233 



BORAX. 



BORE. 



The greater part of commercial borax is now prepared, both in 

 England and France, by saturating with carbonate of soda the boracic 

 acid imported from Tuscany. This salt is little employed in medicine, 

 but ia used extensively in the arts as an ingredient iu the glaze of the 

 finer kinds of earthenware, and in chemical investigations as a flux. 



The primary form of common borax is an oblique rhombic prism, 

 variously modified ; but it has been found by Mr. Payen, that if a 

 saturated solution of borax at 174 be slowly cooled, it deposits 

 crystals when the temperature is above 103, which are in the form of 

 the regular octohedron. These crystals contain only half as much 

 water as those just described. 



Borax has rather an alkaline and sweetish taste, acts like alkalies 

 upon turmeric paper, and is soluble in twelve parts of cold and two of 

 boiling water. It effloresces slowly by exposure to the air, and when 

 twc i pieces are rubbed together in the dark they become luminous. 

 When moderately heated, borax swells and loses about four-tenths of 

 its weight, and assumes the form of a light porous friable mass, and is 

 called calcined t>ora.r. When very strongly heated, it melts into a 

 transparent glass. According to Berzelius, it is composed of, 



2 equivalents boracio acid . 

 1 do. soda . 

 10 do. water 



69-80 

 31-32 

 90-00 



191-12 



BORAX. [BORACIC ACID.] 



BORDA'RII, one of the classes of agricultural occupiers of land 

 mentioned in the Domesday Survey, and, with the exception of the 

 villaui, the largest. The origin of their name, and the exact nature of 

 their tenure, have been variously interpreted. Lord Coke (' Inst.' lib. 

 i. s i. fol. 5 b. edit. 1628) calls them "boors holding a little house, 

 with some land of husbandry, bigger than a cottage." Nichols, in his 

 ' Introduction to the History of Leicestershire," p. xlv., considers them 

 as cottagers, taking their name from living on the borders of a village 

 or manor : but this is sufficiently refuted by Domesday it-self, where 

 we find them not only mentioned generally among the agricultural 

 occupiers of land, but in one instance as " circa aulam manentes," 

 dwelling near the manor-house ; and even residing in some of the 

 larger towns. In two quarters of the town of Huntingdon, at the time 

 of forming the Survey, as well as in King Edward the Confessor's 

 time, there were 116 burgesses, and subordinate to them 100 bordarii, 

 who aided them in the payment of the geld or tax. (' Domesd. Book.' 

 t"iu. i., fol. 208.) In Norwich there were 420 bordarii: and 20 are 

 mentioned aa living in Thetford. (' Ibid.' torn, ii., fol. lit! b. 173.) 



Bishop Kennett says, " The bordarii often mentioned in the Domes- 

 day Inquisition were distinct from the servi and villani, and seem to 

 be those of a less servile condition, who had a bord or cottage with a 

 (.mall jarcel of land allowed to them, on condition they should supply 

 the lord with poultry and eggs, and other small provisions for his board 

 and entertainment." (' Gloss. Paroch. Antiq.') Such also is the inter- 

 pretation given by Blomfleld in his ' History of Norfolk.' Brady says, 

 " they were drudges, and performed vile iervices, which were reserved 

 by the lord upon a poor little house, and a small parcel of land, and 

 might perhaps be domestic works, such as grinding, threshing, drawing 

 water, cutting wood," &c. 



Bonn, aa Bishop Kennett has already noticed, was a cottage. Bnr- 



ilirii, it should seem, were cottagers merely. In one of the Ely 



Registers we find bordarii, where the breviate of the same entry in 



^lay itself reads cotarii. Then- condition was probably different 



on different manors. In some entries in the Domesday Survey, 



" Ixirdarii arantes" occur. At Eve-sham, on the abbey demesne, 27 



: ii are described as " scrvientes curia;." (' Domesd.' torn, i., fol. 



175 b.) 



On the demesne appertaining to the castle of Ewias, there were 12 

 bordarii, who are described as performing personal labour on one day 

 in every week. (' Ibid.' fol. 186.) At St. Edmondsbury in Suffolk, 

 the abbot had 118 homagers, and under them 52 bordarii. The total 

 number of bordarii noticed in the different counties of England in 

 Domesday Book is 82,634. 



(Ellis's General Introd. to Damctday Book ; Heywood's Distort, upon 

 the Rankt of the Peojile under the Amjln-Saj-on (jonrnmenlt.) 



BORDER WA I! I! ANT is a writ issued by the sheriffs of the Scottish 



c counties, to apprehend a person domiciled iu England who has 



ied debt in Scotland, if he should happen to be in the sheriffs' 



jurisdiction. It is given on oath being made to the debt, and to the 



party's domicile. The principle of arrest on mesne process was never 



in Scotland, farther than to the extent of apprehending 



debtors about to escape from the country (in meditalinne fwjce) until 



they should pay their debt or find security for it, and the border 



warrants, which are in practice disused, are a part of the system. 



BORE, less commonly BOAR, a phenomenon which occurs in some 



rivers, near their mouth at spring tides. When the tide enters the river, 



:iters suddenly rise to a great height, in some rivers many feet 



the surface of the stream, and rush with tremendous noise against 



'irrent for a considerable distance. Sometimes the waters do not 



lij till they have almost reached the limit of tide-water. As this 



swell does not occur in all rivers where there is a tide, it is evident that 



t be caused by some conformation of thu banks or bed of the river, 



or by both combined. It seems to be necessary, in order that there 

 should be a bore, that the river should fall into an estuary, that this 

 estuary be subject to high tides, and that it contract gradually ; and 

 lastly that the river also narrows by degrees. The rise of the sea at spring 

 tides pushes a great volume of water into the wide entrance of the 

 estuary, where it accumulates, not being able to flow off quickly enough 

 into the narrower part. The tide therefore enters with the greater force 

 the narrower the estuary becomes, and when it reaches the mouth of 

 the river, the swell has already obtained a considerable height above 

 the descending stream, and rushes on like a torrent. 



In England the bore is observed in some rivers, more especially in 

 the Severn, as particularly described below, in which it has a face 9 feet 

 high, the Trent (Stark's ' Gainsborough '), the Wye, in the Sohvay Frith, 

 and probably in other rivers and estuaries also, in which the water rises 

 suddenly a few feet, and then rushes on against the current of the river. 

 The bore is called in some parts of England, for instance in the Trent 

 and Severn, the Eagre or Hygre. (Gibson's ' Camden,' i. 268 ; Stark.) 

 This phenomenon takes place near Bordeaux, in the Garonne, and also 

 iu its affluent the Dordogne, and is called le Mascaret. 



Some of the most remarkable bores hitherto described are those of 

 the Ganges and Brahmapootra. In the Hoogly branch of the Gauges 

 the bore is so quick, that it takes only four hours in travelling from 

 Fultah to Nia-serai, above Hoogly town, a distance of nearly 70 miles. 

 At Calcutta it sometimes causes an instantaneous rise of 5 feet, which 

 would occasion great damage among the smaller vessels, if it did not 

 run along one bank only, so that the barges, on hearing the noise 

 which precedes it; can be safely brought to the other side of the river, 

 or to the middle, where the swell is indeed considerable, but not so 

 sudden as to endanger vessels which are skilfully managed. In the 

 channels between the islands at the month of the Megna or Brahma- 

 pootra, the height of the bore is said to exceed 12 feet, and it is so 

 terrific in its appearances, and so dangerous in its consequences, that 

 no boat will venture to navigate there at spring-tide ; but it does not 

 ascend to any great distance in this river, which is probably owing 

 to . the great width of the channel of the Megna. Dr. Joseph D. 

 Hooker, F.H.S., in his ' Himalayan Journals ' (vol. ii. p. 343), has 

 given a picturesque description of the manner in which his passage, 

 of about 100 miles, from Noacolly on the east bank of the Megna, 

 to Chittagong at its most eastern mouth, was affected by the bore 

 of that river ; from which the following particulars are derived : 

 "The great object in this navigation is .to keep afloat, and to make 

 progress towards the top of the tide and during its flood, and to ground 

 during the ebb in creeks where the bore (tidal wave) is not violent ; 

 for where the channels are broad and open, the height and force of 

 this wave rolls the largest coasting craft over, and swamps them." The 

 ebb, at the mouth of the Fenny, a tributary of the Megna, sometimes 

 retires twenty miles from high-water mark. After this, of course, no 

 water is either to be seen or heard ; nothing is visible but glistening 

 oozy mud, except the bleak level surfaces of the islands ; until, on the 

 return of the tide, in popular language, a white line is seen on the low 

 black horizon, which is the bore, advancing at the rate of five miles an 

 hour, with a hollow and harsh roar, bearing back the mud that wan 

 following the ebb. 



It will be seen that there are some unexplained inconsistencies in 

 the several accounts of the bore as occurring in this river, the Ganges, 

 and others, with regard to the comparative safety of vessels in the 

 central streams and near or upon the banks. It is evident, also, that 

 as there is every variety in rivers, with respect to the dimensions of 

 the tidal stream and the rate of contraction of the banks, so there is a 

 corresponding variety in their bores, from the narrow rushing torrent 

 of comparatively great altitude, emphatically the bore, to the slightly 

 elevated and accelerated quiet tide-wave. In the case of the Megna, 

 described by Dr. Hooker, we have an intermediate variety. 



The bore in the Gulf of Cambay and its tributaries is exceed- 

 ingly high and rapid, in consequence of which, and of the currents 

 in the gulf, its navigation is dangerous. The phenomenon observed 

 in the mouths of the Indus must be of the same kind. Burnes 

 remarks (' Journal of R. Geog. Soc. Lond., 1 vol. iii.) that " the tides 

 rise in the mouths of the Indus about 9 feet at full moon ; and flow 

 and ebb with great violence, particularly near the sea, where they 

 flood and abandon the banks with equal and incredible velocity. It is 

 dangerous to drop the anchor unless at low water, as the channel is 

 frequently obscured, and the vessel may be left dry. The tides are 

 only perceptible 76 miles from the sea." The ships of Alexander expe- 

 rienced these dangerous tides in the Indus, and his historian, Arrian, is 

 the first who has described them. (' Anab.' vi. 19.) 



The tides iu the bay of Fundy are perhaps thu highest in the world, 

 the spring tides in some places rising 60 or 70 feet perpendicular ; and 

 the bore in the creek of Fundy is higher than iu the Severn. On the 

 N. coast of Brazil, especially on the shores of the provinces Para and 

 Maranhao, a similar phenomenon is observed hi some rivers, and in 

 the channel which extends between the coast and a series of islands 

 from Cape Norte to the mouth of the river Macappa. This phenome- 

 non, which is called by the Indians pwurbca, is particularly strong in 

 the Amazonas, at the junction of the Araguari river, and in the rivers 

 (iuama and Capiin near Para, and also in the river Meary in Maninliao 

 The description of the poror'>ca does not differ materially from that of 

 the bore of the rivers in India, except that it rises to from 12 to 16 



