BELGIUM susceptibilities of the deputies, and the King's orders became merely "solemn recommendations." Early in 1907, and doubtless as a result of the interpellations in the British parliament upon the "intolerable conditions" in the Congo, the Belgian Chamber, affirming the right of investigation formerly granted to it without any conditions, ordered its Colonial Bureau to constitute a special commission to examine, as soon as possible, the general colonial rule of Belgium. It expected that complete reports would be furnished to the Commission upon the actual state of affairs in the Congo and upon its natural and financial results. Meanwhile the King wished to retain the absolute power which he actually exercised. He did not wish to be forced into decreeing the annexation of the Congo, which he would have been obliged to do had his African ministers rendered strict account to the Belgian Parliament. Hence, to escape the conflict which appeared imminent the commission of investigation was SO constituted as to comprise a majority made up of partisans of the royal policy, who would be sure to employ dilatory and deceptive tactics. So the ministers, speaking in the name of the King and disregarding their promise to furnish useful reports, pretended that the greater number of those reports which they had received were useless and that it would be indiscreet to demand them, hence by arrangement with the Ministry, the commission decided to ask of the Congo Free State a general report upon the Congo situation, without specifying the questions upon which it was to answer. In other words, this simply showed that the sovereign of the Congo had become more hostile than ever to the idea of transferring to Belgium his African domain, and instead of ceasing to be absolute in the Congo was determined to grant to parliament a merely nominal control. In this determination, Leopold II. has been aided by the new Ministry, since the Premier, M. de Trooz, is an avowed friend of the King, while M. Renken, Minister of Justice, and M. Delbeke, Minister of Works, are in favor of keeping up the old system in Africa. As indicating that the King's policy would be pursued, M. Trooz said on May 7th: "The Government intends to propose that Belgium shall take over the African colony. The Chambers will thus be able in the full exercise of their liberty to give their decision on the Colonial Law and at the same time to say whether or not it is to the interest of Belgium to annex the Congo. Parliament can count on our loyal collaboration in affording it all the information it requires, and in elaborating with it a law which, by the cooperation of the Colonial Government and the public authorities, will assure the constant de velopment of the work carried on in Africa by Belgium for the moral and material advancement of the native population." On December 3 the treaty of transfer between the plenipotentiaries of the Belgian and Congo State Government was sent to the Colonial Commission. A matter of chief importance in the treaty concerned the Crown domain, which was to continue to exist in the form of a separate enterprise, subject to the laws of the colony, its administrators being appointed by the government, and the profits derived to be devoted to various objects of a literary, artistic and "sumptuary" nature. To this ambiguous document, by a majority of nine votes, two amendments were carried. The first, proposed by M. Vandervelde, instituting a permanent commission consisting of six members to regulate the position of Belgians, natives and foreigners in the Congo. The second amendment, proposed by M. Schollært, the President of the Chamber, would regulate the position of Belgium's natives and foreigners in the Congo, Belgians and foreigners to enjoy the rights recognized by the Belgian Constitution and by the Colonial laws, and the natives to enjoy rights recognized by the Colonial laws and by such customs as are not opposed to public order. In criticising these proposals of the Belgian Government, the London Times said that the Colonial law left the present system unchanged in all its vital features, with no check at all upon autocratic control in so far as native administration is concerned, and a majority on the parliamentary commission charged with the examination of these proposals has been found willing to concede to autocracy what autocracy required above all-financial control. Nevertheless, other interpretations have been put upon this Colonial Bill, the vital part of the bill being said to lie in Article 2, which declares that the legislative power in the colonial possessions of Belgium is exercised by the King in a form specified in the bill, and in Article 3, which declares that power is exercised by decrees issued, with certain exceptions when the cabinet has charge, by the Colonial Minister, and in Article 5, which declares that no act of the King can have effect unless countersigned by the Colonial Minister, who by that makes himself responsible. The last named article might appear to put a check upon Leopold, except for the provisions of Article 8, which leaves the annual budget to be drawn up by the King, although there is a proviso that "decrees authorizing loans chargeable to or granted by the colony, and works to be paid for out of extraordinary resources, shall be issued only on the proposal of the ministers in council." Inasmuch as these ministers have heretofore shown themselves to be "the King's friends," and after a careful examination of the text of the Congo Annexation Treaty, the Liberal members of the Chamber of Deputies on December 18th voted unanimously to oppose the treaty on the ground that the conditions therein stated unduly limited the sovereignty of Belgium and disregarded Belgium's right. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. In its international relations, an event of great significance for Belgium in 1907 was the understanding reached in March with Holland. The Belgium-Dutch Commission, after two months' session in Brussels, reached an agreement on postal, telegraph, telephone, and railway legislation, identical labor legislation, copyright laws, and customs tariff. This understanding and the temporary opening of the Bruges Canal has been declared to be due to a joint fear of the two Netherlands regarding Germany. The Belgians, especially, have come to realize how largely trade and commerce are in the hands of the Germans, bank and commercial houses being run by German capital, and ports like Antwerp being the main outlets for German shipping. It is this perception of the meaning of a "peaceful invasion" of Germany that has led many Belgians to realize what would be the importance of a warlike invasion of a power eager to extend its coast line and to gain suitable Atlantic harbors. Hence, there has arisen a party which seeks to make the understanding with Holland more than an agreement, in fact to bring about an actual military alliance between the two peoples of the ancient Seventeen Provinces. However, the people, as a whole, have shown themselves remiss in appropriations for home defense, Belgium's army being 50,000 men short of the necessary 150,000, and the forts of Antwerp being inadequately manned. Now while Belgium, by an international agreement to which Great Britain is a signatory, is declared neutral territory, the opinion is held in Belgium that its neutrality would doubtless be violated in case of a German attack upon France. In view of this eventuality, it is interesting to know that King Leopold has been astutely seeking the aid of England in case of future trouble, already providing that in case of his death, as virtual owner of the Congo, that portion of the Congo which controls the waters of the Upper Nile shall revert to the government of the British Soudan. Minor legislation for the year 1907 comprised hygienic measures in the mining districts, such as the installation of baths and the prohibition of the employment of children less than 14 years of age. Another measure, especially favored by the Socialists, allotted pensions of 300 francs to workmen incapacitated by old age. The most important of the domestic social legislation of the year concerned the modification of the law regarding the weekly day in campaigns against the Cree and the Sioux Indians in 1883 and 1891, respectively. He served in the American Army in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, and subsquently against the Filipinos. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general in the United States in 1901 (February 19), and held various important commands in Manila and in the Department of Luzon, generally, until 1903, when he was ordered home, and was made commandant of the Infantry and Cavalry School and of the Staff College, at Fort Leavenworth. General Bell was awarded a medal of honor for "distinguished gallantry in action" near Porac, Luzon (September 9, 1899), when he charged seven insurgents with his pistol, and compelled the surrender of a captain and two privates while he himself was under the fire of insurgents concealed in bamboo thickets. BENEDICT, GEORGE GRENVILLE. An American editor and author, died on April 8, 1907, Vt., on December 10, 1826, and graduated at at Camden, N. J. He was born in Burlington, the University of Vermont in 1847. He had between Burlington and Boston, and in 1853 charge of constructing the first telegraph line with his father became interested in the Burlington Free Press, of which paper he was afterwards editor-in-chief for forty years. He was 1871-1874, State Senator in 1869-1871, and State postmaster of Burlington in 1861-1864 and in military historian in 1878-1886. From 1865 he was secretary of the University of Vermont. His publications include: Vermont at Gettysburg (1866); Vermont in the Civil War, 2 vols. (1886); Army Life in Virginia (1895), and he edited a Bibliography of Vermont (1897), published by the State. of rest. Here the Socialistic Left was in accord with the Catholic party in not being satisfied with the simple cessation of work one day in the week among employees who might elect to cease work. They preferred the weekly closing of all shops where there were employees, Sunday not being specified as a day of rest. As the law stood it was the practical enforcing of a dogma, for it prohibited working more than 6 days a week and fixed the day of rest as Sunday. Upon interpellation, the government promised to bring forward mediating measures that would not run counter to the constitutional law allowing full liberty of individual action. BELL, GEORGE. An American soldier, brigadier-general in the United States army, died in Washington, D. C., on January 2, 1907. He was born in Hagerstown, Md., on March 12, 1828, entered West Point from that State, and graduated as a second lieutenant of artillery in 1853. In the Civil War he commanded a battery in the defences at Washington, served in the commissary department, and assisted in organizing the Subsistence Department for the Manassas Campaign of July, 1861. The following month he was put in charge of the subsistence depot at Alexandria, Va. In 1862 he was appointed principal assistant commissary to the Army of the Potomac in the Virginia Peninsula Čampaign, and thereafter he served as chief of commissariat of the Department of the Susquehanna, with headquarters at Harrisburg. For faithful and meritorious services in the Sub-guished Irish surgeon, died in June, 1907, at sistence Department during the war, he was advanced to the rank of brigadier-general (April 9, 1865). He was retired in 1892. BELL, JAMES FRANKLIN. Chief of the general staff, and major-general in the United States Army, to which rank he was advanced January 2, 1907. He was born at Shelbyville, Ky., on January 9, 1856, graduated at West Point in 1878, and was with the Seventh Cavalry BENNDORF, OTTO. A German archæologist, died on January 2, 1907. He was born at Greiz, on September 13, 1838, and was educated at the Universities of Bonn and Erlangen, where he studied philology in 1857-62. In 1864-1868 he traveled in Italy and Greece under the patronage of the German Archæological Institute. He became professor of archæology at Göttingen in 1868, at Zürich in 1869, at Munich in 1871, at Prague in 1872, and in 1898 was appointed director of the Archæological Institute at Vienna. He accompanied the expedition to Samothrace in 1875, and the one sent by the Austrian Government to Asia Minor in 1881-1882, which made important discoveries. In 1884 he resumed his explorations in Asia Minor. He was often called the "Schliemann of Ephesus," because his discoveries there ranked in importance with those of Schliemann at Troy. He published: Die antiken Bildwerke des lateranischen Museums, with R. Schöne (1867); Antike Gesichtshelme und Sepulkralmasken (1878); Reisen im südwestlichen Kleinasien (1884) and Reisen in Lykien und Karien (1884). BENNET, EDWARD HALLARAN. A distin Dublin. He was educated at Trinity College, College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1863, and in Dublin; was awarded the fellowship of the Royal 1864 was appointed university anatomist at Dublin. In 1873 he was elected to the chair of surgery at that institution; in 1884 he became president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland; and in 1897-1900 was president of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland. He was also chosen president of the Pathological BENNET Society of Dublin in 1880, and president of the Leinster branch of the British Medical Association in 1886. He was a recognized expert on fractures and their complications, and was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in England, in recognition of his contributions to the literature of surgery. His publications include: Ankylosis of Hip (1874); Fractures of Costal Cartilages (1876); Fractures of the Rib (1878); Fractures of the Upper Third of Fibula (1880), and Fractures of the Femur (1880, 1895). BENTZON, TH. Pseudonym of a French author and journalist, Marie Thérèse Blanc, who died on February 7, 1907. She was born at Seine-Port, on September 21, 1840. For several years she was a member of the staff of the Revue des Deux Mondes. She traveled widely in the United States and had written understandingly of American life and literature. Her essays include: Littérature et mœurs étrangers (1882); and Les nouveaux romanciers Américains (1885). Among her novels are: La vocation de Louise (1873); Sangmêlé (1875); Yvonne (1881); Tony (1884); Constance (1891); and Tchelovek (1900). She had also translated some of the novels of Dickens, Bret Harte, Aldrich, Ouida and other American and English writers. BERGMANN, ERNST VON. An eminent German surgeon, died on March 25, 1907. He was born at Rujen, in Livland, on December 16, 1836, and studied at the Russian University of Dorpat, and at Vienna and Berlin. In 1871-1878 he was professor of surgery at Dorpat, and he was a member of the faculty at Würzburg from 1878 to 1882, when he was appointed to the chair of surgery at Berlin, where he remained during the rest of his life. He made a special study of the prevention of traumatic infection, developed Lord Lister's antiseptic methods, and adopted the purely aseptic treatment, dispensing with the carbolic spray, and relying upon perfect cleanliness to prevent infection. He was especially successful in operations upon the skull and brain. In 1887 he advised a radical operation upon the Emperor Frederick, for cancer of the throat, but the diagnosis of Sir Morell Mackenzie, the English throat specialist, was finally accepted, and he was given charge of the case, a step which caused a long and somewhat acrid controversy between the two surgeons. After the death of Virchow, von Bergmann was recognized as the ablest of German physicians. In 1906 he was made a life member of the Prussian Diet, and on his seventieth birthday he received many tributes of honor and esteem from members of his profession throughout the world. BERI-BERI. This disease is characterized by multiple neuritis, gastric and intestinal disorders, paralysis, edema, cardiac weakness and death. The disease is essentially tropical, but it has become widely distributed, and occurs in sporadic and even epidemic form in temperate climates, and in 1907 was receiving considerable study. The causative agent of beri-beri is unknown, as well as the method of transmission, although an extensive literature has sprung up of late years. A sifting of the evidence concerning its cause seems to point to a specific germ, whose activity is determined by restricted diet. Several micro-organisms have been described as causative, but the work of the various investigators remains unconfirmed. The relation of food to beri-beri is more definitely established. In the Japanese navy, prior to 1884, an average of 33 per cent. of its strength was continuously disabled by this disease. During the war with China 45 per cent. of the Japanese army were affected; and in 1904 and 1905 nearly one half of the sickness was due to beri-beri, amounting to nearly 85,000 men. The final control of the disease by Kakaki was looked upon as one of the triumphs of modern medicine. Kakaki instituted many hygienic reforms, chief among which was the substitution who observed the epidemic at Bilibid prison, of a high proteid diet for rice. Dr. L. H. Fales, Manila, during which there were 5448 cases, traces the epidemic to a change to a ration, low in nitrogen and vegetable content; and ascribes cessation of the epidemic to a return to a regimen containing sufficient nitrogen and vegetables. A study of the Bilibid epidemic seems to favor the lack of fresh vegetables as a cause rather than the restriction of nitrogwho had access to the kitchen and more than enous food for the reasons that those prisoners their share of vegetables had no beri-beri; that when vegetables were almost entirely eliminated for a time from the ration, the mortality in creased; and that a number of cases (50) of scurvy occurred during the epidemic, which were cured when vegetables were added to their diet. The epidemic lasted from December, 1901, to January, 1903. Capt. Shirmer, assistant surgeon, U. S. Navy, made a study of beri-beri on the Isthmus of Panama. He stated that the disease was unknown there before 1887. In that year the canal company imported a number of Chinese and African contract laborers. Thereafter the disease spread rapidly among the poorer classes and the colored races. Many of the cases on the Isthmus were of a malarial type and in their early stages responded to quinine. The opinion among local physicians was that the disease is of malarial origin. The author reported a series of cases in which beri-beri was complicated by malarial fever, ankylostomiasis (q. v.), chronic nephritis and locomotor ataxia. BERMUDA. A group of about 300 islands, reefs, and rocks, of which about 20 are inhabited, situated south-east of Florida, and constituting a British colony. The largest islands are St. George, Bermuda, Somerset and Ireland. The total area is about 19 square miles. The popu lation numbered 17,535 (6383 whites) in 1901, and was estimated at 20,206 in 1904. The chief town is Hamilton, on Bermuda, with 2246 inhabitants in 1901. About one-third of the total area is under cultivation. The products and exports are mainly sweet potatoes, onions, lilybulbs, bananas, arrowroot, and some corn. Foods are imported mainly from the United States and Canada. The distribution of the foreign trade, exclusive of specie, in 1906 was as follows: The colony is administered by a governor, in 1907 Gen. J. A. Wodehouse, assisted by an executive council, a legislative council, and a House of Assembly, the members of the latter being elected upon a restricted suffrage basis. The revenue and expenditure were in 1905 £53,321 (£44,855 from customs) and £65,307, respectively. The public debt stood in the same year at £46,500. Bermuda is an important naval base, and has also a military garrison of about 1300 men, the cost of which is borne by Great Britain. Because of the sudden and unforeseen reduction of the Imperial establishments in 1906, there was large commercial loss in Bermuda, which continued in 1907. Beside this reduction, the finishing of the Dockyard Extension Works brought about the return to the West Indies of a large number of workmen whose wages had increased the money circulated in the colony. BERNAYS, AUGUSTUS CHARLES. An American surgeon, died on May 21, 1907. He was born at Highland, Ill., on October 13, 1854, graduated at McKendree College, Lebanon, Ill., in 1872, and at Heidelberg in 1876. During the next year he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, and the following year he began to practice in St. Louis, Mo. He devoted himself chiefly to surgery, and particularly to the development of antiseptic methods, of which he was one of the earliest exponents in the United States. In 1883 he became a professor of anatomy and clinical surgery in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and he also taught those subjects in the Marion Sims College and the Woman's Medical College. He published: Chips from a Surgeon's Workshop (1880); Development of Valves of the Heart (1876); and Development of Joints in General, and of the Human Knee Joint (1877). BERNIER, J. E. See ARCTIC EXPLORATION. BERTHELOT, PIERRE EUGÈNE MARCELIN. A celebrated French chemist, born in Paris on October 25, 1827, died in Paris on March 18, 1907. The son of a medical practitioner, he received his general education at the Lycée Henri IV. He studied science at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France and became research assistant to Balard (the discoverer of bromine) at the latter institution. In 1854 he received the degree of Docteur ès Sciences on presentation of a thesis on the artificial reproduction of the natural fats. Beginning with this classical contribution to organic chemistry, Berthelot devoted a considerable part of the following 50 years to researches in synthetic chemistry, and scarcely another chemist's contributions in this field have been so profound in importance or so extensive in scope. As one of the chief possibilities of organic synthesis Berthelot considered the manufacture of foods from simple substances widely distributed in nature-a problem the successful solution of which is destined to thoroughly change the economic and social conditions of the civilized world. In 1863 a chair of organic chemistry was established specially for Berthelot at the Collège de France, where, besides his synthetic studies, he devoted a number of years to experimental researches in thermo-chemistry. The results of his thermochemical labors are embodied in his Essai de Mécanique Chimique (2 vols., 1879); Sur la Force des Matières Explosives (2 vols., 1883); Traité Pratique de Calorimétrie Chimique (1893); Thermo-chimie (2 vols., 1897). The data correlated by his "third principle of thermo-dynamics," which was long looked upon as a worthless scientific fallacy, have recently been receiving more careful attention from the phys ical chemists, and while there is no doubt that the principle in its general form adopted by Berthelot is erroneous, there is a growing feeling that the facts gathered by Berthelot have behind them a law of nature whose importance may prove comparable with that of the celebrated Carnot-Clausius principle. Important among his many contributions to agricultural chemistry is his discovery that plants utilize the nitrogen of the air through the agency of micro-organisms living in the soil. His agricultural researches are contained in his Chimie Agricole (4 vols., 1899). His unusual philological and linguistic erudition rendered possible a series of valuable investigations in the history of alchemy and of modern chemistry (Les Origines de l'Alchimie, La Révolution Chimique, etc., 1885-1893). Berthelot took an active part in politics. In 1881 he was made a life member of the French Senate; in 1886 he served as Minister of Public Instruction and Affairs. He died a few minutes after the the Fine Arts, and in 1895 as Minister of Foreign death of his wife, and the remains of both were placed in the Panthéon, next to those of Victor Hugo. BEZOLD, WILHELM VON. A German meteorologist, died on February 17, 1907. He was born in Munich, on June 21, 1837, was educated in the university there and at Göttingen, and in 1866 was appointed a member of the faculty at Munich. He was appointed to the faculty of the Technical Institute at Munich in 1868, and remained there until 1885, when he took charge of the reorganization of the Meteorological InDie Farbenlehre im Hinblick auf Kunst und stitute at Berlin. His publications include: Kunstgewerbe (1874); Die Kälterückfälle im Mai (1883); Ueber zündende Blitze im Königreich Bayern (1884); and Zur Theorie des Erdmagnetismus (1897). The BIBLE SOCIETY, AMERICAN, founded 1816, the destitute and poor. The issue for the year for the gratuitous distribution of Bibles among 1906-1907 amounted to 1,910,853 copies. ninety-first annual meeting was held at the Bible House in New York City, May 9, 1907. During its ninety-one years of existence the society has distributed 80,420,382 Bibles, including those in foreign tongues and the languages of several American Indian tribes. The society has received since its organization contributions exceeding $32,400,000. It issues an besides thousands of leaflets annually. Presiillustrated monthly, The Bible Society Record, Rev. John Fox, D.D., Rev. William L. Haven, dent, Daniel Coit Gilman, LL.D.; secretaries, D.D., and Rev. Henry O. Dwight, LL.D., Bible House, New York City. BICKNELL, GEORGE AUGUstus. Rear-admiral, in the United States Navy, was advanced to that rank upon the retirement of Rear-admiral William W. Mead, for age, on February 8, 1907. He was born at Batsto, N. J., May 15, 1846, but entered the Naval Academy from Indiana in December, 1861. While serving on the Iroquois, of the Asiatic fleet, in 1868, he had a part in opening to trade the Japanese |