less outwards, with an upward direction near the tips, and conspicuous knobs or ridges are never developed on their surface. The tall upper molars have inner columns. The group is represented throughout the Old World as far east as Celebes, and has one living North American representative. All the species may be included in the genus Bos, with several subgeneric divisions (see Anoa, Aurochs, Bantin, Bison, Buffalo, Gaur, Gayal, Ox and Yak).
The second group, or Caprinae, includes the sheep and goats, which are smaller animals than most of the Bovidae, generally with horns in both sexes, but those of the females small. In the males the horns are usually compressed and triangular, with transverse ridges or knobs, and either curving backwards or spiral. The muzzle is narrow and hairy; and when face-glands are present these are small and insignificant; while the tail is short and flattened. Unlike the Bovinae, there are frequently glands in the feet; and the upper molar teeth differ from those of that group in their narrower crowns, which lack a distinct inner column. When a face-pit is present in the skull it is small. The genera are Ovis (sheep), Capra (goats) and Hemitragus (tahr). Sheep and goats are very nearly related, but the former never have a beard on the chin of the males, which are devoid of a strong odour; and their horns are typically of a different type. There are, however, several more or less transitional forms. Tahr are short-horned goats. The group is unknown in America, and in Africa is only represented in the mountains of the north, extending, however, some distance south into the Sudan and Abyssinia. All the species are mountain-dwellers. (See Udad, Argali, Goat, Ibex, Mouflon, Sheep and Tahr.)
The musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) alone represents the family Ovibovinae, which is probably most nearly related to the next group (see Musk-ox).
Next come the Rupicaprinae, which include several genera of mountain-dwelling ruminants, typified by the European chamois (Rupicapra); the other genera being the Asiatic serow, goral and takin, and the North American Rocky Mountain goat. These ruminants are best described as goat-like antelopes. (See Antelope, Chamois, Goral, Rocky Mountain Goat, Serow and Takin.)
Under the indefinable term “antelope” (q.v.) may be included the seven remaining sections, namely Tragelaphinae (kudu and eland), Hippotraginae (sable antelope and oryx), Antilopinae (black-buck, gazelles, &c.), Cervicaprinae (reedbuck and waterbuck), Neotraginae (klipspringer and steinbok), Cephalophinae (duikers and four-horned antelopes) and Bubalinae (hartebeests and gnus). (R. L.*)
BOVILL, SIR WILLIAM (1814–1873), English judge, a younger son of Benjamin Bovill, of Wimbledon, was born at Allhallows, Barking, on the 26th of May 1814. On leaving school he was articled to a firm of solicitors, but entering the Middle Temple he practised for a short time as a special pleader below the bar. He was called in 1841 and joined the home circuit. His special training in a solicitor’s office, and its resulting connexion, combined with a thorough knowledge of the details of engineering, acquired through his interest in a manufacturing firm in the east end of London, soon brought him a very extensive patent and commercial practice. He became Q.C. in 1855, and in 1857 was elected M.P. for Guildford. In the House of Commons he was very zealous for legal reform, and the Partnership Law Amendment Act 1865, which he helped to pass, is always referred to as Bovill’s Act. In 1866 he was appointed solicitor-general, an office which he vacated on becoming chief justice of the common pleas in succession to Sir W. Erie in November of the same year. He died at Kingston, Surrey, on the 1st of November 1873. As a barrister he was unsurpassed for his remarkable knowledge of commercial law; and when promoted to the bench his painstaking labour and unswerving uprightness, as well as his great patience and courtesy, gained for him the respect and affection of the profession.
BOVILLAE, an ancient town of Latium, a station on the Via Appia (which in 293 B.C. was already paved up to this point), 11 m. S.E. of Rome. It was a colony of Alba Longa, and appears as one of the thirty cities of the Latin league; after the destruction of Alba Longa the sacra were, it was held, transferred to Bovillae, including the cult of Vesta (in inscriptions virgines Vestales Albanae are mentioned, and the inhabitants of Bovillae are always spoken of as Albani Longani Bovillenses) and that of the gens Iulia. The existence of this hereditary worship led to an increase in its importance when the Julian house rose to the highest power in the state. The knights met Augustus’s dead body at Bovillae on its way to Rome, and in A.D. 16 the shrine of the family worship was dedicated anew,[1] and yearly games in the circus instituted, probably under the charge of the sodales Augustales, whose official calendar has been found here. In history Bovillae appears as the scene of the quarrel between Milo and Clodius, in which the latter, whose villa lay above the town on the left of the Via Appia, was killed. The site is not naturally strong, and remains of early fortifications cannot be traced. It may be that Bovillae took the place of Alba Longa as a local centre after the destruction of the latter by Rome, which would explain the deliberate choice of a strategically weak position. Remains of buildings of the imperial period—the circus, a small theatre, and edifices probably connected with the post-station—may still be seen on the south-west edge of the Via Appia.
See L. Canina, Via Appia (Rome, 1853), i. 202 seq.; T. Ashby in Mélanges de l’école française de Rome (1903), p. 395. (T. As.)
BOW (pronounced “bō”), a common Teutonic word for anything bent[2] (O. Eng. boʒa; cf. O. Sax. and O.H.G. bogo, M.H.G. boge, Mod. Ger. bogen; from O. Teut. stem bug- of beugan, Mod. Ger. biegen, to bend). Thus it is found in English compound words, e.g. “elbow,” “rainbow,” “bow-net,” “bow-window,” “bow-knot,” “saddle-bow,” and by itself as the designation of a great variety of objects. The Old English use of “bow,” or stone-bow, for “arch,” now obsolete, survives in certain names of churches and places, e.g. Bow church (St Mary-in-Arcubus) in Cheapside, and Stratford-le-Bow (the “Stratford-atte-Bowe” of Chaucer). “Bow,” however, is still the designation of objects so various as an appliance for shooting arrows (see Archery), a necktie in the form of a bow-knot (i.e. a double-looped knot), a ring or hoop forming a handle (e.g. the bow of a watch), certain instruments or tools consisting of a bent piece of wood with the ends drawn together by a string, used for drilling, turning, &c., in various crafts, and the stick strung with horsehair by means of which the strings of instruments of the violin family are set in vibration. It is with this last that the present article is solely concerned.
Bow in Music.—The modern bow (Fr. archet; Ger. Bogen; Ital. arco) consists of five parts, i.e. the “stick,” the screw or “ferrule,” the “nut,” the “hair” and the “head.” The stick, in high-grade bows, is made of Pernambuco wood (Caesalpinia brasiliensis), which alone combines the requisite lightness, elasticity and power of resistance; for the cheaper bows American oak is used, and for the double-bass bow beech. A billet rich in colouring matter and straight in the grain is selected, and the stick is usually cut from a templet so as to obtain the accurate taper, which begins about 414 in. from the nut, decreasing according to regular proportions from 38 in. at the screw to 316 at the back of the head. The stick is cut absolutely straight and parallel along its whole length with the fibre of the wood; it is then bent by heat until it is slightly convex to the hair and has assumed the elegant cambrure first given to it by François Tourte (1747–1835). This process requires the greatest care, for if the fibres be not heated right through, they offer a continual resistance to the curve, and return after a time to the rigid
- ↑ It is not likely that any remains of it now exist.
- ↑ “Bow,” the forepart or head of a ship, must be distinguished from this word. It is the same word, and pronounced in the same way, as “bough,” an arm or limb of a tree, and represents a common Teutonic word, seen in O. Eng. bog, Ger. Bug, shoulder, and is cognate with Gr. πῆχυς, forearm. The sense of “shoulder” of a ship is not found in O. Eng. bog, but was probably borrowed from Dutch or Danish. “Bow,” an inclination of the head or body, though pronounced as “bough,” is of the same origin as “bow,” to bend.
