Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/411

 BATHYLLUS OF ALEXANDRIA BATTERING RAM 391 reous mud brought up in sea dredgings, by Drs. W. B. Carpenter and Wyville Thomson, from a depth of about 650 fathoms in the north Atlantic ocean. According to Huxley, a very large extent of the bed of the Atlantic ocean is covered by this living expanse of transparent gelatinous or protoplasmic matter, growing at the expense of inorganic elements, in which are imbedded granular bodies which he calls coccoliths and coccospheres, and to which they bear the same relation as the spicules of sponges do to the soft parts of these animals. This mud also contains minute foraminifera, the so- called globigerirue, whose calcareous remains are forming a stratum at the bottom of the ocean, considered by Huxley the same in char- acter and mode of formation as the chalk of the cretaceous period. Dr. Wallich, on the con- trary, regards the so-called bathybius, not as an animal, but as a complex mass of slime, with many foreign bodies and the remains of once living organisms in it, and also with numerous living forms. Denying the organic nature of bathybius, he maintains that the coccoliths and coccospheres stand in no direct relation to it, but are independent structures derived from preexisting similar forms, and that their nutri- tion is effected by a vital act which enables these organisms to extract from the surrounding me- dium the elements necessary for their growth. Dr. 0. W. Gumbel has recently (1872) pub- lished a paper confirming the conclusions of Huxley, Carpenter, and Haeckel with regard to the organic nature of the protoplasmic ba- thybius and the coccoliths (discoliths and cya- tholiths), and their relationship to each other. A similar growth in fresh water has been called pelobiiu. I! 41 IM 1,1,1 S OF ALEXANDRIA, a freedman and favorite of Maecenas, who, together with Py- lades of Cilicia, was preeminent in the imitative dances called pantomimi. In the reign of Au- gustus, with Bathyllus and Pylades as principal performers, pantomimes were brought to their highest point of perfection, but they afterward grew more and more obscene and demoralized. Bathyllus excelled in the representation of comic characters, and Pylades in tragic per- sonifications. Each had his school and disci- ples, and each was the head of a party. I! ITOk.t, a tribe of S. Africa, who occupy two considerable islands in the river Leeam- bye, and the adjacent country on either bank. They formerly held wide sway, but are now for the most part subject to the Barotse. The Batoka universally knock out the upper front teeth of both sexes at the age of puberty. They are very degraded, and addicted to smoking the mutokwane (cannabis mtiva), from the effects of which they become delirious. BATONI, Pompeo Virolamo, an Italian painter, born at Lucca in 1708, died in Rome, Feb. 4, 1787. Some of his best works are at Lisbon and St. Petersburg. His principal picture at Rome is the "Fall of Simon Magus," at the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. BATON ROCGE, a city, capital of the parish of East Baton Rouge, La., and formerly of the state, situated on a bluff on the E. bank of the Mississippi, 129 m. above New Orleans; pop. in 1870, 6,498, of whom 3,356 were colored. It was one of the first French settlements, said to have been the site of an old Indian vil- lage. It is in the midst of a large district de- voted to the cultivation of sugar and cotton. The town is well built, contains a national ar- senal and barracks, a military hospital, and the state penitentiary and deaf and dumb asylum. It is the seat of the Louisiana state university, which in 1871 had 18 instructors, 184 students, and a library of 7,000 volumes, and of Baton Rouge college. It has one weekly and two daily newspapers and a monthly periodical. In the civil war Baton Rouge was occupied by federal troops shortly after the capture of New Orleans. On Aug. 5, 1862, Gen. Williams was attacked there by the confederate Gen. Breck- enridge, and fell, gallantly fighting, at the mo- ment of victory ; the ram Arkansas, on the co- operation of which the assailants had counted, having broken her engine and proved a failure. BATON ROUGE, East and West See EAST BATON ROUGE, and WEST BATON ROUGE. i:Tlt rill ls. See AMPHIBIA. i:TMllN. See BATOHIAN. BATTA. See BATAK. BATTERING RAM (Lat. aries), the earliest machine for destroying stone walls and the or- dinary defences of fortified towns. The primi- tive form of this instrument was a huge beam of seasoned and tough wood, hoisted on the shoulders of men, who ran with it at speed against the obstacle. The second step was strengthening and weighting the impinging end of the machine with a mass of bronze, brass, Battering Rama. or iron. The third improvement was suspend- ing it by chains or ropes from a crane or trivet, in such a manner as to allow it to swing some