BLACKCAP. 138 BLACK DEATH. birds of Great Britain. It is sinallor than the niarhtinjrale. and plain f;ray and ashy-brown. The male has the top of the head jet-black, but in the female it is a dull rust-color. This blackcap is very popular as a cage-bird. BLACKCAT. A Canadian fur-bearer. See Fisher. BLACK CHALK. A variety of clay contain- ing a large amount of carbon. It is found in t'arnarvonsliire and on the island of Islay. It is used for drawing, and, when ground, as a black pigment. BLACKCOCK (fern, (hreylicn) . A dark- colored grouse (Tetrao tetrix), with outward- curling tail-feathers, prevalent on moorlands throughout Europe. It is known in Great Brit- ain as black grouse, or black game, and as heath- cock and heath-hen, while the young are called poults. See Grouse, and Plate of Grouse. BLACK CODE. See Black Law. BLACK CO'HOSH. See Cimicituga. BLACK CROM. An ancient idol of the Irish, from whose worship the present term 'Cromduff Sunday' has come down. BLACK DEATH (Lat. pestis, pestis buio- nica, pestis iiiguiiidlis, bubonic plague). One of the names given to an Oriental plague. An acute infectious disease caused by the presence of a specific microbe, and marked by suppuration and tumors, which in the Fourteenth Century deso- lated the world. It took this name from the black spots which appeared in the skin, caused by subcutaneous hemorrhages. The symptoms were: swelling of glands and formation of bu- boes; headache, vertigo with tottering gait, pains, deafness, convulsions, cough, and expec- toration of bloody mucus in some cases, enlarge- ment of liver and spleen, etc. On the first ap- pearance of the plague in Europe, fever, the evacuation of blood, and affection of the lungs brought death before the other symjitoms could be developed; afterwards boils and buboes char- acterized its fatal course in Europe, as in the East. In almost all cases its victims perished in two or three days after being attacked. Rufus of Ephesus wrote of its appearance in Libya, Egjpt, and Syria during the Third Century B.C. Tile plague which broke out in the reign of Justinian originated in Egypt about .542, and passed through Constantinople, Gaul, Spain, Marseilles, and thence over all Europe, lasting 60 years and resulting in enormous mortality. Theprec'se dale of the appearance of the plague in China is miknown, but from 13.3.3 till 1348 that great country siifTered a terrible mortality from droughts, famines, floods, earthquakes which swallowed movmtains. and swarms of innumer- able locusts; and in the last few years of that period, from the plague. It appears that the pestilence had, in a milder form, appeared in Europe in 1342. The invasion of 1348 may be tracked from China in its advance by the various caravan routes toward the west. The northern coast of the Black Sea sent the plague by con- tagion to Constantinople. By contagion it reach- ed the seaports of Italy, and thence, as from so many foci of contagion, it soon established itself overEurope. lis advance may be traced through Germany and France to England, from which it was transmitted to Sweden. It was three years from its appearance at Constantinople before it crept, by a great circle, to the Russian ter- ritories. There are no proper materials for estimating the mortality which this plague produced, for it occurred before the value of statistics was appreciated. But in China 13.000,000 are said to have died, and in the rest of the East nearly 24,000,000. Coming to Europe, the horror is increased by the greater exactness of the details. London alone lost over 100,000 souls; lii Euro- pean cities lost among them about 300,000 ; Ger- many is calculated to have lost 1,244,000; Italy, one-half its population. On a moderate calcula- tion, it may be assumed that in Europe 25,- 000.000 human beings perished. Africa suf- fered with the rest of the known world. All animal life was threatened. Rivers were conse- crated to receive corpses, for which none dared to perform the rites of burial, and which in other places were cast in thousands into huge pits made for their reception. Death was on the sea, too, as well as on the land, and the imagination is quickened to the realization of the terrible mortality by accounts of ships with- out crews — the crews dead and putrefying on the decks of the aimless hulks — drifting through the Mediterranean, the Black, and the North seas, and cursing with contagion the shores on which winds or the tide chanced to cast them. Many died of fear, which among the living dis- solved the ties of kindred; mothers forsook their plague-stricken children ; the worldly became quickened to a maddening sense of sin ; the reli- gious fixed their eyes more steadily on futurity; all rushed to sacrifice their means to the Church, while the ecclesiastics drew back from the gold showered over their walls, as being tainted with death. In other cases people abandoned them- selves to crime and debaichcry. Superstition finally banded multitudes together by common means to work out the common safety. In Hun- gary,and afterwards in Germany, rose the brother- hood of the Flagellants (q.v.). who undertook to expiate the sins of the people, and avert the pestilence by self-imposed sufferings. Originally of the lower classes, they gathered to their order, as it extended, crowds of the highest, both men and women, and marched fiom city to city, robed in sombre garments, with red crosses on the breast, back, and cap, ;ind with their heads cot- ered as far as the eyes ; they went chanting in solcnjn processions with banners, with down- turned faces, and bearing triple scourges with points of iron, with which, at stated times, they lacerated their bodies. They at last pervaded nearly all ICurope; Germany, Hungary, Poland, liohumia, Silesia, and Flanders did lliom homage. The order was not suppressed till the Pope, at the instigation of several crowned heads, pro- hibited throughout Christendom their ]>ilgrim- ages, on pain of exconuninication. While the wanderings of the Flagellants threw society into confusion, and helped to spread the ])lague, the horrors of the time were further heightened by the fearful persecutions to which the Jews were subjected, from a popular belief that the pesti- lence was owing to their poisoning the public wells. The people rose to exterminate the He- brew race, of whom in Mainz alone 12,000 were cruelly murdered. They were kilk><l by fire and by torture wherever Ihey could be found, and to the terrors of the plague for them were added those of a populace everywhere infuriated against
