Chapter IV: ECAUDATA (22).--Frogs and toads. Four limbs and no tail. Radius (9)

_Cultivation of Field-bean._--Several varieties of _Vicia Faba_ (e.g. the horse bean, the mazagan, the tick bean, the winter bean) are cultivated in the field for the sake both of the grain, which is used as food for live-stock, and of the haulm, which serves for either fodder or litter. They are best adapted for heavy soils such as clays or clayey loams. The time for sowing is from the end of January to the beginning of March, or in the case of winter beans from the end of September to the middle of November. The bean-crop is usually interposed between two crops of wheat or some other cereal. If spring beans are to be sown, the land after harvest is dressed with farmyard manure, which is then ploughed in. In January the soil is levelled with the harrows, and the seed, which should be hard and light brown in colour, is drilled in rows from 15 to 24 in. apart at the rate of from 2 to 2-1/2 bushels to the acre and then harrowed in. The alternative is to "dibble" the seed in the furrow left by the autumn ploughing and cover it in with the harrows; or the land may be ridged with the double-breasted plough, manure deposited in the furrows and the seed sown broadcast, the ridges being then split back so as to cover both manure and seed. After the plant shows, horse-hoeing and hand-hoeing between the rows is carried on so long as the plant is small enough to suffer no injury therefrom. The routine of cultivation for winter beans hardly differs from that described except as regards the time of sowing.

Beans are cut when the leaf is fallen and the haulm is almost black either with the fagging hook or the reaping machine, though the stoutness of the stalks causes a severe strain on the latter implement. They are tied and stocked, and are so left for a considerable time before stacking. There is less fear of injury to the crop through damp than in the case of other cereals. Their value for feeding purposes increases in the stack, where they may remain for a year or more before threshing. Pea and bean weevils, both striped (_Sitones lineatus_) and spotted (_Sitones crinitus_), and the bean aphis (_Aphis rumicis_), are noted pests of the crop. Winter beans come to maturity earlier than the spring-sown varieties, and are therefore strong enough to resist the attacks of the aphis by the end of June, when it begins its ravages. Field-beans yield from 25 to 35 bushels to the acre.

_Phascolus vulgaris_, the kidney, French or haricot bean, an annual, dwarf and bushy in growth, is widely cultivated in temperate, sub-tropical and tropical regions, but is nowhere known as a wild plant. It was long supposed to be of Indian origin, an idea which was disproved by Alphonse de Candolle, who sums up the facts bearing on its origin as follows:--_Phaseolus vulgaris_ has not been long cultivated in India, the south-west of Asia and Egypt, and it is not certain that it was known in Europe before the discovery of America. At the latter epoch the number of varieties in European gardens suddenly increased, and all authors began to mention them. The majority of the species of the genus exist in South America, and seeds apparently belonging to the species in question have been found in Peruvian tombs of an uncertain date, intermixed with many species, all American. Hence it is probable that the plant is of South American origin.

It is a tender annual, and should be grown in a rich light loamy soil and a warm sheltered situation. The soil should be well enriched with hot-bed dung. The earliest crop may be sown by the end of March or beginning of April. If, however, the temperature of the soil is below 45 deg., the beans make but little progress. The main crops should be got in early in May; and a later sowing may be made early in July. The earlier plantings may be sown in small pots, and put in frames or houses, until they can be safely planted out-of-doors. A light covering of straw or some other simple shelter suffices to protect from late frosts. The seeds should be covered 1-1/2 or 2 in. deep, the distance between the rows being about 2 ft., or for the dwarfest sorts 18 in., and that between plants from 4 to 6 in. The pods may be used as a green vegetable, in which case they should be gathered whilst they are so crisp as to be readily snapped in two when bent; but when the dry seeds are to be used the pods should be allowed to ripen. As the green pods are gathered others will continue to be formed in abundance, but if old seed-forming pods are allowed to remain the formation of young ones will be greatly checked. There are numerous varieties; among the best are Canadian Wonder, Canterbury and Black Negro.

_Phaseolus multiflorus_, scarlet runner, is nearly allied to _P. vulgaris_, of which it is sometimes regarded as a variety, but differs in its climbing habit. It is naturally perennial and has a thick fleshy root, but is grown in Great Britain as a tender annual. Its bright, generally scarlet flowers, arranged in long racemes, and the fact that it will flourish in any ordinary good garden soil, combine to make it a favourite garden plant. It is also of interest as being one of the few plants that twine in a direction contrary to the apparent motion of the sun. The seeds of the runner beans should be sown in an open plot,--the first sowing in May, another at the beginning of June, and a third about the middle of June. In the London market-gardens they are sown 8 to 12 in. apart, in 4 ft. rows if the soil is good. The twining tops are pinched or cut off when the plants are from 2 to 2-1/2 ft. high, to save the expense of staking. It is better, however, in private gardens to have the rows standing separately, and to support the plants by stakes 6 or 7 ft. high and about a foot apart, the tops of the stakes being crossed about one-third down. If the weather is dry when the pods are forming abundantly, plenty of tepid water should be supplied to the plants. In training the shoots to their supports, they should be twined from right to left, contrary to the course of the sun, or they will not lay hold. By frequently picking the pods the plants are encouraged to form fresh blooms from which pods may be picked until the approach of frost.

The ordinary scarlet runner is most commonly grown, but there is a white-flowered variety which has also white seeds; this is very prolific and of excellent quality. Another variety called Painted Lady, with the flowers red and white, is very ornamental, but not so productive. Carter's Champion is a large-podded productive variety.

Another species _P. lunatus_, the Lima bean, a tall biennial with a scimitar-shaped pod (whence the specific name) 2 to 3 in. long containing a few large seeds, is widely cultivated in the warmer parts of the world.

The young pods of another leguminous climbing herb, _Dolichos Lablab_, as well as the seeds, are widely used in the tropics, as we use the kidney bean. The plant is probably a native of tropical Africa, but is now generally cultivated in the tropics. The word _Dolichos_ is of Greek origin, and was used by Theophrastus for the scarlet runner.

Another species, _D. biflorus_, is the horse gram, the seed of which is eaten by the poorer class of natives in India, and is also, as are the pods, a food for horses and cattle.

The Soy bean, _Glycine hispida_, was included by Linnaeus in the genus _Dolichos_. It is extensively cultivated in China and Japan, chiefly for the pleasant-flavoured seed from which is prepared a piquant sauce. It is also widely grown in India, where the bean is eaten, while the plant forms a valuable fodder; it is cultivated for the latter purpose in the United States.

Other references to beans will be found under special headings, such as CALABAR BEAN, LOCUST-TREE. There are also several non-leguminous seeds to which the popular name bean is attached. Among these may be mentioned the sacred Egyptian or Pythagorean bean (_Nelumbium speciosum_), and the Ignatius bean (probably _Strychnos multiflora_), a source of strychnine.

The ancient Greeks and Romans made use of beans in gathering the votes of the people, and for the election of magistrates. A white bean signified absolution, and a black one condemnation. Beans had a mysterious use in the _lemuralia_ and _parentalia_, where the master of the family, after washing his hands three times, threw black beans over his head nine times, reiterating the words "I redeem myself and my family by these beans."

BEAN-FEAST, primarily an annual dinner given by an employer to his workpeople, and then colloquially any jollification. The phrase is variously derived. The most probable theory is that which connects it with the custom in France, and afterwards in Germany and England, of a feast on Twelfth Night, at which a cake with a bean buried in it was a great feature. The bean-king was he who had the good fortune to have the slice of cake in which was the bean. This choosing of a king or queen by a bean was formerly a common Christmas diversion at the English and Scottish courts, and in both English universities. This monarch was master of the revels like his congener the lord of misrule. A clue to his original functions is possibly found in the old popular belief that the weather for the ensuing twelve months was determined by the weather of the twelve days from Christmas to Twelfth Night, the weather of each particular month being prognosticated from each day. Thus the king of the bean of Twelfth Night may have originally reigned for the twelve days, his chief duty being the performance of magical ceremonies for ensuring good weather during the ensuing twelve months. Probably in him and the lord of misrule it is correct to find the lineal descendant of the old king of the Saturnalia, the real man who personated Saturn and, when the revels ceased, suffered a real death in his assumed character. Another but most improbable derivation for bean-feast connects it with M.E. _bene_ "prayer," "request," the allusion being to the soliciting of alms towards the cost of their Twelfth Night dinner by the workpeople.

See WAYZGOOSE; MISRULE, LORD OF; also J. Boemus, _Mores, leges et
ritus omnium gentium_ (Lyons, 1541), p. 222; Laisnel de la Salle,
_Croyances et legendes du centre de la France_, i. 19-29; Lecoeur,
_Esquisses du Bocage normand_, ii. 125; Schmitz, _Sitten und Sagen des
Eifler Volkes_, i. 6; Brand, _Popular Antiquities of Great Britain_
(Hazlitt's edit. 1905), under "Twelfth Night"; Cortet, _Fetes
religieuses_, p. 29 sqq.

BEAR, properly the name of the European brown bear (_Ursus arctus_), but extended to include all the members of the _Ursidae_, the typical family of Arctoid carnivora, distinguished by their massive bodies, short limbs, and almost rudimentary tails. With the single exception of the Indian sloth-bear, all the species have forty-two teeth, of which the incisors and canines closely resemble those of purely carnivorous mammals; while the molars, and especially the one known as the "sectorial" or "carnassial," have their surfaces tuberculated so as to adapt them for grinding vegetable substances. As might have been supposed from their dentition, the bears are omnivorous; but most prefer vegetable food, including honey, when a sufficient supply of this can be had. The grizzly bear, however, is chiefly carnivorous; while the polar bear is almost wholly so.

Bears are five-toed, and provided with formidable claws, which are not retractile, and thus better fitted for digging and climbing than for tearing. Most climb trees in a slow, lumbering fashion, and, in descending, always come hind-quarters first. The grizzly bear is said to lose this power of climbing in the adult stage. In northern countries bears retire during the winter into caves and the hollows of trees, or allow the falling snow to cover them, and there remain dormant till the advent of spring, about which time the female usually produces her young. These are born naked and blind, and it is commonly five weeks before they see, or become covered with hair. Before hibernating the adults grow very fat, and it is by the gradual consumption of this fat--known in commerce as bear's grease--that such vital action as is necessary to the continuance of life is sustained.

The bear family is widely distributed, being found in every quarter of the globe except Australia, and in all climates, from the highest northern latitudes yet reached by man to the warm regions of India and Malaya. In the north-west corner of Africa the single representative of the family found on that continent occurs.

The polar or white bear (_Ursus maritimus_), common to the Arctic regions of both hemispheres, is distinguished from the other species by having the soles of the feet covered with close-set hairs,--in adaptation to the wants of the creature, the bear being thereby enabled to walk securely on slippery ice. In the whiteness of its fur also, it shows such an assimilation in colour to that of surrounding nature as must be of considerable service in concealing it from its prey. The food of the white bear consists chiefly of seals and fish, in pursuit of which it shows great power of swimming and diving, and a considerable degree of sagacity; but its food also includes the carcases of whales, birds and their eggs, and grass and berries when these can be had. That it can sustain life on a purely vegetable diet is proved by instances on record of its being fed for years on bread only, in confinement. These bears are strong swimmers, Sir Edward Sabine having found one "swimming powerfully 40 m. from the nearest shore, and with no ice in sight to afford it rest." They are often carried on floating ice to great distances, and to more southern latitudes than their own, no fewer than twelve Polar bears having been known to reach Iceland in this way during one winter. The female always hibernates, but the male may be seen abroad at all seasons. In bulk the white bear exceeds most other members of the family, measuring nearly 9 ft. in length, and often weighing 1600 lb.

Land bears have the soles of the feet destitute of hair, and their fur more or less shaggy. On these the brown bear (_Ursus arctus_,--[Greek: arktos] of Aristotle) is found in one or other of its varieties all over the temperate and north temperate regions of the eastern hemisphere, from Spain to Japan. The fur is usually brownish, but there are black, blackish-grey and yellowish varieties. It is a solitary animal, frequenting the wooded parts of the regions it inhabits, and living on a mixed diet of fruits, vegetable, honey, fish and the smaller animals. In winter it hibernates, concealing itself in some hollow or cavern. It does not seek to attack man; but when baited, or in defence of its young, shows great courage and strength, rising on its hind legs and endeavouring to grasp its antagonist in an embrace. Bear-baiting, till within comparatively recent times, was a favourite sport throughout Europe, but, along with cock-fighting and badger-baiting, has gradually disappeared before a more humane civilization. It was a favourite pastime among the Romans, who imported their bears from Britain, a proof that the animal was then comparatively abundant in that country; indeed, from reference made to it in early Scottish history, the bear does not appear to have been extirpated in Britain before the end of the 11th century. It is now found in greatest abundance in Norway, Russia and Siberia, where hunting the bear is a favourite sport, and where, when dead, its remains are highly valued. Among the Kamchadales "the skin of the bear," says a traveller, "forms their beds and their coverlets, bonnets for their heads, gloves for their hands and collars for their dogs. The flesh and fat are their dainties. Of the intestines they make masks or covers for their faces, to protect them from the glare of the sun in the spring, and use them as a substitute for glass, by extending them over their windows. Even the shoulder-blades are said to be put in requisition for cutting grass." In confinement the brown bear is readily tamed; and advantage has been taken of the facility with which it can sustain itself on the hind feet to teach it to dance to the sound of music. It measures 4 ft. in length, and is about 2-1/2 ft. high. Of this species Crowther's bear from the Atlas Mountains, the Syrian bear (_Ursus arctus pyriacus_) and the snow or isabelline bear (_Ursus arctus isabellinus_) of the Himalaya are local races, or at most subspecies.[1] American naturalists regard the big brown bears of Alaska as a distinct group. They range from Sitka to the extremity of the Alaskan Peninsula, over Kodiak Island, and inland. Their distinctive external features are their large size, light-brown colour, high shoulders, massive heads of great breadth and shaggy coat.

The grizzly bear (_Ursus arctus horribilis_, formerly known as _U. ferox_) is regarded by some naturalists as a distinct species and by others as a variety of the brown bear, to which it is closely allied. It was said to exceed all other American mammals in ferocity of disposition and muscular strength. Stories were told of its attacking the bison, and it has been reported to carry off the carcase of a wapiti, weighing nearly 1000 lb., for a considerable distance to its den, there to devour it at leisure. It also eats fruit and vegetables. Its fur is usually of a yellowish-brown colour, coarse and grizzled, and of little value commercially, while its flesh, unlike that of other bears, is uneatable even by the Indians. The grizzly bear is now rare in the United States, save in the Yellowstone Park and the Clearwater Mountains of Idaho, though more common in British Columbia. Several geographical races are recognized. The Tibet bear (_U. pruinosus_) is a light-coloured small species.

The American black bear (_Ursus americanus_) occurs throughout the wooded parts of the North American continent, whence it is being gradually driven to make room for man. It is similar in size to the brown bear, but its fur is of a soft even texture, and of a shining black colour, to which it owes its commercial value. At the beginning of the 19th century black bears were killed in enormous numbers for their furs, which at that time were highly valued. In 1803 the skins imported into England numbered 25,000, but the imports have since decreased to one-half of that number. They are chiefly used for military accoutrements. This is a timid animal, feeding almost solely on fruits, and lying dormant during winter, at which period it is most frequently killed. It is an object of superstitious reverence to the Indians, who never kill it without apologizing and deploring the necessity which impels them to do so.

The Himalayan black bear (_U. torquatus_) is found in the forest regions ranging from the Persian frontier eastward to Assam. The average length is about 5 ft.; there is no under-fur, and the coat is smooth, black in colour, with the exception of a white horseshoe-mark on the chest. It feeds chiefly on fruit and roots, but kills sheep, goats, deer, ponies and cattle, and sometimes devours carrion.

The small bruang or Malayan bear (_Ursus malayanus_) is of a jet-black colour, with a white semilunar mark on the chest, and attains a length of 4-1/2 ft. Its food consists almost solely of vegetables and honey, but the latter is its favourite food,--the extreme length and pliability of the tongue enabling it to scoop out the honeycombs from the hollows of trees. It is found in the Malay Peninsula and Islands, and is readily tamed.

Not much larger than the Malay bear is the South American spectacled bear of the Andes (_U. ornatus_), distinguished from all the rest by the presence of a perforation in the lower end of the humerus, and hence sometimes separated as _Tremarctus_. It is black, with tawny rings round the eyes, and white cheeks, throat and chest. A second race or species exists.

The sloth-bear (_Melursus labiatus_ or _ursinus_) is distinguished by the absence of one pair of upper incisors, the small size of the cheek-teeth and the very extensile character of the lips. It is also known as the aswail and the honey-bear, the last name being also given to the Malay bear and the kinkajou. It is about the size of the brown bear, is covered with long, black hair, and of extremely uncouth aspect. It inhabits the mountainous regions of India, is readily tamed and is the bear usually exhibited by the Hindu jugglers. The food consists of fruits, honey and white ants.

Fossil remains of extinct bears first occur in strata of the Pliocene age. Those of the great cave bear (_Ursus spelaeus_), found abundantly in certain caverns of central Europe and Asia, show that it must have exceeded in size the polar bear of the present day. Its remains are also found in similar situations in Britain associated with those of an allied species (_Ursus priscus_).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Lydekker, in _Proc. Zool. Soc._, 1897, p. 412.

BEAR-BAITING and BULL-BAITING, sports formerly very popular in England but now suppressed on account of their cruelty. They took place in arenas built in the form of theatres which were the common resort even of cultivated people. In the bear-gardens, which are known to have existed since the time of Henry II., the bear was chained to a stake by one hind leg or by the neck and worried by dogs. Erasmus, writing (about 1500) from the house of Sir Thomas More, spoke of "many herds of bears maintained in the country for the purpose of baiting." Sunday was the favourite day for these sports. Hentzner, writing in 1598, describes the bear-garden at Bankside as "another place, built in the form of a theatre, which serves for the baiting of Bulls and Bears. They are fastened behind, and then worried by great English bull-dogs, but not without great risk to the dogs from the horns of the one and the teeth of the other, and it sometimes happens they are killed upon the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired." He also describes the whipping of a blinded bear, a favourite variation of bear-baiting. For a famous baiting which took place before Queen Elizabeth in 1575 thirteen bears were provided. Of it Robert Laneham (fl. 1575) wrote, "it was a sport very pleasant to see, to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his enemies' approach; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid his assaults: if he were bitten in one place how he would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then by what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he would work and wind himself from them; and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy." The famous "Paris Garden" in Southwark was the chief bear-garden in London. A Spanish nobleman of the time, who was taken to see a pony baited that had an ape tied to its back, expressed himself to the effect that "to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with the screaming of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable." Butler describes a bear-baiting at length in the first canto of his _Hudibras_.

The Puritans endeavoured to put an end to animal-baiting, although Macaulay sarcastically suggested that this was "not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators." The efforts of the Puritans seem, however, to have had little effect, for we find the sport flourishing at the Restoration; but the conscience of cultivated people seems to have been touched, for Evelyn wrote in his _Diary_, under the date of June 16th, 1670: "I went with some friends to the bear-garden, where was cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bear and bull baiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties. The bulls did exceedingly well, but the Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady's lap, as she sat in one of the boxes at a considerable height from the arena. Two poor dogs were killed, and so all ended with the ape on horseback, and I most heartily weary of the rude and dirty pastime, which I had not seen, I think, in twenty years before." Steele also attacked these cruel sports in the _Tatler_. Nevertheless, when the tsar Nicholas I. visited England as cesarevich, he was taken to see a prize-fight and a bull-baiting. In this latter form of the sport the bull's nose was usually blown full of pepper to render him the more furious. The bull was often allowed a hole in the ground, into which to thrust his nose and lips, his most vulnerable parts. Sometimes the bull was tethered, and dogs, trained for the purpose, set upon him one by one, a successful attack resulting in the dog fastening his teeth firmly in the bull's snout. This was called "pinning the bull." A sport called bull-running was popular in several towns of England, particularly at Tutbury and Stamford. Its establishment at Tutbury was due to John of Gaunt, to whose minstrels, on the occasion of their annual festival on August 16th the prior of Tutbury, for his tenure, delivered a bull, which had his horns sawn off, his ears and tail cut off, his nostrils filled with pepper and his whole body smeared with soap. The minstrels gave chase to the bull, which became the property of any minstrel of the county of Stafford who succeeded in holding him long enough to cut off a lock of his hair. Otherwise he was returned to the prior. At the dissolution of the monasteries this tenure devolved upon the dukes of Devonshire, who suppressed it in 1788. At Stamford the running took place annually on November 13th, the bull being provided by the butchers of the town, the townspeople taking part in the chase, which was carried on until both people and beast were exhausted, and ended in the killing of the bull. Certain rules were strictly observed, such as the prohibition of carrying sticks or staves that were shod with iron. The Stamford bull-running survived well into the 19th century. Bear-baiting and bull-baiting were prohibited by act of parliament in 1835.

BEARD, WILLIAM HOLBROOK (1825-1900), American painter, was born on the 13th of April 1825 at Painesville, Ohio. He studied abroad, and in 1861 removed to New York City, where in 1862 he became a member of the National Academy of Design. He was a prolific worker and a man of much inventiveness and originality, though of modest artistic endowment. His humorous treatment of cats, dogs, horses and monkeys, generally with some human occupation and expression, usually satirical, gave him a great vogue at one time, and his pictures were largely reproduced. His brother, James Henry Beard (1814-1893), was also a painter.

BEARD (A.S. _beard_, O.H. and Mod. Ger. _Bart_, Dan. _baard_, Icel. _bar_, rim, edge, beak of a ship, &c., O. Slav, _barda_, Russ. _baroda_. Cf. Welsh _barf_, Lat. _barba_, though, according to the _New English Dictionary_, the connexion is for phonetic reasons doubtful). Modern usage applies this word to the hair grown upon a man's chin and cheek. When the chin is shaven, what remains upon the cheeks is called whiskers. "Moustache" or "moustaches" describes the hair upon the upper lip. But the words have in the past had less exact meaning. Beard has stood alone for all these things, and whisker has in its time signified what we now call moustache, as in the case of Robinson Crusoe's great pair of "Turkish whiskers."

The bearded races of mankind have ever held the beard in high honour. It is the sign of full manhood; the lad or the eunuch is beardless, and the bearded woman is reckoned a witch, a loathsome thing to all ages. Also the beard shrinks from the profane hand; a tug at the beard is sudden pain and dishonour. The Roman senator sat like a carven thing until the wondering Goth touched his long beard; but then he struck, although he died for the blow. The future King John gave deadly offence to the native chieftains, when visiting Ireland in 1185, by plucking at their flowing beards.

David's ambassadors had their beards despitefully shaven by a bold heathen. Their own king mercifully covered their shame--"Tarry ye at Jericho until your beards be grown"--but war answered the insult. The oath on the beard is as old as history, and we have an echo of it in the first English political ballad when Sir Simon de Montfort swears "by his chin" revenge on Warenne.

Adam, our first father, was by tradition created with a beard: Zeus Allfather is bearded, and the old painters and carvers who hardily pictured the first person of the Trinity gave Him the long beard of his fatherhood. The race-fathers have it and the ancient heroes. Abraham and Agamemnon, Woden and King Arthur and Charlemagne, must all be bearded in our pictures. With the Mahommedan peoples the beard as worn by an unshaven prophet has ever been in high renown, the more so that amongst most of the conquering tribes who first acknowledged the unity of God and prophethood of Mahomet it grows freely. But before Mahomet's day, kings of Persia had plaited their sacred beards with golden thread, and the lords of Nineveh had curiously curled and oiled beards such as their winged bull wears. Bohadin tells us that Saladin's little son wept for terror when he saw the crusaders' envoys "with their clean-shaven chins." Selim I. (1512-1521) comes down as a Turkish sultan who broke into holy custom and cut off his beard, telling a remonstrating Mufti that his vizier should now have nothing to lead him by. But such tampering with tradition has its dangers, and the absolute rule of Peter the Great is made clear when we know that he taxed Russian beards and shaved his own, and yet died in his bed. Alexander the Great did as much and more with his well-drilled Macedonians, and was obeyed when he bade them shave off the handle by which an enemy could seize them.

With other traditions of their feudal age, the Japanese nation has broken with its ancient custom of the razor, and their emperor has beard and moustache; a short moustache is common amongst Japanese officers and statesmen, and generals and admirals of Nippon follow the imperial example. The Nearer East also is abandoning the full beard, even in Mahommedan lands. Earlier shahs of the Kajar house have glorious beards below their girdles, but Nasiru'd-Din and his successor have shaved their chins. In later years the sultan of Turkey has added a beard to his moustache; the khedive of Egypt, son of a bearded father, has a soldier's moustache only. In Europe the great Russian people is faithful to the beard, Peter's law being forgotten. The tsar Alexander III.'s beard might have satisfied Ivan the Terrible, whose hands played delightedly with the five-foot beard of Queen Elizabeth's agent George Killingworth. Indeed the royal houses of Europe are for the most part bearded or whiskered. It may be that the race of Olivier le Dain, of the man who can be trusted with a sharp razor near a crowned king's throat, is extinct. Leopold II., king of the Belgians, however, was in 1909 the only sovereign with the full beard unclipped. The Austrian emperor, Francis Joseph, retained the moustache and whiskers of the 'sixties, and the German emperor, William II., for a short period, commemorated by a few very rare photographs, had a beard, although it was never suffered to reach the length of that beard which gave his father an air of Charlemagne or Barbarossa. In France bearded presidents have followed each other, but it may be noted that the waxed moustache and "imperial" beard of the Second Empire is now all but abandoned to the Frenchman of English comedy. The modern English fashion of shaving clean is rare in France save among actors, and during 1907 many Parisian waiters struck against the rule which forbade them to grow the moustache.

For the most part the clergy of the Roman obedience shave clean, as have done the popes for two centuries and more. But missionary bishops cultivate the long beard with some pride, and the orders have varying customs, the Dominican shaving and the Franciscan allowing the hair to grow. The Roman Catholic clergy of Dalmatia, secular and regular, are allowed to wear the moustache without beard or whiskers, as a concession to national prejudices.

Amongst English people, always ready to be swayed by fashion, the hair of the face has been, age by age, cherished or shaved away, curled or clipped into a hundred devices. Before the immigration from Sleswick the Briton knew the use of the razor, sometimes shaving his chin, but leaving the moustaches long. The old English also wore moustaches and forked beards, but, save for aged men, the beard had passed out of fashion before the Norman Conquest. Thus, in the Bayeux needlework, Edward the king is venerable with a long beard, but Harold and his younger fighting men have their chins reaped. "The English," says William of Malmesbury, "leave the upper lip unshaven, suffering the hair continually to increase," and to Harold's spies the Conqueror's knights, who had "the whole face with both lips shaven," were strange and priest-like. Matthew Paris had a strange idea that the beard was distinctive of Englishmen; he asserts that those who remained in England were compelled to shave their beards, while the native nobles who went into exile kept their beards and flowing locks "like the Easterns and especially the Trojans." He even believed that "William with the beard," who headed a rising in London under Richard I., came of a stock which had scorned to shave, out of hatred for the Normans, a statement which Thierry developed.

The _Chanson de Roland_ shows us "the pride of France" as "that good bearded folk," with their beards hanging over coats of mail, and it makes the great emperor swear to Naimes by his beard. It was only about the year 1000, according to Rodolf Glaber, that men began in the north of France to wear short hair and shave "like actors"; and even in the Bayeux tapestry the old Norman shipwrights wear the beard. But so rare was hair on the face amongst the Norman invaders that William, the forefather of the Percys, was known in his lifetime and remembered after his death as William "Asgernuns" or "Oht les gernuns," i.e. "William with the moustaches," the epithet revived by one of his descendants making our modern name of Algernon. Count Eustace of Boulogne was similarly distinguished. Fashion swung about after the Conquest, and, in the day of Henry I., Serle the bishop could compare bearded men of the Norman-English court with "filthy goats and bristly Saracens." The crusades, perhaps, were accountable for the beards which were oddly denounced as effeminate in the young courtiers of William Rufus. Not only the Greeks but the Latins in the East sometimes adopted the Saracen fashion, and the siege of Antioch (1098) was as unfavourable to the use of the razor as that of Sevastopol. When the Latins stormed the town by night, bearded knights owed their death to the assumption that every Christian would be a shaven man. But for more than four centuries diversity is allowed, beards, moustaches and shaven faces being found side by side, although now and again one fashion or another comes uppermost to be followed by those nice in such matters. Henry II. is a close-shaven king, and Richard II.'s effigy shows but a little tuft on each side of the chin, tufts which are two curled locks on the chin of Henry IV. But Henry III. is long-bearded, Edward II. curls his beard in three great ringlets, and the third Edward's long forked beard flows down his breast in patriarchal style. The mid-13th century, as seen in the drawings attributed to Matthew Paris, is an age of many full and curled beards, although the region about the lips is sometimes clipped or shaved. The beard is common in the 14th century, the forked pattern being favoured and the long drooping moustache. Amongst those who ride with him to Canterbury, Chaucer, a bearded poet, notes the merchant's "forked beard," the white beard of the franklin and the red beard of the miller, but the reeve's beard is "shave as ny as ever he can." Henry of Monmouth and his son are shaven, and thereafter beards are rare save with a few old folk until they come slowly back with the 16th century. In Ireland the statute enacted by a parliament at Trim in 1447 recited that no manner of man who will be taken for an Englishman should have beard above his mouth--the upper lip must be shaven at least every fortnight or be of equal growth with the nether lip,--and this statute remained unrepealed for nigh upon two hundred years. Henry VIII., always a law to himself, brought back the beard to favour, Stowe's annals giving 1535 as the year in which he caused his beard "to be knotted and no more shaven," his hair being polled at the same time. Many portraits give his fashion of wearing a thin moustache, whose ends met a short and squarely trimmed beard parted at the chin, a fashion in which he was followed by his brother-in-law Charles Brandon. But it is remarkable that those about him rarely imitated their most dread sovereign. While Cromwell and Howard the Admiral go clean shaven, the Seymour brothers, Denny and Russell, have the beard long and flowing. Even the forty shilling a year man, says Hooper in 1548, will waste his morning time while he sets his beard in order. About this time the clergy began to break with the long tradition of smooth faces. A priest in 1531 is commanded to abstain from wearing a beard, and Cardinal Pole, coming from the court of a bearded pope, appears bearded like a Greek patriarch. The law too, the church's kinswoman, begins to forbid, a sign of the change, and from 1542 the society of Lincoln's Inn makes rules for fining and expelling those who appear bearded at their mess, rules which the example of exalted lawyers caused to be withdrawn in 1560.

The age of Elizabeth saw lawyers, soldiers, courtiers and merchants all bearded. Her Cecils, Greshams, Raleighs, Drakes, Dudleys and Walsinghams have the beard. A shaven chin such as that seen in the portrait of Philip Howard, earl of Arundel, is rare, but the beards take a hundred fashions, and satirists and Puritan pamphleteers were busy with them and with the men who wasted hours in perfuming or starching them, in dusting them with orris powder, in curling them with irons and quills. Stubbs gives them a place amongst his abuses. "It is a world to consider how their mowchatowes must be preserved or laid out from one cheek to another and turned up like two horns towards the forehead." Of the English variety of beards Harrison has a good word: "beards of which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of Marquess Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, others with a _pique de vant_ (O! fine fashion) or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being grown to be so cunning in this behalf as the tailors. And therefore if a man have a lean and straight face, a Marquess Otto's cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter-like, a long slender beard will make it seem the narrower; if he be weasel-becked, then much hair left on the cheeks will make the owner look big like a bowdled hen, and as grim as a goose, if Cornelis of Chelmersford say true." Nevertheless he adds that "many old men do wear no beards at all." The Elizabethan fashions continued under King James, the beard trimmed to a point being common wear; but under King Charles there is a certain reaction, and the royal style of shaving the cheeks and leaving the moustache whose points sweep upward and the chin beard like a downward flame is followed by most of the gentry. With some the beard disappears altogether or remains a mere fleck below the lip. Archbishop Laud has a cavalier-like chin tuft and upturned moustache, but Abbot his predecessor wore the spade beard, the "cathedral beard" of Randle Holme, seen in all its dignity on the Chigwell brass of Samuel Harsnett, archbishop of York (died 1631), a grim figure with his angry moustache and a long and broad beard, cut square at the bottom.

From the Restoration year the razor comes more into use. Young men shave clean. The restored king curls a few dark hairs of a moustache over each cheek, but his brother James is shaven. With the reign of Queen Anne the country enters the beardless age, and beards, moustaches and whiskers are no more seen. In the 18th century the moustache indicated a soldier from beyond sea. A Jew or a Turk was known by the beard, an appendage loathsome as comic. Matthew Robinson, the second Lord Rokeby, was indeed wearing a beard in 1798, but he was reckoned a madman therefor, and Phillips's _Public Character_ pictures him as "the only peer and perhaps the only gentleman of either Great Britain or Ireland who is thus distinguished." That George III. in his madness should have been left unshaved was a circumstance of his misery that wrung the hearts of all loyal folk. But in the very year of 1798, when Lord Rokeby's image was engraved for the curious, the Worcestershire militia officers quartered near Brighton were copying the Austrian moustache of the foreign troops, and we may note that the hair of the face, which disappeared when wigs came in, began to reappear as wigs went out. Early in the 19th century the bucks began to show a patch of whisker beside the ear, and the soldier's moustache became a common sight. Before Waterloo, guardsmen were complaining that officers of humbler regiments imitated their fashion of the moustache, and by the Waterloo year most young cavalry officers were moustached. The Horse Artillery were the next moustached corps, the rest of the army, already whiskered, following their example in the 'fifties. But for a civilian to grow a moustache was long reckoned a piece of unseemly swagger. Clive Newcome, it will be remembered, wore one until the taunting question whether he was "going in the Guards" shamed him into shaving clean. When in 1840 Mr George Frederick Muntz appeared in parliament with a full beard there were those who felt that this tall Radical had taken his own strange method of insulting English parliamentary institutions. James Ward, R.A. (d. 1859), painter of animals, was another breaker of the unwritten law, defending his beard in a pamphlet of eighteen arguments as a thing pleasing at once to the artist and to his Creator. Freedom in these matters only came when the troops were home from the Crimea, when officers who had grown beards and acquired the taste for tobacco during the long months in the trenches showed their beards and their cigars in Piccadilly. Then came the Volunteer movement, and every man was a soldier, taking a soldier's licence. The dominant fashion was the moustache, worn with long and drooping whiskers. But the "Piccadilly weepers" of the 'sixties were out of the mode for the younger men when the 'eighties began, and by the end of the century whiskers were seen in the army only upon a few veteran officers. The fashion of clean shaving had made some way, the popularity of the shaven actor having a part in this. In 1909 all modes of dealing with the hair of the face might be recognized, but the full beard had become somewhat rare in England and the full whiskers rarer still. The upper class showed an inclination to shave clean, although the army grudgingly recognized a rule which ordered the moustache to be worn. Naval men, by regulation, shaved or wore both beard and moustache, but their beards were always trimmed. Most barristers shaved the lips, although the last judge unable to hear an advocate whose voice a moustache interrupted had left the bench. Clergymen followed the lay fashions as they did under the first Stuart kings, although there was still some prejudice against the moustache as an ornament military and inappropriate. A newspaper of 1857, describing the appearance of Livingstone the missionary at a Mansion House meeting, records that he came wearing a moustache, "braving the prejudices of his countrymen and thus evincing a courage only inferior to that exhibited by him amongst the savages of Central Africa." Even as late as 1884 the _Pall Mall Gazette_ has some surprised comments on the beard of Bishop Ryle, newly consecrated to the see of Liverpool.

The footman, whose full-dress livery is the court dress of a hundred years ago, must show no more than the rudimentary whisker of the early eighteen-hundreds, and butler, coachman and groom come under the same rule. The jockey and the hunt whip are shaven likewise, but the courier has the whiskers and moustache that once marked him as a foreigner in the English milor's service, and the chauffeur, a servant with no tradition behind him, is often moustached.

Lastly, we may speak of the practice of the royal house since England came out of the beardless century. The regent took the new fashion, and sat "in whiskered state," but his brother and successor shaved clean and disliked even the hussar's moustache. The prince consort wore the moustache as a young man, adding whiskers in later years. King Edward VII. wore moustache and trimmed beard, and his heir apparent also followed the fashion of many fellow admirals. (O. Ba.)

BEARDSLEY, AUBREY VINCENT (1872-1898), English artist in black and white, was born at Brighton on the 24th of August 1872. In 1883 his family settled in London, and in the following year he appeared in public as an "infant musical phenomenon," playing at several concerts with his sister. In 1888 he obtained a post in an architect's office, and afterwards one in the Guardian Life and Fire Insurance Company (1889). In 1891, under the advice of Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Puvis de Chavannes, he took up art as a profession. In 1892 he attended the classes at the Westminster School of Art, then under Professor Brown; and from 1893 until his death, at Mentone, on the 16th of March 1898, his work came continually before the public, arousing a storm of criticism and much hostile feeling. Beardsley had an unswerving tendency towards the fantastic of the gloomier and "unwholesome" sort. His treatment of most subjects was revolutionary; he deliberately ignored proportion and perspective, and the "freedom from convention" which he displayed caused his work to be judged with harshness. In certain phases of technique he especially excelled; and his earlier methods of dealing with the single line in conjunction with masses of black are in their way unsurpassed, except in the art of Japan, the country which probably gave his ideas some assistance. He was always an ornamentist, rather than an illustrator; and his work must be judged from that point of view. His frontispiece to _Volpone_ is held by some to be, from this purely technical standpoint, one of the best pen-drawings of the age. His posters for the Avenue theatre and for Mr Fisher Unwin were among the first of the modern cult of that art.

The following are the chief works which are illustrated with drawings
by Beardsley: the _Bon Mot_ Library, _The Pall Mall Budget_, and _The
Studio_ (1893), Sir Thomas Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ (1893-1894),
_Salome_ (1894), _The Yellow Book_ (1894-1895), _The Savoy Magazine_
(1896), _The Rape of the Lock_ (1896).

See also J. Pennell, _The Studio_ (1893); Symons, _Aubrey Beardsley_
(1898); R. Ross, _Volpone_ (1898); H.C. Marillier, _The Early Work of
Aubrey Beardsley_ (1899); Smithers, _Reproductions of Drawings by
Aubrey Beardsley_; John Lane, _The Later Works of Aubrey Beardsley_
(1901); R. Ross, _Aubrey Beardsley_ (1908). (E. F. S.)

BEARDSTOWN, a city of Cass county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the W. part of the state, on the E. bank of the Illinois river, about 111 m. N. of St Louis, Missouri. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South-Western, and the Burlington (Chicago, Burlington & Quincy) railways, and by steamboats plying between it and St. Louis. Pop. (1890) 4226; (1900) 4827 (444 foreign-born); (1910) 6107. The industrial establishments of the city include flour, planing and saw mills, the machine shops (of the St Louis division) of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railway, ice factories, pearl button factories and a shoe factory. The fishing interests are also important. Beardstown was laid out in 1827 and was incorporated as a city in 1896. It was named in honour of Thomas Beard, who settled in the vicinity in 1820. During the Black Hawk War (1832) it was a base of supplies for the Illinois troops. The old court house in which Abraham Lincoln, in 1854, won his famous "Armstrong murder case," is now used for a city hall.

BEARER, strictly "one who carries," a term used in India for a palanquin-bearer, and now especially for a body-servant. The term is also used in connexion with military ambulances, and "bearer" companies formed part of the Royal Army Medical Corps until amalgamated with the field-hospitals to form field-ambulances (1905). In banking and commerce the word is applied to the holder or presenter of a cheque or draft not made payable to a specific person; it has also a technical use, as in printing, of anything that supports pressure in machinery, &c.

BEARINGS. In engineering a "bearing" is that particular kind of support which, besides carrying the load imposed upon it by the shaft associated with it, allows the shaft freedom to revolve. Or, put in another way, a bearing forms with the shaft a pair of elements having one degree of freedom to turn relatively to one another about their common axis. The part of the shaft in the bearing is commonly called the _journal_. The component parts of a small bearing, pillow block, plummer block or pedestal, as it is variously styled, are illustrated in fig. 1, and these parts, put together, are further illustrated in fig. 2 with the shaft added. Corresponding parts are similarly lettered in the two illustrations. The shaft (S) is encircled by the _brasses_ (B1 and B2) made of gun metal, phosphor bronze or other suitable material. The lower brass fits into the main casting (A) in the semicircular seat provided for it, and is prevented from moving endways by the flanges (F, F) and from turning with the shaft by the projections (P, P), which fit into corresponding recesses in the casting (A), one of which is shown at p. After the shaft has been placed in position, the upper brass (B2) and the cap (C) are put on and both are held in place by the bolts (Q1, Q2). The brasses are bedded into the main casting (A) and the cap (C) respectively at the surfaces D, D, D, D. The complete bearing is held to the framework of the machine by bolts (R1, R2) passing through holes (H, H) which are slotted to allow endwise adjustment of the whole bearing in order to facilitate the alignment of the shaft. Oil or other lubricant is introduced through the hole (G), and it passes through the top brass to grooves or oilways cut into the surface of the brass for the purpose of distributing the oil uniformly to the journal.