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 visible, would have been obscured by the fuller entries causing it to extend over many pages.

The Bibliography of Bibliography.—The zeal of students of early printing has provided the material for an almost exhaustive list (see ) of the books printed in the 15th century still extant. Of those printed in the years 1501–1536 there is a tentative enumeration in the continuation of Panzer’s Annales Typographici (1803), and materials are gradually being collected for improving and extending this. But the projects once formed for a universal bibliography have dwindled in proportion as the output of the press has increased, and the nearest approaches to such a work are the printed catalogue of the library of the British Museum, and that of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, now in progress. Of books of great rarity unrepresented in these catalogues a fairly sufficient record exists in Brunet’s Manuel du libraire, the bibliographical collections of Mr W. C. Hazlitt, the Bibliographer’s Manual by Lowndes, and the other bibliographical works enumerated in the article on (q.v.). When a universal bibliography was recognized as an impossibility, patriotism suggested the compilation of national bibliographies, and the Bibliotheca Britannica of Robert Watt (Edinburgh, 1824) remains an extraordinary example of what the zeal of a single man could accomplish in this direction. Quérard’s La France littéraire (Paris, 1827–1839), while it gives fuller titles, is much less comprehensive, embracing mainly books of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and only such of these as appeared to the compiler to be written by “savants, historiens, et gens de lettres.” In the works of Heinsius (Allgemeines Bücherlexikon, 1700–1815, Leipzig, 1812–1817), and Kayser (Bücherlexikon, 1750, &c., Leipzig, 1834, &c.) Germany possesses a fine record of her output of books during the last two centuries, and since the organization of the book-trade, contemporary lists of books, with résumés and indexes issued at intervals, exist for most European countries. For the period before these became of importance in England much bibliographical material has been collected in the Catalogues of English Books printed up to the end of the year 1640, issued by the British Museum in 1884, by the John Rylands library, Manchester, in 1895, and by the University library, Cambridge, in 1900–1906. A similar record of the rich English collections in the Bodleian library, Oxford, remains a great desideratum. While these substitutes for a universal author catalogue have gradually been provided, similar contributions to a universal subject catalogue have been made in the form of innumerable special bibliographies compiled by students or bookmen interested in special subjects or departments of literature. The most important of these are enumerated in the bibliographical notes appended to articles in this Encyclopaedia, but many attempts have been made to compile separate catalogues of them.

The most recent of these bibliographies of bibliographies naturally take over all that is of any value in their predecessors, and it may suffice therefore to make special mention of the following:—Bibliotheca ''bibliographica. Kritisches Verzeichniss der das Gesammtgebiet'' der Bibliographie betreffenden Litteratur des In- und Auslandes, in ''systematisches Ordnung bearbeitet von Dr Julius Petzholdt. Mit'' alphabetischen Namen und Sachregister (Leipzig, 1866), 8vo, pp. xii. 940; Manuel de bibliographie générale, par Henri Stein (Paris, 1898), 8vo, pp. xx. 896; Manuel de bibliographie historique, par Ch. V. Langlois (Paris, 1901), 12mo, pp. xi. 623; A Register of National ''Bibliography. With a selection of the chief bibliographical works'' and articles printed in other Countries, by W. P. Courtney (London, 1905), 8vo, pp. viii. 631.

It should also be noted that the List of Books of Reference in the Reading-Room of the British Museum, first published in 1889, and the Subject-index of the Modern Works added to the Library of the British Museum in the years 1881–1900, edited by G. K. Fortescue (supplements published every five years), include entries of a vast number of bibliographical works, and that an eclectic list, with a valuable introduction, will be found in Professor Ferguson’s Some Aspects of Bibliography (Edinburgh, 1900).

 BIBLIOMANCY (from the Gr. , a book, and  , prophecy), a form of (q.v.) by means of the Bible or other books. The method employed is to open the Bible haphazard and be guided by the first verse which catches the eye. Among the Greeks and Romans the practice was known under the name of sortes Homericae or sortes Virgilianae, the books consulted being those of Homer or Virgil.

 BIBRACTE, an ancient Gaulish town, the modern Mont Beuvray, near Autun in France. Here, on a hilltop 2500 ft. above sea-level, excavation has revealed a vast area of 330 acres, girt with a stone and wood rampart 3 m. long, and containing the remains of dwelling-houses, a temple of Bibractis, and the workshops of iron and bronze workers and enamellers. It was the capital of the Aedui in the time of Julius Caesar. Later on Augustus removed the inhabitants to his new town Augustodunum (Autun), to destroy the free native traditions. Another far more obscure town in Gaul, near Reims, also bore the name.

See Bulliot, Fouilles de Beuvray; Déchelette, Oppidum de Bibracte; also references s.v..

 BIBULUS, a surname of the Roman gens Calpurnia. The best-known of those who bore it was Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, consul with Julius Caesar, 59 He was the candidate put forward by the aristocratical party in opposition to L. Lucceius, who was of the party of Caesar; and bribery was freely used, with the approval of even the rigid Cato (Suetonius, Caesar, 9), to secure his election. But he proved no match for his able colleague. He made an attempt to oppose the agrarian law introduced by Caesar for distributing the lands of Campania, but was overpowered and even personally ill-treated by the mob. After making vain complaints in the senate, he shut himself up in his own house during the remaining eight months of his consulship, taking no part in public business beyond fulminating edicts against Caesar’s proceedings, which only provoked an attack upon his house by a mob of Caesar’s partisans. His conduct gave rise to the jest, that Julius and Caesar were consuls during that year. When the relations of Caesar and Pompey became strained, Bibulus supported Pompey (Plutarch, Cato Minor, 41) and joined in proposing his election as sole consul (52 ). Next year he went to Syria as proconsul and claimed credit for a victory gained by one of his officers over the Parthians, before his own arrival in the province. After the expiration of his term of office, Pompey gave him command of his fleet in the Ionian Sea. He proved himself utterly incapable; his chief exploit was the burning of thirty transports on their return from Epirus whither they had succeeded in conveying Caesar and some troops from Brundusium. He died soon afterwards (48) of fatigue and mortification (Caesar, Bell. Civ. iii. 5-18; Dio Cassius xli. 48). Although not a man of great importance, Bibulus showed great persistency as the enemy of Caesar. Cicero says of him that he was no orator, but a careful writer. By his wife Porcia, daughter of Cato, afterwards married to Brutus, he had three sons. The two eldest were murdered in Egypt by some of the soldiery of Gabinius; the youngest, Lucius Calpurnius Bibulus, fought on the side of the republic at the battle of Philippi, but surrendered to Antony soon afterwards, and was by him appointed to the command of his fleet. He died (about 32) while governor of Syria under Augustus. He wrote a short memoir of his step-father Brutus, which was used by Plutarch (Appian, B.C. iv. 136; Plutarch, Brutus, 13. 23).

 BICE (from Fr. bis, a word of doubtful origin, meaning dark-coloured), a term erroneously applied in English to particular shades of green or blue pigments from the French terms vert bis and azur bis, dark green or blue. These colours are generally prepared from basic copper carbonates, but sometimes from ultramarine and other pigments.

 BICESTER, a market town in the Woodstock parliamentary division of Oxfordshire, England, 12 m. N.N.E. of Oxford by a branch of the London & North-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3023. It lies near the northern edge of the flat open plain of Ot Moor, in a pastoral country. The church of St Eadburg, the virgin of Aylesbury, is cruciform, with a western tower, and contains examples of Norman and each succeeding style. There is, moreover, in the nave a single rude angular arch considered to be Saxon. Incorporated with a farm-house, scanty Perpendicular remains are seen of an 