was deprived of his command in 1888 for twice coming to Paris without leave, and finally on the recommendation of a council of inquiry composed of five generals, his name was removed from the army list. He was, however, almost at once elected to the chamber for the Nord, his political programme being a demand for a revision of the constitution. In the chamber he was in a minority, since genuine Republicans of all varieties began to see what his success would mean, and his actions were accordingly directed to keeping the public gaze upon himself. A popular hero survives many deficiencies, and neither his failure as an orator nor the humiliation of a discomfiture in a duel with M. Floquet, then an elderly civilian, sufficed to check the enthusiasm of his following. During 1888 his personality was the dominating feature of French politics, and, when he resigned his seat as a protest against the reception given by the chamber to his revisionist proposals, constituencies vied with one another in selecting him as their representative. At last, in January 1889, he was returned for Paris by an overwhelming majority. He had now become an open menace to the parliamentary Republic. Had Boulanger immediately placed himself at the head of a revolt he might at this moment have effected the coup d’état which the intriguers had worked for, and might not improbably have made himself master of France; but the favourable opportunity passed. The government, with M. Constans as minister of the interior, had been quietly taking its measures for bringing a prosecution against him, and within two months a warrant was signed for his arrest. To the astonishment of his friends, on the 1st of April he fled from Paris before it could be executed, going first to Brussels and then to London. It was the end of the political danger, though Boulangist echoes continued for a little while to reverberate at the polls during 1889 and 1890. Boulanger himself, having been tried and condemned in absentia for treason, in October 1889 went to live in Jersey, but nobody now paid much attention to his doings. The world was startled, however, on the 30th of September 1891 by hearing that he had committed suicide in a cemetery at Brussels by blowing out his brains on the grave of his mistress, Madame de Bonnemains (née Marguerite Crouzet), who had died in the preceding July.
See also the article France: History; and Verly, Le Général Boulanger et la conspiration monarchique (Paris, 1893). (H. Ch.)
BOULAY DE LA MEURTHE, ANTOINE JACQUES CLAUDE JOSEPH, Comte (1761–1840), French politician and magistrate,
son of an agricultural labourer, was born at Chamousey (Vosges)
on the 19th of February 1761. Called to the bar at Nancy in
1783, he presently went to Paris, where he rapidly acquired a
reputation as a lawyer and a speaker. He supported the revolutionary
cause in Lorraine, and fought at Valmy (1792) and
Wissembourg (1793) in the republican army. But his moderate
principles brought suspicion on him, and during the Terror he
had to go into hiding. He represented La Meurthe in the Council
of Five Hundred, of which he was twice president, but his views
developed steadily in the conservative direction. Fearing a
possible renewal of the Terror, he became an active member of
the plot for the overthrow of the Directory in November 1799.
He was rewarded by the presidency of the legislative commission
formed by Napoleon to draw up the new constitution; and as
president of the legislative section of the council of state he
examined and revised the draft of the civil code. In eight years
of hard work as director of a special land commission he settled
the titles of land acquired by the French nation at the Revolution,
and placed on an unassailable basis the rights of the proprietors
who had bought this land from the government. He received
the grand cross of the Legion of Honour and the title of count,
was a member of Napoleon’s privy council, but was never in high
favour at court. After Waterloo he tried to obtain the recognition
of Napoleon II. He was placed under surveillance at
Nancy, and later at Halberstadt and Frankfort-on-Main. He
was allowed to return to France in 1819, but took no further
active part in politics, although he presented himself unsuccessfully
for parliamentary election in 1824 and 1827. He died in
Paris on the 4th of February 1840. He published two books on
English history—Essai sur les causes qui, en 1649, amenèrent en Angleterre l’établissement de la république (Paris, 1799), and
Tableau politique des regnes de Charles II et Jacques II, derniers rois de la maison de Stuart (The Hague, 1818)—which contained
much indirect criticism of the Directory and the Restoration
governments. He devoted the last years of his life to writing
his memoirs, which, with the exception of a fragment on the
Théorie constitutionnelle de Sieyès (1836), remained unpublished.
His elder son, Comte Henri Georges Boulay de la Meurthe (1797–1858), was a constant Bonapartist, and after the election of Louis Napoleon to the presidency, was named (January 1849) vice-president of the republic. He zealously promoted popular education, and became in 1842 president of the society for elementary instruction.
BOULDER, a city and the county-seat of Boulder county,
Colorado, U.S.A., about 30 m. N.W. of Denver. Pop. (1890)
3330; (1900) 6150 (693 foreign-born); (1910) 9539. It is served
by the Union Pacific, the Colorado & Southern, and the Denver,
Boulder & Western railways; the last connects with the neighbouring
mining camps, and affords fine views of mountain scenery.
Boulder lies about 5300 ft. above the sea on Middle Boulder
Creek, a branch of the St Vrain river about 30 m. from its
confluence with the Platte, and has a beautiful situation in the
valley at the foot of the mountains. The state university of Colorado,
established at Boulder by an act of 1861, was opened in
1877; it includes a college of liberal arts, school of medicine
(1883), school of law (1892), college of engineering (1893),
graduate school, college of commerce (1906), college of education
(1908), and a summer school (1904), and has a library of about
42,000 volumes. There are a fine park of 2840 acres, the property
of the city, and three beautiful cañons near Boulder. At the
southern limits, in a beautiful situation 400 ft. above the city,
are the grounds of an annual summer school, the Colorado
Chautauqua. The climate is beneficial for those afflicted with
bronchial and pulmonary troubles; the average mean annual
temperature for eleven years ending with 1907 was 51° F.
There are medicinal springs in the vicinity. The water-works
are owned and operated by the city, the water being obtained
from lakes at the foot of the Arapahoe Peak glacier in the Snowy
Range, 20 m. from the city. The surrounding country is irrigated,
and successfully combines agriculture and mining. There
are ore sampling works and brick-making establishments. Oil
and natural gas abound in the vicinity; there are oil refineries
in the city; and in Boulder county, especially at Nederland,
18 m. south-west, and at Eldora, about 22 m. south-west of the
city, has been obtained since 1900 most of the tungsten mined
in the United States; the output in 1907 was valued at about
$520,000. The first settlement near the site of Boulder was made
in the autumn of 1858. Placer gold was discovered on an
affluent of Boulder Creek in January 1859. The town was laid
out and organized in February 1859, and a city charter was
secured in 1871 and another in 1882.
BOULDER (short for “boulder-stone,” of uncertain origin;
cf. Swed. bullersten, a large stone which causes a noise of
rippling water in a stream, from bullra, to make a loud noise),
a large stone, weathered or water-worn; especially a geological
term for a large mass of rock transported to a distance from the
formation to which it belongs. Similarly, in mining, a mass of
ore found at a distance from the lode.
BOULDER CLAY, in geology, a deposit of clay, often full of boulders, which is formed in and beneath glaciers and ice-sheets wherever they are found, but is in a special sense the typical deposit of the Glacial Period in northern Europe and America. Boulder clay is variously known as “till” or “ground moraine” (Ger. Blocklehme, Geschiebsmergel or Grundmoräne; Fr. argile à blocaux, moraine profonde; Swed. Krosstenslera). It is usually a stiff, tough clay devoid of stratification; though some varieties are distinctly laminated. Occasionally, within the boulder clay, there are irregular lenticular masses of more or less stratified sand, gravel or loam. As the boulder clay is the result of the abrasion (direct or indirect) of the older rocks over which the ice has travelled, it takes its colour from them; thus, in Britain,
