the vats are filter-pressed, and the cakes dried on plates supported on racks in heated chambers. This product is a very valuable manure, and is also used in the manufacture of phosphorus.
Instead of extracting all the gelatinous matter from degreased bones, the practice of extracting about one half and carbonizing the residue is frequently adopted. The bones are heated in horizontal cast-iron retorts, holding about 5 cwt., and the operation occupies about twelve to thirteen hours. The residue in the retorts is removed while still red-hot to air-tight vessels in which it is allowed to cool. It is then passed through grinding mills, and is subsequently riddled by revolving cylindrical sieves. The yield is from 55 to 60% of the bones carbonized, and the product contains about 10% of carbon and about 75% of calcium phosphate, the remainder being various inorganic salts and moisture (6-7%). Animal charcoal has a deep black colour, and is much used as a filtering and clarifying material. The vapours evolved during carbonization are condensed in vertical air condensers. The liquid separates into two layers: the upper tarry layer is floated off and redistilled; the distillate is termed “bone oil,”[1] and mainly consists of many fatty amines and pyridine derivatives, characterized by a most disgusting odour; the residue is “bone pitch,” and finds application in the manufacture of black varnishes and like compositions. The lower layer is ammoniacal liquor; it is transferred to stills, distilled with steam, and the ammonia received in sulphuric acid; the ammonium sulphate, which separates, is removed, drained and dried, and is principally used as a manure. Both during the carbonization of the bones and the distillation of the tar inflammable gases are evolved; these are generally used, after purification, for motive or illuminating purposes. (C. E.*)
BONE BED, a term loosely used by geologists when speaking generally of any stratum or deposit which contains bones of whatever kind. It is also applied to those brecciated and stalagmitic deposits on the floor of caves, which frequently contain osseous remains. In a more restricted sense it is used to connote certain thin layers of bony fragments, which occur upon well-defined geological horizons. One of the best-known of these is the Ludlow Bone Bed, which is found at the base of the Downton Sandstone in the Upper Ludlow series. At Ludlow itself, two such beds are actually known, separated by about 14 ft. of strata. Although quite thin, the Ludlow Bone Bed can be followed from that town into Gloucestershire for a distance of 45 m. It is almost made up of fragments of spines, teeth and scales of ganoid fish. Another well-known bed, formerly known as the “Bristol” or “Lias” Bone Bed, exists in the form of several thin layers of micaceous sandstone, with the remains of fish and saurians, which occur in the Rhaetic Black Paper Shales that lie above the Keuper marls in the south-west of England. It is noteworthy that a similar bone bed has been traced on the same geological horizon in Brunswick, Hanover and Franconia. A bone bed has also been observed at the base of the Carboniferous limestone series in certain parts of the south-west of England.
BONE-LACE, a kind of lace made upon a cushion from linen thread; the pattern is marked out with pins, round which are twisted the different threads, each wound on its own bobbin. The lace was so called from the fact that bobbins were formerly made of bone.
BONER (or Bonerius), ULRICH (fl. 14th century), German-Swiss writer of fables, was born in Bern. He was descended of an old Bernese family, and, as far as can be ascertained, took clerical orders and became a monk; yet as it appears that he subsequently married, it is certain that he received the “tonsure” only, and was thus entitled to the benefit of the clerici uxoriati, who, on divesting themselves of the clerical garb, could return to secular life. He is mentioned in records between 1324 and 1349, but neither before nor after these dates. He wrote, in Middle High German, a collection of fables entitled Der Edelstein (c. 1349), one hundred in number, which were based principally on those of Avianus (4th century) and the Anonymus (edited by I. Nevelet, 1610). This work he dedicated to the Bernese patrician and poet, Johann von Rinkenberg, advocatus (Vogt) of Brienz (d. c. 1350). It was printed in 1461 at Bamberg; and it is claimed for it that it was the first book printed in the German language. Boner treats his sources with considerable freedom and originality; he writes a clear and simple style, and the necessarily didactic tone of the collection is relieved by touches of humour.
Der Edelstein has been edited by G. F. Benecke (Berlin, 1816) and Franz Pfeiffer (Leipzig, 1844); a translation into modern German by K. Pannier will be found, in Reclam’s Universal-Bibliothek (Leipzig, 1895). See also G. E. Lessing in Zur Geschichte und Literatur (Werke, ix.); C. Waas, Die Quellen der Beispiele Boners (Giessen, 1897).
BO’NESS, or Borrowstounness, a municipal and police burgh and seaport of Linlithgowshire, Scotland. Pop. (1891) 6295; (1901) 9306. It lies on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, 17 m. W. by N. of Edinburgh, and 24 m. by rail, being the terminus of the North British railway’s branch line from Manuel. In the 18th century it ranked next to Leith as a port, but the growth of Grangemouth, higher up the firth, seriously affected its shipping trade, which is, however, yet considerable, coal and pig-iron forming the principal exports, and pit props from the Baltic the leading import. It has an extensive harbour (the area of the dock being 734 acres). The great industries are coal-mining—some of the pits extending for a long distance beneath the firth—iron-founding (with several blast furnaces) and engineering, but it has also important manufactures of salt, soap, vitriol and other chemicals. Shipbuilding and whaling are extinct. Traces of the wall of Antoninus which ran through the parish may still be made out, especially near Inveravon. Blackness, on the coast farther east, was the seaport of Linlithgow till the rise of Bo’ness, but its small export trade now mainly consists of coal, bricks, tiles and lime. Its castle, standing on a promontory, is of unknown age. James III. of Scotland is stated to have consigned certain of the insurgent nobles to its cells; and later it was used as a prison in which many of the Covenanters were immured. It was one of the four castles that had to be maintained by the Articles of Union, but when its uselessness for defensive purposes became apparent, it was converted into an ammunition depot. Kinneil House, 1 m. south of Bo’ness, a seat of the duke of Hamilton, formerly a keep, was fortified by the regent Arran, plundered by the rebels in Queen Mary’s reign, and reconstructed in the time of Charles II. Dr John Roebuck (1718–1794), founder of the Carron Iron Works, occupied it for several years from 1764. It was here that, on his invitation, James Watt constructed a model of his steam-engine, which was tested in a now disused colliery. Though Roebuck lost all his money in the coal-mines and salt works which he established at Bo’ness, the development of the mineral resources of the district may be regarded as due to him.
BONFIGLI, BENEDETTO, 15th century Italian painter, was born at Perugia. Until near the middle of the 15th century the Umbrian school was far behind those of Florence and the North, but in the person of Perugino and some of his followers it suddenly advanced into the very first rank. Among the latter none holds a more distinguished place than Benedetto Bonfigli. The most important of his extant works are a series, in fresco, of the life of St Louis of Toulouse, in the communal palace of Perugia.
BONFIRE (in Early English “bone-fire,” Scottish “bane-fire”), originally a fire of bones, now any large fire lit in the open air on an occasion of rejoicing. Though the spelling “bonfire” was used in the 16th century, the earlier “bone-fire” was common till 1760. The earliest known instance of the derivation of the word occurred as ban fyre ignis ossium in the Catholicon Anglicum,
A.D. 1483. Other derivations, now rejected, have been sought for the word. Thus some have thought it Baal-fire, passing through Bael, Baen to Bane. Others have declared it to be boon-fire by analogy with boen-harow, i.e. “harrowing by gift,” the suggestion being that these fires were “contribution” fires, every one in the neighbourhood contributing a portion of the material, just as in Northumberland the “contributed Ploughing Days” are known as Bone-daags.
Whatever the origin of the word, it has long had several meanings—(a) a fire of bones, (b) a fire for corpses, a funeral pile, (c) a fire for immolation, such as that in which heretics and
- ↑ Bone oil, also known as Dippel’s oil, was originally produced by the distillation of stags’ horns; it is of interest in the history of chemistry, since from it were isolated in 1846 by T. Anderson pyridine and some of its homologues.
