belles-lettres, a lyceum, an antiquarian museum, a society of agriculture, and schools of medicine, artillery, and design, besides two deaf and dumb institutions. The chief branch of industry is the manufacture of watches anc? jewellery. There are also some considerable breweries and manufactories of carpets, porcelain, hardware, Seltzer-water, artificial flowers, iL r c. Besanon enjoys a good position for the commerce between France and Switzerland. Population
in 1872, 39,808. Long. 5 5G 26" E., lat. 47 14 12" N.
Besancon is a place of groat antiquity Under the name of Vesentio, it was, in the time of Caesar, the chief town of the Sequani. Under the Romv.i emperors it was rich and prosperous, and Aurelian especially had a great liking for the place. Many of the streets still bear the old Roman names. It was frequently destroyed and rebuilt during the Middle Ages, and the present city stands twenty i eet above the original level. In the 12th century it passed with the rest of Franche-Comte to the German empire, and was made a free city by Frederick I. In 1584, Granvilla, the minister of Charles V. became archbishop of the see, and afterwards founded a university in the town, which existed till the ^Revolution. By thp. treaty of Westphalia, Besanon was made over to Spain, and many traces of Spanish occupation still remain. In 1660 Louis XIV. besieged it in person, and it was assigned to France by the peace of Nimeguen. In 1814 and 1815 it was invested and bombarded by the allies; and in the war of 1870-71 it formod an important position in the move ments of the French army.
BESKOW, Bernhard von, Baron, the Swedish dramatist, was born at Stockholm, April 19, 1796. Beskow s first book, Poetical E/orts, published in 1818, made a favourable impression with the public, and he wrote the prize poem for the Swedish Academy some years later. His dramas, however, are his chief claim to remembrance ; the best are TorJcel Knutsson, Erik XIV., Birger and his Race, and Gustavus Adolphus in Germany. Torkel Knuts son is considered the finest drama that Swedish literature possesses. In the highest sense of the word, these are not, however, dramas at all, since they lack unity and fail in the development of character, but they are grandiose historical studies in a dramatic form. Beskow s poetry is over-decorated with phrases, and becomes the prey of sonorous antithesis. Bjsides lyrical and dramatic poetry, Baron von Beskow distinguished himself in history, philosophy, politics, and travels. In 1823 he was elected president of the Swedish Academy, and became an enthusiastic and liberal patron of national poetry and art. (Ehlenschlager translated his dramas into Danish, and various persons rendered them into German. He died on the 17th of October 1868.
BESSARABIA, a government in the S.W. of European Russia, on the borders of Austria and the Danubian princi palities, with an area, since the cessions of the Paris peace in 1856, of 14,577 English square miles. Till the last Eastern war Bessarabia occupied the whole space between the Dniester and the Pruth from the Austrian frontier to the Black Sea. The northern portion of Bessarabia is mountainous, the southern flat and low, the limit between the two being marked by the so-called upper Trajan wall, an artificial elevation executed, according to some, in the end of the 2d century A.D., under Trajan, but, according to others, in the 3d century, under Probus. This wall extends from the. confluence of the Botna with the Dniester to the Pruth. In northern or mountainous Bessarabia two systems of elevations may be distinguished. The first is an immediate offshoot of the Carpathians, and occupies the whole of Khoteen, or the north-western district of the government. It rises about 450 feet above the valley of the Dniester, and consists of strata of Palaeozoic formation, sandstones, schists, and limestones. The second system is especially extended in the very middle of Bessarabia, and may be called the Yassa-Orgievian range. It consists of limestone of secondary formation, and its highest point is Mount Megura, about 20 miles S. of Bielitz, between Bakhmut and Poltava. The low portion of Bessarabia stretches south from the Trajan wall, with a length of 133 miles and a breadth of 33, and is well known as the Budjak steppes. The surface is perfectly level ; and the soil, except in the region along the shore, consists of a thick bed of loam. The province is washed on its eastern parts by the Black Sea only for the distance of 20 miles to the south of the estuary of the Dniester. Its only seaport is that of Akerman, situated on the estuary of the Dniester. This river divides Bessarabia from Kherson and Podolia for a distance of almost 600 miles. The shores of the Dniester are in general high and steep, and numerous bars obstruct its channel, particularly at Yampol and Bakat. On the Bessarabian bank are situated the towns Khoteen, Cosoka, and Bender; and thirteen natural harbours for ships are counted along this side of the river. Among the principal tributaries are the Reuth, the Ikel, the Buik, and Botna. Another important stream is the Pruth, of which the left shore skirts the province for a distance of more than 140 miles. The navigation on the Pruth is not important; its course is impeded by bars and falls. The only important lakes in the government lie along the coast of the Black Sea in the Akerman district. Marshes extend along the Reuth and its tributaries, and there are also some along the Botna ; they offer no great obstacles, however, to free communication. Bessarabia up to 1856 possessed great quantities of sedimental salt ; but after the cessions of the Black Sea coast and the salt lakes, the quantity obtained, which formerly exceeded 60,000 tons, almost came to nothing. The climate of Bessarabia, is temperate. The medium annual temperature of Keesheneff, 230 feet above the sea-level, is 50 Fahr.; the temperature of the warmest month, about 73; of the coldest, about 20. In the valley of the Dniester the climate is in general much healthier than in that of the Pruth; the climate of the north-west is much colder, and spring commences there ten days later.
In all the upper part there are forests, consisting princi pally of beech, oak, and sorb, besides small quantities of birch. The chief forest region lies along the heights of the Orgieff and Yassa districts about the Megura Mountains, and extends thence east to the Dniester and south-west to Keesheneff. The Khoteen hills are almost all covered with timber. The three northern districts, Khoteen, Bielitz, and Soroka, are especially suited for agriculture, and may be regarded as the granary of Bessarabia. The two intermediate districts of Orgieff and Keesheneff, though possessing a sufficiently fertile soil, are pre-eminently woodland ; while the two southern, Bender and Akerman, although also fertile, have a steppe-like character, and are better adapted to the rearing of cattle.
Bessarabia, in keeping with its position near the Danube, played an important historic part in ancient times, especially in the begin ning of our era, when it served as a key to the eastern approaches of the Byzantine empire. And thus, from immemorial times, nations were ceaselessly alternating with nations within its borders. The original inhabitants were the Cymri, succeeded by the Scythians. Herodotus, who had been in the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, relates that near the mouth of the Dniester (Tyras) there lived the- Tyritians, possessing on the estuary of that river the town of Tyras (Oxeia or, according to Pliny, Ophiusa). In the 2d century after Christ Bessarabia was occupied by the Geti and offshoots from tho Bastroni, and in 106 A.D., tho Geti were conquered by Trajan. After this subjugation of the land by the Romans, the present Bessarabia went along with "Walachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, to compose Dacia. In the 3d century appeared the Goths, recently con verted to Christianity. In the 5th century Bessarabia was over run by the Huns; after the Huns, in the end of the 5th century, arrived the Avars and the Bulgarians; and last of all came the Slavonians (Lutichi and Tevertzi), who built themselves the town of Bielgorod. In the 7th century appeared the race of the Bessi from whom the country acquired its present name. In the 9th cen tury arrived the Ugrians; in the 10th the Pechenegs; in the llth the Kumans, the Uses, and the Polovtzians; and in the 13th the Mongolians, under the leadership of Batia. In this last century, also, the Genoese founded their colonies on the shores of the Dniester. In 1367 Bessarabia formed a part of Moldavia. In 1503 the south-
