Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/443

 who ran away were branded with S on cheek or forehead. This law was repealed in 1636. From the time of Henry VII. branding was inflicted for all offences which received benefit of (q.v.), but it was abolished for such in 1822. In 1698 it was enacted that those convicted of petty theft or larceny, who were entitled to benefit of clergy, should be “burnt in the most visible part of the left cheek, nearest the nose.” This special ordinance was repealed in 1707. James Nayler, the mad Quaker, who in the year 1655 claimed to be the Messiah, had his tongue bored through and his forehead branded B for blasphemer.

In the Lancaster criminal court a branding-iron is still preserved in the dock. It is a long bolt with a wooden handle at one end and an M (malefactor) at the other. Close by are two iron loops for firmly securing the hands during the operation. The brander, after examination, would turn to the judge and exclaim, “A fair mark, my lord.” Criminals were formerly ordered to hold up their hands before sentence to show if they had been previously convicted.

Cold branding or branding with cold irons became in the 18th century the mode of nominally inflicting the punishment on prisoners of higher rank. “When Charles Moritz, a young German, visited England in 1782 he was much surprised at this custom, and in his diary mentioned the case of a clergyman who had fought a duel and killed his man in Hyde Park. Found guilty of manslaughter he was burnt in the hand, if that could be called burning which was done with a cold iron” (Markham’s Ancient Punishments of Northants, 1886). Such cases led to branding becoming obsolete, and it was abolished in 1829 except in the case of deserters from the army. These were marked with the letter D, not with hot irons but by tattooing with ink or gunpowder. Notoriously bad soldiers were also branded with BC (bad character). By the British Mutiny Act of 1858 it was enacted that the court-martial, in addition to any other penalty, may order deserters to be marked on the left side, 2 in. below the armpit, with the letter D, such letter to be not less than 1 in. long. In 1879 this was abolished.

 BRANDIS, CHRISTIAN AUGUST (1790–1867), German philologist and historian of philosophy, was born at Hildesheim and educated at Kiel University. In 1812 he graduated at Copenhagen, with a thesis Commentationes Eleaticae (a collection of fragments from Xenophanes, Parmenides and Melissus). For a time he studied at Göttingen, and in 1815 presented as his inaugural dissertation at Berlin his essay Von dem Begriff der Geschichte der Philosophie. In 1816 he refused an extraordinary professorship at Heidelberg in order to accompany B. G. Niebuhr to Italy as secretary to the Prussian embassy. Subsequently he assisted I. Bekker in the preparation of his edition of Aristotle. In 1821 he became professor of philosophy in the newly founded university of Bonn, and in 1823 published his Aristotelius et Theophrasti Metaphysica. With Boeckh and Niebuhr he edited the Rheinisches Museum, to which he contributed important articles on Socrates (1827, 1829). In 1836–1839 he was tutor to the young king Otho of Greece. His great work, the ''Handbuch der Geschichte der griechisch-röm. Philos''. (1835–1866; republished in a smaller and more systematic form, Gesch. d. Entwickelungen d. griech. Philos., 1862–1866), is characterized by sound criticism. Brandis died on the 21st of July 1867.

 BRANDON, a city and port of entry of Manitoba, Canada, on the Assiniboine river, and the Canadian Pacific and Canadian Northern railways, situated 132 m. W. of Winnipeg, 1184 ft. above the sea. Pop. (1891) 3778; (1907) 12,519. It is in one of the finest agricultural sections and contains a government experimental farm, grain elevators, saw and grist mills. It was first settled in 1881, and incorporated as a city in 1882.

 BRANDON, a market town in the Stowmarket parliamentary division of Suffolk, England, on the Little Ouse or Brandon river, 86 m. N.N.E. from London by the Ely-Norwich line of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2327. The church of St Peter is Early English with earlier portions; there is a free grammar school founded in 1646; and the town has some carrying trade by the Little Ouse in corn, coal and timber. Rabbit skins of fine texture are dressed and exported. Extensive deposits of flint are worked in the neighbourhood, and the work of the “flint-knappers” has had its counterpart here from the earliest eras of man. Close to Brandon, but in Norfolk across the river, at the village of Weeting, are the so-called Grimes’ Graves, which, long supposed to show the foundations of a British village, and probably so occupied, were proved by excavation to have been actually neolithic flint workings. The pits, though almost completely filled up (probably as they became exhausted), were sunk through the overlying chalk to the depth of 20 to 60 ft., and numbered 254 in all. Passages branched out from them, and among other remains picks of deer-horn were discovered, one actually bearing in the chalk which coated it the print of the workman’s hand.

 BRANDY, an alcoholic, potable spirit, obtained by the distillation of grape wine. The frequently occurring statement that the word “brandy” is derived from the High German Branntwein is incorrect, inasmuch as the English word (as Fairley has pointed out) is quite as old as any of its continental equivalents. It is simply an abbreviation of the Old English brandewine, brand-wine or brandy wine, the word “brand” being common to all the Teutonic languages of northern Europe, meaning a thing burning or that has been burnt. John Fletcher’s Beggar’s Bush (1622) contains the passage, “Buy brand wine”; and from the Roxburgh Ballads (1650) we have “It is more fine than brandewine.” The word “brandy” came into familiar use about the middle of the 17th century, but the expression “brandywine” was retained in legal documents until 1702 (Fairley). Thus in 1697 (View Penal Laws, 173) there occurs the sentence, “No aqua vitae or brandywine shall be imported into England.” The British Pharmacopoeia formerly defined French brandy, which was the only variety mentioned (officially spiritus vini gallici), as “Spirit distilled from French wine; it has a characteristic flavour, and a light sherry colour derived from the cask in which it has been kept.” In the latest edition the Latin title spiritus vini gallici is retained, but the word French is dropped from the text, which now reads as follows: “A spirituous liquid distilled from wine and matured by age, and containing not less than 36% by weight or 43% by volume of ethyl hydroxide.” The United States Pharmacopoeia (1905), retains the Latin expression spiritus vini gallici (English title Brandy), defined as “an alcoholic liquid obtained by the distillation of the fermented, unmodified juice of fresh grapes.”

Very little of the brandy of commerce corresponds exactly to the former definition of the British Pharmacopoeia as regards colouring matter, inasmuch as trade requirements necessitate the addition of a small quantity of caramel (burnt sugar) colouring to the spirit in the majority of cases. The object of this is, as a rule, not that of deceiving the consumer as to the apparent age of the brandy, but that of keeping a standard article of commerce at a standard level of colour. It is practically impossible to do this without having recourse to caramel colouring, as, practically speaking, the contents of any cask will always differ slightly, and often very appreciably, in colour intensity from the contents of another cask, even though the age and quality of the spirits are identical.

The finest brandies are produced in a district covering an area of rather less than three million acres, situated in the departments of Charente and Charente Inférieure, of which the centre is the town of Cognac. It is generally held that only brandies produced within this district have a right to the name “cognac.” The Cognac district is separated into district zones of production, according to the quality of the spirit which each yields. In the centre of the district, on the left bank of the Charente, is the Grande Champagne, and radiating beyond it are (in order of merit of the spirit produced) the Petite Champagne, the Borderies (or Premiers Bois), the Fins Bois, the Bons Bois, the Bois Ordinaires, and finally the Bois communs dits à terroir. Many hold that the brandy produced in the two latter districts is not entitled to the name of “cognac,” but this is a matter of controversy, as