BORNEO, the capital of the kingdom of Borneo Proper, | spots with drifting sand. Bornholm is watered by a numor Brunai, is situated on the north-western coast of the ber of rivulets, possesses some excellent springs, and has Island of Borneo, 4° 56' N. lat. and 114° 44′ E. long, on several sheets of water. Every spot is diligently cultivated. the banks of a river, about ten miles from the sea. The The climate is colder but drier than that of the adjacent mouth of the river is narrow, with a bar in front of it, on islands, and it is accounted very healthy. The agricultural which there are scarcely 17 feet of water at high tides. produce of the island is principally oats, rye, barley, pease, Farther up the river has a considerable depth, on an average and some small quantities of flax, hemp, hops, and potatoes. six fathoms, and here the shipping lies, particularly the The cattle are small but of good quality, and the wool is of Chinese junks, which are moored head and stern. The a finer and better description than that from the neighbourtown, which is on low ground on both sides of the river, ing islands; the stock in hand is estimated at 9000 horses, contains a considerable number of houses, built on posts 20,000 oxen and cows, and 25,000 sheep. Bees are every four or five feet high, which, at the rise of the tides, allow where reared; poultry, particularly ducks and geese, is the water freely to pass under them. The streets are formed abundant, and marine fowl are plentiful, but game is by canals, either natural or artificial, which facilitate com- scanty. The coast abounds with fish, mostly salmon, hadmunication, and they are always covered with boats, which docks, and small-sized herrings. Bornholm is rich in are managed by women with great dexterity. mineral productions; coal is partially raised for domestic use; quarries of sandstone and millstones are worked; and there is also marble, slate, and potter's-earth.

Borneo is a place of considerable trade. Its commerce was principally limited to its intercourse with China, the Philippines, and the Sooloo Islands, the countries on the peninsula of Malacca not being much frequented by the Borneo navigators. But since the foundation of Singapore, the Bugis merchants of Borneo often visit that port. The exports are rice, black pepper, camphor, cinnamon, beeswax, sea-slugs, turtle-shell, pearls, and mother-of-pearl, with tea, wrought and raw silk, and nankeen, the three last articles being imported from China. At Singapore they take in exchange cottons and woollens, opium, iron, arms, and ammunition. This port is rarely visited by European vessels, but many Chinese junks come from Amoy and Ningpo. The Chinese find it advantageous to build their junks here, for though the island has no teak, it produces other kinds of good ship-timber, among which is the camphor-tree. (Dr. Leyden's description of Borneo in the Asiatic Journal.)

BORNHEM, a town and commune in the province of Antwerp, about 12 m. W. from Mechlin, and 10 m. S.W. of Antwerp. The commune is bounded on the N. and the W. by the Scheldt, which separates it from East Flanders. The town contains 594 houses and 4043 inhabitants, among whom, in 1829, occurred 121 births, 104 deaths, and 27 marriages. Bornhem supports a communal school, in which 203 boys and 103 girls were taught in 1833.

The principal trade of the place is in corn, flax, and linen cloth, considerable quantities of which are made there. In cutting a sluice, in 1781, a great number of Roman bronze medals were found, thirty feet below the surface, and seven or eight feet below the level of the Scheldt. These medals were of the emperors Commodus and Caracalla.

The river Rupel having, in February, 1825, forced down the dyke of the polder of Eykenbroek, a great part of the commune of Bornhem was overflowed, so that nearly all the inhabitants were obliged to abandon their houses, and were unable to return to them for two months. (Dict. Géog. de la Prov. d'Anvers, par Van der Maelen.)

The inhabitants of Bornholm, about 20,000 in number (in 1801 18,902), are wholly of Danish extraction; they are a remarkably industrious race, quick in temperament, enterprising, and sober, and make good sailors, though rough and somewhat perverse. They speak a peculiar dialect of the Danish mixed with German words; and are expert in the manufacture of woollens, pottery, and clocks and watches, the last mentioned being made in the towns. General comfort prevails throughout Bornholm; the farmers are the owners of the lands they cultivate. It is the custom of the island for the lands to descend to the youngest son, but, on the failure of male issue, the eldest daughter, not the youngest, inherits them. Among other privileges which the Bornholmers enjoy are those of paying only half the taxes imposed on their fellow subjects, and providing for the defence of the island out of their own resources. The military force, which is confined to natives, and cannot be removed out of the island, is composed of two companies of artillery, four squadrons of dragoons, four companies of regular infantry, a company of riflemen, and eleven companies of civic and provincial militia.

Bornholm is divided into four districts or hardes,' the northern, western, southern, and eastern, and contains twenty-one parishes, five towns, two hamlets, and 948 farming establishments; the last stand wholly isolated, nor are there any regular villages throughout the island. Though there is but one public school, most of the inhabitants are able to read and write.

In very remote ages Bornholm belonged to Denmark, but in the sixteenth century it was made over to the citizens of Lübeck for fifty years. In 1645 it was captured by the Swedes, who retained possession of it by the subsequent treaty of Roeskild; in 1658 however the inhabitants rose against their new masters, under the conduct of Jens Korfoed, and having declared their island an heir-loom of the crown of Denmark, it has ever since maintained its allegiance to it.

BORNHOLM, an island and bailiwick attached to the Danish province of Seeland, is situated in the Baltic, 90 m. E. of the island of Seeland, about 40 m. E. by S. The chief town of Bornholm lies on a high flat on the of Ystad on the coast of Sweden, and about 50 from the W. coast, and is called Rönne, Rönnedy, or Rottum. It is N.E. shores of the Prussian island of Rügen. It is about an open place, irregularly built, and has a singular ap32 m. in length from N. to S., and varies from 9 to 12 in pearance in consequence of the walls of the houses being breadth, except at the N. extremity; inclusive of three whitewashed, and the woodwork being smeared with tar. islets, it contains an area of about 216 sq. m. Born- The castle, now reduced to an old tower, is all that is left holm presents features the very reverse of those which of the fortifications raised in the times of Christian V.; they characterise the other Danish islands, for it is not only have been superseded by batteries of modern construction. a complete rock, but mountainous in the interior, parti- There are a large market-place in the town, a church, cularly towards the N.; and it is so walled in by pre-grammar-school, town hall, arsenal, and hospital, seventy cipitous cliffs and dangerous reefs that, at certain seasons streets, nearly 600 houses, and about 2800 inhabitants, who of the year, the approach to it is extremely hazardous. subsist by traffic in grain, making clocks and watches and The whole channel between the island and the coast pottery-ware, and upon the produce of their fisheries, their of Pomerania is dangerous to vessels that draw much trade with the interior and foreign parts, and their navigawater, arising mainly from the shifting sand-bank called tion. The harbour is small, and varies in depth from 6 to the Dueodde or Pigeon's Point. A high range which 9 ft. the first mentioned being the more general depth; stretches across Bornholm from N. to S., called the Almin- but it affords a safe anchorage against most winds. It is dingen, contains the Rytterknecht, or Knight's fol- the seat of government, and the residence of the high lower, the most elevated point in the island, about 500 ft. bailiff or Amtsman, and of the military commandant; in height. The Almindingen does not form a continuous 55° 6' N. lat., and 14° 40' E. long. The next town of imelevation, but is intersected by fertile valleys lined with portance is Nexöe, on the S.E. coast; it is situated upon an underwoods of oak. There is also a spacious moor, the elevated mass of rocks, possesses a good harbour and roadLyngmark, in the interior, on which nothing will grow sted, a church, charity-school, hospital, and public storebut low juniper and other wild shrubs, with some coarse house. The pop. is about 1700. In the vicinity there are grass; the inhabitants however use it as common pasture quarries of sandstone and millstones, worked by the goground. The remainder of the island has a stony soil, par- vernment. The other towns are Aakirkebye, in the intially intermingled with tracts of deep loam, and on three terior, which is the seat of justice for the island, and has

1

a handsome black marble church, the finest in Bornholm, a hospital and public store, and about 460 inhabitants; Hasle, on the W. coast, with an indifferent harbour and about 500 inhab. Svanike, on the eastern coast, lying in a small bight which forms an insignificant harbour with bad anchorage, has a church, hospital, charity-school, and storehouse, and about 670 inhab.; and Sandvig, on the N.E. point of the island, a town which does not contain more than 50 houses, and about 200 inhab. Maltgvarn is said to contain 1400 pop. The three small islands or rocks of Christiansöe, Fredericks-holm, and Gräsholmen, are about 17 m. E. of the N. point of Bornholm, and belong to the larger island. Christiansöe and Fredericks-holm are inhabited and fortified, and on Christiansöe there is a lighthouse. The fisheries and the taking of sea-fowl are very productive. The pop., including the garrison, is about 500.

BORNOU, a kingdom situated nearly in the centre of North Africa, between the 10th and 15th parallels of N. lat., and from 12 to 18° E. long. It borders on the N. on the eastern portion of the great desert of Sahara, and partly also on the kingdom of Kanem, which extends on the N. banks of the lake Tchad. This lake forms its E. boundary to the mouth of the Shary, and hence it runs along the course of this river, probably up to the place where it issues from the mountains of Mandara. The latter kingdom, which comprehends the northern declivity of an extensive range of primitive mountains, extends to the S. of Bornou, and on the W. lies the Felatah kingdom of Howssa.

The whole country presents nearly a perfect level, with a few very gentle ascents and descents. The level is so little above the neighbouring lake of Tehad, that in the rainy season great tracts of land along its banks are inundated, when both the inhabitants of the villages and the woods are compelled to retreat farther to the west. But even the remainder of the country is partially subject to inundations, the slow rivers and rivulets which intersect the country being unable to carry off the immense supply of water during the rainy season; and thus extensive tracts which skirt their banks on both sides are covered with water, and remain inundated generally for three months.

60°. The prevailing winds in this season blow from the N. & N.W.

The only implement of agriculture is an ill shaped hoe, made from the iron found in the Mandara Mountains. All the labours of the field devolve almost entirely on women. The most valuable products are maize, cotton, and indigo, of which the two last grow wild close to the Tchad and in the overflowed grounds. The indigo is of a superior quality, and the dark-blue colour of their tobes, or large shirts (the only dress the people wear), is probably not excelled in any part of the world. The senna plant is also found wild. Rice is not much cultivated, and what is raised is of inferior quality; considerable quantities are imported from Soudan. Very little wheat is grown, and barley is not abundant. The grain most used as food for men and animals is a species of millet called gussub, which is raised in great quantities, and prepared as food in different ways. The seed of a grass called kasheia, which grows wild in swampy places, is made into flour, or eaten like rice, when boiled. Bornou is almost entirely destitute of fruit-trees. Mangoes are only found in the southern districts near Mandara, and date-trees only to the N. of Woodie, four days N. of Kouka, and even there they are sickly, and produce an indifferent fruit. The wealth of the inhabitants principally consists of slaves and domestic animals, especially bullocks and horses. Black cattle are most numerous. The Shouaas on the banks of the Tchad have probably more than 20,000 heads, and those on the river Shary not less. They breed also many horses, and send to Soudan annually from 2000 to 3000, where they fetch a good price, the horses of that country being very inferior. The other domestic animals are dogs, sheep, and goats. The common fowl is small but well flavoured, and reared in immense numbers. Bees and locusts are numerous; the latter are eaten by the natives with avidity, both roasted and boiled, and formed into balls as a paste. The beasts of burden are the bullock and the ass. There is a very fine breed of asses in the Mandara valleys. Camels are only used by foreigners or persons of rank.

The lion, the panther, a species of tiger-cat, the leopard, the hyæna, the jackal, the civet cat, the fox, and several species of monkeys, black, grey, and brown, are found in Bornou. The elephant is so numerous near the Tchad that herds of from fifty to two hundred are sometimes seen; they are hunted for the ivory as well as for their flesh. Other wild animals whose flesh is eaten are the buffalo, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus. The flesh of the crocodile is extremely fine, it has a green firm fat, resembling the turtle; and the calipee has the colour, firmness, and flavour of the finest veal. (Denham.) The giraffe is found in the woods and marshy grounds near the Tchad; there are also antelopes, gazelles, hares, and an animal of the size of a red deer, with annulated horns, called koorigum.

It does not appear that Bornou extends to the lower ranges of the Mandara Mountains, though these mountains are visible in the southern districts of the kingdom. The rivers are numerous, but have generally a short course, falling either into the Tchad, or into one of the two principal rivers, the Shary and the Yeou. The Shary has its source in the Mandara Mountains, and seems to form the boundary between Bornou and Begharmi, nearly the whole length of its course in the plains. Towards its mouth it divides into many branches, and forms numerous islands; those which lie nearest to the mouths of these branches are complete swamps, and unfit for agriculture even during the dry season. The Yeou river rises in the more hilly country Partridges are abundant and large, but the grouse are of of Howssa, near 10° E. long., where it is called Shoohum, a small kind. Besides these birds many others abound, as and after having traversed in the first half of its course a wild ducks, geese, snipes, and ostriches, which latter are as country mostly covered with low rocky hills, it runs for much killed for their flesh as their feathers. In the marshy the remainder of its course, which in general is in an grounds are great numbers of pelicans, spoon-bills, and eastern direction, through the extensive plain of Bornou | Balearic cranes, with a variety of other large birds of the to the Tehad. This lake covers many thousand square crane species. Guinea-fowl abound in the woods. miles, and contains many inhabited islands. It extends from N.W. to S.E. about 200 m., but it has not yet been ascertained how far it extends to the N.E. It abounds in fish.

The heat in Bornou is very great, but not uniform. The hottest season is from March to May, when there is no rain, and the thermometer sometimes rises to 105° and 107° at two o'clock in the afternoon. The prevailing winds of this season are from S. and S.E., and they are suffocating and scorching. In night the thermometer sometimes falls to 86 and 88°. This hot season is followed by violent thunder, lightning, and rain towards the middle of May, when the inhabitants prepare the ground for their corn. At the end of June the inundations of the rivers and lakes begin. The rains are then nearly continual, and the weather cloudy, damp, and sultry. The winds are hot and violent at the same time, and blow commonly from the E. and S. In October the rains become less frequent, the air is milder and more fresh, and the weather serene: breezes blow from the N.W., with a clearer atmosphere. Towards the end of December and in the beginning of January it begins to be cold, and in these months Bornou is colder than might be expected from its latitude. The thermometer never rises above 74° or 75°, and in the morning it descends to 58° and

Reptiles, especially scorpions, centipedes, large toads, and serpents of several kinds, are very common. A snake of the congo kind measures sometimes from fourteen to sixteen feet in length, but is said to be harmless.

Iron is found in the Mandara Mountains, and imported into Bornou, but in no great quantity. The best comes from Soudan, mostly worked up into good pots and kettles.

The inhabitants speak ten different languages, or rather dialects of the same language. The Shouaas inhabiting the borders of the lake Tchad are Beduins, and have preserved the Arabic, which they speak nearly pure. They are the best troops of Bornou, and it is said that this country can muster 15,000 Shouaas. The aborigines of Bornou, who call themselves Kanowry, have large unmeaning faces, with flat Negro noses and mouths of great dimensions, with good teeth and large foreheads. Their dress consists of one, two, or three tobes, according to the means of the bearer. Persons of rank wear a cap of dark-blue, but common people go bare-headed, and take care to keep the head constantly free from hair. They are Mohammedans, and very strict about the external rites of praying and bathing. They are less tolerant than the Arabs. They tattoo their bodies like the other negro nations of these latitudes.

The principal towns or cities are thirteen, among which

as given by Berzelius, 100 parts of sassoline being composed of boracic acid, 56:37, water, 43.63: their specific gravity is 1:48. The lustre is pearly, and the colour is greyish or yellowish white: they are slightly translucent.

It loses its water of crystallization and fuses at a very low temperature, forming a glassy globule, which is a non-conductor of electricity, and becomes resinously electric on friction. It has also been found, more recently by Dr. Holland to be a deposit of the solfatara within the crater of Volcano, one of the Lipari Isles, being an exhalation of the fumaroles, around the edges of which it forms thin filament or cakes on the surface of the sulphur.

Borax, or borate of soda, is principally employed (as stated under BORACIC ACID) in the arts as a flux in several metallurgical processes, and is very advantageously used in the process of soldering metals. To the chemist it is an invaluable re-agent in experimenting with the blow-pipe.

Borax is soluble in twelve times its weight of cold and twice its weight of boiling water, from which it may be readily obtained in very perfect crystals of the oblique prismatic system. The more usual form of these is represented in the accompanying figure, where the faces r are the vertical prism, the angles of which are, according to the measurements of Phillips, 86° 30' and 93° 30', the acuter edge of which is truncated by M, the obtuser by T, while P is the inclined terminal plane, and makes with M an angle of 106° 30'; O are the faces of a hemi-octohedron.

It is very common to find the edges between O and r truncated. The specific gravity varies from 15 to 17; the hardness from 2 to 25. When coloured it is of a light yellowish-green: the fracture is conchoidal and of a resinous lustre.

The presence of boron in any mineral may be readily detected with the blow-pipe, owing to the beautiful green tint communicated to the flame by the boracic acid.The facility with which the tint is obtained depends on the element with which the boracic acid is combined; in every instance however it may be detected by the following pro"ess:-let a flux, composed of 4 parts of bisulphate of formula Na B+ 10 H, corresponding to the analysis—

Boracic acid

Soda
Water

36.52
16.37
47.11

is better to employ a weak solution of muriate of ammonia, and lastly only alcohol.

Boron is a powder of a deep brown colour with a shade of Boracite is in many respects one of the most interesting green, and when it has been heated in vacuo or in gases bodies of the inorganic kingdom. It was first described by which contain no oxygen, it is insoluble in water; and is Lasius in 1787 under the name of cubic quartz, and was not dissolved by alcohol, æther, or oils, whether hot or cold. found in the Gyps rocks near Lüneburg in Brunswick, It is devoid of smell and taste. It is not altered by exwhere it occurs in small crystals, which are perfectly deve-posure to the air or to oxygen gas at the usual temperaloped on every side and imbedded in the gyps. The crystals tures; but when heated to about 600° it absorbs oxygen, and usually present a combination of the cube, dodecahedron, burning with considerable brilliancy it is converted into boand the two hemi-octohedrons, in which combinations someracic acid; a portion however of the boron is so enveloped times the one sometimes the other form predominates. The by the acid formed, that it is impossible to barn the whole locality was for some time the only spot where boracite was of a given quantity of boron at one operation. found, until they were discovered in a gyps rock called Segeberg in Holstein, at the foot of which is situated a small village of the same name. The boracite of this spot possess the same characters as those of Lüneburg, and add considerable interest to the very peculiar rock in which they are found, which is itself a very remarkable object from its abrupt elevation over the sandy plain of Holstein. It is described in the 'Geognostitschen Aufsäbzen' of Steffens, who considers it to be of the same formation as the Gyps of

the Paris basin.

Boracite has been analysed by Stromeyer, who found it
composed of boracic acid 67, magnesia 33.
Berzelius expresses its atomic constitution by the formula

Mga Bo

but this differs from the proportions of the analyses, which
it must also be stated vary considerably from each other.
The specific gravity is 2.9; it is transparent, but also
frequently opaque; the hardness is 65 to 7; it is brittle
and has a conchoidal fracture; its lustre is vitreous, in-
clining to adamantine.

The colour is usually a yellowish or greenish grey; it
fuses easily before the blowpipe, at first with much foam,
and then forms a glass globule, which crystallizes on cool-
ing, so that the surface is covered with fine acicular points.
When just so much soda is added as will form with it a
clear glass, it will then crystallize as perfectly as the phos-
phate of lead.

The density of boron when recently prepared is 1.183, but when it has been exposed to a strong heat in close vessels its density is increased to 1844, and it suffers no other change, being neither fused nor volatilized. It is a non-conductor of electricity; the alkalis and acids produce no effect upon it, except the nitric which it decomposes, and is by acquiring oxygen converted into boracic acid.

Boron combines with various elementary bodies, forming with the metals compounds which are termed borurets.

Hydrogen and Boron. It appears that, under peculiar circumstances, hydrogen is capable of dissolving a small portion of boron; but no definite compound to which the term of boruret of hydrogen could be applied is known.

Oxygen and Boron unite, and only in one proportion; the
compound is described under BORACIC ACID.
Boron and Sulphur form sulphuret of boron. [SUL-
PHUR.]

The

Boron and Fluorine combined. [FLUOBORIC ACID.] Boron and metals. (See the various metals.) BOROUGHS OF ENGLAND AND WALES. term borough, in familiar language, seems to have been, in latter times, rather vaguely used. The long agitation of the great question of parliamentary reform, and the absorbing interest of the recent struggle to obtain that great constitutional amelioration, made this term synonymous, in the popular apprehension, with a town sending one or more representatives to the Commons House. But the still more recent discussions on the bill for the reform of municipal corporations have turned the public attention to that cha

and essentially resides its organization for local government forming the natural and necessary basis of its political character and efficiency.

The most remarkable properties of boracite are its opti-racteristic of a borough in which its existence originally cal and electrical characters. Though belonging to the regular system of crystallography, it nevertheless, according to the experiments of Brewster, refracts light doubly and in a similar manner to crystals of the rhombohedron system, the axis of refraction being coincident with an axis joining the opposite angles of the cube. These four axes were also found by Häuy to possess the remarkable property of becoming electric when the crystal was heated, the vitreous electricity being accumulated on one extremity of each axis and the resinous on the other.

The vital importance to the welfare and security of a civilized society, of the general establishment of a wiselyregulated municipal organization, is becoming daily more and more understood; and the part of this subject which is of primary importance is manifestly that which relates to the local government of considerable towns. To enable the reader distinctly to appreciate the general change now operating in the town-constitutions of England and Wales, it is indispensable that we should first take a full though compendious view of their general history and previous state.

BORON, an elementary body, and one of the constituents of boracic acid, oxygen being the other. This substance was first obtained by Davy in 1807, and he procured it by exposing slightly moistened boracic acid to the action of The word borough is itself a monument, older than all a Voltaic battery, placed between two surfaces of platinum; a written records, of the state of society in which, in these dark coloured substance separated on the negative plate, to islands, the institution originated. The Anglo-Saxon byrig, which he gave first the name of boracium, supposing it byrg, burh, &c. (for the word is written in a great variety would be found to be metallic; but having afterwards ascer- of ways), like the German burg of the present day, was the tained it to be more analogous to carbon than to any other sub-generic term for any place, large or small, fortified by walls stance, he called it boron. In this way however little boron or mounds. The fortifications of the continental Saxons, was obtained, and its properties were imperfectly examined before their inroads on the Roman empire, it is well known, till 1808, when Gay Lussac and Thenard procured it in were mere earth-works: in their half-nomadic state, they larger quantity by heating boracic acid with potassium in a had neither means nor motive for constructing any other. copper tube; by this metal the oxygen was separated from But their conquest and colonization of the greater part of the boron, potash was formed, and boron developed; and Roman Britain put them in possession of a more solid and the residue of the operation being washed first with water, artificial class of fortifications, of which, when the first fury and then with dilute muriatic acid, the boron remains. Ac- of their devastating violence against everything Roman had cording to Berzelius, boron is more economically obtained exhausted itself, they must in some degree have appreciated by decomposing an alkaline fluoborate by potassium; for the utility. The new circumstances in which the Saxons this purpose liquid fluoric acid is to be saturated with boracic found themselves-in possession of regularly-cultivated acid, and into this solution one of fluoride of potassium is to fields, of towns, of ports-must of necessity have led to a be gradually dropped until no further precipitate is formed: change in the forms of their civil institutions, though the the salt obtained is to be well washed, and dried at nearly fact of their constituting the great majority of the population a red heat then mix it well with an equal weight of po- in the districts in which they settled, enabled them to keep tassium, and stir the mixture with an iron rod, and heat the inviolate the republican spirit of those institutions embotube till it is nearly red hot, and the residual mass will be died in the practice of election. found to consist of boron mixed with fluoride of potassium: the fluoride is dissolved by water and the boron left. If however it be washed with pure water a quantity of it is dissolved, and therefore towards the end of the washing it

The municipal organization of the Anglo-Saxons was not confined to their towns; it pervaded the whole territory; the modern distinction between personal and political freedom was unknown; the right to a weapon for

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