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BOROLANITE, one of the most remarkable rocks of the British Isles, found on the shores of Loch Borolan in Sutherlandshire, after which it has been named. In this locality there is a considerable area of granite rich in red alkali felspar, and passing, by diminution in the amount of its quartz, into quartz-syenites and syenites. At the margins of the outcrop patches of nepheline-syenite occur; usually the nepheline is decomposed, but occasionally it is well-preserved; the other ingredients of the rock are brown garnet and aegirine. The abundance of melanite is very unusual in igneous rocks, though some syenites, leucitophyres, and aegirine-felsites resemble borolanite in this respect. In places the nepheline-syenite assumes the form of a dark rock with large rounded white spots. These last consist of an intermixture of nepheline or sodalite and alkali-felspar. From the analogy of certain leucite-syenites which are known in Arkansas, it is very probable that these spots represent original leucites which have been changed into aggregates of the above-named minerals. They resemble leucite in their shape, but have not yet been proved to have its crystalline outlines. The "pseudo-leucites," as they have been called, measure one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch across. The dark matrix consists of biotite, aegirine-augite and melanite. Connected with the borolanite there are other types of nepheline-syenite and pegmatite. In Finland, melanite-bearing nepheline rocks have been found and described as Ijolite, but the only other locality for melanite-leucite-syenite is Magnet Cove in Arkansas.

Boron chloride BCl3 results when amorphous boron is heated in chlorine gas, or more readily, on passing a stream of chlorine over a heated mixture of boron trioxide and charcoal, the volatile product being condensed in a tube surrounded by a freezing mixture. It is a colourless fuming liquid boiling at 17-18? C, and is readily decomposed by water with formation of boric and hydrochloric acids. It unites readily with ammonia gas forming a white crystalline solid of composition 2BCl3?3NH3.

Boron nitride BN is formed when boron is burned either in air or in nitrogen, but can be obtained more readily by heating to redness in a platinum crucible a mixture of one part of anhydrous borax with two parts of dry ammonium chloride. After fusion, the melt is well washed with dilute hydrochloric acid and then with water, the nitride remaining as a white powder. It can also be prepared by heating borimide B23; or by heating boron trioxide with a metallic cyanide. It is insoluble in water and unaffected by most reagents, but when heated in a current of steam or boiled for some time with a caustic alkali, slowly decomposes with evolution of ammonia and the formation of boron trioxide or an alkaline borate; it dissolves slowly in hydrofluoric acid.

Borimide B23 is obtained on long heating of the compound B2S3?6NH2 in a stream of hydrogen, or ammonia gas at 115-120? C. It is a white solid which decomposes on heating into boron nitride and ammonia. Long-continued heating with water also decomposes it slowly.

Boron sulphide B2S3 can be obtained by the direct union of the two elements at a white heat or from the tri-iodide and sulphur at 440? C., but is most conveniently prepared by heating a mixture of the trioxide and carbon in a stream of carbon bisulphide vapour. It forms slightly coloured small crystals possessing a strong disagreeable smell, and is rapidly decomposed by water with the formation of boric acid and sulphuretted hydrogen. A pentasulphide B2S5 is prepared, in an impure condition, by heating a solution of sulphur in carbon bisulphide with boron iodide, and forms a white crystalline powder which decomposes under the influence of water into sulphur, sulphuretted hydrogen and boric acid.

/ CH3 + 6Zn < OC2H5

The atomic weight of boron has been determined by estimating the water content of pure borax , also by conversion of anhydrous borax into sodium chloride and from analysis of the bromide and chloride ; the values obtained ranging from 10.73 to 11.04. Boron can be estimated by precipitation as potassium fluoborate, which is insoluble in a mixture of potassium acetate and alcohol. For this purpose only boric acid or its potassium salt must be present; and to ensure this, the borate can be distilled with sulphuric acid and methyl alcohol and the volatile ester absorbed in potash.

BOROUGH , STEVEN , English navigator, was born at Northam in Devonshire on the 25th of September 1525. In 1553 he took part in the expedition which was despatched from the Thames under Sir Hugh Willoughby to look for a northern passage to Cathay and India, serving as master of the "Edward Bonaventure," on which Richard Chancellor sailed as pilot in chief. Separated by a storm from the "Bona Esperanza" and the "Bona Confidentia," the other two ships of the expedition, Borough proceeded on his voyage alone, and sailing into the White Sea, in the words of his epitaph, "discouered Moscouia by the Northerne sea passage to St Nicholas" . In a second expedition, made in the "Serchthrift" in 1556, he discovered Kara Strait, between Novaya Zemlya and Vaygach island. In 1560 he was in charge of another expedition to Russia, and, probably in 1558, he also made a voyage to Spain. At the beginning of 1563 he was appointed chief pilot and one of the four masters of the queen's ships in the Medway, and in this office he spent the rest of his life. He died on the 12th of July 1584, and was buried at Chatham. His son, Christopher Borough, wrote a description of a trading expedition made in 1579-1581 from the White Sea to the Caspian and back.

BOROUGH , the term for a town, considered as a unit of local government.

The many special authorities created under act of parliament led to much confusion, conflict and overlapping, and increased the need for a general reform. The reform of the boroughs was treated as part of the question of parliamentary reform. In 1832 the exclusive privileges of the corporations in parliamentary elections having been abolished and male occupiers enfranchised, the question of the municipal franchise was next dealt with. In 1833 a commission inquired into the administration of the municipal corporations. The result of the inquiry was the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which gave the municipal franchise to the ratepayers. In all the municipal corporations dealt with by the act, the town council was to consist of a mayor, aldermen and councillors, and the councils were given like powers, being divided into those with and those without a commission of the peace. The minutes were to be open to the inspection of any burgess, and an audit of accounts was required. The exclusive rights of retail trading, which in some towns were restricted to freemen of the borough, were abolished. The system of police, which in some places was still medieval in character, was placed under the control of the council. The various privileged areas within the bounds of a borough were with few exceptions made part of the borough. The powers of the council to alienate corporate property were closely restricted. The operations of the act were extended by later legislation, and the divers amendments and enactments which followed were consolidated in the Municipal Corporations Act 1882.

Burghs of regality and of barony held in vassalage of some great lordship, lay or ecclesiastical, but were always in theory or in practice created by crown grant. They received jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters, generally cumulative with that of the baron or the lord of regality, who in some cases obtained the right of nominating magistrates. Powers to hold markets and to levy customs were likewise given to these burghs.

BOROUGHBRIDGE, a market town in the Ripon parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England; 22 m. N.W. of York on a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop. 830. It lies in the central plain of Yorkshire, on the river Ure near its confluence with the Swale. It is in the parish of Aldborough, the village of that name , celebrated for its Roman remains, lying a mile south-east.

BOROUGH ENGLISH, a custom prevailing in certain ancient English boroughs, and in districts attached to them , and also in certain copyhold manors , by which in general lands descend to the youngest son, to the exclusion of all the other children, of the person dying seised and intestate. Descent to the youngest brother to the exclusion of all other collaterals, where there is no issue, is sometimes included in the general definition, but this is really a special custom to be proved from the court-rolls of the manor and from local reputation--a custom which is sometimes extended to the youngest sister, uncle, aunt. Generally, however, Borough English, apart from specialties, may be said to differ from gavelkind in not including collaterals. It is often found in connexion with the distinct custom that the widow shall take as dower the whole and not merely one-third of her husband's lands.

BORROMEAN ISLANDS, a group of four islands on the W. side of Lago Maggiore off Baveno and Stresa. The southernmost, the Isola Bella, is famous for its ch?teau and terraced gardens, constructed by Count Vitaliano Borromeo . To the N.W. is the Isola dei Pescatori, containing a fishing village; and to the N.E. of this the Isola Madre, the largest of the group, with a ch?teau and garden; and to the N. again, off Pallanza, is the little Isola S. Giovanni.

In 1576, when Milan was visited by the plague, he went about giving directions for accommodating the sick and burying the dead, avoiding no danger and sparing no expense. He visited all the neighbouring parishes where the contagion raged, distributing money, providing accommodation for the sick, and punishing those, especially the clergy, who were remiss in discharging their duties. He met with much opposition to his reforms. The governor of the province, and many of the senators, apprehensive that the cardinal's ordinances and proceedings would encroach upon the civil jurisdiction, addressed remonstrances and complaints to the courts of Rome and Madrid. But Borromeo had more formidable difficulties to struggle with, in the inveterate opposition of several religious orders, particularly that of the Humiliati . Some members of that society formed a conspiracy against his life, and a shot was fired at him in the archiepiscopal chapel under circumstances which led to the belief that his escape was miraculous. The number of his enemies was increased by his successful attack on his Jesuit confessor Ribera, who with other members of the college of Milan was found to be guilty of unnatural offences. His manifold labours and austerities appear to have shortened his life. He was seized with an intermittent fever, and died at Milan on the 4th of November 1584. He was canonized in 1610, and his feast is celebrated on the 4th of November.

His nephew, Federigo Borromeo , was archbishop of Milan from 1595, and in 1609 founded the Ambrosian library in that city.

BORT, or BOART, an inferior kind of diamond, unfit for cutting but useful as an abrasive agent. The typical bort occurs in small spherical masses, of greyish colour, rough or drusy on the surface, and showing on fracture a radiate crystalline structure. These masses, known in Brazil as bolas, are often called "shot bort" or "round bort." Much of the bort consists of irregular aggregates of imperfect crystals. In trade, the term bort is extended to all small and impure diamonds, and crystalline fragments of diamond, useless as gem-stones. A large proportion of the output of some of the South African mines consists of such material. This bort is crushed in steel mortars to form diamond powder, which is largely used in lapidaries' work.

BORZHOM, a watering-place of Russian Transcaucasia, in the government of Tiflis, and 93 m. by rail W. of the city of Tiflis. Pop. 5800. It is situated at an altitude of 2750 ft. in the Borzhom gorge, a narrow rift in the Little Caucasus mountains, and on the Kura. Its warm climate, its two hot springs and its beautiful parks make it a favourite summer resort, and give it its popular name of "the pearl of Caucasus." The bottled mineral waters are very extensively exported.

BOSA, a seaport and episcopal see on the W. coast of Sardinia, in the province of Cagliari, 30 m. W. of Macomer by rail. Pop. 6846. The height above the town is crowned by a castle of the Malaspina family. The cathedral, founded in the 12th century, restored in the 15th, and rebuilt in 1806, is fine. There are some tanneries, and the fishing industry is important, but the coral production of Sicily has entirely destroyed that of Bosa since 1887. The district produces oil and wine. The present town of Bosa was founded in 1112 by the Malaspina, 1 1/2 m. from the site of the ancient town , where a well-preserved church still exists. The old town is of Roman origin, but is only mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and as a station on the coast-road in the Itineraries . One of the inscriptions preserved in the old cathedral records the erection of four silver statues, of Antoninus Pius, his wife Faustina and their two sons.

BOSCASTLE, a small seaport and watering-place in the Launceston parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, 5 m. N. of Camelford station on the London & South-Western railway. Pop. 329. The village rises steeply above a very narrow cove on the north coast, sheltered, but difficult of access, vessels having to be warped into it by means of hawsers. A mound on a hill above the harbour marks the site of a Norman castle. The parish church of St Symphorian, Forrabury, also stands high, overlooking the Atlantic from Willapark Point. The tower is without bells, and the tradition that a ship bearing a peal hither was wrecked within sight of the harbour, and that the lost bells may still be heard to toll beneath the waves, has been made famous by a ballad of the Cornish poet Robert Stephen Hawker, vicar of Moorwinstow. The coast scenery near Boscastle is severely beautiful, with abrupt cliffs fully exposed to the sea, and broken only by a few picturesque inlets such as Crackington Cove and Pentargan Cove. Inland are bare moors, diversified by narrow dales.

BOSCAWEN, EDWARD , British admiral, was born on the 19th of August 1711. He was the third son of Hugh, 1st Viscount Falmouth. He early entered the navy, and in 1739 distinguished himself at the taking of Porto Bello. At the siege of Cartagena, in March 1741, at the head of a party of seamen, he took a battery of fifteen 24-pounders, while exposed to the fire of another fort. On his return to England in the following year he married, and entered parliament as member for Truro. In 1744 he captured the French frigate "M?d?e," commanded by M. de Hocquart, the first ship taken in the war. In May 1747 he signalized himself in the engagement off Cape Finisterre, and was wounded in the shoulder with a musket-ball. Hocquart again became his prisoner, and the French ships, ten in number, were taken. On the 15th of July he was made rear-admiral and commander-in-chief of the expedition to the East Indies. On the 29th of July 1748 he arrived off Fort St David's, and soon after laid siege to Pondicherry; but the sickness of his men and the approach of the monsoons led to the raising of the siege. Soon afterwards he received news of the peace, and Madras was delivered up to him by the French. In April 1750 he arrived in England, and was the next year made one of the lords of the Admiralty, and chosen an elder brother of the Trinity House. In February 1755 he was appointed vice-admiral, and in April he intercepted the French squadron bound to North America, and took the "Alcide" and "Lys" of sixty-four guns each. Hocquart became his prisoner for the third time, and Boscawen returned to Spithead with his prizes and 1500 prisoners. For this exploit, he received the thanks of parliament. In 1758 he was appointed admiral of the blue and commander-in-chief of the expedition to Cape Breton, when, in conjunction with General Amherst, he took the fortress of Louisburg, and the island of Cape Breton--services for which he again received the thanks of the House of Commons. In 1759, being appointed to command in the Mediterranean, he pursued the French fleet, commanded by M. de la Clue, and after a sharp engagement in Lagos Bay took three large ships and burnt two, returning to Spithead with his prizes and 2000 prisoners. The victory defeated the proposed concentration of the French fleet in Brest to cover an invasion of England. In December 1760 he was appointed general of the marines, with a salary of ?3000 per annum, and was also sworn a member of the privy council. He died at his seat near Guildford on the 10th of January 1761.

Forests.

Acres. Plough-land. 2,355,499 Garden-ground. 103,040 Meadow. 739,200 Vineyards. 12,598 Pasture. 1,875,840 Forest. 5,670,619 Unproductive. 210,998

In respect of foreign trade Bosnia and Herzegovina were in 1882 included in the customs and commercial system of Austria-Hungary, to the extinction of all intermediate imposts. Since 1898 special statistics have been drawn up respecting their trade also with Austria and Hungary. According to these statistics the most important articles of export are coal and turf, fruit, minerals, soda, iron and steel, and cattle. Other articles of export are chemicals, dyeing and tanning stuffs, tobacco, sugar-beet and kitchen-salt. The imports consist principally of food stuffs, building materials, drinks, sugar, machinery, glass, fats, clothes, wooden and stone wares, and various manufactured goods.

There is a national bank in Serajevo, which carries on a hypothecary credit business and manages the wholesale trade of the tobacco factories. There are savings banks in Banjaluka, Bjelina and Brcka.

Serajevo, with 41,543 inhabitants in 1895, is the capital of the combined provinces, and other important places are Mostar , the capital of Herzegovina, Banjaluka , Dolnja Tuzla , Travnik , Livno , Visoko, Foca , Jajce and Trebinje . All these are described in separate articles.

Formation of the Banate.

Religious controversies.

Period of Hungarian supremacy.

Stephen Kotromanic.

Establishment of the Bosnian kingdom.

Decline of the Bosnian kingdom.

Kotromanic and Tvrtko had known how to crush or conciliate their turbulent magnates, whose power reasserted itself under Dabisa , a brother of Tvrtko. Sigismond of Hungary profited by the disorder that ensued to regain Croatia and Dalmatia; and in 1398 the Turks, aided by renegade Slavs, overran Bosnia. Ostoja , an illegitimate son of Tvrtko, proved a puppet in the hands of Hrvoje Vukcic, duke of Spalato, Sandalj Hranic, and other leaders of the aristocracy, who fought indifferently against the Turks, the Hungarians, the king or one another. Some upheld a rival claimant to the throne in Tvrtkovic, a legitimate son of Tvrtko, and all took sides in the incessant feud between Bogomils and Roman Catholics. During the reigns of Ostojic and Tvrtkovic Bosnia was thus left an easy prey to the Turks, who exacted a yearly tribute, after again ravaging the country, and carrying off many thousands of slaves, with a vast store of plunder.

Turkish conquest.

Bosnia under Turkish rule.

External history 1528-1821.

These conditions lasted until the 19th century, and meanwhile the country was involved in the series of wars waged by the Turks against Austria, Hungary and Venice. In the Krajina and all along the Montenegrin frontier, Moslems and Christians carried on a ceaseless feud, irrespective of any treaties concluded by their rulers; while the Turkish campaigns in Hungary provided constant occupation for the nobles during a large part of the 16th and 17th centuries. But after the Ottoman defeat at Vienna in 1683, the situation changed. Instead of extending the foreign conquests of their sultan, the Bosnians were hard pressed to defend their own borders. Zvornik fell before the Austro-Hungarian army in 1688, and the Turkish vali, who was still officially styled the "vali of Hungary," removed his headquarters from Banjaluka to Travnik, a more southerly, and therefore a safer capital. Two years later, the imperial troops reached Dolnja Tuzla, and retired with 3000 Roman Catholic emigrants. Serajevo was burned in 1697 by Eugene of Savoy, who similarly deported 40,000 Christians. The treaties of Carlowitz and Passarowitz deprived the Turks of all the Primorje, or littoral of Herzegovina, except the narrow enclaves of Klek and Suttorina, left to sunder the Ragusan dominions from those of Venice. At the same time a strip of territory in northern Bosnia was ceded to Austria, which was thus able to control both banks of the Save. This territory was restored to Turkey in 1739, at the peace of Belgrade; but in 1790 it was reoccupied by Austrian troops. Finally, in 1791, the treaty of Sistova again fixed the line of the Save and Una as the Bosnian frontier.

Moslem rebellions.

Condition of the serfs.

The downfall of the Moslem aristocracy resulted in an important administrative change: Serajevo, which had long been the commercial centre of the country, and the jealously guarded stronghold of the nobles, superseded Travnik as the official capital, and the residence of the vali. A variety of other reforms, including the reorganization of Moslem education, were introduced by Omer Pasha, who governed the country until 1860. But as the administration grew stronger, the position of the peasantry became worse. They had now to satisfy the imperial tax-farmers and excisemen, as well as their feudal lords. The begs and agas continued to exact their forced labour and one-third of their produce; the central government imposed a tithe which had become an eighth by 1875. Three kinds of cattle-tax, the tax for exemption from military service, levied on every newborn male, forced labour on the roads, forced loan of horses, a heavy excise on grapes and tobacco, and a variety of lesser taxes combined to burden the Christian serfs; but even more galling than the amount was the manner in which these dues were exacted--the extortionate assessments of tax-farmers and excisemen, the brutal licence of the soldiery who were quartered on recalcitrant villagers. A crisis was precipitated by the example of Servian independence, the hope of Austrian intervention, and the public bankruptcy of Turkey.

Christian rising of 1875.

Sporadic insurrections had already broken out among the Bosnian Christians, and on the 1st of July 1875 the villagers of Nevesinje, which gives its name to a mountain range east of Mostar, rose against the Turks. Within a few weeks the whole country was involved. The Herzegovinians, under their leaders Peko Pavlovic, Socica, Ljubibratic, and others, held out for a year against all the forces that Turkey could despatch against them. In July 1876 Servia and Montenegro joined the struggle, and in April 1877 Russia declared war on the sultan.

Austro-Hungarian occupation, 1878-1908.

The Austro-Hungarian occupation, authorized on the 13th of July 1878 by the treaty of Berlin , was not easily effected; and, owing to the difficulty of military operations among the mountains, it was necessary to employ a force of 200,000 men. Haji Loja, the native leader, was supported by a body of Albanians and mutinous Turkish troops, while the whole Moslem population bitterly resented the proposed change. The losses on both sides were very heavy, and, besides those who fell in battle, many of the insurgents were executed under martial law. But after a series of stubbornly contested engagements, the Austrian general, Philippovic, entered Serajevo on the 19th of August, and ended the campaign on the 20th of September, by the capture of Bihac in the north-west, and of Klobuk in Herzegovina. The government of the country was then handed over to the imperial ministry of finance; but the bureaucratic methods of the finance ministers, Baron von Hoffmann and Joseph de Szl?vy, resulted only in the insurrection of 1881-82. Order was restored in June 1882, when the administration was entrusted to Benjamin von K?llay , as imperial minister of finance. K?llay retained this position until his death on the 13th of July 1903, when he was succeeded by Baron Stephan Burian de Rajecz. During this period life and property were rendered secure, and great progress was achieved, on the lines already indicated, in creating an efficient civil service, harmonizing Moslem law with new enactments, promoting commerce, carrying out important public works, and reorganizing the fiscal and educational systems. All classes and creeds were treated impartially; and, although the administration has been reproached alike for undue harshness and undue leniency, neither accusation can be sustained. Critics have also urged that K?llay fostered the desire for material welfare at the cost of every other national ideal; that, despite his own popularity, he never secured the goodwill of the people for Austria-Hungary; that he left the agrarian difficulty unsolved, and the hostile religious factions unreconciled. These charges are not wholly unfounded; but the chief social and political evils in Bosnia and Herzegovina may be traced to historical causes operative long before the Austro-Hungarian occupation, and above all to the political ambition of the rival churches. Justly to estimate the work done by K?llay, it is only necessary to point to the contrast between Bosnia in 1882 and Bosnia in 1903; for in 21 years the anarchy and ruin entailed by four centuries of misrule were transformed into a condition of prosperity unsurpassed in south-eastern Europe.

Austrian annexation.

It was no doubt natural that Austrian statesmen should wish to end the anomalous situation created by the treaty of Berlin, by incorporating Bosnia and Herzegovina into the Dual Monarchy. The treaty had contemplated the evacuation of the occupied provinces after the restoration of order and prosperity; and this had been expressly stipulated in an agreement signed by the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman plenipotentiaries at Berlin, as a condition of Turkish assent to the provisions of the treaty. But the Turkish reform movement of 1908 seemed to promise a revival of Ottoman power, which might in time have enabled the Turks to demand the promised evacuation, and thus to reap all the ultimate benefits of the Austrian administration. The reforms in Turkey certainly encouraged the Serb and Moslem inhabitants of the occupied territory to petition the emperor for the grant of a constitution similar to that in force in the provinces of Austria proper. But the Austro-Hungarian government, profiting by the weakness of Russia after the war with Japan, and aware that the proclamation of Bulgarian independence was imminent, had already decided to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina, in spite of the pledges given at Berlin, and although the proposal was unpopular in Hungary. Its decision, after being communicated to the sovereigns of the powers signatory to the treaty of Berlin, in a series of autograph letters from the emperor Francis Joseph, was made known to Bosnia and Herzegovina in an imperial rescript published on the 7th of October 1908. The Serb and Moslem delegates, who had started on the same day for Budapest, to present their petition to the emperor, learned from the rescript that the government intended to concede to their compatriots "a share in the legislation and administration of provincial affairs, and equal protection for all religious beliefs, languages and racial distinctions." The separate administration was, however, to be maintained, and the rescript did not promise that the new provincial diet would be more than a consultative assembly, elected on a strictly limited franchise.

FOOTNOTES:

This was soon modified in detail. Arrears of debt, for instance, were made recoverable for one year only, instead of the ten years allowed by Turkish law.

This is the first recorded instance of such an alliance. The Slavs were probably Bogomils.

BOSPORUS CIMMERIUS, the ancient name for the Straits of Kerch or Yenikale, connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov; the Cimmerii were the ancient inhabitants. The straits are about 25 m. long and 2 1/2 m. broad at the narrowest, and are formed by an eastern extension of the Crimea and the peninsula of Taman, a kind of continuation of the Caucasus. This in ancient times seems to have formed a group of islands intersected by arms of the Hypanis or Kuban and various sounds now silted up. The whole district was dotted with Greek cities; on the west side, Panticapaeum , the chief of all, often itself called Bosporus, and Nymphaeum ; on the east Phanagoria , Cepi, Hermonassa, Portus Sindicus, Gorgippia . These were mostly settled by Milesians, Panticapaeum in the 7th or early in the 6th century B.C., but Phanagoria was a colony of Teos, and Nymphaeum had some connexion with Athens--at least it appears to have been a member of the Delian Confederacy. The towns have left hardly any architectural or sculptural remains, but the numerous barrows in their neighbourhood have yielded very beautiful objects now mostly preserved in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. They comprise especially gold work, vases exported from Athens, textiles and specimens of carpentry and marquetry. The numerous terra-cottas are rather rude in style.

The Bosporan kingdom is interesting as the first Hellenistic state, the first, that is to say, in which a mixed population adopted the Greek language and civilization. It depended for its prosperity upon the export of wheat, fish and slaves, and this commerce supported a class whose wealth and vulgarity are exemplified by the contents of the numerous tombs to which reference has been made. In later times a Jewish element was added to the population, and under its influence were developed in all the cities of the kingdom, especially Tanais, societies of "worshippers of the highest God," apparently professing a monotheism which without being distinctively Jewish or Christian was purer than any found among the inhabitants of the Empire.

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