Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/393

 BAST BASTARD 373 for technical, medicinal, and other purposes, the bast cell is of the highest importance. It conducts sap, serves to exchange and alter the vegetable matters, produces nutritious or poi- sonous or medicative matters, and is largely used in the fabrication of cloth, ropes, mats, sacks, &c. The bast cells are disposed and de- veloped variously in different plants; occur- ring in rows, wreaths, more or less spread bundles, or single within the parenchyma. In some plants hast is formed but once, in others every year. Some are simple, others branched ; some primary, others secondary; some ever flexible, others changing into wood. They are most developed toward the outside. While yonng they contain a granulary liquid, which disappears by the thickening of their walls. In the chelidonium majus this liquid remains as yellow milk. The laticiferous cells of the apocynece, euphorbiacece, and composite (dan- delion, lettuce, &c.) are developed just like the fibrous cells of flax. Young bast cells, when treated by a solution of iodine and chloride of zinc, become pale blue, the older ones violet, the full grown pink. Thickened cells are plain- ly stratified, and their walls often become con- tiguous by the disappearance of the cavity. The walls exhibit various designs, spiral or other lines, more or less constantly, according to the variety of the plants, and also to the treatment by alkali and acids. By such treat- ment, and by the microscope, the nature of the various fabrics made of bast may be deter- mined. Thomson and F. Baur have thus de- monstrated the sheets around Egyptian mum- mies to be of linen. The degree of decom- posability, of contraction, of twisting, and the length, density, and form of the single cells of the bast, vary in different plants. They are very long in flax, hemp, in some nettles, spurges, &c. ; very short in cinchona. Cotton consists of long hairs, and not of bast cells, which it very much resembles otherwise. The bast cells of monocotyledonous plants are mostly ligni- fied. The unlignified are very hygroscopic (water-attracting), contain often chlorophyl (the green matter of plants), and more fre- quently a sort of milk, which is condensed into gum elastic, gutta percha, opium, &c. The lignified, on the contrary, conduct sap but a short time, become filled with air, and thus dead for the plant. No bast cell has pits, but the abietinea have sieve pores or canals. The uses of bast are manifold. Flax bast is soft, flexible, seldom with swellings; hemp bast is very long, stiffer and thicker than flax, more stratified ; nettle (urtica dioiea) bast resembles cotton, has swellings, and is thicker than hemp. Branched and lignified bast cells of great beauty are those of the mangrove tree (rhizo- phora mangle), and the secondary ones ofabies pectinnta. Among the monocotyledonous bast fibres, those of the New Zealand flax (phor- mium tenax) are the most remarkable, being found in bundles near the margin of leaves. They resemble hemp, are very white, some- times yellowish, very long, and contain much lignine, somewhat stiff, but very tough, and fit for stout ropes. In palms a highly developed body of lignified bast surrounds their vascular bundle, while particular bast bundles are found also in the bark, leaves, and interior of the stem. Of this, the husk of the cocoanut is an example. A similar disposition exists in the dracana reflexa, and in some aroidea. Every- body knows the tenacity of the bast of the linden tree, which is hence also called bass- wood. The Chinese grass cloth is made of ramie, Bcehmeria puya. Manila hemp comes from the mwsa textilis ; rice bags are made in India from antiaris saccidora. The Latin name of bast, liber, was used to signify book, from the use of bast in ancient times for writing on. Our word book also means, originally, beech (fagw), from the same use of its bast before the invention of other materials. BASTARD (old Fr. bastard, of uncertain deri- vation), a person born without lawful parentage. By the English law a child born after the mar- riage of its parents, whatever may be the time, is legitimate, unless non-access of the husband, who is otherwise presumed to be the father, can be proved. Birth of a child after the death of the husband, if within a possible period of gestation commencing from a time ante- rior to such decease, is also held to be legiti- mate; and this period has in some instances been allowed of an extravagant extent, but is now, in accordance with the opinion of medical writers as to the limit of any acciden- tal variation from the accustomed course, fixed at 10 months. To avoid any question which might arise in cases of second marriage by the widow soon after the death of the husband, it was a rule of the civil law that she should be prohibited from marrying infra annum luctw (within the year of mourning), which, accord- ing to the ancient Eoman calendar, was 10 months ; and the same rule was adopted by the Saxons and Danes, except that the year was 12 months. By the civil and canon law the inter- marriage of the parents after the birth of a child rendered such child legitimate ; and this is the law of Scotland, France, Holland, and Germany. The ecclesiastics unsuccessfully urged the parliament of Merton in the reign of Henry III. to adopt this rule of the canon law ; it has never been accepted in England. A bastard, by the English common law, being held to be nulliu jilius, cannot take real or per- sonal estate as the heir of either parent, nor has he even the name of the father or mother, but may assume it or any other name, and is known in law only by such assumed or re- puted name. He is, however, able to take real or personal estate by will or other conveyance, and to dispose of the same in a similar man- ner ; but only his children can inherit, and in case he dies intestate without children, his real estate escheats to the crown, and his per- sonal estate is disposed of by administration for the benefit of the crown or its grantee.