With this view M. Biot carried with him the instruments used in Spain, and obtained every facility for his work from the English government. On his arrival in London in May, 1817, he was kindly received by Sir Joseph Banks, and when he reached Edinburgh with Captain Mudge, he made Leith fort the first station for his pendulum experiments, and was hospitably received by Sir Howard Elphinstone, who commanded the engineers, and then lived in the neighbourhood of the fort. After finishing his work at Leith, Biot went to Aberdeen, where, after a hospitable reception, he embarked on the 9th July on board the Investigator, and reached Shetland on the 10th. The little island of Batta, at the entrance to the principal bay of the island of Unst, was chosen as the place best fitted for his observations, and he resided during his stay under the hospitable roof of Mr. Edmonstone. After two months' residence in the island, M. Biot returned to Edinburgh, and paid a visit to Sir Howard Elphinstone, then living at Harkness cottage, near Peebles, where he met Sir David Brewster, then residing at Venlaw, in the immediate neighbourhood of that town. Sir David showed him his various unpublished experiments on the double refraction and polarization of light, and particularly those which led him to the discovery of biaxal crystals, and the law of double refraction in various classes of minerals (Phil. Trans., 1818); but though M. Biot noticed various persons whom he met in Scotland, he omitted, in his long and diffuse narrative, even the name of the only Scotchman who was engaged in the same researches as himself—in researches, too, on which the high reputation of M. Biot, as an original discoverer, must ultimately rest.
From Scotland our author visited the great manufacturing establishments in the centre of England, and after seeing Cambridge and Oxford, he met M. Arago at Greenwich, where they continued their observations, assisted by Mr. Pond, the astronomer-royal, and M. Humboldt, who was then in England. (See Mem. Acad. Paris, 1818, vol. iii. pp. 73-133.) After his return to Paris, he communicated to the Institute his memoir "On the General Laws of Double Refraction," as founded on the discoveries of Sir David Brewster, and written in a spirit which posterity will estimate more correctly than his contemporaries.
In 1814 M. Biot was named a chevalier of the legion of honour, of which he became a commander. In 1840 the Royal Society awarded to him the Rumford medals for his researches in and connected with the circular polarization of light. He had also the honour of being a member of three of the academies of the Institute, having, in 1841, been chosen an academicien libre of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and in 1856 a member of the French Academy. He was a foreign member of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, and of almost all the learned academies in the Old and New world.
Besides his memoirs, a few of which only we have mentioned, he published his "Traité de Physique" in 1816, in four large volumes, and his "Traité Elementaire d' Astronomie Physique," which has passed through several editions. To the Biographie Universelle he communicated the lives of Descartes, Franklin, Galileo, Leibnitz, and Newton, in the last of which he has given deep offence to the friends of the great philosopher, by maintaining and persisting in the opinion, after it had been completely refuted, that Newton was long under the influence of mental derangement, and that all his theological writings were composed during its existence, and in his old age. In 1858 he began the publication, in 3 vols. 8vo, of a collection of his writings, under the title of "Melanges Scientifiques et Litteraires," and almost to the close of his long life he was engaged in his usual pursuits. He died on the 3rd of February, 1862.
Biot married, in 1796, the accomplished daughter of M. Brisson, professor of natural philosophy in the college of Navarre, by whom he had one son and one daughter. (See Biot, Edouard )
The following estimate of M. Biot's optical discoveries is given by a competent judge, Principal Forbes, of St. Andrews, in his dissertation on mathematical and physical science:—"His subject by predilection was optics, and here he made his most considerable discovery, and that which he has followed out with most minute industry, namely, the rotatory action of fluids, in which he had Seebeck for a co-discoverer. He studied the colours of crystallized plates with exemplary patience, and by his accurate observations on the law of the tints, prepared the way for the theory of transverse vibrations; but his own doctrine of moveable polarization, which he imagined to explain them, made no impression on the progress of science. He was the first who divided doubly refracting crystals into positive (as quartz) and negative (as calcareous spar). . . . . He also discovered (very approximatively) the law regulating the plane of polarization of the rays in biaxal crystals. . . . . His researches, always marked by precision, are perhaps deficient in bold conjecture and happy generalization. They are conducted with a mathematical stiffness which allows little play to the fancy, and in hypothetical reasoning he rarely indulges. His style is formal yet diffuse, and consequently somewhat repulsive to the student. His works are consequently not easily read, and have contributed less to the progress of knowledge than the scrupulous care often evinced in their compilation might seem to warrant. Yet the name of Biot will be ever associated with devotion to science, and especially with the progress of optics in our own day."—(Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th edition.)—D.
BIRAGO, Francesco, born at Milan of a patrician family in 1562. The chivalrous times in which he lived compelled men of high rank to study the art of warfare which then formed the most important branch of a nobleman's education. Being the eldest son of Jacopo Marcello Birago, the lord of Metono and Siciano, both feuds belonging to that family in the territory of Pavia, he inherited those large estates and honorable titles at the death of his father. His immense wealth allowed him to devote the whole of his time to collect documents and write many volumes on the science of chivalry, in a style, says Pietro de Crescenzj, his contemporary, as lofty and pure as the author's mind was, Birago was, according to the said historian, the arbiter all through Lombardy on all matters connected with chivalry, and no one ever disputed his decisions. It is, however, to be regretted, that whilst many writers have spoken of Birago's consummate knowledge of chivalry, no account has been left of his life. We only know that he wrote pastoral poetry. and that he was an accomplished scholar. His apology for Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, in which he nobly and successfully defends the poet against the attacks of Olevano, who asserts that Tasso was ignorant of the laws of chivalry, met with the approbation of the literary world. These and many other works have been recorded by Mazzuchelli. Birago died at an advanced age in 1640.—A. C. M.
BIRAGO, Lampugnino or Lampo. This writer was born in the duchy of Milan, and flourished about the middle of the 15th century. His deep knowledge of Greek and Latin classics brought him in contact with Pietro Candido Decembrio; and the celebrated Filelfo, who very often in his Epistolæ alludes to Birago's literary attainments in the most flattering terms, informs us that Birago was the bosom friend of Nicholas V., and that in 1459 he dedicated to Pius II. many translations from Xenophon and Plutarch; that he translated also Dionysius Halicarnasseus, and wrote an original work entitled, "Strategicon adversus Turcas ad Nicholaum V. It has been remarked that this distinguished Greek scholar began to apply himself to the study of that language at an advanced age, and he attained such a knowledge of it that he was considered second to none. He died at the beginning of the 16th century.—A. C. M.
BIRAGUE, Flaminio, lived in the reign of Charles IX. of France. The chief purpose which his verses now serve is, that they are occasionally quoted to exemplify faults of style. He was a friend and imitator of Ronsard.
BIRCH, John George, a Danish author, born 1750; died 1795; wrote a "Biography of Frederick II. of Russia," Copenhagen, 1789; and translated Sterne's Sentimental Journey.
BIRCH, Thomas, one of the most industrious writers of the latter half of the eighteenth century, was born in London in 1705. His parents were quakers, and the father was, by trade, a maker of coffee-mills. Thomas was originally destined to follow this occupation; but as he approached the period of manhood, he began to feel a tendency towards literary studies, that soon carried him out of the circle of his father's trade. After a very little preliminary instruction, he became an usher in a school, and so assiduous was he in the work of self-culture, that he soon obtained such an acquaintance with the learned languages that he was admitted into the church "as a literate person," though he had never studied at a university. He had long left the sect of the quakers, and in 1728 he married the daughter
