Bothwell (Village of Scotland miles E)
a village of Scotland, 8 miles E. of Glasgow. About a mile distant, toward the S. E., the road to Hamilton is carried over the river Clyde by Bothwell Bridge, the scene of one of the most memorable events in Scottish history. The Covenanters, numbering from 4,000 to 5,000 men, having taken possession of the bridge, were attacked, on June 22, 1679, the bridge forced, and their army totally routed by the royal troops commanded by the Duke of Monmouth. Near the village is the magnificent ruin of Bothwell Castle.
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Bothwell, James
James (1536-1578), a Scottish earl, known in history as the third husband of Queen Mary. By various intrigues he obtained high office near the person of Queen Mary with whom he became a great favorite. In 1567 Darnley, her husband, was blown up in a hunting lodge, as was believed with the connivance of Bothwell. At all events the later conducted the queen to Dunbar Castle soon afterward, and married her. The Scottish nobility, however, resented his rise to power, and rescued the queen, as they pleased to term it, from his influence. He fled to the Orkneys, thence to Norway and to Denmark where he died insane. See Mary ; Queen Of Scots 2026 Editor's Note: Bothwell's end was worse than the entry's abrupt stop suggests: he fled to Denmark, was imprisoned in Dragsholm Castle, and died there after some ten years in confinement, reportedly insane. His marriage destroyed Mary, Queen of Scots — it cost her the throne and led eventually to her execution in England. (Ed: BR 2026-06-29)
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Botrychium
a genus of ferns belonging to the order ophioglossaceæ (adders' tongues). B. lunaria, or common moonwort, occurs in dry mountain pastures in Europe. B. virginicum, an American species, is called the rattlesnake fern, from its growing in such places as those venomous reptiles frequent.
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Botrytis
a genus of fungi, with clusters of minute globular seeds or seed vessels. They grow on rotten herbaceous stems, decaying fungi, living leaves, and similar localities. The muscadine disease which destroys so many silk worms is caused by one species, B. bassi- B. infectans, which causes the poana. tato disease, is now removed to the genus peronospora.
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Botta
PAUL EMILE, a French traveler and archæologist, born in Turin, Dec. 6, 1802; was appointed French Consul at Alexandria in 1833. He undertook a journey to Arabia in 1837, described in his "Relation d'un Voyage dans l'Yémen." He discovered the ruins of ancient Nineveh in 1843. He published two important works-one on the cuneiform writing of the Assyrians ("Mémoire de l'Écriture Cuneiforme Assyrienne"), and the other upon the monuments of Nineveh ("Monuments de Ninive," 5 vols. folio, with drawings by Flandin, Paris, 1846-1850). He died in Achères, March 29, 1870.
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Botticelli
ALESSANDRO (botti-chel'le), a Florentine artist, born in painting under Lippi, 1440. He studied whose manner he successfully imitated, and was one of the earliest engravers, having learned the art from Baldini, and applied it to the illustration of Dante's works, printed in 1488. Two pictures of his, "Venus Rising from the Sea," and "Venus Adorned by the Graces," are highly spoken of. He died in 1515.
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Bottle Gourd
a gourd, lagenaria vulgaris, called also the white pumpkin. The Hindus cultivated it largely as an article of food. There are several varieties. One is the sweet bottle gourd; another is used as a buoy in swimming across Indian rivers, transporting baggage, etc.
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Bottle Imps
A class of German spirits, similar in many ways to Familiars . The following is the prescription/of an old alchymist, given by the Bishop of Dromore in his Relics of Ancient Poetry, for the purpose of securing one of these fairies. First, take a broad square crystal or Venetian glass, about hree inches in breadth and length. Lay it in the blood of a white hen on three Wednesdays or three Fridays. Then take it and wash it with holy water and fumigate it. Then take three hazel sticks a year old; take the bark off them; make them long enough to write on them the name of the fairy or spirit whom you may desire three times on each stick, which must be flat on one side. Bury them under some hill haunted by fairies on the Wednesday before you call her; and on the Friday following dig them out, and call her at eight, or three, or ten o'clock, which are good times for this purpose. In order to do so successfully one must be pure, and face toward the East. When you get her, tie her to the glass.
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Bottle Nose
a cetacean, the bottle nosed whale (hyperoödon bidens), very destructive to food fishes, and of comparatively little economic value itself. It is the prime aversion of fishermen. BOTTLE TREE (delabechea rupestris), a tree of northeastern Australia, order sterculiacea, with a stem that bulges out into a huge, rounded mass. It abounds in a nutritious mucilaginous substance.
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Bottom
in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream , an Athenian weaver who plays the part of Pyramus in the interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe. Oberon, the fairy king, punishes his queen Titania by directing Puck to anoint her eyelids with "love-in-idleness." The result of this treatment is that Titania falls in love with and caresses Bottom, upon whom Puck has fixed the head of an ass. Bottom is a brawny, awkward fellow, ignorant, but full of conceit and mock heroism. See Midsummer Night'S Dream 2026 Editor's Note: Bottom in his ass's head is one of the enduring images of the English stage, and his baffled waking speech — "I have had a most rare vision" — is often taken as Shakespeare's sly joke about the limits of explaining art. The play has never been out of the repertory, and Mendelssohn's incidental music gave the world its most-played wedding march. (Ed: BR 2026-06-05)
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Bottoming File
A file constructed like those shown in Fig. 41, so that it may be used for filing sinks, or other depressions, where an ordinary file cannot be brought into use.
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Bottomry
a contract by which the owner of a vessel borrows money on the security of the bottom or keel, by which, a part being put for the whole, is meant the ship itself. If the ship is lost the lender loses all his money. If, on the contrary, it returns in safety, he receives back the principal, with interest at any rate which may be agreed upon between the parties, and this was allowed to be the case even when the usury laws were in force. Bottomry is sometimes corrupted into bummaree.
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