B I S 



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B I S 



the name of biscuit, which is given from the resemblance 

 which they bear in colour and apparent texture to ship- 

 bread. The second firing is necessary in order to vitrifv 

 the glaze, and to bring out the metallic colours which are 

 used for embellishing earthenwares. 



The heat of the first oven must be at least equal to that 

 employed for the vitrification of the glaze, and for this rea- 

 son : as soon as that degree of heat to which earthenwares 

 have been already subjected is passed, a further degree of 

 shrinking occurs, which would occasion the glaze to crack 

 and peel off, an effect which will not be produced by a repe- 

 tition of the degree of heat that has been once applied. It 

 is a property of clay to contract when subjected to any de- 

 gree of heat greater than it has previously borne but short 

 of the point of fusion, and to continue at that same state of 

 contraction at every other temperature which is not above 

 the degree of heat to which it has once been subjected, 

 and by which its actual state of contraction has been pro- 

 duced. 



Earthenware in the state of biscuit is permeable to water, 

 which however it imbibes without undergoing any altera- 

 tion of texture. This quality fits it for being used in the 

 cooling of fluids, which effect is produced through the rapid 

 evaporation from the outer surface. (Lardner's Cabinet 

 Cyclopeedia, vol. xxvi.) 



BISHAREEN is the common name of several tribes 

 which inhabit the mountain desert between the valley of 

 the Nile and the Red Sea. The tribes comprised under 

 this name are masters of the desert lying between the Wady 

 Naby (about 21 N. lat.), to the mouth of the Atbara or 

 Tacazze (about 18 N. lat.); but they are also found to the 

 north of Wady Naby, where they are mixed with the Ababde 

 tribes, to whom the country north of Wady Naby is con- 

 sidered to belong. To the south some of the Bishareen 

 tribes are met with as far as Massuah or Massowa (16 N. 

 lat.) on the Red Sea, and here they are mixed with their 

 southern neighbours, the Hadendoa. 



In their manner of life they are Beduins, though evi- 

 dently not of Arabian origin. In winter they pasture their 

 camels and sheep on the mountains near the Red Sea, where 

 the rain produces plenty of herbage in the beds of the winter 

 torrents ; but in summer, when the grass is dried up in the 

 desert, they are obliged to descend to the Nile to feed their 

 cattle on the herbage along the banks of the streams. 



They live entirely upon milk and flesh, much of which 

 they eat raw. A few of them occasionally visit Derr or 

 Assouan with senna, sheep, and ostrich -feathers ; the ostrich 

 is common in their mountains, and their senna of the 

 best kind. In exchange they take shirts and dhurra, the 

 grains of which they swallow raw as a dainty, and never 

 make it into bread. 



Several of the Bishareen, though Beduins, do not neglect 

 agriculture. They repair to the banks of the Atbara imme- 

 diately after the inundation to sow dhurra and kidney-beans, 

 and remain there till the harvest is got in, when they return 

 to the mountains. 



They are a good-looking race of people, resembling the 

 Ababde. Their women are rather handsome, of a dark- 

 brown complexion, with beautiful eyes and fine teeth ; their 

 persons are slender and elegant ; they mix in company with 

 strangers, and are reported to be of very depraved habits. 

 The dress of both sexes consists only of a dammour shirt. 



Their encampments consist of several long irregular rows 

 of tenls, formed of mats made of the leaves of the doum- 

 tree. As the Nubian sheep and goats do not furnish the 

 inhabitants with the necessary materials for tent-coverings 

 of wool or goats'-hair, like the eastern Beduins, their place 

 is supplied by mats. 



The Bishareen are constantly armed. Their youths make 

 plundering excursions as far as Dongola, and along the 

 route to Sennaar, mounted upon camels of a breed superior 

 to any other that exists between the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean and Abyssinia. They fear none but the Ababde, 

 who know their pasturing places in the mountains, and 

 often surprise their encampments. They arc addicted to 

 drunkenness and pilfering, and are described as treacherous, 

 cruel, avaricious, and revengeful. They are all Mussul- 

 mans, but they observe none of the rites prescribed by the 

 Koran. Though kind, hospitable, and honest towards each 

 other, they shew none of these virtues towards strangers; 

 and their want of hospitality is adduced as a proof that they 

 are not of Arabian origin, which is likewise evident from 

 their language. 



Scarcely any of them understand the Arabic language, 

 except those who visit the neighbouring trading places' 

 Towards the frontier of Abyssinia they understand the 

 Abyssinians, who however are said to have greater diffi- 

 culty in understanding the Bishareen. The r language, 

 are probably derived from the same source, like many 

 others of the numerous dialects which prevail towards tho 

 northern frontier of Abyssinia. (Burckhardfs Travels in 

 Nubia.) 



BISHOP, the name of that superior order of pastors 

 or ministers in the Christian church who exercise su- 

 perintendency over the ordinary pastors within a certain 

 district, called their see or diocese, and to whom also be- 

 longs the performance of those higher duties of Chris- 

 tian pastors, ordination, consecration (or dedication to reli- 

 gious purposes) of persons or places, and finally, excommu- 

 nication. 



The word itself is corrupted Greek. "EiriaKcnros (episcopos) 

 became episcopus when the Latins adopted it. They intro- 

 duced it among the Saxons, with whom, by losing something 

 both at the beginning and the end, it became piscop, or, as 

 written in Anglo-Saxon characters, Bijceop. This is the 

 modern bishop, in which it is probable that the change 

 in the orthography (though small) is greater than in the 

 enunciation. Othei modern languages retain in like man- 

 ner the Greek term slightly modified according to the pecu- 

 liar genius of each, as the Italian, vescovo; Spanish, obispo ; 

 and French, evcque; as well as the German, bischof ; Dutch, 

 bisschop ; and Swedish, bishop. 



The word episcopus literally signifies / an inspector or 

 superintendent;' and the etymological sense expresses 

 even now much of the actual sense of the word. The 

 peculiar character of the bishop's office might be ex- 

 pressed in one word superintendency. The bishop is 

 the overseer, overlooker, superintendent in the Christian 

 Church, and an exalted station is allotted to him corre- 

 sponding to the important duties which belong to his office, 

 It was not, however, a term which was invented purposely 

 to describe the new officer which Christianity introduced 

 into the social system. The term existed before both among 

 the Greeks and Latins to designate certain civil officers 

 to whom belonged some species of superintendency. (See 

 Harpocrat. or Suidas in voc. i-n-iaKowof.) Cicero (ad Att., 

 lib. vii. ep. 11) speaks of himself as appointed an tirioKOTroe 

 in Campana. 



It has long been a great question in the Christian Church 

 what kind of superintendency it was that originally belonged 

 to the bishop. This question, as to whether it was origi- 

 nally a superintendency of pastors or of people, may be 

 briefly stated thus : Those who maintain that it was a su- 

 perintendency of pastors challenge for bishops that they are 

 an order of ministers in the Christian Church distinct from, 

 the order of presbyters, and standing in the same high 

 relation to them that the apostles did to the ordinary minis- 

 ters in the church ; that, in short, they are the successors 

 and representatives of the apostles, and receive at their 

 consecration certain spiritual graces by devolution and trans- 

 mission from them, which belong not to the common pres- 

 byters. This is the view taken of the original institution 

 and character of the bishop in the Catholic Church, in the 

 English Protestant Church, and we believe in all churches 

 which are framed on an episcopal constitution. Episcopacy 

 is thus regarded as of divine institution, inasmuch as it is 

 the appointment of Jesus Christ and the apostles, acting in 

 affixirs of the church under a divine direction. There are, 

 on the other hand, many persons who contend that the 

 superintendency of the bishop was originally in no respect 

 different from the superintendency exercised by presbyters 

 as pastors of particular churches. They maintain that, if 

 the question is referred to scripture, we there find that bishop 

 and presbyter are used indifferently to indicate the same 

 persons or class of persons ; and that there is no trace in the 

 scriptures of two distinct orders of pastors ; and that if the 

 reference is made to Christian antiquity we find no trace of 

 such a distinction till about 200 years after the time of the 

 apostles. The account which they give of the rise of the 

 distinction which afterwards existed between bishops and 

 mere presbyters is briefly this. 



When in the ecclesiastical writers of the first three cen- 

 turies we read of the bishops, as of Antioch, Ephesu-s, Car- 

 thage, Rome, and the like, we are to understand the pres- 

 byters who were the pastors of the Christian churches in 

 those cities. While the Christians were few in each city, 



