they emit a fetid liquid when pursued, and are for the most part agile runners; many have no true wings; they conceal themselves in the earth or under stones and the bark of trees. This is a very numerous tribe, and its study is difficult. Some of the most interesting genera are carabus, scarites, harpalus, brachinus, feronia, &c. The hydrocanthari, or swimming beetles, include the genera dytiscus and gyrinus; the feet are adapted for swimming, being compressed and ciliated; they live in the fresh lakes and marshes and quiet streams of all countries, and they pass their first and final stages in the water. The dytisci can live on the land and also can fly; they vary in size from 14 inch to of an inch in length; they are carnivorous and voracious, and can remain a long time under water in pursuit of their prey; they swim on the surface with great rapidity. The gyrini are smaller, and may be found in troops on the surface of still waters, darting about with surprising agility; they can see in the water and in the air at the same time; they can fly well, though they swim better; the eggs are deposited on the leaves of aquatic plants. This family is useful in destroying noxious and predacious insects and grubs. 2. The brachelytra have but 1 palpus in the jaws, or 4 in all; the wing cases are shorter than the body, which is narrow and elongated; the head is large and flat, the mandibles strong, the antenna short; they live in moist earth, on dung and other excrementitious matters, and most of all in decaying animal carcasses; they are courageous and strong, running or flying with the greatest facility; they destroy insects with eagerness. This family is composed entirely of the old and vaguely determined Linnæan genus, staphylinus. The larvæ live in the same situations as the perfect insects. The family are very useful natural scavengers. 3. The serricornes have elytra covering the abdomen, and antennæ equal throughout, dentated, saw-like or fan-like. Some of the most interesting genera are: Buprestis, many of whose species are very large, and exceedingly brilliant; these walk very slowly, but are excellent flyers; they are most numerous in warm climates, and live generally in wood. The genus elater is remarkable for the shortness of the legs, and for the faculty it has of changing from a supine position to its feet by springing into the air by means of a spine on its præsternum; the species are found in flowers, or plants, and on the ground; some of the American species, as the E. noctilucus, are phosphorescent, and are called fire-flies. The genus lampyris, also, is interesting, as containing the phosphorescent species whose females go by the name of glow-worms; the genus telephorus is noted as furnishing the species which are occasionally taken up by high winds, and deposited in distant regions, causing the socalled insect showers; the tick of the deathwatch is produced by a species of anobium, living in decaying wood. The larvæ sometimes

cause great destruction of valuable timber. 4. The clavicornes have the antennæ thickened, or knob-shaped, at the end; they live chiefly on animal substances. The genus hister feeds on decaying and excrementitious matters. The genus necrophorus is noted for its habit of interring small animals, such as mice and moles, for the purpose of depositing its eggs in the decaying carcass; this they do by removing the earth beneath the body, which falls into the hollow; their sense of smell must be extremely acute. The genus silpha also prefers putrefying animal substances. The genera dermestes and anthrenus, in their larva state, are perfect pests to the naturalist, as they devour every animal substance accessible in his cabinet; the action of heat, usually employed to destroy them, is nearly as destructive as the insects. 5. The palpicornes resemble the preceding family in the shape of the antennæ, composed of only 9 joints, and the feet in most of the genera are formed for swimming. The genus hydrophilus is carnivorous and voracious, frequenting fresh water and marshes, swimming well, but not so rapidly as dytiscus; their larvæ destroy great numbers of aquatic insects and water-snails; they pass the nymph state in cavities in the earth, for about 3 weeks. Other genera are elophorus and sphæridium; the latter is terrestrial. 6. The lamellicornes are the last family of the pentamera, including numerous genera, among which are some of the most brilliant and the largest of the order; those that feed on vegetable substances are beautifully colored, while dark tints prevail among those which devour decaying animal matters. The antennæ are deeply inserted under the side of the head, short, ending in a knob, composed of plates or lamina. An idea of the form of the larvæ, which are often very destructive to vegetation, may be formed from the well-known whiteworm, the larva of the melolontha. In this family are included the genus scarabæus of Linnæus, proper to warm climates, particularly Africa; they live in ordure of all kinds; the ateuchus sacer, an object of religious veneration among the ancient Egyptians, and often represented on their monuments, and found in the sarcophagi, belongs to this genus; other genera are copris, geotrupes, trox, melolontha, cetonia, and lucanus (stag beetle). While many of the melolonthians are destructive, the geotrupida and scarabaida are useful in removing carrion and filth.-The heteromera, the 2d section of the order, are all vegetable feeders; many of them avoid the light; it includes: 7. The family melasoma, of black or ash-colored species, for the most part apterous, with the elytra as it were soldered together; some of them have a salivary apparatus; they dwell on the ground, under stones, and in dark situations in houses, quitting their retreats at night; they are slow in their movements. Among the genera are pimelia, blaps, and tenebrio (meal-worms). They and their larvæ are useful scavengers. 8. The taxicornes have no corneous tooth on the inner side

of the jaws; all are winged, and the legs are not adapted for running; in the males the head is sometimes furnished with horns. Most live on tree fungi or under the bark, or under stones on the ground. Some of the genera are diaperis, phaleria, and eledona. These fungus-eaters are useful to man. 9. The stenelytra differ from the preceding chiefly in the antennæ; they are quite active, concealing themselves under the bark or among the leaves and flowers of trees; some live in fungi, others in old wood. To this belong the genera helops, cistela, dircæa, ademera, and others serviceable to man. 10. The trachelides live on plants, of which they devour the leaves and suck the juices. Here belong the genera lagria, pyrochroa, mordella, notoxus, horia, meloe, cantharis, &c.; the C. vesicatoria, or Spanish fy, is well known in medicine for its blistering properties.-The third section, the tetramera, are vegetable feeders; they include: 11. The rhynchophora, a large and richly ornamented family, living very often in the interior of fruit and seeds, and very destructive to the products of the farm and the orchard; it is easily recognized by its projecting muzzle. Among the genera are bruchus, whose larvæ are very destructive; attelabus, brentus; curculio, the greatest pest of the horticulturist; calandra, one of whose species, the weevil, destroys immense quantities of grains; the larvæ of the C. palmarum, on the other hand, are considered a great dainty by the West Indian blacks. 12. The xylophagi, in the larva state, destroy or render useless great numbers of forest trees by the channels which they gnaw in various directions; among the most destructive is the genus scolytus; other genera are bostrichus and trogosita. 13. The platysoma are found beneath the bark of trees; the principal genus is cucujus. 14. The longicornes have filiform and very long antennæ; their larvæ live in the interior or beneath the bark of trees, where they are very destructive. Some of the species are among the largest of the or der. Among the genera are parandra, cerambyx, callidium, lamia, saperda, and leptura. 15. The eupoda derive their name from the large size of the posterior thighs in many species; they are all winged, and occur on the stems and leaves of plants, especially the liliacea; among the genera are sagra, crioceris, and donacia. 16. The cyclica are small, slow in their movements, but often brilliantly colored; the females are very prolific. Here are placed the genera hispa, cassida, cryptocephalus, chrysomela; eumolpus, one species of which, E. vitis, in its larva state, commits great ravages in wine countries; galeruca and altica, possessed of great jumping powers; the latter is often very destructive to the turnip crops. 17. The clavipalpi are all gnawers, and may be distinguished by their antenna ending in a knob, and by an internal tooth to the jaws; the body is usually rounded. Some of the genera are erotylus, triplax, agathidium, and phalacrus.-The last section, the trimera,

have the antennæ ending in a compressed club formed by the last 3 of the 11 joints; it contains: 18. The fungicola, living chiefly in fungi and dead wood; the principal genus is eumorphus. 19. The aphidiphagi are best represented by the genus coccinella, or lady-bird; these pretty little beetles, more especially in the larva state, live almost entirely on aphides, or plant-lice, and in this way are of immense service. 20. The pselaphii have short truncated elytra; the species are generally very small, and live on the ground in moist places, and under stones and moss; the types of this, the last family, are the genera pselaphus and claviger.-The coleoptera are exceedingly numerous in species. It is by the occurrence of elytra that this order may be at once recognized; these organs are highly ornamented, and they serve not only to protect the membranous wings, but to shield the body in the dark and dangerous places in which beetles delight to go; and by their broad expanded surfaces they assist the heavy species in their flight, acting both as a sail and a parachute.

BEFANA, in Italy the name of a puppet or doll dressed as a woman, and carried through the streets in procession on the day of Epiphany, and on some other feast days. The name is probably derived from Epifania, the feast of the Epiphany. On the day of this feast presents are given to children in Italy, as they are in America on Christmas or New Year's, and the befana is supposed to bring them.

BEG, BEY, BEGLERBEG, titles of honor among the Turks. The term beg means "lord; the beglerbeg is "the lord of the lords." The beg is, in some parts of the empire, inferior to a pasha, holding a town or district subject to the supervision of the pasha. In the African provinces, the bey is the supreme officer of Tunis and Tripoli, and was the chief title among the Mamelukes.

BEGA, a river of Eastern Hungary. It joins the Theiss 21 miles east of Peterwardein, and forms a part of the Bega canal, extending from Facset to Becskerek, a distance of 86 miles.

BEGA, CORNELIUS, a Dutch painter, born at Haarlem in 1620, died Aug. 16, 1664. He was a pupil of Ostade, whose manner he imitated. The subjects of his paintings are commonly the amusements of the Dutch peasantry, and the interior of cottages and taverns. When the plague in 1664 visited Holland, a young lady, whom he loved, was attacked by it, and abandoned by her friends. Bega remained by her side, rendering her every attention till her last moment. He, however, caught the fatal infection, and died of it.

BEGAS, KARL, a Prussian painter, professor, and member of the Berlin academy of fine arts, born April 30, 1794, at Heinsberg, near Aix la Chapelle, died in Berlin, Nov. 23, 1854. He studied first under Philippart, and in Paris under Gros. His first work, a copy of the Madonna della Sedia, attracted the attention of the king of Prussia, who appointed him painter

13th century. Of one thing we are certain, that the epithet of Beghards or Beguines was bestowed in after time upon numerous sects and orders, which had nevertheless each a different chronological, and many of them a widely differing philosophical origin. The Beguins and Beguines of St. Francis, for so we may designate them in distinction from all others, were an outgrowth of the crusades, and cannot be understood if contemplated separately from these great features of ecclesiastical history. The Beguines differed from the nuns who took the veil, in that they still had control over their own property, and never were regarded at any stage of their career as having pledged themselves, without return or repentance, to a life of seclusion. They might, indeed, be the mothers of families, and many of them were the widows of those who had perished in the crusades. The same general principle characterized the Beguins or Beghards. They were in many instances the heads of families, while the real monks were required to abstain from marriage. Thus the orders of the Beguines and Beguins were instituted by St. Francis as a kind of middle rank between the priesthood and the laity, and were the result of a practical insight on his part into the wants which the spirit of the crusades had begotten. These sects or orders were both of them characterized by simple and temperate habits, nor do they ever appear to have been guilty of great personal offences. They were, however, destined to persecution. Unconnected with the church ecclesiastically, the powers of the church were not always engaged to protect them. Having become suspected of some heresies in doctrine, on account of a division in their ranks into practicals or orthodox and mystics, the mystic branch of the Beguines seem to have allied themselves with an order of the laity which had come to be known as the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and so exposed themselves to the censure of the church, which, in 1311, passed the famous act of the council of Vienna, known as the Clementina, the persecutions justified by which nearly ruined the mystic Beguines, and seriously injured both the orthodox sisterhood, and their brethren the Beguins. The Beguines of Holland seem to have avoided the suspicion of heresy, and were therefore less molested. But after 1250 the term Beghard was mainly synonymous with heretic in the ecclesiastical vocabulary. The more orthodox portion of the order joined by degrees either the Franciscans or the Dominicans, and wandered on the banks of the Rhine, crying piteously "Bread for God's sake." From 1311 to 1318, the Beguins were persecuted in Germany with too little regard to the division above mentioned, and to 1326 in Italy, at which several dates John XXII. took the orthodox branch of them under protection. After 1374, the Beghards are mostly merged in the Lollards. There are still Beguinagia, or establishments of the Beguines, in many cities of Belgium and Holland. There is one in

Brussels containing 1,000 inmates, who are governed by matrons.

BEGUM, in the East Indies, a title of honor bestowed upon princesses, and also upon the sultanas of seraglios. Two wealthy begums of Oude, in Hindostan, the wife and mother of Sujah Dowlah, are celebrated for the cruelties which they suffered from Warren Hastings. That resolute governor having looked in vain elsewhere for the treasures which he required, determined to extort it from these princesses. To this end their confidential servants were arrested and tortured, their zenanas or dwellings were surrounded by troops, and, the treasure being still withheld, their apartments-sanctuaries respected in the east by governments which respect nothing else-were burst open by gangs of bailiffs. For the face of an eastern lady to be seen by strange men is an intolerable outrage, and to avoid so terrible an exposure the beguins surrendered to the governor immense sums. Yet the cruelties did not cease, but many of the women and children were flung into gaol, distressed by torture or want of food, or driven to the extremity more dreaded than death of appearing publicly before the sepoys. Begums are generally of noble birth, and heirs to at least a portion of the wealth which they possess. Not unfrequently, however, they are quick-witted provincial girls, whose first successes were due to their beauty, and who after an adventurous career find themselves the survivors and heirs of their various husbands. Thus in the present century the famous begum Sumroo, who swayed the territory of Sirdhana, and whose annual revenue was £250,000, was by birth a Cashmerian, and by family a Georgian. At first a dancing girl, her lustrous eyes charmed a French officer, who with more enterprise than principle, served on all sides in the Indian wars, till by the last of his 8 masters he was rewarded with the territory of Sirdhana for his valuable services. The Cashmerian girl, whose maiden name was Zeb-al-Nissa (the ornament of the sex), accompanied this officer in his various expeditions, and was at length successful in alluring him into a marriage. Wearied at length of her lord and master, and exasperated at discovering that she was not the sole object of his love, she with cool perfidy beguiled him to his death in a wellvarnished but horrible plot. Having seen his dead body she returned to her tent, buried alive the poor slave girl who had been the object of her husband's passion, and placing her bed over the grave, slept there until morning, lest any one more compassionate than herself should lend a saving hand to the victim. She now owned and ruled an immense estate till her death in 1836, at 90 years of age, living in splendor at her houses and gardens in Merat and Delhi, entertaining guests in the most magnificent style, admired even by the British for her taste and wit, though she usually sat in the crosslegged fashion, and seeming to exist principally upon tea and the smoke of tobacco, and to keep death at arm's length rather by the energy of

her mind than by any strength of the flesh. Eminent among the begums of India was Nour Jehan (the light of the world), the favorite wife of the emperor Shah Jehan, reputed to have been the most beautiful and accomplished woman of her age in Asia, and in reverence for whose illustrious beauty, virtues, and accomplishments, and to immortalize her name, that prince erected over her remains the magnificent mausoleum of Tajh Mahal, at Agra, one of the most superb specimens of architecture in the Orient. In its centre is a block of marble recording the name and graces of the begum, and extravagantly inlaid and bedecked with gems. The begum and light of the harem Nourmahal in the poem of Lalla Rookh, is well known, and Mr. Thackeray in his novel of the "Newcomes," makes a begum, or wealthy widow returned from India, figure in English society.

BEHAIM, or BEHEM, MARTIN, a German navigator and geographer, born at Nuremberg about 1459, died at Lisbon, July 29, 1506. After having at an early age pursued astronomical and mathematical studies, he went, in 1477, to Flanders, where, at Mecheln and at Antwerp, he engaged in manufacturing and selling cloths. The active commerce between Flanders and Portugal, and also the interest which he took in the great maritime undertakings of the Portuguese at this time, induced him, in 1480, to visit Lisbon, where he was well received at the court of King John II., and became a pupil of the learned John Müller, celebrated under the name of Regiomontanus. Here he was associated with Columbus, whose views of a western passage to India he is said by Herrera to have supported. In 1483 he was appointed a member of the commission for calculating an astrolabe and tables of declension; and in reward for his services, was made a knight of the order of Christ. In the following year he was cosmographer in the expedition of Diego Cam, who sailed along the western coast of Africa as far south as the mouth of the Congo. In 1486 he sailed to Fayal, one of the Azores, where he established a Flemish colony, and married the daughter of its governor. Here he remained till 1490, when he returned to Nuremberg, where he constructed a terrestrial globe, on which historical notices were written, and which is a valuable memorial of the discoveries and geographical knowledge of his time. Behaim subsequently returned to Fayal, and was, for a time, employed in diplomacy by the Portuguese government. It has been maintained, by some writers, that he visited America before Columbus; and an island which he places upon his globe far to the west of the Azores, has been thought to be evidence of this. But the existence of an island somewhere in the western waters was one of the current beliefs of the time, and it is probable that Behaim had no positive evidence in assigning it a locality.

BEHAM, HANS SEBALD, a painter and engraver, born at Nuremberg in 1500, died at

Frankfort in 1550, as notorious for his profligacy as he was eminent for his abilities as an artist. Bartsch enumerates 430 of his prints, of which 171 are wood-cuts. He excelled principally as an engraver upon copper, and in small prints, which are much in the style of those of Aldegrever.

BEHEADING, a mode of execution said to have been first employed by the Persians. According to Xenophon, it was looked upon in Greece as the least degrading capital punishment; and this classic theory of beheading was adopted by the British nobility, whose heads are cut off, while commoners are consigned to the less aristocratic gallows. St. John's head was cut off under the Roman régime in Judea. Caligula was a great amateur of executions, and employed a soldier, an eminent artist in the profession of beheading, who brought prisoners indiscriminately from their dungeons, in order to exercise his art upon their heads for the special delight of his imperial master. In the early ages, the blow was given with an axe; but as chivalry and good taste advanced, the sword was substituted, which remains to the present day a favorite instrument of beheading, as, for instance, in Bavaria, and some other parts of Germany. The Roman beheading, or decollatio, was a popular military punishment. The earl Waltheof was the first Englishman beheaded, by order of William the Conqueror, in 1075. In some English counties, beheading was not confined to the nobility; and under Edward II., it was customary in Cheshire to behead every common felon. The murderous instrument which, in the 13th century, cut off the heads of Italian noblemen, was called mannaia. In 1268, Conrad of Swabia was beheaded at Naples with a Welsh trap, or Welsche Falle, as the Germans call it. The instrument used for the first time in Germany in Zittau, in 1300, was called dolabra, which caused death by driving the instrument through the neck. In Scotch antiquity, the edged instrument used for beheading was called the maiden, introduced into Scotland by the regent Morton, who became a victim of his own invention. This instrument is preserved in the Scottish antiquarian museum. The duke of Montmorency was beheaded at Toulon in 1632. In the 18th century, the Dutch beheaded the convicted slaves in their colonies. The Scotch maiden does not differ much from the guillotine, and chops off the head in descending, with the exception that the oblique descent of the_guillotine causes a more instantaneous death. In France, beheading was formerly confined to the nobility; but since the invention of the guillotine, it is the only mode of capital punishment.

BEHEMOTH, the beast described in the book of Job (xl. 15-24). There has been much variety of opinion as to what species of animal is referred to under this appellation. The elephant, the ox, and the crocodile have been suggested. The christian fathers variously supposed it to be a figurative representation of the devil, Antichrist, Sennacherib, and Pharaoh.