the island, and all the recommendations made by him were adopted. He died at Brighton on the 21st of February 1899, having been married twice, and having had a family of one son and four daughters. Bowen wrote Ithaca in 1850 (London, 1854), translated into Greek in 1859; and Mount Athos, Thessaly and Epirus (London, 1852); and he was the author of Murray’s Handbook for Greece (London, 1854).
A selection of his letters and despatches, Thirty Years of Colonial Government (London, 1889), was edited by S. Lane-Poole.
BOWER, WALTER (1385–1449), Scottish chronicler, was born
about 1385 at Haddington. He was abbot of Inchcolm (in the
Firth of Forth) from 1418, was one of the commissioners for the
collection of the ransom of James I., king of Scots, in 1423 and
1424, and in 1433 one of the embassy to Paris on the business of
the marriage of the king’s daughter to the dauphin. He played
an important part at the council of Perth (1432) in the defence of
Scottish rights. During his closing years he was engaged on his
work the Scotichronicon, on which his reputation now chiefly rests.
This work, undertaken in 1440 by desire of a neighbour, Sir David Stewart of Rosyth, was a continuation of the Chronica Gentis Scotorum of Fordun. The completed work, in its original
form, consisted of sixteen books, of which the first five and a
portion of the sixth (to 1163) are Fordun’s—or mainly his, for
Bower added to them at places. In the later books, down to the
reign of Robert I. (1371), he was aided by Fordun’s Gesta Annalia, but from that point to the close the work is original and of contemporary importance, especially for James I., with whose death it ends. The task was finished in 1447. In the two remaining years of his life he was engaged on a reduction or “abridgment” of this work, which is known as the Book of Cupar, and is preserved in the Advocates’ library, Edinburgh (MS. 35. 1. 7). Other abridgments, not by Bower, were made about the same
time, one about 1450 (perhaps by Patrick Russell, a Carthusian of
Perth) preserved in the Advocates’ library (MS. 35. 6. 7) and
another in 1461 by an unknown writer, also preserved in the
same collection (MS. 35. 5. 2). Copies of the full text of the
Scotichronicon, by different scribes, are extant. There are two in
the British Museum, in The Black Book of Paisley, and in Harl.
MS. 712; one in the Advocates’ library, from which Walter
Goodall printed his edition (Edin., 1759), and one in the library
of Corpus Christi, Cambridge.
Goodall’s is the only complete modern edition of Bower’s text. See also W. F. Skene’s edition of Fordun in the series of Historians of Scotland (1871). Personal references are to be found in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, iii. and iv. The best recent account is that by T. A. Archer in the Dict. of Nat. Biog.
BOWERBANK, JAMES SCOTT (1797–1877), English naturalist
and palaeontologist, was born in Bishopsgate, London, on the
14th of July 1797, and succeeded in conjunction with his brother
to his father’s distillery, in which he was actively engaged until
1847. In early years astronomy and natural history, especially
botany, engaged much of his attention; he became an enthusiastic
worker at the microscope, studying the structure of shells,
corals, moss-agates, flints, &c., and he also formed an extensive
collection of fossils. The organic remains of the London Clay
attracted particular attention, and about the year 1836 he and six
other workers founded “The London Clay Club”—the members
comprising Dr Bowerbank, Frederick E. Edwards (1799–1875),
author of The Eocene Mollusca (Palaeontograph. Soc.), Searles V.
Wood, John Morris, Alfred White (zoologist), N. T. Wetherell,
surgeon of Highgate (1800–1875), and James de Carle Sowerby. In
1840 Bowerbank published A History of the Fossil Fruits and Seeds of the London Clay, and two years later he was elected F.R.S. In
1847 he suggested the establishment of a society for the publication
of undescribed British Fossils, and thus originated the
Palaeontographical Society. From 1844 until 1864 he did much
to encourage a love of natural science by being “at home” every
Monday evening at his residence in Park Street, Islington, and
afterwards in Highbury Grove, where the treasures of his
museum, his microscopes, and his personal assistance were at
the service of every earnest student. In the study of sponges he
became specially interested, and he was author of A Monograph of the British Spongiadae in 4 vols., published by the Ray Society,
1864–1882. He retired in 1864 to St Leonards, where he died on
the 8th of March 1877.
BOWIE, JAMES (1796–1836), American pioneer, was born in
Logan county, Kentucky. He was taken to Louisiana about
1802, and in 1818–1820 was engaged with his brothers, John J.
and Rezin P., in smuggling negro slaves into the United States
from the headquarters of the pirates led by Jean Lafitte on
Galveston Island. Bowie removed to Texas in 1828 and took a
prominent part in the revolt against Mexico, being present at the
battles of Nacogdoches (1832), Concepcion (1835) and the Grass
Fight (1835). He was one of the defenders of the Alamo (see
San Antonio), but was ill of pneumonia at the time of the final
assault on the 6th of March 1836, and was among the last to be
butchered. Bowie’s name is now perpetuated by a county in
north-eastern Texas, and by its association with that of the
famous hunting-knife, which he used, but probably did not
invent.
BOW-LEG (Genu Varum), a deformity characterized by separation of the knees when the ankles are in contact. Usually there is an outward curvature of both femur and tibia, with at times an interior bend of the latter bone. At birth all children are more or less bandy-legged. The child lies on its nurse’s knee with the soles of the feet facing one another; the tibiae and femora are curved outwards; and, if the limbs are extended, although the ankles are in contact, there is a distinct space between the knee-joints. During the first year of life a gradual change takes place. The knee-joints approach one another; the femora slope downwards and inwards towards the knee-joints; the tibiae become straight; and the sole of the foot faces almost directly downwards. While these changes are occurring, the bones, which at first consist principally of cartilage, are gradually becoming ossified, and in a normal child by the time it begins to walk the lower limbs are prepared, both by their general direction and by the rigidity of the bones which form them, to support the weight of the body. If, however, the child attempts either as the result of imitation or from encouragement to walk before the normal bandy condition had passed off, the result will necessarily be either an arrest in the development of the limbs or an increase of the bandy condition. If the child is weakly, either rachitic or suffering from any ailment which prevents the due ossification of the bones, or is improperly fed, the bandy condition may remain persistent. Thus the chief cause of this deformity is rickets (q.v.). The remaining causes are occupation, especially that of a jockey, and traumatism, the condition being very likely to supervene after accidents involving the condyles of the femur. In the rickety form the most important thing is to treat the constitutional disease, at the same time instructing the mother never to place the child on its feet. In many cases this is quite sufficient in itself to effect a cure, but matters can be hastened somewhat by applying splints. When in older patients the deformity arises either from traumatism or occupation, the only treatment is that of operation.
A far commoner deformity than the preceding is that known as knock-knee (or Genu Valgum). In this condition there is close approximation of the knees with more or less separation of the feet, the patient being unable to bring the feet together when standing. Occasionally only one limb may be affected, but the double form is the more common. There are two varieties of this deformity: (i.) that due to rickets and occurring in young children (the rachitic form), and (ii.) that met with in adolescents and known as the static form. In young children it is practically always due to rickets, and the constitutional disease must be most rigorously dealt with. It is, however, especially in these cases that cod-liver oil is to be avoided, since it increases the body weight and so may do harm rather than good. The child if quite young must be kept in bed, and the limbs manipulated several times a day. Where the child is a little older and it is more difficult to keep him off his feet, long splints should be applied from the axilla or waist to a point several inches below the level of the foot. It is only by making the splints sufficiently long
