St Dominic, a church built in the 13th century by the Templars, and the cathedral of Santa Maria Maggiore which belongs mainly to the 12th century, are the chief buildings. The fortifications and citadel date from the 16th and 17th centuries. A massive medieval tower serves as a powder-magazine. The trade of Bonifacio, which is carried on chiefly with Sardinia, is in cereals, wine, cork and olive-oil of fine quality. Cork-cutting, tobacco-manufacture and coral-fishing are carried on. The olive is largely cultivated in the neighbourhood and there are oil-works in the town.
Bonifacio was founded about 828 by the Tuscan marquis whose name it bears, as a defence against the Saracen pirates. At the end of the 11th century it became subject to Pisa, and at the end of the 12th was taken and colonized by the Genoese, whose influence may be traced in the character of the population. In 1420 it heroically withstood a protracted siege by Alphonso V. of Aragon. In 1554 it fell into the hands of the Franco-Turkish army.
BONIFACIUS (d. 432), the Roman governor of the province of Africa who is generally believed to have invited the Vandals into that province in revenge for the hostile action of Placidia, ruling in behalf of her son the emperor Valentinian III. (428–429). That action is by Procopius attributed to his rival Aëtius, but the earliest authorities speak of a certain Felix, chief minister of Placidia, as the calumniator of Bonifacius. Whether he really invited the Vandals or not, there is no doubt that he soon turned against them and bravely defended the city of Hippo from their attacks. In 432 he returned to Italy, was received into favour by Placidia, and appointed master of the soldiery. Aëtius, however, resented his promotion, the two rivals met, perhaps in single combat, and Bonifacius, though victorious, received a wound from the effects of which he died three months later.
The authorities for the extremely obscure and difficult history of these transactions are well discussed by E. A. Freeman in an article in the English Historical Review, July 1887, to which the reader is referred. But compare also Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iii. pp. 505-506, edited by J. B. Bury (London, 1897).
BONIN ISLANDS, called by the Japanese Ogasawara-Jima, a chain of small islands belonging to Japan, stretching nearly due north and south, a little east of 142 E., and from 26° 35′ to 27° 45′ N., about 500 m. from the mainland of Japan. They number twenty, according to Japanese investigations, and have a coast-line of 174.65 m. and a superficies of 28.82 sq. m. Only ten of them have any appreciable size, and these are named—commencing from the north—Muko-shima (Bridegroom Island), Nakadachi-shima (Go-between Island[1]), Yome-shima (Bride Island), Ototo-jima (Younger-brother Island), Ani-shima (Elder-brother Island), Chichi-jima (Father Island), Haha-jima (Mother Island), Mei-jima (Niece Island), Ani-jima (Elder-sister Island) and Imoto-jima (Younger-sister Island). European geographers have been accustomed to divide the islands into three groups for purposes of nomenclature, calling the northern group the Parry Islands, the central the Beechey Islands and the southern the Coffin or Bailey Islands. The second largest of all, Chichi-jima, in Japanese cartography was called Peel Island in 1827 by Captain Beechey, and the same officer gave the name of Stapleton Island to the Ototo-jima of the Japanese, and that of Buckland Island to their Ani-jima. To complete this account of Captain Beechey’s nomenclature, it may be added that he called a large bay on the south of Peel Island Fitton Bay, and a bay on the south-west of Buckland Island Walker Bay.[2] Port Lloyd, the chief anchorage (situated on Peel Island), is considered by Commodore Perry—who visited the islands in 1853 and strongly urged the establishment of a United States coaling station there—to have been formerly the crater of a volcano from which the surrounding hills were thrown up, the entrance to the harbour being a fissure through which lava used to pour into the sea. The islands are, indeed, plainly volcanic in their nature.
History.—The diversity of nomenclature indicated above suggests that the ownership of the islands was for some time doubtful. According to Japanese annals they were discovered towards the close of the 16th century, and added to the fief of a Daimyo, Ogasawa Sadayori, whence the name Ogasawara-jima. They were also called Bunin-jima (corrupted by foreigners into Bonin) because of their being without (bu) inhabitants (nin). Effective occupation did not take place, however, and communications with the islands ceased altogether in 1635, as was a natural consequence of the Japanese government’s veto against the construction of sea-going vessels. In 1728 fitful communication was restored by the then representative of the Ogasawara family, only to be again interrupted until 1861, when an unsuccessful attempt was made to establish a Japanese colony at Port Lloyd. Meanwhile, Captain Beechey visited the islands in the “Blossom,” assigned names to some of them, and published a description of their features. Next a small party consisting of two British subjects, two American citizens, and a Dane, sailed from the Sandwich Islands for Port Lloyd in 1830, taking with them some Hawaiian natives. These colonists hoisted the British flag on Peel Island (Chichi-jima), and settled there. When Commodore Perry arrived in 1853, there were on Peel Island thirty-one inhabitants, four being English, four American, one Portuguese and the rest natives of the Sandwich Islands, the Ladrones, &c.; and when Mr Russell Robertson visited the place in 1875, the colony had grown to sixty-nine, of whom only five were pure whites. Mr Robertson found them without education, without religion, without laws and without any system of government, but living comfortably on clearings of cultivated land. English was the language of the settlers, and they regarded themselves as a British colony. But in 1861 the British government renounced all claim to the islands in recognition of Japan’s right of possession. There is now regular steam communication; the affairs of the islands are duly administered, and the population has grown to about 4500. There are no mountains of any considerable height in the Ogasawara Islands, but the scenery is hilly with occasional bold crags. The vegetation is almost tropically luxuriant—palms, wild pineapples, and ferns growing profusely, and the valleys being filled with wild beans and patches of taro. Mr Robertson catalogues a number of valuable timbers that are obtained there, among them being Tremana, cedar, rose-wood, iron-wood (red and white), box-wood, sandal and white oak. The kekop tree, the orange, the laurel, the juniper, the wild cactus, the curry plant, wild sage and celery flourish. No minerals have been discovered. The shores are covered with coral; earthquakes and tidal waves are frequent, the latter not taking the form of bores, but of a sudden steady rise and equally sudden fall in the level of the sea; the climate is rather tropical than temperate, but sickness is almost unknown among the residents. (F. By.)
BONITZ, HERMANN (1814–1888), German scholar, was born at Langensalza in Saxony on the 29th of July 1814. Having studied at Leipzig under G. Hermann and at Berlin under Böckh and Lachmann, he became successively teacher at the Blochmann institute in Dresden (1836), Oberlehrer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms gymnasium (1838) and the Graues Kloster (1840) in Berlin, professor at the gymnasium at Stettin (1842), professor at the university of Vienna (1849), member of the imperial academy (1854), member of the council of education (1864), and director of the Graues Kloster gymnasium (1867). He retired in 1888, and died on the 25th of July in that year at Berlin. He took great interest in higher education, and was chiefly responsible for the system of teaching and examination in use in the high schools of Prussia after 1882. But it is as a commentator on Plato and Aristotle that he is best known outside Germany. His most important works in this connexion are: Disputationes Platonicae Duae (1837); Platonische Studien (3rd ed., 1886); Observations Criticae in Aristotelis Libros Metaphysicos (1842); Observationes Criticae in Aristotelis quae feruntur Magna Moralia et Ethica Eudemia (1844); Alexandri Aphrodisiensis Commentarius in Libras Metaphysicos Aristotelis (1847); Aristotelis Metaphysica (1848–1849); Über die Kategorien des A. (1853); Aristotelische Studien (1862–1867); Index
