Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/147

BOTOCUDOS BOTTA 141 shaved with a bamboo razor for about two inch- es from the edge all round. The beard, naturally deficient, is commonly plucked out. The skin is a whitish yellow ; and it has been affirmed that the Botocudos are capable of blushing. The women have the abdomen very large, the breasts flaccid and pendent, and are frequently bow-legged. All the hard work falls to their lot; they are the slaves of their husbands, who treat them with the utmost cruelty, beating them unmercifully and even cutting them with knives. Children while young are often treat- ed with tenderness, and yet it is not unusual for the mothers to sell them to planters, who in reality hold them as slaves ; but these rarely reach maturity. As a race, the Botocudos are decidedly ugly, exceptions to this rule being rare even in the young women. It has been erroneously stated that the Aymbores painted their bodies as other Indians do. They were formerly in the habit of varnishing their skin with the yellowish sap of certain trees, which gave them the appearance of having jaundice; but the intention was not to beautify but to preserve their bodies from the attack of mos- quitoes and other insects. Their weapons con- sist of a bow about six feet long, so strong that none but an Indian can use it, and arrows of great length, sometimes barbed, with a sharp- pointed bamboo head, hardened in the fire. Their mode of combat is by attacking at night and from ambush. According to current be- lief, they were cannibals, and it is certain that after battle they ate the bodies of the slain, and that these feasts were conducted with great ceremony. They are fond of amuse- ment, and have nothing of the stolid gravity of the northern Indians. Among their articles of diet are the larva? of certain insects, ants, alligators, lizards, the boa constrictor, mon- keys, the ounce and other carnivora, tapirs, and ant-eaters. The Botocudos have been consid- erably reduced in number by European vices, and above all by the passion for strong drink, by disease, and by the war of extermination un- ceasingly waged against them by the whites. Of those still existing, some are domesticated and divided into several small bands, each of which has its separate headquarters, called aldeamentos, or villages; others have resisted all efforts to civilize them, and roam in freedom through the forest. All of them inhabit the region between the Rio Doce and Rio Pardo, and watered by these rivers and the Mucury and Belmonte. They all go naked, except civilized ones when they visit the fazendas or plantations; and these close up the slit in the lip with wax. The ear plug is often four inch- ' es in diameter, and that for the lip two inch- es; but the custom of wearing them appears to be going out, and is only persevered in by the adult females. Old women always lack the lower incisors, which have been dislodged by the pressure of the plug ; in many cases even the alveola? have totally disappeared, leaving the bone bare and as sharp as a knife. The. Botocudo language is entirely different from the various Tupi tongues, and has dialectic dif- ferences observable in each band. It is rich in reduplicated words, but possesses no gutturals or sibilants, and is generally spoken in a high key, very rapidly, and apparently indistinctly. BOTOSHAJV, or Botnshani, a city of Roumania, in Moldavia, on the Shiska, an affluent of the Pruth, 60 m. N. W. of Jassy ; pop. in 1866, 28,117. It is irregularly built, and contains 1 Armenian and 14 Greek churches, 10 syna- gogues, and a hospital. It has a considerable trade, especially in cattle, and is the seat of the most important fair in Moldavia. BOTS, the larva? of a species of gadfly, gantero- philug equi. The females deposit their eggs on the sides and legs of horses, where a glutinous fluid attaches the eggs to the hair. The horse in licking himself breaks the eggs, and a small worm adheres to the tongue, and is conveyed with the food into the stomach. There it clings firmly to the cuticular portion of the stomach by means of a hook on either side of its mouth, feeding on the mucus during the winter, and passing out with the chyme at the end of spring, by which time it has attained a considerable size. The larva buries itself in the ground, becomes 'a chrysalis, and in a few weeks is changed into a fly. The bots cannot, while they inhabit the stomach of the horse, give the animal any pain or cause any injury ; for he enjoys the most per- fect health while the cu- ticular part of his stomach is filled with them, and their presence is not suspected until they appear at the anus. They cannot be removed by medicine, because they are not in that part of the stomach to which medicine is usually conveyed ; and if they were, their mouths are too deeply buried in the mucus for any medi- cine that can safely be administered to affect them ; in due course of time they detach them- selves and come away. When, after death, the coats of the stomach are found to be corroded and perforated, and when bots are found either in the perforations or already passed through them, other causes have destroyed the stomach. Horses are frequently injured, however, by the medicines which are ignorantly given to re- move the bots. This will easily be understood, when it is stated that bots have lived for many days together in olive oil, and even in oil of turpentine, and that tobacco and nitrous and sulphuric acids do not immediately kill them. BOTTA. I. Carlo Giuseppe Gngllelmo, an Italian historian, born at San Giorgio del Oanavese, Piedmont, Nov. 6, 1766, died in Paris, Aug. 10, 1837. He was educated as a physician at the university of Turin, and also studied literature, botany, and music. In 1792 he was imprison- ed for an alleged political offence, and, though nothing could be proved against him, he was