Broach, the principal place of the district of the same name, situated on an elevated mound, supposed to be artificial, on the northern bank of the Nerbudda, about 30 miles above its mouth, in 21 42 N. lat. and 73 2 E. long. The river is here a noble sheet of water, two miles wide at ebb tide, but shallow for the most part even at flood-tide, though there is then a deep but intricate channel admitting vessels of considerable burden. In 1872 the population of the town and municipality was returned at 30,932. As in the generality of eastern towns, the streets are narrow and the houses lofty. It has a con siderable trade, and annually exports large quantities of raw cotton to Bombay. Broach is thought with some appearance of probability to have been the Barygaza of Ptolemy and Arrian. Upon the conquest of Guzerat by the Mahometans, and the formation of the state of that name, Broach formed part of the new kingdom. On its overthrow by Akbar in 1572, it was annexed to the Mughul empire and governed by a Nawab. The Marhattas became its masters in 1685, from which period it was held in subordination to the Peshwa until 1772, when it was captured by a force under General Wedderburn (brother to Lord Loughborough), who was killed in the assault. In 1783 it was ceded by the British to Sindhia in acknow ledgment of certain services. It was stormed in 1803 by a detachment commanded by Colonel Woodington, and was finally ceded to the East India Company by Sindhia under the treaty of Serji Anjangaon. Distance north from Bombay 190 miles.
BROADSTAIRS, a town of England, in the county of Kent, about a mile and a half to the south of the North Foreland, and three miles from Margate, on the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway. It has a small pier for fishing-boats built in the reign of Henry VIII., a modern Gothic church, hotels, libraries, and bathing-establish ments ; and in the summer season it attracts a considerable number of visitors. There is an archway leading down to the shore, which beara that it was erected by George Culmer in 1540, and not far off is the site of a chapel of the Virgin, to which ships were accustomed to veil their top-sails as they passed. Population in 1871, 1926.
BROCCHI, Giovanni Battista, a celebrated Italian mineralogist and geologist, was born at Bassano, in February 1772. Ho studied at the university of Pisa, where his attention was especially turned to mineralogy and botany. In 1802 he was appointed professor of botany in the new Lyceum of Brescia ; but he more particularly devoted himself to geological researches in the numerous excursions he made into the adjacent districts. The fruits of these labours appeared in different publications, particularly in his Treatise on the Iron Mines in the department of Mella ; and his Essay on the Physical Constitution of the Metalliferous Mountains of the Valley of Troinpia, which appeared in 1807. His valuable researches procured him, in the following year, the office of inspector of mines in the recently established kingdom of Italy, which enabled him to extend his investigations over a great part of Central and Southern Italy, as well as its northern districts. In 1811 he produced a valuable memoir On the Mineralogy of the Valley of Fassa and the Tyrol, but his most important work is the great Geologie Fossile Subapennina con Osservazioni Geologiche sulle Apennini, e sul Suolo Adjacente, 2 vols. 4to, Milan, 1814, containing most accurate details of the structure of the A.pennine range, and an account of the fossils of their strata. These subjects were further illustrated by his valuable geognostic map and his Catalogo ragionato di una Raccolti di Rocche, disposto con or dine Geografico, per servire d lllustrazione della Carta Geognostica dell Italia, Milan, 1817. His work, Delia Stato Fisico del Suolo di Roma, with its accompanying map, is admirable for accu racy and judgment. In it he has corrected the erroneous views of Breislak, who conceived that the Eternal City occupies the site of a volcano, to which he ascribed the tufa and other volcanic materials that cover the seven hills. Brocchi, on the other hand, has satisfactorily shown that they are derived either from Mont Albano, an extinct volcano, 12 miles from Rome, or from Mont Cimini, still further to the north of the city. Indeed he has shown that the streams or beds of tufa may be traced almost uninterruptedly from that mountain to Rome. Several minor papers by him, on other mineralogical subjects, appeared in the Biblioteca Italiana from 1816 to 1823. In the latter year Brocchi sailed for Egypt, and engaged with his usual ardour in exploring the geology of that country and its mineral resources, every facility being granted by Mehemet AH, who in 1825 appointed Brocchi one of a commission to examine and organize his conquest of Sennaar, but the naturalist, unfortunately for science, fell a victim to the climate, at Khartum, in September 1826.
BROCKHAUS, Friedrich Arnold, an eminent German publisher, was born in Dortmund, on the 4th May 1772. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native place, and from 1788 to 1793 served an apprenticeship in a mercantile house at Dlisseldorf. He then devoted two years at Leipsic to the study of modern languages and literature, after which he set up at Dortmund an emporium for English goods. In 1810 he transferred this business to Arnheim, and in the following year to Amsterdam. In 1805, having given up his first line of trade, he, in conjunction with a friend, began business as a publisher. Two journals projected by him were not suffered by the Government to survive for any length of time, and in 1810 the complica tions in the affairs of Holland induced him to return homewards. In 1811 he settled at Altenburg. About three years previously he had purchased the copyright of the Conversations- Lexicon, which had been begun in 1796, and in 1810-11 he completed the first edition of this celebrated work. A second edition under his own editor ship was begun in 1812, and was received with universal favour. His business expanded rapidly, and in 1817 he removed to Leipsic, where he established a large printing- house. Among the more extensive of his many literary undertakings were the critical periodicals Hermes, the Literarische Conversationsblatt (afterwards the Blatter fur literarische Unterhaltung and the Zeitgenossen, and some large historical and bibliographical works, such as Von Raumer s Gescldchte der Hohenstaufen, and Ebert s Allgem. Bibliogr aphis. Lexicon. The work distinctively associated with his name, and svith the publishing house which has been carried on by his sons, is the Conversations- Lexicon, in many ways the completest and best encyclopaedia of its kind, which has now reached its twelfth edition. Brockhaus died in 1823.
reputation, was born in Somersetshire, llth August 1722. He was educated at Ballytore, in Ireland, studied medicine at Edinburgh, and finally graduated at Leyden in 1745. In 1751 he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians at London, of which he afterwards became a fellow. In 1758 he was appointed physician to the army, in which capacity he served in Germany during the greater part of the Seven Years War, and in the course of it was chosen physician to the hospitals for British forces. The results of his observations during this period were published in 1764, under the title of Economical and Medical Obser vations from 1738 to 1763, tending to the Improvement of Medical Hospitals. He had already given many proofs of his industry and his attainments by papers published in the
Transactions of the Royal Society. His Dissertation on fhe