BAK 



BAR 



the canicular days ; published at Oxford, 

 in 1648, by Mr. Greaves, tog-ether with 

 a demonstration of the heliacal rising of 

 Sirius, the Dog-Star, for the parallel of 

 Lower Egypt. Dr. Bainbridge undertook 

 this work at the request of Archbishop 

 Usher, but he left it imperfect ; being pre- 

 vented by the breaking out of the civil 

 war, or by death. 



There were also several dissertations 

 of his prepared for, and committed to the 

 press the year after his death, but the 

 edition of them was never completed. 



BAIT, in fishing, a thing prepared to 

 take and bring fishes to. See ANGLING. 



BAITING is applied to the act of small- 

 er or weaker beasts attacking and har- 

 rassing greater and stronger ones. Bulls 

 and bears are baited by mastiffs, or bull- 

 dogs. The practice of bull-baiting, and 

 other sports of the same kind, which can- 

 not be too strongly reprobated, may be 

 traced to an early period of our history. 

 In the twelfth century, it was a common 

 practice on every holiday. In the reign 

 of Henry VIII. many herds of bears were 

 maintained for the purpose of baiting. 

 Queen Mary had a great exhibition of 

 bear-baiting immediately after mass, with 

 which to entertain her sister Elizabeth, 

 then a prisoner in Hatfield-House ; and 

 the same princess, soon after her acces- 

 sion to the throne, entertained the foreign 

 ambassadors with the baiting of bulls and 

 bears.' The custom of bull-baiting was 

 most ingeniously defended by Mr. Wind- 

 ham, in the House of Commons, in the 

 session of 1803, when a bill was brought 

 in to stop that inhuman practice. Whales 

 are baited by a kind of fish called orix, 

 or killers, ten or twelve of which will 

 atttack a young whale at once, and not 

 leave him till he is killed. 



BAKER, (THOMAS) a mathematician 

 of some eminence, was born at llton, in 

 Somersetshire, in 1625. He entered up- 

 on his studies at Oxford, in 1640, where 

 he remained seven years. He was after- 

 wards appointed vicar of Bishop's-Nym- 

 met in Devonshire, where he lived a stu- 

 dious and retired life for many years, 

 chiefly pursuing the mathematical scien- 

 ces ; of which he gave a proof of his criti- 

 cal knowledge, in the book he published, 

 concerning the general construction of 

 biquadratic equations, by a parabola and 

 a circle ; the title of which book at full 

 length is, " The Geometrical Key ; or 

 the Gate of Equations unlocked : or a 

 new Discovery of the construction of all 

 Equations, howsoever effected, not ex- 

 ceeding the fourth degree; viz. of Linears, 



Quadratics, Cubics, Biquadratics, and the 

 finding of all their roots." 



A little before his death, the Royal So- 

 ciety sent him some mathematical que- 

 ries : to which he returned such satisfac- 

 tory answers, as procured the present of 

 a medal, with an inscription full of honour 

 and respect. Mr. Baker died at Bishop's- 

 Nymmet, 1690, in the 65th year of his 

 age. 



BAKER, (HENRY) an ingenious and 

 diligent naturalist, was born in London 

 about the beginning of the 18th century. 

 He was brought up under an eminent 

 bookseller, but being of a philosophical 

 turn of mind, he quitted that line of busi- 

 ness soon after the expiration of his ap- 

 prenticeship, and took to the employment 

 of teaching deaf and dumb persons to 

 speak and write, &c. in which occupation, 

 in the course of his life, he acquired a 

 handsome fortune. For his amusement, 

 he cultivated various natural and philoso- 

 phical sciences, particularly botany, natu- 

 ral history, and microscopical subjects, 

 in which he especially excelled, having, 

 in the year 1744, obtainedthe Royal Socie- 

 ty's gold medal, for his microscopical ex- 

 periments on the crystallizations and con- 

 figurations of saline particles. He pub- 

 lished various papers in the Transactions 

 of the Royal Society, of which he was a 

 worthy member, as well as of the Society 

 of Antiquaries. 



He was author of many pieces on vari- 

 ous subjects, the principal of which were, 

 his Treatise on the Water Polype, and 

 two treatises on the Microscope ; viz. 

 " The Microscope made easy," and "Em- 

 ployment for the Microscope," which 

 have gone through several editions. 



Mr. Baker married Sophia, youngest 

 daughter of the celebrated Daniel Defoe, 

 by whom he had two sons, who both died 

 before him. He terminated an honour- 

 able and useful life, at his apartments in 

 the Strand, on the 25th of November, 

 1774, being then upwards of 70 years of 

 age. 



BAKER, a person whose occupation or 

 business is to prepare bread, or to reduce 

 meal of any kind, whether simple or 

 compound, into bread, biscuit, &,c. It is 

 not known when this very useful business 

 first became a particular profession. Ba- 

 kers were a distinct body of people in 

 Rome, nearly two hundred years before 

 the Christian sera, and it is supposed that 

 they came from Greece. To these were 

 added a number of freemen, who were 

 incorporated into a college, from which 

 neither they nor their children were al- 



