Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/255

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BALARD BALBINUS 235 pirates were killed, refusing to take quarter. The forts and houses of the island were level- led to the ground, and to make it uninhabita- ble about 8,000 cocoa palms were cut down. BALARD, Antoine Jerftme, a French chemist, born in Montpellier, Sept. 30, 1802. He was an apothecary and subsequently professor of pharmacy and chemistry, and acquired celeb- rity in 1826 by the discovery of bromine in sea water, also by the extraction of sulphate of soda, which increased the supply and lowered the price of potash. He has written on these discoveries and on other subjects in the Annales de chimie et de physique, and in the Memoires of the academy. He succeeded Th6nard in the chair of chemistry in the faculty of sciences of Paris, and Pelouze in the college de France in 1851. He became a member of the academy in 1844. In 1868 he was appointed inspector general of superior instruction and honorary professor at the faculty of sciences. BALARUC, a French watering place, in the de- partment of H6rault, 15 m. S. W. of Montpel- lier ; pop. 600. The springs were known to the Romans, who formed aqueducts and built a temple here. They have a temperature of about 129 F. in summer and 115 in winter, and are recommended for paralysis. A public hospital gives gratuitous relief to the destitute and to soldiers. BALASORE, a city in the presidency of Ben- gal and province of Orissa, India, the principal seaport of Outtack, 120 m. S. W. of Calcutta; pop. about 11,000. It formerly had factories of almost all European nations, but has much declined, the principal trade being limited to imports of the products of the cocoanut and of coir, cowries, tortoise shell, and salted fish from the Maldive islands, in exchange for rice, sugar, and English manufactured goods and hard- ware. It is provided with dry docks for the ac- commodation of small vessels at spring tides. Denmark ceded the town to England in 1844. BALASSA-GYARMATH, a town of Hungary, capital of the county of Nograd, situated in a delightful region on the Eipel, 42 m. N. of Pesth; pop. in 1870, 6,435. It has an old mountain castle, and carries on considerable trade in oil and wine. In 1626 a peace was concluded here between Austria and Turkey. BALATON, Like (Ger. Plattensee), a large lake in 8. W. Hungary, in the counties of Zala, Veszpr6m, and Somogy; length, from S. W. to N. E., about 47 m. ; greatest breadth 9 m. ; depth from 27 to 36 feet ; area, about 450 sq. m. It is fed by the river Szala, and discharges its waters through the Si6, which falls into the Sarviz, an affluent of the Danube. The lake abounds in fish. The fogas, a kind of large perch, is found only in this lake ; it fre- quently weighs 10 to 15- and sometimes 20 pounds. There is also a species of white fish resembling the herring, which appears in large shoals during the winter. Crabs, crayfish, tor- toises, and mussels are found. Iron sand occurs on the shores, which exhibits under the mi- croscope grains of garnet, ruby, topaz, ame- thyst, and other precious stones. BALBI, Adriano, an Italian geographer, born in Venice, April 25, 1782, died there, March 14, 1848. After holding a professorship of geogra- phy, sciences, and statistics in Italy, he spen'; many years in Portugal while preparing seve- ral works relating to that country. He subse- quently resided in Paris, receiving assistance from the French government, in 1832 went to Padua, and finally to Vienna, where the Aus- trian government gave him a pension. His principal works are : Atlas ethnographiqwe dw globe (Paris, 1826), a work of superior arrange- ment, containing the latest researches of Ger- man philologists, and Abrege de geographic (2 vols., 1832), a summary of geographical sci- ence, which has been translated into nearly all the European languages (English transla- tion, "Abridgment of Geography," New York, 1835). With La Renaudiere and Huot he used to some extent unpublished writings of Malte- Brun in preparing a Traite elementaire de ge- ographic (2 vols., 1830-'31). Among his other publications are : La monarchic francaise com- paree awx principaux etats de V Europe (Paris, 1828); Balance politique du globe (1828); L 1 Empire russe comparee aux principaux etats du monde (1829) ; " The World compared with the British Empire" (1830). His son, the geographer EUGENIO BALBI, has edited a collection of his Scritti geogrqfici (5 vols., Turin, 1841-'2). BALBI, Giovanni de Janna or Jannensls (from his birthplace, Genoa), a Dominican friar of the 13th century, author of a universal cyclopaedia or Catholicon (about 1286), which owes its ce- lebrity principally to the fact that it became one of the earliest monuments of the art of printing. The original edition, Summa Gram- matwalis valde Notabilis qua Catholicon nomi- natur, was printed at Mentz by Faust and Schoffer in 1460, and was reprinted at Augs- burg in 1469 and 1472, at Nuremberg in 1483, at Venice in 1487, and at Lyons in 1520. BALBI, Conntess de, a favorite of the count de Provence, afterward Louis XVIIL, born in 1753, died in Paris about 1836. She was the daughter of the marquis de Caumont de la Force, and was lady in waiting to the countess de Provence, and the wife of the Genoese count de Balbi, who became insane in consequence of her misconduct. The count de Provence continued to lavish vast amounts upon her even after the smallpox had destroyed her beauty. After the outbreak of the revolution she per- suaded him to leave France, but he subse- quently discarded her, and she was expelled from many capitals on account of her dissipa- tion and intrigues. On her return to France she was exiled to Montauban, where she estab- lished a gambling house. She died in obscurity. U t I.I! I M s. Deelmus Ctelins, a Roman emperor, slain in A. D. 238. He was a senator, and twice consul, and was elected emperor by the senate in conjunction with Maximus, in opposition to