some thousands of varieties of forged bank-notes in circulation; the whole revealing a frightfu state of commercial and moral depravity.

BLACKLOCK, Thomas, D.D., a remarkable example of the power of the mind to overcome the most oppressive disadvantages, was born at Annan in 1721, and died at Edinburgh in 1791. The child of humble parents, and deprived before he was six months old of the power of sight, he won for himself before he reached middle age the designation of an accomplished scholar, a cultivated thinker, and, for those times, a respectable poet. After going through the necessary course of academic study in Edinburgh, he was licensed as a preacher of the Established Church in 1759, and in 1762 was ordained minister of Kirkcudbright. The determined resistance of the congregation to the appointment, based apparently on his too philosophical and "moderate" style of preaching (joined perhaps to the fact that he was the intimate friend of David Hume), led to a litigation, to his sensitive mind extremely distressing, and he resigned the charge in consideration of a small annuity. After this, he resided in Edinburgh till his death, occupied chiefly in superintending the education of a limited number of boarders a charge for which his varied accomplishments and benign manners peculiarly qualified him. He will, however, be best remembered in connection with that famous letter of his which happily arrested Robert Burns on the eve of his departure for the West Indies, and thus, to all human appearance, saved from oblivion the greatest lyrist that the world has seen. A collected edition of his poems was published in 1793, with a biographical sketch by Henry Mackenzie.

BLA'CK-MAIL, a scarcely voluntary impost submitted to, in the earlier half of the 18th c., by the people of the Highlands, and of parts of the Lowlands bordering on the Highlands, as a kind of compromise with robbers. The districts in question, being then in an extremely barbarous state, enjoyed but an imperfect protection from the law. Owing, moreover, in part, to political and social circumstances, theft and robbery were not then regarded in the Highlands as they are now: to carry off the cattle of a neighbor was perhaps only wreaking out an old family quarrel or clan dispute, or making reprisals for some severity of persons in power. Certain it is that men of good standing gave a certain degree of protection to notorious cattle-lifters. In these circumstances, a class of men rose up who professed to take upon themselves the duty of protecting the property of individuals, on the payment by them of a percentage on their rents, generally 4 per cent. They were not low men who did so; nearly all of them had good Highland pedigrees, and passed externally as honorable persons, though there was only too great reason to suspect that they encouraged and profited by robberies, in order to make the B. a necessity. The celebrated Rob Roy was, about 1730, a notable levier of B. in the southern Highlands and adjacent Lowland districts. A little later, Coll M'Donell of Barrisdale, a cadet of the Glengarry family, was equally noted further north. When one of the payers of the B. suffered what was called a hership, the levier of the impost, being quickly informed of what had happened, busied himself to recover the lost cattle, and if he failed, he held himself bound to pay an equivalent. We are informed by Mr. Lapslie, the minister of Campsie, Stirlingshire, in his Statistical AccouL of the parish, 1795, that his father, John Lapslie, was a farmer who paid B. in 1744 to M'Gregor of Glengyle, the nephew of Rob Roy. The engagement was that he should make good losses, if the number of sheep stolen exceeded seven, for anything less was held as not a hership or lifting, but merely a picking. Early in 1745, fifteen were stolen, and M'Gregor was honorably preparing to replace them, when the breaking out of the rebellion, in which he became involved, deprived him of the power of fulfilling his engagement, and likewise put an end to his self-created wardenship of the Highland borders. After that period, law was vigorously enforced in the Highlands, and B. ceased to be heard of.

BLACKMORE, Sir Richard, one of the court physicians in the reigns of William III. and Anne, is remembered as the most heavy and voluminous poetaster of his own or any other age. He appears to have been a good and well-meaning man, and the merciless ridicule of contemporary wits was due, in some part at least, to the moral and religious tone of his works, and to his free censures of the libertinism of the time. But the worthlessness of the poems has been amply confirmed by the judgment of posterity. "The Creation," considered his best, Addison pronounces

Black Quarter

"Prince

one of the most useful and noble productions in our English verse;" but few modern readers are likely to examine the grounds of this judgment, still less to agree with it. B. wrote six epics (choosing always the loftiest themes)-viz., Arthur," in 10 books; King Arthur," in 12; "Eliza," in 10; "Creation," in 7; 'Redemption," in 6; "Alfred," in 12; besides "The Nature of Man," 3 books; a new version of the Psalms, paraphrases of Job, and other parts of the Bible, and a long list of theological, medical, and miscellaneous treatises.

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BLACKPOOL, a flourishing town in the township of Layton-cum-Warbreck, in the county of Lancaster, is now a very considerable place, lying on the coast of the Irish Sea, between the estuaries of the Ribble and the Lune, distant from Poultonle-Fylde 4 miles, and from Preston 18 miles. The population in 1861 was 3506, and in 1871 it had increased to 6001; but the numbers who resort here during the bathing-season far exceed the permanently resident inhabitants. Upwards of 100,000 visitors annually come from East Lancashire, Manchester, Yorkshire, and other parts of the kingdom. B. is one of the most frequented bathing-places in the west of England, the sands being excellent. It has & branch railway connecting it with the Preston and Wyre Railway, which affords easy access from Preston, Liverpool, Manchester, and all parts of the kingdom. There is also another railway connecting it with Lytham, another favorite bathingplace on the Ribble, about 7 miles to the south. B. has a fine pier, furnishing sitting accommodation to upwards of 3000 persons, which cost about £25,000; and a second, more recently opened, 500 yards in length. There are three established churches, a Roman Catholic chapel, and five other chapels for the Wesleyans, Independents, &c. Besides excellent streets and terraces of houses elegantly built, it has many large hotels (one of which, recently erected, cost upwards of £12,000); there is also a theatre, libraries, news-rooms, &c. There is no trade or manufactures; the lodging-house keepers depend solely on the large concourse of visitors. Fishing is the employment of many during the winter months.

BLACK PRINCE, the name usually given in history to Edward Prince of Wales' son of Edward III. (q. v.).

BLACK QUARTER, syn. Black Spald, Black Leg, Quarter Evil, Blood Striking; incorrectly termed by some English writers Inflammatory Fever-termed by others Hæmatosepsis (Simonds) Hæmatoclysis.

Definition.-An apoplectic disease peculiar to cattle; a form of carbuncular disease, or anthrax-enzootic, i. e., limited to districts; not spread by contagion, but attended, especially in warin climates, and in Great Britain in hot weather, with the development of a blood-poison destructive to man and the lower animals. See MALIGNANT PUSTULE.

Causes.-Rich pasture on stiff, retentive, and undrained soil; sudden changes from poor to rich keep, particularly with animais in good health, predisposed to make blood or fatten fast. Youth predisposes to the disease, from the greater activity of the nutritive functions in early life. It is a disease confined almost entirely to yearling and two-year old animals; the writer has, however, seen it in aged cows, &c. A young animal, thriving fast, may suddenly be seized with B. Q., if exposed to cold, showers, or a storm. A check thus induced to the organs of secretion, and particularly to the action of the skin, at once produces the blood-charge and apoplectic effusion peculiar to the disease. In various countries where calves are reared by the hand, and not allowed to suckle their mothers, there are many cases of quarter ill when the young animals are transferred from the stable or bare fields to rich grass-lands. The malady is chiefly witnessed in spring and autumn, particularly when animals are fed on strong autumn grass.

Symptoms. The premonitory signs are often very insignificant, and usually overlooked. The healthy thriving aspect of a young steer, in a district where the disease prevails, excites the suspicion of the farmer. The auimal may be observed with a sleek coat, voracious appetite, quick staring look, suddenly to stop feeding; the eyes become bloodshot; there is slight salivation or foaming at the mouth; and in the space of an hour or less, it will fall helpless, having manifested slight lameness in one of the limbs before dropping. In other cases, the animal suffers from swelling and pains, suddenly developed in one of the joints, whether the fetlocks, knees, or hocks, elbow, shoulder, or stifle. The swelling extends, and the animal

falls. In both cases, the limb or quarter of the animal affected swells, the skin is bluish, the veins of the part are diste..ded by black blood, and the creature is perfectly helpless. The suffering is unusually acute; but in many instances the respiration is tranquil, the pulse, however, oppressed and frequent. Animals in this state are costive at first, but occasionally violent diarrhoea supervenes, and the excrement is tinged by black extravasated blood. Death almost invariably supervenes in from 4 to 48 hours. Some cases prove lingering, especially if active and proper treatment be employed early; but recovery is rare. The symtoms of approaching death are convulsive twitchings of the muscles, fixed haggard look, grinding with the teeth, and spasmodic breathing. In some cases, the animal appears quite paralytic, and quietly breathes its last.

Post-mortem Appearances.-The quarter affected is found, when cut into, soaked in black semi-coagulated blood. Similar blood is found in all the vessels of the body, and all the tissues have consequently a black congested appearance, particularly the lungs. The heart, as in all blood-diseases, is stained both externally and internally by black blood, effused beneath its serous covering or lining; and this appearance has led some veterinarians to believe the immediate cause of death to be inflainmation of the heart. Such is not the case. The blood extravasations indicate the peculiar condition of the circulating fluid. In some cases in which a joint has been affected some hours before severe constitutional symptoms have appeared, the tissues around the joints are infiltrated by a yel. w semi-solid exuda ion or lymph, which is capable of producing malignant pustule if inoculated in man or animals. Abscesses and sloughs are occasionally met with in and around the diseased joints.

Treatment-In the earliest stage, blood-letting to the extent of 5 or 6 quarts. Administer half-ounce doses of nitre in solution every half-hour for 4 or 5 hours. Give the animal much water to drink, and if chances of recovery are observed, 4ounce doses of Mindererus's spirit, or solution of the acetate of ammonia, must be given every 4 hours. As the animal rallies, it may be desirable to administer a mild purge of Epsom or Glauber salts. The local treatment consists in incisions into the swollen parts, care being taken that the joints are not penetrated. The incisions must be washed with the following lotion: Chloride of zinc, 1 drachm; water, 12 ounces; dissolve and apply with linen rag or lint, confining the moisture by gutta-percha or oil-silk. Treatment is not often successful, but we have the greatest facilities for

Prevention by deep draining, whereby many pasture-lands have been rendered perfectly safe-after having repeatedly ruined tenant-farmers-from destruction by black quarter. In some hill-lands, where drainage does not appear the cause, the malady may be prevented by giving to all the cattle on the farm a weekly dose of an ounce of nitre. The animals that thrive most rapidly should have the medicine rather more frequently, though not to such an extent as to reduce their condition.

The flesh of animals dying from this disease should not be used for human food. It has destroyed whole families, and though in this cold climate accidents are rare, nevertheless they have occurred. Butchers have lost their arms, and persons have lost their lives from being inoculated in cutting up meat from oxen that have died of quarter ill.

BLACK ROD, Usher of the, an officer of the House of Lords, appointed by letters-patent. He is chief gentleman-usher to the sovereign, and be ongs to the order of the Garter. His principal duty is (himself, or by his deputy the yeomanusher) to summon the House of Commons to the Peers when the royal assent is given to bills, or when royal speeches are read; and to take into custody any peer guilty of breach of privilege. His income is derived from certain fees under the regulation of the House; and the appointment of messengers, door-keepers, servants, &c., rests with him. This patronage was at one time very lucrative, but new arraugements have made it much less so.

BLACK ROOD OF SCOTLAND. When the Anglo-Saxon princess who became the wife of King Malcolm Ceanmohr landed in Scotland, about the year 1070, she brought with her what was regarded as a priceless relic-a cross of gold, elaborately wrought in the form of a casket, about a span long, containing what was believed to be a piece of the true cross, set in an ebony figure of the Saviour, richly decorated with gold. Of its earlier history nothing is known; but St Margaret bequeathed it

Black Sea

as an inheritance to her children, and as she herself was at the point of death, we are told by her confessor, that she had it brought to her bedside, when she pressed it to her eyes and lips, and expired clasping it with both her hands. The contemporary biographer of her son, King David I., relates that "the Black Rood of Scotland," as it was called, r ceived the dying adoration of that saintly prince, and that it had then (in the nriddle of the 12th c.) come to be regarded by the whole nation of the Scots with mingled feelings of love and awe. It was kept as an heirloom of the kingdom, in the royal treasury in the castle of Edinburgh, and along with the other regalia aud muniments of Scotland, was delivered up to King Edward I. in 1291. The irreverent scrutiny of the officers of the English king discovered that the outer case, which to the eyes of St Aeired, in the previous century, seemed to be of the purest gold, was only silver gilt. But the relic itself was not the less venerable on that account; and it was used by King Edward to give increased solemnity to the oaths of fealty which he exacted from the magnates of Scotland. Thus, when the bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow sided with Bruce, it was urged as a heinous aggravation of their guilt, that they had sworn upon the body of Christ (i. e., the sacrament of the eucharist), and upon the holy gospels, and upon the cross of St Neot, and upon the B. R. of S.,' to be true and faithful to the English king and his heirs for ever. When the long struggle between England and Scot and was at last ended by the peace of Northampton in 1328, the B. R. was restored to Scotland as one of the national treasures. But it was not destined to remain long in the north. When the hapless King David II. invaded England in 1346, he carried the B. R. with him, in the beliet (common in that age) that such a holy relic would insure safety to his person or victory to his arms. On his defeat and capture under the wails of Durham, the B. R. of S. became the prize of his conqueror, Sir Ralph de Neville, Lord of Raby, by whom, along with other spoils of the battle, it was offered up at the shrine of St Cuthbert, in the Cathedral of Durham. There it hung till the Reformation, when all trace of it disappears.

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BLACK, or Euxine Sea (the Pontus Euxinus, or "hospitable sea," of the ancients, the Kara Deniz of the Turks, the Mauri Tha'assa of the modern Greeks, and the Tschernoje Moré of the Russians), is an inland sea lying between Europe and Asia, extending from lat. 40° 45′ to 46° 45′ n., and from long. 27° 30' to 41° 50' e. In shape it bears a certain resemblance to the human foot. Its greatest length from east to west, on the 42d parallel, is about 700 miles, and its greatest breadth, near the west end, about 380 miles. Area, 172,000 square miles. On the south-western extremity it communicates by the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardabelles, with the Mediterranean, and on the north-east by the Straits of Yenikale with the Sea of Azof. The B. S. drains nearly one-fourth of the surface of Europe, and also about 100,000 square miles of Asia. Throughout its whole extent it has but one island, and that a small one, lying opposite the mouths of the Danube, called Adassi, or Isle of Serpents, on which is a light-house. The continued occupation of this island by the Russians, in defiance of the stipulations of the treaty signed at Paris after the termination of the Crimean war, occasioned considerable queasiness in Turkey, and detained a British fleet in the B. S. for several months. In the centre of the B. S. there are no soundings at 150 fathoms, nor are there shoals along the shores, except at the entrance of the Bosporus; the navigation of the B. S. ought, therefore, to be particularly easy and safe. It is so in summer; but in winter, being enclosed on every side, it becomes the scene of conflicting winds, and of storms which, though of short duration, are terrible while they lasi. Such a storm it was on the 14th of November 1854, in which about forty vessels of the allies were either totally wrecked or very seriously injured, nearly 1000 lives were lost, and property worth some millions destroyed.

All the coasts are high, with good harbors, except between the mouths of the Danube and the Crimea; there the land is low, and the danger of navigation greatly increased in winter by the presence of floating ice; for, from the many large rivers which flow into the B. S. and Sea of Azof (Danube, Dniester, Bug, Dnieper, Don, and Kuban, in Europe; and the Kizil-Irmak and Sakara in Asia), the waters are fresher, and consequently more easily frozen than those of the Mediterranean. The specific gravity of the water of the B. S. is 1014 (water being 1000), while that of the Mediterranean is 1025. The shores from Odessa to the Crimea are ice-bound

=

during January and February; and although the harbor of Odessa is never frozen up, yet the drift-ice frequently renders the entrance to it dangerous.

There is no tide in the B. S., but the large rivers flowing into it give rise to currents, which are particularly strong in spring when the snows melt, and the accumulated moisture of the whole winter is drained off the land. The great current which, passing out of the Sea of Azof round the Crimea, flows first in a south-westerly, then in a north-westerly direction, and again due west, is turned southward by a current from the Dnieper and Dniester; the two currents are afterwards met by another from the Danube, and then, all united, rush towards the Bosporus. The Bosporus, however, is not wide enough to admit the entire volume of water pressing into it; and a portion of the main current is consequently diverted to the coast of Asia, where it is strengthened by new accessions. This, which is the normal course of the currents in the B. S., is modified by the winds, and by local circumstances. In some bays of Roumelia and Bulgaria counter-currents have been observed.

The most important ports on the B. S. are those of Odessa, Kherson, Eupatoria, Sebastopol, Batum, Trebizond, Samsun, Sinope, Varna, &c.

The depth of the water is unfavorable to the extensive establishment of fisheries, but several kinds of sturgeon are caught in considerable quantities in the straits of Yenikale. Other fish of various kinds are said to be abundant.

The ancients believed that the B. S. was at one time much more extensive, and that it had no connection with the Mediterranean. They accounted for its decrease and communication with the larger sea by the supposition that the Thracian Bosporus had been burst through by an earthquake, or by the great deluge known as the Deucalion deluge, which inundated Greece. The B. S. being higher than the Mediterranean, the latter, of course, through the newly created channel, became the basin for much of its waters. Certain geological and other appearances have led some modern geographers to entertain an opinion similar to that of the old Greeks, which, however, is not shared in by others.

The B. S. has been navigated from a very early period. Its original name (supposed to have arisen from the dangers such an expanse of sea offered to early navigation, as well as from the fact that savage tribes dwelt upon its coasts) was Axine, or "inhospitable" sea, afterwards changed by the Greeks to Euxinus. In the time of Xerxes, large quantities of corn were exported from its ports to Athens and the Peloponnesus. The Romans and Byzantine emperors, and also the Genoese, had large traffic on the Black Sea. When the Turks captured Constantinople, all but their own ships were excluded from its waters until the treaty of Kinarji, 1774, when the Russians obtained the right to trade in it. Ten years after, Austrian ships were privileged to trade here; and by the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, British and French ships were admitted. The undue preponderance of Russia in the B. S. was the main cause of the Crimean war.

BLACK SNAKE (Coluber constrictor, see COLUBER), a species of snake common in the United States of America from Louisiana to Connecticut. It is of an almost unifor leaden color, is one of the largest serpents in North America, and is remarkable for its great agility. It moves along the ground with a swiftness equal to that of a horse, glides over bushes, and climbs trees. It feeds on small quadrupeds, birds, frogs, &c.; frequently plunders poultry-yards of eggs; and enters dairies to drink milk or cream, of which it is very fond, but compensates for these depredations by killing rats and mice. It has no poison-fangs, but is not slow to bite. It is very capable of domestication.

BLACKSTONE, Sir William, a commentator on English law, was the posthumous son of a silk-mercer in London, and was born there on the 10th of July 1723. At the age of 15, having obtained a scholarship from the Charterhouse school, where he was educated, he was sent to Pembroke Hall, Oxford. There he was fortunate enough to obtain a second scholarship, and remained till, in 1744, he was admitted a fellow of All Soul's College, when he removed to London, to attend the courts of law with the view of qualifying himself for his future profession. In 1746, at the age of 23, he was called to the bar, but failed to attract either notice or practice. Upon the death of an uncle in 1749, he was appointed recorder of Wallingford, in Berkshire, but in 1753 he went to Oxford, where he delivered a course of academic lectures upon the law of England. A few years later, a Mr Viner having left a sum of money to