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BLUE SKY LAWS—BOLIVIA
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alterations to existing houses at Brocklesby Park, Lines.; Apethorpe, Northants.; Chequers Court, Bucks, and elsewhere. Amongst his London work are the United University Club, Pall Mall; the Goldsmiths' College, New Cross; the London and County Bank; the Imperial War Cross, Chelsea; and Paul's Cross, St. Paul's Churchyard. At Oxford he built the new buildings for Lady Margaret Hall, and at Bath the Holbourne Museum. With Sir Aston Webb and Ernest Newton he was appointed to advise as to the architectural treatment of the Quadrant, Regent Street, London, and he designed a portion of the fagade.

As author, Sir R. Blomfield is known by various important volumes of history and criticism. His Academy School Lectures were published in 1908 as The Mistress Art. His Formal Garden in England (1892), published in collaboration with F. Inigo Thomas, did much to make known the claim of the architect to consider as his right not only the design of the building but of the surroundings in which it was set. His History of Renaissance Architecture in England (1897) and his successive works on French Architecture (1911 and 1921) are accepted by students as textbooks, and their illustrations show the author's considerable powers as a black-and-white artist.

Sir R. Blomfield was elected A.R.A. in 1905, and R.A. in 1914, in which latter year he was also made Officier de l'Instruction publique by the French Government. He was professor of architecture at the Royal Academy from 1906 to 1910. He was elected president of the R.I.B.A. in 1914, and received its Gold Medal in 1913.

As an old member of the Inns of Court volunteers, at the commencement of the World War he received a commission as officer in charge of trench work. At its termination he was appointed a principal architect of the Imperial War Graves Commission, and he was one of the chief designers of various forms of local war memorial. In 1906 he was made hon. fellow of his college, and in 1920 Liverpool University conferred on him the hon. degree of Litt.D. He was knighted in 1919 in recognition of his work as architect and author.


BLUE SKY LAWS.—This name is popularly applied in the United States to those statutes enacted in many states to protect from fraud purchasers of stocks and bonds. The first Blue Sky law was passed in Kansas in 1911, requiring investment companies among other things to file with the Secretary of State a full description of their business and forbidding them to sell securities until authorized by the bank commissioner. Following the Kansas model, within two years no fewer than 18 other states had enacted similar legislation, and by the close of 1919 some form of Blue Sky law was to be found in 44 states. Requirements vary in the different states, but in every case information must be filed with a designated official or commission and licence obtained. In 1914 there developed considerable opposition to such legislation. Its constitutionality was attacked on the ground that it violated the commerce clause of the Federal Constitution; that it delegated legislative and judicial power to an executive official; that it deprived citizens of liberty and property without due process of law. In three states, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio, these contentions were upheld by the lower courts; but in 1917 the U.S. Supreme Court decided that such laws were constitutional on the ground that "prevention of deception is within the competency of government."


BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN (1840–), English writer (see 4.93), published a complete edition of his poetical works in 1914 and two volumes of My Diaries (1919 and 1920). His wife, Lady Anne Blunt, became Baroness Wentworth on the death of her niece, the daughter of the 13th Baron and 2nd Earl of Lovelace, in 1917. She completed a History of the Arabian Horse just before her death in Egypt Dec. 25 1917. She was succeeded in the title by her daughter Judith Anne Dorothea, wife of Neville Stephen Lytton (b. 1879), 4th son of the 1st Earl of Lytton.


BODINGTON, SIR NATHAN (1848–1911), vice-chancellor of Leeds University, was born at Aston May 29 1848. A graduate of Wadham College, Oxford, he became a fellow of Oriel, and in 1882 professor of Greek and principal of Yorkshire College, Leeds. It was owing to his efforts that the college was endowed and chartered in 1903 as a university. He died at Leeds May 12 1911.


BOEHM VON BAWERK, EUGEN (1851–1914), Austrian economist and statesman (see 4.112), died in 1914.


BÖHM-ERMOLLI, EDUARD, Freiherr von (1856–), Austro-Hungarian field-marshal, was born in 1856 at Ancona, then an Austrian garrison town. He entered the army, serving in the cavalry and on the general staff. In the World War he commanded the 2nd Army, fighting first in Serbia, then against the Russians in Galicia and Poland. In the operation of the pursuit of the enemy after the battle of Gorlice he captured the Galician capital, Lemberg, on June 22 1915. He also played a distinguished part in the summer offensive of 1917. After the conclusion of the peace of Brest-Litovsk he marched into the Ukraine, and directed from Odessa the measures for turning to account the resources of that country. In numerous battles Böhm-Ermolli showed his capacity as a general in the field, and was highly appreciated by the Germans.


BOISBAUDRAN, PAUL EMILE FRANQOIS LECOQ DE (1838–1912), French chemist, was born at Cognac in 1838. He was the discoverer of gallium in 1875 and a student of spectroscopics generally, on which he wrote several treatises. Some details as to his work appear in 5.761; 6.46; 8.208; 11.421, 777. He died in Paris May 31 1912.


BOITO, ARRIGO (1842–1918), Italian poet (see 4.155), died June 10 1918.


BOLDREWOOD, ROLF, the pen name of Thomas Alexander Browne (1826–1915), Anglo-Australian novelist, was born in London Aug. 6 1826 and was educated at Sydney College, N.S.W. He had an adventurous early life in Australia, being successively a sheep farmer, a pioneer squatter in Victoria and police magistrate and warden of goldfields till 1895. These varied colonial experiences furnished him with material for his long series of bushranging novels, of which Robbery under Arms is the most widely known. This book was published in 1888 in London after it had run as a serial in the Sydney Mail. Amongst his other books are The Miner's Right (1890); A Modern Buccaneer (1894); The Babes in the Bush (1900) and A Tale of the Golden West (1906). He died at South Yarra, Melbourne, March 11 1915.


BOLIVIA (see 4.166).—No census had been taken up to 1921 since the rough enumeration of 1900 indicating 1,816,271 inhabitants. In 1910 a Bolivian publicist estimated the pop. at 1,744,568. An official estimate in 1920 set the pop. at 2,500,000. The inhabitants are scattered through eight departments and three "national colonial territories," the most densely populated region being the department of La Paz. The pop. of the city of La Paz in 1920 was estimated at 107,252.

Government.—The fundamental law of Bolivia was in 1921 still the constitution adopted in 1880. In 1910 some changes were made in the official nomenclature of towns and cities; and in 1914 a law was promulgated which abolished vice-cantons. Although—according to the statutes—Sucré is still the capital of Bolivia and remains the seat of her Supreme Court, the seat of government is the city of La Paz, where the National Congress assembles regularly, the members of the Cabinet have their bureaus, and where the president of the republic lives.

Communications.—In accordance with the Treaty of Petropolis, (1903), the Brazilian Government began in Aug. 1907 to construct a railway round the series of cataracts in the Madeira and Mamore rivers, from Sao Antonio on the Madeira river to Guajara Merim on the Mamore river (Brazil). The Madeira-Mamoré railroad was formally opened to traffic on July 15 1912. Bolivia then undertook to build a line between the Bolivian towns of Guajara Merim and Riberalta on the Beni river, in order to link her rubber-producing region with Amazonian navigation. In accordance with Bolivia's treaty of 1904 with Chile, that Government constructed a railway from Arica to La Paz, which was completed May 13. 1913. Thus Bolivia was furnished with a direct route to the Pacific.

An electric railway, financed by New York capitalists, was being constructed in 1921 from La Paz to Corioco in the Yungas region,