Bana´na, an African port, in Belgian Congo, at the mouth of the Congo.
Banana-bird, a pretty insessorial bird (Ictĕrus leucoptĕryx), a native of the West Indies and the warmer parts of America. It is a lively bird, easily domesticated, tawny and black in colour, with white bars upon the wings.
Banat. See Ban.
Ban´bridge, a town of Ireland, County Down, 22 miles S.W. of Belfast, on the Bann. The manufacture of linen is carried on to a great extent in town and neighbourhood. Pop. 5101.
Banbury (ban'be-ri), a town of England, in Oxfordshire, long celebrated for its cheese, its cakes, and its ale; a parliamentary borough till 1885, and now giving name to a parliamentary division of the county. Pop. (municipal borough) (1921), 13,347.
Banca, an island belonging to the Dutch East Indies, between Sumatra and Borneo; area, 4446 sq. miles; pop. 113,658, of which a considerable proportion are Chinese. It is celebrated for its excellent tin, of which the annual yield is above 6000 tons; but it produces nothing else of any importance.
Banco, in commerce, a term employed to designate the money in which the banks of some countries keep or kept their accounts, in contradistinction to the current money of the place, which might vary in value or consist of light and foreign coins. The term was applied to the Hamburg bank accounts before the adoption (in 1873) of the new German coinage. The mark banco had a value of 1s. 5½d.; but there was no corresponding coin. See Bank.
Ban´croft, George, American historian, born near Worcester, Mass., 1800, died 1891. He was educated at Harvard and in Germany, where he made the acquaintance of many literary men of note. In 1823 he published a translation of Heeren's Politics of Ancient Greece, and a small volume of poems, and was also meditating and collecting materials for a history of the United States. Between 1834 and 1840 three volumes of his history were published. In 1845 he was appointed Secretary of the Navy, and effected many reforms and improvements in that department. He was American ambassador to Britain from 1846 to 1849, when the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L. He took the opportunity while in Europe to perfect his collections on American history. He returned to New York in 1849, and began to prepare for the press the fourth and fifth volumes of his history, which appeared in 1852. The sixth appeared in 1854, the seventh in 1858, the eighth soon after, but the ninth did not appear till 1866. From 1867 to 1874 he was Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Berlin. The tenth and last volume of his great
work appeared in 1874. An additional section appeared first as a separate work in 1882: History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States, and the whole came out in 6 vols. in 1884-5. He has also published many essays in the North American Review and other periodicals, a selection from which was published in 1855 under the title of Miscellanies.
Ban´croft, Richard, born in Lancashire 1544, died 1610, studied at Cambridge, entered the Church, and rose rapidly during the reign of Elizabeth till he obtained the see of London in 1597. James I made him Archbishop of Canterbury on the death of Whitgift. He suppressed the Puritans mercilessly, and they in return never ceased to abuse him.