Part 11

BACON, Francis, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England, was born at London in 1561, died at Highgate in 1626. His father, Nicholas Bacon, was Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1575 was admitted to Gray's Inn. From 1576 to 1579 he was at Paris with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador. The death of his father called him back to England, and being left in straitened circumstances he zealously pursued the study of law, and was admitted a barrister in 1582. In 1584 he became member of Parliament for Melcombe Regis, and soon after drew up a _Letter of Advice_ to Queen Elizabeth, an able political memoir. In 1586 he was member for Taunton, in 1589 for Liverpool. A year or two after he gained the Earl of Essex as a friend and patron. Bacon's talents and his connection with the Lord-Treasurer Burleigh, who had married his mother's sister, and his son, Sir Robert Cecil, First Secretary of State, seemed to promise him the highest promotion; but he had displeased the queen, and when he applied for the attorney-generalship, and next for the solicitor-generalship (1595), he was unsuccessful. Essex endeavoured to indemnify him by the donation of an estate in land. Bacon, however, forgot his obligations to his benefactor, and not only abandoned him as soon as he had fallen into disgrace, but without being obliged took part against him on his trial, in 1601, and was active in obtaining his conviction. He had been chosen member for the county of Middlesex in 1593, and for Southampton in 1597, and had long been a Queen's Counsel. The reign of James I was more favourable to his interest. He was assiduous in courting the king's favour, and James, who was ambitious of being considered a patron of letters, conferred upon him in 1603 the honour of knighthood. In 1604 he was appointed King's Counsel, with a pension of L60; in 1606 he married; in 1607 he became Solicitor-General, and six years after Attorney-General. Between James and his Parliament he was anxious to produce harmony, but his efforts were without avail, and his obsequiousness and servility gained him enmity and discredit. In 1617 he was made Lord-Keeper of the Seal; in 1618 Lord High Chancellor of England and Baron Verulam. In this year he lent his influence to bring a verdict of guilty against Raleigh. In 1621 he was made Viscount St. Albans. Soon after this his reputation received a fatal blow. A new Parliament was formed in 1621, and the Lord Chancellor was accused before the House of bribery, corruption, and other malpractices. It is difficult to ascertain the full extent of his guilt; but he seems to have been unable to justify himself, and handed in a 'confession and humble submission', throwing himself on the mercy of the Peers. He was condemned to pay a fine of L40,000, to be committed to the Tower during the pleasure of the king, declared incompetent to hold any office of State, and banished from Court for ever. The sentence, however, was never carried out. The fine was remitted almost as soon as imposed, and he was imprisoned for only a few days. He survived his fall a few years, during this time occupying himself with his literary and scientific works, and vainly hoping for political employment. In 1597 he published his celebrated _Essays_, which immediately became very popular, were successively enlarged and extended, and translated into Latin, French, and Italian. The treatise on the _Advancement of Learning_ appeared in 1605; _The Wisdom of the Ancients_ in 1609 (in Latin); his great philosophical work, the _Novum Organum_ (in Latin), in 1620; and the _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, a much enlarged edition (in Latin) of the _Advancement_, in 1623. His _New Atlantis_ was written about 1614-7; _Life of Henry VII_ about 1621. Various minor productions also proceeded from his pen. Numerous editions of his works have been published, by far the best being that of Messrs. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, 1857-9 (reprinted, 1879-90). Bacon was great as a moralist, a historian, a writer on politics, and a rhetorician; but it is as the father of the inductive method in science, as the powerful exponent of the principle that facts must be observed and collected before theorizing, that he occupies the grand position he holds among the world's great ones. His moral character, however, was not on a level with his intellectual, self-aggrandizement being the main aim of his life. We need do no more than allude to the preposterous attempt that has been made to prove that Bacon was the real author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, an attempt that only ignorance of Bacon and Shakespeare could uphold and tolerate.--BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Spedding, _Life and Letters of Francis Bacon_; R. W. Church, _Bacon_ (in English Men of Letters Series); Sir Sidney Lee, _Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century_; J. M. Robertson, _Short History of Free-thought_.

BACON, John, English sculptor, born 1740, died 1799. Among his chief works are two groups for the interior of the Royal Academy; the statue of Judge Blackstone for All Souls College, Oxford; another of Henry VI for Eton College; the monument of Lord Chatham in Westminster Abbey; and the statues of Dr. Johnson and Mr. Howard in St. Paul's Cathedral.

BACON, Sir Nicholas, father of Francis Bacon, Lord-Keeper of the Great Seal, born 1510, died 1579. Henry VIII gave him several lucrative offices, which he retained under Edward VI. He lived in retirement during the reign of Mary, but Queen Elizabeth appointed him Lord-Keeper for life. He was the intimate friend of Lord Burleigh, a sister of whose wife he married, and by her became the father of the great Chancellor.

BACON, Roger, an English monk, and one of the most profound and original thinkers of his day, was born about 1214, near Ilchester, Somersetshire, died at Oxford in 1294. He first entered the University of Oxford, and went afterwards to that of Paris, where he is said to have distinguished himself and received the degree of Doctor of Theology. About 1250 he returned to England, entered the order of Franciscans and fixed his abode at Oxford; but having incurred the suspicion of his ecclesiastical superiors, he was sent to Paris and kept in confinement for ten years, without writing-materials, books, or instruments. The cause seems to have been simple enough. He had been a diligent student of the chemical, physical, and mathematical sciences, and had made discoveries, and deduced results, which appeared so extraordinary to the ignorant that they were believed to be works of magic. This opinion was countenanced by the jealousy and hatred of the monks of his fraternity. In subsequent times he was popularly classed among those who had been in league with Satan. Having been set at liberty, he enjoyed a brief space of quiet while Clement IV was Pope; but in 1278 he was again thrown into prison, where he remained for at least ten years. Of the close of his life little is known. His most important work is his _Opus Majus_, where he discusses the relation of philosophy to religion, and then treats of language, metaphysics, optics, and experimental science. He was undoubtedly the earliest philosophical experimentalist in Britain; he made signal advances in optics; was an excellent chemist; and in all probability discovered gunpowder. He was intimately acquainted with geography and astronomy, as appears by his discovery of the errors of the calendar, and their causes, and by his proposals for correcting them, in which he approached very nearly to truth.--Cf. E. Charles, _Roger Bacon, sa vie, ses ouvrages, ses doctrines_.

BACTE'RIA (Gr. _bakt[=e]rion_, a rod), a general term applied to the lowest visible forms of life; other names given are _germs_ or _microbes_. They are divided into three classes: (1) _cocci_--these are minute spheres about one twenty-five thousandth of an inch in diameter, arranged in chains or clusters; (2) _bacilli_--these are straight rods about the breadth of a coccus and two to four times as long; (3) _spirilla_--here there are two forms; one is like a bacillus, but curved (spirillum proper or vibrio); the other is a very fine spiral thread (spirochaete) often only half the thickness of a vibrio and two to six times as long. Bacteria consist of protoplasm surrounded by a membrane, and many show active movements; they all multiply asexually by splitting, and so rapidly may the process occur that 17,000,000 organisms or more may be formed from one bacterium in twenty-four hours. The chief part played by bacteria in nature is to cause putrefaction. They are found on all organic matter, and are therefore omnipresent. When grown artificially (see _Bacteriology_) they usually require organic matter for their food, and this they split up into simpler chemical compounds, some of which are very poisonous to animals (toxins); they can also split up sugars to produce various alcohols, acids, and gases. When certain of the bacilli are starved, the living matter gathers itself up into a spore surrounded by a very resisting membrane, and it can survive for a long time in this condition. All ordinary bacteria, including most of those which produce disease, can be killed by a few minutes' boiling, but the sporing varieties (e.g. many putrefactive forms) withstand much longer boiling--up to one and a half hours; they can also be killed by chemical means (see _Disinfection_). Many bacteria are useful to man, and a few give rise to disease (see _Germ Theory_).

BACTERIOLOGY, the branch of science which deals with the structure and properties of bacteria. Though the existence of bacteria had been known from the time when Leeuwenhock arranged lenses so as to form a microscope, it was through the work of Pasteur that modern knowledge regarding the group originated. Pasteur's discovery that yeasts are the cause of the formation of alcohol from sugar was followed by his showing that bacteria are responsible for other processes of a similar character, e.g. the formation of vinegar from alcohol, the occurrence of the rancid change in butter, &c. When he went on to prove that a bacterium was the cause of a disease of silkworms, a stimulus was given to the germ theory of infection, and bacteriology was thus early brought intimately into contact with medical science. Another stimulus to bacteriological inquiry came from the controversy on spontaneous generation, and Pasteur was one of those who helped to establish the principle that the new development of living things, as represented by bacteria, out of non-living matter does not take place. This led to the inevitable deduction that all putrefactive processes are due to bacteria. On this Lister founded his antiseptic treatment of wounds, the practical effects of which focused attention on the important part played by bacteria in human affairs. The modern science of bacteriology really dates from 1877, when Koch proved that _Bacillus anthracis_ is the cause of anthrax in cattle. The outstanding feature of Koch's research was that in it, for the first time, methods were employed whereby all extraneous organisms were excluded from the inquiry, and the way was thus opened up for the study of the properties and effects of one species of bacterium acting by itself. The chief aspects of his work were as follows: (1) the determination of the temperatures at which bacteria are killed; the knowledge of this enables investigators to render free from living organisms their apparatus and the food materials (usually called _media_) necessary to support bacterial life (this is called _sterilization_); (2) the discovery that the insertion of a plug of cotton-wool in the neck of a vessel (e.g. a flask or test-tube) before its sterilization constitutes a sufficient filter, which prevents bacteria in the outside air gaining access to its interior or to any food medium placed in it for sterilization; (3) the elaboration of a series of media capable of acting as food for all the commonly occurring bacteria; (4) the introduction of a simple method of separating from one another bacterial species which in nature are often growing side by side. This is effected by making media containing a jelly (e.g. gelatine) which melts at a relatively low temperature. The bacterial mixture is well diluted in the melted medium, and this is poured out in a thin layer on a sterile glass plate and allowed to set. Each individual bacterial cell can thus multiply apart from neighbouring cells, and, it may be, in a few hours the resulting growth (a 'colony') is visible to the naked eye. A minute part of the colony is picked off with a heated needle and placed on a mass of sterile medium. In this way a 'pure culture' of each species present in the original mixture can be obtained. Koch's work was chiefly concerned with disease bacteria, and between 1880 and 1895 many such organisms were isolated in pure culture and their properties investigated (see _Germ Theory of Disease_).

While in the evolution of knowledge the progress of bacteriology has been most associated with that of medicine and surgery, the science has fundamental relations with many other human interests, and the same methods are used in investigating such relationships. The adaptation of these methods on a commercial scale underlies all industrial processes concerned in the preserving of milk and in the canning and bottling of meat and fruit (apart from the addition of chemical preservatives). Since bacteriology came into existence, many of the most primitive domestic procedures have been improved and placed on a scientific basis. Thus, butter-making involves a previous souring of the milk; this is due to bacterial action, and standard mixtures of milk-souring bacteria are now regularly supplied by the laboratory as 'starters' of the process. It is recognized that the disorders of milk, e.g. 'ropiness', 'blue milk', &c., are due to certain 'wild' bacteria gaining access to the dairy. The ripening of such cheeses as Gorgonzola and Stilton is due to bacteria and allied organisms, and here again light has been shed on the 'diseases' of cheese by bacteriological investigation. The pickling of foods by salt, or vinegar, or nitre, is due to the action of these substances as antiseptics, and a similar principle, aided by boiling, underlies the making of jams. Again, certain kinds of bacteria which only flourish at high temperatures are responsible for the heating of hay and corn stacks, and for the production of ensilage. Bacteriology is also throwing important light on factors concerned in the fertility of soils. For example, it has been shown that the little nodules on the roots of plants of the pea tribe are caused by bacteria; these, in growing, take up nitrogen from the air, and form compounds which promote the growth of the plant on which they are parasites and remain to enrich the soil when the plant dies. In short, there is no industry, which depends on natural putrefaction being prevented or modified so as to stop at a particular stage, which bacteriology cannot guide towards securing the most perfect results.--BIBLIOGRAPHY: Fischer, _The Structure and Functions of Bacteria_; Abbot, _Principles of Bacteriology_; Muir and Ritchie, _Manual of Bacteriology_; E. R. Stitt, _Practical Bacteriology_; P. H. Hiss and H. Zinsser, _A Textbook of Bacteriology_.

BACTRIA'NA, or BACTRIA, a country of ancient Asia, south of the Oxus and reaching to the west of the Hindu Kush. It is often regarded as the original home of the Indo-European races. A Graeco-Bactrian kingdom flourished about the third century B.C., but its history is obscure.

BACULI'TES, a fossil genus allied to the ammonites, characteristic of cretaceous strata, having a straight tapering shell. See _Cephalopoda_.

BA'CUP, a municipal borough of England, in Lancashire, 18 miles N. of Manchester. The chief manufacturing establishments are connected with cotton-spinning and power-loom weaving; there are also ironworks, Turkey-red dyeing-works, and in the neighbourhood numerous coal-pits and immense stone-quarries. Pop. (1921), 21,256.

BADAGRY, seaport in the British province of Southern Nigeria, West Africa, 50 miles E.N.E. of Whydah. Pop. about 10,000.

BADAJOZ (b[.a]-_d_[.a]-_h_[=o]th'; ancient, PAX AUGUSTA), the fortified capital of the Spanish province of Badajoz, on the left bank of the Guadiana, which is crossed by a stone bridge of twenty-eight arches. It is a bishop's see, and has an interesting cathedral. During the Peninsular War Badajoz was besieged by Marshal Soult, and taken in March, 1811. It was twice attacked by the English, on 5th and 29th May, 1811, and was besieged by Wellington on 16th March, and taken 6th April, 1812. Pop. 37,600.--The province of Badajoz has an area of 8451 sq. miles. Pop. 644,220.

BADAKSHAN', a territory of Central Asia, tributary to the Ameer of Afghanistan. It has the Oxus on the north, and the Hindu Kush on the south, and has lofty mountains and fertile valleys; the chief town is Faizabad. The inhabitants profess Mahommedanism. Pop. 20,957.

BADALONA (bae-_d_[.a]-l[=o]'na), a Mediterranean seaport of Spain, 5 miles from Barcelona. Pop. 19,240.

BADEN (bae'd[.e]n), formerly a Grand-Duchy and one of the more important States of the German Empire, situated in the S.W. of Germany, to the west of Wuerttemberg. It is divided into four districts, Constance, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, and Mannheim. It has an area of 5819 sq. miles, and a pop. of 2,142,833. It is mountainous, being traversed to a considerable extent by the lofty plateau of the Schwarzwald or Black Forest, which attains its highest point in the Feldberg (4904 feet). The nucleus of this plateau consists of gneiss and granite. In the north it sinks down towards the Odenwald, which is, however, of different geological structure, being composed for the most part of red sandstone. The whole of Baden, except a small portion in the S.E., in which the Danube takes its rise, belongs to the basin of the Rhine, which bounds it on the south and west. Numerous tributaries of the Rhine intersect it, the chief being the Neckar. Lakes are numerous, and include a considerable part of the Lake of Constance. The climate varies much. The hilly parts, especially in the east, are cold and have a long winter, while the valley of the Rhine enjoys the finest climate of Germany. The principal minerals worked are coal, salt, iron, zinc, and nickel. The number of mineral springs is remarkably great, and of these not a few are of great celebrity. The vegetation is peculiarly rich, and there are magnificent forests. The cereals comprise wheat, oats, barley, and rye. Potatoes, hemp, tobacco, wine, and sugar-beet are largely produced. Several of the wines, both white and red, rank in the first class. Baden has long been famous for its fruits also. Of the total area 55.4 per cent is under cultivation, 39.4 per cent under forest, and 5.2 per cent uncultivated (houses, roads, water, &c.). The farms are mostly quite small. The manufactures are important. Among them are textiles, tobacco and cigars, chemicals, machinery, pottery ware, jewellery (especially at Pforzheim), wooden clocks, confined chiefly to the districts of the Black Forest, musical boxes and other musical toys. The capital is Karlsruhe, about 5 miles from the Rhine; the other chief towns are Mannheim, Freiburg-im-Breisgau (with a Roman Catholic university), Baden, and Heidelberg. Baden has warm mineral springs, which were known and used in the time of the Romans. Heidelberg has a university (Protestant), founded in 1386, the oldest in Germany. The railways have a length of 1200 miles, and are all State property. In the time of the Roman Empire southern Baden belonged to the Roman province of Rhaetia. Under the old German Empire it was a margraviate, which in 1533 was divided into Baden-Baden and Baden-Durlach, but reunited in 1771. The title of grand-duke was conferred by Napoleon in 1806, and in the same year Baden was extended to its present limits. Until 1918 the executive power was vested in the grand-duke, the legislative in a house of legislature, consisting of an upper and a lower chamber. The former consisted partly of hereditary members; the latter of elected representatives of the people. In the break-up of the German Empire in Nov., 1918, Baden was among the first States to feel the shock of revolution. The Grand-Duke Frederick I abdicated, and the Provisional Government, under the Socialist Herr Jeiss, proclaimed Baden a Republic. Two-thirds of the population are Roman Catholics, the rest Protestants.

BADEN (or BADEN-BADEN, to distinguish it from other towns of the same name; German _Bad_, a bath), a town and watering-place, in the former Grand-Duchy of Baden, 18 miles S.S.W. of Karlsruhe, built in the form of an amphitheatre on a spur of the Black Forest, overhanging a valley, through which runs a little stream Oosbach. Baden has been celebrated from the remotest antiquity for its thermal baths; and it used also to be celebrated for its gaming-saloons. It has many good buildings, and a castle, the summer residence of the former grand-dukes. Pop. 22,066.

BADEN, a town of Austria, 15 miles S.W. of Vienna. It has numerous hot sulphurous springs, used both for bathing and drinking, and much frequented. Pop. 19,000.

BADEN, a small town of Switzerland, canton Aargau, celebrated for its hot sulphurous baths, which attract many visitors. Pop. 8318.

BADEN-POWELL. See _Powell_.

BADGE (baj), a distinctive device, emblem, mark, honorary decoration, or special cognizance, used originally to identify a knight or distinguish his followers, now worn as a sign of office or licensed employment, as a token of membership in some society, or generally as a mark showing the relation of the wearer to any person, occupation, or order. See _Cockade_, _Heraldry_, _Totems_.

BADGER (baj'[.e]r), a plantigrade, carnivorous mammal, allied both to the bears and to the weasels, of a clumsy make, with short thick legs, and long claws on the fore-feet. The common badger (_Meles vulg[=a]ris_) is as large as a middling-sized dog, but much lower on the legs, with a flatter and broader body, very thick tough hide, and long coarse hair. It inhabits the north of Europe and Asia, burrows, is indolent and sleepy, feeds by night on vegetables, small quadrupeds, &c. Its flesh may be eaten, and its hair is used for artists' brushes in painting. The American badger belongs to a separate genus. _Badger baiting_, or _drawing the badger_, is a barbarous sport, long a favourite amusement in England, but declared illegal in the middle of last century, and yet to some extent practised, generally as an attraction to public-houses of the lowest sort. A badger is put in a barrel, and one or more dogs are put in to drag him out. When this is effected he is returned to his barrel, to be similarly assailed by a fresh set. The badger usually makes a most determined and savage resistance.

BADGER DOG, a long-bodied, short-legged dog, with rather large pendulous ears, usually short haired, black, and with yellow extremities; often called by its German name _Dachshund_.

BAD'MINTON, a game closely resembling lawn-tennis, but played with battledore and shuttle-cock instead of ball and racket: named after a seat of the Duke of Beaufort, in Gloucestershire.

BADRINATH (-aet'), a peak of the main Himalayan range, in Garhwal District, in the United Provinces, 23,210 feet above the sea. On one of its shoulders, at an elevation of 10,400 feet, stands a celebrated temple of Vishnu, which some years attracts as many as 50,000 pilgrims.