maintained by the evaporation of this volatile substance. This temperature is considerably below the freezing-point of quicksilver. The discovery of this new product of the sugarbeet presents an additional inducement for its cultivation in the United States, an object which the Agricultural Bureau has for some time sought to promote. The climatic conditions most favorable to the growth of this useful plant were considered in a paper read before the Association for the Advancement of Science at Saratoga in September, by Dr. William McMurtrie. The best meteorological conditions are a warm, dry spring, and a temperate, moist summer, followed by a cool, dry au

tumn.

BELGIUM, a kingdom of Europe. Leopold II., King of the Belgians, born April 9, 1835, is the son of King Leopold I., former Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and ascended the throne at his death, December 10, 1865. He was married August 22, 1853, to Marie Henriette, daughter of the late Archduke Joseph of Austria (born August 23, 1836), who has borne him three daughters. The heir apparent to the throne is the brother of the King, Philip, Count of Flanders, born March 24, 1837, lieutenantgeneral in the service of Belgium, who was married, April 26, 1867, to Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (born November 17,

YEAR.

The population of the principal cities on December 31, 1877, was as follows: Brussels, 164,598, and including eight adjacent communities, 380,238; Antwerp, 155,820; Ghent, 129,201; Liége, 118,140; Bruges, 44,950; Malines, 39,776; Verviers, 38,410; Louvain, 34,440; Tournay, 32,180; Courtrai, 26,328; Saint Nicholas, 25,440; Namur, 25,353; Mons, 24,638; Seraing, 24,564; Alost, 21,107.

The movement of population from 1871 to 1877 is shown in the following table:

Total Population en December 31.

1871. 1872.

1878.

1874.

1875.

1876.

Marriages.

1877.

Almost the entire population is connected with the Roman Catholic Church. The number of Protestants is estimated at 15,000; that of Jews at 3,000. The larger portion of both lives in the provinces of Antwerp and Limburg. Of the 5,336,185 inhabitants according to the census of 1876, 2,256,860 spoke French, 2,659,890 Flemish, 340,770 French and Flemish, 38,070 German, 22,700 French and German, 1,790 Flemish and German, 5,490 these three languages, 7,650 foreign languages, and 2,070 were deaf and dumb.

According to the census of 1866 the nativity of the inhabitants was as follows:

Total

Population. 4,729,737 26,435

7,419

5,625

82,021

20,701

8,003

2,892

4,827,833

1876.

1877.

1880....

IMPORTS.

EXPORTS.

General. Special. General. Special,

1,048.9 598.5 966-1 511.8 1,520.8 809-4 1,345.1 638.1 2,240 6 1,288.2 1,988-0 780-6 2,818-8 1,807-1 2,107-6 1,101.8

1,448 5 1,426 2

2,088-4

2,004 2

1,065-8 1,074.8

2,460 4
2,356 6
90.0 90.0 104.6 96.6

The Chambers reassembled in January, and on the 21st the Government introduced a new law on elementary instruction, designed to take the place of the law of 1842. It required every community to establish a school in a proper locality, tuition to be free for poor children. The school-books to be used are to be examined by the school council, and to be approved by the Government. The clerical supervision is to cease. The teachers shall be appointed by the Communal Council, but must be native or naturalized Belgians, and possess a certificate of their ability to teach. The instruction is to comprise morals, reading, writing, arithmetic, object-teaching, the rudiments of the French, Flemish, or German language (according to the locality), geography, Belgian history, drawing, gymnastic exercises, music, and needlework. Article IV. is as follows: "Religious instruction shall be left to the care of the families and of the ministers of the different denominations. A room in the school is to be placed at the disposal of the latter in order to give religious instruction to the school-children before or after schoolhours."

A royal decree was published on February 23d, which ordered that, in the state normal schools for the instruction of elementary schoolteachers, the principles of constitutional and administrative law shall be taught, embracing a history of the political institutions of the country, a knowledge of the Constitution and the laws relating to it, and the elementary school law. This instruction is to be given by a professor specially appointed for that purpose, who shall if possible be a doctor of laws. In April the Minister of Public Instruction appointed a committee of seventeen to prepare a plan for the improvement of the secondary schools.

The discussion on the new elementary school law in the Chamber of Deputies led to violent scenes and severe recriminations. M. Woeste, one of the leaders of the Clerical party, attempted to show that lay teachers were not fit for their work. For this purpose he cited fifteen cases of teachers who had since 1859 been convicted of improper conduct with their pupils. The Minister of Public Instruction in reply stated that only three of this number had come from state normal schools, which, however, had been under clerical supervision; while the remaining twelve had graduated with high honors from episcopal seminaries. Of 5,393 lay teachers in the public schools, fifteen had committed offenses against morality in twenty years. In the same time, however, of 452 clerical teachers, not less than eighteen had committed similar offenses, who indeed had not all been punished, because some had disappeared.

In May the Minister of Finance submitted a bill abolishing the hearth tax introduced by the laws of 1821 and 1822, and increasing the rent, door, and window taxes. The object of the bill was to put an end to numerous election abuses which had occurred under the old order of things.

The bill on primary education was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on June 6th by a vote of 67 to 60, all but two members being present. In the Senate the bill was passed on June 18th by a vote of 33 to 31, after a bitter speech by the President, Prince de Ligne, who is a member of the Left, in which he denounced the law as an unfortunate law and a war measure. Immediately upon the passage of the school law in the Senate, the bishops of Belgium issued a common pastoral letter condemning it. They declared that the school system which the Government wished to introduce was "dangerous in itself, that it promoted infidelity and indifference, and that it is an attack on the faith, the piety, and the religious rights of the Belgian people." No par

ents should therefore send their children to a school subject to the new law, if a Catholic school was in their vicinity. No Catholic should aid in the execution of the new law, should accept a school office, or be a member of the school council.

On June 27th the Minister of Finance presented a financial bill, in which he proposed to tax the cultivation of tobacco, and to increase the import duty on tobacco, as well as the succession and excise duties. The preamble to the bill stated that the proposed augmentations were estimated to yield to the Treasury an additional sum of 7,350,000 francs, whereas the deficit to be covered amounted to 12,000,000 francs. The Government therefore reserved to itself to propose, when expedient, the conversion of the 4 per cent. rentes. The electoral reform bill was passed in the Lower Chamber in the beginning of July by 69 votes to 60. The discussion on the new financial laws was closed on July 22d, after a speech from M. de Kerwyn urging the necessity of affording protection to the agricultural interests of the country. The Minister for Foreign Affairs replied that there was no occasion to revert to a policy of protection, and the bill was then adopted by 60 to 42 votes. A proposition of the Government to convert the 4 per cent. rentes to 4 per cents was adopted the same day in the Chamber and the Senate. On July 21st Prince de Ligne, President of the Senate, resigned, and on August 1st the Chambers were closed. In the beginning of September General Liagre was appointed Minister of War in the place of General Renard, who had died shortly before.

The new school laws were considered in a meeting of the Belgian bishops held in Malines in the middle of August, when it was resolved to refuse absolution to the teachers of normal schools; that the religious instruction given in secular schools was schismatic, and all teachers giving such instruction were to be excommunicated. These resolutions were, however, not fully approved by Cardinal Nina, the Papal Secretary of State, in a note to the Papal Nuncio in Brussels, in which Cardinal Nina ordered that the resolutions should not be communicated to the clergy until they had received the sanction of the Holy See.

The bitter feeling existing between the different parties caused the King to address the people at a festival in Tournay, exhorting them to unity and fraternity, particularly in view of the semi-centennial of national independence to be celebrated in 1880.

BIGELOW, Dr. JACOB, an eminent physician, born in Sudbury, Mass., February 27, 1787, died in Boston, January 10th. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1806, and, having prepared himself for the practice of medicine, opened his office in Boston in 1810, and displayed unusual skill. In 1814 he published a work entitled "Florula Bostoniensis," describing the plants of Boston and its envi

66

rons, enlarged editions of which were published in 1824 and 1840. He enjoyed the friendship of several noted European botanists, with whom he had an extended correspondence relative to botanical studies and discoveries. Between 1817 and 1821 he published in three volumes the "American Medical Botany," a work that commanded marked attention not only in this country, but also in Europe. He edited with notes Sir J. E. Smith's work on botany in 1814, was one of the committee of five selected in 1820 to form the 'American Pharmacopoeia," and is to be credited with the principle of the nomenclature of materia medica afterward adopted by the British colleges, which principle substituted a single for a double word whenever practicable. Mount Auburn Cemetery, the first garden cemetery established in the United States, was founded by him, and became the model after which all others in the country have been made. During a term of twenty years Dr. Bigelow was a physician of the Massachusetts General Hospital, and was Professor of Materia Medica and of Clinical Medicine in Harvard University. From 1816 to 1827 he beld the Rumford Professorship in the same institution, and delivered lectures on the application of science to the useful arts. These lectures were published in a volume entitled "Elements of Technology," which work, enlarged and improved, was republished some years later with the title "The Useful Arts considered in Connection with the Applications of Science " (1849). At various times he published medical essays and treatises, in the production of which he was industrious and prolific without impairing the value of his work by its quantity. "Nature and Disease," a volume published in 1854, contained several of these essays. Notable among his papers was one entitled "A Discourse on Self-Limited Disease," which was delivered as an address before the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1835, and had a marked effect in modifying the practice of physicians. He was during many years the President of that Society, and was also President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retiring from the active practice of his profession some years ago, Dr. Bigelow gave much attention to the subject of education, and especially to the matter of establishing and developing technological schools. In an address "On the Limits of Education," delivered in 1865, before the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he laid especial emphasis on the necessity of students devoting themselves to special technical branches of knowledge, rather than devoting time and strength to sub ects irrelevant to the particular vocations they are to follow.

BLAINE, JAMES GILLESPIE, an American statesman, born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, January 31, 1830, at Indian Hill Farm, the home of his maternal grandfather, Neal Gillespie. His great-grandfather, Colonel

Ephraim Blaine of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was Commissary-General of the Revolutionary army from 1778 till the close of the struggle in 1783. Washington attributed the preservation of his troops from actual starvation during that terrible winter at Valley Forge mainly to the heroic and self-sacrificing efforts of Colonel Blaine. Mr. Blaine's father, born and reared in Carlisle, after an extended tour in Europe, South America, and the West Indies, returned and settled in Washington County about 1818, becoming one of the largest landed proprietors in western Pennsylvania. He took special pains to give his son a thorough intellectual training, but died before he was fully grown. At the age of eleven he was sent to school in Lancaster, Ohio, where he lived in the family of his relative, the Hon. Thomas Ewing, at that time Secretary of the Treasury. He graduated from Washington College in 1847, at the age of seventeen. Specially excelling in mathematics and Latin, he shared the first honor of his class with John O. Hervey, now Superintendent of Public Instruction at Wheeling, West Virginia. His college guardian was his uncle, the Hon. John H. Ewing, then a Representative in Congress from the Washington district of Pennsylvania. After graduating, Mr. Blaine taught for a while in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, wrote for the press, and studied law, but never practiced. He married Harriet Stanwood, a teacher from Massachusetts.

In 1853 he went to Maine, where he edited the "Portland Advertiser" and the "Kennebec Journal." He was chosen a member of the Maine Legislature in 1858, where he served four years, the last two as Speaker of the House. The late Governor Kent of Maine, speaking of Mr. Blaine's record in that State, says: "Almost from the day of his assuming editorial charge of the Kennebec Journal, at the early age of twenty-three, Mr. Blaine sprang into a position of great influence in the politics and policy of Maine. At twenty-five he was a leading power in the councils of the Republican party, so recognized by Fessenden, Hamlin, and the two Morrills, and others then and still prominent in the State. Before he was twenty-nine he was chosen chairman of the Executive Committee of the Republican organization in Maine-a position he has held ever since, and from which he has practically shaped and directed every political campaign in the State, always leading his party to brilliant victory."

In 1862 Mr. Blaine was elected a Representative to the Thirty-eighth Congress, and served on the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads. Reelected to the Thirty-ninth Congress, he served on the Committee on Military Affairs, and the special Committee on the Death of President Lincoln, and as chairman of that on the War Debts of the Loyal States. Reelected to the Fortieth Congress, he served on the Committees on Appropriations and Rules. Though entering very young, Mr.

Blaine always commanded the attention of the House, and before he had been three years a member he ranked with the highest as a debater. At the period of greatest anxiety and depression in the war, he delivered a speech on "The Ability of the American People to suppress the Rebellion," which has been cited for the great attention and commendation it received. While a member of the Post-Office Committee he took an active part in securing the system of postal cars now in general use. Throughout the period of reconstruction he was active and energetic in influencing legislation, and was especially prominent in shaping some of the most important features of the fourteenth amendment, particularly that relating to the basis of representation. The discussions on this great series of questions, in which Mr. Blaine figured largely, are among the most interesting and valuable in the history of the American Congress.

He was reelected to the Forty-first Congress, and made Speaker of the House of Representatives, which position he also held during the Forty-second and Forty-third Congresses. It has been said that no man since Clay's speakership presided with such an absolute knowledge of the rules of the House, or with so great a mastery in the rapid, intelligent, and faithful discharge of business. His knowledge of parliamentary law was instinctive and complete, and his administration of it so fair that both sides of the House united at the close of each Congress in cordial thanks for his impartiality. Even more marked than his career as Speaker was Mr. Blaine's course in the House when he returned to the floor at the close of his speakership. His speeches during the debates on the proposition to remove the political disabilities of Jefferson Davis added greatly to his reputation as an orator and parliamentarian.

In June, 1876, Mr. Blaine was appointed by the Governor of Maine to fill the vacancy in the Senate caused by the resignation of Lot M. Morrill, appointed Secretary of the Treasury. On the meeting of the Legislature in January, 1877, he was promptly chosen not only for the remainder of the unexpired term, but for the full term ending March 4, 1883. In the Senate he has taken a prominent part in every important debate. Always a strong party man, he is now one of the recognized leaders on the Republican side.

Mr. Blaine is a man of good temper, with a certain intellectual vehemence that might sometimes be mistaken for anger, of strong physique, with wonderful powers of endurance and recuperation, and of great activity and industry. To these qualities, added to great personal magnetism and a remarkably tenacious memory, he owes his success in public life. In the recent political troubles in Maine his statesmanlike qualities proved sufficient for the emergency, saved the State from threatened violence, and carried the Republican party to

success.

BOLIVIA (REPÚBLICA DE BOLIVIA). This republic, so rarely the scene of events of interest to the rest of the world, now emerges from obscurity and claims her share of the attention attracted by a war ranking among the most disastrous in its course, and likely to prove one of the most sterile in useful results, that have ever been waged on the Pacific coast of South America. A brief review of Bolivian statistics, and Bolivia's relations with the neighboring states, for some years past, will suffice to throw into conspicuous relief the true origin of the strife.

With an area (assuming the lowest estimate) of rather more than 500,000 square miles, and a population of 2,325,000,* Bolivia is nearly the equal of Peru in both respects, while she is slightly the superior of Chili in the second and four times her superior in the first respect. But in spite of the vastness of her territory, a large proportion of which comprises cultivable lands of unsurpassed fertility, and notwithstanding the richness and variety of her mineral products, she is commercially and industrially the inferior of both. Possessing but a few miles of seaboard, with two small ports accessible only over a narrow strip of desert wedged between her maritime neighbors, her landlocked position condemns her to the fatal necessity of carrying on through Peruvian territory and Peruvian ports the main bulk of her commerce, which thus becomes a tributary of the Peruvian Treasury. In the official returns last published, for 1875, but which are asserted to give figures far below the truth, the imports and exports were set down as of the total value of $5,750,000 respectively, for the most part through Peruvian ports-Arica, etc. The duties on the imports went to the Peruvian custom-houses, and to Bolivia was paid over the sum of $500,000, or little more than one third of the total amount collected, assuming the average rate of duties to have been 25 per cent.! But the official returns, as above suggested, have been pronounced incorrect by some writers, one of whom remarks substantially as follows: The subjoined table, from the "Tableau général du commerce de la France," exhibits the value of the Bolivian, Chilian, and Peruvian trade with the French Republic in 1876: Bolivia....Imports...

Chili..

Peru..

Exports.

$45,956 635

5,523,430

6,492,008

11,906,376 4,094,908

These figures show a striking disproportion between the Chilian and Peruvian imports and those of Bolivia, although the population and the consumption of foreign commodities are nearly equal in the three republics. The cause of the discrepancy is to be found in the fact that Bolivia's purchases from Valparaiso and

For the territorial division, area, population, etc., see "Annual Cyclopædia " for 1872 and 1878.

Tacna, which constitute the great bulk of her foreign supplies, do not figure in the list of her imports. Conversely, the full value of her exports is not represented either, as they are transmitted through Peru and Chili, in payment of the merchandise received through these countries. From 1825 to 1840 the value of the silver purchased annually by the Banco Nacional, which was then very generally supposed to monopolize that metal, was from $2,000,000 to $2,500,000; but large quantities have always been exported secretly, the value of which there is no means of determining. Certain it is, however, that all the silver sent out of the country is in payment of imports. Ever since 1850 the yield of the silver mines has steadily increased, and it is now estimated at an annual value of not less than $10,000,000, exclusive of the product of the Caracoles mines. Gold, too, has at all times been exported on an extensive scale, but secretly. Yet, as nowhere in the republic is gold-mining systematically carried on, and as all the gold brought to market is in the shape of pepitas or nuggets, laid bare by descending torrents in the rainy season and gathered by the Indians, it is probable there has been no progressive increase of quantity, notwithstanding the increased necessities of the Indian population. Another important article of export is copper from the Corocoro mines, which, in spite of greatly reduced prices, continues to be extracted on account of its superior quality. Tin, though very abundant, is now almost wholly neglected. Merchants who have attentively studied this subject are of opinion that the aggregate value of the gold, copper, and tin at present exported is about $5,000,000 a year; which, with $10,000,000 for silver, constitutes an annual value of $15,000,000 for metal exports alone. The various branches of agricultural industry in Bolivia are for the most part limited by the demand for home consumption. The great Yungas valleys of the east, watered by the snow-covered Cordilleras, extending from the giant peak of Illimani to that of Sorata (a distance of some 300 miles), and with a climate no less favorable than that of tropical Brazil, yield coffee and cacao of excellent quality. Indeed, the cacao is said to be superior to that of Guayaquil; and the quina or calisaya-bark of the same region is esteemed for the strength and general superiority of its sulphates. In the absence of necessary data, it would be rash to form an estimate of the quantity exported of these commodities; but it is evidently very much smaller than it might be with improved means of transportation. The sugar-cane is cultivated in the valleys above referred to, and in that of Santa Cruz; but the sugar and molasses manufactured do not exceed the home requirements. Cereals, leguminous plants, and almost every variety of fruits peculiar to the tropical and temperate zones, are abundant and cheap, but, like the products above enumerated, are never sent