BURWASH 



1014 



BUSHMEN 



father's farm, working, reading and studying. 



The essay was always his favorite form of 



literature, and he found especial enjoyment in 



reading Emerson, 



Walt Whitman 



and Matthew Ar- 



nold. The first, 



he says, awak- 



ened his religious 



feelings; the sec- 



ond quickened 



h i s interest i n 



JOHN BURROUGHS 



H 



the third taught 

 him to think and 

 write clearly. His 

 first published 

 book, Watt Whit- 

 man as Poet and Person (1867), was written 

 while he was a clerk in the Treasury Depart- 

 ment at Washington. He left this position 

 in 1873, was for several years a national bank 

 examiner, and then, having bought a fruit 

 farm at West Park, near Esopus, on the Hud- 

 son, settled down to the congenial life of 

 farmer, student of nature and essayist. 



Burroughs' essays are read and loved both 

 in the home and in the school, and are enjoyed 

 equally by the children and their elders. Few 

 other nature writers have quite his gift for 

 making the beauties of outdoor life a reality to 

 the reader. He has the high art of writing so 

 clearly and simply that one forgets his manner 

 of expression and becomes absorbed in the 

 matter. His sympathetic interest in his little 

 friends of the woodlands and his amazing pow- 

 ers of observation are happily revealed in the 

 quaint and suggestive titles of his essays, Bird 

 Enemies, The Tragedies of the Nests, An Idyl 

 of the Honey-Bee, Winter Neighbors, A Taste 

 of Maine Birch, Winter Sunshine and others. 

 Whitman, a Study and Literary Values are 

 representative of his literary essays; The Light 

 of Day gives his personal religious views. His 

 experiences on a Western trip with Theodore 

 Roosevelt are interestingly told in Camping 

 and Tramping with Roosevelt. . He has also 

 written a number of poems, collected under the 

 "title Bird and Bough. 



BUR 'WASH, NATHANAEL (1839- ), a 

 Canadian educator and Methodist theologian, 

 from 1887 to 1913 president and chancellor of 

 Victoria College, and for half a century a leader 

 in educational reform in Ontario. Dr. Burwash 

 was graduated from Victoria College in 1859, 

 when it was still at Cobourg, Ont., his birth- 



place. He continued his theological studies 

 at Yale College and at Garrett Biblical Insti- 

 tute of Northwestern University, Evanston, 111. 

 He was ordained a Methodist minister in 1864, 

 and two years later was appointed professor 

 of natural science in Victoria College. Later 

 he was dean of the theological faculty for thir- 

 teen years, and then president for twenty-six 

 years. He was largely responsible for the feder- 

 ation of Victoria College and the University 

 of Toronto. Dr. Burwash has taken a prom- 

 inent part in the direction of the Methodist 

 Church in Canada, was Methodist secretary of 

 education, from 1874 to 1886, and has been 

 president of the general conference and dele- 

 gate to the ecumenical conferences at Washing- 

 ton, D. C., in 1901 and at London, England, in 

 1911. Of his many writings the most significant 

 are Wesley's Doctrinal Standards; Inductive 

 Studies in Theology; A Manual of Christian 

 Theology, and Life and Times of Egerton 

 Ryerson. 



BURYING BEETLE, also called SEXTON 

 BEETLE, is an insect which in North America 

 reaches a length of about one and a half inches. 

 The name is due to a characteristic unknown 

 among other insect families. It has a keen 

 sense of smell, which guides it promptly to 

 small dead animals, the basis of its domestic 

 economy. Having found a small carrion, it 

 burrows around and under the body until the 

 animal is about five inches below the surface of 

 the ground. In this carrion the female deposits 

 her eggs, and when the larvae (young) hatch 

 in about two weeks they live until mature upon 

 the decaying matter and then begin to repeat 

 the life history of their parents. 



There are ten slightly-differing species in 

 America; they are of nearly the same size and 

 most of them are black, with either two red 

 spots or a red band en each of the lateral wing 

 covers. 



BUSHEL, the common measure of all bulky 

 articles of commerce, equal to four pecks, or 

 thirty-two quarts. The standard bushel in the 

 United States and Canada contains 2,150.42 

 cubic inches, being equal to a cylinder eight 

 inches deep and eighteen and one-half inches 

 in diameter, interior measure. In Great Britain 

 an imperial bushel is used, having a capacity 

 of 2,218.192 cubic inches. See WEIGHTS AND 

 MEASURES. 



BUSHMEN, a tribe of African dwarfs inhab- 

 iting the Kalahari Desert and the plains in 

 the north of the Cape of Good Hope province. 

 They are a fierce, unsociable and only partly- 



