34 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



their inferior dimensions, their effect in pastry, is thought by many, 

 to equal those of the Dorking fowl. 



BAOBAB, or BAHOBAB. The name of a huge tree which 

 grows on the west coast of Africa, from the Niger to the kingdom of 

 Benin. The circumference of its trunk is generally between seventy 

 and eighty feet, though the height of the trunk seldom exceeds twelve 

 feet. The branches, which are remarkably thick, shoot out horizon- 

 tally to the length of fifty or sixty feet, and their extremities, being 

 bent to the ground by their own weight, they form a hemispherical 

 mass of foliage, about one hundred and thirty feet in diameter. The 

 decayed trunks of the Baobab are hollowed out into burying-places by 

 the negroes, for their poets and musicians. The bodies are thus 

 preserved perfectly dry, and resist putrefaction as if they had been 

 embalmed. 



BARILLA. A plant, whose salts are used in manufacturing 

 glass. .When this plant is grown to its pitch, it is cut down, and let 

 dry ; afterwards it is burnt and calcined in pits, like lime kilns, dug in 

 the ground for that purpose ; which are closely covered up with earth, 

 so that no air may come at the fire. The matter, by these means, is 

 not reduced into ashes only, but is made into a very hard stone, like 

 rock salt, which must be broken with hammers to get it out. 



BARK. In the anatomy of plants, the exterior part of trees, 

 corresponding to the skin of an animal. As animals are furnished 

 with a panniculus adiposus, usually replete with fat, which invests 

 and covers all the fleshy parts, and screens them from external cold ; 

 so plants are encompassed with a bark. replete with fatty juices, by 

 means whereof the cold is kept out, and, in winter time, the spicules of 

 ice prevented from fixing and freezing the juices in the vessel ; whence 

 it is, that some sorts of trees remain evergreen the year round, by 

 reason their barks containing more oil, than can be spent and exhaled 

 by the sun. It appears that trees stripped of their bark in the time 

 of their sap, and suffered to die, afford heavier timber, more uniformly 

 dense, stronger, and fitter for service, than if the trees had been cut 

 down in their healthy state. 



BARK-BREAD-. Is a species of bread which the Laplanders 

 prepare from the inner bark of pine trees. For this purpose the 

 most lofty and clearest branches are selected, the scaly bark taken off, 

 and the succulent white alburnum is collected, dried on coals till it is 

 friable, when it is pulverized, kneaded with water into cakes, baked 

 in an oven, and eaten as bread. In Siberia, when the ermine hunters 

 find their ferment, with which they make their quass, destroyed by 

 the cold, they digest the inner bark of the pine with water over a fire 

 for an hour, mix it with rye meal, bury the dough in the snow, and 

 after twelve hours find the ferment ready prepared in the sediment. 



BARLEY. One of the most common cultivated grains, in use 

 from time immemorial, and extensively cultivated in modern times. 



