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646 BINNEY BIOT winding up the affairs of that institution. He took no prominent part in national politics until the election of Gen. Jackson ; but he then came forward in opposition to that administra- tion, and was elected to congress. In that body he immediately obtained a commanding position. Since his retirement from political life his most celebrated effort was the defence of the city of Philadelphia in the supreme court against the suit brought by the heirs of Stephen Girard. The arguments of Mr. Binney and others in this case have several times been printed in book form by the city of Philadel- phia. His sketch entitled " The Leaders of the Old Bar of Philadelphia" (1859) gives a vivid portraiture of some of the remarkable jurists of the time. In 1862 he published two pam- phlets on " The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus under the Constitution," in defence of the power of the president to suspend the writ without a previous authority from congress. In a third essay written in 1865 he showed that the suspension of the writ does not involve the right to proclaim martial law or arrest a citizen without a warrant and cause assigned. BINNEY, Thomas, an English dissenting cler- gyman, born at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1798. He studied at Wymondley college, was for some time minister of an Independent chapel at Newport, Isle of Wight, and from 1829 to 1871 of the King's Weigh-house chapel, then in Eastcheap, afterward in the new building on Fish street hill, London. The degree of LL. D. was conferred on him by the university of Aberdeen, and that of D. D. he received in the United States, which he visited in 1845 as well as Canada; and in 1857-'9 he visited Australia. He introduced chanting into the service of Independent congregations, improved the psalmody by his " Service of Song in the House of the Lord," and acquired renown as one of the most popular preachers of England. He has published many works of a religious character, several being expressly designed for the young. Among them are: "Fiat Jus- titia," a series of pamphlets treating upon topics which have agitated the religious public ; "Dissent not Schism," "The Christian Min- istry not a Priesthood," and others of a polem- ical nature. " The Practical Power of Faith " (1830) is a series of sermons on the llth chap- ter of Hebrews. The "Life of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton," and " Is it Possible to Make the Best of Both Worlds? " were originally de- livered as lectures. During his visit to Austra- lia he wrote a review of the bishop of Ade- laide's "Idea of the Church of the Future," which he afterward expanded into the " Lights and Shadows of Church Life in Australia." In 1868 he published " From Seventeen to Thirty," a work for the young; and in 1869 a volume of sermons. Other works are, "St. Paul, his Life and Ministry, " " Micah the Priest-maker," and " Thoughts on some Things at Home." BIOBIO, a river of Chili, which rises in Lake Huehueltui, about lat. 38 S., Ion. 71 W., and flows N. W. through the provinces of Arauco and Concepcion, partly separating them. It receives several mountain streams and small rivers, and after a course of 180 m. falls into the Pacific at the city of Concepcion, through a channel If in. wide, with a bar which im- pedes the entrance of large vessels. It is navi- gated most of the year by small craft and bar- ges to Nacimiento, 80 m. from its mouth, and in most parts is very picturesque. The Bio- bio, called by the aborigines Biu-biu (double string), or Butanleuvu (great river), was the scene of Valdivia's first onslaught against the Araucanians, and of numerous battles during the wars of conquest and of independence. BIOLOGY (Gr. plot, life, and Myof, doctrine), the study of the conditions and phenomena of life and living beings. This term was introduced by Lamarck and Treviranus in 1802, and has been used by Carus, Oken, Schelling, and other German philosophers, to denote the ulti- mate conditions of human life. It was par- tially revived by Comte (Philosophic positive) in 1838, and has since been employed by some writers in preference to physiology, as being a term of greater scientific comprehensiveness and exactitude. We have accordingly the " Bi- ological Journal" and the "Society of Biolo- gy," and Herbert Spencer has made biology the title of one of the departments in his sys- tem of "Synthetic Philosophy." BION, a Greek pastoral poet, born near Smyrna, flourished about 280 B. C. On at- taining manhood he emigrated to Sicily, where he fell a victim to a conspiracy and died of poison. His poems are all ' in hexameter verse, some of them erotic. A few remain en- tire, and fragments of others are extant ; they are generally printed with the bucolic poems of his disciple Moschus and of Theocritus. BIOT, Jean Baptiste, a French savant, born in Paris, April 21, 1774, died Feb. 2, 1862. He served for some time in the artillery, entered the polytechnic school in 1794, became a pro- fessor in the central school of Beauvais, and in 1800 professor of physics in the college de France. In 1803 he was elected a member of the academy of sciences, and the following year entered the observatory of Paris. In con- junction with Arago he continued the re- searches into the refracting power of gases, already begun by Borda. In 1806 he was as- sociated with Arago, in Spain, in measuring an arc of the meridian. He was next ap- pointed professor of physical astronomy in the faculty of sciences, and in 1817 he made a journey to the Orcades for the purpose of cor- recting the observations relating to the measure of the meridian. In 1856 he became a member of the French academy. His fame rests chiefly upon his astronomical, mathematical, and phys- ical writings. His Traite de physique experi- mentale et mathematique (4 vols., Paris, 1816) is regarded as his masterwork. A third edition of his Traite elementaire d'astronomie physique was completed in 5 vols. in 1857. In 1858 he