BAGS BACTERIUM 207 ranee and jealousy of the other monks and of the clergy in general, and hostility created by Bacon's denunciation of their immorality, led to his being accused of studying and prac- tising magic ; and his lectures at Oxford were prohibited and the circulation of his writings confined to the convent. Robert Grosseteste, the bishop of Lincoln, befriended Bacon ; and in 1265, when Clement IV., who had been a cardinal legate in England, was raised to the papacy, he despatched Raymond de Loudun to the Franciscan monk to procure some of his writings. Bacon sent him the Opus Majus, together with two other supplementary works, the Opus Minus and the Opus Tertium. It is not known what reception Clement gave them, but he had scarcely got them in hand when he died, 1268. For ten years thereafter Bacon was allowed to prosecute his studies in peace ; but in 1278 Jerome of Ascoli, superior of the Franciscan order, and afterward pope under the name of Nicholas IV., was appointed legate to the court of France, and was induced to sum- mon Bacon to Paris, where a council of Fran- ciscans condemned his writings and sentenced him to be confined to his cell. He was then in his 64th year, and ten years he passed in confinement. Finally his release was obtained through the influence of prominent persons in England, though some authorities state that he died in prison. Bayle and others reckon 101 of his treatises on various subjects. His chief printed works are : Perspectita (Frank- fort, 1614); Speculum Alchimice (Nurem- berg, 1581) ; De Seeretis Artii et Natura Operibus (Paris, 1542) ; De Retardandis Se- nectutis Accidentibus (Oxford, 1590); and the Opus Majug, edited by Dr. Jebb (Lon- don, 1733), which contains a digest of his writings, and is the principal monument of his fame. Manuscripts of his works exist in the Cottonian, Harleian, Bodleian, and Trinity col- lege libraries. A second manuscript of the Opus Tertium was found in the library at Douay by Victor Cousin, who gave an ac- count of it, with an elaborate criticism of Bacon and his philosophical character in the Journal des savants for 1848. Roger Bacon claims for human reason the right to exercise control over all the doctrines submitted to its approba- tion ; he insists upon the dignity and importance of all the sciences, and establishes experience rather than reasoning as the proper method of research. He fell into many errors on the subject of alchemy and astrology, but his scien- tific genius was wonderful for his time. His writings anticipate (according to some authori- ties) the discovery of the telescope; he was acquainted with the composition of gunpow- der ; and the whole tone of his mind and scope of his thought were two or three centuries in advance of his generation. Bits, or Itaeska, a county in southern Hun- gary, surrounded on three sides by the Danube and Theiss; area, 3,972 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870. 576,149. The county is mostly level, and, with 66 VOL. n. 14 the exception of a few barren tracts, is noted for its great fertility and splendid pastures. It produces wheat of the best quality, wine, tobacco, and fine cattle and horses. The inte- | rior is traversed by the Francis canal, near which Zombor, the capital, is situated. Other important towns are Szabadka or Maria- Theresiopel, on the railroad uniting Zombor with Szegedin, and Neusatz, on the Danube. The population consists chiefly of Magyars, Germans, and Rascians or Serbs. Shortly after the outbreak of the Hungarian revolution in 1848, the county became the principal seat of the Serb rising against the Magyars, and for more than a year witnessed all the horrors of a war of races. After the war it formed with the Banat the Serb waywodeship (Voivodina), but has since been restored to its former status. Bits, a town in the S. W. part of the county, is situated on a small tributary of the Danube ; pop. in 1870, 3,666. i:< s H, Janos. a Hungarian poet, born at Tapolcza, in the county of Zala, May 11, 1763, died in Linz, Upper Austria, May 12, 1845. His first work was A magyarok vitezsege ("The Valor of the Magyars," Pesth, 1785). He cooperated with Kazinczy in editing the Magyar Museum, and with him was implicated in the democratic conspiracy of the abbot Mar- tinovich of 1794, and was sent to prison at the Spielberg, where he was confined about two years. Having marrried the German poetess Gabriele Baumberg and settled in Vienna, he was obliged to leave that city in 1809 for trans- lating Napoleon's proclamation to the Hunga- rians, and took refuge in Paris. He was deliv- ered up to the Austrian authorities after the peace of 1811, and kept under surveillance in Linz. He published his collected poems at Pesth in 1827 and at Buda in 1835. l!UTi:iuni, a minute and exceedingly low vegetable form or monad, liable to appear in any fluid or solid substance containing vitalized matters. It is a mere point of organized matter, highly refractive, spherical in form, and moves with considerable activity. The first forms of living organisms, which M. B6champ called microzymas, have been found in chalk, and are among the smallest living beings that can be seen. They are found also in concentrated alkaline solutions, in all the tissues of organic beings, in various morbid products, in the sugar-producing cells of the liver, in the blood of man and animals, in the liquids of the eggs, larvse, and perfect form of insects, in the sap of plants, and very extensively, if not univer- sally, in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. They act as powerful organic ferments, as vegetable cells, in the transformation of cane sugar and fecula into glucose. They are de- rived from the air, in which the germs are in suspension, and undergo various degrees of development before they begin to act as fer- ments. They undoubtedly play a very impor- tant part in both healthy and morbid processes ; they assist in the ripening of fruits, in elabo-
