Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/251

This page needs to be proofread.
BAG—BAG
235

BAGHMATI, a river of Hindustan, which has its source in the hills to the north of Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, whence it flows in a southerly direction through the district of Tirhut in the province of Behar, and, receiving the waters of the Buchii on its north bank, and of Burd Gandak on its south bank, joins the Ganges, after a course of 285 miles, in 25 23 N. lat, and 86 34 E. long., about 8 miles below the town of Monghir, but on the opposite bank.

BAGLIVI, Giorgio, an illustrious Italian physician, descended from a poor persecuted Armenian family, was born at Ragusa in 1669, and assumed the name of his adoptive father, Pietro Angelo Baglivi, a wealthy physician of Lecce. He studied successively at the universities of Salerno, Padua, and Bologna ; and after travelling over Italy, he went in 1602 to Rome, where, through the in fluence of the celebrated Malpighi, he was elected professor of anatomy in the college of Sapienza. He died at Rome in 1707, at the early age of thirty-eight. A collection of his writings, which are all in the Latin language, was published in 4to in 1704, and has been several times reprinted in the same form. An edition in 2 vols. Svo was published in 1788. Baglivi s work De Fibra Motrice, is the foundation of that theory of medicine which was substi tuted by Hoffmann and Cullen for the Humoral Pathology.

BAGNACAVALLO, Bartolommeo, an Italian painter, who flourished about the beginning of the 16th century. His real name was Ramenghi, but he received the cogno men Bagnacavallo from the little village where he was born in 1484. He studied first under Francia, and then proceeded to Rome, where he became a pupil of Raffaelle. While studying under him he worked along with many others at the decoration of the gallery in the Vatican, though it is not known what portions are his work. On his return to Bologna he quickly took the leading place as an artist, and to him were due the great improvements in the general style of what has been called the Bolognese school. His works were considered to be inferior in point of design to some other productions of the school of Raffaelle, but they were distinguished by rich colouring and graceful delineation. They were highly esteemed by Guido and the Carracci, who studied them carefully and in some points imitated them. The best specimens of Bagnacavallo s works, the Dispute of St Augustin and a Madonna, irith Child, are at Bologna. He died in 1542.

BAGNÈRES-DE-BIGORRE (the Vicus Aquensis of the Romans), the capital of an arrondissement in the depart ment of Hautes-Pyre ne es, is situated on the left bank of the Adour, 13 miles S.E. of Tarbes. It is one of the princi pal watering-places in France, and is much admired for its picturesque situation and the beauty of its environs, parti cularly the valley of Campan, which abounds with beautiful gardens and handsome villas. The town is remarkably neat and clean, and many of the houses are built or orna mented with marble. Its thermal springs and baths are numerous and varied, and are very efficacious in debility of the digestive organs and other maladies. Their temperature is from 90 to 135 Fahr. The season commences in May and terminates about the end of October, during which time the population is more than doubled. Manu factures of woollen cloth, worsted, leather, pottery, and toys are carried on, and marble from the neighbouring quarries is wrought in the town. Greatly frequented by the Romans, and destroyed by the Gothic invaders, Bagneres begins to appear again in history in the 12th century, and rose into permanent importance under the reign of Jeanne d Albert, the mother of Henry IV. Per manent population, about 9500.

BAGNÈRES-DE-LUCHON, a small well-built town of France, department of Haute-Garonne, pleasantly situated in the valley of the Luchon, at the foot of the Pyrenees. It is celebrated for its sulphurous thermal springs, which vary in temperature from 88 to 180 Fahr. The bath ing establishment is one of the most complete in Europe. The waters are employed with success in a variety of chronic affections, and about 10,000 patients visit the town annually. Resident population, about 3600.

BAGPIPE (Fr. musette, Ger. Sackpfeife, Ital. cornamusa), a musical instrument of unknown antiquity, which seems to have been at one time or other in common use among all the nations of Europe, and still retains its place in many Highland districts, such as Calabria, the Tyrol, and the Highlands of Scotland. The wind is generally supplied by a blowpipe, though in some cases bellows are used. These and other slight variations, however, involve no essential difference in character or construction, and a description of the great bagpipe of the Highlands of Scotland will serve to indicate the leading features of the instrument in all its forms. It consists of a large wind bag made of greased leather covered with woollen cloth; a mouth-tube, valved, by which the bag is inflated with the player s breath; three reed drones; and a reed chanter with finger-holes, on which the tunes are played. Of the three drones, one is long and two are short. The longest is tuned to A, an octave below the lowest A of the chanter, and the two shorter drones are tuned each an octave above the A of the longest drone; or, in other words, in unison with the lowest A of the chanter. The scale of the chanter has a compass of nine notes, all natural, extending from G on the second line of the treble stave up to A in alt. In the music performed upon this instrument, the players introduce among the simple notes of the tune a kind of appoggiatura, consisting of a great number of rapid notes of peculiar embellishment, which they term warblers. No exact idea of these warblers can be formed except by hear ing a first-rate player upon the Highland bagpipe. The history of the bagpipe can be clearly traced from the earliest periods by means of pictorial representations and references occurring in literature. The instrument probably consisted at first of the pipes without the bag, and in this form it is mentioned in Scripture (1 Sam. x. 5; Isa. v. 12; Jer. xlviii. 36), and was used by the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The strain upon the player of these pipes was so great that he had to bandage up his lips and cheeks with a <f>op{3fia or Tre/Ho-ro/uov, the Roman capistrum, a leathern muzzle or headstall. It seems very probable that the bagpipe derived its origin from these double and triple reed-pipes, by the after addition to them of a wind-bag made of the skin of a goat or kid, together with a valved porte-vcrd, in order to relieve the strain on the lungs and cheeks of the player. There are several evidences that the bagpipe was well known in the time of Nero. It is represented on a coin of that reign, copied in Montfaucon s Antiquities, and Suetonius (Ner., 54) speaks of a promise made by Nero shortly before his death, that he would appear before the people as a bagpiper (utricu- larius). In mediaeval Latin the instrument is designated the Tibia utricularia. Chaucer represents the miller as skilled in playing the bagpipe; and Shakspeare s familiar allusion to " the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe " is suffi cient of itself to disprove the common notion that the instrument has always been peculiar to Scotland.

BAGRATION, Peter, Prince, a distinguished Russian

general, descended from the noble Georgian family of the Bagratides, was born in 1765. In 1782 he entered the Russian army and served for some years in the Caucasus. In 1788 he was engaged in the siege of Oczacow, and after wards accompanied Suwaroff, by whom he was highly esteemed, through all his Italian and Swiss campaigns. He particularly distinguished himself in 1799 by the

capture of the town of Brescia. In the wars of 1805 his