with the usual barbarities in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The detection of the plot led to Mary’s own destruction. There is no positive documentary proof in Mary’s own hand that she had knowledge of the intended assassination of Elizabeth, but her circumstances, together with the tenour of her correspondence with Babington, place her complicity beyond all reasonable doubt.
BABINGTON, CHURCHILL (1821–1889), English classical scholar and archaeologist, was born at Roecliffe, in Leicestershire, on the 11th of March 1821. He was educated by his father till he was seventeen, when he was placed under the tuition of Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, the orientalist and archaeologist. He entered St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1839, and graduated B.A. in 1843, being seventh in the first class of the classical tripos and a senior optime. In 1845 he obtained the Hulsean Prize for his essay The Influence of Christianity in promoting the Abolition of Slavery in Europe. In 1846 he was elected to a fellowship and took orders. He proceeded to the degree of M.A. in 1846 and D.D. in 1879. From 1848 to 1861 he was vicar of Horningsea, near Cambridge, and from 1866 to his death on the 12th of January 1889, vicar of Cockfield in Suffolk. From 1865 to 1880 he held the Disney professorship of archaeology at Cambridge. In his lectures, illustrated from his own collections of coins and vases, he dealt chiefly with Greek and Roman pottery and numismatics.
Dr Babington was a many-sided man and wrote on a variety of subjects. His early familiarity with country life gave him a taste for natural history, especially botany and ornithology. He was also an authority on conchology. He was the author of the appendices on botany (in part) and ornithology in Potter’s History and Antiquities of Charnwood Forest (1842); Mr Macaulay’s Character of the Clergy . . . considered (1849), a defence of the clergy of the 17th century, which received the approval of Mr Gladstone, against the strictures of Macaulay. He also brought out the editio princeps of the speeches of Hypereides Against Demosthenes (1850), On Behalf of Lycophron and Euxenippus (1853), and his Funeral Oration (1858). It was by his edition of these speeches from the papyri discovered at Thebes (Egypt) in 1847 and 1856 that Babington’s fame as a Greek scholar was made. In 1855 he published an edition of Benefizio della Morte di Cristo, a remarkable book of the Reformation period, attributed to Paleario, of which nearly all the copies had been destroyed by the Inquisition. Babington’s edition was a facsimile of the editio princeps published at Venice in 1543, with Introduction and French and English versions. He also edited the first two volumes of Higden’s Polychronicon (1858) and Bishop Pecock’s Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy (1860), undertaken at the request of the Master of the Rolls; Introductory Lecture on Archaeology (1865); Roman Antiquities found at Rougham [1872]; Catalogue of Birds of Suffolk (1884–1886); Flora of Suffolk (with W. M. Hind, 1889), and (1855, 1865) some inscriptions found in Crete by T. A. B. Spratt, the explorer of the island. In addition to contributing to various classical and scientific journals, he catalogued the classical MSS. in the University Library and the Greek and English coins in the Fitzwilliam museum.
BABIRUSA (“pig-deer”), the Malay name of the wild swine of Celebes and Buru, which has been adopted in zoology as the scientific designation of this remarkable animal (the only representative of its genus), in the form of Babirusa alfurus. The skin is nearly naked, and very rough and rugged. The total number of teeth is 34, with the formula i.23. c.11. p.23. m.33. The molars, and more especially the last, are smaller and simpler than in the pigs of the genus Sus, but the peculiarity of this genus is the extraordinary development of the canines, or tusks, of the male. These teeth are ever-growing, long, slender and curved, and without enamel. Those of the upper jaw are directed upwards from their bases, so that they never enter the mouth, but pierce the skin of the face, thus resembling horns rather than teeth; they curve backwards, downwards, and finally often forwards again, almost or quite touching the forehead.
Old Male Babirusa (Babirusa alfurus).
Dr A. R. Wallace remarks that “it is difficult to understand what can be the use of these horn-like teeth. Some of the old writers supposed that they served as hooks by which the creature could rest its head on a branch. But the way in which they usually diverge just over and in front of the eye has suggested the more probable idea, that they serve to guard these organs from thorns and spines while hunting for fallen fruits among the tangled thickets of rattans and other spiny plants. Even this, however, is not satisfactory, for the female, who must seek her food in the same way, does not possess them. I should be inclined to believe rather that these tusks were once useful, and were then worn down as fast as they grew, but that changed conditions of life have rendered them unnecessary, and they now develop into a monstrous form, just as the incisors of the beaver and rabbit will go on growing if the opposite teeth do not wear them away. In old animals they reach an enormous size, and are generally broken off as if by fighting.” On this latter view we may regard the tusks of the male babirusa as examples of redundant development, analogous to that of the single pair of lower teeth in some of the beaked whales. Unlike ordinary wild pigs, the babirusa produces uniformly coloured young. (See Swine.) (R. L.*)
BABOON (from the Fr. babuin, which is itself derived from Babon, the Egyptian deity to whom it was sacred), properly the designation of the long-muzzled, medium-tailed Egyptian monkey, scientifically known as Papio anubis; in a wider sense applied to all the members of the genus Papio (formerly known as Cynocephalus) now confined to Africa and Arabia, although in past times extending into India. Baboons are for the most part large terrestrial monkeys with short or medium-sized tails, and long naked dog-like muzzles, in the truncated extremity of which are pierced the nostrils. As a rule, they frequent barren rocky districts in large droves, and are exceedingly fierce and dangerous to approach. They have large cheek-pouches, large naked callosities, often brightly coloured, on the buttocks, and short thick limbs, adapted rather to walking than to climbing. Their diet includes practically everything eatable they can capture or kill. The typical representative of the genus is the yellow baboon (P. cynocephalus, or babuin), distinguished by its small size and grooved muzzle, and ranging from Abyssinia to the Zambezi. The above-mentioned anubis baboon, P. anubis (with the subspecies neumanni, pruinosus, heuglini and doguera), ranging from Egypt all through tropical Africa, together with P. sphinx, P. olivaceus, the Abyssinian P. lydekkeri, and the chacma, P. porcarius of the Cape, represent the subgenus Choeropithecus. The named Arabian baboon, P. hamadryas of North Africa and Arabia, dedicated by the ancient Egyptians to the god Thoth, and the South Arabian P. arabicus, typify Hamadryas; while the drill and mandrill of the west coast, P. leucophaeus and P. maimon, constitute the subgenus Maimon. The anubis baboons, as shown by the frescoes, were tamed by the ancient Egyptians and trained to pluck sycamore-figs from the trees. (See Primates; Chacma; Drill; Gelada and Mandrill). (R. L.*)
BABRIUS, author of a collection of fables written in Greek. Practically nothing is known of him. He is supposed to have been a Roman, whose gentile name was possibly Valerius, living in the East, probably in Syria, where the fables seem first
