Ban´croft, Sir Squire, English actor, born in London in 1841. After playing in Dublin and elsewhere he made his first appearance in London, at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, in 1865. He married Miss Marie Effie Wilton in 1867, and was knighted in 1897. In collaboration with his wife he has written The Bancrofts: Recollections of Sixty Years (1909).
Banda, a town and district of India, in the United Provinces. The town stands on a plain on the right bank of the Ken River, 95 miles S.W. from Allahabad, and is a considerable cotton mart. Pop. 22,000.—Area of district 2965 sq. miles. Pop. 660,000.
Banda Islands, a group belonging to Holland, Indian Archipelago, south of Ceram, Great Banda, the largest, being 12 miles long by 2 broad. They are beautiful islands, of volcanic origin, yielding quantities of nutmeg. Goenong Api, or Fire Mountain, is a cone-shaped volcano which rises 2320 feet above the sea. Pop. 10,000.
Bandajan´, a pass over a range of the Himálaya, Kashmir State, 14,854 feet above sea-level.
Bandan´na, a variety of silk handkerchief having a uniformly-dyed ground, usually of bright red or blue, ornamented with white or yellow circular, lozenge-shaped, or other simple figures produced by discharging the groundcolour.
Banda Oriental. See Uruguay.
Bandel´lo, Matteo, an Italian writer of novelle or tales, born about 1480, died about 1562. He was, in his youth, a Dominican monk, and having been banished from Italy as a partisan of the French, Henry II of France gave him in 1550 the bishopric of Agen. He left the administration of his diocese to the Bishop of Grasse, and employed himself, at the advanced age of seventy, in the completion of his novelle. He also wrote poetry, but his fame rests on his novelle, which are in the style of Boccaccio's Decameron and the Queen of Navarre's Heptameron, and have been made use of by Shakespeare, Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher.
Bande Noire. See French Revolution.
Band-fish, the popular name of fishes of the genus Cepŏla, from their long, flat, thin bodies. C. rubescens, a very fragile creature, is sometimes cast up on British shores. Also called Snake-fish, Ribbon-fish.
