[Britannia], a name for Britain as old as the days of Cæsar, and inhabited by Celts, as Gaul also was.
[Britannia Tubular Bridge], a railway bridge spanning the Menai Strait, designed by Robert Stephenson, and completed in 1850; consists of hollow tubes of wrought-iron plates riveted together, and took five years in erecting.
[Britannicus], the son of Claudius and Messalina, poisoned by Nero.
[British Aristides], name applied to Andrew Marvell from his corresponding incorruptible integrity in life and poverty at death.
[British Association], an association, of Sir David Brewster's suggestion, of men of all departments of science for the encouragement of scientific research and the diffusion of scientific knowledge, which holds its meetings annually under the presidency of some distinguished scientist, now in this, now in that selected central city of the country; it is divided into eight sections—mathematical, chemical, geological, biological, geographical, economic, mechanical, and anthropological.
[British Columbia] (98), a western fertile prov. of British America, extending between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, and from the United States on the S. to Alaska on the N., being 800 m. long and four times the size of Great Britain; rich in timber and minerals; rain is abundant, and cereals do well.
[British Lion], the name given to John Bull when roused by opposition.
[British Museum], a national institution in London for the collection of MSS., books, prints and drawings, antiquities, and objects of natural history, ethnology, &c.; founded as far back as 1700, though not opened, in Montagu House as it happened, for the public benefit till 1759.
[Britomart], is a lady knight in the "Faërie Queene," representing chastity with a resistless magic spear.
[Brittany] (3,162), an old French prov., land of the Bretons, comprising the peninsula opposite Devon and Cornwall, stretching westward between the Bays of Cancale and Biscay, was in former times a duchy; a third of its inhabitants still retain their Breton language.