Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 02.djvu/64

LEFT BLACKBOY 50 earthworms and berries. It pairs in Feb- ruary or March. Its nest is bulky, and is composed externally of stalks of grasses, twigs, etc. It lays four (gen- erally five) eggs. They are pale bluish green with darker markings. There is no bird in the United States precisely similar to the European bird here de- scribed. There are two American species; the red winged blackbird {argelaius phceniceus) and the crow blackbird (quisculus versicolor). BLACKBOY, a name for the grass trees (xanthorrhcea) of Australia yield- ing a gum or resin called blackboy resin or akaroid resin. BLACKBURN, a town and parlia- mentary borough of England, 21 miles N. N. W. from Manchester. It has a free grammar school, founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1557, a free school for girls, founded in 1765, and many other pub- lic schools; and a free library, a public park of 50 acres, etc. Blackburn is one of the chief seats of the cotton manu- facture, there being upward of 110 mills as well as works for making cotton machinery and steam engines. Pop. (1917) 113,315. BLACKCAP {sylvia atricapilla), a European passerine bird of the warbler family, six inches long, upper part of the head black, upper parts of the body gray with a greenish tinge, under parts more or less silvery white. The female has its hood of a dull rust color. The blackcap is met with in England from April to September. Its nest is built near the ground; the eggs, from five to six, are reddish-brown, mottled with a deeper color. It ranks next to the night- ingale for sweetness of song. The American blackcap is a species of tit- mouse {parus atricapillus), so called from the coloring of the head. BLACKCOCK, a name for the male of the black grouse or black game, called also the heathcock {tetrao tetrix). The female is called the gray hen, and the young are poults. The blackcock, as its name imports, is black, having, however, white on the wing covets and under the tail, the two forks of which are directed outward. It is about as large as a do- mestic fowl. It is found in some abun- dance in Scotland and less plentifully in England. The eggs are from 6 to 10 in number, of a yellowish gray color, blotched with reddish brown. BLACK DEATH, THE, one of the most memorable of the epidemics of the Middle Ages, was a great pestilence in the 14th century; which devastated Asia, Europe, BLACKFISH and Africa. It was an Oriental plague, marked by inflammatory boils and tumors of the glands. On account of these boils, and from the black spots which appeared upon the skin, it has been generally called the black death. In England th:> plague first broke out in the county of Dorset, whence it advanced through the counties of Devon and Somerset to Bristol, and thence reached Gloucester, Oxford, and London. From England the contagion was carried by a ship to Nor- way, where the plague broke out in its most frightful form. The whole period of time during which the black death raged with destructive violence in Europe was (with the ex- ception of Russia, where it did not bre..k out until 1351) from 1347 to 1350. Ireland was much less heavily visited than Eng- land, and Scotland, too, would perhaps have remained free from it had not the Scotch availed themselves of the dis- comfiture of the English to make an ir- ruption into England, which terminated in the destruction of their army and the extension of the pestilence through those who escaped over the whole country. It may be assumed that Europe lost by the black death some 25,000,000 of people. See Bubonic Plague. BLACK DRAUGHT, sulphate of mag- nesia and infusion of senna, with aro- matics to make it palatable. BLACK EARTH (tchemozem of Russian geologists), the name to a de- posit which covers vast areas in south Russia, extending over the steppes and low-lying plateaus that border on the Black Sea, and the depressed area to the N. of the Caspian, with a breadth from N. to S. of from 200 or 300 to nearly 700 miles. It closely resembles the loess of central Europe in texture and struc- ture, for it is fine-grained, and is usually devoid of stratification. It varies in color, however, from dark brovni to black, and in thickness from a foot or two up to 6 or 7 yards, occasionally reach- ing, it is said, even to 60 feet. It is composed chiefly of siliceous sand (about 70 per cent.), alumina and other in- gredients (23 per cent.), and organic matter (about 7 per cent.). It bears the same relation to the glacial accumulations of Russia that the loess of the Rhine, the Danube, etc., does to those of central Europe, and is probably the fine-grained silt derived from the torrents and flooded rivers of the glacial period. BLACKFISH (tautoga americdna), a fish caught on the coast of the United States, especially in the vicinity of Long Island. Its back and sides are of a