BATHURST, a city of Bathurst county, New South Wales, Australia, 144 m. by rail W.N.W. of Sydney on the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 9223. It is situated on the south bank of the Macquarie river, at an elevation of 2153 ft., in a fertile undulating plain on the west side of the Blue Mountains. Bathurst has broad streets, crossing one another at right angles, with a handsome park in the centre of the town, while many of the public buildings, specially the town hall, government buildings, and Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals, are noteworthy. Bathurst is the centre of the chief wheat-growing district of New South Wales, while gold, copper and silver are extensively mined in its vicinity. There are railway works, coach factories, tanneries, breweries, flour-mills and manufactures of boots and shoes and other commodities. The town was founded in 1815 by Governor Macquarie, taking its name from the 3rd Earl Bathurst, then secretary of state for the colonies, and it has been a municipality since 1862.
BATHVILLITE, a naturally occurring organic substance. It is an amorphous, opaque, and very friable material of fawn-brown colour, filling cavities in the torbanite or Boghead coal of Bathville, Scotland. It has a specific gravity of 1.01, and is insoluble in benzene.
BATHYBIUS (βαθύς, deep, and βίος, life), a slimy substance at one time supposed to exist in great masses in the depths of the ocean and to consist of undifferentiated protoplasm. Regarding it as an organism which represented the simplest form of life, Huxley about 1868 named it Bathybius Haeckelii. But investigations carried out in connexion with the “Challenger” expedition indicated that it was an artificial product, composed of a flocculent precipitate of gypsum thrown down from sea-water by alcohol, and the hypothesis of its organic character was abandoned by most biologists, Huxley included.
BATHYCLES, an Ionian sculptor of Magnesia, was commissioned by the Spartans to make a marble throne for the statue of Apollo at Amyclae, about 550 B.C. Pausanias (iii. 18) gives us a detailed description of this monument, which is of the greatest value to us, showing the character of Ionic art at the time. It was adorned with scenes from mythology in relief and supporting figures in the round.
For a reconstruction, see Furtwängler, Meisterwerke der griech. Plastik, p. 706.
BATLEY, a municipal borough in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, within the parliamentary borough of Dewsbury, 8 m. S.S.W. of Leeds, on the Great Northern, London & North Western, and Lancashire & Yorkshire railways. Pop. (1900) 30,321. Area 2039 acres. The church of All Saints is mainly Perpendicular, and contains some fine woodwork, mostly of the 17th century, and some good memorial tombs. The market square contains an excellent group of modern buildings, including the town hall, public library, post office and others. The town is a centre of the heavy woollen trade, and has extensive manufactures of army cloths, pilot cloths, druggets, flushings, &c. The working up of old material as “shoddy” is largely carried on. There are also iron foundries, manufactures of machinery, and stone quarries. The town lies on the south-west Yorkshire coalfield, and there are a number of collieries in the district. The borough is governed by a mayor, six aldermen, and eighteen councillors.
BATON (Fr. bâton, baston, from Late Lat. basto, a stick or staff), the truncheon carried by a field marshal as a sign of authority, by a police constable, &c.; in music, the stick with which the conductor of an orchestra beats time; in heraldry, the fourth part of a bend, frequently broken off short at the ends so as to be shaped like a rod; in English coats of arms, only as a mark of illegitimacy, the “baton sinister.”
BATONI, POMPEO GIROLAMO (1708–1787), Italian painter, was born at Lucca. He was regarded in Italy as a great painter in the 18th century, and unquestionably did much to rescue the art from the intense mannerism into which it had fallen during the preceding century. His paintings, however, are not of the highest order of merit, though they are generally graceful, well designed, and harmoniously coloured. His best production is thought to be his group of “Peace and War.” Batoni painted an unusual number of pictures, and was also celebrated for his portraits.
BATON ROUGE, the capital of Louisiana, U.S.A., and of East Baton Rouge parish, on the E. bank of the Mississippi river, about 70 m. N.W. of New Orleans. Pop. (1890) 10,478; (1900) 11,269, of whom 6596 were of negro descent; (1910 census) 14,897. It is served by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railway and by the Louisiana Railway & Navigation Company; and the Texas & Pacific enters Port Allen, just across the river. The city lies on the river bluff, secure against the highest floods. Old houses in the Spanish style give quaintness to its appearance. The state capitol was built in 1880–1882, replacing another burned in 1862. At Baton Rouge is the State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College (1860), of which the Audubon Sugar School, “for the highest scientific training in the growing of sugar cane and in the technology of sugar manufacture,” is an important and distinctive feature. The university grew out of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, founded in 1855 near Alexandria and opened in 1860 under the charge of W. T. Sherman. In 1869 the institution was removed to Baton Rouge, and in 1877 it was united with the Agricultural and Mechanical College, established in 1873 and in 1874 opened at New Orleans. The campus of the university is the former barracks of the Baton Rouge garrison, occupied by the college since 1886 and transferred to it by the Federal government in 1902. The enrolment of the university in 1907–1908 was 636. Other important institutions at Baton Rouge are a State Agricultural Experiment Station, asylums and schools for the deaf and dumb, for the blind, and for orphans, and the state penitentiary. The surrounding bluff and alluvial country is very rich. Sugar and cotton plantations and subtropic fruit orchards occupy the front-lands on the river. The manufactures include lumber and cotton seed products, and sugar. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $717,368 in 1900 to $1,383,061 in 1905 or 92.8%. The city is governed under a charter granted by the legislature in 1898. This charter is peculiar in that it gives to the city council the power to elect various administrative boards—of police, finance, &c.—from which the legislative council of most cities is separated.
Baton Rouge was one of the earliest French settlements in the state. As a part of West Florida, it passed into the hands of the British in 1763, and in 1779 was captured by Bernardo Galvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana. The town was incorporated in 1817. In 1849 it was made the state capital, remaining so until 1862, when Shreveport became the Confederate state capital. In 1864 the Unionists made New Orleans the seat of government. The Secession Ordinance of Louisiana was passed on the 26th of January 1861 by a convention that met at Baton Rouge. On the 2nd of May 1862 the city was captured by the forces of the United States under Col. Benjamin H. Grierson (b. 1826), who had led raiders thither from Tennessee; on the 12th of May it was formally occupied by troops from New Orleans, and was successfully defended by Brig.-Gen. Thomas Williams (1815–1862) against an attack by Confederate forces under General John C. Breckinridge on the 5th of August 1862; Gen. Williams, however, was killed during the attack. Baton Rouge was soon abandoned for a month, was then reoccupied, and was held throughout the rest of the war. It became the state capital again in 1882, in accordance with the state constitution of 1879. For several years after 1840 Zachary Taylor made his home on a plantation near Baton Rouge.
BATRACHIA. The arguments adduced by T. H. Huxley, in his article on this subject in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for applying the name Amphibia to those lung-breathing, pentadactyle vertebrates which had been first severed from the Linnaean Amphibia by Alexandre Brongniart, under the name of Batrachia, have not met with universal acceptance. Although much used in text-books and anatomical works in Great Britain and in Germany, the former name has been discarded in favour of the latter by the principal authors
