Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/60

50 languages (1839), on the Old-Prussian (1853) and Albanian languages (1854), on the accent in Sanskrit and Greek (1854)^ on the relationship of the Malayo-Polynesian with the Indo-European languages (1840), and on the Caucasian languages (1846). In the two last-mentioned the impetus of his genius had led him on a wrong track. They show the rocks against which the student of comparative philo logy has to guard. As for the charge that has been made against Bopp of neglecting the study of the native Sanskrit grammars, every excuse ought to be made in his favour. In those early days of Sanskrit studies the requisite materials were not accessible in the great libraries of Europe ; and if they had been, they would have absorbed his exclusive attention for years, while the grammars of Forster, Wilkins, and Colebrooke, from which his grammatical knowledge was derived, were all based on native grammars. The further charge that Bopp, in his Comparative Grammar, gave undue prominence to Sanskrit may be disproved by his own words; for, as early as the year 1820, he gave it as his opinion that frequently the cognate languages serve to elucidate grammatical forms lost in Sanskrit (Annals of Or. Lit., i. 3), an opinion which ho has further developed in all his subsequent writings. In his translations from the Sanskrit Bopp was not successful. He seems to have felt this himself; for, after the publication, in 1838, of his metrical translation of the Story of Nala, he resigned that task to more skilful hands. The method of tracing the life and growth of language, so successfully applied by Bopp in the case of the Indo- European languages, has become the corner stone on which all modern linguistic science rests. His researches, carried with wonderful penetration into the most minute and almost microscopical details of linguistic phenomena, have led to the opening up of a wide and distant view into the original seats, the closer or more distant affinity, and the tenets, practices, and domestic usages of the ancient Indo-European nations, and form the only safe basis on which further investigations in each direction are possible. The outlines of his great work had been distinctly traced by him in his very first publication, from which the science of comparative grammar may truly be said to date. In grateful recognition of that fact, on the fiftieth anniversary of the date of Windischmann s preface to that work, a fund called Die Bopp-Stiftung, for the promotion of the study of Sanskrit and comparative grammar, was established at Berlin, to which liberal contributions were made by his numerous pupils and admirers in all parts of the globe. Bopp was specially favoured by fortune in living to see the results of his labours everywhere accepted, and his name justly celebrated. But the sun that gilds the writer s pen did not shine upon him, and he died a poor man, by his genuine kindliness and unselfishness, his devotion to his family and friends, and his rare modesty, endeared to all who knew him. (Breed s Translation oj jBopp s Comp. Gr.,vol. i., introduction; Th. Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 1869 ; A. Kuhu in Unsere Zeit, Neue Folge, iv. 1, 1868.)  BORAX, the biborate of sodium (Na 2 B 4 O 7 ), a substance found in commerce under the two different forms of ordinary or prismatic borax, which contains ten equivalents of water of crystallization, and octahedral or jeweller s borax, which has only five molecules of water in its com position. The former, which is the variety commonly met with, occurs as a natural product in various parts of the world. In former times crude borax was procured chiefly from Thibet, whence it came by way of India under the name of tincal. It also is found in other parts of Central Asia, at Halberstadt in Transylvania, in Canada, and in Peru ; and in recent years an important source of the mineral has been discovered near the Clear Lake iu California, in a body of water now called the Borax Lake. In very dry seasons the water almost entirely disappears from the basin of the Borax Lake, which is situated in a region containing hot springs and the remains of volcanic action. In 1863, when the lake measured 4000 feet long, 1800 feet across at its widest part, and about 3 feet deep, the water was found to contain 2401 56 grains of solid matter per gallon, of which 5 35 08 grains represented crystallized borax. The bed of the lake is occupied with a deposit of borax crystals, which are obtained by sinking caissons, pumping out the water, and digging up the deposit. California!! crude borax is fit for use by assayers and others without undergoing any purification ; but that obtained from Thibet contains a greenish encrusting matter of a soapy consistence which has to be separated before the material is fit for use under the name of refined borax. The supply of borax is, however, more largely derived by artificial means from boracic or boric acid, or from salts in which that acid occurs, than from these natural sources. Boracic acid is found among the cjecta around the craters of some volcanoes, and it is found in jets of vapour which stream forth from fissures in the earth in regions of volcanic disturbance. The chief source of boracic acid at the present day is found in the Maremma of Tuscany, an extensive and desolate track of country embracing an area of about forty miles, over which jets of vapour and heated gases (soffioni) and springs of boiling water spurt out from numerous chasms and fissures. The Maremma is dis turbed by frequent volcanic shocks ; at some points the mouths of the fissures open direct into the air, at others they are covered by small muddy lakes (layoni). In addition to a small impregnation of boracic acid the soffioni contain ammoniacal vapour, to fix and obtain which the gases at some works are led through sulphuric acid. For obtaining the boracic acid a series of basins or artificial lagoni are formed over the soffioni, so arranged that water to be charged with the acid is conveyed by gravitation from the first to the last of the series. Water is led into the highest and by the action of the heated gases it is soon in a state of ebullition. After being so left for about a day it is drawn off into the second, where it remains under like circumstances for the same period, and so to the end of the series, when the water should contain nearly 2 per cent, of boracic acid. The mechanical impurities being allowed to subside, the liquor is then run into evaporating pans, shallow lead-lined vessels, heated by the gases from the soffioni themselves. The evaporating pans are worked on a con tinuous system, similar to the lagoons ; the liquor placed in the upper being concentrated down to half its original bulk is run into the second, and so on till it reaches a degree of concentration fit for crystallizing out the acid. In recent years artificial soffioni have been formed by boring through the rock till some of the numerous chasms or chambers, with which the interior is honey-combed, are reached, when immediately all the phenomena of a boracic soffione are established. From some of these artificial soffioni issues water of sufficient richness in acid to be led there direct to the evaporating pans. Similar emanations of volcanic vapours and boracic acid have been discovered in Nevada, United States. Boracic acid is also obtained from boronatrocalcite (Ulexite or Hayesine), a double salt of sodium and calcium, of which extensive deposits exist in the neighbourhood of the nitrate of soda beds of Chili and Peru. It is very variable in constitution and condition of purity. Similar deposits are found in Cali fornia, Nevada, and Nova Scotia, and from the West Coast of Africa is received a borate of lime bearing the name of rhodizite. The boronatrocalcite, or borate of lime, as it is called in commerce, is applied in its unrefined condition 