K I T 



470 



B 1 T 



vi.) in th reign of ArUxerxe* Ixmgimanus ; and Pharna 

 bazus, the ton of Pharnaces, in the reign of Darius Nothu* 

 Bilhynia was taken tram the Persians by Alexander tin 

 Great, but his general, Calantus, was defeated by Bag 

 the ton of Botciras, a native prince, and Bithynia became at 

 independent state. 



Mr. Clinton (Fatti HeUeniri, &c.. Append, c. 7, p. 410 

 baa made such a complete collection of the passages ii 

 aniieni writers relating to the kings of Bithynia. that 

 cannot do better than refer our readers to his work for al 

 particulars respecting the hi.story of this district during thi 

 period in which it had a separate existence. BBS wa 

 succeeded in 326 B.C. by his son Zipcetes, who c.irriei 

 on a successful war with Lysimachus, and founded tin 

 city Ziputtion. His eldest son, Nicomedes I., came to 

 the throne about 278 B.C. His succession was dispute* 

 by his brother Zyboetes, and he called in the Gauls to 

 support bis claim ; who also seem to have assisted his son 

 Zeilas in recovering his inheritance from his step-mother 

 Etazeta. Zeilas or Zelas (not Zielas, as Clinton writes it. 

 reigned till about 228 B.C., when he was succeeded by his 

 son, Prusias I. This prince is described as a man of cou 

 rage and activity, and indeed gained his name of the lame 

 from a wound which he received while mounting a scaling 

 ladder at the siege of Heraclea ; but his memory is in some 

 degree tarnished by his connexion with the death of the 

 great Hannibal, who sought refuge at his court. Hanniba 

 died in 183 H.C., and Prusias II. probably came to the throne 

 in 1 80 H.C., or thereabouts. He married the sister of Per- 

 seus, king of Macedon, between whom and the Romans he 

 endeavoured to mediate. (Liv. xliv. 14.) He visited Rome, 167 

 B.C., along with his son, Nicomedes, by whom he was mur- 

 dered, 149 B.C. Little is known of Nicomedes II. He was 

 applied to for succours during the Cimbrian war by Marius 

 and died probably in the year 91 B.C. His son, Nicomedus 

 III., was expelled by Mithridatcs, but was restored by tin. 

 Romans, and expelled again, 88 B.C. At the peace in 84 

 B.C., he was a second time restored, and, dying in 74 B.C., 

 be left his kingdom to the Romans as his heirs. 



Bithynia as a Roman province is thrown quite into the 

 shade till the time of Trajan, when Pliny the younger pre- 

 sided over it, and from his epistles we derive a good deal ol 

 information respecting its condition at that time. In the 

 division of Augustus it was one of the Proconsulares Pro- 

 vincice, i. P., one of those which were left to the senate and 

 the people (Dio. 53, 12, Strabo, i. 17, Tacitus, Annul, xvi. 

 18) ; but Pliny's appointment was due to his intimacy with 

 the Emperor, with whom he corresponded familiarly on the 

 affairs of the province. He found near Nicomedia a foss 

 commenced by a king of Persia probably for the purpose of 

 irrigating the neighbouring lands, and he endeavoured to 

 induce the emperor to turn it into a canal between the lake 

 of Nicomedia and the sea : Trajan seems to have been in- 

 clined to adopt his suggestion. (Epist. x. 50, 69.) In his 

 46th Epitt. 1. 10, he asks Trajan for an ' aquilex' to com- 

 plete the aqueduct commenced by the Nicomedians, and 

 appears in general to have been a great benefactor of the 

 province. 



It was on the plain of Nicooa that the Sultan Solyman 

 cut to pieces the army of Peter the Hermit, and its prox- 

 imity to Constantinople has made this district the scene of 

 manv important events in modern history. 



BlTON, a Greek writer about the time of Archimedes. 

 A work by him on the construction of catapultco (*arniri>ni 

 ro\iuutuv Offaviav jcarajrtXruciJr) is extant, in the collection 

 of Thevenot. 



BITONTO, a town in the province of Bari, in the king- 

 dom of the two Sicilies, with a population of about 4000 in- 

 habitant*. It lies on the road from Canosa to Bari, twelve 

 miles W. by 8. of Bari, and about seven miles from the 

 nearest point of the Adriatic coast. The country around is 

 very fertile. [See BARI.] Bitonto is the antient Butuntum 

 or Butuntus of the Antonine Itinerary. It is known in 

 modern history for a battle fought near "it, 25th May, 1734, 

 between the Spaniards, commanded by the Duke of Monte- 

 mar, and the Austrian*, commanded by the Prince of 

 Bclmonte. The Spaniards won the battle, which gave them 

 the possession of the kingdom of Naples, where the Bourbon 

 dynasty was thus established. Montemar was created by 

 King Charles Duke of Bitonto. (Holla. Storia (t Italia ) 

 . BITTER PRINCIPLE. When indigo and some other 

 .vegetable products are acted upon by nitric acid a substance 

 >s produced, which, before iU properties had been accurately 



examined, was called, on account of its taste, bitter prin- 

 ciple. This is now, however, known to be a peculiar acid, 

 and is called earbarotic or nitropienc arid, and will be men- 

 tioned hereafter under the former name. 



Besides this artificial product, there exist a vast number 

 of vegetables, most or all of which are used in medicine, 

 that contain bitter extractive matter, and from which a 

 peculiar bitter principle may in many cases be separated : 

 thus gentian root yields a crystallizable and extremely 

 bitter matter ; but it has not been ascertained that t 

 the only bitter contained in this root ; it i* called gen- 

 tianine; that of senna is termed catharten, of colon mli. 

 colocynthcn, &c. These and others of the same class will 

 be mentioned under their respective letters. 



BITTERSPAR. Considerable uncertainty will be found 

 to exist in the use of this term in the various mineral 

 works, owing to a very close connection existing between the 

 carbonates of lime, magnesia, protoxides of iron, manganese 

 and zinc, and the compounds which these carbonate* form 

 with one another. There is consequently gome difficult) in 

 determining the precise limits which divide one species from 

 the other. According, however, to the most general a< capta- 

 tion it must be considered as denoting the crystallized 

 varities of Dolomite, and therefore its essential chemical 

 constitution may be considered as containing one equivalent 

 of carbonate of lime united with one equivalent of carbonate 

 of magnesia, which expressed in symbols is 



Ca c + Mg o 



That exactly the above compound should rarely m-cur, is, 

 from what we know of the principles of isomorphism, no 

 longer a matter of any surprise, since either of the elements 

 may be partially replaced by the other, or by the proto\i.K-> 

 of manganese and iron, which is indeed usually the case. 

 On the supposition of the above composition, 100 parts 

 should be found to contain 



Of Carbonate of lime .... 5-T3 

 Carbonate of magnesia . . . 45'7 

 while the analysis of varieties from Tyrol by Klaproth give 

 the composition thus 



Carbonate of lime . . . 54' 18 . .52 

 Carbonate of magnesia . . 45*82 . . 45 

 Carbonate of iron and manganese o . 3 



100 100 



The quantity of iron and manganese is, however, at times 

 much greater, Bcrthier having obtained as much as 14 per 

 cent, of the former, and six of the latter. Particular atten- 

 tion is requisite to distinguish this species from calcareous 

 spar, carbonate of lime, on the one hand, and magncsitspar 

 or talcspar, the carbonate of magnesia, on the other, two 

 species to which the bitterspar is most nearly allied, and 

 between which it is situated, not only in its chemical con- 

 stitution, but in almost all of its other properties. Tims 

 for example they are all three cleavable in directions parallel 

 to the faces of a rhombohedral, the ngle in the obtuse 

 edges of which in the purest specimens 



OfCalcsparis . . . 105 5' 

 Bitterspar . . .106 15' 

 Talcspar . . . 107 22' 



[n the general character of the crystals also the bittrrspnr is 

 intermediate between the other two : tor while in calespar 

 we find an almost infinite variety of forms and combinations, 

 with a most decided tendency to the recurrence oftli' 

 idcd regular prism, and a remarkable complexity and 

 .ariety of shapes, talcspar on the contrary is as remark- 

 ible for its simplicity, the faces of its cleavage rhombo- 

 icdron being the only ones which have as yet ever been 

 >hserved to occur in this mineral. Bitterspar, on the con- 

 rary, holds as it were a mean between these two extremes, 

 iresenting us, in addition to the planes of the cleavage 

 rhombohedron, the faces of the first ohtusrr, and first and 

 ic-cond acuter rhombohedron, together with the planes trun- 

 ating the terminal angle; the two acuter rhombohedion 

 occur alone as well as that of cleavage. The principal c.im 

 >inations arc seen in the accompanying figure, where the 

 'aces marked E represent the plane truncating the terminal 

 angle, R the cleavage and its second neuter: the faces R 

 are frequently not present. The crystalline faces, par- 

 icularly those of the cleavage rhombohedron, are fre- 

 liiently rounded, by which the crystals assume the 

 arm of a lens. In hardness it is also situated between 

 alwpar and talcspar, its number being 3'5 to 4, while 



