Bashkirtsev, Marie, Russian painter and authoress, born 1860, died 1884; educated mostly outside of Russia, in France, Germany, and Italy; became an accomplished linguist and musician, and studied art in Paris, attaining high success, but overtaxing her system, with fatal results. She is best known from her journal, an intimate personal record, interesting not only as revealing her own peculiar character and intellectual gifts, but also for notices of the notable personages with whom she came in contact. It has been translated into various languages—into English by Mathilde Blind (1890), who has also published A Study of Marie Bashkirtsev (1892). A number of her letters were also published in 1891.—Cf. The Journal of Marie Bashkirtsev, an Exposure and a Defence.
Basic Slag, the slag or refuse-matter which is got in making basic steel, and which, from the phosphate of lime it contains, is a valuable fertilizer. See Manures (Phosphatic).
Basic Steel. See Steel.
Basi´diomycetes, one of the two sub-classes of the Eumycetes or septate Fungi, including the bulk of the larger and more familiar saprophytic types, such as the Mushroom, Toad-stools, Shelf-fungi, Puff-balls, and Earth-stars, and also the important parasites known as the Rusts. They are characterized by their principal spores being produced externally, usually in fours, upon an organ called a basidium. The basidia are arranged in a continuous layer (hymenium), and are usually massed together upon a specialized fruit-body, of which an ordinary mushroom is a good example. The principal subdivisions of the group, with representative genera, are as follows:—
A. Basidia septate (Proto-Basidiomycetes).
1. Family Uredineæ (Rusts). Basidia transversely septate; teleutospores present; parasites. Puccinia, Phragmidium, Melampsora.
2. Family Auricularineæ. Basidia transversely septate; no teleutospores; saprophytes. Auricularia.
3. Family Tremellineæ. Basidia longitudinally septate; saprophytes. Tremella.
B. Basidia not septate (Auto-Basidiomycetes).
4. Family Exobasidiineæ. Parasites without fruit-body; basidia exposed on surface of host. Exobasidium.