jects above-mentioned, which in many cases may be regarded as furnishing their first practical reduction into a scientific form. After occupying the position of a professor at Göttingen for the long period of forty-five years, and becoming a member of almost all the German learned societies, and of many of those in other countries, Beckmann died on the 3rd February, 1811, deeply regretted by a vast number of friends and pupils. The published writings of Beckmann are very numerous, and relate to almost every branch of practical science. He is best known, perhaps, especially in this country, by his "Contributions towards a History of Inventions," in which he has taken up the most various subjects, and investigating them from the earliest periods at which any record of them can be found, has traced them down to his own day. His "History of the Earliest Voyages made in Modern Times" is another interesting and valuable work. Besides these, he published some elementary works on natural history, and papers on various subjects in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Göttingen, and we are also indebted to his literary labours for editions of the work, De mirabilibus Auscultationibus, attributed to Aristotle, 1786; of the Wonderful Histories of Antigonus Carystius, 1791; and of the Treatise on Stones of Marbodius, 1799.—W. S. D.
BECKMAN, Sir Martin, an engraver of Charles II.'s time, the age that let Hollar almost starve. He was probably of German or Dutch descent. He painted various scenes with ships, and Sheerness and Tilbury forts.—W. T.
BECKWITH, Sir George, an English general, born in 1753; died at London, 20th March, 1823. He entered the army in 1771, and was first employed in the American war. He was successively governor of Bermuda, St. Vincent, and Barbadoes. In 1809 he took Martinique from the French, and received in recompense the thanks of the House of Commons, and the honour of knight of the Bath. In 1810 he captured Guadaloupe, and soon after returned to Barbadoes, where he continued to exercise the functions of governor until 1814, when he resigned in consequence of ill health. From 1816 to 1820 he had the command of the troops in Ireland. He then returned to England, where he continued to reside until his death.—G. M.
BECLARD, Pierre Augustin, a distinguished French anatomist, born at Angers in 1785, and died at Paris on the 17th March, 1825. He was first apprenticed to an ironmonger, and was afterwards employed in the department of public conveyance. At last, however, he succeeded in obtaining a position as student of medicine in the secondary school of Angers. Here he studied for four years, and having made great progress, he went to Paris in 1808. Here he attached himself to La Charité, obtained his degree of doctor of surgery, and was appointed successively prosector to the faculty, and head of the anatomical department. In 1818 he was appointed professor of anatomy in the Ecole de Medicine. In this position he was one of the most successful teachers of anatomy. His knowledge of the anatomy of the body was most minute, his judgment sound, his memory extensive, and his powers of expressing himself correctly very great. He died of a cerebral fever, at the early age of forty. He was universally lamented, and his coffin was borne to its last resting-place, upon the arms of his pupils. He was a worthy follower of Bichat, and published an edition of that great man's work on general anatomy. In 1823 he published a work of his own, entitled "Elements of General Anatomy." Although favourably known before, this work greatly extended his reputation. He wrote the articles on anatomy in the first twelve volumes of the Dictionnaire de Medicine.—E. L.
BECŒUR, C., a historical and portrait painter, born at Paris, 1807; studied under Le Thière.—W. T.
BECON, Thomas, D.D., one of the most active restorers of the church of England; was born, probably in Norfolk, in the year 1511 or 1512. At the age of sixteen he entered St. John's college, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1530. The dates of his other degrees are not known. While at Cambridge he was a frequent hearer of Bishop Latimer, and to his teaching he ascribes all his knowledge of God, and of true religion. He was ordained about 1538, and became vicar of Brensett, near Romney, Kent, where he published several works under the assumed name of Theodore Basil. He did not, however, escape, in those days of persecution, the name of heretic, but was compelled to retract his doctrines at Paul's Cross, and to burn his books publicly. He then retired into Derbyshire, and supported himself for some time by tuition. On the accession of Edward VI. he resumed his ministry, and was made one of the six preachers at Canterbury, chaplain to the Lord Protector Somerset, and to Archbishop Cranmer; and, on March 24, 1547, rector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, London. He also lectured on divinity during this reign in the university of Oxford. In August, 1553, he was committed to the tower by Queen Mary, where he remained till March, 1554, when he was ejected from his benefice, and fled for safety to Strasburg. There he continued to write, and to encourage his suffering brethren at home. At the death of Queen Mary he returned, and was restored to his various offices; and became, in succession, rector of Buckland, Herts; vicar of Christ church, Newgate Street, and of St. Dionis Backchurch, London; and canon of Canterbury. He appears to have been a very powerful and favourite preacher. His numerous works, remarkable for the quaintness of their titles, as well as their intrinsic value, are published by the Parker Society, from which edition this notice is chiefly derived. Selections from them, with a Life, are published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. There are also notices of him in Lupton's History of Modern Protestant Divines, London, 1637; in Bishop Tanner's Bibliotheca; and in the British Reformers, published by the Religious Tract Society in 1828-31. He had five children, one of whom, Theodore, was educated at Cambridge, and befriended by Lord Burleigh. He died at Canterbury in 1567 or 1570.—T. S. P.
* BECQUEREL, Alexandre Edmond, second son of Antoine Cesar, was born at Paris in 1820. After completing his studies in the normal and polytechnic schools of Paris, he became assistant-professor in the museum of natural history; and in 1853 was appointed to the chair of physics in the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. He has principally devoted his attention to electricity, magnetism, and optics. As the result of some experiments on the effects of magnets on liquids and gases, he discovered that oxygen gas is a magnetic body, and was led to conclude that the variations observed in the earth's magnetism are due to the presence of that gas in the atmosphere. He discovered in 1848, among other sensitive substances, a chloride of silver capable of receiving and retaining impressions from light. The solar spectrum, acting on a surface suitably prepared, was found to leave an impression of all its colours, and, in like manner, a camera obscura an impression of its shadows. M. Becquerel has treated of the properties of these substances in a number of interesting memoirs, in which he produces the theory that several of them are only acted on by some rays of light after they have been slightly impressed by others. In other memoirs he has examined the development of electricity from chemical actions produced by the influence of light; and the scientific world is indebted to him for the construction of an instrument which serves to measure the action of light on bodies in the same way as the thermo-electric pile the action of heat.—(Nouv. Biog. Gen.)—J. S., G.
BECQUEREL, Antoine Cesar, a distinguished French physician, and professor of natural history in the museum of Paris, was born in 1788 at Chatillon-sur-Loire in the department of Loiret. He was educated at the polytechnic school of Paris, and entered the army as officer of engineers in 1810. In Spain, where he served till 1812, he signalized himself at several sieges, especially at that of Tarragona. In 1813 he returned to France, and for two years was on the staff of the etat-major-general of the army; but in 1815 quitted the service with the grade of chef de bataillon, and commenced those elaborate researches in experimental science which procured him a wide celebrity. His first publications related to geology and mineralogy; but the phenomena of electricity soon absorbed his attention; and it is as a discoverer in that branch of science that he particularly claims our notice. While engaged in the study of the properties of amber, he had occasion to make some experiments on the disengagement of electricity by pressure, and this formed the starting point of his labours in physics. He applied himself afterwards to the disengagement of electricity in all chemical actions, and to giving the laws of the effects produced. These researches led him to contradict the theory of contact with which Volta endeavoured to explain the effects of his pile, and to construct the first pile with a constant current. The discoveries that M. Becquerel made in this matter are detailed in the Annales de Physique et de Chimie, and in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences. During the many years that he was a member of the Institut he read there considerably upwards of a hundred
