Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/374

358 and swine is largely engaged in. The province is subdivided into six circles. The capital is Fiinfkirchen, with a popu lation of 23,863.  BARANZANO,, surnamed Redemptus, an eminent natural philosopher and mathematician, was born in Piedmont in 1590, and died at Montargis in 1622. He was a Barnabite monk, and was for a time professor of philo sophy and mathematics at Annecy. His principal works are Uranoscopia(l6l7), De Novis Opinionibus Physicis (1619), Campus Philosophkus (1620). He was greatly esteemed by Lord Bacon, with whom he corresponded. Bacon s letter to him (Spedding, Letters and Life of Bacon, vii. 374-6) shows that he thoroughly appreciated the new philo sophy, and could see its weak as well as its strong points.  BÁRÁSAT, a subdivisional town in the district of the 24 Parganas, under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, situated in 22&quot; 43 24&quot; N. lat. and 88 31 45&quot; E. long. For a considerable time Barasat town was the headquarters of a joint magistracy, known as the &quot; Barasat District,&quot; but in 1861, on a re-adjustment of boundaries, Barasat district was abolished by order of Government, and was converted into a subdivision of the 24 Parganas. Population in 1872 Hindus, 6649 ; Mahometans, 5133; Christians, 30; and others, 10; total 11,822. Municipal income, 363; expenditure, -289, 4s.; rate of municipal taxation, 7¼d. per head. It forms a striking illustration of -the rural character of the so-called &quot; towns&quot; in Bengal, and is merely an agglomeration of 41 separate villages, in which all the operations of hus bandry go on precisely as in the adjacent hamlets.  BARATIÈRE, or,, a very remarkable instance of precocious genius, was born at Schwabach near Nuremberg on the ]0th January 1721. His early education was most carefully conducted by his father, Francis Baratiere, pastor of the French church at Schwabach, and so rapid was his progress that by the time he was five years of age he could speak French, Latin, and Dutch with ease, and read Greek fluently. He then engaged in the study of Hebrew, and in three years was able to translate the Hebrew Bible into Latin or French, or to retranslate these versions into the original Hebrew. From his reading he collected materials for a dictionary of rare and difficult Hebrew words, with critical and philo logical observations ; and when he was about eleven years old translated from the Hebrew Tudela s Itinerarium. In his fourteenth year he was admitted Master of Arts at Halle, and received into the Royal Academy at Berlin. The last years of his short life he devoted to the study of history and antiquities, and had collected materials for histories of the Thirty Years War and of Autitrinitarianism, and for an Inquiry concerning Egyptian Antiquities. His health, which had always been weak, gave way completely under these labours, and he died on the 5th October 1740, aged 19 years and 8 months. He had published eleven separate Works, and left a great quantity of manuscript materials.  BARATYNSKI,, a distin guished Russian poet, was born in 1792. He was educated at the royal school at St Petersburg, and then entered the army. He served for eight years in Finland, and appears to have got into disgrace on account of some foolish pranks which he had played. During these years he composed his first poem, Eva, which bears very manifest traces of his residence in Finland. Through the interest of friends he obtained leave from the Czar to retire from the army, and settled near Moscow. There, so far as his broken health would allow him, he devoted his time to poetry, and completed his chief work, The Gipsy, which has been spoken of by critics as the best poem of its kind in the Russian language, and as fully equal, if not superior, to the finest productions of Pouschlun. This was his only work cf any extent ; his health gave way completely, and he died in 1844 at Naples, whither he had gone for the sake of the milder climate. A collected edition of his poems appeared at St Petersburg, in 2 vols., in 1835.  BARBACENA, a town of Brazil, in the province of Minas-Geraes, situated, at the height of about 3500 feet above the sea, in the Sierra Mantiqueira, 150 miles N.W. of Rio de Janeiro. It has low houses and broad streets, and contains a town-hall, a prison, a hospital, founded in 1852 by Antonio Ferreira Armond, and a &quot;school of inter mediate instruction,&quot; in which French history and geometry are taught. The trade is principally in gold-dust, cotton, and coffee. Population of town and district, 14,000.  Sketch Map of Barbados. BARBADOS, or, the most windward of the Caribbean Islands, is situated in lat. 13 4 N. and long. 59 37 W., 78 miles E. of St Vincent, the island nearest to it in the Caribbean chain. It lies in the track of vessels, and is well adapted to be an entrepot of commerce. It has nearly the size and proportions of the Isle of Wight, being 21 miles in length, and about 14| miles in its broadest part. It has a superficial area of 106,470 acres, or about 166 square miles, 70,000 acres (besides grass laud) are under cultivation, and nearly 30,000 acres of sugar-cane are annually cut. The island is almost encircled by coral reefs, which in some parts extend seaward nearly three miles. There are two lighthouses, one on the south point and another on the south-east coast. A harbour light has also been placed on Needham s Point. The harbour, Carlisle Bay, is a large open roadstead. The inner harbour, or careenage, for small vessels, is protected by a breakwater called the Molehead. Barbados presents every variety of scenery, hill and valley, smooth table-land and rugged rocks. From one point of view the land rises in a suc cession of limestone and coral terraces, which indicate different periods of upheaval from the sea. From another there is nothing to be seen but a mass of abruptly-rising rocks. The highest elevation, Mount Hillaby, is 1104 feet above the level of the sea. The island contains but few 