

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 L500. 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).

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 liberta 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-Real, _OEuvres_, 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 republique de Venise_ (Paris, 1853); A. Baschet, _Histoire de la chancellerie secrete a Venise_ (Paris, 1870).

BED-MOULD, in architecture, the congeries of mouldings which is under the projecting part of almost every cornice, of which, indeed, it is a part.

BEDOUINS (_Ahl Bedu_, "dwellers in the open land," or _Ahl el beit_, "people of the tent," as they call themselves), the name given to the most important, as it is the best known, division of the Arab race. The Bedouins are the descendants of the Arabs of North Arabia whose traditions claim Ishmael as their ancestor (see ARABS). The deserts of North Arabia seem to have been their earliest home, but even in ancient times they had migrated to the lowlands of Egypt and Syria. The Arab conquest of northern Africa in the 7th century A.D. caused a wide dispersion, so that to-day the Arab element is strongly represented in the Nile Valley, Saharan, and Nubian peoples. Among the Hamitic-Negroid races the Bedouins have largely lost their nomadic character; but in the deserts of the Nile lands they remain much what their ancestors were. Thus the name has suffered much ethnic confusion, and is often incorrectly reserved to describe such pastoral peoples as the Bisharin, the Hadendoa and the Ababda. This article treats solely of the Arabian Bedouin, as affording the purest type of the people. They are shepherds and herdsmen, reduced to an open-air, roving life, partly by the nature of their occupations, partly by the special characteristics of the countries in which they dwell. For, while land, unsuited to all purposes except pasture, forms an unusually large proportion of the surface in the Arabian territory, the prolonged droughts of summer render considerable portions of it unfit even for that, and thus continually oblige the herdsmen to migrate from one spot to another in search of sufficient herbage and water for their beasts. The same causes also involve the Bedouins in frequent quarrels with each other regarding the use of some particular well or pasture-ground, besides reducing them not unfrequently to extreme want, and thus making them plunderers of others in self-support. Professionally, the Bedouins are shepherds and herdsmen; their raids on each other or their robbery of travellers and caravans are but occasional exceptions to the common routine. Their intertribal wars (they very rarely venture on a conflict with the better-armed and better-organized sedentary population) are rarely bloody; cattle-lifting being the usual object. Private feuds exist, but are usually limited to two or three individuals at most, one of whom has perhaps been ridiculed in satirical verse, to which they are very sensitive, or had a relation killed in some previous fray. But bloodshed is expensive, as it must be paid for either by more bloodshed or by blood-money--the _diya_, which varies, according to the importance of the person killed, from ten to fifty camels, or even more. Previous to Mahomet's time it was optional for the injured tribe either to accept this compensation or to insist on blood for blood; but the Prophet, though by his own account despairing of ever reducing the nomad portion of his countrymen to law and order, succeeded in establishing among them the rule, that a fair _diya_ if offered must be accepted. Instances are, however, not wanting in Arab history of fiercer and more general Bedouin conflicts, in which the destruction, or at least the complete subjugation, of one tribe has been aimed at by another, and when great slaughter has taken place. Such were the wars of Pekr and Thagleb in the 6th century, of Kelb and Howazin in the 8th, of Harb and Ateba in the 18th.

The Bedouins regard the plundering of caravans or travellers as in lieu of the custom dues exacted elsewhere. The land is theirs, they argue, and trespassers on it must pay the forfeit. Hence whoever can show anything equivalent to a permission of entrance into their territory has, in the regular course of things, nothing to fear. This permission is obtained by securing the protection of the nearest Bedouin sheik, who, for a politely-worded request and a small sum of money, will readily grant the pass, in the shape of one or two or more men of his tribe, who accompany the wayfarers as far as the next encampment on their road, where they hand their charge over to fresh guides, equally bound to afford the desired safeguard. In the interior of Arabia the passport is given in writing by one of the town governors, and is respected by the Bedouins of the district; for, however impudent and unamenable to law these nomads may be on the frontiers of the impotent Ottoman government in Syria or the Hejaz, they are submissive enough in other and Arab-governed regions. But the traveller who ventures on the desert strip without such precautions will be robbed and perhaps killed.

Ignorant of writing and unacquainted with books, the Bedouins trust to their memory for everything; where memory fails, they readily eke it out with imagination. Hence their own assertions regarding the antiquity, numbers, strength, &c., of their clans are of little worth; even their genealogies, in which they pretend to be eminently versed, are not to be much depended on; the more so that their own family names hardly ever exceed the limits of a patronymic, whilst the constantly renewed subdivisions of a tribe, and the temporary increase of one branch and decrease of another, tend to efface the original name of the clan. Few tribes now preserve their ancient, or at least their historical titles; and the mass of the Bedouin multitude resembles in this respect a troubled sea, of which the substance is indeed always the same, but the surface is continually shifting and changing. As, however, no social basis or ties are acknowledged among them except those of blood and race, certain broad divisions are tolerably accurately kept up, the wider and more important of which may here be noted. First, the Aneza clan, who extend from Syria southward to the limits of Jebel Shammar. It is numerous, and, for a Bedouin tribe, well armed. Two-thirds of the Arab horse trade, besides a large traffic in sheep, camels, wool, and similar articles, are in their hands. Their principal subdivisions are the Sebaa on the north, the Walid Ali on the west, and the Ruala on the south; these are generally on bad terms with each other. If united, they could muster, it is supposed, about 30,000 lances. They claim descent from Rabi'a. Second, the Shammar Bedouins, whose pasturages lie conterminous to those of the Aneza on the east. Their numbers are about the same. Thirdly, in the northern desert, the Huwetat and Sherarat, comparatively small and savage tribes. There is also the Solibi clan, which, however, is disowned by the Arabs, and seems to be of gipsy origin. Next follow, in the western desert, the Beni-Harb, a powerful tribe, supposed to muster about 20,000 fighting men. They are often troublesome to the Meccan pilgrims. In the eastern desert are the Muter, the Beni-Khalid, and the Ajmans, all numerous clans, often at war with each other. To the south, in Nejd itself or on its frontiers, are the Hodeil, Ateba, and others. These all belong to the "Mustareb," or northern Arabs.

The Bedouins of southern or "pure Arab" origin are comparatively few in number, and are, with few exceptions, even poorer and more savage than their northern brethren. Al-Morrah, on the confines of Oman, Al-Yam and Kahtan, near Yemen, and Beni-Yas, between Harik and the Persian Gulf, are the best known. The total number of the Bedouin or pastoral population throughout Arabia, including men, women, and children, appears not to exceed a million and a half, or about one fifth of the total population. The only tribal authority is the "elder," or "sheik," a title not necessarily implying advanced age, but given to any one who, on account of birth, courage, wealth, liberality or some other quality, has been chosen to the leadership. Descent has something to do with rank, but not much, as every individual of the tribe considers himself equal to the others; nor are the distinctions of relative riches and poverty greatly taken into account. To the "sheik" all disputes are referred; he is consulted, though not necessarily obeyed, on every question which regards the general affairs of the tribe, whether in peace or war; there is no other magistrate, and no law except what he and the other chief men may consider proper. But in fact, for most personal and private affairs, every man does pretty much what is right in his own eyes.

All the Bedouins, with the exception of certain tribes in Syria, are nominally Mahommedans, but most pay but slight attention to the ceremonial precepts of the Koran; the five daily prayers and the annual fast of Ramadan are not much in favour among them; and however near a tribe may be to Mecca, few of them visit it as pilgrims. The militant Wahhabi have, however, from time to time enforced some degree of Islamitic observance among the Bedouins of Nejd and the adjoining districts: elsewhere Mahommedanism is practically confined to the profession of the Divine Unity; among the remoter and wilder tribes sun-worship, tree-worship, and no worship at all, are not uncommon. Some clans even omit the rite of circumcision altogether; others, like the tribe of Hodeil, south of Mecca, perform it after a fashion peculiar to themselves.

Though polygamy is not common among Bedouins, marriages are contracted without any legal intervention or guarantee; the consent of the parties, and the oral testimony of a couple of witnesses, should such be at hand, are all that are required; and divorce is equally easy. Nor is mutual constancy much expected or observed either by men or women; and the husband is rarely strict in exacting from the wife a fidelity that he himself has no idea of observing. Jealousy may indeed occasionally bring about tragic results, but this rarely occurs except where publicity, to which the Bedouins, like all other Arabs, are very sensitive, is involved. Burckhardt writes: "The Bedouins are jealous of their women, but do not prevent them from laughing and talking with strangers. It seldom happens that a Bedouin strikes his wife; if he does so she calls loudly on her _wasy_ or protector, who pacifies the husband and makes him listen to reason .... The wife and daughters perform all domestic business. They grind the wheat in the handmill or pound it in the mortar; they prepare the breakfast and dinner; knead and bake the bread; make butter, fetch water, work at the loom, mend the tent-covering ... while the husband or brother sits before the tent smoking his pipe." A maiden's honour is, on the other hand, severely guarded; and even too openly avowed a courtship, though with the most honourable intentions, is ill looked on. But marriage, if indeed so slight and temporary a connexion as it is among Bedouins deserves the name, is often merely a passport for mutual licence. In other respects Bedouin morality, like that of most half-savage races, depends on custom and public feeling rather than on any fixed code or trained conscience, and hence admits of the strangest contradictions. Not only are lying and exaggeration no reproach in ordinary discourse, but even deliberate perjury and violation of the most solemn engagements are frequent occurrences. Not less frequent, however, are instances of prolonged fidelity and observance of promise carried to the limits of romance. "The wind," "the wood," and "the honour of the Arabs" are the most ordinary oaths in serious matters; but even these do not give absolute security, while a simple verbal engagement will at other times prove an inviolable guarantee. Thus, too, the extreme abstemiousness of a Bedouin alternates with excessive gorgings; and, while the name and deeds of "robber" are hardly a reproach, those of "thief" are marked by abhorrence and contempt. In patience, or rather endurance, both physical and moral, few Bedouins are deficient; wariness is another quality universally developed by their mode of life. And in spite of an excessive coarseness of language, and often of action, gross vice, at least of the more debasing sorts that dishonour the East, is rare.

Most Bedouins, men and women, are rather undersized; their complexion, especially in the south, is dark; their hair coarse, thick and black; their eyes dark and oval; the nose is generally aquiline, and the features well formed; the beard and moustache are usually scanty. The men are active, but not strong; the women are generally plain. The dress of the men consists of a long cotton shirt, open at the breast, often girt with a leathern girdle; a black or striped cloak of hair is sometimes thrown over the shoulders; a handkerchief, folded once, black, or striped yellow and red, covers the head, round which it is kept in its place by a piece of twine or a twisted hairband. To this costume a pair of open sandals is sometimes added. Under the shirt, round the naked waist, a thin strip of leather plait is wound several times, not for any special object, but merely out of custom. In his hand a Bedouin almost always carries a slight crooked wand, commonly of almond-wood. Among the Bedouins of the south a light wrapper takes the place of the handkerchief on the head, and a loin-cloth that of the shirt. The women usually wear wide loose drawers, a long shirt, and over it a wide piece of dark blue cloth enveloping the whole figure and head, and trailing on the ground behind. Very rarely does a Bedouin woman wear a veil, or even cover her face with her overcloak, contenting herself with narrowing the folds of the latter over her head on the approach of a stranger. Her wrists and ankles are generally adorned with bracelets and rings of blue glass or copper or iron, very rarely of silver; her neck with glass beads; ear-rings are rare, and nose-rings rarer. Boys, till near puberty, usually go stark naked; girls also wear no clothes up to the age of six or seven.

On a journey a Bedouin invariably carries with him a light, sharp-pointed lance, the stem of which is made of Persian or African cane; the manner in which this is carried or trailed often indicates the tribe of the owner. The lance is the favourite and characteristic weapon of the Arab nomad, and the one in the use of which he shows the greatest skill. An antiquated sword, an out-of-date musket, an ornamented dagger or knife, a coat of mail, the manufacture of Yemen or Bagdad, and a helmet, a mere iron head-piece, without visor or crest, complete his military outfit.

A Bedouin's tent consists of a few coverings of the coarsest goat-hair, dyed black, and spread over two or more small poles, in height from 8 to 9 ft., gipsy fashion. If it be the tent of a sheik, its total length may be from 30 to 40 ft.; if of an ordinary person, less than 20 ft. Sometimes a partition separates the quarters of the women and children; sometimes they are housed under a lower and narrower covering. A rough carpet or mat is spread on the ground; while camel-saddles, ropes, halters, two or three cooking pots, one or two platters, a wooden drinking bowl, the master's arms at one side of the tent, and his spear stuck in the ground at the door, complete the list of household valuables. On striking camp all these are fastened on the backs of camels; the men mount their saddles, the women their litters; and in an hour the blackened stones that served for a cooking hearth are the only sign of the encampment. For food the Bedouin relies on his herds, but rice, vegetables, honey, locusts and even lizards are at times eaten.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, _Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabis_ (1831); Karstens Niebuhr, _Travels through Arabia_ (orig. Germ. edit. 1772), translated into English by Robert Heron (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1792); H.H. Tessup, _Women of the Arabs_ (New York, 1874); W.S. Blunt, _Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates_ (1879); Lady Anne Blunt, _Pilgrimage to Neid_ (1881); Desmoulins, _Les Francais d'aujourd'hui_ (Paris, 1898); C.M. Doughty, _Arabia Deserta_ (2 vols., 1888); E. Reclus, _Les Arabes_ (Brussels, 1898); Rev. S.M. Zwemer, _Arabia, the Cradle of Islam_ (1900); W. Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_ (Cambridge, 1885); H.C. Trumbull, _The Blood Covenant_ (Philadelphia, 1891).

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.

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.

BEE (Sanskrit _bha_, A S. _beo_, Lat. _apis_), a large and natural family of the zoological order _Hymenoptera_, characterized by the plumose form of many of their hairs, by the large size of the basal segment of the foot, which is always elongate and in the hindmost limb sometimes as broad as the shin, and by the development of a "tongue" for sucking liquid food; this organ has been variously interpreted as the true insectan tongue (hypo-pharynx) or as a ligula formed by fused portions of the second maxillae (probably the latter).

Bees are specialized in correspondence with the flowers from which they draw the bulk of their food supply, the flexible tongue being used for sucking nectar, the plumed hairs and the modified legs (fig. 7) for gathering pollen. These floral products which form the food of bees and of their larvae, are in most cases collected and stored by the industrious insects; but some genera of bees act as inquilines or "cuckoo-parasites," laying their eggs in the nests of other bees, so that their larvae may feed at the expense of the rightful owners of the nest. In a few cases, the parasitic bee-grub devours not only the food-supply, but also the larva of its host.

_Solitary and Social Bees._--Many genera of bees are represented, like most other insects, by ordinary males and females, each female constructing a nest formed of several chambers ("cells") and storing in each chamber a supply of food for the grub to be hatched from the egg that she lays therein. Such bees, although a number of individuals often make their nests close together, are termed "solitary," their communities differing in nature from those of the "social" bees, among which there are two kinds of females--the normal fertile females or "queens," and those specially modified females with undeveloped ovaries (see fig. 6) that are called "workers" (fig. 1). The workers are the earliest developed offspring of the queen, and it is their associated work which renders possible the rise of an insect state--a state which evidently has its origin in the family. It is interesting to trace various stages in the elaboration of the bee-society. Among the humble-bees (_Bombus_) the workers help the queen, who takes her share in the duties of the nest; the distinction between queen and workers is therefore less absolute than in the hive-bees (_Apis_), whose queen, relieved of all nursing and building cares by the workers, devotes her whole energies to egg-laying. The division of labour among the two castes of female becomes therefore most complete in the most highly organized society.

_Structure._--Details of the structure of bees are given in the article HYMENOPTERA. The feelers (fig. 2, a) are divided into "scape" and "flagellum" as in the ants, and the mandibles vary greatly in size and sharpness in different genera. The proboscis or "tongue" (fig. 2, l) is a hollow organ enclosing an outgrowth of the body-cavity which is filled with fluid, and with its flexible under-surface capable of invagination or protrusion. Along this surface stretches a groove which is surrounded by thickened cuticle and practically formed into a tube by numerous fine hairs. Along this channel the nectar is drawn into the pharynx and passes, mixed with saliva, into the crop or "honey-bag"; the action of the saliva changes the saccharose into dextrose and levulose, and the nectar becomes honey, which the bee regurgitates for storage in the cells or for the feeding of the grubs. The sting (fig. 6, pg, st.) of female bees is usually highly specialized, but in a few genera it is reduced and useless.

Many modifications in details of structure may be observed within the family. The tongue is bifid at the tip in a few genera; usually it is pointed and varies greatly in length, being comparatively short in _Andrena_, long in the humble-bees (_Bombus_), and longest in _Euglossa_, a tropical American genus of solitary bees. The legs, which are so highly modified as pollen-carriers in the higher bees, are comparatively simple in certain primitive genera. The hairy covering, so notable in the hive-bee and especially in humble-bees, is greatly reduced among bees that follow a parasitic mode of life.

_Early stages._--As is usual where an abundant food supply is provided for the young insects, the larvae of bees (fig. 3, SL.) are degraded maggots; they have no legs, but possess fairly well-developed heads. The successive cuticles that are cast as growth proceeds are delicate in texture and sometimes separate from the underlying cuticle without being stripped off. The maggots may pass no excrement from the intestine until they have eaten all their store of food. When fully grown the final larval cuticle is shed, and the "free" pupa (fig. 3, N) revealed. The larvae of some bees spin cocoons (fig. 3, _co_) before pupation.

_Nests of Solitary Bees._--Bees of different genera vary considerably in the site and arrangement of their nests. Many--like the common "solitary" bees _Halictus_ and _Andrena_--burrow in the ground; the holes of species of _Andrena_ are commonly seen in springtime opening on sandy banks, grassy lawns or gravel paths. Our knowledge of such bees is due to the observations of F. Smith, H. Friese, C. Verhoeff and others. The nest may be simple, or, more frequently, a complex excavation, cells opening off from the entrance or from a main passage. Sometimes the passage is the conjoint work of many bees whose cells are grouped along it at convenient distances apart. Other bees, the species of _Osmia_ for example, choose the hollow stem of a bramble or other shrub, the female forming a linear series of cells in each of which an egg is laid and a supply of food stored up. J.H. Fabre has found that in the nests of some species of _Osmia_ the young bee developed in the first-formed cell, if (as often happens) she emerges from her cocoon before the inmates of the later cells, will try to work her way round these or to bite a lateral hole through the bramble shoot; should she fail to do this, she will wait for the emergence of her sisters and not make her escape at the price of injury to them. But when Fabre substituted dead individuals of her own species or live larvae of another genus, the _Osmia_ had no scruple in destroying them, so as to bite her way out to air and liberty.

The leaf-cutter bees (_Megachile_)--which differ from _Andrena_ and _Halictus_ and agree with _Osmia_, _Apis_ and _Bombus_ in having elongate tongues--cut neat circular disks from leaves, using them for lining the cells of their underground nests. The carpenter-bees (_Xylocopa_ and allied genera), unrepresented in the British Islands, though widely distributed in warmer countries, make their nests in dry wood. The habits of _X. violacea_, the commonest European species, were minutely described in the 18th century in one of R.A.F. de Reaumur's memoirs. This bee excavates several parallel galleries to which access is gained by a cylindrical hole. In the galleries are situated the cells, separated from one another by transverse partitions, which are formed of chips of wood, cemented by the saliva of the bee.

Among the solitary bees none has more remarkable nesting habits than the mason bee (_Chalicodoma_) represented in the south of France and described at length by Fabre. The female constructs on a stone a series of cells, built of cement, which she compounds of particles of earth, minute stones and her own saliva. Each cell is provided with a store of honey and pollen beside which an egg is laid; and after eight or nine cells have been successively built and stored, the whole is covered by a dome-like mass of cement. Fabre found that a _Chalicodoma_ removed to a distance of 4 kilometres from the nest that she was building, found her way back without difficulty to the exact spot. But if the nest were removed but a few yards from its former position, the bee seemed no longer able to recognize it, sometimes passing over it, or even into the unfinished cell, and then leaving it to visit again uselessly the place whence it had been moved. She would accept willingly, however, another nest placed in the exact spot where her own had been. If the unfinished cell in the old nest had been only just begun, while that in the substituted nest were nearly completed, the bee would add so much material as to make the cell much larger than the normal size, her instinct evidently being to do a certain amount of building work before filling the cell with food. The food, too, is always placed in the cell after a fixed routine--first honey disgorged from the mouth, then pollen brushed off the hairs beneath the body (fig. 7, c) after which the two substances are mixed into a paste.

_Inquilines and Parasites._--The working bees, such as have been mentioned, are victimized by bees of other genera, which throw upon the industrious the task of providing for the young of the idle. The nests of _Andrena_, for example, are haunted by the black and yellow species of _Nomada_, whose females lay their eggs in the food provided for the larva of the _Andrena_. According to H. Friese, the relations between the host and the inquiline are quite friendly, and the insects if they meet in the nest-galleries courteously get out of each other's way. D. Sharp, in commenting on this strange behaviour, points out that the host can have no idea why the inquiline haunts her nest. "Why then should the _Andrena_ feel alarm? If the species of _Nomada_ attack the species of _Andrena_ too much, it brings about the destruction of its own species more certainly than that of the _Andrena_."

More violent in its methods is the larva of a _Stelis_, whose operations in the nest of _Osmia leucomelana_ have been studied by Verhoeff. The female _Stelis_ lays her eggs earlier than the _Osmia_, and towards the bottom of the food-mass; the egg of the _Osmia_ is laid later, and on the surface of the food. Hence the two eggs are at opposite ends of the food, and both larvae feed for a time without conflict, but the _Stelis_, being the older, is the larger of the two. Finally the parasitic larva attacks the _Osmia_, and digging its mandibles into its victim's head kills and eats it, taking from one to two days for the completion of the repast.

_Social Bees._--The bees hitherto described are "solitary," all the individuals being either males or unmodified females. The most highly developed of the long-tongued bees are "social" species, in which the females are differentiated into egg-laying queens and (usually) infertile "workers" (fig. 6). Verhoeff has discussed the rise of the "social" from the "solitary" condition, and points out that for the formation of an insect community three conditions are necessary--a nest large enough for a number of individuals, a close grouping of the cells, and an association between mother and daughters in the winged state. For the fulfilment of this last condition, the older insects of the new generation must emerge from the cells while the mother is still occupied with the younger eggs or larvae. One species of _Halictus_ nearly reaches the desired stage; but the first young bees to appear in the perfect state are males, and when the females emerge the mother dies.

Among the social bees the mother and daughter-insects co-operate, and they differ from the "solitary" groups in the nature of their nest, the cells (fig. 25) of which are formed of wax secreted by special glands (fig. 5) in the bee's abdomen, the wax being pressed out between the segmental sclerites in the form of plates (fig. 4), which are worked by the legs (fig. 7) and jaws into the requisite shape. In our well-known hive-bee (_Apis_) and humble-bees (_Bombus_) the wax glands are ventral in position, but in the "stingless" bees of the tropics (_Trigona_ and _Melipona_) they are dorsal. A colony of humble-bees is started in spring by a female "queen" which has survived the winter. She starts her nest underground or in a surface depression, forming a number of waxen cells, roughly globular in shape and arranged irregularly. The young females ("workers") that develop from the eggs laid in these early cells assist the queen by building fresh cells and gathering food for storage therein. The queen may be altogether relieved of the work of the nest as the season advances, so that she can devote all her energies to egg-laying, and the colony grows rapidly. The distinction between queen and worker is not always clear among humble-bees, the female insects varying in size and in the development of their ovaries. If any mishap befall the queen, the workers can sometimes keep the community from dying out. In autumn males are produced, as well as young queens. The community is broken up on the approach of winter, the males and workers perish, and the young queens after hibernation start fresh nests in the succeeding year.

The appearance of the heavy-bodied hairy _Bombi_ is well known. They are closely "mimicked" by bees of the genus _Psithyrus_, which often share their nests. These _Psithyri_ have no pollen-carrying structures on the legs and their grubs are dependent for their food-supply on the labours of the _Bombi_, though, according to E. Hoffer's observations, it seems that the female _Psithyrus_ builds her own cells. The colonies of _Bombus_ illustrate the rise of the inquiline habit. Many of the species are very variable and have been differentiated into races or varieties. F.W.L. Sladen states that a queen belonging to the _virginalis_ form of _Bombus terrestris_ often invades a nest belonging to the _lucorum_ form, kills the rightful queen, and takes possession of the nest, getting the _lucorum_ workers to rear her young. In the nests of _Bombi_ are found various beetle larvae that live as inquilines or parasites, and also maggots of drone-flies (_Volucella_), which act as scavengers; the Volucella-fly is usually a "mimic" of the _Bombus_, whose nest she invades.

The "stingless" bees (_Trigona_) of the tropics have the parts of the sting reduced and useless for piercing. As though to compensate for the loss of this means of defence, the mandibles are very powerful, and some of the bees construct tubular entrances to the nest with a series of constrictions easy to hold against an enemy. The habits of the Brazilian species of these bees have been described in detail by H. von Jhering, who points out that their wax glands are dorsal in position, not ventral as in _Bombus_ and _Apis_.

With _Apis_, the genus of the hive-bee, we come to the most highly-specialized members of the family--better known, perhaps than any other insects, on account of the long domestication of many of the species or races. In _Apis_ the workers differ structurally from the queen, who neither builds cells, gathers food, nor tends brood, and is therefore without the special organs adapted for those functions which are possessed in perfection by the workers. The differentiation of queen and workers is correlated with the habit of storing food supplies, and the consequent permanence of the community, which finds relief for its surplus population by sending off a swarm, consisting of a queen and a number of workers, so that the new community is already specialized both for reproduction and for labour.

The workers of _Apis_ may be capable (fig. 6, C) of laying eggs--necessarily unfertilized--which always give rise to males ("drones"), and, since the researches of J. Dzierzon (1811-1906) in 1848, it has been believed that the queen bee lays fertilized eggs in cells appropriate for the rearing of queens or workers, and unfertilized eggs in "drone-cells," virgin reproduction or parthenogenesis being therefore a normal factor in the life of these insects. F. Dickel and others have lately claimed that fertilized eggs can give rise to either queens, workers or males, according to the food supplied to the larvae and the influence of supposed "sex-producing glands" possessed by the nurse-workers. Dickel states that a German male bee mated with a female of the Italian race transmits distinct paternal characters to hybrid male offspring. A. Weismann, however, doubts these conclusions, and having found a spermaster in every one of the eggs that he examined from worker-cells, and in only one out of 272 eggs taken from drone-cells, he supports Dzierzon's view, explaining the single exception mentioned above as a mistake of the queen, she having laid inadvertently this single fertilized egg in a drone instead of in a worker cell.

The cells of the honeycomb of _Apis_ are usually hexagonal in form, and arranged in two series back to back (figs. 3, 25). Some of these cells are used for storage, others for the rearing of brood. The cells in which workers are reared are smaller than those appropriate for the rearing of drones, while the "royal cells," in which the young queens are developed, are large in size and of an irregular oval in form (fig. 25). It is believed that from the nature of the cell in which she is ovipositing, the queen derives a reflex impulse to lay the appropriate egg--fertilized in the queen or worker cell, unfertilized in the drone cell, as previously mentioned. Whether the fertilized egg shall develop into a queen or a worker depends upon the nature of the food. All young grubs are at first fed with a specially nutritious food, discharged from the worker's stomach, to which is added a digestive secretion derived from special salivary glands in the worker's head. If this "royal jelly" continue to be given to the grub throughout its life, it will grow into a queen; if the ordinary mixture of honey and digested pollen be substituted, as is usually the case from the fourth day, the grub will become a worker. The workers, who control the polity of the hive (the "queen" being exceedingly "limited" in her monarchy), arrange if possible that young queens shall develop only when the population of the hive has become so congested that it is desirable to send off a swarm. When a young queen has emerged, she stings her royal sisters (still in the pupal stage) to death. Previous to the emergence of the young queen, the old queen, prevented by the workers from attacking her daughters, has led off a swarm to find a new home elsewhere. The young queen, left in the old home, mounts high into the air for her nuptial flight, and then returns to the hive and her duties of egg-laying. The number of workers increases largely during the summer, and so hard do the insects work that the life of an individual may last only a few weeks. On the approach of winter the males, having no further function to perform for the community, are refused food-supplies by the workers, and are either excluded or banished from the hive to perish. Such ruthless habits of the bee-commonwealth, no less than the altruistic labours of the workers, are adapted for the survival and dominance of the species. The struggle for life may deal hardly with the individual, but it results--to quote Darwin's well-known title--in "the preservation of favoured races."

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--More has been written on bees, and especially on the genus _Apis_, than on any other group of insects. The classical observations of Reaumur _Memoires pour servir a l'histoire des insectes_, vols. v., vi. (Paris, 1740-1742) and F. Huber's _Nouvelles observations sur les abeilles_ (Geneve, 1792) will never be forgotten; they have been matched in recent times by J.H. Fabre's _Souvenirs entomologiques_ (Paris, 1879-1891); and M. Maeterlinck's poetic yet scientific _La vie des abeilles_ (Paris, 1901). Among writers on the solitary and parasitic species may be specially mentioned F. Smith, _Hymenoptera in the British Museum_ (London, 1853-1859); H. Friese, _Zool. Jahrb. Syst._, iv. (1891) J. Perez, _Actes Soc. Bordeaux_, xlviii. (1895); and C. Verhoeff, _Zool. Jahrb. Syst._, vi. (1892). For the social species we have valuable papers by E. Hoffer, _Mitt. Naturwissen. Ver. Steiermark_, xxxi. (1881); H. von Jhering, _Zool. Jahrb. Syst._, xix. (1903); and others. For recent controversy on parthenogenesis in the hive bee, see J. Perez, _Ann. Sci. Nat. Zool._ (6), vii. (1878); F. Dickel, _Zool. Anz._, xxv. (1901), and _Anatom. Anzeiger_, xix. (1902); A. Petrunkevich, _Zoolog. Jahrb. Anat._, xiv. (1901); and A. Weismann, _Anatom. Anzeiger_, xviii. (1901). F.R. Cheshire's _Bees and Bee-keeping_ (London, 1885-1888), and T.W. Cowan's _Honey Bee_ (2nd ed., 1904), are invaluable to the naturalist, and contain extensive bibliographies of _Apis_. D. Sharp's summary in the _Cambridge Natural History_, vol. vi., should be consulted for further information on bees generally. British bees are described in the catalogues of Smith, mentioned above, and by E. Saunders, _The Hymenoptera of the British Islands_ (London, 1896). (G. H. C.)

BEE-KEEPING

Bee-keeping, or the cultivation of the honey-bee as a source of income to those who practise it, is known to have existed from the most ancient times. Poets, philosophers, historians and naturalists (among whom may be mentioned Virgil, Aristotle, Cicero and Pliny) have eulogized the bee as unique among insects, endowed by nature with wondrous gifts beneficial to mankind in a greater degree than any other creature of the insect world. We are told that some of these ancient scientists passed years of their lives studying the wonders of bee-life, and left accurate records of their observations, which on many points agree with the investigations of later observers. As a forcible illustration of the manner in which a colony of bees was recognized as the embodiment of government by a chief or ruler, in the earliest times of which there is any existing record, it may be mentioned that on the sarcophagus containing the mummified remains of Mykerinos (now in the British Museum and dating back 3633 years B.C.) will be found a hieroglyphic bee,(fig. 8) representing the king of Lower Egypt.

Queen-rearing.

In dealing with the practical side of bee-keeping as now understood, it may be said that, compared with the methods in vogue during the first decade of the 19th century, or even within the memory of men still living at the beginning of the 20th, it is as the modern locomotive to the stagecoach of a previous generation. Almost everything connected with bee-craft has been revolutionized, and apiculture, instead of being classed with such homely rural occupations as that of the country housewife who carries a few eggs weekly to the market-town in her basket, is to-day regarded in many countries as a pursuit of considerable importance. Remarkable progress has also been made in the art of queen-rearing, and in improving the common or native bee by judicious crossing with the best foreign races, selected mainly for hardiness, working qualities and the prolific capacity of their queens. American bee-breeders are conspicuous in this respect, extensive apiaries being exclusively devoted to the business of rearing queens by the thousand for sale and export.

On the European continent queen-rearing apiaries are plentiful, but less attention is paid there to hybridizing than to keeping the respective races pure. In England also, some bee-keepers include queen-rearing as part of their business, while one large apiary on the south coast is exclusively devoted to the rearing of queen bees on the latest scientific system, and to breeding by selection from such races as are most suited to the exceptional climatic conditions of the country.

Honey as food.

Extensive apiaries have been established on the American continent, some containing from 2000 to 3500 colonies of bees, and in these honey is harvested in hundreds of tons yearly. The magnitude of the bee industry in the United States may be judged from the fact of a single bee-farmer located in California having harvested from 150,000 lb. of honey in one year from 2000 stocks of bees, and, as an instance of the enormous weight of honey obtainable from good hives in that favoured region, the same farmer secured 60,000 lb. of comb-honey in one season from his best 300 colonies. This is probably the maximum, and the hives were necessarily located in separate apiaries some few miles apart in order to avoid the evils of overstocking, but all in the midst of thousands of acres of honey-yielding flowers. Results like the above compared with those of the skeppist bee-keeper of former days, who was well pleased with an average of 20 to 25 lb. per hive, may be regarded as wonderful, but they are matters of fact. The consumption of honey as an article of food has also largely increased of late years; a recent computation shows that from 100 to 125 million lb. of honey, representing a money value of from eight to ten million dollars, is consumed annually in the United States alone. Many of the larger bee-farmers of the United States of America and Canada harvest from 50,000 to 60,000 lb. of honey in a single season, and some of them sell the whole crop direct to consumers.

State aid for bee-keeping.

It is a notable fact that in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and indeed all English-speaking countries outside the United Kingdom, honey is far more extensively used than it is there as an article of daily food. The natural result of this is that the trade in honey is conducted, in those countries, on entirely different lines from those followed in the British Isles, where honey production as an occupation has, until quite recent years, been regarded as too insignificant for official notice in any form. The value of the bee industry is now recognized, however, by the British government as worthy of state aid, in the promotion of technical instruction connected with agriculture. On the American continent apiculture is officially recognized by the respective states' governments; and by the federal government at Washington it is taken into account as a section of the Agricultural Department, with fully equipped experimental apiaries and qualified professors engaged therein for educational work. In several Canadian provinces also, the public funds are used in promoting the bee industry in various ways, mainly in combating the bee-disease known as "foul brood." In New Zealand the government of the colony has displayed the most praiseworthy earnestness and vigour in promoting apiculture. State-aided apiaries have been established under the supervision of a skilled bee-keeper, who travels over the colony giving instruction in practical bee-work at the public schools, and forming classes at various centres where pupils are taught bee-keeping in all its branches.

Value of bees as fertilizers.

In Europe similar progress is observable; technical schools, with well-equipped apiaries attached, are supported by the state, and in them the science and practice of modern bee-keeping is taught free by scientists and practical experts. Institutions of this kind have been established in Germany, Russia, Switzerland and elsewhere, all tending in the same direction, viz. the cultivation of the honey-bee as an appreciable source of income to the farmer, the peasant cultivator, and dwellers in districts where bee-forage is abundant and, if unvisited by the bee, lies wasting its sweetness on the desert air. It may be safely said that the value of the bee to the fruit-grower and the market-gardener has been proved beyond dispute; and the technical instruction now afforded by county councils in the rural districts of England has an appreciable effect. In proof thereof, we may quote the case of an extensive grower in the midland counties--sending fruit to the London market in tons--whose crop of gooseberries increased nearly fourfold after establishing a number of stocks of bees in close proximity to the gooseberry bushes. The fruit orchards and raspberry fields of Kent are also known to be greatly benefited by the numerous colonies of bees owned by more than 3000 bee-keepers in the county. The important part played by the bee in the economy of nature as a fertilizer is shown in fig. 9.

Bee-keepers' associations.

Bee and honey shows.

Honey labels.

In the United Kingdom the prevailing conditions, climatic and otherwise, with regard to apiculture--as well as the lack of sufficient natural bee-forage for large apiaries--are such as to preclude the possibility of establishing apiaries on a scale comparable with those located in less confined lands. On the other hand, even in England the value of bee-keeping is worthy of recognition as a minor industry connected with such items of agriculture as fruit-growing, market-gardening or poultry-raising. The fact that British honey is second to none for quality, and that the British market is eagerly sought by the bee-keepers of other nationalities, has of late impressed itself on the minds of thinking men. Moreover, their views are confirmed by the constant references to bees and the profits obtainable from bee-keeping in the leading papers on all sides. This newly-aroused interest in the subject is no doubt to a large extent fostered by the grants in aid of technical instruction afforded by county councils in rural districts. The British Bee-keepers' Association (instituted in 1874) has been untiring in its efforts to raise the standard of efficiency among those who are desirous of qualifying as experts and teachers of bee-keeping on modern methods. This body had for its first president the distinguished naturalist Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury). Subsequently the baroness Burdett-Coutts accepted the office in the year 1878, and was re-elected annually until her death in 1906. During this time she presided at its meetings and took an active part in its work, until advancing years prevented her attendance, but her interest in the welfare of the association was maintained to the last. Branch societies of bee-keepers were established throughout the English counties, mainly by the efforts of the parent body in London, with the object of securing co-operation in promoting the sale of honey, and showing the most modern methods of producing it in its most attractive form at exhibitions held for the purpose. Nearly the whole of these county societies affiliated with the central association, paying an affiliation fee yearly, and receiving in return the silver medal, bronze medal and certificate of the association, to be offered as prizes for competition at the annual county shows. Other advantages are given in connexion with the qualifying of experts, &c., while nearly all the county associations in the United Kingdom employ qualified men who visit members in spring and autumn for the purpose of examining hives and giving advice on bee management to those needing it. Another advantage of membership is the use of a "county label" for affixing to each section of honey in comb, or jar of extracted honey, offered for sale by members. These labels are numbered consecutively, and thus afford a guarantee of the genuineness and quality of the honey, the label enabling purchasers to trace the producer if needed. The British Bee-keepers' Association is an entirely philanthropic body, the only object of its members being to promote all that is good in British bee-keeping, and to "teach humanity to that industrious little labourer, the honey-bee." Bee-appliance manufacturers are not eligible for membership of its council, nor are those who make bee-keeping their main business; thus no professional jealousies can possibly arise. In this respect the association appears to stand alone among the bee-keepers' societies of the world. There are many equally beneficial societies, framed on different lines, existing in Germany, France, Russia and Switzerland, but they are mainly co-operative bodies instituted for the general benefit of members, who are without exception either bee-keepers on a more or less extensive scale, or scientists interested in the study of insect life.

The bee-keepers' associations of the United States, Canada and most of the British colonies, are--like those last mentioned above--formed for the sole and laudable purpose of promoting the business interests of their members, the latter being either bee-farmers or bee-appliance manufacturers. Thus they make no pretension of any but business discussions at their conferences, and much benefit to all concerned follows as a matter of course. In fact, we find enthusiastic bee-men and women travelling several hundreds of miles and devoting time, money and labour in attending conferences of bee-keepers in America, while the proceedings usually last for several days and are largely attended. The extent of the industry compared with that of Great Britain is so great that it fully accounts for the difference in procedure of the respective associations.

The bee-appliance trade.

As a natural consequence of this activity, the trade in bee-appliance making has assumed enormous proportions in the United States, where extensive factories have been established; one firm--employing over 500 hands, and using electric-power machinery of the most modern type--being devoted entirely to the manufacture of bee-goods and apiarian requisites. From this establishment alone the yearly output is about 25,000 bee-hives, and upwards of 100 millions of the small wooden boxes used for holding comb-honey. The most generally approved form of this box is known as the "1-lb. section," made from a strip of wood 1/2 in. thick, 2 in. wide, and of such length that when folded by joining the morticed and tenoned ends A B (fig. 10) it forms the section of box C, measuring 4-1/4" X 4-1/2" X 2" when complete, and holds about 1 lb. of comb-honey when filled by the bees and ready for table use. The V-shaped groove D (cut across and partly through the wood) shows the joint when in the flat, and E the same joint when closed for use. All the section boxes used in the United Kingdom are made in the U.S.A or in Canada from the timber known as basswood, no native wood being suitable for the purpose.

The straw skep.

The movable-frame hive.

Huber's observatory hive.

_Development of the Movable-frame Hive_--The dome-shaped straw skep of our forefathers may be regarded as the typical bee-hive of all time and of all civilized countries; indeed, it may with truth be said that as a healthy and convenient home for the honey-bee it has no equal. A swarm of bees hived in a straw skep, the picturesque little domicile known the world over as the personification of industry, will furnish their home with waxen combs in form and shape so admirably adapted to their requirements as to need no improvement by man. Why the circular form was chosen for the skep need not be inquired into, beyond saying that its shape conforms to that of a swarm, as the bees usually hang clustered on the branch of a neighbouring tree or bush after issuing from the parent hive. Fig 11 shows a straw skep in section, and explains itself as illustrating the admirable way in which the bees furnish their dwelling. The vertical section (A) shows the lower portion of the combs devoted to brood-rearing, the higher and thicker combs being reserved for honey, and midway between the brood and food is stored the pollen required for mixing with honey in feeding the larvae. It will be seen how well the upper part of the combs are fitted for bearing the weight of stores they contain, and how the lower portion allows the bees to cluster around the tender larvae and thus maintain the warmth necessary during its metamorphosis from the egg to the perfect insect. The horizontal section (B) with equal clearness demonstrates the bee's ingenuity in economizing space, showing how the outer combs are used exclusively for stores, and, as such, may be built of varying thickness as more or less storage room is required. The straw skep has, however, the irredeemable fault of fixed combs, and the gradual development of the movable-frame hive of today may be said to have first appeared in 1789 with the leaf-hive of Huber, so called from its opening like the leaves of a book. Prior to that date wooden box-hives of various shapes had been adopted by advanced bee-masters anxious to increase their output of honey, and by enthusiastic naturalists desirous of studying and investigating the wonders of bee-life apart from the utilitarian standpoint. Foremost among the latter was the distinguished Swiss naturalist and bee-keeper, Francois Huber, who was led to construct the leaf-hive bearing his name after experimenting with a single comb observatory hive recommended by Reaumur. Huber found that although he could induce swarms to occupy the glass-sided single frame advised by Reaumur, if the frame was fitted with ready-built pieces of comb patched together before hiving the swarm, the experiment was successful, while if left to themselves the bees built small combs across the space between the sheets of glass, and the desired inspection from the outside was thus rendered impossible. He also gathered that the abnormal conditions forced upon the bees by a ready-built single comb might so turn aside their natural instincts as to render his investigations less trustworthy than if conducted under perfectly natural conditions; so, in order to remove all doubt, he decided to have a series of wooden frames made, measuring 12 in. sq., each of rather more than the ordinary width allowed for brood-combs. These frames were numbered consecutively 1 to 12, and hinged together as shown in fig. 12 (h, A). In this way the frames of comb could be opened for inspection like a book, while when closed the bees clustered together as in an ordinary hive. Ten of these frames had a small piece of comb fixed to the top-bar in each, supported (temporarily) by a thin lath wedged up with pegs at side, the latter being removed when the comb had been made secure by the bees. When closed, the ten frames, together with the two outside ones (fitted with squares of glass for inspection), which represent the covers of the book, were tied together with a couple of stout strings. In a subsequent form of the same hive Huber was enabled--with the help of very long thumb-screws at each side (fig. 13)--to raise up any frame between two sheets of glass which confined the bees and allowed him to study the process of comb-building better than any hive we know of today. By means of the leaf-hive and using the entrances (fig. 12, e, e, A) Huber made artificial swarms by dividing and the use of division-boards, though not in quite the same fashion as is practised at the present day. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Huber's hive was defective in many respects; the parting of each frame, thus letting loose the whole colony, caused much trouble at times, but it remained the only movable-comb hive till 1838, when Dr Dzierzon--whose theory of parthenogenesis has made his name famous--devised a box-hive with a loose top-bar on which the bees built their combs and a movable side or door, by means of which the frames could be lifted out for inspection. This improvement was at once appreciated, and in the year 1852 Baron Berlepsch added side-bars and a bottom-bar, thus completing the movable frame.

Laagstroth's hive.

About the same time the Rev. L.L. Langstroth was experimenting on the same lines in America, and in 1852 his important invention was made known, giving to the world of bee-keepers a movable frame which in its most important details will never be excelled. We refer to the respective distances left between the side-bars and hive walls on each side, and between the lower edge of the bottom-bars and the floor-board. Langstroth, in his measurements, hit upon the happy mean which keeps bees from propolizing or fastening the frames to the hive body, as they assuredly would do if sufficient space had not been allowed for free passage round the side-bars; it is equally certain that if too much space had been provided, they would fill it with comb and thus render the frame immovable. In addition to these benefits, Langstroth's frame and hive possessed the enormous advantage over Dzierzon's of being manipulated from above, so that any single frame could be raised for inspection without disturbing the others. Langstroth's space-measurements have remained practically unaltered notwithstanding the many improvements in hive-making, and in the various sizes of movable frames, since introduced and used in different parts of the world.

Size of frames in the U.S.A.

In the United States of America Langstroth's frame and hive are the acknowledged "standards" among the great body of bee-keepers, although about a dozen different frames, varying more or less in size, have their adherents. Among these may be named the American, Adair, Danzenbaker, Gallup, Heddon, Langstroth and Quinby. Three of these, the American, Adair and Gallup, may be termed square frames, the others being oblong, but the latter shape appears to possess the most all-round advantages to the modern bee-keeper. Amid the different climatic conditions of so vast a continent as America, variation in size, and in the capacity of frames used, is in some measure accounted for.

British "Standard" frame.

In the British Isles, though the conditions are variable enough, they are less extreme, and, fortunately for those engaged in the pursuit, only one size of frame is acknowledged by the great majority of bee-keepers, viz. the British Bee-keepers' Association "Standard" (fig. 14). This frame, the outside measurement of which is 14 by 8-1/2 in., was the outcome of deliberations extending over a considerable time on the part of a committee of well-known bee-keepers, specially appointed in 1882 to consider the matter. In this way, whatever type or form of hive is used, the frames are interchangeable. Differences in view may, and do, exist regarding the thickness of the wood used in frame-making, but the _outside_ measurement never varies. Notwithstanding this fact, the advancement of apiculture and the continuous development of the modern frame-hive and methods of working have proceeded with such rapidity, both in England and in America, that hives and appliances used prior to 1885 are now obsolete.

Winter cellars for bees.

It may, therefore, be useful to compare the progress made in the United States of America and in Great Britain in order to show that, while the industry is incomparably larger and of more importance in America and Canada than in Great Britain, British bee-keepers have been abreast of the times in all things apicultural. The original Langstroth hive was single-walled, held ten frames (size 17-3/4 by 9 in.), and had a deep roof, made to cover a case of small honey boxes like the sections now in use; but the cumbersome projecting porch and sides, made to support the roof, are now dispensed with, and the number of frames reduced to eight. Although various modifications have since been made in minor details--all tending to improvement--its main features are unaltered. The typical hive of America is the _improved_ Langstroth (fig. 15), which has no other covering for the frame tops but a flat roof-board allowing 1/4 in. space between the roof and top-bars for bees to pass from frame to frame. Consequently, on the roof being raised the bees can take wing if not prevented from doing so. This feature finds no favour with British bee-keepers, nevertheless the "improved Langstroth" is a useful and simple hive, moderate in price, and no doubt efficient, but not suitable for bees wintered on their summer stands, as nearly all hives are in Great Britain. American bee-keepers, therefore, find it necessary to provide underground cellars, into which the bees are carried in the fall of each year, remaining there till work begins in the following spring. Those among them who cannot, for various reasons, adopt the cellar-wintering plan are obliged to provide what are termed "chaff-covers" for protecting their bees in winter. Of late years they have also introduced, as an improvement, the plan long followed in England of using double-walled chaff-packed hives. The difference here is that packing is now dispensed with, it being found that bees winter equally well with an outer case giving 1-1/2 in. of free space on all sides of the hive proper, but with no packing in between. Thus no change is needed in winter or summer, the air-space protecting the bees from cold in winter and heat in summer. Another point of difference between the English and American hive is the roof, which being gable-shaped in the former allows warm packing to be placed directly on the frame tops, so that the bees are covered in when the roof is removed and may be examined or fed with very little disturbance. Again, the American hive is, as a general rule, set close down on the ground, while stands or short legs are invariably used in Great Britain. One of the best-known hives in England is that known as the W.B.C. hive, devised in 1890 by W. Broughton Carr.

Figs. 16 and 17 explain its construction and, as will be seen, it is equally suitable when working for comb or for extracted honey.

Honey extractors.

Various causes have contributed to the development of the modern hive, the most important of which are the improvements in methods of extracting honey from combs, and in the manufacture of comb-foundation. Regarding the first of these, it cannot be said that the honey extractor, even in its latest form, differs very much from the original machine (fig. 18) invented by Major Hruschka, an officer in the Italian army, who in later life became an enthusiastic apiculturist. Hruschka's extractor, first brought to public notice in 1865, may be said to have revolutionized the bee-industry as a business. It enabled the honey producer to increase his output considerably by extracting honey from the cells in most cleanly fashion without damaging the combs, and in a fraction of the time previously occupied in the draining, heating and squeezing process. At the same time the combs were preserved for refilling by the bees, in lieu of melting them down for wax. The principle of the honey extractor (throwing the liquid honey out of the cells by centrifugal force) was discovered quite by accident. Major Hruschka's little son chanced to have in his hand a bit of unsealed comb-honey in a basket to which was attached a piece of string, and, as the boy playfully whirled the basket round in the air, his father noticed a few drops of honey, thrown out of the comb by the centrifugal force employed to keep the basket suspended. The value of the idea at once struck him, he set to work on utilizing the principle involved, and ere long had constructed a machine admirably adapted to serve its purpose. Since that time changes, of more or less value, have been introduced to meet present-day requirements. One of the first to take advantage of Hruschka's invention was Mr A. I. Root, who in 1869 perfected a machine on similar lines to the Hruschka one but embodying various improvements. This appliance, known as the "Novice Honey Extractor," became very popular in the United States of America, but it had the fault of wasting time in removing the combs for reversing after one side had been emptied of its contents. A simple form of machine for extracting honey by centrifugal force was brought to notice in England in 1875, and was soon improved upon, as will be seen in fig. 19, which shows a section of one of the best English machines at that time. Various plans were tried in America to improve on the "Novice" machine, and Mr T.W. Cowan, who was experimenting in the same direction in England, invented in the year 1875 a machine called the "Rapid," in which, the combs were reversed without removal of the cages (fig. 20). The frame-cases--wired on both sides--are hung at the angles of a revolving ring of iron, and the reversing process is so simple and effective that the "Cowan" reversible frame has been adopted in all the best machines both in Great Britain and in America.

Comb foundation.

Next in importance, to bee-keepers, is the enormous advance made in late years through the invention of a machine for manufacturing the impressed wax sheets known as "comb foundation," aptly so named, because upon it the bees build the cells wherein they store their food. We need not dwell upon the evolution from the crude idea, which first took form in the endeavour to compel bees to build straight combs in a given direction by offering them a guiding line of wax along the under side of each top-bar of the frame in which the combs were built; but we may glance at the more important improvements which gradually developed as time went on. In 1843 a German bee-keeper, Krechner by name, conceived the idea of first dipping fine linen into molten wax, then pressing the sheets so made between rollers, and thus forming a waxen midrib on which the bees would build their combs. This experiment was partially successful, but the instinctive dislike of bees to anything of a fibrous nature caused them completely to spoil their work of comb-building in the endeavour to tear or gnaw away the linen threads whenever they got in touch with them. In 1857 Mehring (also a German) made a further advance by the use of wooden moulds for casting sheets of wax impressed with the hexagonal form of the bee-cell. These sheets were readily accepted by the bees, and afterwards plates cast from metal were employed, with so good a result as to give to the bees as perfect a midrib as that of natural comb with the deep cell walls cut away. Fig. 22 shows a portion of one of these metal plates with worker-cells of natural size, i.e. five cells to the inch. Thus Mehring is justly claimed as the originator of comb-foundation, though the value of his invention was less eagerly taken advantage of even in Germany than its merits deserved. Probably it was ahead of the times, for not until nearly twenty years later was any prominence given to it, when Samuel Wagner, founder and editor of the _American Bee Journal_, became impressed with Mehring's invention and warmly advocated it in his paper. Mr Wagner first conceived the idea of adding slightly raised side walls to the hexagonal outlines of the cells, by means of which the bees are supplied with the material for building out one-half or more of the complete cell walls or sides. The manifest advantage of this was at once realized by practical American apiarists as saving labour to the bees and money to the bee-keeper. One of the first to recognize its value was Mr A I. Root, of Medina, Ohio, who suggested the substitution of embossed rollers in lieu of flat plates, in order to increase the output of foundation and lessen its cost to the bee-keeper. He lost no time in giving practical shape to his views, and mainly through the inventive genius of a skilled machinist (Mr A. Washburn) the A. I. Root Co. constructed a roller press (fig 23) for producing foundation in sheets. This form of machine came into extensive use in the United States of America and afterwards in Great Britain. The first roller press was made by the A.I. Root Co. and imported by Mr William Raitt, a Scottish bee-keeper of repute in Perthshire, N.B. In all roller machines used at that time the plain sheets of wax were first made by the "dipping" process, i.e. by repeated dippings of damped boards in molten wax (kept in liquid condition in tanks immersed in hot water) until the sheet was of suitable thickness for the purpose. The prepared sheets were then passed through the rollers, and after being cut out and trimmed were ready for use.

Owing to the enormous demand for comb-foundation at that time various devices were tried with the view of securing (1) more rapid production, and (2) a foundation thin enough to be used in surplus chambers when working for comb-honey intended for table use. Foremost among the able men who experimented in this latter direction was Mr F.B. Weed, a skilful American machinist, who, after some years of strenuous effort, succeeded in devising and perfecting special rollers and dies, by the use of which foundation was produced with a midrib so thin as to compare favourably with natural comb built by the bees. "Dipping," however, proved not only a stumbling-block to speed but to the production of continuous sheets of wax; and in the end Mr Weed, acting in concert with Mr A.I. Root (who placed the resources of his enormous factory at his disposal), devised and perfected machinery--driven by motor power--for manufacturing foundation by what is known as the "Weed" process. By this process "dipping" is abolished, and in its latest form sheets of wax of any length are produced, passed between engraved rollers 6 in in diameter, cut to given lengths, trimmed, counted and paper-tissued ready for packing, at a rate of speed previously undreamt of.

_Practical Management of Bees._--Among the world of insects the honey-bee stands pre-eminent as the most serviceable to mankind; from the day on which the little labourer leaves its home for the first time in search of food, its mission is undoubtedly useful. Launched upon an unknown world, and guided by unerring instinct to the very flowers it seeks, the bee fertilizes fruit and flowers while winging its happy flight among the blossoms, gathering pollen for the nurslings of its own home and honey for the use of man. Nothing seems to be lost, nor can any part of the bee's work be accounted labour in vain; the very wax from which the insect builds the store-combs for its food and the cells in which its young are hatched and reared is valuable to mankind in many ways, and is regarded today no less than in the past ages as an important commercial product. The hive bee is, moreover, the only insect known to be capable of domestication, so far as labouring under the direct control of the bee-master is concerned, its habits being admirably adapted for embodying human methods of working for profit in our present-day life.

In dealing with the practical side of apiculture it will not be necessary to do more than mention the salient points to be considered by those desirous of acquiring more complete knowledge of the subject. Authoritative text-books specially written for the guidance of bee-keepers are numerous and cheap, and on no account should any one engage in an attempt to manage bees on modern lines without a careful perusal of one or more of these. Bearing this in mind the reader will understand that so much of the natural history of the honey-bee as is necessary for elucidating the practical part of our subject may be comprised in (1) the life of the insect, (2) its mission in life, and (3) utilizing to the utmost the brief period during which it can labour before being worn out with toil.

Sex of bees.

Loss of queens.

A prosperous bee-colony managed on modern lines will in the height of summer consist of three kinds of bees: a queen or mother-bee, a certain number of drones, and from 80,000 to 100,000 workers. With regard to sex, the queen is a fully-developed female, the drones are males and the workers may be termed neuters or partially developed females. These last possess ovaries like the queen, but shrunken and aborted so as to render the insect normally incapable of egg-production. The relative importance of the three kinds of bees, differs greatly in a degree and in somewhat curious fashion. For instance, the queen (or "king" of the hives as it was termed by our forefathers) is of paramount importance at certain seasons, her death or disablement during the period when the male element is absent meaning extinction of the whole colony. Fecundation would under such conditions be impossible, and without this the eggs of a resultant queen will produce nothing but drones. During the summer season, however (from May to July), when drones are abundant, the loss of a queen is of comparatively little moment, as the workers can transform eggs (or young larvae not more than three days old), which would in the ordinary course produce worker bees, into fully-developed queens, capable of fulfilling all the maternal duties of a mother-bee. The value of this wonderful provision of nature to the bee-keeper of today may be estimated from the fact that bees managed according to modern methods are necessarily subject to so much manipulating or handling, that fatal accidents are as likely to happen in bee life as among human beings.

Authorities differ with regard to the age during which the queen bee is useful to the bee-keeper who works for profit. Under normal conditions the insect will live for three, four or sometimes five years, but the stimulation given together with the high-pressure system followed in modern bee-management, exhausts the period of her greatest fecundity in two years, so that queens are usually superseded after their second season has expired and egg-production gradually decreases. This can hardly cause wonder if it is borne in mind that for many weeks during the height of the season a prolific queen will deposit eggs at the rate of from two to three thousand every twenty-four hours.

The drone.

Drones (or male bees) are more or less numerous in hives according to the skill of the bee-keeper in limiting their production. It is admitted by those best able to judge that the proportion of about a hundred drones in each hive is conducive to the prosperity of the colony, but beyond that number they are worse than useless, being non-producers and heavy consumers. Thus in times of scarcity, which are not infrequent during the early part of the season, they become a heavy tax upon the food-supply of the colony at the critical period when brood-rearing is accelerated by an abundance of stores, while shortness of food means a falling-off in egg-production. The modern bee-keeper, therefore, allows just so much drone comb in the hive as will produce a sufficient number of drones to ensure queen-mating, while affording to the bees the satisfaction of dwelling in a home equipped according to natural conditions, and containing all the elements necessary to bee-life. The action of the bees themselves makes this point clear, for when the season of mating is past the drone is no longer needed, the providing of winter stores taking first place in the economy of the hive. So long as honey is being gathered in plenty drones are tolerated, but no sooner does the honey harvest show signs of being over than they are mercilessly killed and cast out of the hive by the workers, after a brief idle life of about four months' duration. Thus the "lazy yawning drone," as Shakespeare puts it, has a short shrift when his usefulness to the community is ended.

The worker-bee.

Longevity in bees.

Finally we have the aptly named worker-bee, on whom devolves the entire labour of the colony. The worker-bee is incapable of egg-production and can therefore take no part in the perpetuation of its species, so that individually its value to the community is infinitesimal. Yet it forms an item in a commonwealth, the members of which are in all respects equally well endowed. They are in turn skilled scientists, architects, builders, artisans, labourers and even scavengers; but collectively they are the rulers on whom the colony depends for the wonderful condition of law and order which has made the bee-community a model of good government for all mankind. Then so far as regards longevity, the period of a worker-bee's existence is not measured by numbering its days but simply by wear and tear, the marvellous intricacy and wonderful perfection of its framework being so delicate in construction that after six or seven weeks of strenuous toil, such as the bee undergoes in summer time, the little creature's labour is ended by a natural death. On the other hand, worker-bees hatched in the autumn will seven months later be strong with the vigour of lusty youth, able to take their full share in the labour of the hive for six weeks or more in the early spring, which is the most critical period in the colony's existence; hence the value to the apiarist of bees hatched in the autumn.

The mission of the worker-bee is _work_; not so much for itself as for the younger members of the community to which it belongs. We cannot claim for it the virtue of strict honesty with regard to the stranger, but for its own "kith and kin" it is a model of socialism in an ideal form, possessing nothing of its own yet toiling unceasingly for the good of all. The increasing warmth of each recurring spring finds the bee awake, and full of eagerness to be up and doing; its sole mission being apparently to accomplish as much work as possible while life lasts. The earliest pollen is sought out from far and near, and has its immediate effect upon the mother bee of the colony. If healthy and young she begins egg-laying at once, and brood-rearing proceeds at an ever-increasing rate as each week passes, until the hive is brimming over with bees in time for the first honey flow. Then comes the almost human foresight with which the bee prevents the inevitable chaos created by an overcrowded home. There is no cell-room either for storing the abundant supply of food constantly being brought in, or for the thousands of eggs which a prolific queen will produce daily as a consequence of general prosperity; therefore unless help comes from without an exodus is prepared for, and what is known as "swarming" takes place.

Swarming.

Hiving swarms.

It would be difficult to imagine anything more exhilarating to a beginner in bee-keeping than the sight of his first hive in the act of swarming. The little creatures are seen rushing in frantic haste from the hive like a living stream, filling the air with ever-increasing thousands of bees on the wing. The incoming workers returning pollen-laden from the fields, carried away by the prevailing excitement, do not stop to unload their burdens in the old home, but join the enthusiastic emigrants, tumbling over each other pell-mell in the outrush; among them the queen of the colony will in due course have taken her place, bound like her children for a new home. It soon becomes apparent to the onlooker when the queen has joined the flying multitude of bees in the air, for they are seen to be closing up their ranks, and in a few moments begin to form a solid cluster, usually on the branch of a small tree or bush close to the ground. When this stage of swarming is reached the bee-keeper has but to take his hiving skep, hold it under the swarm, and shake the bees into it, preparatory to transferring them into a frame-hive already prepared for their reception. The process of hiving a swarm is very simple and need not occupy many moments of time under ordinary conditions, but so many unlooked-for contingencies may arise that the apiarist would do well to prepare himself beforehand by carefully reading the directions in his text-book.

The illustration given in fig. 25 will serve more readily than words to enlighten the would-be bee-keeper. It shows a portion of honeycomb (natural size) not precisely as it appears when the frame containing it is lifted out of the hive, but as would be seen on two or more combs in the same hive, namely, the various cells built for--and occupied by--queens, drones and workers; also the larvae or grubs in the various stages of transformation from egg to perfect insect, with the latter biting their way out of sealed cells. It also shows sealed honey and pollen in cells, &c. To familiarize himself with the various objects depicted, all of which are drawn from nature, will not only help the reader to understand the different phases of bee-life during the swarming season, but tend to increase the interest of beginners in the pursuit. "Early drones, early swarms" was the ancient bee-man's favourite adage, and the skilled apiarist of to-day experiences the same pleasurable thrill as did the skeppist of old at the sight of the first drone of the year, which betokens an early swarm. As the drones increase in number queen-cells are formed, unless steps be taken to turn aside the swarming impulse by affording additional room beforehand in the hive. The above brief outline of the guiding principles of natural swarming is merely intended as introductory to the fuller information given in a good text-book.

Bee-forage in U.S.A.

_Management of an Apiary._--The main consideration in establishing an apiary is to secure a favourable location, which means a place where honey of good marketable quality may be gathered from the bee-forage growing around without any planting on the part of the bee-keeper himself. It is impossible to deal here with the varying conditions under which apiculture is carried on in all parts of the world, but, as a rule, the same principle applies everywhere. The bee industry prospers greatly in America, where amid the vast stretches of mountain and canyon in California the bee-forage extends for miles without a break, and the climatic conditions are so generally favourable as to reduce to a minimum the chances of the honey crop failing through adverse weather.

The bee-keeper's object is to utilize to the utmost the brief space of a worker-bee's life in summer, by adopting the best methods in vogue for building up stocks to full strength before the honey-gathering time begins, and preparing for it by the exercise of skill and intelligence in carrying out this work.

Value of pollen.

The queen of bee-plants.

In the United Kingdom there is a difference of several weeks in the honey season between north and south. Swarming usually begins in May in the south of England, and in mid-July in the north of Scotland, the issue of swarms coinciding with the early part of the main honey flow. The weather is naturally more precarious in autumn than earlier in the year, and chances of success proportionately smaller for northern bee-men, but the disadvantage to the latter is more than compensated for by the heather season, which extends well into September. With regard to the British bee-keeper located in the south, the early fruit crop is what concerns him most, and where pollen (the fertilizing dust of flowers) is plentiful his bees will make steady progress. If pollen is scarce, a substitute in the form of either pea-meal or wheaten flour must be supplied to the bees, as brood-rearing cannot make headway without the nitrogenous element indispensable in the food on which the young are reared. But the main honey-crop of both north and south is gathered from the various trifoliums, among which the white Dutch or common clover (_Trifolium repens_) is acknowledged to be the most important honey-producing plant wherever it grows. In the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and in many other parts of the world honey of the finest quality is obtained from this "queen of bee-plants," and in lesser degree from other clovers such as sainfoin, alsike (a hybrid clover), trefoil, &c.

British and American methods.

Before undertaking the management of a modern apiary, the bee-keeper should possess a certain amount of aptitude for the pursuit, without which it is hardly possible to succeed. He must also acquire the ability to handle bees judiciously and well under all imaginable conditions. In doing this it is needful to remember that bees resent outside interference with either their work or their hives, and will resolutely defend themselves when aroused even at the cost of life itself. Experience has also proved that, when alarmed, bees instinctively begin to fill their honey-sacs with food from the nearest store-cells as a safeguard against contingencies, and when so provided they are more amenable to interference. The bee-keeper, therefore, by the judicious application of a little smoke from smouldering fuel, blown into the hive by means of an appliance known as a bee-smoker, alarms the bees and is thus able to manipulate the frames of comb with ease and almost no disturbance. The smoker (fig. 26) devised by T.F. Bingham of Farwell, Michigan, U.S.A., is the one most used in America and in the United Kingdom. No other protection is needed beyond a bee-veil of fine black net, which slipped over a wide-brimmed straw hat protects the face from stings when working among bees; as experience is gained the veil is not always used. The man who is hasty and nervous in temperament, who fears an occasional sting, and resents the same by viciously killing the bee that inflicts it will rarely make a good apiarist. The methods of handling bees vary in different countries, this being in a great measure accounted for by the number of hives kept. Very few apiaries in the United Kingdom contain more than a hundred hives; consequently the British bee-keeper has no need for employing the forceful or "hustling" methods found necessary in America, where the honey-crop is gathered in car-loads and the hives numbered by thousands. It naturally follows that bee-life is there regarded very slightly by comparison, and the bee-garden in England becomes the "bee-yard" in America, where the apiarist when at work must thoroughly protect himself from being stung, and, safe in his immunity from damage, cares little for bee-life in getting through his task, the loss of a few hundred bees being considered of no account. There are, however, other reasons, apart from humanity, to account for the difference in handling bees as advocated in the United Kingdom. The great majority of apiaries owned by British bee-keepers are located in close proximity to neighbours; consequently a serious upset among the bees would in many cases involve an amount of trouble which should if possible be avoided; therefore quietness and the exercise of care when manipulating are always recommended by teachers, and practised by those who wisely take their lessons to heart.

Two forms of foul brood have been long known, one foul smelling, the other odourless; and investigations made during 1906 and 1907 showed that the etiology of the disease is not by any means simple, but that it is produced by different microbes, two others in addition to _Bacillus alvei_ playing an important part. These are _Bacillus brandenburgiensis_, Maassen (syn. _B. burri_, Burri: _B. larvae_, white), and _Streptococcus apis_, Maassen (syn. _B. Guntheri_, Burri). The first two are found in both forms of foul brood, whereas the last is only present with _B. alvei_ in the strong-smelling form of the disease, in which the larvae are attacked prior to the cells being sealed over.

The brood of bees, when healthy, lies in the combs in compact masses, the larvae being plump and of a pearly whiteness, and when quite young curled up on their sides at the base of the cells. When attacked by the disease, the larva moves uneasily, stretches itself out lengthwise in the cell, and finally becomes loose and flabby, an appearance which plainly indicates death.

When the disease attacks the larvae before they are sealed over _Bacillus alvei_ is present, usually associated with _Streptococcus apis_, which latter imparts a sour smell to the dead brood. In cases where the disease is odourless the larvae are attacked after the cells are sealed over, and just before they change to pupae, when they become slimy, sputum-like masses, difficult to remove from the cells. Under these conditions _Bacillus brandenburgiensis_ is found, although _Bacillus alvei_ may also be present. The two bacilli are antagonistic, each striving for supremacy, first one then the other predominating. Various other microbes are also present in large numbers, but are not believed to be pathogenic or disease-producing in character.

It is, therefore, seen that at least three different microbes play an important part in the same disease. The danger of contagion lies in the wonderful vitality of the spores, and their great resistance to heat and cold. Dr Maassen records a case where he had no difficulty in obtaining cultures from spores removed from combs after being kept dry for twenty years. It should be borne in mind that the disease is much easier to cure in the earlier stages while the bacilli are still rod-shaped than when the rods have turned to spores.

Since the bacterial origin of foul brood has been established, the efforts of some bacteriologists have been employed in finding a simple remedy by means of which the disease may be checked in its earliest stages, and in this an appreciable amount of success has been attained. Nor has foul brood in its more advanced forms been neglected, all directions for treatment being found in text-books written by distinguished writers on apiculture in the United Kingdom, America and throughout the European continent.

The only other disease to which reference need be made here is dysentery, which sometimes breaks out after the long confinement bees are compelled to undergo during severe winters. This trouble may be guarded against by feeding the bees in the early autumn with good food made from cane sugar, and housing them in well-ventilated hives kept warm and dry by suitable coverings. When bees are wintered on thin, watery food not sealed over, and are unable for months to take cleansing flights, they become weak and involuntarily discharge their excrement over the combs and hive, a state of things never seen in a healthy colony under normal conditions. The stocks of bee-keepers who attend to the instructions given in text-books are rarely visited by this disease.

The above embraces all that is necessary to be said in relation to diseases, though bees have been subject to other ailments such as paralysis, constipation, &c.

In the Isle of Wight a serious epidemic broke out in 1906 which caused great destruction to bee-life in the following year. The malady was of an obscure character, but its cause has been under investigation by the British Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, and by European bacteriologists in 1908.

AUTHORITIES.--Though in modern times a great deal has appeared in the daily newspapers on the subject, it is a notable fact that not a tithe of the wonderful things published in such articles about bees and bee-keeping is worthy of credence or possesses any real value. Indeed, a pressman possessing any technical knowledge of the subject--beyond that obtainable from books--would be a _rara avis_. The account given above is the result of forty years' practical experience with bees in England, the writer having for a great portion of the time been connected editorially with the only two papers in that country entirely devoted to bees and bee-keeping, _The British Bee Journal_ (weekly, founded 1873), and _Bee-keepers' Record_ (monthly, founded 1882), the former being the only weekly journal in the world. The following books on the subject may be consulted for further details:--Francois Huber, _New Observations on the Natural History of Bees_; T.W. Cowan, _British Bee-keepers' Guide-Book, The Honey Bee, its Natural History, Anatomy and Physiology; Langstroth on the Honey Bee_, revised by C. Dadant & Son; A.I. Root, _A B C and X Y Z of Bee-culture_; F.R. Cheshire, _Bees and Bee-keeping_; Dr Dzierzon, _Rational Bee-keeping_; E. Bertrand, _Conduite du rucher_; A.J. Cook, _Manual of the Apiary_; Dr C.C. Miller, _Forty Years among the Bees_; F.W.L. Sladen, _Queen-rearing in England_; S. Simmins, _A Modern Bee Farm_. (W. B. Ca.)

BEECH, a well-known tree, _Fagus sylvatica_, a member of the order Fagaceae to which belong the sweet-chestnut (_Castanea_) and oak. The name beech is from the Anglo-Saxon _boc, bece_ or _beoce_ (Ger. _Buche_, Swedish, _bok_), words meaning at once a book and a beech-tree. The connexion of the beech with the graphic arts is supposed to have originated in the fact that the ancient Runic tablets were formed of thin boards of beech-wood. "The origin of the word," says Prior (_Popular Names of British Plants_), "is identical with that of the Sanskrit _boko_, letter, _bokos_, writings; and this correspondence of the Indian and our own is interesting as evidence of two things, viz. that the Brahmins had the art of writing before they detached themselves from the common stock of the Indo-European race in Upper Asia, and that we and other Germans have received alphabetic signs from the East by a northern route and not by the Mediterranean." Beech-mast, the fruit of the beech-tree, was formerly known in England as buck; and the county of Buckingham is so named from its fame as a beech-growing country. Buckwheat (_Bucheweizen_) derives its name from the similarity of its angular seeds to beech-mast. The generic name Fagus is derived from [Greek: phagein] to eat; but the [Greek: phaegos] of Theophrastus was probably the sweet chestnut (_Aesculus_) of the Romans. Beech-mast has been used as food in times of distress and famine; and in autumn it yields an abundant supply of food to park-deer and other game, and to pigs, which are turned into beech-woods in order to utilize the fallen mast. In France it is used for feeding pheasants and domestic poultry. Well-ripened beech-mast yields from 17 to 20% of non-drying oil, suitable for illumination, and said to be used in some parts of France and other European countries in cooking, and as a substitute for butter.

The beech is one of the largest British trees, particularly on chalky or sandy soils, native in England from Yorkshire southwards, and planted in Scotland and Ireland. It is one of the common forest trees of temperate Europe, spreading from southern Norway and Sweden to the Mediterranean. It is found on the Swiss Alps to about 5000 ft. above sea-level, and in southern Europe is usually confined to high mountain slopes; it is plentiful in southern Russia, and is widely distributed in Asia Minor and the northern provinces of Persia.

It is characterized by its sturdy pillar-like stem, often from 15 to 20 ft. in girth, and smooth olive-grey bark. The main branches rise vertically, while the subsidiary branches spread outwards and give the whole tree a rounded outline. The slender brown pointed buds give place in April to clear green leaves fringed with delicate silky hairs. The flowers which appear in May are inconspicuous and, as usual with our forest trees, of two kinds; the male, in long-stalked globular clusters, hang from the axils of the lower leaves of a shoot, while the female, each of two or three flowers in a tiny cup (cupule of bracts), stand erect nearer the top of the shoot. In the ripe fruit or mast the four-sided cupule, which has become much enlarged, brown and tough, encloses two or three three-sided rich chestnut-brown fruits, each containing a single seed. It is readily propagated by its seeds. It is a handsome tree in every stage of its growth, but is more injurious to plants under its drip than other trees, so that shade-bearing trees, as holly, yew and thuja, suffer. Its leaves, however, enrich the soil. The beech has a remarkable power of holding the ground where the soil is congenial, and the deep shade prevents the growth of other trees. It is often and most usefully mixed with oak and Scotch fir. The timber is not remarkable for either strength or durability. It was formerly much used in mill-work and turnery; but its principal use at present is in the manufacture of chairs, bedsteads and a variety of minor articles. It makes excellent fuel and charcoal. The copper-beech is a variety with copper-coloured leaves, due to the presence of a red colouring-matter in the sap. There is also a weeping or pendulous-branched variety; and several varieties with more or less cut leaves, are known in cultivation.

The genus _Fagus_ is widely spread in temperate regions, and contains in addition to our native beech, about 15 other species. A variety (_F. sylvatica_ var. _Sieboldi_) is a native of Japan, where it is one of the finest and most abundant of the deciduous-leaved forest trees. _Fagus americana_ is one of the most beautiful and widely-distributed trees of the forests of eastern North America. It was confounded by early European travellers with _F. sylvatica_, from which it is distinguished by its paler bark and lighter green, more sharply-toothed leaves. Several species are found in Australia and New Zealand, and in the forests of southern Chile and Patagonia. The dense forests which cover the shore of the Straits of Magellan and the mountain-slopes of Tierra del Fuego consist largely of two beeches--one evergreen, _Fagus betuloides_, and one with deciduous leaves, _F. antarctica_.

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).

BEECHER, HENRY WARD (1813-1887), American preacher and reformer, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th of June 1813. He was the eighth child of Lyman and Roxana Foote Beecher, and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Entering Amherst College in 1830, and graduating four years later, he gave more attention to his own courses of reading than to college studies, and was more popular with his fellows than with the faculty. With a patience foreign to his impulsive nature, he submitted to minute drill in elocution, and became a fluent extemporaneous speaker. Reared in a Puritan atmosphere, he has graphically described the mystical experience which, coming to him in his early youth, changed his whole conception of theology and determined his choice of the ministry. "I think," he says, "that when I stand in Zion and before God, the highest thing that I shall look back upon will be that blessed morning of May when it pleased God to reveal to my wondering soul the idea that it was His nature to love a man in his sins for the sake of helping him out of them." In 1837 he graduated from Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio, of which his father was president, and entered upon his work as pastor of a missionary Presbyterian church at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a village on the Ohio, about 20 m. below Cincinnati. The membership numbered nineteen women and one man. Beecher was sexton as well as preacher. Two years later he accepted a call to Indianapolis. His unconventional preaching shocked the more staid members of the flock, but filled the church to overflowing with people unaccustomed to churchgoing. He studied men rather than books; became acquainted with the vices in what was then a pioneer town; and in his _Seven Lectures to Young Men_ (1844) treated these with genuine power of realistic description and with youthful and exuberant rhetoric. Eight years later (1847) he accepted a call to the pastorate of Plymouth Church (Congregational), then newly organized in Brooklyn, New York. The situation of the church, within five minutes' walk of the chief ferry to New York, the stalwart character of the man who had organized it, and the peculiar eloquence of Beecher, combined to make the pulpit a national platform. The audience-room of the church, capable of seating 2000 or 2500 people, frequently contained 500 or 1000 more.

Beecher at once became a recognized leader. On the all-absorbing question of slavery he took a middle ground between the pro-slavery or peace party, and abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, believing, with such statesmen as W.H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Abraham Lincoln, that slavery was to be overthrown under the constitution and in the Union, by forbidding its growth and trusting to an awakened conscience, enforced by an enlightened self-interest. He was always an anti-slavery man, but never technically an abolitionist, and he joined the Republican party soon after its organization. In the earlier days of the agitation, he challenged the hostility which often mobbed the anti-slavery gatherings; in the later days he consulted with the political leaders, inspiring the patriotism of the North, and sedulously setting himself to create a public opinion which should confirm and ratify the emancipation proclamation whenever the president should issue it. When danger of foreign intervention cast its threatening shadow across the national path, he went to England, and by his famous addresses did what probably no other American could have done to strengthen the spirit in England favourable to the United States, and to convert that which was doubtful and hostile. In 1861-1863 he was the editor-in-chief of the _Independent_, then a Congregational journal; and in his editorials, copied far and wide, produced a profound impression on the public mind by clarifying and defining the issue. Later (in 1870), he founded and became editor-in-chief of the _Christian Union_, afterwards the _Outlook_, a religious undenominational weekly. His lectures and addresses had the spirit if not the form of his sermons, just as his sermons were singularly free from the homiletical tone. Yet his work as a reformer was subsidiary to his work as a preacher. He was not indeed a parish pastor; he inspired church activities which grew to large proportions, but trusted the organization of them to laymen of organizing abilities in the church; and for acquaintance with his people he depended on such social occasions as were furnished in the free atmosphere of this essentially New England church at the close of every service. But during his pastorate the church grew to be probably the largest in membership in the United States.

It was in the pulpit that Beecher was seen at his best. His mastery of the English tongue, his dramatic power, his instinctive art of impersonation, which had become a second nature, his vivid imagination, his breadth of intellectual view, the catholicity of his sympathies, his passionate enthusiasm, which made for the moment his immediate theme seem to him the one theme of transcendent importance, his quaint humour alternating with genuine pathos, and above all his simple and singularly unaffected devotional nature, made him as a preacher without a peer in his own time and country. His favourite theme was love: love to man was to him the fulfilment of all law; love of God was the essence of all Christianity. Retaining to the day of his death the forms and phrases of the New England theology in which he had been reared, he poured into them a new meaning and gave to them a new significance. He probably did more than any other man in America to lead the Puritan churches from a faith which regarded God as a moral governor, the Bible as a book of laws, and religion as obedience to a conscience to a faith which regards God as a father, the Bible as a book of counsels, and religion as a life of liberty in love. The later years of his life were darkened by a scandal which Beecher's personal, political and theological enemies used for a time effectively to shadow a reputation previously above reproach, he being charged by Theodore Tilton, whom he had befriended, with having had improper relations with his (Tilton's) wife. But in the midst of these accusations (February 1876), the largest and most representative Congregational council ever held in the United States gave expression to a vote of confidence in him, which time has absolutely justified. Not a student of books nor a technical scholar in any department, Beecher's knowledge was as wide as his interests were varied. He was early familiar with the works of Matthew Arnold, Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer; he preached his _Bible Studies_ sermons in 1878, when the higher criticism was wholly unknown to most evangelical ministers or known only to be dreaded; and his sermons on _Evolution and Religion_ in 1885, when many of the ministry were denouncing evolution as atheistic. He was stricken with apoplexy while still active in the ministry, and died at Brooklyn on the 8th of March 1887, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

The principal books by Beecher, besides his published sermons, are: _Seven Lectures to Young Men_ (1844); _Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes_ (1855); _Star Papers, Experiences of Art and Nature_ (1855); _Life Thoughts_ (1858); _New Star Papers; or Views and Experiences of Religious Subjects_ (1859); _Plain and Pleasant Talks about Fruits, Flowers, and Farming_ (1859); _American Rebellion, Report of Speeches delivered in England at Public Meetings in Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London_ (1864); _Prayers from Plymouth Pulpit_ (1867); _Norwood: A Tale of Village Life in New England_ (1867); _The Life of Jesus the Christ_ (1871), completed in 2 vols. by his sons (1891); and _Yale Lectures on Preaching_ (3 vols., 1872-1874).

The prinipal lives are: Noyes L. Thompson, _The History of Plymouth Church_ (1847-1872); Thomas W. Knox, _The Life and Work of Henry Ward Beecher_ (Hartford, Conn., 1887); Frank S. Child, _The Boyhood of Henry Ward Beecher_ (Pamphlet, New Creston, Conn., 1887); Joseph Howard, Jr., _Life of Henry Ward Beecher_ (Philadelphia, 1887); T.W. Hanford, _Beecher: Christian Philosopher, Pulpit Orator, Patriot and Philanthropist_ (Chicago, 1887); Lyman Abbott and S.B. Halliday, _Henry Ward Beecher: A Sketch of his Career_ (New York, 1887); William C. Beecher, Rev. Samuel Scoville and Mrs. H.W. Beecher, _A Biography of Henry Ward Beecher_ (New York, 1888); John R. Howard, _Henry Ward Beecher: A Study_ (1891); John Henry Barrows, _Henry Ward Beecher_ (New York, 1893); and Lyman Abbott, _Henry Ward Beecher_ (Boston, 1903). (L. A.)

BEECHER, LYMAN (1775-1863), American clergyman, was born at New Haven, Connecticut, on the 12th of October 1775. He was a descendant of one of the founders of the New Haven colony, worked as a boy in an uncle's blacksmith shop and on his farm, and in 1797 graduated from Yale, having studied theology under Timothy Dwight. He preached in the Presbyterian church at East Hampton, Long Island (1798-1810, being ordained in 1799); in the Congregational church at Litchfield, Connecticut (1810-1826), in the Hanover Street church of Boston (1826-1832), and in the Second Presbyterian church of Cincinnati, Ohio (1833-1843); was president of the newly established Lane Theological Seminary at Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, and was professor of didactic and polemic theology there (1832-1850), being professor emeritus until his death. At Litchfield and in Boston he was a prominent opponent of the growing "heresy" of Unitarianism, though as early as 1836 he was accused of being a "moderate Calvinist" and was tried for heresy, but was acquitted. Upon his resignation from Lane Theological Seminary he lived in Boston for a short time, devoting himself to literature; but he broke down, and the last ten years of his life were spent at the home of his son, Henry Ward Beecher, in Brooklyn, New York, where he died on the both of January 1863. Magnetic in personality, incisive and powerful in manner of expression, he was in his prime one of the most eloquent of American pulpit orators. In 1806 he preached a widely circulated sermon on duelling, and about 1814 a series of six sermons on intemperance, which were reprinted frequently and greatly aided temperance reform. Thrice married, he had a large family, his seven sons becoming Congregational clergymen, and his daughters, Harriet Beecher Stowe (q.v.) and Catherine Esther Beecher, attaining literary distinction.

Lyman Beecher's published works include: _A Plea for the West_ (1835), _Views in Theology_ (1836), and various sermons; his _Collected Works_ were published at Boston in 1852 in 3 vols. Consult his _Autobiography and Correspondence_ (2 vols., New York, 1863-1864), edited by his son Charles; D.H. Alien, _Life and Services of Lyman Beecher_ (Cincinnati, 1863); and James C. White, _Personal Reminiscences of Lyman Beecher_ (New York, 1882).

His daughter, CATHERINE ESTHER (1800-1878), was born at East Hampton, Long Island, on the 6th of September 1800. She was educated at Litchfield Seminary, and from 1822 to 1832 conducted a school for girls at Hartford, Connecticut, with her sister Harriet's assistance, and from 1832 to 1834 conducted a similar school in Cincinnati. She wrote and lectured on women's education and in behalf of better primary schools, and radically opposed woman suffrage and college education for women, holding woman's sphere to be domestic. The National Board of Popular Education, a charitable society which she founded, sent hundreds of women as teachers into the South and West. She died on the 12th of May 1878 in Elmira, New York. She published _An Essay on Slavery and Abolition with Reference to the Duty of American Females_ (1837), _A Treatise on Domestic Economy_ (1842), _The True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women_ (1851), _Letters to the People on Health and Happiness_ (1855), _The Religious Training of Children_ (1864), and _Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator_ (1871).

His son, EDWARD BEECHER (1803-1895), was born at East Hampton, Long Island, on the 27th of August 1803, graduated at Yale in 1822, studied theology at Andover, and in 1826 became pastor of the Park Street church in Boston. From 1830 to 1844 he was president of Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois, and subsequently filled pastorates at the Salem Street church, Boston (1844-1855), and the Congregational church at Galesburg, Illinois (1855-1871). He was senior editor of the _Congregationalist_ (1849-1855), and an associate editor of the _Christian Union_ from 1870. In 1872 he settled in Brooklyn, New York, where in 1885-1889 he was pastor of the Parkville church and where he died on the 28th of July 1895. He wrote _Addresses on the Kingdom of God_ (1827), _History of the Alton Riots_ (1837), _Statement of Anti-Slavery Principles_ (1837), _Baptism, its Import and Modes_ (1850), _The Conflict of Ages_ (1853), _The Papal Conspiracy Exposed_ (1855), _The Concord of Ages_ (1860), and _History of Opinions on the Scriptural Doctrine of Future Retribution_ (1878).

CHARLES BEECHER (1815-1900), another of Lyman's sons, was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 7th of October 1815. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1834, and subsequently held pastorates at Newark, New Jersey (1851-1857), and Georgetown, Massachusetts; and from 1870 to 1877 lived in Florida, where he was state superintendent of public instruction in 1871-1873. He died at Georgetown, Massachusetts, on the 21st of April 1900. He was an accomplished musician, and assisted in the selection and arrangement of music in the _Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes_. He wrote _David and His Throne_ (1855), _Pen Pictures of the Bible_ (1855), _Redeemer and Redeemed_ (1864), and _Spiritual Manifestations_ (1879).

THOMAS KINNICUTT BEECHER (1824-1900), another son, born at Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 10th of February 1824, was pastor of the Independent Congregational church (now the Park church), at Elmira, New York, one of the first institutional churches in the country, from 1854 until his death at Elmira on the 14th of March 1900. He wrote Our _Seven Churches_ (1870).

BEECHEY, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1796-1856), English naval officer and geographer, son of Sir William Beechey, R.A., was born in London on the 17th of February 1796. In 1806 he entered the navy, and saw active service during the wars with France and America. In 1818 he served under Lieutenant (afterwards Sir) John Franklin in Buchan's Arctic expedition, of which at a later period he published a narrative; and in the following year he accompanied Lieutenant W.E. Parry in the "Hecla." In 1821 he took part in the survey of the Mediterranean coast of Africa under the direction of Captain, afterwards Admiral, William Henry Smyth. He and his brother Henry William Beechey, made an overland survey of this coast, and published a full account of their work in 1828 under the title of _Proceedings of the Expedition to Explore the Northern Coast of Africa from Tripoly Eastward in 1821-1822_. In 1825 Beechey was appointed to command the "Blossom," which was intended to explore Bering Strait, in concert with Franklin and Parry operating from the east. He passed the strait and penetrated as far as 71 deg. 23' 31" N., and 156 deg. 21' 30" W., reaching a point only 146 m. west of that reached by Franklin's expedition from the Mackenzie river. The whole voyage lasted more than three years; and in the course of it Beechey discovered several islands in the Pacific, and an excellent harbour near Cape Prince of Wales. In 1831 there appeared his _Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Bering's Strait to Co-operate with the Polar Expeditions, 1825-1828_. In 1835 and the following year Captain Beechey was employed on the coast survey of South America, and from 1837 to 1847 carried on the same work along the Irish coasts. He was appointed in 1850 to preside over the Marine Department of the Board of Trade. In 1854 he was made rear-admiral, and in the following year was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society. He died on the 29th of November 1856.

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

BEECHING, HENRY CHARLES (1859- ), English clergyman and author, was born on the 15th of May 1859, and educated at the City of London school and at Balliol College, Oxford. He took holy orders in 1882, and after three years in a Liverpool curacy he was for fifteen years rector of Yattendon, Berkshire. From 1900 to 1903 he lectured on pastoral and liturgical theology at King's College, London, and was chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, where he became preacher in 1903. He became a canon of Westminster in 1902, and examining chaplain to the bishop of Carlisle in 1905. As a poet he is best known by his share in two volumes--_Love in Idleness_ (1883) and _Love's Looking Glass_ (1891)--which contained also poems by J.W. Mackail and J. Bowyer Nichols. He was a sympathetic editor and critic of the works of many 16th and 17th century poets, of Richard Crashaw (1905), of Herrick (1907), of John Milton (1900), of Henry Vaughan (1896). Under the pseudonym of "Urbanus Sylvan" he published two successful volumes of essays, _Pages from a Private Diary_ (1898) and _Provincial Letters and other Papers_ (1906). His works also include numerous volumes of sermons and essays on theological subjects.

BEECHWORTH, a town of Bogong county, Victoria, Australia, 172 m. by rail N.E. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 7359. The town is the centre of the Ovens goldfields, and the district is mainly devoted to mining with both alluvial and reef working, but much of the land is under cultivation, yielding grain and fruit. The water supply is derived from Lake Kerferd in the vicinity, which is a favourite resort of visitors; the scenery near the town, which lies at an elevation of 1805 ft. among the May Day Hills, being singularly beautiful. The industries of Beechworth include tanning, ironfounding and coach-building.

BEEF (through O. Fr. _boef_, mod. _boeuf_, from Lat. _bos, bovis_, ox, Gr. [Greek: bous], which show the ultimate connexion with the Sanskrit _go, gaus_, ox, and thus with "cow"), the flesh of the ox, cow or bull, as used for food. The use of the French word for the meat, while the Saxon name was retained for the animal, has been often noticed, and paralleled with the use of veal, mutton and pork. "Beef" is also used, especially in the plural "beeves," for the ox itself, but usually in an archaic way. "Corned" or "corn" beef is the flesh cured by salting, i.e. sprinkling with "corns" or granulated particles of salt. "Collared" beef is so called from the roll or collar into which the meat is pressed, after extracting the bones. "Jerked" beef, i.e. meat cut into long thin slices and dried in the sun, like "biltong" (q.v.), comes through the Spanish-American _charque_, from _echarqui_, the Peruvian word for this species of preserved meat. For "Beefeater" see YEOMEN OF THE GUARD.

BEEFSTEAK CLUB, the name of several clubs formed in London during the 18th and 19th centuries. The first seems to have been that founded in 1709 with Richard Estcourt, the actor, as steward. Of this the chief wits and great men of the nation were members and its badge was a gridiron. Its fame was, however, entirely eclipsed in 1735 when "The Sublime Society of Steaks" was established by John Rich at Covent Garden theatre, of which he was then manager. It is said that Lord Peterborough supping one night with Rich in his private room, was so delighted with the steak the latter grilled him that he suggested a repetition of the meal the next week. From this started the Club, the members of which delighted to call themselves "The Steaks." Among them were Hogarth, Garrick, Wilkes, Bubb Doddington and many other celebrities. The rendezvous was the theatre till the fire in 1808, when the club moved first to the Bedford Coffee House, and the next year to the Old Lyceum. In 1785 the prince of Wales joined, and later his brothers the dukes of Clarence and Sussex became members. On the burning of the Lyceum, "The Steaks" met again in the Bedford Coffee House till 1838, when the New Lyceum was opened, and a large room there was allotted the club. These meetings were held till the club ceased to exist in 1867. Thomas Sheridan founded a Beefsteak Club in Dublin at the Theatre Royal in 1749, and of this Peg Woffington was president. The modern Beefsteak Club was founded by J.L. Toole, the actor, in 1876.

See J. Timbs, _Clubs and Club Life in London_ (1873); Walter Arnold, _Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Steaks_ (1871).

BEELZEBUB, BEELZEBUL, BAALZEBUB. In 2 Kings i. we read that Ahaziah ben Ahab, king of Israel, fell sick, and sent to inquire of Baalzebub, the god of the Philistine city Ekron, whether he should recover. There is no other mention of this god in the Old Testament. _Baal_, "lord," is the ordinary title or word for a deity, especially a local deity, cf. such place names as Baal Hazor (2 Sam. xiii. 23), Baal Hermon (Judges iii. 3), which are probably contractions of fuller forms, like Beth Baal Meon (Josh. xiii. 17), the House or Temple of the Baal of Meon. According to these analogies we should expect _Zebub_ to be a place. No place _Zebub_, however, is known; and it has been objected that the Baal of some other place would hardly be the god of Ekron. These objections are hardly conclusive.

Usually _Zebub_ is identified with a Hebrew common noun _zebub_ = flies,[1] occurring twice in the Old Testament,[2] so that Baalzebub "is the Baal to whom flies belong or are holy. As children of the summer they are symbols of the warmth of the sun, to which ... Baal stands in close relation. Divination by means of flies was known at Babylon."[3] There are other cases of names compounded of Baal and an element equivalent to a descriptive epithet, e.g. Baalgad, the Baal of Fortune.[4] For the "Fly-god," sometimes interpreted as the "averter of insects," cf [Greek: Zeus apomouios, muiagros], and the Hercules [Greek: muiagros]. Clemens Alexander speaks of a Hercules [Greek: apomuios] as worshipped at Rome. It has been suggested that Baalzebub was the dung-beetle, _Scarabaeus pillularius_, worshipped in Egypt.

A name of a deity on an Assyrian inscription of the 12th century B.C. has been read as _Baal-zabubi_, but this reading has now been abandoned in favour of _Baal-sapunu_ (Baal-Zephon).[5] Cheyne considers that Baalzebub is a "contemptuous uneuphonic Jewish modification of the true name Baalzebul."[6]

In the New Testament we meet with Beelzebul,[7] which some of the versions, especially the Vulgate and Syriac, followed by the Authorized Version, have changed to Beelzebub, under the influence of 2 Kings. In Matt. x. 25, Christ speaks of men calling the master of the house, i.e. Himself, Beelzebul.[8] In Mark iii 22-27,[9] the scribes explain that Jesus is possessed by Beelzebul[10] and is thus enabled to cast out devils. The passage speaks of Beelzebul as Satan and as the prince of the demons.

The origin of the name Beelzebul is variously explained. (a) It is "a phonetic corruption, perhaps a softening of the original word"; as Bab-el-mandel is a corruption of Bab-el-mandeb. (b) _Zebul_ is from _zebel_, a word found in the Targums in the sense of "dung," so that Beelzebul would mean "Lord of Dung," a term of contempt. The further suggestion has been made that _zebul_ itself in the sense of "dung" is a term for a heathen deity, cf. the Old Testament use of "abomination" &c. for heathen deities, so that Beelzebul would mean "Chief of false gods," and so arch-fiend. (c) _Zebul_ is found in 1 Kings viii. 13 in the sense of "height," _beth-sebul_--lofty house, and in Rabbinical writings in the sense of "house" or "temple," or "the fourth heaven";[11] and Beelzebul may equal "Lord of the High House" or "Lord of Heaven." This view is perhaps favoured by Matt. x. 25, "if they have called the lord of the house Beelzebul." It appears, however, that Rabbinical writings use _yom_ (day-of) _zebul_ for the festival of a heathen deity; and Jastrow connects this usage with the meaning "house" or "temple," so that the meaning "Lord of the False Gods" might be arrived at in a different way.

The names _Zebulun, 'Izebel_ (Jezebel), suggest that _Zebul_ may be an ancient name of a deity; cf. the names [Hebrew: baal ezebel] (B'L 'ZBL), [Hebrew: shemzebel] (ShMZBL) in Punic and Phoenician inscriptions.[12] The substitution of Beelzebub for Beelzebul by the Syriac, Vulgate and other versions implies the identification of the New Testament arch-fiend with the god of Ekron; this substitution, however, may be due to the influence of the Aramaic _B'el-debaba_, "adversary," sometimes held to be the original of these names.

There is no trace of Beelzebul or Beelzebub outside of the Biblical passages mentioned, and the literature dependent on them. If we assume a connexion between the two names, there is nothing to show how the god became in later times the devil.

In _Paradise Lost_, Book ii., Beelzebub appears as second only to Satan himself.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Lightfoot, _Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae_, Works, vol. ii. pp. 188 f., 429, ed. Strype (1684); Baethgen, _Beitrage zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte_, pp. 25, 65, 261. Commentaries on the Biblical passages especially Burney and Skinner on _Kings_, Meyer and A.B. Bruce on the _Synoptic Gospels_, and Swete on _Mark_. Articles on "Baal," "Baalzebub," "Beelzebub," "Beelzebul," in Hastings' _Bible Dict._, Black and Cheyne's _Encycl. Bibl._, and Hauck's _Realencyklopadie_; on [Hebrew: baal zebub] in Clarendon Press _Hebr. Lex._; and on [Hebrew: zebel] and [Hebrew: zebul] in Jastrow's _Dict. of the Targumim, &c._ (W. H. Be.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] So Clarendon Press, _Hebrew Lexicon_, p. 127, with LXX.

[2] Eccl. x. 1; Isaiah vii. 18.

[3] Baethgen, _Beitrage zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte_, p. 25, cf. pp. 65, 261.

[4] Josh, xii. 7.

[5] Art. "Baalzebub," Black and Cheyne's _Ency. Bibl._

[6] With various spellings (e.g. Belzebul, and in XB, Beezebul), all variants of Beelzebul. Cf. Deissmann, _Bible Studies_, 332.

[7] There is a variation of reading, which has been held to support the view that the passage means that men reproached Jesus with His supposed connexion with Beelzebul; cf. A.B. Bruce, _in loco_.

[8] And in the parallel passages, Matt. xii. 22-29; Luke xi. 14-22.

[9] Cf. John vii. 20, viii. 48, 52, x. 20.

[10] Swete, _in loco_.

[11] Jastrow, _Dict. of the Targumim._ &c., sub voce.

[12] Lidzbarski, _Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik_, i. pp. 240, 377.

BEER, a beverage obtained by a process of alcoholic fermentation mainly from cereals (chiefly malted barley), hops and water. The history of beer extends over several thousand years. According to Dr Bush, a beer made from malt or red barley is mentioned in Egyptian writings as early as the fourth dynasty. It was called [Hieroglyph] or _heqa_. Papyri of the time of Seti I. (1300 B.C.) allude to a person inebriated from over-indulgence in beer. In the second book (c. 77) of Herodotus (450 B.C.) we are told that the Egyptians, being without vines, made wine from barley (cf. Aesch. _Suppl._ 954); but as the grape is mentioned so frequently in Scripture and elsewhere as being most abundant there, and no record exists of the vine being destroyed, we must conclude that the historian was only partially acquainted with the productions of that most fertile country. Pliny (_Natural History_, xxii. 82) informs us that the Egyptians made wine from corn, and gives it the name of _sythum_, which, in the Greek, means drink from barley. The Greeks obtained their knowledge of the art of preparing beer from the Egyptians. The writings of Archilochus, the Parian poet and satirist who flourished about 650 B.C., contain evidence that the Greeks of his day were acquainted with the process of brewing. There is, in fact, little doubt that the discovery of beer and its use as an exhilarating beverage were nearly as early as those of the grape itself, though both the Greeks and the Romans despised it as a barbarian drink. Dioscorides mentions two kinds of beer, namely [Greek: zythos] and [Greek: kourmi], but he does not describe them sufficiently to enable us to distinguish them. Sophocles and other Greek writers, again, styled it [Greek: bryton]. In the time of Tacitus (1st century after Christ), according to him, beer was the usual drink of the Germans, and there can be little doubt that the method of malting barley was then known to them. Pliny (_Nat. Hist._ xxii. 82) mentions the use of beer in Spain under the name of _celia_ and _ceria_ and in Gaul under that of _cerevisia_; and elsewhere (xiv. 29) he says:--"The natives who inhabit the west of Europe have a liquid with which they intoxicate themselves, made from corn and water. The manner of making this liquid is somewhat different in Gaul, Spain and other countries, and it is called by different names, but its nature and properties are everywhere the same. The people in Spain in particular brew this liquid so well that it will keep good a long time. So exquisite is the cunning of mankind in gratifying their vicious appetites that they have thus invented a method to make water itself produce intoxication."

The knowledge of the preparation of a fermented beverage from cereals in early times was not confined to Europe. Thus, according to Dr H.H. Mann, the Kaffir races of South Africa have made for ages--and still make--a kind of beer from millet, and similarly the natives of Nubia, Abyssinia and other parts of Africa prepare an intoxicating beverage, generally called _bousa_, from a variety of cereal grains. The Russian _quass_, made from barley and rye, the Chinese _samshu_, made from rice, and the Japanese _sake_ (q.v.) are all of ancient origin. Roman historians mention the fact that the Britons in the south of England at the time of the Roman invasion brewed a species of ale from barley and wheat. The Romans much improved the methods of brewing in vogue among the Britons, and the Saxons--among whom ale had long been a common beverage--in their turn profited much by the instruction given to the original inhabitants of Great Britain by the Romans. We are informed by William of Malmesbury that in the reign of Henry II. the English were greatly addicted to drinking, and by that time the monasteries were already famous, both in England and on the continent, for the excellence of their ales. The waters of Burton-on-Trent began to be famous in the 13th century. The secret of their being so especially adapted for brewing was first discovered by some monks, who held land in the adjacent neighbourhood of Wetmore. There is a document dated 1295 in which it is stated that Matilda, daughter of Nicholas de Shoben, had re-leased to the abbot and convent of Burton-on-Trent certain tenements within and without the town; for which re-lease they granted her, daily for life, two white loaves from the monastery, two gallons of conventual beer, and one penny, besides seven gallons of beer for the men. The abbots of Burton apparently made their own malt, for it was a common covenant in leases of mills belonging to the abbey that the malt of the lords of the manor, both spiritual and temporal, should be ground free of charge. Robert Plot, in his _Natural History of Staffordshire_ (1686), refers to the peculiar properties of the Burton waters, from which, he says, "by an art well known in this country good ale is made, in the management of which they have a knack of fining it in three days to that degree that it shall not only be potable, but is clear and palatable as we could desire any drink of this kind to be." In 1630 Burton beer began to be known in London, being sold at "Ye Peacocke" in Gray's Inn Lane, and according to the _Spectator_ was in great demand amongst the visitors in Vauxhall. Until tea and coffee were introduced, beer and ale (see ALE) were, practically speaking, the only popular beverages accessible to the general body of consumers. Since the advent of tea, coffee, cocoa and mineral waters, the character of British beers has undergone a gradual modification, the strongly alcoholic, heavily hopped liquids consumed by the previous generation slowly giving place to the lighter beverages in vogue at the present time. The old "stock bitter" has given way to the "light dinner ale," and "porter" (so called from the fact that it was the popular drink amongst the market porters of the 18th century) has been largely replaced by "mild ale." A certain quantity of strong beer--such as heavy stouts and "stock" and "Scotch" ales--is still brewed nowadays, but it is not an increasing one. The demand is almost entirely for medium beers such as mild ale, light stout, and the better class of "bitter" beers, and light beers such as the light "family ales," "dinner ales" and lager.

The general run of beers contain from 3 to 6% of alcohol and 4 to 7% of solids, the remainder being water and certain flavouring and preservative matters derived from the malt, hops and other materials employed in their manufacture. The solid, i.e. non-volatile, matter contained in solution in beer consists mainly of maltose or malt sugar, of several varieties of dextrin (see BREWING), of substances which stand in an intermediate position between the sugars and the dextrins proper, and of a number of bodies containing nitrogen, such as the non-coagulable proteids, peptones, &c. In addition there is an appreciable quantity of mineral matter, chiefly phosphates and potash. Dietetically regarded, therefore, beer possesses considerable food value, and, moreover, the nutritious matter in beer is present in a readily assimilable form.

It is probable that the average adult member of the British working classes consumes not less than two pints of beer daily. A reasonable calculation places the total proteids and carbohydrates consumed by the average worker at 140 and 400 grammes respectively. Taking the proteid content of the average beer at 0.4% and the carbohydrate content at 4%, a simple calculation shows that about 3% of the total proteid and 11% of the total carbohydrate food of the average worker will be consumed in the shape of beer.

The chemical composition of beers of different types will be gathered from the following tables.

A. ENGLISH BEERS.

(Analyses by J.L. Baker, Hulton & P. Schidrowitz.)

I. _Mild Ales._

+---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | Number.| Original Gravity.| Alcohol %.| Extractives (Solids) %.| +---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | 1.[1] | 1055.13 | 4.17 | 6.1 | | 2.[1] | 1055.64 | 4.47 | 5.7 | | 3.[2] | 1071.78 | 5.57 | 7.3 | +---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+

II. _Light Bitters and Ales._

+---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | Number.| Original Gravity.| Alcohol %.| Extractives (Solids) %.| +---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | 1. | 1046.81 | 4.15 | 4.0 | | 2. | 1047.69 | 4.23 | 4.1 | | 3. | 1047.79 | 4.61 | 3.2 | | 4. | 1050.30 | 4.53 | 4.2 | | 5. | 1038.31 | 3.81 | 3.5 | +---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+

III. _Pale and Stock Ales._

+---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | Number.| Original Gravity.| Alcohol %.| Extractives (Solids) %.| +---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | 1.[3] | 1059.01 | 4.77 | 5.8 | | 2.[4] | 1068.58 | 5.48 | 7.1 | | 3.[4] | 1076.80 | 6.68 | 5.9 | +---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+

IV. _Stouts and Porter._

+---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | Number.| Original Gravity.| Alcohol %.| Extractives (Solids) %.| +---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | 1.[5] | 1072.92 | 6.14 | 6.3 | | 2.[6] | 1054.26 | 4.73 | 4.5 | | 3.[6] | 1081.62 | 6.02 | 8.8 | | 4.[7] | 1054.11 | 3.90 | 6.5 | +---------+------------------+-----------+------------------------+

The figures in the above tables are very fairly representative of different classes of British and Irish beers. It will be noticed that the _Mild Ales_ are of medium original gravity[8] and alcoholic strength, but contain a relatively large proportion of solid matter. The _Light Bitters and Ales_ are of a low original gravity, but compared with the Mild Ales the proportion of alcohol to solids is higher. The _Pale and Stock Ales_, which represent the more expensive bottle beers, are analytically of much the same character as the Light Bitters, except that the figures all round are much higher. The _Stouts_, as a rule, are characterized by a high gravity, and contain relatively more solids (as compared with alcohol) than do the heavy beers of light colour. With regard to the proportions of the various matters constituting the extractives (solids) in English beers, roughly 20-30% consists of maltose and 20-50% of dextrinous matter. In mild ales the proportion of maltose to dextrin is high (roughly 1:1), thus accounting for the full sweet taste of these beers. Pale and stock ales, on the other hand, which are of a "dry" character, contain relatively more dextrin, the general ratio being about 1:1-1/2 or 1:2. The mineral matter ("ash") of beers is generally in the neighbourhood of 0.2 to 0.3%, of which about one-fourth is phosphoric acid. The proteid ("nitrogenous matters") content of beers varies very widely according to character and strength, the usual limits being 0.3 to 0.8%, with an average of roughly 0.4%.

B. CONTINENTAL BEERS.

(Analyses by A. Doemens.)

+----------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | | Original | | Extractives | | Description. | Gravity. | Alcohol %. | (Solids) %. | +----------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | Munich Draught Dark | 1056.4 | 3.76 | 6.58 | | " " " | 1052.6 | 3.38 | 6.45 | | " " Light | 1048.0 | 3.18 | 5.55 | | " " " | 1048.1 | 4.05 | 3.92 | | " Export | 1054.3 | 3.68 | 6.32 | | " " | 1059.5 | 4.15 | 7.48 | | " Bock Beer[9] | 1076.6 | 4.53 | 10.05 | | Pilsener Bottle | 1047.7 | 3.47 | 4.90 | | " Draught | 1044.3 | 3.25 | 4.58 | | Berlin Dark | 1055.2 | 3.82 | 6.17 | | " Light | 1056.5 | 4.36 | 5.46 | | " Weissbier | 1033.1 | 2.644 | 3.01 | +----------------------+----------+------------+-------------+

It will be seen that, broadly speaking, the original gravity of German and Austrian beers is lower than that of English beers, and this also applies to the alcohol. On the other hand, the foreign beers are relatively very rich in solids, and the extractives: alcohol ratio is high. (See BREWING.)

C. AMERICAN BEERS AND ALES.

(Analyses by M. Wallerstein.)

+------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | | Original | | Extractives | | Description. | Gravity. | Alcohol %. | (Solids) %. | +------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | Bottom \ 1. | 1046.7 | 3.48 | 5.08 | | Fermentation | 2. | 1055.6 | 3.56 | 6.50 | | Beers | 3. | 1063.4 | 4.12 | 7.43 | | (Lager Type). / 4. | 1046.0 | 2.68 | 5.96 | | 5. | 1051.7 | 3.42 | 5.86 | +------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | Top Fermentation \ 1. | 1084.2 | 5.89 | 8.60 | | Ales | 2. | 1073.5 | 6.46 | 5.69 | | (British Type) / 3. | 1068.0 | 5.50 | 5.53 | +------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+

It will be noted that the American _beers_ (i.e. bottom fermentation products of the lager type) are very similar in composition to the German beers, but that the ales are very much heavier than the general run of the corresponding British products.

_Production and Consumption._--(For manufacture of beer, see BREWING.) Germany is the greatest beer-producing nation, if liquid bulk be taken as a criterion; the United States comes next, and the United Kingdom occupies the third place in this regard. The consumption per head, however, is slightly greater in the United Kingdom than in Germany, and very much greater than is the case in the United States. The 1905 figures with regard to the total production and consumption of the three great beer-producing countries, together with those for 1885, are as under:--

+----------------+--------------------------------+---------------------+ | | | Consumption per | | Country. | Total Production (Gallons). | Head of Population | | | | (Gallons) | +----------------+------------------+-------------+----------+----------+ | | 1905. | 1885. | 1905. | 1885 | | +------------------+-------------+----------+----------+ | German Empire | 1,538,240,000 | 932,228,000 | 23.3 | 19.8 | | United States | 1,434,114,180 | 494,854,000 | 19.9 | 8.8 | | United Kingdom | 1,227,933,468[10]| 993,759,000 | 27.90[10]| 27.1 | +----------------+------------------+-------------+----------+----------+

The chief point of interest in the preceding table is the enormous increase in the United States. In considering the figures, the character of the beer produced must be taken into consideration. Thus, although Germany produces roughly 25% more beer in liquid measurement than the United Kingdom, the latter actually uses about 50% more malt than is the case in the German breweries. According to a Viennese technical journal, the quantities of malt employed for the production of one hectolitre (22 gallons) of beer in the respective countries is 0.40 cwt. in the German empire, 0.72 cwt. in the United States, and 0.81 cwt. in the United Kingdom. In a sense, therefore, England may still claim pre-eminence as a beer-producing nation. Large as the _per capita_ consumption in the United Kingdom may seem, it is considerably less than is the case in Bavaria, which stands at the head of the list with over 50 gallons, and in Belgium, which comes second with 47.7 gallons. In the city of Munich the consumption is actually over 70 gallons, that is to say, about 1-1/2 pints a day for every man, woman and child. It is curious to note that in Germany, which is usually regarded as a beer-drinking country _par excellence_, the consumption per head of this article is slightly less than in England, and that inversely the average German consumes more alcohol in the shape of spirits than does the inhabitant of the British Islands (consumption of spirits per head: Germany, 1.76 gallons; United Kingdom, 0.99 gallons). This is accounted for by the fact that the peasantry of the northern and eastern portions of the German empire consume spirits almost exclusively. In the British colonies beer is generally one of the staple drinks, but if we except Western Australia, where about 25 gallons per head of population are consumed, the demand is much smaller than in the United Kingdom. In Australia generally, the _per capita_ consumption amounts to about 12 gallons, in New Zealand to 10 gallons, and in Canada to 5 gallons. (P. S.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] London Ales.

[2] Strong Burton Mild Ale.

[3] Fairly representative of "Pale Ales."

[4] Heavy Stock Ales.

[5] Irish Stout.

[6] Nos. 2 and 3 are respectively "single" and "double" London Stouts from the same brewery.

[7] London Porter or Cooper.

[8] The specific gravity, or "gravity" as it is always termed in the industry, of the brewer is 1000 times the specific gravity of the physicist. This is purely a matter of convention and convenience. Thus when a brewer speaks of a wort of a "gravity" of 1045 (ten-forty-five) he means a wort having a specific gravity of 1.045. Each unit in the brewer's scale of specific gravity is termed a "degree of gravity." The wort referred to above, therefore, possesses forty-five _degrees_ of gravity. The "original gravity," it may here be mentioned, represents the specific gravity of the wort (see BREWING) before fermentation. The solids in the original wort may be ascertained by dividing the excess of the gravity over 1000 by 3.86. Thus in the case of Mild Ale No. 1 the excess of the original gravity over 1000 is 1055.13 - 1000 = 55.13. Dividing this by 3.86 we get 14.28, which indicates that the wort from which the beer was manufactured contained 14.28% of solids. In the trade the gravity of a beer (or rather of the wort from which it is derived) is generally expressed in pounds per barrel. This means the excess in weight of a barrel of the wort over the weight of a barrel of water. The weight of a barrel (36 gallons) of water is 360 lb.; in the above example the weight of a barrel of the beer wort is 360 X 1.05513 = 379.8. The gravity of the wort in lb. is therefore 379.8 - 360 = 19.8. The beer which is made from this wort would also be called a 19.8 lb. beer, the reference in all cases being to the original wort.

[9] A particularly heavy beer, only brewed at certain times in the year.

[10] The maxima of production and consumption were reached in 1899/1900, when the production amounted to 1,337,509,116 gallons (at the standard gravity) and consumption to 32.28 gallons per head.

BEERSHEBA, a place midway between Gaza and Hebron (28 m. from each), frequently referred to in the Bible as the southern limit of Palestine ("Dan to Beersheba," Judg. xx. i, &c.) Its foundation is variously ascribed to Abraham and Isaac, and different etymologies for its name are suggested, in the fundamental documents of Genesis (xxi. 22, xxvi. 26). It was an important holy place, where Abraham planted a sacred tree (Gen. xxi. 23), and where divine manifestations were vouchsafed to Hagar (Gen. xxi. 17), Isaac (xxvi. 24), Jacob (xlvi. 2) and Elijah (1 Kings xix. 5). Amos mentions it in connexion with the shrines of Bethel and Gilgal (Amos v. 5) and denounces oaths by its _numen_ (viii. 14). The most probable meaning of the name is "seven wells," despite the non-Semitic construction involved in this interpretation. Seven ancient wells still exist here, though two are stopped up. Eusebius and Jerome mention the place in the 4th century as a large village and the seat of a Roman garrison. Extensive remains of this village exist, though they are being rapidly quarried away for building; some inscriptions of great importance have been found here. Later it appears to have been the site of a bishopric; remains of its churches were still standing in the 14th century. Some fine mosaics have been here unearthed and immediately destroyed, in sheer wantonness, by the natives quarrying building-stone. The Biblical Beersheba probably exists at Bir es-Seba', 2 m. distant.

BEESLY, EDWARD SPENCER (1831- ), English historian and positivist, son of the Rev. James Beesly, was born at Feckenham, Worcestershire, on the 23rd of January 1831. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, which may be regarded as the original centre of the English positivist movement. Richard Congreve (q.v.) was tutor at Wadham from 1849 to 1854, and three men of that time, Frederic Harrison (q.v.), Beesly and John Henry Bridges (1832-1906), became the leaders of Comtism in England. Beesly left Oxford in 1854 to become assistant-master at Marlborough College. In 1859 he was appointed professor of history at University College, London, and of Latin at Bedford College, London, in 1860. He resigned these appointments in 1893 and 1889, and in 1893 became the editor of the newly-established _Positivist Review_. He collaborated in the translation of Comte's system of _Positive Polity_ (4 vols., 1875-1879), translated his _Discourse on the Positive Spirit_ (1903), and wrote a biography of Comte for a translation of the first two chapters of his _Cours de philosophie positive_, entitled _Fundamental Principles of Positive Philosophy_ (1905). Professor Beesly stood unsuccessfully as Liberal candidate for Westminster in 1885 and for Marylebone in 1886, and is the author of numerous review articles on social and political topics, treated from the positivist standpoint, especially on the Irish question. His works also include a series of lectures on Roman history, entitled _Catiline, Clodius, Tiberius_ (1878), in which he rehabilitates in some degree the character of each of his subjects, and _Queen Elizabeth_ (1892), in the "Twelve English Statesmen" series.

BEET, a cultivated form of the plant _Beta vulgaris_ (natural order Chenopodiaceae), which grows wild on the coasts of Europe, North Africa and Asia as far as India. It is a biennial, producing, like the carrot, a thick, fleshy tap-root during the first year and a branched, leafy, flowering stem in the following season. The small, green flowers are borne in clusters. A considerable number of varieties are cultivated for use on account of their large fleshy roots, under the names of mangel-wurzel or mangold, field-beet and garden-beet. The cultivation of beet in relation to the production of sugar, for which purpose certain varieties of beet stand next in importance to the sugar cane, is dealt with under SUGAR. The garden-beet has been cultivated from very remote times as a salad plant, and for general use as a table vegetable. The variety most generally grown has long, tapering, carrot-shaped roots, the "flesh" of which is of a uniform deep red colour throughout, and the leaves brownish red. It is boiled and cut into slices for being eaten cold; and it is also prepared as a pickle, as well as in various other forms. Beet is in much more common use on the continent of Europe as a culinary vegetable than in Great Britain, where it has, however, been cultivated for upwards of two centuries. The white beet, _Beta cicla_, is cultivated for the leaves, which are used as spinach. The midribs and stalks of the leaves are also stewed and eaten as sea-kale, under the name of Swiss chard. _B. cicla_ is also largely used as a decorative plant for its large, handsome leaves, blood red or variegated in colour.

The beet prospers in a rich deep soil, well pulverized by the spade. If manure is required, it should be deposited at the bottom of the trench in preparing the ground. The seeds should be sown in drills 15 ins. asunder, in April or early in May, and the plants are afterwards to be thinned to about 8 in. apart in the lines, but not more, as moderate-sized roots are preferable. The plants should grow on till the end of October or later, when a portion should be taken up for use, and the rest laid in in a sheltered corner, and covered up from frost. The roots must not be bruised and the leaves must be twisted off--not closely cut, as they are then liable to bleed. In the north the crop may be wholly taken up in autumn, and stored in a pit or cellar, beyond reach of frost. If it is desired to have fresh roots early, the seeds should be sown at the end of February or beginning of March; and if a succession is required, a few more may be sown by the end of March.

BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN (1770-1827), German musical composer, was baptized (probably, as was usual, the day after birth) on the 17th of December 1770 at Bonn. His family is traceable to a village near Louvain, in Belgium, in the 17th century. In 1650 a lineal ancestor of the composer settled in Antwerp. Beethoven's grandfather, Louis, quarrelled with his family, came to Bonn in 1732, and became one of the court musicians of the archbishop-elector of Cologne. He was a genial man of estimable character, and though Ludwig van Beethoven was only four years old when his grandfather died, he never forgot him, but cherished his portrait to the end of his life. Beethoven's father, a tenor singer at the archbishop-elector's court, was of a rough and violent temper, not improved by his passion for drink, nor by the dire poverty under which the family laboured. He married Magdelina Leim or Laym, the widow of a _valet-de-chambre_ of the elector of Trier and daughter of the chief cook at Ehrenbreitstein. Beethoven's father wished to profit as early as possible by his son's talent, and accordingly began to give him a severe musical training, especially on the violin, when he was only five years old, at about which time they left the house in which he was born (515 Bonngasse, now preserved as a Beethoven museum, with a magnificent collection of manuscripts and relics). By the time Beethoven was nine his father had no more to teach him, and he entered upon a perhaps healthier course of clavier lessons under a singer named Pfeiffer. A little general education was also edged in by a certain Zambona. Van den Eeden, the court organist, and an old friend of his grandfather, taught him the organ and the pianoforte, and so rapid was Beethoven's progress that when C.G. Neefe succeeded to Van den Eeden's post in 1781, he was soon able to allow the boy to act as his deputy. With his permission Beethoven published in 1783 his earliest extant composition, a set of variations on a march by Dressler. The title-page states that they were written in 1780 _"par un jeune amateur Louis van Beethoven age de dix ans_." Beethoven's father was very clumsy in his unnecessary attempts to make an infant prodigy of his son; for the ante-dating of this composition, implying the correct date of birth, contradicts the post-dating of the date of birth by which he tried to make out that the three sonatas Beethoven wrote in the same year were by a boy of eleven. (Beethoven for a long time believed that he was born in 1772, and the certificate of his baptism hardly convinced him, because he knew that he had an elder brother named Ludwig who died in infancy.) In the same year, 1783, Beethoven was given the post of cembalist in the Bonn theatre, and in 1784 his position of assistant to Neefe became official. In a _catalogue raisonne_ of the new archbishop Max Franz's court musicians we find "No. 14, Ludwig Beethoven" described "as of good capacity, still young, of good, quiet behaviour and poor," while his father (No. 8) "has a completely worn-out voice, has long been in service, is very poor, of fairly good behaviour, and married."

In the spring of 1787 Beethoven paid a short visit to Vienna, where he astonished Mozart by his extemporizations and had a few lessons from him. How he was enabled to afford this visit is not clear. After three months the illness of his mother, to whom he was devoted, brought him back. She died in July, leaving a baby girl, one year old, who died in November. For five more years Beethoven remained at Bonn supporting his family, of which he had been since the age of fifteen practically the head, as his father's bad habits steadily increased until in 1789 Ludwig was officially entrusted with his father's salary. He had already made several lifelong friends at Bonn, of whom the chief were Count Waldstein and Stephan Breuning; and his prospects brightened as the archbishop-elector, in imitation of his brother the emperor Joseph II., enlarged the scale of his artistic munificence. By 1792 the archbishop-elector's attention was thoroughly aroused to Beethoven's power, and he provided for Beethoven's second visit to Vienna. The introductions he and Count Waldstein gave to Beethoven, the prefix "van" in Beethoven's name (which looked well though it was not really a title of nobility), and above all the unequalled impressiveness of his playing and extemporization, quickly secured his footing with the exceptionally intelligent and musical aristocracy of Vienna, who to the end of his life treated him with genuine affection and respect, bearing with all the roughness of his manners and temper, not as with the eccentricities of a fashionable genius, but as with signs of the sufferings of a passionate and noble nature.

Beethoven's life, though outwardly uneventful, was one of the most pathetic of tragedies. His character has had the same fascination for his biographers as it had for his friends, and there is probably hardly any great man in history of whom more is known and of whom so much of what is known is interesting. Yet it is all too much a matter of detail and anecdote to admit of chronological summarizing here, and for the disentangling of its actual incidents we must refer the reader to Sir George Grove's long and graphic article, "Beethoven," in the _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_, and to the monumental biography of Thayer, who devoted his whole life to collecting materials. These two biographical works, read in the spirit in which their authors conceived them, will reveal, beneath a mass of distressing, grotesque and sometimes sordid detail, a nobility of character and unswerving devotion to the highest moral ideas throughout every distress and temptation to which a passionate and totally unpractical temper and the growing shadow of a terrible misfortune could expose a man.

The man is surpassed only by his works, for in them he had that mastery which was denied to him in what he himself calls his attempt to "grapple with fate." Such of his difficulties as lay in his own character already showed themselves in his studies with Haydn. Haydn, who seems to have heard of him on his first visit to Vienna in 1787, passed through Bonn in July 1792, and was so much struck by Beethoven that it was very likely at his instigation that the archbishop sent Beethoven to Vienna to study under him. But Beethoven did not get on well with him, and found him perfunctory in correcting his exercises. Haydn appreciated neither his manners nor the audacity of his free compositions, and abandoned whatever intentions he may have had of taking Beethoven with him to England in 1794. Beethoven could do without sympathy, but a grounding in strict counterpoint he felt to be a dire necessity, so he continued his studies with Albrechtsberger, a mere grammarian who had the poorest opinion of him, but who could, at all events, be depended on to attend to his work. Almost every comment has been made upon the relations between Haydn and Beethoven, except the perfectly obvious one that Mozart died at the age of thirty-six, just at the time Beethoven came to Vienna, and that Haydn, as is perfectly well known, was profoundly shocked by the untimely loss of the greatest musician he had ever known. At such a time the undeniable clumsiness of Beethoven's efforts at academic exercises would combine with his general tactlessness to confirm Haydn in the belief that the sun had set for ever in the musical world, and would incline him to view with disfavour those bold features of style and form which the whole of his own artistic development should naturally have predisposed him to welcome. It is at least significant that those early works of Beethoven in which Mozart's influence is most evident, such as the Septet, aroused Haydn's open admiration, whereas he hardly approved of the compositions like the sonatas, _op._ 2 (dedicated to him), in which his own influence is stronger. Neither he nor Beethoven was skilful in expressing himself except in music, and it is impossible to tell what Haydn meant, or what Beethoven thought he meant, in advising him not to publish the last and finest of the three trios, _op._ 1. But even if he did not mean that it was too daring for the public, it can hardly be expected that he never contrasted the meteoric career of Mozart, who after a miraculous boyhood had produced at the age of twenty-five some of the greatest music Haydn had ever seen, with the slow and painful development of his uncouth pupil, who at the same age had hardly a dozen presentable works to his credit. It is not clear that Haydn ever came to understand Beethoven, and many years passed before Beethoven realized the greatness of the master whose teaching had so disappointed him.

From the time Beethoven settled permanently in Vienna, which he was soon induced to do by the kindness of his aristocratic friends, the only noteworthy external features of his career are the productions of his compositions. In spite of the usual hostile criticism for obscurity, exaggeration and unpopularity, his reputation became world-wide and by degrees actually popular; nor did it ever decline, for as his later works became notorious for their extravagance and unintelligibility his earlier works became better understood. He was no man of business, but, in a thoroughly unpractical way, he was suspicious and exacting in money matters, which in his later years frequently turned up in his conversation as a grievance, and at times, especially during the depreciation of the Austrian currency between 1808 and 1815, were a real anxiety to him. Nevertheless, with a little more skill his external prosperity would have been great. He was always a personage of importance, as is testified by more than one amusing anecdote, like those of his walks with Goethe and his half-ironical comments on the hats which flew off more for him than for Goethe; and in 1815 it seemed as if the summit of his fame was reached when his 7th symphony was performed, together with a hastily-written cantata, _Der glorreiche Augenblick_ and the blazing piece of descriptive fireworks entitled _Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria_, once popular in England as the _Battle Symphony_. The occasion for this performance was the congress of Vienna; and the government placed the two halls of the Redouten-Saal at his disposal for two nights, while he himself was allowed to invite all the sovereigns of Europe. In the same year he received the freedom of the city, an honour much valued by him. After that time his immediate popularity, as far as new works were concerned, became less eminent, as that of his more easy-going contemporaries began to increase. Yet there was, not only in the emotional power of his earlier works, but also in the known cause of his increasing inability to appear in public, something that awakened the best popular sensibilities; and when his two greatest and most difficult works, the 9th symphony and parts of the _Missa Solemnis_, were produced at a memorable concert in 1824, the storm of applause was overwhelming, and the composer, who was on the platform in order to give the time to the conductor, had to be turned round by one of the singers in order to _see_ it.

Signs of deafness had given him grave anxiety as early as 1708. For a long time he successfully concealed it from all but his most intimate friends, while he consulted physicians and quacks with eagerness; but neither quackery nor the best skill of his time availed him, and it has been pointed out that the root of the evil lay deeper than could have been supposed during his lifetime. Although his constitution was magnificently strong and his health was preserved by his passion for outdoor life, a post-mortem examination revealed a very complicated state of disorder, evidently dating almost from childhood (if not inherited) and aggravated by lack of care and good food. The touching document addressed to his brothers in 1802, and known as his "will," should be read in its entirety, as given by Thayer (iv. 4). No verbal quotation short of the whole will do justice to the overpowering outburst which runs almost in one long unpunctuated sentence through the whole tragedy of Beethoven's life, as he knew it then and foresaw it. He reproaches men for their injustice in thinking and calling him pugnacious, stubborn and misanthropical when they do not know that for six years he has suffered from an incurable condition, aggravated by incompetent doctors. He dwells upon his delight in human society, from which he has had so early to isolate himself, but the thought of which now fills him with dread as it makes him realize his loss, not only in music but in all finer interchange of ideas, and terrifies him lest the cause of his distress should appear. He declares that, when those near him had heard a flute or a singing shepherd while he heard nothing, he was only prevented from taking his life by the thought of his art, but it seemed impossible for him to leave the world until he had brought out all that he felt to be in his power. He requests that after his death his present doctor, if surviving, shall be asked to describe his illness and to append it to this document in order that at least then the world may be as far as possible reconciled with him. He leaves his brothers his property, such as it is, and in terms not less touching, if more conventional than the rest of the document, he declares that his experience shows that only virtue has preserved his life and his courage through all his misery.

And, indeed, his art and his courage rose far above any level attainable by those artists who are slaves to the "personal note," for his chief occupation at the time of this document was his 2nd symphony, the most brilliant and triumphant piece that had ever been written up to that time. On a smaller scale, in which mastery was the more easily attainable as experiment was more readily tested, Beethoven was sooner able to strike a tragic note, and hence the process of growth in his style is more readily traceable in the pianoforte works than in the larger compositions which naturally represent a series of crowning results. Only in his last period does the pianoforte cease to be Beethoven's normal means of expression. Accordingly, if in the discussion of Beethoven's works, with which we close this article, we dwell rather more on the pianoforte sonatas than on his greater works, it is not only because they are more easily referred to by the general reader, but because they are actually a key to his intellectual development, such as is afforded neither by his life nor by the great works which are themselves the crowning mystery and wonder of musical art.

Deafness causes inconvenience in conversation long before it is noticeable in music, and in 1806 Beethoven could still conduct his opera _Fidelio_ and be much annoyed at the inattention to his nuances; and his last appearance as a player was not until 1814, when he made a great impression with his B flat trio, _op._ 97. At the end of November 1822 an attempt to conduct proved disastrous. The touching incident in 1824 has been described, but up to the last Beethoven seems to have found or imagined that ear-trumpets (of which a collection is now preserved at Bonn) were of use to him in playing to himself, though his friends were often pained when the pianoforte was badly out of tune, and were overcome when Beethoven in soft passages did not make the notes sound at all. The instrument sent him by Broadwood in 1817-1818 gave him great pleasure and he answered it with a characteristically cordial and quaint letter in the best of bad French. His fame in England was often a source of great comfort to him, especially in his last illness, when the London Philharmonic Society, for which the 9th symphony was written and a 10th symphony projected, sent him L100 in advance of the proceeds of a benefit concert which he had begged them to give, being in very straitened circumstances, as he would make no use of the money he had deposited in the bank for his nephew.

This nephew was the cause of most of his anxiety and distress in the last twelve years of his life. His brother, Kaspar Karl, had often given him trouble; for example, by obtaining and publishing some of Beethoven's early indiscretions, such as the trio-variations, _op._ 44, the sonatas, _op._ 49, and other trifles, of which the late _opus_ number is thus explained. In 1815, after Beethoven had quarrelled with his oldest friend, Stephan Breuning, for warning him against trusting his brother in money matters, Kaspar died, leaving a widow of whom Beethoven strongly disapproved, and a son, nine years old, for the guardianship of whom Beethoven fought the widow through all the law courts. The boy turned out utterly unworthy of his uncle's persistent devotion, and gave him every cause for anxiety. He failed in all his examinations, including an attempt to learn some trade in the polytechnic school, whereupon he fell into the hands of the police for attempting suicide, and, after being expelled from Vienna, joined the army. Beethoven's utterly simple nature could neither educate nor understand a human being who was not possessed by the wish to do his best. His nature was passionately affectionate, and he had suffered all his life from the want of a natural outlet for it. He had often been deeply in love and made no secret of it; but Robert Browning had not a more intense dislike of "the artistic temperament" in morals, and though Beethoven's attachments were almost all hopelessly above him in rank, there is not one that was not honourable and respected by society as showing the truthfulness and self-control of a great man. Beethoven's orthodoxy in such matters has provoked the smiles of Philistines, especially when it showed itself in his objections to Mozart's _Don Giovanni_, and his grounds for selecting the subject of _Fidelio_ for his own opera. The last thing that Philistines will ever understand is that genius is far too independent of convention to abuse it; and Beethoven's life, with all its mistakes, its grotesqueness and its pathos, is as far beyond the shafts of Philistine wit as his art.

At the beginning of 1827 Beethoven had projects for a 10th symphony, music to Goethe's _Faust_, and (under the stimulus of his newly acquired collection of Handel's works) any amount of choral music, compared to which all his previous compositions would have seemed but a prelude. But he was in bad health; his brother Johann, with whom he had been staying, had not allowed him a fire in his bedroom, and had sent him back to Vienna in an open chaise in vile weather; and the chill which resulted ended in a fatal illness. Within a week of his death Beethoven was still full of his projects. Three days before the end he added a codicil to his will, and saw Schubert, whose music had aroused his keen interest, but was not able to speak to him, though he afterwards spoke of the Philharmonic Society and the English, almost his last words being "God bless them." On the 26th of March 1827, during a fierce thunderstorm, he died.

_Beethoven's Music._--The division of Beethoven's work into three styles has become proverbial, and is based on obvious facts. The styles, however, are not rigidly separated, either in themselves or in chronology. Nor can the popular description of Beethoven's first manner as "Mozartesque" be accepted as doing justice to a style which differs more radically from Mozart's than Mozart's differs from Haydn's. The style of Beethoven's third period is no longer regarded as "showing an obscurity traceable to his deafness," but we have, perhaps, only recently outgrown the belief that his later treatment of form is revolutionary. The peculiar interest and difficulty in tracing Beethoven's artistic development is that the changes in the materials and range of his art were as great as those in the form, so that he appears in the light of a pioneer, while the art with which he started was nevertheless already a perfectly mature and highly organized thing. And he is perhaps unique among artists in this, that his power of constructing perfect works of art never deserted him while he revolutionized his means of expression. No doubt this is in a measure true of all the greatest artists, but it is seldom obvious. In mature art vital differences in works of similar form are generally more likely to be overlooked than to force themselves on the critic's attention. And when they become so great as to make a new epoch it is generally at the cost of a period of experiment too heterogeneous and insecure for works of art to attain great permanent value. But in Beethoven's case, as we have said, the process of development is so smooth that it is impossible to separate the periods clearly, although the ground covered is, as regards emotional range, at least as great as that between Bach and Mozart. No artist has ever left more authoritative documentary evidence as to the steps of his development than Beethoven. In boyhood he seems to have acquired the habit of noting down all his musical ideas exactly as they first struck him. It is easy to see why in later years he referred to this as a "bad habit," for it must often take longer to jot down a crude idea than to reject it; and by the time the habit was formed Beethoven's powers of self-criticism were unparalleled, and he must often have felt hampered by the habit of writing down what he knew to be too crude to be even an aid to memory. Such first intuitions, if not written down, would no doubt be forgotten; but the poetic mood, the _Stimmung_, they attempt to indicate, would remain until a better expression was forthcoming. Beethoven had acquired the habit of recording them, and thereby he has, perhaps, misled some critics into over-emphasizing the contrast between his "tentative" self-critical methods and the quasi-extempore outpourings of Mozart. This contrast is probably not very radical; indeed, we may doubt whether in every thoughtful mind any apparently sudden inspiration is not preceded by some anticipatory mood in which the idea was sought and its first faint indications tested and rejected so instantaneously as to leave no impression on the memory.

The number and triviality of Beethoven's preliminary sketches should not, then, be taken as evidence of a timid or vacillating spirit. But if we regard his sketches as his diary their significance becomes inestimable. They cover every period of Beethoven's career, and represent every stage of nearly all his important works, as well as of innumerable trifles, including ideas that did not survive to be worked out. And the type of self-criticism is the same from beginning to end. There is no tendency in the middle or last period, any more than in the first, to "subordinate form to expression," nor do the sketches of the first period show any lack of attention to elements that seem more characteristic of the third. The difference between Beethoven's three styles appears first in its full proportions when we realize this complete continuity of his method and art. We have ventured to cast doubts upon the Mozartesque character of his early style, because that is chiefly a question of perspective. While he was handling a range of ideas not, in a modern view, glaringly different from Mozart's, he had no reason to use a glaringly different language. His contemporaries, however, found it more difficult to see the resemblance; and, though their criticism was often violently hostile, they saw with prejudice a daring originality which we may as well learn to appreciate with study. Beethoven himself in later years partly affected and partly felt a lack of sympathy with his own early style. But he had other things to do than to criticize it. Modern prejudice has not his excuse, and the neglect of Beethoven's early works is no less than the neglect of the key to the understanding of his later. It is also the neglect of a mass of mature art that already places Beethoven on the same plane as Mozart, and contains perhaps the only traces in all his work of a real struggle between the forces of progress and those of construction. We will therefore give special attention to this subject here.

The truth is that there are several styles in Beethoven's first period, in the centre of which, "proving all things," is the true and mature Beethoven, however wider may be the scope of his later maturity. And he did not, as is often alleged, fail to show early promise. The pianoforte quartets he wrote at the age of fifteen are, no doubt, clumsy and childish in execution to a degree that contrasts remarkably with the works of Mozart's, Mendelssohn's or Schubert's boyhood; yet they contain material actually used in the sonatas, _op._ 2, No. 1, and _op._ 2, No. 3. And the passage in _op._ 2, No. 3, is that immediately after the first subject, where, as Beethoven then states it, it embodies one of his most epoch-making discoveries, namely, the art of organizing a long series of apparently free modulations by means of a systematic progression in the bass. In the childish quartet the principle is only dimly felt, but it is nevertheless there as a subconscious source of inspiration; and it afterwards gives inevitable dramatic truth to such passages as the climax of the development in the sonata, _op._ 57 (commonly called _Appassionata_), and throughout the chaos of the mysterious introduction to the C major string-quartet, _op._ 59, No. 3, prepares us for the world of loveliness that arises from it.

Although with Beethoven the desire to express new thoughts was thus invariably both stimulated and satisfied by the discovery of the necessary new means of expression, he felt deeply the danger of spoiling great ideas by inadequate execution; and his first work in a new form or medium is, even if as late as the Mass in C, _op._ 89, almost always unambitious. His teachers had found him sceptical of authority, and never convinced of the practical convenience of a rule until he had too successfully courted disaster. But he appreciated the experience, though he may have found it expensive, and traces of crudeness in such early works as he did not disown are as rare as plagiarisms. The first three pianoforte sonatas, _op._ 2. show the different elements in Beethoven's early style as clearly as possible. Sir Hubert Parry has aptly compared the opening of the sonata, _op._ 2, No. 1, with that of the finale of Mozart's G minor symphony, to show how much closer Beethoven's texture is. The slow movement well illustrates the rare cases in which Beethoven imitates Mozart to the detriment of his own proper richness of tone and thought, while the finale in its central episode brings a misapplied and somewhat diffuse structure in Mozart's style into direct conflict with themes as "Beethovenish" in their terseness as in their sombre passion. The second sonata is flawless in execution, and entirely beyond the range of Haydn and Mozart in harmonic and dramatic thought, except in the finale. And it is just in the adoption of the luxurious Mozartesque rondo form as the crown of this work that Beethoven shows his true independence. He adopts the form, not because it is Mozart's, but because it is right and because he can master it. The opening of the second subject in the first movement is a wonderful application of the harmonic principle already mentioned in connexion with the early piano quartets. In all music nothing equally dramatic can be found before the D minor sonata, _op._ 31, No. 2, which is rightly regarded as marking the beginning of Beethoven's second period. The slow movement, like those of _op._ 7 and a few other early works, shows a thrilling solemnity that immediately proves the identity of the pupil of Haydn with the creator of the 9th symphony. The little _scherzo_ no less clearly foreshadows the new era in music by the fact that in so small and light a movement a modulation from A to G sharp minor can occur too naturally to excite surprise. If the later work of Beethoven were unknown there would be very little evidence that this sonata was by a young man, except, perhaps, in the remarkable abruptness of style in the first movement, an abruptness which is characteristic, not of immaturity, but of art in which problems are successfully solved for the first time. This abruptness is, however, in a few of Beethoven's early works carried appreciably too far. In the sonata in C minor, _op._ 10, No. 1, for example, the more vigorous parts of the first movement lose in breadth from it, while the finale is almost stunted.

But Beethoven was not content to express his individuality only in an abrupt epigrammatic style. From the outset breadth was also his aim, and while he occasionally attempted to attain a greater breadth than his resources would properly allow (as in the first movement of the sonata, _op._ 2, No. 3, and that of the violoncello sonata, _op._ 5, No. 1, in both of which cases a kind of extempore outburst in the coda conceals the collapse of his peroration), there are many early works in which he shows neither abruptness of style nor any tendency to confine himself within the limits of previous art. The C minor trio, _op._ 1, No. 3, is not more remarkable for the boldness of thought that made Haydn doubtful as to the advisability of publishing it, than for the perfect smoothness and spaciousness of its style. These qualities Beethoven at first naturally found easier to retain with less dramatic material, as in the other trios in the same _opus_, but the C minor trio does not stand alone. It represents, perhaps, the most numerous, as certainly the noblest, class of Beethoven's early works. Certainly the smallest class is that in which there is unmistakable imitation of Mozart, and it is significant that almost all examples of this class are works for wind instruments, where the technical limitations narrowly determine the style and discourage the composer from taking things seriously. Such works are the beautiful and popular septet, the quintet for pianoforte and wind instruments (modelled superficially, yet closely and with a kind of modest ambition, on Mozart's wonderful work for the same combination) and, on a somewhat higher level, the trio for pianoforte, clarinet and violoncello, _op._ 11.

It is futile to discuss the point at which Beethoven's second manner may be said to begin, but he has himself given us excellent evidence as to when and how his first manner (as far as that is a single thing) became impossible to him. Through quite a large number of works, beginning perhaps with the great string quintet, _op._ 29, new types of harmonic and emotional expression had been assimilated into a style at least intelligible from Mozart's point of view. Indeed, Beethoven's favourite way of enlarging his range of expression often seems to consist in allowing the Titanic force of his new inventions and the formal beauty of the old art to indicate by their contrast a new world grander and lovelier than either. Sometimes, as in the C major quintet, the new elements are too perfectly assimilated for the contrast to appear. The range of key and depth of thought is beyond that of Beethoven's first manner, but the smoothness is that of Mozart. In the three pianoforte sonatas, _op._ 31, the struggle of the transition is as manifest as its accomplishment is triumphant. The first movement of the first sonata (in G major) deals with widely separated keys on new principles. These are embodied in a style which for abruptness and jocular paradox is hardly surpassed by Beethoven's most nervous early works. The exceptionally ornate and dilatory slow movement reads almost like a protest; while the finale begins as if to show that humour should be beautiful, and ends by making fun of the beauty. The second sonata (in D minor) is the greatest work Beethoven had as yet written. Its first movement, already cited above in connexion with the dramatic sequences in _op._ 2, No. 2, is, like that of the _Sonata Appassionata_, a _locus classicus_ for such powerful means of expression. And it is worth noting that the only sketch known of this movement is a sketch in which nothing but its sequential plan is indicated. In the third sonata Beethoven enjoys on a higher plane an experience he had often indulged in before, the attainment of smoothness and breadth by means of a delicately humorous calm which gives scope to the finer subtleties of his new thoughts.

Beethoven himself wrote to his publisher that these three sonatas represented a new phase in his style; but when we realize his artistic conscientiousness it is not surprising that they should be contemporary with larger works like the 2nd symphony, which are far more characteristic of his first manner. His whole development is entirely ruled by his determination to let nothing pass until it has been completely mastered, and long before this his sketch-books show that he had many ambitious ideas for a 1st symphony, and that it was a deliberate process that made his ambitions dwindle into something that could be safely realized in the masterly little comedy with which he began his orchestral career. The easy breadth and power of the 2nd symphony represents an amply sufficient advance, and leaves his forces free to develop in less expensive forms those vast energies for which afterwards the orchestra and the string-quartet were to become the natural field.

In the "Waldstein" sonata, _op._ 53, we see Beethoven's second manner literally displacing his first; that is to say, we reach a state of things at which the two can no longer form an artistic contrast. The work, as we know it, is not only perfect, but has all the qualities of art in which the newest elements have long been familiar. The opening is on the same harmonic train of thought as that of the sonata, _op._ 31, No. 1, but there is no longer the slightest need for a paradoxical or jocular manner. On the contrary, the harmonies are held together by an orderly sequence in the bass, and the onrush is that of some calm diurnal energy of nature. The short introduction to the finale is harmonically and emotionally the most profound thing in the sonata, while the finale itself uses every new resource in the triumphant attainment of a leisure more splendid than any conceivable in the most spacious of Mozart's rondos. Yet it is well known that Beethoven originally intended the beautiful _andante_ in F, afterwards published separately, to be the slow movement of this sonata. That andante is, like the finale, a spacious and gorgeous rondo, which probably Beethoven himself could not have written at an earlier period. The modulation to D flat in its principal theme, and that to G flat near the end, are its chief harmonic effects and stand out in beautiful relief within its limits. After the first movement of the Waldstein sonata they would be flat and colourless. The sketch-books show that Beethoven, when he first planned the sonata, was by no means inattentive to the balance of harmonic colour in the whole scheme, but that at first he did not realize how far that scheme was going to carry him. He originally thought of the slow movement as in E major, a remote key to which, however, he soon assigned the more intimate position of complementary key in the first movement. He then worked at the slow movement in F with such zest that he did not discover until the whole sonata was finished that he had raised the first and last movements to an altogether higher plane of thought, though the redundancy of the two rondos in juxtaposition and the unusual length of the sonata were so obvious that his friends ventured to point them out. Beethoven's revision of his earliest works is now known to have been extensive and drastic; but this is the first instance, and _Fidelio_ and the quartet in B flat, _op._ 131, are the only other instances, of any later work needing important alteration after it was completely executed. From this point up to _op._ 101 we may study Beethoven's second manner entirely free from any survivals of his first, even as a legitimate contrast; though it is as impossible to fix a point before which his third manner cannot be traced as it is to ignore the premonitions of his second manner in his early works. The distinguishing features in Beethoven's second style are the result of a condition of art in which enormous new possibilities have become so well known that there is no need for stating them abruptly, paradoxically or emphatically, but also no need for working them out to remote conclusions. Hence these works have become for most people the best-known and best-loved type of classical music. In their perfect fusion of untranslatable dramatic emotion with every beauty of musical design and tone they have never been equalled, nor is it probable that any other art can show a wider range of thought embodied in a more perfect form. In music itself there is nothing else of so wide a range without grave artistic defects from which Beethoven is entirely free. Wagnerian opera aims at an ideal as truly artistic, and in so far of wider range than Beethoven's that it passes beyond the bounds of pure music altogether. Within those bounds Beethoven remained, and even the apparent exceptions (such as _Fidelio_ and his two great examples of "programme music," the _Pastoral Symphony_ and the sonata, _Les Adieux_) only show how universal his conception of pure music is. Extraneous ideas had here struck him as magnificent material for instrumental music, and he never troubled to argue whether instrumental music is the better or worse for expressing extraneous ideas. To describe the works of Beethoven's second period here would be to describe a library of well-known classics, and we must refer the reader for further details to the articles on SONATA FORMS, CONTRAPUNTAL FORMS, HARMONY and INSTRUMENTATION. It remains for us to attempt to indicate the essential features of his third style, and to conclude with a survey of his influence on the history of music.

Beethoven's third style arose imperceptibly from his second. His deafness had very little to do with it, for all his epoch-making discoveries in orchestral effect date from the time when he was already far too much inconvenienced to test them in a way which would satisfy any one who depended more upon his ear than upon his imagination. It is indeed highly probable that there are no important features in Beethoven's latest style that may not be paralleled by the tendencies of all great artists who have handled their material until it contains nothing that has not been long familiar with them. Such tendencies lead to an extreme simplicity of form, underlying an elaboration of detail which may at first seem bewildering until we realize that it is purely the working out to its logical conclusions of some idea as simple and natural as the form itself. The form, however, will be not merely simple, but individual. Different works will show such striking external differences of form that a criticism which applies merely _a priori_ or historic standards will be tempted by the fallacy that there is less form in a number of such markedly different works than in a number of works that have one scheme in common. All this is eminently the case with Beethoven's last works. The extreme simplicity of the themes of the first two movements of the quartet in B flat, _op._ 131, and the tremendous complexity of the texture into which they are woven, at first impress us as something mysterious and intangible rather than astonishing. The boldness with which the slow introduction is blended in broad statement and counter-statement with the _allegro_, is directly impressive, as is also the entry of the second subject with its dark harmony and tone, but the work needs long familiarity before its vast mass of thought reveals itself to us in its true lucidity. Such works are "dark with excessive bright." When we enter into them they are transparent as far as our vision extends, and their darkness is that of a depth that shines as we penetrate it. In all probability only a veil of familiarity prevents our finding the same kind of difficulty in Beethoven's earlier works. What is undoubtedly newest in the last works is the enormous development of those polyphonic elements which are always essential to the life of a composition, but which have very different functions and degrees of prominence in different forms and stages of the art. Polyphony inevitably draws attention to detail, and thus Beethoven in his middle period found its more obvious manifestations but little conducive to the breadth of designs which were not as yet sufficiently familiar to take any but the foremost place. Hence, among other interesting features of that second period, his marked preference for themes founded on rhythmic figures of one note, e.g. the famous "four taps" in the C minor symphony; an identical rhythm in a melodious theme of very different character in the G major concerto; a similar figure in the _Sonata Appassionata_; the first theme of the _scherzo_ of the F major quartet, _op._ 59, No. 1, and the drum-beats in the violin concerto. Such rhythms give thematic life to an inner part without causing it to assume such melodic interest as might distract the attention from the flow of the surface. But in proportion as polyphony loses its danger so does the prominence of such rhythmic figures decrease, until in Beethoven's last works they are no more noticeable than other kinds of simplicity. The impression of crowded detail is naturally more prominent the smaller the means with which Beethoven works and the less outwardly dramatic his thought. Thus those most gigantic of all musical designs, the 9th symphony, and the Mass in D, are, but for the mechanical difficulties of the choral writing, almost like works of the second period as far as direct impressiveness is concerned; and in the same way the enormous pianoforte sonata, _op._ 106, is in its first three movements easier to follow than the extremely terse and subtle works on a smaller scale that preceded it (sonata in A major, 101, and the two sonatas for violoncello, _op._ 102).

His enormous development of polyphonic interest soon led Beethoven to employ the fugue, not only, as in previous works, by way of episodic contrast to passages and designs in which the form and not the texture is the main object of interest, but as the culminating expression of a condition or art in which the unity of form and texture is so perfect that the mind is free to concentrate itself on the texture alone. This union was not effected without a struggle, the traces of which present a close parallel to that abrupt emphasis which we noticed in some of Beethoven's early works. In his fugue-writing the notion that the chief interest lies in the texture is as yet so difficult to hold together with the perception that these fugues are based on a modern firmness and range of form, that the texture is forced upon the listener's attention by a continual series of ruthlessly logical bold strokes of harmony. From this and from the notorious violence of Beethoven's choral writing, and also from his well-known technical struggles in his years of pupilage, the easy inference has been drawn that Beethoven never was a great master of counterpoint, an inference that is absolutely irreconcilable with such plain facts as, to take but one early example, the brilliant piece of triple counterpoint in the _andante_ of the string quartet in C minor, _op._ 18, No. 4, and the complete absence of anything like crudeness in his handling of harmonics, basses or inner parts at any period of his career. Beethoven may have mastered some things with difficulty, but he mastered nothing incompletely; and where he is not orthodox it is safest to conclude that orthodoxy is wrong. Had he lived for another ten years he would certainly have produced an immense amount of choral work, and with it many other great instrumental works in which this last remaining element of conflict between texture and form would have dwindled away. But while this would doubtless result in such work being easier to follow and might even have given us a version of the great fugue, _op._ 133 (discarded from the string-quartet, _op._ 131), that did not surpass the bounds of practical performance, it would yet be no sound criterion by which to stigmatize as an immaturity the roughness of the polyphonic works that we know. That roughness is, like the abrupt epigrammatic manner of some of his early works, the necessary condition in which such material realizes mature expression. Without it that material could receive but the academic handling of a dead language. And by it was created that permanent reconciliation of polyphony and form from which has arisen almost all that is true in "Romantic" music, all that is peculiar to the thematic technique of Wagnerian opera, and all the perfect smoothness of Brahms's polyphony.

The incalculable depth of thought and closeness of texture in Beethoven's later works are, of course, the embodiment of a no less incalculable emotional power. If we at times feel that the last quartets are more introspective than dramatic, that is only because Beethoven's dramatic sense is higher than we can realize. The subject is too large and too subtle for dogmatism to be profitable; and we cannot in Beethoven's case, as we can in Bach's, cite a complete series of illustrations of his musical ideas from his treatment in choral music of words which themselves interpret the intention of the composer. There is so little but the music itself by which one can express Beethoven's thought, that the utmost we can do here is to refer the reader, as before, to the articles on SONATA FORMS, HARMONY, INSTRUMENTATION, OPERA and MUSIC, where he will find further attempts to indicate in what sense pure music can be described as dramatic and expressive of emotion.

As our range of investigation widens, and thoroughness of analysis and study increases, so we shall surely find in ourselves an ever-deepening conviction that Beethoven, whether in range, depth and truth of thought, perfect sense of beauty, or absolute conscientiousness of execution, is the greatest musician, perhaps the greatest artist, that ever lived. There is no means of measuring Beethoven's influence upon subsequent music. Every composer of every school claims it. The immense changes he brought about in the range of music have their most obvious effect in the possibilities of emotional expression; and so any outbreak of vulgarity or sentimentality can with impunity claim descent from Beethoven, though its ancestry may be no higher than Meyerbeer. Again, we have already referred to that confusion of thought which regards a series of works markedly different in form as containing less form than any number of works cast in one mould. Hence the works of Beethoven's third period have been cited in defence of more than one "revolution," attempted in a form which never existed in any true classic, for the purpose of setting up something the revolutionist has not yet succeeded in inventing. To measure Beethoven's influence is like measuring Shakespeare's. It is an influence either too vaguely universal to name or too profoundly artistic to analyse. Perhaps the truest account of it would be that which ignored its presence in the works of ill-balanced artists, or even in the works of those who profited merely by an increase of technical and harmonic resource which, though effected by Beethoven, would, after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, almost certainly have to some extent arisen from sheer necessity of finding expression for the new experience of humanity, if Beethoven had never existed. Setting aside, then, all instances of mere domination, and of a permanently established new world of musical thought, and omitting Schubert and Weber as contemporaries, the one attracted and the other partly repelled, we may, perhaps, take three later composers, Schumann, Wagner and Brahms, as the leading examples of the way in which Beethoven's influence is definitely traceable as a creative force. The depth and solemnity of Beethoven's melody and later polyphonic richness is a leading source of Schumann's inspiration, though Schumann's artistic schemes exclude any high degree of formal organization on a large scale. Beethoven's late polyphony is carried on by Brahms to the point at which perfect smoothness of style is once more possible, and there is no aspect of his form which Brahms neglects or fails to realize with that complete originality which has nothing to fear from its ancestry. Wagner does not handle the same art-forms; his task is different, but Beethoven was the inspiring source, not only of his purely musical sense, but also of his whole sense of dramatic contrast and fitness. When he had shaken off the influence of Meyerbeer, which has so often been confused with that of Beethoven, there remained to him, pre-eminently in his music and more imperfectly realized in his drama, a power of combining contrasted emotions such as is the privilege of only the very greatest dramatic artists. Bach and Beethoven are the sources of the polyphonic means of expression by which he attains this. Beethoven alone is the extraneous source of his knowledge that it was possible. And it is as certain as anything in the history of art that there will never be a time when Beethoven's work does not occupy the central place in a sound musical mind.

ANNOTATED LIST OF BEETHOVEN'S WORKS

Up to 1823 we give in most cases the dates of publication, the date of composition being generally from one to three years earlier. Beethoven seldom had less than a dozen projects in hand at once, and their immediate chronology is inextricable; whereas publication generally means final revision. This list is purposely incomplete in order that unimportant works may not distract attention, even when they are late and on a large scale.

Sonata = Pianoforte sonata. Violin or violoncello sonata = for pianoforte, V. or Vc. Pianoforte trio = Pfte., V., Vc. Pianoforte quartet = Pfte., V., viola and Vc. String trio = V., Va., Vc. String quartet = VV., Va. and Vc. Pianoforte or violin concerto = Concerto with orchestra.

1785. 3 pfte. quartets, of which the third contains important material for the sonatas, _op._ 2, Nos. 1 and 3. (Thayer's attribution of the masterly bagatelles, _op._ 33, published 1803, to this period can only be rationalized by some similar rough first idea.)

1790. 24 variations on an air by Righini (published 1801). A very remarkable work, anticipating Schumann's _Papillons_ in its humorous close. It was Beethoven's chief early _tour-de-force_ in pianoforte playing.

1795. 3 pfte. trios, _op._ 1 (E-flat, G, C minor).

1796. 3 pfte. sonatas, _op._ 2 (F minor, A and C, dedicated to Haydn).

1797. String trio, _op._ 3, 2 violoncello sonatas, _op._ 5, F and G mi., sonata, _op._ 7, E-flat.

1798. 3 string trios, _op._ 9; G, D, C mi., 3 sonatas, _op._ 10 (C mi., F, D). Trio for pfte., clarinet and violoncello in B-flat, _op._ 11.

1799. 3 violin sonatas (D, A, E-flat), _op._ 12. Pfte. sonata (_Pathetique_ not Beethoven's title) C mi., _op._ 13, 2 pfte. sonatas, _op._ 14, E, G (the first arranged by the composer as a string quartet in F).

1801. Pianoforte concertos, _op._ 15 in C, _op._ 19 in B-flat (the latter composed first). Quintet for pianoforte and wind instruments, _op._ 16 (also arranged, with new details, as quartet for pianoforte and strings), composed 1797. 6 string quartets, _op._ 18 (F, G, D, C mi., A, B-flat). 1st symphony (C), _op._ 21. 2 violin sonatas, A mi., _op._ 23; F ma., _op._ 24 (made into two opus-numbers by an accident in the _format_ of the volumes).

1802. Pianoforte score of the _Prometheus_ ballet, _op._ 24 (ousted by the F ma. violin sonata, and reissued as _op._ 43). Sonata in B-flat, _op._ 22. Sonata in A-flat, _op._ 26 (with the funeral march). 2 sonatas ("quasi fantasia"), _op._ 27, E-flat, C-sharp mi. Sonata in D, _op._ 28 (_Pastorale_ not Beethoven's title). String quintet in C, _op._ 29.

1803. 3 violin sonatas, _op._ 30 (A, C mi., G). 3 sonatas, _op._ 31, G, D mi., E-flat (the last appearing in 1804). Variations, _op._ 34. 15 variations and fugue on theme from _Prometheus_, _op._ 35.

1804. 2nd symphony (D), _op._ 36 (1802). 3rd pfte. concerto (C mi.), _op._ 37 (1800).

1805. The "Kreutzer" sonata, _op._ 47, for pfte. and violin (A) (finale at first intended for _op._ 30, No. 1). "Waldstein" sonata for pfte., _op._ 53 (C). First version of opera _Leonore_ in three acts (with overture "No. 2").

1806. Sonata in F, _op._ 54. _Eroica Symphony_, No. 3, _op._ 55 (E-flat), written in 1804 in honour of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was just finished when news arrived that Napoleon had made himself emperor, and Beethoven was with difficulty restrained from destroying the score. It is still the longest extant perfect design in instrumental music. The finale glorifies the material (and much of the form) of the variations, _op._ 35. The _scherzo_ is the first full-sized example of Beethoven's special type. _Leonore_ reproduced in two acts with overture No. 3. 32 variations in C mi. (no opus-number, but a very important work on the lines of a modernized _chaconne_).

1807. Triple concerto (pfte., V. and Vc.), _op._ 56, chiefly interesting as a study for the true concerto-form which had given Beethoven difficulty. Sonata, _op._ 57 (F mi., _Appassionata_, not Beethoven's title). New overture, _Leonore_, "No. 1," composed for projected performance of the opera at Prague (posthumously published as _op._ 138).

1808. 4th pfte. concerto, _op._ 58 (G). 3 string quartets, _op._ 59, F, E mi., C (dedicated to Count Rasoumovsky, in compliment to whom Russian tunes appear in the finale of No. 1 and the _scherzo_ of No. 2). Overture to _Coriolanus_, _op._ 62.

1809. 4th symphony, _op._ 60 (B-flat). Violin concerto (D), _op._ 61 (also arranged by the composer for pianoforte). 5th symphony, _op._ 67 (C mi.) (1806), the first in which trombones appear. 6th symphony (Pastorale), _op._ 68; violoncello sonata, _op._ 69 (A). 2 pianoforte trios, _op._ 70 (D, E-flat).

1810. Pianoforte score of _Leonore_ (2nd version) published. String quartet, _op._ 74 (E-flat, called "Harp" because of _pizzicato_ passages in first movement). Fantasia, _op._ 77, interesting as consisting of a long and capricious series of dramatic beginnings and breakings off of themes, as if in search for a firm idea, which is at last found and developed as a set of variations. This scheme thus foreshadows the choral finale of the 9th symphony even more significantly than the Choral Fantasia.

Sonata, _op._ 78, F-sharp (extremely terse and subtle, and a great favourite with Beethoven, who preferred it to the C-sharp mi.).

1811. 5th pfte. concerto, _op._ 73, E-flat (_The Emperor_ not Beethoven's title). Fantasia for pfte., orchestra and chorus, _op._ 80. Sonata, _op._ 81a (_Les Adieux, l'absence, et le retour_), first movement written when the archduke Rudolph had to leave Vienna (4th May 1809), and the rest on his return on the 30th of January 1810. It was an anxious time both for Beethoven and his excellent royal friend, for whom he had great affection. (Battle of Wagram, 6th July 1809.) (We may here note that _op._ 81b is an unimportant and very early sextet.) The overture to _Egmont_, _op._ 84; _Christus am Oelberge_ (the Mount of Olives), _op._ 85, oratorio (probably composed between 1800 and its first performance in 1803).

1812. The rest of the _Egmont_ music, _op._ 84. 1st mass, _op._ 87 (C) (first performance, 1807).

1814. Final version of _Leonore_, performed as _Fidelio_ with great alterations, skilful revision of the libretto, very important new material in the music and a new overture.

1815. Sonata, _op._ 90 (E mi.).

1816. 7th symphony, _op._ 92 (A); 8th symphony, _op._ 93 (F) (Beethoven was planning a group of three of which the last was to be in D mi., which we shall find significant). String quartet, _op._ 95 (F mi.). Violin sonata, _op._ 96 (G). Pianoforte trio, _op._ 97 (B-flat); _Liederkreis_, _op._ 98.

1817. Sonata, _op._ 101 (the first indisputably in Beethoven's "third manner"). 2 violoncello sonatas, _op._ 102 (C, D, the second containing Beethoven's first modern instrumental strict fugue).

1819. Arrangement for string quintet, _op._ 104, of C mi. trio, _op._ 1, No. 3 (a wonderful study in translation, comparable only to Bach's arrangements and very unlike Beethoven's former essays of the kind). Sonata, _op._ 106 (B-flat), the largest and most symphonic pianoforte work extant, surpassed in length only by Bach's _Goldberg_ variations and Beethoven's 33 variations on Diabelli's waltz.

1821. 25 Scotch songs accompanied by pfte., V. and Vc., _op._ 108 (the first set of a large and much neglected collection, mostly posthumous, many of great interest and beauty and very Beethovenish, which has shocked persons who expect sympathetic insight into folk-music to prevail over Beethoven's artistic impulse). Sonata, _op._ 109 (E).

1822. Sonata, _op._ 110 (A-flat). Overture, _Die Weihe des Hauses_, _op._ 124 (C), a magnificent essay in orchestral free fugue, published 1825.

1823. Sonata, _op._ 111 (C mi., the last pianoforte sonata). 33 variations on a waltz by Diabelli, who sent his waltz round to fifty-one musicians in Austria asking each to contribute a variation; the whole to be published for the benefit of the widows and orphans left by the war. Beethoven answered with the greatest set ever written, and it was published in a separate volume. Among the other fifty composers were Schubert and an infant prodigy of eleven, Franz Liszt! The mass in D (_Missa Solemnis_), _op._ 123, begun in 1818 for the installation of the archduke Rudolph as archbishop of Olmutz, was not finished until 1826, two years after the installation. The 9th symphony, _op._ 125 D mi. (see note on 7th and 8th symphonies); sketches begun 1817; project of setting Schiller's _Freude_ already in Beethoven's mind before he left Bonn. 6 bagatelles, _op._ 126, Beethoven's last pianoforte work a very remarkable and unaccountably neglected group of carefully contrasted lyric pieces.

1824. String quartet, _op._ 127 (E-flat, published 1826).

1825. String quartet, _op._ 130 (B-flat), with finale, _op._ 133 (grand fugue); string quartet, _op._ 132 (A mi., with slow movement in Lydian mode, a _Heiliger Dankgesang_ on recovery from illness. Theme of finale first thought of as for instrumental finale to 9th symphony).

1826. String quartet, _op._ 131 (C-sharp, mi.). String quartet, op. 135 (F). New finale to _op._ 130, Beethoven's last composition. (D. F. T.)

AUTHORITIES.--A.W. Thayer, _Beethovens Leben_ (1866-1879); L. Nohl, _Life of Beethoven_ (Eng. trans., 1884), and _Letters_ (Eng. trans., 1866); Sir G. Grove, _Beethoven and his Symphonies_ (1896), and in Grove's _Dictionary of Music_.

BEETLE (O. Eng. _bityl_; connected with "bite"), a name commonly applied to those insects which possess horny wing-cases; it is used to denote the cockroaches (q.v.) (black beetles), as well as the true beetles or _Coleoptera_ (q.v.), the two belonging to different orders of _Insecta_.

The adjective "beetle-browed," and similarly "beetling" (of a cliff), are derived from the name of the insect. From another word (O. Eng. _betel_, connected with "beat") comes "beetle" in the sense of a mallet, and the "beetling-machine," which subjects fabrics to a hammering process.

BEETS, NIKOLAAS (1814-1903), Dutch poet, was born at Haarlem on the 13th of September 1814; constant references in his poems and sketches show how deeply the beauty of that town and its neighbourhood impressed his imagination. He studied theology in Leiden, but gave himself early to the cultivation of poetry. In his youth Beets was entirely carried away on the tide of Byronism which was then sweeping over Europe, and his early works--_Jose_ (1834), _Kuser_ (1835) and _Guy de Vlaming_ (1837)--are gloomy romances of the most impassioned type. But at the very same time he was beginning in prose the composite work of humour and observation which has made him famous, and which certainly had nothing that was in the least Byronic about it. This was the celebrated _Camera Obscura_ (1839), the most successful imaginative work which any Dutchman of the 18th century produced. This work, published under the pseudonym of "Hildebrand," goes back in its earliest inception to the year 1835, when Beets was only twenty-one. It consists of complete short stories, descriptive sketches, studies of peasant life--all instinct with humour and pathos, and written in a style of great charm; it has been reprinted in countless editions. Beets became a professor at the university of Leiden, and the pastor of a congregation in that city. In middle life he published further collections of verse--_Cornflowers_ (1853) and _New Poems_ (1857)--in which the romantic melancholy was found to have disappeared, and to have left in its place a gentle sentiment and a depth of religious feeling. In 1873-1875 Beets collected his works in three volumes. In April 1883 the honorary degree of LL.D. Edin. was conferred upon him. He died at Utrecht on the 13th of March 1903.

BEFANA (Ital., corrupted from _Epifania_, Epiphany), the Italian female counterpart of Santa Claus, the Christmas benefactor (St Nicholas). On Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, she plays the fairy godmother to the children, filling their stockings with presents. Tradition relates that she was too busy with house duties to come to the window to see the Three Wise Men of the East pass on their journey to pay adoration to the Saviour, excusing herself on the ground that she could see them on their return. They went back another way, and Befana is alleged to have been punished by being obliged to look for them for ever. Her legends seem to be rather mixed, for in spite of her Santa Claus character, her name is used by Italian mothers as a bogey to frighten the babies. It was the custom to carry her effigy through Italian towns on the eve of the Epiphany.

BEFFROY DE REIGNY, LOUIS ABEL (1757-1811), French dramatist and man of letters, was born at Laon on the 6th of November 1757. Under the name of "Cousin Jacques" he founded a periodical called _Les Lunes_ (1785-1787). The _Courrier des planetes ou Correspondance du Cousin Jacques avec le firmament_ (1788-1792) followed. _Nicodeme dans la lune, ou la revolution pacifique_ (1790) a three-act farce, is said to have had more than four hundred representations. In spite of his protests against the evils of the Revolution he escaped interference through the influence of his brother, Louis Etienne Beffroy, who was a member of the Convention. Of _La Petite Nanette_ (1795) and several other operas he wrote both the words and the music. His _Dictionnaire neologique_ (3 vols., 1795-1800) of the chief actors and events in the Revolution was interdicted by the police and remained incomplete. Beffroy spent his last years in retirement, dying in Paris on the 17th of December 1811.

BEGAS, KARL (1794-1854), German historical painter, was born at Heinsberg near Aix-la-Chapelle. His father, a retired judge, destined him for the legal profession, but the boy's tastes pointed definitely in another direction. Even at school he was remarked for his wonderful skill in drawing and painting, and in 1812 he was permitted to visit Paris in order to perfect himself in his art. He studied for eighteen months in the atelier of Gros and then began to work independently. In 1814 his copy of the Madonna della Sedia was bought by the king of Prussia, who was attracted by the young artist and did much to advance him. He was engaged to paint several large Biblical pictures, and in 1825, after his return from Italy, continued to produce paintings which were placed in the churches of Berlin and Potsdam. Some of these were historical pieces, but the majority were representations of Scriptural incidents. Begas was also celebrated as a portrait-painter, and supplied to the royal gallery a long series of portraits of eminent Prussian men of letters. At his death he held the post of court painter at Berlin. His son OSKAR (1828-1883) was also a painter and professor of painting at Berlin. REINHOLD, the sculptor, is noticed below.

BEGAS, REINHOLD (1831- ), German sculptor, younger son of Karl Begas, the painter, was born at Berlin on the 15th of July 1831. He received his early education (1846-1851) in the ateliers of C.D. Rauch and L. Wichmann. During a period of study in Italy, from 1856 to 1858, he was influenced by Bocklin and Lenbach in the direction of a naturalistic style in sculpture. This tendency was marked in the group "Borussia," executed for the facade of the exchange in Berlin, which first brought him into general notice. In 1861 he was appointed professor at the art school at Weimar, but retained the appointment only a few months. That he was chosen, after competition, to execute the statue of Schiller for the Gendarmen Markt in Berlin, was a high tribute to the fame he had already acquired; and the result, one of the finest statues in the German metropolis, entirely justified his selection. Since the year 1870, Begas has entirely dominated the plastic art in Prussia, but especially in Berlin. Among his chief works during this period are the colossal statue of Borussia for the Hall of Glory; the Neptune fountain in bronze on the Schlossplatz; the statue of Alexander von Humboldt, all in Berlin; the sarcophagus of the emperor Frederick III. in the mausoleum of the Friedenskirche at Potsdam; and, lastly, the national monument to the emperor William (see BERLIN), the statue of Bismarck before the Reichstag building, and several of the statues in the Siegesallee. He was also entrusted with the execution of the sarcophagus of the empress Frederick.

See A.G. Meyer, "Reinhold Begas" in _Kunstler-Monographien_, ed. H. Knackfuss, Heft xx. (Bielefeld, 1897; new ed., 1901).

BEGGAR, one who begs, particularly one who gains his living by asking the charitable contributions of others. The word, with the verbal form "to beg," in Middle English _beggen_, is of obscure history. The words appear first in English in the 13th century, and were early connected with "bag," with reference to the receptacle for alms carried by the beggars. The most probable derivation of the word, and that now generally accepted, is that it is a corruption of the name of the lay communities known as Beguines and Beghards, which, shortly after their establishment, followed the friars in the practice of mendicancy (see BEGUINES). It has been suggested, however, that the origin of "beg" and "beggars" is to be found in a rare Old English word, _bedecian_, of the same meaning, which is apparently connected with the Gothic _bidjan_, cf. German _betteln_; but between the occurrence of _bedecian_ at the end of the 9th century and the appearance of "beggar" and "beg" in the 13th, there is a blank, and no explanation can be given of the great change in form. For the English law relating to begging and its history, see CHARITY, POOR LAW and VAGRANCY.

BEGGAR-MY-NEIGHBOUR, a simple card-game. An ordinary pack is divided equally between two players, and the cards are held with the backs upwards. The first player lays down his top card face up, and the opponent plays his top card on it, and this goes on alternately as long as no court-card appears; but if either player turns up a court-card, his opponent has to play four ordinary cards to an ace, three to a king, two to a queen, one to a knave, and when he has done so the other player takes all the cards on the table and places them under his pack; if, however, in the course of this playing to a court-card, another court-card turns up, the adversary has in turn to play to this, and as long as neither has played a full number of ordinary cards to any court-card the trick continues. The player who gets all the cards into his hand is the winner.

BEGONIA (named from M. Begon, a French patron of botany), a large genus (natural order, Begoniaceae) of succulent herbs or undershrubs, with about three hundred and fifty species in tropical moist climates, especially South America and India. About one hundred and fifty species are known in cultivation, and innumerable varieties and hybrid forms. Many are tuberous. The flowers are usually showy and large, white, rose, scarlet or yellow in colour; they are unisexual, the male containing numerous stamens, the female having a large inferior ovary and two to four branched or twisted stigmas. The fruit is a winged capsule containing numerous minute seeds. The leaves, which are often large and variegated, are unequal-sided.

Cuttings from flowering begonias root freely in sandy soil, if placed in heat at any season when moderately firm; as soon as rooted, they should be potted singly into 3-in. pots, in sandy loam mixed with leaf-mould and sand. They should be stopped to keep them bushy, placed in a light situation, and thinly shaded in the middle of very bright days. In a few weeks they will require another shift. They should not be overpotted, but instead assisted by manure water. The pots should be placed in a light pit near the roof glass. The summer-flowering kinds will soon begin blooming, but the autumn and winter flowering sorts should be kept growing on in a temperature of from 55 deg. to 60 deg. by night, with a few degrees more in the day. The tuberous-rooted sorts require to be kept at rest in winter, in a medium temperature, almost but not quite dry. In February they should be potted in a compost of sandy loam and leaf-mould, and placed in a temperate pit until May or June, when they may be moved to the greenhouse for flowering. If they afterwards get at all pot-bound, weak manure should be applied. After blooming, the supply of water must be again slackened; in winter the plants should be stored in a dry place secure from frost; they are increased by late summer and autumn cuttings, after being partially cut down.

BEGUINES (Fr. _beguine_, Med. Lat. _beguina, begina, beghina_), at the present time the name of the members of certain lay sisterhoods established in the Netherlands and Germany, the enclosed district within which they live being known as a beguinage (Lat. _beginagium_). The equivalent male communities, called also Beguines (Fr. _beguins_, Lat. _beguini_), but more usually Beghards (Lat. _baghardi, beggardi, begehardi_, &c., O. Fr. _begard-i_, Flem. _beggaert_), have long ceased to exist. The origin of the names Beguine and Beghard has been the subject of much controversy. In the 15th century a legend arose that both name and organization were traceable to St Begga, daughter of Pippin of Landen, who consequently in 1630 was chosen by the Beguines as the patron saint of their association. In 1630 a professor of Louvain, Erycius Puteanus (van Putte), published a treatise, _De Begginarum apud Belgas instituto et nomine suffragium_, in which he produced three documents purporting to date from the 11th and 12th centuries, which seemed conclusively to prove that the Beguines existed long before Lambert le Begue. For two centuries these were accepted as genuine and are admitted as such even in the monumental work of Mosheim. In 1843, however, they were conclusively proved by the German scholar Hallmann, from internal evidence, to be forgeries of the 14th and 15th centuries. It is now universally admitted that both the institution and the name of the Beguines are derived from Lambert le Begue, who died about the year 1187. The confusion caused by the spurious documents of Puteanus, however, led, even when the legend of St Begga was rejected, to other suggestions for the derivation of the name, e.g. from an imaginary old Saxon word _beggen_, "to beg" or "pray," an explanation adopted even by Mosheim, or from _begue_, "stammering," a French word of unknown origin, which only brings us back to Lambert again, whose name of Le Begue, as the chronicler Aegidius, a monk of Orval (Aureae Vallis), tells us, simply means "the stammerer," _quia balbus erat_ (_Gesta pontificum Leodiensium, c_. A.D. 1251). Doubtless this coincidence gave a ready handle to the scoffing wits of the time, and among the numerous popular names given to the Beghards--_bons garcons, boni pueri, boni valeti_ and the like--we find also that of Lollards (from Flemish _lollen_, "to stammer").

About the year 1170 Lambert le Begue, a priest of Liege, who had devoted his fortune to founding the hospital and church of St Christopher for the widows and children of crusaders, conceived the idea of establishing an association of women, who, without taking the monastic vows, should devote themselves to a life of religion. The effect of his preaching was immense, and large numbers of women, many of them left desolate by the loss of their husbands on crusade, came under the influence of a movement which was attended with all the manifestations of what is now called a "revival." About the year 1180 Lambert gathered some of these women, who had been ironically styled "Beguines" by his opponents, into a semi-conventual community, which he established in a quarter of the city belonging to him around his church of St Christopher. The district was surrounded by a wall within which the Beguines lived in separate small houses, subject to no rule save the obligation of good works, and of chastity so long as they remained members of the community. After Lambert's death (c. 1187?) the movement rapidly spread, first in the Netherlands and afterwards in France--where it was encouraged by the saintly Louis IX.--Germany, Switzerland and the countries beyond. Everywhere the community was modelled on the type established at Liege. It constituted a little city within the city, with separate houses, and usually a church, hospital and guest-house, the whole being under the government of a mistress (_magistra_). Women of all classes were admitted; and, though there was no rule of poverty, many wealthy women devoted their riches to the common cause. The Beguines did not beg; and, when the endowments of the community were not sufficient, the poorer members had to support themselves by manual work, sick-nursing and the like.

The Beguine communities were fruitful soil for the missionary enterprise of the friars, and in the course of the 13th century the communities in France, Germany and upper Italy had fallen under the influence of the Dominicans and Franciscans to such an extent that in the Latin-speaking countries the tertiaries of these orders were commonly called _beguini_ and _beguinae_. The very looseness of their organization, indeed, made it inevitable that the Beguine associations should follow very diverse developments. Some of them retained their original character; others fell completely under the dominion of the friars, and were ultimately converted into houses of Dominican, Franciscan or Augustinian tertiaries; others again fell under the influence of the mystic movements of the 13th century, turned in increasing numbers from work to mendicancy (as being nearer the Christ-life), practised the most cruel self-tortures, and lapsed into extravagant heresies that called down upon them the condemnation of popes and councils.[1] All this tended to lower the reputation of the Beguines. During the 14th century, indeed, numerous new beguinages were established; but ladies of rank and wealth ceased to enter them, and they tended to become more and more mere almshouses for poor women. By the 15th century in many cases they had utterly sunk in reputation, their obligation to nurse the sick was quite neglected, and they had, rightly or wrongly, acquired the reputation of being mere nests of beggars and women of ill fame. At the Reformation the communities were suppressed in Protestant countries, but in some Catholic countries they still survive. The beguinages found here and there in Germany are now simply almshouses for poor spinsters, those in Holland (e.g. at Amsterdam and Breda) and Belgium preserve more faithfully the characteristics of earlier days. The beguinage of St Elizabeth at Ghent has some thousand sisters, and occupies quite a distinct quarter of the city, being surrounded by a wall and moat. The Beguines wear the old Flemish head-dress and a dark costume, and are conspicuous for their kindness among the poor and their sick nursing.

It is uncertain whether the parallel communities of men originated also with Lambert le Begue. The first records are of communities at Louvain in 1220 and at Antwerp in 1228. The history of the male communities is to a certain extent parallel with the female, but they were never so numerous and their degeneration was far more rapid. The earliest Flemish Beghard communities were associations mainly of artisans who earned their living by weaving and the like, and appear to have been in intimate connexion with the craft-gilds; but under the influence of the mendicant movement of the 13th century these tended to break up, and, though certain of the male beguinages survived or were incorporated as tertiaries in the orders of friars, the name of Beghard became associated with groups of wandering mendicants who made religion a cloak for living on charity; _beguigner_ becoming in the French language of the time synonymous with "to beg," and _beghard_ with "beggar," a word which, according to the latest authorities, was probably imported into England in the 13th century from this source (see BEGGAR). More serious still, from the point of view of the Church, was the association of these wandering mendicants with the mystic heresies of the Fraticelli, the Apostolici and the pantheistic Brethren of the Free Spirit. The situation was embittered by the hatred of the secular clergy for the friars, with whom the Beguines were associated. Restrictions were placed upon them by the synod of Fritzlar (1269), by that of Mainz (1281) and Eichstatt (1281). and by the synod of Beziers (1299) they were absolutely forbidden. They were again condemned by a synod held at Cologne in 1306; and at the synod of Trier in 1310 a decree was passed against those "who under a pretext of feigned religion call themselves Beghards ... and, hating manual labour, go about begging, holding conventicles and posing among simple people as interpreters of the Scriptures." Matters came to a climax at the council of Vienne in 1311 under Pope Clement V., where the "sect of Beguines and Beghards" were accused of being the main instruments of the spread of heresy, and decrees were passed suppressing their organization and demanding their severe punishment. The decrees were put into execution by Pope John XXII., and a persecution raged in which, though the pope expressly protected the female Beguine communities of the Netherlands, there was little discrimination between the orthodox and unorthodox Beguines. This led to the utmost confusion, the laity in many cases taking the part of the Beguine communities, and the Church being thus brought into conflict with the secular authorities. In these circumstances the persecution died down; it was, however, again resumed between 1366 and 1378 by Popes Urban V. and Gregory XI., and the Beguines were not formally reinstated until the pontificate of Eugenius IV. (1431-1447). The male communities did not survive the 14th century, even in the Netherlands, where they had maintained their original character least impaired.

See J.L. von Mosheirn, _De beghardis et beguinabus commentarius_ (Leipzig, 1790); E. Hallmann, _Die Geschichte des Ursprungs der belgischen Beghinen_ (Berlin, 1843); J.C.L. Giesclcr, _Eccles. Hist._ (vol. iii., Eng. trans., Edinburgh, 1853), with useful excerpts from documents; Du Cange, _Glossarium_; Herzog-Haurk, _Realencyklopadie_ (3rd ed., 1897) s. "Beginen," by Herman Haupt, where numerous further authorities are cited. (W. A. P.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] In the year 1287 the council of Liege decreed that "all Beguinae desiring to enjoy the Beguine privileges shall enter a Beguinage, and we order that all who remain outside the Beguinage shall wear a dress to distinguish them from the Beguinae."

BEHAIM (or BEHEM), MARTIN (1436?-1507), a navigator and geographer of great pretensions, was born at Nuremberg, according to one tradition, about 1436; according to Ghillany, as late as 1459. He was drawn to Portugal by participation in Flanders trade, and acquired a scientific reputation at the court of John II. As a pupil, real or supposed, of the astronomer "Regiomontanus" (i.e. Johann Muller of Konigsberg in Franconia) he became (c. 1480) a member of a council appointed by King John for the furtherance of navigation. His alleged introduction of the cross-staff into Portugal (an invention described by the Spanish Jew, Levi ben Gerson, in the 14th century) is a matter of controversy; his improvements in the astrolabe were perhaps limited to the introduction of handy brass instruments in place of cumbrous wooden ones; it seems likely that he helped to prepare better navigation tables than had yet been known in the Peninsula. In 1484-1485 he claimed to have accompanied Diogo Cao in his second expedition to West Africa, really undertaken in 1485-86, reaching Cabo Negro in 15 deg. 40' S. and Cabo Ledo still farther on. It is now disputed whether Behaim's pretensions here deserve any belief; and it is suggested that instead of sharing in this great voyage of discovery, the Nuremberger only sailed to the nearer coasts of Guinea, perhaps as far as the Bight of Benin, and possibly with Jose Visinho the astronomer and with Joao Affonso d'Aveiro, in 1484-86. Martin's later history, as traditionally recorded, was as follows. On his return from his West African exploration to Lisbon he was knighted by King John, who afterwards employed him in various capacities; but, from the time of his marriage in 1486, he usually resided at Fayal in the Azores, where his father-in-law, Jobst van Huerter, was governor of a Flemish colony. On a visit to his native city in 1492, he constructed his famous terrestrial globe, still preserved in Nuremberg, and often reproduced, in which the influence of Ptolemy is strongly apparent, but wherein some attempt is also made to incorporate the discoveries of the later middle ages (Marco Polo, &c.). The antiquity of this globe and the year of its execution, on the eve of the discovery of America, are noteworthy; but as a scientific work it is unimportant, ranking far below the _portolani_ charts of the 14th century. Its West Africa is marvellously incorrect; the Cape Verde archipelago lies hundreds of miles out of its proper place; and the Atlantic is filled with fabulous islands. Blunders of 16 deg. are found in the localization of places the author claims to have visited: contemporary maps, at least in regard to continental features, seldom went wrong beyond 1 deg. It is generally agreed that Behaim had no share in Transatlantic discovery; and though Columbus and he were apparently in Portugal at the same time, no connexion between the two has been established. He died at Lisbon in 1507.

See C.G. von Murr, _Diplomatische Geschichte des beruhmten Ritters Behaim_ (1778); A. von Humboldt, _Kritische Untersuchungen_ (1836); F.W. Ghillany, _Geschichte des Seefahrers Martin Behaim_ (1853); O. Peschel, _Geschichte der Erdkunde_, 214-215, 226, 251, and _Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_, esp. p. 90; Breusing, _Zur Geschichte der Geographie_ (1869); Eugen Gelcich in the _Mittheilungen_ of the Vienna Geographical Society, vol. xxxvi. pp. 100, &c.; E.G. Ravenstein, _Martin de Bohemia_, (Lisbon, 1900), _Martin Behaim, His Life and His Globe_ (London, 1909), and _Voyages of Diogo Cao and Bartholomeu Dias_, 1482-1488, in _Geographical Journal_, Dec. 1900; see also _Geog. Journal_, Aug. 1893, p. 175, Nov. 1901, p. 509; Jules Mees in _Bull. Soc. Geog._, Antwerp, 1902, pp. 182-204; A. Ferreira de Serpa in _Bull. Soc. Geog._, Lisbon, 1904, pp. 297-307. (C. R. B.)

BEHAR, or BIHAR, a town of British India, in the Patna district of Bengal, which gives its name to an old province, situated on the right bank of the river Panchana. Pop. (1901) 45,063. There are still some manufactures of silk and muslin, but trade has deserted Behar in favour of Patna and other places more favourably situated on the river Ganges and the railway, while the indigo industry has been ruined by the synthetic products of the German chemist, and the English colony of indigo planters has been scattered abroad.

The old province, stretching widely across the valley of the Ganges from the frontier of Nepal to the hills of Chota Nagpur, corresponds to the two administrative divisions of Patna and Bhagalpur, with a total area of 44,197 sq. m. and a population of 24,241,305. It is the most densely populated tract in India, and therefore always liable to famine; but it is now well protected almost everywhere by railways. It is a country of large landholders and formerly of indigo planters. The vernacular language is not Bengali, but a dialect of Hindu; and the people likewise resemble those of Upper India. The general aspect of the country is flat, except in the district of Monghyr, where detached hills occur, and in the south-east of the province, where the Rajmahal and Santal ranges abut upon the plains.

Behar abounds in great rivers, such as the Ganges, with its tributaries, the Ghagra, Gandak, Kusi, Mahananda and Sone. The Ganges enters the province near the town of Buxar, flows eastward and, passing the towns of Dinajpur, Patna, Monghyr and Colgong, leaves the province at Rajmahal. It divides the province into two almost equal portions; north of the river lie the districts of Saran, Champaran, Tirhoot, Purnea, and part of Monghyr and Bhagalpur, and south of it are Shahabad, Patna, Gaya, the Santal parganas, and the rest of Monghyr and Bhagalpur. The Ganges and its northern tributaries are navigable by country boats of large burden all the year round. The cultivation of opium is a government monopoly, and no person is allowed to grow the poppy except on account of government. The Behar Opium Agency has its headquarters at the town of Patna. Annual engagements are entered into by the cultivators, under a system of pecuniary advances, to sow a certain quantity of land with poppy, and the whole produce in the form of opium is delivered to government at a fixed rate.

Saltpetre is largely refined in Tirhoot, Saran and Champaran, and is exported both by rail and river to Calcutta. The manufactures of less importance are tussore-silk, paper, blankets, brass utensils, firearms, carpets, coarse cutlery and hardware, leather, ornaments of gold and silver, &c. Of minerals--lead, silver and copper exist in the Bhagalpur division, but the mines are not worked. One coal-mine is worked in the parganas. Before the construction of railways in India, the Ganges and the Grand Trunk road afforded the sole means of communication from Calcutta to the North-Western Provinces. But now the railroad is the great highway which connects Upper India with Lower Bengal. The East Indian railway runs throughout the length of the province. The climate of Behar is very hot from the middle of March to the end of June, when the rains set in, which continue till the end of September. The cold season, from October to the first half of March, is the pleasantest time of the year.

_History._--The province of Behar corresponds to the ancient kingdom of Magadha, which comprised the country now included in the districts of Patna, Gaya and Shahabad, south of the Ganges. The origin of this kingdom, famous alike in the political and religious history of India, is lost in the mists of antiquity; and though the Brahmanical _Puranas_ give lists of its rulers extending back to remote ages before the Christian era, the first authentic dynasty is that of the Saisunaga, founded by Sisunaga (c. 600 B.C.), whose capital was at Rajagaha (Rajgir) in the hills near Gaya; and the first king of this dynasty of whom anything is known was Bimbisara (c. 528 B.C.), who by conquests and matrimonial alliances laid the foundations of the greatness of the kingdom. It was in the reign of Bimbisara that Vardhamana Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, and Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, preached in Magadha, and Buddhist missionaries issued thence to the conversion of China, Ceylon, Tibet and Tatary. Even to this day Behar, where there are extensive remains of Buddhist buildings, remains a sacred spot in the eyes of the Chinese and other Buddhist nations.

Bimbisara was murdered by his son Ajatasatru, who succeeded him, and whose bloodthirsty policy reduced the whole country between the Himalayas and the Ganges under the suzerainty of Magadha. According to tradition, it was his grandson, Udaya, who founded the city of Pataliputra (Patna) on the Ganges, which under the Maurya dynasty became the capital not only of Magadha but of India. The remaining history of the dynasty is obscure; according to Mr Vincent Smith, its last representative was Mahanandin (417 B.C.), after whose death the throne was usurped, under obscure circumstances, by Mahapadma Nanda, a man of low caste (_Early Hist. of India_, p. 36). It was a son of this usurper who was reigning at the time of the invasion of Alexander the Great; and the conqueror, when his advance was arrested at the Hyphasis (326 B.C.), meditating an attack on Pataliputra (the Palimbothra of the Greeks), was informed that the king of Magadha could oppose him with a force of 20,000 cavalry, 200,000 infantry, 2000 chariots, and 3000 or 4000 elephants. The Nanda dynasty seems to have survived only for two generations, when (321 B.C.) Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the great Maurya dynasty, seized the throne. This dynasty, of which the history belongs to that of India (q.v.), occupied the throne for 137 years. After the death of the great Buddhist king, Asoka (c. 231), the Maurya empire began to break up, and it was finally destroyed about fifty years later when Pushyamitra Sunga murdered the Maurya king Brihadratha and founded the Sunga dynasty. Descendants of Asoka continued, however, to subsist in Magadha as subordinate rajas for many centuries; and as late as the 8th century A.D. petty Maurya dynasties are mentioned as ruling in Konkan. The reign of Pushyamitra, who held his own against Menander and succeeded in establishing his claim to be lord paramount of northern India, is mainly remarkable as marking the beginning of the Brahmanical reaction and the decline of Buddhism; according to certain Buddhist writers the king, besides reviving Hindu rites, indulged in a savage persecution of the monks. The Sunga dynasty, which lasted 112 years, was succeeded by the Kanva dynasty, which after 45 years was overthrown (c. 27 B.C.) by the Andhras or Satavahanas. In A.D. 236 the Andhras were overthrown, and, after a confused and obscure period of about a century, Chandragupta I. established his power at Pataliputra (A.D. 320) and founded the famous Gupta empire (see GUPTA), which survived till it was overthrown by the Ephthalites (q.v.), or White Huns, at the close of the 5th century. In Magadha itself the Guptas continued to rule as tributary princes for some centuries longer. About the middle of the 8th century Magadha was conquered by Gopala, who had made himself master in Bengal, and founded the imperial dynasty known as the Palas of Bengal. They were zealous Buddhists, and under their rule Magadha became once more an active centre of Buddhist influence. Gopala himself built a great monastery at Udandapura, or Otantapuri, which has been identified by Sir Alexander Cunningham with the city of Behar, where the later Pala kings established their capital. Under Mahipala (c. 1026), the ninth of his line, and his successor Nayapala, missionaries from Magadha succeeded in firmly re-establishing Buddhism in Tibet.

In the 11th century the Pala empire, which, according to the Tibetan historian Taranath, extended in the 9th century from the Bay of Bengal to Delhi and Jalandhar (Jullundur) in the north and the Vindhyan range in the south, was partly dismembered by the rise of the "Sena" dynasty in Bengal; and at the close of the 12th century both Palas and Senas were swept away by the Mahommedan conquerors, the city of Behar itself being captured by the Turki free-lance Mahommed-i-Bakhtyar Khilji in 1193, by surprise, with a party of 200 horsemen. "It was discovered," says a contemporary Arab historian, "that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar." Most of the monks were massacred in the first heat of the assault; those who survived fled to Tibet, Nepal and the south. Buddhism in Magadha never recovered from this blow; it lingered in obscurity for a while and then vanished.

Behar now came under the rule of the Mahommedan governors of Bengal. About 1330 the southern part was annexed to Delhi, while north Behar remained for some time longer subject to Bengal. In 1397 the whole of Behar became part of the kingdom of Jaunpur; but a hundred years later it was annexed by the Delhi emperors, by whom--save for a short period--it continued to be held. The capital of the province was established under the Moguls at the city of Behar, which gave its name to the province. From the middle of the 14th to the middle of the 16th century a large part of Behar was ruled by a line of Brahman tributary kings; and in the 15th century another Hindu dynasty ruled in Champaran and Gorakhpur. Behar came into the possession of the East India Company with the acquisition of the Diwani in 1765, when the province was united with Bengal. In 1857 two zemindars, Umar Singh and Kumar Singh, rebelled against the British government, and for some months held the ruinous fort of Rohtas against the British.

See _Imperial Gazetteer of India_ (Oxford, 1908), _s.v._ "Bihar" and "Bengal"; V.A. Smith, _Early History of India_ (2nd ed., Oxford, 1908).

BEHA UD-DIN [ABU-L-MAHASIN YUSUF IBN RAFI' IBN SHADDAD BEHA UD DIN] (1145-1234), Arabian writer and statesman, was born in Mosul and early became famous for his knowledge of the Koran and of jurisprudence. Before the age of thirty he became teacher in the great college at Bagdad known as the Nizamiyya, and soon after became professor at Mosul. In 1187, after making the pilgrimage to Mecca, he visited Damascus. Saladin, who was at the time besieging Kaukab (a few miles south of Tiberias), sent for him and became his friend. Beha ud-Din observed that the whole soul of the monarch was engrossed by the war which he was then engaged in waging against the enemies of the faith, and saw that the only mode of acquiring his favour was by urging him to its vigorous prosecution. With this view he composed a treatise on _The Laws and Discipline of Sacred War_, which he presented to Saladin, who received it with peculiar favour. From this time he remained constantly attached to the person of the sultan, and was employed on various embassies and in departments of the civil government. He was appointed judge of the army and judge of Jerusalem. After Saladin's death Beha-ud-Din remained the friend of his son Malik uz-Zahir, who appointed him judge of Aleppo. Here he employed some of his wealth in the foundation of colleges. When Malik uz-Zahir died, his son Malik ul-'Aziz was a minor, and Beha ud-Din had the chief power in the regency. This power he used largely for the patronage of learning. After the abdication of Malik ul-'Aziz, he fell from favour and lived in retirement until his death in 1234. Beha ud-Din's chief work is his _Life of Saladin_ (published at Leiden with Latin translation by A. Schultens in 1732 and 1755). An English translation was published by the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, London, 1897.

For list of other extant works see C. Brockelmann, _Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur_ (Weimar, 1898), vol. i. pp. 316 f. (G. W. T.)

BEHA UD-DIN ZUHAIR (ABU-L FADL ZUHAIR IBN MAHOMMED AL-MUHALLABI) (1186-1258), Arabian poet, was born at or near Mecca, and became celebrated as the best writer of prose and verse and the best calligraphist of his time. He entered the service of Malik us-Salih Najm ud-Din in Mesopotamia, and was with him at Damascus until he was betrayed and imprisoned. Beha ud-Din then retired to Nablus (Shechem) where he remained until Najm ud-Din escaped and obtained possession of Egypt, whither he accompanied him in 1240. There he remained as the sultan's confidential secretary until his death, due to an epidemic, in 1258. His poetry consists mostly of panegyric and brilliant occasional verse distinguished for its elegance. It has been published with English metrical translation by E.H. Palmer (2 vols., Cambridge, 1877).

His life was written by his contemporary Ibn Khallikan (see M'G. de Slane's trans. of his _Biographical Dictionary_, vol. i. pp. 542-545). (G. W. T.)

BEHBAHAN, a walled town of Persia in the province of Fars, pleasantly situated in the midst of a highly cultivated plain, 128 m. W.N.W. of Shiraz and 3 m. from the left bank of the river Tab, here called Kurdistan river. It is the capital of the Kuhgilu-Behbahan sub-province of Fars and has a population of about 10,000. The walls are about 3 m. in circumference and a Narinj Kalah (citadel) stands in the south-east corner. At a short distance north-west of the city are the ruins of Arrajan, the old capital of the province.

BEHEADING, a mode of executing capital punishment (q.v.). It was in use among the Greeks and Romans, and the former, as Xenophon says at the end of the second book of the _Anabasis_, regarded it as a most honourable form of death. So did the Romans, by whom it was known as _decollatio_ or _capitis amputatio_. The head was laid on a block placed in a pit dug for the purpose,--in the case of a military offender, outside the intrenchments, in civil cases outside the city walls, near the _porta decumana_. Before execution the criminal was tied to a stake and whipped with rods. In earlier years an axe was used; afterwards a sword, which was considered a more honourable instrument of death, and was used in the case of citizens (_Dig._ 48, 19, 28). It was with a sword that Cicero's head was struck off by a common soldier. The beheading of John the Baptist proves that the tetrarch Herod had adopted from his suzerain the Roman mode of execution. Suetonius (_Calig. c_. 32) states that Caligula kept a soldier, an artist in beheading, who in his presence decapitated prisoners fetched indiscriminately for that purpose from the gaols.

Beheading is said to have been introduced into England from Normandy by William the Conqueror. The first person to suffer was Waltheof, earl of Northumberland, in 1076. An ancient MS. relating to the earls of Chester states that the serjeants or bailiffs of the earls had power to behead any malefactor or thief, and gives an account of the presenting of several heads of felons at the castle of Chester by the earl's serjeant. It appears that the custom also attached to the barony of Malpas. In a roll of 3 Edward II., beheading is called the "custom of Cheshire" (Lysons' _Cheshire_, p. 299, from Harl. MS. 2009 fol. 34b). The liberty of Hardwick, in Yorkshire, was granted the privilege of beheading thieves. (See GUILLOTINE.)

But with the exceptions above stated beheading was usually reserved as the mode of executing offenders of high rank. From the 15th century onward the victims of the axe include some of the highest personages in the kingdom: Archbishop Scrope (1405); duke of Buckingham (1483); Catherine Howard (1542); earl of Surrey (1547); duke of Somerset (1552); duke of Northumberland (1553); Lady Jane Grey (1554), Lord Guildford Dudley (1554); Mary queen of Scots (1587); earl of Essex (1601); Sir Walter Raleigh (1618); earl of Strafford (1641); Charles I. (1649); Lord William Russell (1683); duke of Monmouth (1685); earl of Derwentwater (1716); earl of Kenmure (1716); earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino (1746); and the list closes with Simon, Lord Lovat, who (9th of April 1747) was the last person beheaded in England. The execution of Anne Boleyn was carried out not with the axe, but with a sword, and by a French headsman specially brought over from Calais. In 1644 Archbishop Laud was condemned to be hanged, and the only favour granted him, and that reluctantly, was that his sentence should be changed to beheading. In the case of the 4th Earl Ferrers (1760) his petition to be beheaded was refused and he was hanged.

Executions by beheading usually took place on Tower Hill, London, where the scaffold stood permanently during the 15th and 16th centuries. In the case of certain state prisoners, e.g. Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey, the sentence was carried out within the Tower on the green by St Peter's chapel.

Beheading was only a part of the common-law method of punishing male traitors, which was ferocious in the extreme. According to Walcot's case (1696), 1 _Eng. Rep._ 89, the proper sentence was "quod ... ibidem super bigam (herdillum) ponatur et abinde usque ad furcas de [Tyburn] trahatur, et ibidem per collum suspendatur et vivus ad terram prosternatur et quod secreta membra ejus amputentur, et interiora sua intra ventrem suum capiantur et in ignem ponantur et ibidem _ipso vivente_ comburantur, et quod caput ejus amputetur, quodque corpus ejus in quatuor partes dividatur et illo ponantur ubi dominus rex eas assignare voluit." There is a tradition that Harrison the regicide after being disembowelled rose and boxed the ears of the executioner.

In Townley's case (18 Howell, _State Trials_, 350, 351) there is a ghastly account of the mode of executing the sentence; and in that case the executioner cut the traitor's throat. In the case of the Cato Street conspiracy (1820, 33 Howell, _State Trials_, 1566), after the traitors had been hanged as directed by the act of 1814, their heads were cut off by a man in a mask whose dexterity led to the belief that he was a surgeon.

Female traitors were until 1790 liable to be drawn to execution and burnt alive. In that year hanging was substituted for burning.

In 1814 so much of the sentence as related to disembowelling and burning the bowels was abolished and the king was empowered by royal warrant to substitute decapitation for hanging, which was made by that act the ordinary mode of executing traitors. But it was not till 1870 that the portions of the sentence as to drawing and quartering were abolished (Forfeiture Act 1870).

The more barbarous features of the execution were remitted in the case of traitors of high rank, and the offender was simply decapitated.

The block usually employed is believed to have been a low one such as would be used for beheading a corpse. C.H. Firth and S.R. Gardiner incline to the view that such a block was the one used at Charles I.'s execution. The more general custom, however, seems to have been to have a high block over which the victim knelt. Such is the form of that preserved in the armoury of the Tower of London. This is undoubtedly the block upon which Lord Lovat suffered, but, in spite of several axe-cuts on it, probably not one in early use. The axe which stands beside it was used to behead him and the other Jacobite lords, but no certainty exists as to its having been previously employed. On the ground floor of the King's House, at the Tower, is preserved the processional axe which figured in the journeys of state prisoners to and from their trials, the edge turned from them as they went, but almost invariably turned towards them as they returned to the Tower. The axe's head is peculiar in form, 1 ft. 8 in. high by 10 in. wide, and is fastened into a wooden handle 5 ft. 4 in. long. The handle is ornamented by four rows of burnished brass nails.

In Scotland they did not behead with the axe, nor with the sword, as under the Roman law, and formerly in Holland and France, but with the maiden (q.v.).

Capital punishment is executed by beheading in France, and in Belgium by means of the guillotine.

In Germany the instrument used varies in different states: in the old provinces of Prussia the axe, in Saxony and Rhenish Prussia the guillotine. Until 1851 executions were public. They now take place within a prison in the presence of certain specified officials.

Beheading is also the mode of executing capital punishment in Denmark and Sweden. The axe is used. In Sweden the execution takes place on the order of the king within a prison in the presence of certain specified officials and, if desired, of twelve representatives of the commune within which the prison is situate (Code 1864, s. 2, Royal Ordinance 1877).

In the Chinese empire decapitation is the usual mode of execution. By an imperial edict (24th of April 1905) certain attendant barbarities have been suppressed: viz. slicing, cutting up the body, and exhibiting the head to public view (32 Clunet, 1175).

BEHEMOTH (the intensive plural of the Hebrew _b'hemah_, a beast), the animal mentioned in the book of Job (ch. xl. 15), probably the hippopotamus, which in ancient times was found in Egypt below the cataracts of Syene. The word may be used in Job as typical of the primeval king of land animals, as leviathan of the water animals. The modern use expresses the idea of a very large and strong animal.

BEHISTUN, or BISITUN, now pronounced _Bisutum_, a little village at the foot of a precipitous rock, 1700 ft. high, in the centre of the Zagros range in Persia on the right bank of the Samas-Ab, the principal tributary of the Kerkha (Choaspes). The original form of the name, Bagistana, "place of the gods" or "of God" has been preserved by the Greek authors Stephanus of Byzantium, and Diodorus (ii. 13), the latter of whom says that the place was sacred to Zeus, i.e. Ahuramazda (Ormuzd). At its foot passes the great road which leads from Babylonia (Bagdad) to the highlands of Media (Ecbatana, Hamadan). On the steep face of the rock, some 500 ft. above the plain, Darius I., king of Persia, had engraved a great cuneiform inscription (11 or 12 ft. high), which recounts the way in which, after the death of Cambyses, he killed the usurper Gaumata (in Justin Gometes, the pseudo-Smerdis), defeated the numerous rebels, and restored the kingdom of the Achaemenidae. Above the inscription the picture of the king himself is graven, with a bow in his hand, putting his left foot on the body of Gaumata. Nine rebel chiefs are led before him, their hands bound behind them, and a rope round their necks: the ninth is Skunka, the chief of the Scythians (Sacae) whom he defeated. Behind the king stand his bow-bearer and his lance-bearer; in the air appears the figure of the great god Ahuramazda, whose protection led him to victory.[1] The inscriptions are composed in the three languages which are written with cuneiform signs, and were used in all official inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings: the chief place is of course given to the Persian language (in four columns); the three Susian (Elamitic) columns lie to the left, and the Babylonian text is on a slanting boulder above them; a part of the Babylonian has been destroyed by a torrent, which has made its way over it. In former times the second language has often been called Scythian, Turanian or Median; but we now know from numerous inscriptions of Susa that it is the language of Elam which was spoken in Susa, the capital of the Persian empire.

In 1835 the difficult and almost inaccessible cliff was first climbed by Sir Henry Rawlinson, who copied and deciphered the inscriptions (1835-1845), and thus completed the reading of the old cuneiform text and laid the foundation of the science of Assyriology. Diodorus ii. 13 (cf. xvii. 110), probably following a later author who wrote the history of Alexander's campaigns, mentions the sculptures and inscriptions, but attributes them to Semiramis. At the foot of the rock are the remainders of some other sculptures (quite destroyed), the fragments of a Greek inscription of the Parthian prince Gotarzes (A.D. 40; text in Dittenberger, _Orientis graeci inscr. selectae_, no. 431), and of an Arabic inscription.

See Sir Henry Rawlinson in the _Journ. R. Geog. Soc._ ix., 1839; _J.R. Asiatic Soc._ x. 1866, xiv., 1853, xv., 1855; _Archaeologia_, xxxiv., 1852; Sir R. Ker Porter, _Travels_, ii. 149 ff.; Flandin and Coste, _Voyage en Perse_, i. pl. 16; and the modern editions of the inscriptions, the best of which, up to the end of the 19th century, were: Weissbach and Bang, _Die altpersischen Keilinschriften_ (1893); Weissbach, _Die Achaemenideninschriften zweiter Art_ (1890); Bezold, _Die (babylonischen) Achaemenideninschriften_ (1882). A description of the locality, with comments on the present state of the inscriptions and doubtful passages of the Persian text, was given by Dr A.V. Williams Jackson in the _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, xxiv., 1903, and in his _Persia, Past and Present_ (1906). Dr Jackson in 1903 climbed to the ledge of the rock and was able to collate the lower part of the four large Persian columns; he thus convinced himself that Foy's conjecture of _arstam_ ("righteousness") for Rawlinson's _abistam_ or _abastam_ was correct. A later investigation was carried out in 1904 on the instructions of the British Museum Trustees by Messrs. L.W. King and R.C. Thompson, who published their results in 1907 under the title, _The Inscription of Darius the Great at Behistun_, including a full illustrated account of the sculptures and the inscription, and a complete collation of the text. (Ed. M.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A passage in the inscription runs:--"Thus saith Darius the king: That which I have done I have done altogether by the grace of Ahuramazda. Ahuramazda, and the other gods that be, brought aid to me. For this reason did Ahuramazda, and the other gods that be, bring aid to me, because I was not hostile, nor a liar, nor a wrongdoer, neither I nor my family, but according to Rectitude (_arstam_) have I ruled." (A.V. Williams Jackson, _Persia, Past and Present_)

BEHN, APHRA (otherwise AFRA, APHARA or AYFARA) (1640-1689), British dramatist and novelist, was baptized at Wye, Kent, in 1640. Her father, John Johnson, was a barber. While still a child she was taken out to Surinam, then an English possession, from which she returned to England in 1658, when it was handed over to the Dutch. In Surinam Aphra learned the history, and acquired a personal knowledge of the African prince Oroonoko and his beloved Imoinda, whose adventures she has related in her novel, _Oroonoko_. On her return she married Mr Behn, a London merchant of Dutch extraction. The wit and abilities of Mrs Behn brought her into high estimation at court, and--her husband having died by this time--Charles II. employed her on secret service in the Netherlands during the Dutch war. At Antwerp she successfully accomplished the objects of her mission; and in the latter end of 1666 she wormed out of one Van der Aalbert the design formed by De Ruyter, in conjunction with the DeWitts, of sailing up the Thames and burning the English ships in their harbours. This she communicated to the English court, but although the event proved her intelligence to have been well founded, it was at the time disregarded. Disgusted with political service, she returned to England, and from this period she appears to have supported herself by her writings. Among her numerous plays are _The Forced Marriage, or the Jealous Bridegroom_ (1671); _The Amorous Prince_ (1671); _The Town Fop_ (1677); and _The Rover, or the Banished Cavalier_ (in two parts, 1677 and 1681); and _The Roundheads_ (1682). The coarseness that disfigures her plays was the fault of her time; she possessed great ingenuity, and showed an admirable comprehension of stage business, while her wit and vivacity were unfailing. Of her short tales, or novelettes, the best is the story of _Oroonoko_, which was made the basis of Thomas Southerne's popular tragedy. Mrs Behn died on the 16th of April 1689, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

See _Plays written by the Late Ingenious Mrs Behn_ (1702; reprinted, 1871); also "Aphra Behn's Gedichte und Prosawerke," by P. Siegel in _Anglia_ (Halle, vol. xxv., 1902, pp. 86-128,329-385); and A.C. Swinburne's essay on "Social Verse" in _Studies in Prose and Poetry_ (1894).

BEHR, WILLIAM JOSEPH (1775-1851), German publicist and writer, was born at Salzheim on the 26th of August 1775. He studied law at Wurzburg and Gottingen, became professor of public law in the university of Wurzburg in 1799, and in 1819 was sent as a deputy to the _Landtag_ of Bavaria. Having associated himself with the party of reform, he was regarded with suspicion by the Bavarian king Maximilian I. and the court party, although favoured for a time by Maximilian's son, the future King Louis I. In 1821 he was compelled to give up his professorship, but he continued to agitate for reform, and in 1831 the king refused to recognize his election to the _Landtag_. A speech delivered by Behr in 1832 was regarded as seditious, and he was arrested. In spite of his assertion of loyalty to the principle of monarchy he was detained in custody, and in 1836 was found guilty of seeking to injure the king. He then admitted his offence; but he was not released from prison until 1839, and the next nine years of his life were passed under police supervision at Passau and Regensburg. In 1848 he obtained a free pardon and a sum of money as compensation, and was sent to the German national assembly which met at Frankfort in May of that year. He passed his remaining days at Bamberg, where he died on the 1st of August 1851. Behr's chief writings are: _Darstellung der Bedurfnisse, Wunsche und Hoffnungen deutscher Nation_ (Aschaffenburg, 1816); _Die Verfassung und Verwaltung des Staates_ (Nuremberg, 1811-1812); _Von den rechtlichen Grenzen der Einwirkung des Deutschen Bundes auf die Verfassung, Gesetzgebung, und Rechtspflege seiner Gliederstaaten_ (Stuttgart, 1820).

BEIRA, a seaport of Portuguese East Africa, at the mouth of the Pungwe river, in 19 deg. 50' S., 34 deg. 50' E., 488 m. N. of Delagoa Bay, in communication by railway with Cape Town via Umtali, Salisbury and Bulawayo. Pop. about 4000, of whom a third are Europeans, and some 300 Indians. The town is built on a tongue of sand extending into the river, and is comparatively healthy. The sea front is protected by a masonry wall, and there are over 13,000 ft. of wharfage. Vessels drawing 24 ft. can enter the port at high tide. Between the customs house and the railway terminus is the mouth of a small river, the Chiveve, crossed by a steel bridge, the centre span revolving and giving two passages each of 40 ft. The town is without any architectural pretensions, but possesses fine public gardens. It is the headquarters of the Companhai de Mocambique, which administers the Beira district under charter from the Portuguese crown. The business community is largely British.

Beira occupies the site of a forgotten Arab settlement. The present port sprang into being as the result of a clause in the Anglo-Portuguese agreement of 1891 providing for the construction of a railway between Rhodesia and the navigable waters of the Pungwe. The railway at first began at Fontesvilla, about 50 m. by river above Beira, but was subsequently brought down to Beira. The completion in 1902 of the line connecting Salisbury with Cape Town adversely affected the port of Beira, the long railway route from the Cape being increasingly employed by travellers to and from Mashonaland. Moreover, the high freights on goods by the Beira route enabled Port Elizabeth to compete successfully for the trade of Rhodesia. In October 1905 a considerable reduction was made in railway rates and in port dues and customs, with the object of re-attracting to the port the transit trade of the interior, and in 1907 a branch of the Rhodesian customs was opened in the town. In that year goods valued at L647,000 passed through the port to Rhodesia. Efforts were also made to develop the agricultural and mineral resources of the Beira district itself. The principal exports are rubber, sugar, ground-nuts and oil seeds, beeswax, chromite (from Rhodesia), and gold (from Manica). The imports are chiefly rice (from India) and cotton goods for local use, and food stuffs, machinery, hardware and manufactured goods for Rhodesia. For the three years, 1905-1907, the average annual value of the imports and exports, excluding the transit trade with Rhodesia, was, imports L200,000, exports L90,000. Direct steamship communication with Europe is maintained by German and British lines.

See PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA; also the reports issued yearly by the British Foreign Office on the trade of Beira.

BEIRA, an ancient principality and province of northern and central Portugal; bounded on the N. by Entre Minho e Douro and by Traz os Montes, E. by the Spanish provinces of Leon and Estremadura, S. by Alemtejo and Portuguese Estremadura, and W. by the Atlantic Ocean. Pop. (1900) 1,515,834; area, 9208 sq. m. Beira is administratively divided into the districts of Aveiro, Coimbra, Vizeu, Guarda and Castello Branco, while it is popularly regarded as consisting of the three sections--Beira Alta or Upper Beira (Vizeu), north and west of the Serra da Estrella; Beira Baixa or Lower Beira (Guarda and Castello Branco), south and east of that range; and Beira Mar or Maritime Beira (Aveiro and Coimbra), coinciding with the former coastal province of Douro. The coast line, about 72 m. long, is uniformly flat, with long stretches of sandy pine forest, heath or marshland bordered by a wide and fertile plain. Its most conspicuous features are the lagoon of Aveiro (q.v.) and the bold headland of Cape Mondego; in the south Aveiro, Murtosa, Ovar and Figueira da Foz are small seaports. Except along the coast, the surface is for the most part mountainous,--the highest point in the Serra da Estrella, which extends from north-east to south-west through the centre of the province, being 6532 ft. The northern and south-eastern frontiers are respectively marked by the two great rivers Douro and Tagus, which rise in Spain and flow to the Atlantic. The Agueda and Coa, tributaries of the Douro, drain the eastern plateaus of Beira; the Vouga rises in the Serra da Lapa, and forms the lagoon of Aveiro at its mouth; the Mondego springs from the Serra da Estrella, passes through Coimbra, and enters the sea at Figueira da Foz; and the Zezere, a tributary of the Tagus, rises north-north-east of Covilha and flows south-west and south.

Beira has a warm and equable climate, except in the mountains, where the snowfall is often heavy. The soil, except in the valleys, is dry and rocky, and large stretches are covered with heath. The principal agricultural products are maize, wheat, garden vegetables and fruit. The olive is largely cultivated, the oil forming one of the chief articles of export; good wine is also produced. In the flat country between Coimbra and Aveiro the marshy land is laid out in rice-fields or in pastures for herds of cattle and horses. Sheep farming is an important industry in the highlands of Upper Beira; while near Lamego swine are reared in considerable numbers, and furnish the well-known Lisbon hams. Iron, lead, copper, coal and marble are worked to a small extent, and millstones are quarried in some places. Salt is obtained in considerable quantities from the lagoons along the coast. There are few manufactures except the production of woollen cloth, which occupies a large part of the population in the district of Castello Branco. Three important lines of railway, the Salamanca-Oporto, Salamanca-Lisbon and Lisbon-Oporto, traverse parts of Beira; the two last named are also connected by the Guarda-Figueira da Foz railway, which has a short branch line going northwards to Vizeu. The chief towns, Aveiro (pop. 1900, 9979), Castello Branco (7288), Coimbra (18,144), Covilha (15,469), Figueira da Foz (6221), Guarda (6124), Ilhavo (12,617), Lamego (9471), Murtosa (9737), Ovar (10,462) and Vizeu (8057), with the frontier fortress of Almeida (2330), are described in separate articles. There is a striking difference of character between the inhabitants of the highlands, who are grave and reserved, hardy and industrious, and those of the lowlands, who are more sociable and courteous, but less energetic. The heir-apparent to the throne of Portugal has the title of prince of Beira.

BEIRUT or BEYROUT. (1) A vilayet of Syria, constituted as recently as 1888, which stretches along the sea-coast from Jebel el-Akra, south of the Orontes, to the Nahr Zerka, south of Mount Carmel, and towards the south extends from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. It includes five _sanjaks_, Latakia, Tripoli, Beirut, Acre and Buka'a. (2) The chief town of the vilayet (anc. _Berytus_), the most important seaport town in Syria, situated on the south side of St George's Bay, on rising ground at the foot of Lebanon. Pop. 120,000 (Moslems, 36,000; Christians, 77,000; Jews, 2500; Druses, 400; foreigners, 4100). Berytus, whether it is to be identified with Hebrew _Berothai_ or not (2 Sam. viii. 8; Ezek.