advantage of the easterly monsoon, which carried them to Batavia. In March 1769 the expedition arrived at St Malo, with the loss of only seven out of upwards of 200 men. Bougainville’s account of the voyage (Paris, 1771) is written with simplicity and some humour. After an interval of several years, he again accepted a naval command and saw much active service between 1779 and 1782. In the memorable engagement of the 12th of April 1782, in which Rodney defeated the comte de Grasse, near Martinique, Bougainville, who commanded the “Auguste,” succeeded in rallying eight ships of his own division, and bringing them safely into St Eustace. He was created chef d’escadre, and on re-entering the army, was given the rank of maréchal de camp. After the peace he returned to Paris, and obtained the place of associate of the Academy. He projected a voyage of discovery towards the north pole, but this did not meet with support from the French government. Bougainville obtained the rank of vice-admiral in 1791; and in 1792, having escaped almost miraculously from the massacres of Paris, he retired to his estate in Normandy. He was chosen a member of the Institute at its formation, and returning to Paris became a member of the Board of Longitude. In his old age Napoleon I. made him a senator, count of the empire, and member of the Legion of Honour. He died at Paris on the 31st of August 1811. He was married and had three sons, who served in the French army.
Bougainville’s name is given to the largest member of the Solomon Islands, which belongs to Germany; and to the strait which divides it from the British island of Choiseul. It is also applied to the strait between Mallicollo and Espiritu Santo Islands of the New Hebrides group, and the South American climbing plant Bougainvillea, often cultivated in greenhouses, is named after him.
BOUGHTON, GEORGE HENRY (1834–1905), Anglo-American
painter, was born in England, but his parents went to the
United States in 1839, and he was brought up at Albany, N.Y.
He studied art in Paris in 1861–62, and subsequently
lived mainly in London; he was much influenced by Frederick
Walker, and the delicacy and grace of his pictures soon made
his reputation. He was elected an A.R.A. in 1879, and R.A.
in 1896, and a member of the National Academy of Design in
New York in 1871. His pictures of Dutch life and scenery were
especially characteristic; and his subject-pictures, such as the
“Return of the Mayflower” and “The Scarlet Letter,” were
very popular in America.
BOUGIE, a seaport of Algeria, chief town of an arrondissement
in the department of Constantine, 120 m. E. of Algiers. The
town, which is defended by a wall built since the French occupation,
and by detached forts, is beautifully situated on the slope
of Mount Guraya. Behind it are the heights of Mounts Babor
and Tababort, rising some 6400 ft. and crowned with forests of
pinsapo fir and cedar. The most interesting buildings in the
town are the ancient forts, Borj-el-Ahmer and Abd-el-Kader,
and the kasbah or citadel, rectangular in form, flanked by
bastions and towers, and bearing inscriptions stating that it was
built by the Spaniards in 1545. Parts of the Roman wall exist,
and considerable portions of that built by the Hammadites in
the 11th century. The streets are very steep, and many are
ascended by stairs. The harbour, sheltered from the east by a
breakwater, was enlarged in 1897–1902. It covers 63 acres and
has a depth of water of 23 to 30 ft. Bougie is the natural port
of Kabylia, and under the French rule its commerce—chiefly
in oils, wools, hides and minerals—has greatly developed; a
branch railway runs to Beni Mansur on the main line from
Constantine to Oran. Pop. (1906) of the town, 10,419; of the
commune, 17,540; of the arrondissement, which includes eight
communes, 37,711.
Bougie, if it be correctly identified with the Saldae of the Romans, is a town of great antiquity, and probably owes its origin to the Carthaginians. Early in the 5th century Genseric the Vandal surrounded it with walls and for some time made it his capital. En-Nasr (1062–1088), the most powerful of the Berber dynasty of Hammad, made Bougie the seat of his government, and it became the greatest commercial centre of the North African coast, attaining a high degree of civilization. From an old MS. it appears that as early as 1068 the heliograph was in common use, special towers, with mirrors properly arranged, being built for the purpose of signalling. The Italian merchants of the 12th and 13th centuries owned numerous buildings in the city, such as warehouses, baths and churches. At the end of the 13th century Bougie passed under the dominion of the Hafsides, and in the 15th century it became one of the strongholds of the Barbary pirates. It enjoyed partial independence under amirs of Hafside origin, but in January 1510 was captured by the Spaniards under Pedro Navarro. The Spaniards strongly fortified the place and held it against two attacks by the corsairs Barbarossa. In 1555, however, Bougie was taken by Salah Rais, the pasha of Algiers. Leo Africanus, in his Africae descriptio, speaks of the “magnificence” of the temples, palaces and other buildings of the city in his day (c. 1525), but it appears to have fallen into decay not long afterwards. When the French took the town from the Algerians in 1833 it consisted of little more than a few fortifications and ruins. It is said that the French word for a candle is derived from the name of the town, candles being first made of wax imported from Bougie.
BOUGUER, PIERRE (1698–1758), French mathematician,
was born on the 16th of February 1698. His father, John
Bouguer, one of the best hydrographers of his time, was regius
professor of hydrography at Croisic in lower Brittany, and
author of a treatise on navigation. In 1713 he was appointed
to succeed his father as professor of hydrography. In 1727 he
gained the prize given by the Académie des Sciences for his
paper “On the best manner of forming and distributing the
masts of ships”; and two other prizes, one for his dissertation
“On the best method of observing the altitude of stars at sea,”
the other for his paper “On the best method of observing the
variation of the compass at sea.” These were published in the
Prix de l’Académie des Sciences. In 1729 he published
Essai d’optique sur la gradation de la lumière, the object of which is to
define the quantity of light lost by passing through a given
extent of the atmosphere. He found the light of the sun to be
300 times more intense than that of the moon, and thus made
some of the earliest measurements in photometry. In 1730 he
was made professor of hydrography at Havre, and succeeded
P. L. M. de Maupertuis as associate geometer of the Académie
des Sciences. He also invented a heliometer, afterwards
perfected by Fraunhofer. He was afterwards promoted in the
Academy to the place of Maupertuis, and went to reside in Paris.
In 1735 Bouguer sailed with C. M. de la Condamine for Peru, in
order to measure a degree of the meridian near the equator.
Ten years were spent in this operation, a full account of which
was published by Bouguer in 1749, Figure de la terre déterminée.
His later writings were nearly all upon the theory of navigation.
He died on the 15th of August 1758.
The following is a list of his principal works:—Traité d’optique sur la gradation de la lumière (1729 and 1760); Entretiens sur la cause d’inclinaison des orbites des planètes (1734); Traité de navire, &c. (1746, 4to); La Figure de la terre déterminée, &c. (1749), 4to; Nouveau traité de navigation, contenant la théorie et la pratique du pilotage (1753); Solution des principaux problèmes sur la manœuvre des vaisseaux (1757); Opérations faites pour la vérification du degré du méridien entre Paris et Amiens, par Mess. Bouguer, Camus, Cassini et Pingré (1757).
See J. E. Montucla, Histoire des mathématiques (1802).
BOUGUEREAU, ADOLPHE WILLIAM (1825–1905), French painter, was born at La Rochelle on the 30th of November 1825. From 1843 till 1850 he went through the course of training at the École des Beaux-Arts, and in 1850 divided the Grand Prix de Rome scholarship with Baudry, the subject set being “Zenobia on the banks of the Araxes.” On his return from Rome in 1855 he was employed in decorating several aristocratic residences, deriving inspiration from the frescoes which he had seen at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and which had already suggested his “Idyll” (1853). He also began in 1847 to exhibit regularly at the Salon. “The Martyr’s Triumph,” the body of St Cecilia borne to the catacombs, was placed in the Luxembourg after being exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1855; and in the same
