BUXTORF, or Buxtorff, JOHANNES (1599-1664), son of the preceding, was born at Basel on the 13th of August 1599, and when still a boy attained considerable proficiency in the classical languages. Entering the university at the age of twelve, he was only sixteen when he obtained his master's degree. He now gave himself up to theological and especially to Semitic studies, concentrating later on rabbinical Hebrew, and reading while yet a young man both the Mishna and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Gemaras. These studies he further developed by visits to Heidelberg, Dort (where he made the acquaintance of many of the delegates to the synod of 1619) and Geneva, and in all these places acquired a great reputation. In 1622 he published at Basel a Lexicon Chaldaicum et Syriacum, as a companion work to his father's great Rabbinical Bible. He declined the chair of logic at Lausanne, and in 1624 was appointed general deacon of the church at Basel. On the death of his father in 1629, he was unanimously designated his successor in the Hebrew professorship. From this date until his death in 1664 he remained at Basel, declining two offers which were made to him from Groningen and Leiden, to accept the Hebrew chair in these two celebrated schools. In 1647 the governing body of the university founded, specially for him, a third theological professorship, that of "Commonplaces and Controversies," which Buxtorf held for seven years along with the Hebrew chair. When, however, the professorship of the Old Testament became vacant in 1654 by the death of Theodor Zwinger, Buxtorf resigned the chair of theology and accepted that of the Old Testament instead. He was four times married, his three first wives dying shortly after marriage and the fourth predeceasing her husband by seven years. His children died young, with the exception of two boys, the younger of whom, Jakob (1645-1704), became his father's colleague, and then his successor, in the chair of Hebrew. The same distinction fell to the lot of his nephew Johann (1663-1732).
A considerable portion of Buxtorf's public life was spent in controversy regarding disputed points in biblical criticism, in reference to which he had to defend his father's views. The attitude of the Reformed churches at that time, as opposed to the Church of Rome, led them to maintain many opinions in regard to biblical questions which were not only erroneous, but altogether unnecessary for the stability of their position. Having renounced the dogma of an infallible church, it was deemed necessary to maintain as a counterpoise, not only that of an infallible Bible, but, as the necessary foundation of this, of a Bible which had been handed down from the earliest ages without the slightest textual alteration. Even the vowel points and accents were held to have been given by divine inspiration. The Massoretic text of the Old Testament, therefore, as compared either with that of the recently discovered Samaritan Pentateuch, or the Septuagint or of the Vulgate, alone contained the true words of the sacred writers. Although many of the Reformers, as well as learned Jews, had long seen that these assertions could not be made good, there had been as yet no formal controversy upon the subject. Louis Cappel (q.v.) was the first effectually to dispel the illusions which had long prevailed by a work on the modern origin of the vowel points and accents. The elder Buxtorf had counselled him not to publish his work, pointing out the injury which it would do the Protestant cause, but Cappel sent his MS. to Thomas Erpenius of Leiden, the most learned orientalist of his day, by whom it was published in 1624, under the title Arcanum Punctationis revelatum, but without the author's name. The elder Buxtorf, though he lived five years after the publication of the work, made no public reply to it, and it was not until 1648 that Buxtorf junior published his Tractatus de punctorum origine, antiquitate, et authoritate, oppositus Arcano punctationis revelato Ludovici Cappelli. He tried to prove by copious citations from the rabbinical writers, and by arguments of various kinds, that the points, if not so ancient as the time of Moses, were at least as old as that of Ezra, and thus possessed the authority of divine inspiration. Unfortunately he allowed himself to employ contemptuous epithets towards Cappel, such as "innovator" and "visionary." Cappel speedily prepared a second edition of his work, in which, besides replying to the arguments of his opponent, and fortifying his position with new ones, he retorted his contumelious epithets with interest. Owing to various causes, however, this second edition did not see the light until 1685, when it was published at Amsterdam in the edition of his collected works. Besides this controversy, Buxtorf engaged in three others with the same antagonist, on the subject of the integrity of the Massoretic text of the Old Testament, on the antiquity of the present Hebrew characters, and on the Lord's Supper. In the two former Buxtorf supported the untenable position that the text of the Old Testament had been transmitted to us without any errors or alteration, and that the present square or so-called Chaldee characters were coeval with the original composition of the various books. These views were triumphantly refuted by his great opponent in his Critica Sacra, and in his Diatriba veris et antiquis Ebraicorum literis.
Besides the works already mentioned in the course of this article, Buxtorf edited the great Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum, on which his father had spent the labour of twenty years, and to the completion of which he himself gave ten years of additional study; and the great Hebrew Concordance, which his father had little more than begun. In addition to these, he published new editions of many of his father's works, as well as others of his own, complete lists of which may be seen in the Athenae Rauricae and other works enumerated at the close of the preceding article.
BUYING IN, on the English stock exchange, a transaction by which, if a member has sold securities which he fails to deliver on settling day, or any of the succeeding ten days following the settlement, the buyer may give instructions to a stock exchange official to "buy in" the stock required. The official announces the quantity of stock, and the purpose for which he requires it, and whoever sells the stock must be prepared to deliver it immediately. The original seller has to pay the difference between the two prices, if the latter is higher than the original contract price. A similar practice, termed "selling out," prevails when a purchaser fails to take up his securities.
BUYS BALLOT'S LAW, in meteorology, the name given to a law which may be expressed as follows:—"Stand with your back to the wind; the low-pressure area will be on your left-hand." This rule, the truth of which was first recognized by the American meteorologists J.H. Coffin and W. Ferrel, is a direct consequence of Ferrel's Law (q.v.). It is approximately true in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and is reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, but the angle between barometric gradient and wind is not a right angle in low latitudes. The law takes its name from C.H.D. Buys Ballot, a Dutch meteorologist, who published it in the Comptes rendus, November 1857.
BUZEU, the capital of the department of Buzeu, Rumania, situated near the right bank of the river Buzeu, between the Carpathian Mountains and the fertile lowlands of south Moldavia and east Walachia. Pop. (1900) 21,561. Buzeu is important as a market for petroleum, timber and grain. It is the meeting
place of railroads from Râmnicu Sarat, Braila and Ploesci. Amber is found by the riverside, and there are cloth-mills in the city. Buzeu is the seat of a bishop, whose cathedral was erected in 1640 by Prince Matthias Bassarab of Walachia, on the site of an older church. In the neighbourhood there are many monasteries. Buzeu was formerly called Napuca or Buzograd.
BUZOT, FRANÇOIS NICOLAS LÉONARD (1760-1794), French revolutionist, was born at Evreux on the 1st of March 1760. He studied law, and at the outbreak of the Revolution was an advocate in his native town. In 1789 he was elected deputy to the states-general, and there became known for his advanced opinions. He demanded the nationalization of the possessions of the clergy, and the right of all citizens to carry arms. After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Buzot returned to Evreux, where he was named president of the criminal tribunal. In 1792 he was elected deputy to the Convention, and took his place among the Girondists. He demanded the formation of a national guard from the departments to defend the Convention against the populace of Paris. His proposal was carried, but never put into force; and the Parisians were extremely bitter against him and the Girondists. In the trial of Louis XVI., Buzot voted for death, but with appeal to the people and postponement of sentence. He had a decree of death passed against the émigrés who did not return to France, and against anyone who should demand the re-establishment of the monarchy. Proscribed with the Girondists on the 2nd of June 1793, he succeeded in escaping, and took refuge in Normandy, where he contributed to organize a federalist insurrection against the Convention, which was speedily suppressed. Buzot was outlawed, and fled to the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, and committed suicide in the woods of St Émilion on the 18th of June 1794. He was an intelligent and honest man, although he seems to have profited by the sale of the possessions of the clergy, but he had a stubborn, unyielding temperament, was incapable of making concessions, and was dominated by Madame Roland, who imparted to him her hatred of Danton and the Montagnards.
See Mémoires de Pétion, Barbaroux, Buzot, published by C.A. Daubon (Paris, 1866). For the history of the federalist movement in Normandy, see L. Boivin Champeaux, Notices pour servir à, l'histoire de la Révolution dans le département de l'Eure (Evreux and Paris, 1884).
BUZZARD, a word derived from the Lat. Buteo, through the Fr. Busard, and used in a general sense for a large group of diurnal birds-of-prey, which contains, among many others, the species usually known as the common buzzard (Buteo vulgaris, Leach), though the English epithet is nowadays hardly applicable. The name buzzard, however, belongs quite as rightfully to the birds called in books "harriers," which form a distinct subfamily of Falconidae under the title Circinae, and by it one species, the moor-buzzard (Circus aeruginosus), is still known in such places as it inhabits. "Puttock" is also another name used in some parts of England, but perhaps is rather a synonym of the kite (Milvus ictinus). Though ornithological writers are almost unanimous in distinguishing the buzzards as a group from the eagles, the grounds usually assigned for their separation are but slight, and the diagnostic character that can be best trusted is probably that in the former the bill is decurved from the base, while in the latter it is for about a third of its length straight. The head, too, in buzzards is short and round, while in the eagles it is elongated. In a general way buzzards are smaller than eagles, though there are several exceptions to this statement, and have their plumage more mottled. Furthermore, most if not all of the buzzards, about which anything of the kind is with certainty known, assume their adult dress at the first moult, while the eagles take a longer time to reach maturity. The buzzards are fine-looking birds, but are slow and heavy of flight, so that in the old days of falconry they were regarded with infinite scorn, and hence in common English to call a man "a buzzard" is to denounce him as stupid. Their food consists of small mammals, young birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects—particularly beetles—and thus they never could have been very injurious to the game-preserver, if indeed they were not really his friends, though they have fallen under his ban; but at the present day they are so scarce that in England their effect, whatever it may be, is inappreciable. Buzzards are found over the whole world with the exception of the Australian region, and have been split into many genera by systematists. In the British Islands are two species, one resident (the B. vulgaris already mentioned), and now almost confined to a few wooded districts; the other the rough-legged buzzard (Archibuteo lagopus), an irregular winter-visitant, sometimes arriving in large bands from the north of Europe, and readily distinguishable from the former by being feathered down to the toes. The honey-buzzard (Pernis apivorus), a summer-visitor from the south, and breeding, or attempting to breed, yearly in the New Forest, does not come into the subfamily Buteoninae, but is probably the type of a distinct group, Perninae, of which there are other examples in Africa and Asia. In America the name "buzzard" is popularly given to the turkey-buzzard or turkey-vulture (Cathartes Aura).