Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/79

 BOOBY BOOK 73 object of worship is an invisible spirit. There are female bonzes who live in convents, and to whom the education of girls is sometimes in- trusted. BOOBY, the English name for agenusof^e- lecanida, the dysporus of Illiger, morus of Vieillot, lefou of the French ; separated from the true pelicans by Brisson, under the name of sula. The term booby is applied by naviga- tors to that species (sulafitsca, Briss.) which inhabits the desolate islands and coasts of warm climates in almost every part of the globe. The old voyagers have left accounts perfectly consentaneous concerning the stupidity of these birds, and testify to the passive immobility with which they sit in rows, two and two, along the shores, and suffer themselves to be beaten to death with clubs, attempting only a weak defence by pecking at their aggressors, and never making so much as an effort to take wing. Dampier says that in the Alacrane isl- ands, on the coast of Yucatan, the crowds of these birds were so great that he could not pass their haunts without being inconvenienced by their pecking. He also states that he succeed- ed in making some fly away by the blows which he bestowed on them ; but the greater part remained in spite of all his efforts to com- pel them to take flight. The boobies seldom Booby (Sula fusca). swim and never dive, but take fish by darting down from on high, with unerring aim, upon such kinds as swim near the surface, and in- stantly rising again into the air with their booty. In the performance of this exploit they are often harassed and persecuted by the frigate birds and albatrosses, which give chase to them the instant they see them rising laden with their prey, and force them to dis- gorge it, when they themselves appropriate the fish. Recognizing the similar habit of the whiteheaded eagle toward the osprey, of the great arctic gull toward the fishing terns, and of other predatory birds toward their more industrious and peaceful congeners, there is no reason for doubting the truth of this story. They walk with extreme difficulty, and while at rest on land stand nearly erect, propped, like the penguins, on the stiff feathers of the tail. The omission of all efforts for self-pres- ervation by this bird is to be attributed not to stupidity, but to inability to get away, the extreme length of its wings and comparative shortness of its legs rendering it difficult for the bird to rise at all from a level surface, and almost impossible to do so in a hurry. They ordinarily lay their eggs, each bird two or three, in rude nests on ledges of rock cover- ed with herbage ; but Dampier states that in the isle of Aves they build nests in trees, though they have been always observed in other places to nest on the ground. BOODBOOM. See HALIOAENASSCS. BOOK, by the law of England, is " construed to mean and include every volume, part or di- vision of a volume, pamphlet, sheet of letter- press, sheet of music, map, chart, or plan sepa- rately published." The word comes to us from the Saxon boo, " beech," because the Saxons usually wrote upon beechen boards ; just as the Latin liber denoted originally the inner bark of a tree, which was employed for the same pur- pose. It has, however, received an application anterior to its own origin, and is also used with reference to written tablets of stone and metal. In its widest sense it dates from the most re- mote antiquity. The ten commandments were written on slabs of stone ; the Babylonians and Egyptians traced inscriptions on bricks and rocks. Sheets of wood, ivory, and various metals, and subsequently a great variety of pliable substances, animal and vegetable, crude and prepared, have been used for the purpose. The bark of the birch forms a very good writing material; and the leaves of the talipot palm are to this day used by the Cingalese for large books ; the writing is performed with a sharp metallic point, and a black pigment is 'rubbed into the lines. In the library of the university of Gottingen is a Bible of this kind containing 5,373 leaves. Among the Greeks and Romans books of wood were common. For the more important purposes they also employed ivory, as well as bronze and other metals ; and for common business, such as the recording of con- tracts and the making of wills, and for the cour- tesies of social life, the letters of love or friend- ship, they had sheets of wood, covered with wax, to be written upon with a stylw^ and pro- tected from contact by a raised margin, or op- posite projections in the centres. Many speci- mens of ancient books still exist, which prove, without historical evidence, how various are the materials which suffice for the wants of man in an unlettered age. The most ancient books extant, with the possible exception of a few Egyptian papyri, are probably those brought from the ruins of the palace of Ko- yunjik, at Nineveh, dating from about 667 B. C. They consist of tablets of burned clay, some 9 inches by 6, others much smaller, covered