Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/265

Rh ganj are fevers of the intermittent, remittent, and continued types, attributable to the extreme dampness and malarious nature of the district. Cholera is always present, the number of cases increasing in the hot season and the begin ning of the cold weather. Smallpox occasionally makes its appearance in an epidemic form, frequently caused by inoculation, which is carried on to a great extent in Bakarganj by the native medical practitioners.  BAKER,, a distinguished naturalist, was born in Fleet Street, London, in 1698. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a bookseller, with whom he remained for seven years. He then became clerk to Mr Forster, attorney, whose deaf and dumb daughter he instructed carefully, and with such success that for a time he devoted himself to the training of persons similarly afflicted. During this period of his life he published several poems, and married Sophia, youngest daughter of the famous Daniel Defoe, who bore him two sons, both of whom he survived. In 1740 he was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society. He contributed many memoirs to the Transactions of the latter society, and in 1744 received the Copley gold medal for microscopical experiments on the crystallisation and configuration of saline particles. Mr Baker died at his apartments in the Strand on the 25th of November 1774. Besides his numerous memoirs in the Philosophical Transactions, he published two valuable treatises on the microscope: The Microscope made Easy, London, 1743, and Employment for the Microscope, 1753. Another well- known work is his philosophical poem, The Universe, which has passed through several editions. Mr Baker s memory is perpetuated by the Bakerian Lecture of the Royal Society, for the foundation of which he left by will the sum of 100.  BAKER,, author of the Chronicle of the Kings of England, was born at Sissinghurst, in Kent, about the year 1568. He was educated at Oxford, took the degree of Master of Arts, and in 1603 received the honour of knighthood. In 1620 he was made high sheriff of Oxfordshire ; but having engaged to pay some debts of his wife s family, he was reduced to poverty, and obliged to betake himself for shelter to the Fleet prison, where he died, February 18, 1645. During his confinement he composed numerous works, historical, poetical, and mis cellaneous. Amongst these are Meditations and Disquisi tions on th? Lord s Prayer ; Meditations, &c., on several of the Psalms of David; Meditations and Prayers upon the Seven Days of tJie Week ; Cato Variegatus, or Cato s Moral Distichs ; Theatrum Triumphans, or Theatrum Redivimim, being a reply to Prynne s Histriomastix, &c. His principal work, the Chronicle of the Kings of England, inexact and uncritical, but written in a pleasant and readable style, quickly acquired a high reputation. It was continued to 1658 by Edward Phillips, Milton s nephew, and has passed through many editions.  BAKER,, a learned antiquary, descended from an ancient family distinguished by its loyalty, was born at Crook in 1656. He was educated at the free school at Durham, and proceeded thence, in 1674, to St John s College, Cambridge, where he afterwards obtained a fellow ship. Lord Crewe, bishop of Durham, collated him to the rectory of Long-Newton in his diocese, in 1687, and further intended to give him that of Sedgefield, with a golden prebend, had not Baker incurred his displeasure for refusing to read James II. s Declaration of Indulgence. The bishop who disgraced him for this refusal, and who was afterwards specially excepted from William s Act of Indemnity, took the oaths to that king, and kept his bishopric till his death. Baker, on the other hand, though ho had opposed James, refused to take the oaths to William; he resigned Long-Newton on the 1st of August 1690^ and retired to St John s, in which he was protected till the 20th of January 1716-17, when he and one-and- twenty others were deprived of their fellowships. After the passing of the Registering Act in 1723, he could not be prevailed on to comply with its requirements by regis tering his annuity of 40, although that annuity, left him by his father, with 20 per annum from his elder brother s collieries, was now his whole subsistence. He retained a lively sense of the injuries he had suffered ; and inscribed himself in all his own books, as well as in those which he gave to the college library, socius ejectus, and in some rector ejectus. He continued to reside in the college as commoner-master till his death on the 2d of July 1740. The whole of his valuable books and manuscripts he bequeathed to the university. The only works he pub lished were, Reflections on Learning, showing the Insuffi ciency thereof in its several particulars, in order to evince the usefulness and necessity of Revelation, Lond. 1709-10, and the preface to Bishop Fisher s Fimeral Sermon for Mar garet, Countess of Richmond and Derby, 1708, both with out his name. His valuable manuscript collections relative to the history and antiquities of the university of Cam bridge, amounting to thirty-nine volumes in folio and three in quarto, are divided between the British Museum and the public library at Cambridge, the former possessing twenty-three volumes, the latter sixteen in folio and three in quarto. The life of Baker has been written by Robert Masters, 8vo, 1784, and by Horace Walpole, in the quarto edition of his works.  BAKEWELL, a market-town in Derbyshire, on the River Wye, 152 miles from London. Its fine old church contains monuments of the families of Vernon and Manners. The inhabitants are supported by the working of the coal, lead, and zinc mines, and the stone and marble quarries in the neighbourhood. There is also a large cotton manufac tory in the town established by Arkwright. Bakewell is remarkable for a chalybeate spring, frequented by invalids. It has a free school of ancient date, a literary and scientific institution, and a museum. About four miles distant is Chatsworth House, the seat of the duke of Devonshire. Population in 1871, 2283.  BAKHCHISARAI (Turkish, the Garden Palace), a town of Russia in the government of Taurus, situated in a narrow gorge on the banks of a small stream called the Chiryuk-Su, about 10 miles S.S.W. of Simpheropol. Of unknown origin, it became towards the close of the 15th century the residence of the Tatar khans ; and its chief objects of interest are the remains of its splendour under the Tatar dynasty. The principal building, the palace, or Khan-Serai, was originally erected in 1519 by Abdul- Sahal-Gerai, and was restored at Potemkin s command by the architect Elson for the reception of Catherine. Not far off is a cemetery, which contains the tombs of many of the khans. There are, besides three or four churches and a synagogue, no fewer than thirty-five mosques, of which the most important was founded in tha early part of the 18th century. The population still consists for the most part of Tatars, Catherine II. in 1783 having granted them the exclusive right of habitation in the city. The remainder consists of Russians, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. Bakh chisarai is a place of considerable industry, manufacturing red and yellow morocco, sheepskin cloaks, agriculturc.1 implements, sabres, and other cutlery, and forming an important depot for the corn, flax, fruits, tobacco, and other produce of the whole surrounding district. In the neighbourhood is Chufut-Kali (or Jews city), the chief seat of the Karaitic Jews of the Crimea, situated on lofty and, except on one side, inaccessible cliffs. Population, 10,528.