BARRANDE, JOACHIM (1799-1883), Austrian geologist and palaeontologist, was born at Saugues, Haute Loire, on the 11th of August 1799, and educated in the École Polytechnique at Paris. Although he had received the training of an engineer, his first appointment was that of tutor to the duc de Bordeaux (afterwards known as the comte de Chambord), grandson of Charles X., and when the king abdicated in 1830, Barrande accompanied the royal exiles to England and Scotland, and afterwards to Prague. Settling in that city in 1831, he became occupied in engineering works, and his attention was then attracted to the fossils from the Lower Palaeozoic rocks of Bohemia. The publication in 1839 of Murchison's Silurian System incited Barrande to carry on systematic researches on the equivalent strata in Bohemia. For ten years (1840-1850) he made a detailed study of these rocks, engaging workmen specially to collect fossils, and in this way he obtained upwards of 3500 species of graptolites, brachiopoda, mollusca, crustacea (particularly trilobites) and fishes. The first volume of his great work, Système silurien du centre de la Bohême (dealing with trilobites), appeared in 1852; and from that date until 1881, he issued twenty-one quarto volumes of text and plates. Two other volumes were issued after his death in 1887 and 1894. It is estimated that he spent nearly £10,000 on these works. In addition he published a large number of separate papers. In recognition of his important researches the Geological Society of London in 1855 awarded to him the Wollaston medal.
The term Silurian was employed by Barrande, after Murchison, in a more comprehensive sense than was justified by subsequent knowledge. Thus the Silurian rocks of Bohemia were divided into certain stages (A to H)—the two lowermost, A and B without fossils (Azoic), succeeded by the third stage, C, which included the primordial zone, since recognized as part of the Cambrian of Sedgwick. The fourth stage (Étage D), the true lower Silurian, was described by Barrande as including isolated patches of strata with organic remains like those of the Upper Silurian. These assemblages of fossils were designated "Colonies," and regarded as evidence of the early introduction into the area of species from neighbouring districts, that became locally extinct, and reappeared in later stages. The interpretation of Barrande was questioned in 1854 by Edward Forbes, who pointed to the disturbances, overturns and crumplings in the older rocks as affording a more reasonable explanation of the occurrence of strata with newer fossils amid those containing older ones. Other geologists subsequently questioned the doctrine of "Colonies." In 1880 Dr J. E. Marr, from a personal study in the field, brought forward evidence to show that the repetitions of the fossiliferous strata on which the "Colonies" were based were due to faults. The later stages of Barrande, F, G and H, have since been shown by Emanuel Friedrich Heinrich Kayser (b. 1845) to be Devonian.
Despite these modifications in the original groupings of the strata, it is recognized that Barrande "made Bohemia classic ground for the study of the oldest fossiliferous formations." He died at Frohsdorf on the 5th of October 1883.
See "Sketch of the Life of Joachim Barrande," Geol. Mag. (1883), p. 529 (with portrait).
BARRANQUILLA, a city and port of Colombia, South America, capital of a province of the same name in the department of Atlantico, on the left bank of the Magdalena river about 7 m. above its mouth and 18½ m. by rail from its seaport, Puerto Colombia. Pop. (est. 1902) 31,000. Owing to a dangerous bar at the mouth of the Magdalena the trade of the extensive territory tributary to that river, which is about 60% of that of the entire country, must pass in great part through Barranquilla and its seaport, making it the principal commercial centre of the republic. Savanilla was used as a seaport until about 1890, when shoals caused by drifting sands compelled a removal to Puerto Colombia, a short distance westward, where a steel pier, 4000 ft. in length, has been constructed to facilitate the handling of freight. The navigation of the Magdalena is carried on by means of light-draught steamboats which ascend to Yeguas, 14 m. below Honda, where goods are transhipped by rail to the latter place, and thence by pack animals to Bogotá, or by smaller boats to points farther up the river. Barranquilla was originally founded in 1629, but attracted no attention as a commercial centre until about the middle of the 19th century, when efforts were initiated to secure the trade passing through Cartagena. The city is built on a low plain, is regularly laid out, and has many fine warehouses, public buildings and residences, but its greater part, however, consists of mud-walled cabins supported by bamboo (guadua) framework and thatched with rushes. The water-supply is drawn from the Magdalena, and the city is provided with telephone, electric light and tram services. Owing to periodical inundations, the surrounding country is but little cultivated, and the greater part of the population, which is of the mixed type common to the lowlands of Columbia, is engaged in no settled productive occupation.
BARRAS, PAUL FRANÇOIS NICOLAS, Comte de (1755-1829), member of the French Directory of 1795-1799, was descended from a noble family of Provence, and was born at Fox-Amphoux. At the age of sixteen he entered the regiment of Languedoc as "gentleman cadet," but embarked for India in 1776. After an adventurous voyage he reached Pondicherry and shared in the defence of that city, which ended in its capitulation to the British on the 18th of October 1778. The garrison being released, Barras returned to France. After taking part in a second expedition to the East Indies in 1782-1783, he left the army and occupied the following years with the frivolities congenial to his class and to his nature. At the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, he espoused the democratic cause, and became one of the administrators of the department of the Var. In June 1792 he took his seat in the high national court at Orleans; and later in that year, on the outbreak of war with the kingdom of Sardinia, he became commissioner to the French army of Italy, and entered the Convention (the third of the national assemblies of France) as a deputy for the department of the Var. In January 1793 he voted with the majority for the death of Louis XVI. Much of his time, however, was spent in missions to the districts of the south-east of France; and in this way he made the acquaintance of Bonaparte at the siege of Toulon. As an example of the incorrectness of the Barras Memoirs we may note that the writer assigned 30,000 men to the royalist defending force, whereas it was less than 12,000; he also sought to minimize the share taken by Bonaparte in the capture of that city.
In 1794 Barras sided with the men who sought to overthrow the Robespierre faction, and their success in the coup d'état of 9 Thermidor (27th of July) brought him almost to the front rank. In the next year, when the Convention was threatened by the malcontent National Guards of Paris, it appointed Barras to command the troops engaged in its defence. His nomination of Bonaparte as one of his subalterns led to the adoption of vigorous measures, which ensured the dispersion of the royalists and
malcontents in the streets near the Tuileries, 13 Vendémiaire (5th of October 1795). Thereupon Barras became one of the five Directors who controlled the executive of the French republic. Owing to his intimate relations with Joséphine de Beauharnais, he helped to facilitate a marriage between her and Bonaparte; and many have averred, though on defective evidence, that Barras procured the appointment of Bonaparte to the command of the army of Italy early in the year 1796. The achievements of Bonaparte gave to the Directory a stability which it would not otherwise have enjoyed; and when in the summer of 1797 the royalist and constitutional opposition again gathered strength, Bonaparte sent General Augereau (q.v.), a headstrong Jacobin, forcibly to repress that movement by what was known as the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor (4th September). Barras and the violent Jacobins now carried matters with so high a hand as to render the government of the Directory odious; and Bonaparte had no difficulty in overthrowing it by the coup d'état of 18-19 Brumaire (9th-10th of November). Barras saw the need of a change and was to some extent (how far will perhaps never be known) an accomplice in Bonaparte's designs, though he did not suspect the power and ambition of their contriver. He was left on one side by the three Consuls who took the place of the five Directors and found his political career at an end. He had amassed a large fortune and spent his later years in voluptuous ease. Among the men of the Revolution few did more than Barras to degrade that movement. His immorality in both public and private life was notorious and contributed in no small degree to the downfall of the Directory, and with it of the first French Republic. Despite his profession of royalism in and after 1815, he remained more or less suspect to the Bourbons; and it was with some difficulty that the notes for his memoirs were saved from seizure on his death on the 29th of January 1829.
Barras left memoirs in a rough state to be drawn up by his literary executor, M. Rousselin de St Albin. The amount of alteration which they underwent at his hands is not fully known; but M. George Duruy, who edited them on their publication in 1895, has given fairly satisfactory proofs of their genuineness. For other sources respecting Barras see the Memoirs of Gohier, Larevellière-Lépeaux and de Lescure; also Sciout, Le Directoire (4 vols., Paris, 1895-1897), A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolution française (esp. vols. v. and vi., Paris, 1903-1904), and A. Vandal, L'Avènement de Bonaparte (Paris, 1902-1904).
(J. Hl. R.)