Sea-buckthorn is Hippophae rhamnoides, a willow-like shrub, 1 to 8 ft. in height, with narrow leaves silvery on the underside, and globose orange-yellow fruits one-third of an inch in diameter. It occurs on sandy seashores from York to Kent and Sussex, but is not common.
American buckthorns are: Rhamnus purshiana or Cascara sagrada, of the Pacific coast, producing cascara bark, and R. Caroliniana, the alder-buckthorn. Bumelia lycioides (or lanuginosa) is popularly called "southern buckthorn."
BUCKWHEAT, the fruit (so-called seeds) of Fagopyrum esculentum (natural order Polygonaceae), a herbaceous plant, native of central Asia, but cultivated in Europe and North America; also extensively cultivated in the Himalaya, as well as an allied species F. tataricum. The fruit has a dark brown tough rind enclosing the kernel or seed, and is three-sided in form, with sharp angles, similar in shape to beech-mast, whence the name from the Ger. Buchweizen, beechwheat. Buckwheat is grown in Great Britain only to supply food for pheasants and to feed poultry, which devour the seeds with avidity. In the northern countries of Europe, however, the seeds are employed as human food, chiefly in the form of cakes, which when baked thin have an agreeable taste, with a darkish somewhat violet colour. The meal of buckwheat is also baked into crumpets, as a favourite dainty among Dutch children, and in the Russian army buckwheat groats are served out as part of the soldiers' rations, which they cook with butter, tallow or hemp-seed oil. Buckwheat is also used as food in the United States, where "buckwheat cakes" are a national dish; and by the Hindus it is eaten on "bart" or fast days, being one of the phalahas, or lawful foods for such occasions. When it is used as food for cattle the hard sharp angular rind must first be removed. As compared with the principal cereal grains, buckwheat is poor in nitrogenous substances and fat; but the rapidity and ease with which it can be grown render it a fit crop for very poor, badly tilled land. An immense quantity of buckwheat honey is collected in Russia, bees showing a marked preference for the flowers of the plant. The plant is also used as a green fodder.
In the United States buckwheat is sown at the end of June or beginning of July, the amount of seed varying from 3 to 5 pecks to the acre. The crop matures rapidly and continues blooming till frosts set in, so that at harvest, which is usually set to occur just before this period, the grain is in various stages of ripeness. It is cut by hand or with the self-delivery reaper, and allowed to lie in the swath for a few days and then set up in shocks. The stalks are not tied into bundles as in the case of other grain crops, the tops of the shocks being bound round and held together by twisting stems round them. The threshing is done on the field in most cases.
BUCOLICS (from the Gr. βουκολικός, "pertaining to a herdsman"), a term occasionally used for rural or pastoral poetry. The expression has been traced back in English to the beginning of the 14th century, being used to describe the "Eclogues" of Virgil. The most celebrated collection of bucolics in antiquity is that of Theocritus, of which about thirty, in the Doric dialect, and mainly written in hexameter verse, have been preserved. This was the name, as is believed, originally given by Virgil to his pastoral poems, with the direct object of challenging comparison with the writings of Theocritus. In modern times the term "bucolics" has not often been specifically given by the poets to their pastorals; the main exception being that of Ronsard, who collected his eclogues under the title of "Les Bucoliques." In general practice the word is almost a synonym for pastoral poetry, but has come to bear a slightly more agricultural than shepherd signification, so that the "Georgics" of Virgil has grown to seem almost more "bucolic" than his "Eclogues." (See also Pastoral.)
(E. G.)
BUCYRUS, a city and the county-seat of Crawford county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Sandusky river, 62 m. N. of Columbus. Pop. (1890) 5974; (1900) 6560 (756 foreign-born); (1910) 8122. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Toledo, Walhonding Valley & Ohio (Pennsylvania system), and the Ohio Central railways, and by interurban electric lines. The Ohio Central, of which Bucyrus is a division terminal, has shops here. The city lies at an elevation of about 1000 ft. above sea-level, and is surrounded
by a country well adapted to agriculture and stock-raising. Among its manufactures are machinery, structural steel, ventilating and heating apparatus, furniture, interior woodwork, ploughs, wagons, carriages, copper products and clay-working machines. Bucyrus was first settled in 1817; it was laid out as a town in 1822, was incorporated as a village in 1830, and became a city in 1885. The county-seat was permanently established here in 1830.
BUDAPEST, the capital and largest town of the kingdom of Hungary, and the second town of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, 163 m. S.E. of Vienna by rail. Budapest is situated on both banks of the Danube, and is formed of the former towns of Buda (Ger. Ofen) together with O-Buda (Ger. Alt-Ofen) on the right bank, and of Pest together with Köbánya (Ger. Steinbruch) on the left bank, which were all incorporated into one municipality in 1872. It lies at a point where the Danube has definitely taken its southward course, and just where the outlying spurs of the outer ramifications of the Alps, namely, the Bakony Mountains, meet the Carpathians. Budapest is situated nearly in the centre of Hungary, and dominates by its strategical position the approach from the west to the great Hungarian plain. The imposing size of the Danube, 300 to 650 yds. broad, and the sharp contrast of the two banks, place Budapest among the most finely situated of the larger towns of Europe. On the one side is a flat sandy plain, in which lies Pest, modern of aspect regularly laid out, and presenting a long frontage of handsome buildings to the river. On the other the ancient town of Buda straggles capriciously over a series of small and steep hills, commanded by the fortress and the Blocksberg (770 ft. high, 390 ft. above the Danube), and backed beyond by spurs of mountains, which rise in the form of terraces one above the other. The hills are generally devoid of forests, while those near the towns were formerly covered with vineyards, which produced a good red wine. The vineyards have been almost completely destroyed by the phylloxera.
Budapest covers an area of 78 sq. m., and is divided into ten municipal districts, namely Vár (Festung), Viziváros (Wasserstadt), Ó-Buda (Alt-Ofen), all on the right bank, belonging to Buda, and Belváros (Inner City), Lipótváros (Leopoldstadt), Terézváros (Theresienstadt), Erzsébetváros (Elisabethstadt), Józsefváros (Josephstadt), Ferenczváros (Franzstadt), and Köbánya (Steinbruch), all on the left bank, belonging to Pest. Buda, with its royal palace, the various ministries, and other government offices, is the official centre, while Pest is the commercial and industrial part, as well as the centre of the nationalistic and intellectual life of the town. The two banks of the Danube are united by six bridges, including two fine suspension bridges; the first of them, generally known as the Ketten-Brücke, constructed by the brothers Tiernay and Adam Clark in 1842-1849, is one of the largest in Europe. It is 410 yds. long, 39 ft. broad, 36 ft. high above the mean level of the water, and its chains rest on two pillars 160 ft. high; its ends are ornamented with four colossal stone lions. At one end is a tunnel, 383 yds. long, constructed by Adam Clark in 1854, which pierces the castle hill and connects the quarter known as the Christinenstadt with the Danube. The other suspension bridge is the Schwurplatz bridge, completed in 1903, 56 ft. broad, with a span of 317 yds. The other bridges are the Margaret bridge, with a junction bridge towards the Margaret island, the Franz Joseph bridge, and two railway bridges.