flow freely. The effect is to cause a movement of the air in the pipe, with the result that a fresh supply is drawn in through the annular opening at C, C, and a continuous stream of air passes along the pipe. This is the form of blower made by Messrs Meldrum Bros. of Manchester, and is largely used for delivering air under the fire bars of boiler and other furnaces. In some cases the jets of steam are allowed to enter a boiler furnace above the fire, thus inducing a current of air which helps the chimney draught and is often used to do away with the production of smoke; they are also used for producing currents of air for purposes other than those of boiler fires, and are very convenient where considerable quantities of air are wanted at very low pressures and where the presence of the moisture of the steam does not matter.
Sometimes jets of high-pressure air flowing at great velocities are used to induce more slowly-moving currents of larger volumes of air at low pressures. (W. C. P.)
BELLOY, DORMONT DE, the name assumed by Pierre Laurent Buirette (1727–1775), French dramatist, was born at Saint-Flour, in Auvergne, on the 17th of November 1727. He was educated by his uncle, a distinguished advocate in Paris, for the bar. To escape from a profession he disliked he joined a troupe of comedians playing in the courts of the northern sovereigns. In 1758 the performance of his Titus, which had already been produced in St Petersburg, was postponed through his uncle’s exertions; and when it did appear, a hostile cabal procured its failure, and it was not until after his guardian’s death that de Belloy returned to Paris with Zelmire (1762), a fantastic drama which met with great success. This was followed in 1765 by the patriotic play, Le Siège de Calais. The moment was opportune. The humiliations undergone by France in the Seven Years’ War assured a good reception for a play in which the devotion of Frenchmen redeemed disaster. The popular enthusiasm was unaffected by the judgment of calmer critics such as Diderot and Voltaire, who pointed out that the glorification of France was not best effected by a picture of defeat. De Belloy was admitted to the Academy in 1772. His attempt to introduce national subjects into French drama deserves honour, but it must be confessed that his resources proved unequal to the task. The Siège de Calais was followed by Gaston et Bayard (1771), Pedro le cruel (1772) and Gabrielle de Vergy (1777). None of these attained the success of the earlier play, and de Belloy’s death, which took place on the 5th of March 1775, is said to have been hastened by disappointment.
BELL or INCHCAPE ROCK, a sandstone reef in the North Sea, 11 m. S.E. of Arbroath, belonging to Forfarshire, Scotland. It measures 2000 ft. in length, is under water at high tide, but at low tide is exposed for a few feet, the sea for a distance of 100 yds. around being then only three fathoms deep. Lying in the fairway of vessels making or leaving the Tay and Forth, besides ports farther north, it was a constant menace to navigation. In the great gale of 1799 seventy sail, including the “York,” 74 guns, were wrecked off the reef, and this disaster compelled the authorities to take steps to protect shipping. Next year Robert Stevenson modelled a tower and reported that its erection was feasible, but it was only in 1806 that parliamentary powers were obtained, and operations began in August 1807. Though John Rennie had meanwhile been associated with Stevenson as consulting engineer, the structure in design and details is wholly Stevenson’s work. The tower is 100 ft. high; its diameter at the base is 42 ft., decreasing to 15 ft. at the top. It is solid for 30 ft. at which height the doorway is placed. The interior is divided into six storeys. After five years the building was finished at a cost of £61,300. Since the lighting no wrecks have occurred on the reef. A bust of Stevenson by Samuel Joseph (d. 1850) was placed in the tower.
According to tradition an abbot of Aberbrothock (Arbroath) had ordered a bell—whence the name of the rock—to be fastened to the reef in such a way that it should respond to the movements of the waves, and thus always ring out a warning to mariners. This signal was wantonly destroyed by a pirate, whose ship was afterwards wrecked at this very spot, the rover and his men being drowned. Southey made the incident the subject of his ballad of “The Inchcape Rock.”
BELLUNO (anc. Bellunum), a city and episcopal see of Venetia, Italy, the capital of the province of Belluno, N. of Treviso, 54 m. by rail and 28 m. direct. Pop. (1901) town, 6898; commune, 19,050. It is situated in the valley of the Piave, at its confluence with the Ardo, 1285 ft. above sea-level, among the lower Venetian Alps. It was a Roman municipium. In the middle ages it went through various vicissitudes; it fell under the dominion of Venice in 1511, and remained Venetian until 1797. Its buildings present Venetian characteristics; it has some good palaces, notably the fine early Lombard Renaissance Palazzo dei Rettori, now the seat of the prefecture. The cathedral, erected after 1517 by Tullio Lombardo, was much damaged by the earthquake of 1873, which destroyed a considerable portion of the town, though the campanile, 217 ft. high, erected in 1732–1743, stood firm. The façade was never finished. Important remains of prehistoric settlements have been found in the vicinity; cf. G. Ghirardini in Notizie degli Scavi, 1883, 27, on the necropolis of Caverzano. (T. As.)
BELMONT, AUGUST (1816–1890), American banker and financier, was born at Alzei, Rhenish Prussia, on the 8th of December 1816. He entered the banking house of the Rothschilds at Frankfort at the age of fourteen, acted as their agent for a time at Naples, and in 1837 settled in New York as their American representative. He became an American citizen, and married a daughter of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. He was the consul-general of Austria at New York from 1844 to 1850, when he resigned in protest against Austria’s treatment of Hungary. In 1853–1855 he was chargé d’affaires for the United States at the Hague, and from 1855 to 1858 was the American minister resident there. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, actively supporting Stephen A. Douglas for the presidential nomination, and afterwards joining those who withdrew to the convention at Baltimore, Maryland, where he was chosen chairman of the National Democratic Committee. He energetically supported the Union cause during the Civil War, and exerted a strong influence in favour of the North upon the merchants and financiers of England and France. He remained at the head of the Democratic organization until 1872. He died in New York on the 24th of November 1890.
His son, Perry Belmont (1851– ), was born in New York on the 28th of December 1851, graduated at Harvard in 1872 and at the Columbia Law School in 1876, and practised law in New York for five years. He was a Democratic member of Congress from 1881 to 1889, serving in 1885–1887 as chairman of the committee on foreign affairs. In 1889 he was United States minister to Spain.
Another son, August Belmont (1853– ), was born in New York on the 18th of February 1853 and graduated at Harvard in 1875. He succeeded his father as head of the banking house and was prominent in railway finance, and in financing and building the New York subway. In 1904 he was one of the principal supporters of Alton B. Parker for the Democratic presidential nomination, and served as chairman of the finance committee of the Democratic National Committee.
A volume entitled Letters, Speeches and Addresses of August Belmont (the elder) was published at New York in 1890.
BELOIT, a city of Rock county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., situated on the S. boundary of the state, on Rock river, about 91 m. N.W. of Chicago and about 85 m. S.W. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890) 6315; (1900) 10,436, of whom 1468 were foreign-born; (1910) 15,125. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by an inter-urban electric railway to Janesville, Wisconsin and Rockford, Illinois. Beloit is attractively situated on high bluffs on both sides of the river. The city is the seat of Beloit College, a co-educational, non-sectarian institution, founded under the auspices of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in 1847, and having, in 1907–1908, 36 instructors and 430 students. It has classical, philosophical (1874) and scientific (1892) courses;
