[Black Art], name given to the presumed power of evoking evil spirits.
[Black Assize], a plague at Oxford in 1557, which carried off 300 victims; caught at the assize from the prisoners under trial.
[Black Death], a name given to a succession of fatal epidemics that devastated the world from China to Ireland in the 14th century, believed to be the same as the Oriental plague, though attended with peculiar symptoms; the most serious was that of 1348, which, as is reckoned, stripped England alone of one-third of its inhabitants.
[Black Forest] (488), a wooded mountain chain 4000 ft. high (so called from the black pines that cover it), which runs parallel with the Rhine, and E. of it, through Würtemberg and Baden, from the Swiss frontier to Carlsruhe; is remarkable for its picturesque scenery and its mineral wealth; it possesses many health resorts, as Baden-Baden and Wildbad, where are mineral springs; silver, copper, cobalt, lead, and iron are wrought in many places; the women and children of the region make articles of woodwork, such as wooden clocks, &c.
[Black Friars], monks of the Dominican order; name of a district in London where they had a monastery.
[Black Hole of Calcutta], a confined apartment 13 ft. square, into which 146 English prisoners were crammed by the orders of Surajah Dowia on the 19th June 1756; their sufferings were excruciating, and only 23 survived till morning.
[Black Lands], lands in the heart of Russia, extending between the Carpathians and the Urals, constituting one-third of the soil, and consisting of a layer of black earth or vegetable mould, of from 3 to 20 ft. in thickness, and a chief source, from its exhaustless fertility, of the wealth of the country.
[Black Monday], Easter Monday in 1351, remarkable for the extreme darkness that prevailed, and an intense cold, under which many died.
[Black Prince], Prince of Wales, son of Edward III., so called, it is said, from the colour of his armour; distinguished himself at Crécy, gained the battle of Poitiers, but involved his country in further hostilities with France; returned to England, broken in health, to die (1330-1376).