attended with complete success, and have been since verified by Sir H. Davy himself. To this metallic basis Davy gave the name of BARIUM, which see. 'Pure barytes,' says Dr.Ure, is best obtained by igniting, in a covered.crucible, the pure crystallised nitrate of barytes. It is procured in the state of hydrate by adding caustic potash or soda to a solution of the muriate or nitrate. And barytes, slightly colored with charcoal, may be obtained by strongly igniting the carbonate and charcoal mixed together in fine powder. Barytes obtained from the ignited nitrate is of a whitishgray color; more caustic than strontites, or perhaps even lime. It renders the syrup of violets green, and the infusion of turmeric red. Its specific gravity by Fourcroy is 4. When water in small quantity is poured on the dry earth it slakes like quicklime, but perhaps with evolution of more heat. When swallowed it acts as a violent poison. It is destitute of smell. When pure barytes is exposed in a porcelain tube, at a heat verging on ignition, to a stream of dry oxygen gas, it absorb the gas rapidly, and passes to the state of deutoxide of barium. But when it is calcined, in contact with atmospheric air, we obtain at first this deutoxide and carbonate of barytes; the former of which passes very slowly into the latter, by absorption of carbonic acid from the atmosphere.' Again water at 50°, Fahrenheit, dissolves one-twentieth of its weight of barytes, and at 212° about one-half of its weight; though M. Thenard, in a table, has stated it at only onetenth. As the solution cools, hexagonal prisms, terminated at each extremity with a four-sided pyramid, form. These crystals are often attached to one another, so as to imitate the leaves of fern. Sometimes they are deposited in cubes. They contain about 53 per cent. of water, or 20 prime proportions. The supernatant liquid is barytes water. It is colorless, acrid, and caustic. It acts powerfully on the vegetable purples and yellows. Exposed to the air it attracts carbonic acid, and the dissolved barytes is converted into carbonate, which falls down in insoluble crusts. It appears from the experiments of M. Berthollet that heat alone cannot deprive the crystallised hydrate of its water. After exposure to a red heat, when it fuses like potash, a proportion of water remains in combination. This quantity is a prime equivalent 1125, to 9.75 of barytes. The ignited hydrate is a solid of a whitish-gray color, caustic, and very dense. It fuses at a heat a little under a cherry red; is fixed in the fire; attracts, but slowly, carbonic acid from the atmosphere. It yields carburetted hydrogen, and carbonate of barytes when heated along with charcoal, provided this be not in excess.' 'Sulphur combines with barytes, when they are mixed together, and heated in a crucible. The same compound is more economically obtained by igniting a mixture of sulphate of barytes and charcoal in fine powder. This sulphuret is of a reddish-yellow color, and when dry without smell. When this substance is put into hot water a powerful action is manifested. The water is decomposed, and two new products are formed; namely, hydrosulphuret, and hydroguretted sulphuret of barytes. The first crystallises as the liquid cools; the second remains dissolved. The hydrosulphuret is a compound of 9.75 of barytes with 2:125 sulphuretted hydrogen. Its crystals should be quickly separated by filtration, and dried by pressure between the folds of porous paper. They are white scales, have a silky lustre, are soluble in water, and yield a solution having a greenish tinge. Its taste is acrid, sulphurous, and, when mixed with the hydroguretted sulphuret, eminently corrosive. It rapidly attracts oxygen from the atmosphere, and is converted into the sulphate of barytes. The hydroguretted sulphuret is a compound of 9.75 barytes wtth 4.125 bisulphuretted hydrogen; but contaminated with sulphite and hyposulphite in unknown proportions. The dry sulphuret consists probably of 2 sulphur+9.75 barytes. The readiest way of obtaining barytes water is to boil the solution of the sulphuret with deutoxide of copper, which seizes the sulphur while the hydrogen flies off, and the barytes remains dissolved. Phosphuret of barytes may be easily formed by exposing the constituents together to heat in a glass tube. Their reciprocal action is so intense as to cause ignition. Like phosphuret of lime, it decomposes water, and causes the disengagement of phosphuretted hydrogen gas, which spontaneously inflames with contact of air. When sulphur is made to act on the deutoxide of barytes, sulphuric acid is formed, which unites to a portion of the earth into a sulphate. Its salts are all, more or less, white and transparent: the soluble sulphates make, with the soluble salts of barytes, a precipitate insoluble in nitric acid; and they are all poisonous except the sulphate. See the respective ACIDS, for the most useful. BARYTONO, in the Italian music, answers to our common pitch of bass. BARYTONUM; from ẞapvc, grave, and rovo, accent; in the Greek grammar, denotes a verb, which having no accent marked on the last syllable, a grave accent is to be understood. BARZILLAI; from 1, iron, Heb.: 1. A Gileadite of Rogelim, who supplied David and his few faithful friends with provisions, while they lay at Mahanaim, during the usurpation of Absalom (2 Sam. xvii. 27—29); 2. A Simeonite of Meholah, the father of Adriel, one of Saul's sons-in-law (1 Sam. xviii. 19); 3. A priest who married a daughter of the hospitable Barzillai, and whose descendants returned from Babylon. Neh. vii. 63. BAS, an island of France, on the coast of the department of Finisterre, to which department it belongs; it is about a league in length, and is situated two leagues north of St. Pal de Leon. BAS (James Philip Le), a modern French engraver, by whom we have some excellent prints. His great force seems to lie in landscapes and small figures, which he executed in a superior manner. His style of engraving is extremely neat; he proves the freedom of the etching, and harmonizes the whole with the graver and dry point. We have also a variety of petty vignettes by this artist. He flourished about the middle of the present century; but we have no account of the time of his birth or death. BASAAL, in botany, an Indian tree which grows about Cochin. BASALITES, a word used by Salmasius for BASALTES. BASALT, ARTIFICIAL, or black porcelain, a composition, having nearly the same properties with the natural basaltes, invented by Messrs. Wedgwood and Bentley, and applied to various purposes in their manufacture. BASALT, OF BASALTES; from basal, iron, or Baravi, diligenter examino; in natural history, a heavy, hard stone, chiefly black or green, consisting of prismatic crystals, the number of whose sides is uncertain. The English miners call it cockle; the German schoerl. It abounds in gigantic masses in every part of Europe, and is now regarded by mineralogists as one of the most remarkable species of trap rocks. Basaltes was originally found in columns in Ethiopia, and fragments of it in the river Tmolus, and some other places. We now have it frequently both in columns and small pieces, in Spain, Russia, Poland, near Dresden, and in Silesia; but the most magnificent ranges of basaltic columns in the world are those called the Giant's Causeway, in Ireland and next to them, perhaps, those of Staffa, one of the western isles of Scotland. Great quantities of basalt are likewise found in the neighbourhood of Mount Etna in Sicily, of Hecla in Iceland, of the volcano in the island of Bourbon, and in the ci-devant province of Vivarais in the south of France. It is found therefore in the neighbourhood of active volcanoes, and one of the great questions that geologists have agitated is, whether it does not always demonstrate the existence of some extinguished volcano in its vicinity. : The rocks of the Cyclops, in the neighbourhood of Etna, exhibit very magnificent basaltic pillars. One is an island composed of lava, on a base of basalt, of no uncommon nature; above which there is a crust of pozzolana, combined with a certain white calcareous matter, hard and compact; and which, as it is composed by the action of the air, appears like a piece of knotty porous wood. That rock, at some former period, became so hard as to split; and the clefts were then filled up with a very hard and porous matter like scoriæ. This matter afterwards acquiring new hardness, also splits, leaving large interstices, which in their turn have been filled up with a species of compound yellow matter. The island was formerly inhabited; and there remains a flight of steps leading from the shore to the ruins of some houses, which appear to have been hewn in the rock. These basaltic columns, at first view, seem to resemble those of the Giant's Causeway, and others commonly met with: But on a nearer inspection, we find this difference, that the former are assembled in groups of five or six about one, which serves as their common centre, and are of various sizes and forms; some, square, others hexagonal, heptagonal, or octagonal. It seems also peculiar to that neighbourhood, that some portions of the basaltic formation present the likeness of cannon or hollow cylinders, varying in their diameters from six, inches to twenty feet; but these descriptions not being so well authenticated as some which we possess of basaltes nearer home, we may proceed to remark, that in Ireland the basalt forming the Giant's Causeway rises far up the country, runs into the sea, crosses at the bottom, and rises again on the opposite land. The immense pillars of it have been very particularly described and examined in a work entitled Letters concerning the northern coast of the county of Antrim; from which the following brief particulars are extracted :— 1. The pillars of the Causeway are small, not very much exceeding one foot in breadth, and thirty in length; sharply defined, neat in their articulation, with concave or convex terminations to each point. (BASALTES, fig. 5.) In many of the capes and hills they are of a larger size, more imperfect and irregular in their figure and articulation, having often flat terminations to their points. At Fairhead they are of a gigantic magnitude, sometimes exceeding five feet in breadth, and 100 in length; often apparently destitute of joints altogether. Through many parts of the country this species of stone is entirely rude and unformed, separating in loose blocks; in which state it resembles the stone known in Sweden by the name of trappe. 2. The pillars of the Giant's Causeway stood on the level of the beach, whence they may be traced through all degrees of elevation to the summit of the highest grounds in the neighbourhood. 3. At the Causeway, and in most other places, they stand perpendicular to the horizon. In some of the capes, and particularly near Ushet harbour, in the isle of Baghery, they lie in an oblique position. At Doon Point, in the same island, and along the Balintoy shore, they form a variety of regular curves. 4. The stone is black, close, and uniform; the varieties of color are blue, reddish, and gray; and of all kinds of grain, from extreme fineness to the coarse granulated appearance of a stone which resembles imperfect granite, abounding in crystals of schorl, chiefly black, though sometimes of various colors. 5. Though the stone of the Giant's Causeway be in general compact and homogeneous, yet it is remarkable that the upper joint of each pillar, where it can be ascertained with any certainty, is always rudely formed and cellular. The gross pillars also, in the capes and mountains, frequently abound in these air-holes through all their parts, which sometimes contain fine clay, and other apparently foreign bodies: and the irregular basaltes beginning where the pillars cease, or lying over them, is in general extremely honeycombed; containing in its cells crystals of zeolite, little morsels of fine brown clay, some times very pure steatite, and in a few instances, bits of agate.' In Staffa, one of the western isles of Scotland, the whole end of the island is supported by ranges of pillars, mostly about fifty feet high, standing in natural colonnades, according as the bays and points of land have formed themselves, upon a firm basis of solid unformed rock. Above these, the stratum, which reaches to the soil or surface of the island, varies in thickness, as the island itself is formed into hills or valleys, each hill, which hangs over the valleys below, form |