Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/743

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BUCHU—BUCKETSHOP
  

throwing himself with equal vigour into the great work of historical regeneration which was going on at that period. During 1822 and the succeeding years he travelled about Europe on the search for materials for his Collection des chroniques nationales françaises écrites en langue vulgaire du XIIIᵉ au XVIᵉ siècle (47 vols., 1824–1829). After the revolution of 1830 he founded the Panthéon litteraire, in which he published a Choix d’ouvrages mystiques (1843), a Choix de monuments primitifs de l’église chrétienne (1837), a Choix des historiens grecs (1837), a collection of Chroniques étrangères relatives aux expéditions françaises pendant le XIIIᵉ siècle (1840), and, most important of all, a Choix de chroniques et mémoires sur l’histoire de France (1836–1841). His travels in southern Italy and in the East had put him upon the track of the medieval French settlements in those regions, and to this subject he devoted several important works: Recherches et matériaux pour servir a une histoire de la domination française dans les provinces démembrées de l’empire grec (1840); Nouvelles recherches historiques sur la principauté française de Morée et ses hautes baronnies (2 vols., 1843–1844); Histoire des conquêtes et de l’établissement des Français dans les états de l’ancienne Grèce sous es Villehardouin (1846, unfinished). None of the numerous publications which we owe to Buchon can be described as thoroughly scholarly; but they have been of great service to history, and those concerning the East have in especial the value of original research.


BUCHU, or Buka Leaves, the produce of several shrubby plants belonging to the genus Barosma (nat. order Rutaceae), natives of the Cape of Good Hope. The principal species, B. crenulata, has leaves of a smooth leathery texture, oblong-ovate in shape, from an inch to an inch and a half in length, with serrulate or crenulate margins, on which as well as on the under side are conspicuous oil-glands. The other species which yield buchu are B. serratifolia, having linear-lanceolate sharply serrulate leaves, and B. betulina, the leaves of which are cuneate-obovate, with denticulate margins. They are all, as found in commerce, of a pale yellow-green colour; they emit a peculiar aromatic odour, and have a slightly astringent bitter taste. Buchu leaves contain a volatile oil, which is of a dark yellow colour, and deposits a form of camphor on exposure to air, a liquid hydro-carbon being the solvent of the camphor within the oil-glands. There is also present a minute quantity of a bitter principle. The leaves of a closely allied plant, Empleurum serratulum, are employed as a substitute or adulterant for buchu. As these possess no glands they are a worthless substitute. The British Pharmacopoeia contains an infusion and tincture of buchu. The former may be given in doses of an ounce and the latter in doses of a drachm. The drug has the properties common to all substances that contain a volatile oil. The infusion contains very little of the oil and is of very slight value. Until the advent of the modern synthetic products buchu was valued in diseases of the urinary tract, but its use is now practically obsolete.


BUCK, CARL DARLING (1866–), American philologist, was born on the 2nd of October 1866, at Bucksport, Maine. He graduated at Yale in 1886, was a graduate student there for three years, and studied at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (1887–1889) and in Leipzig (1889–1892). In 1892 he became professor of Sanskrit and Indo-European comparative philology in the University of Chicago; but it is in the narrower field of the Italic dialects that his important work lies, including Der Vocalismus der oskischen Sprache (1892), The Oscan-Umbrian Verb-System (1895), and Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian (1904), as well as an excellent précis of the Italic languages in Johnson’s Universal Cyclopaedia. He collaborated with W. G. Hale (q.v.) in the preparation of A Latin Grammar (1903). Of his contributions to reviews on phonological topics, perhaps the most important is his discussion of “Brugmann’s Law.”


BUCK, DUDLEY (1839–1909), American musical composer, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on the 10th of March 1839, the son of a merchant who gave him every opportunity for cultivating his musical talents; and for four years (1858–1862) he studied at Leipzig, Dresden and Paris. On returning to America he held the position of organist at Hartford, Chicago (1869), and Boston (1871). In 1875 he went to New York to assist Theodore Thomas as conductor of the orchestral concerts, and from 1877 to 1903 was organist at Holy Trinity church. Meanwhile he had become well known as a composer of church music, a number of cantatas (Columbus, 1876; Golden Legend, 1880; Light of Asia, 1885, &c), a grand opera, Serapis, a comic opera, Deseret (1880), a symphonic overture, Marmion, a symphony in E flat, and other orchestral and vocal works. He died on the 6th of October 1909.


BUCK. (1) (From the O. Eng. buc, a he-goat, and bucca, a male deer), the male of several animals, of goats, hares and rabbits, and particularly of the fallow-deer. During the 18th century the word was used of a spirited, reckless young man of fashion, and later, with particular reference to extravagance in dress, of a dandy. (2) (From a root common to Teutonic and Romance languages, cf. the Ger. Bauch, Fr. buée, and Ital. bucata), the bleaching of clothes in lye, also the lye itself, and the clothes to be bleached, so a “buck-basket” means a basket of clothes ready for the wash. (3) Either from an obsolete word meaning “body,” or from the sense of bouncing or jumping, derived from (1), a word now only found in compound words, as “buck-board,” a light four-wheeled vehicle, the primitive form of which has one or more seats on a springy board, joining the front and rear axles and serving both as springs and body; a “buck-wagon” (Dutch, bok-wagen) is a South African cart with a frame projecting over the wheels, used for the transport of heavy loads. (4) (Either from “buck” a he-goat, or from a common Teutonic root, to bend, as seen in the Ger. bücken, and Eng. “bow”), a verb meaning “to leap”; seen especially in the compound “buck-jumper,” a horse which leaps clear off the ground, with feet tucked together and arched back, descending with fore-feet rigid and head down and drawn inwards.


BUCK-BEAN, or Bog-Bean (Menyanthes trifoliata, a member of the Gentian family), a bog-plant with a creeping stem, alternately arranged large leaves each with three leaflets, and spikes of white or pink flowers. The stout stem is bitter and has tonic and febrifuge properties. The plant is widely distributed through the north temperate zone.


BÜCKEBURG, a town of Germany, capital of the principality of Schaumburg-Lippe, pleasantly situated at the foot of the Harrelberg on the river Aue, 6 m. from Minden, on the main railway from Cologne to Berlin. Pop. 6000. It has a palace standing in extensive grounds, a gymnasium, a normal seminary, a library, a synagogue, and three churches, one of which has the appropriate inscription, Religionis non structurae exemplum. The first houses of Bückeburg began to gather round the castle about 1365; and it was not till the 17th century that the town was surrounded with walls, which have given place to a ring of pretty promenades. The poet J. G. von Herder was court preacher here from 1771 to 1776.


BUCKERIDGE, JOHN (c. 1562–1631), English divine, was a son of William Buckeridge, and was educated at the Merchant Taylors school and at St John’s College, Oxford. He became a fellow of his college, and acted as tutor to William Laud, whose opinions were perhaps shaped by him. Leaving Oxford, Buckeridge held several livings, and was highly esteemed by King James I., whose chaplain he became. In 1605 he was elected president of St John’s College, a position which he vacated on being made bishop of Rochester in 1611. He was transferred to the bishopric of Ely in 1628, and died on the 23rd of May 1631. The bishop won some fame as a theologian and a controversialist. Among his intimate friends was Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, whose “Ninety-one Sermons” were published by Laud and Buckeridge in 1629.


BUCKETSHOP, a slang financial term for the office or business of an inferior class of stockbroker, who is not a member of an official exchange and conducts speculative operations for his clients, who deposit a margin or cover. The operations consist, as a rule, of a simple bet or wager between the broker and client, no pretence of an actual purchase or sale being attempted. The term is sometimes, though loosely and wrongfully, applied to