416 BIENNIAL PLANTS. 
kind of food. They were formerly viewed, in 
every country, as antidotes to all poisons, and as 
possessed of some other extraordinary virtues ; 
they were, in some instances, so highly prized, as 
to be sold for ten times their weight of gold; they 
gave rise to the adjective bezoardic, as an epithet 
of any sort of object which was thought super- 
latively valuable ; and they were extensively 
counterfeited by artificial preparations, exactly 
as gold coins and precious gems are counterfeited 
by base imitations ; and yet they owed all their 
original interest to their rarity and the singular 
manner of their formation, and all their market 
value to the place which they acquired in popular 
caprice. They are still esteemed in the east ; but, 
except as a sheer disease, they have passed into 
utter oblivion in Europe. They seem to have 
been first used as a medicine by the Arabians ; 
and they continue to be imported into India 
from Ceylon, Bassora, and the sea-ports of the 
| Persian gulf. The variety of them held in high- 
est esteem, and called emphatically Lapis bezoar 
orientalis, is found in the stomach of the wild- 
voat of Persia. The variety obtained from the 
west, and known as American bezoars, are found 
| principally in the different species of the llama. 
See the article Anpaca. A variety, much less 
indurated than the eastern and western kinds, is 
not uncommon in our sheep, and very frequent 
in our lambs; but is seldom found at any other 
time than the months of September and October, 
and does not appear to be injurious to health. 
Clater describes them as “a number of small 
balls, often of the shape of an almond, or resem- 
bling that of the stomach itself;” and adds,— 
“They are usually of a brown colour, but some- 
times inclining to a yellow. On cutting them 
with a knife, they appear to be composed of lay- 
ers consisting of wool, intermixed with earthy 
substance and mucus. They can be dissolved by 
means of boiling water, and in all probability by 
the gastric juice of the stomach; as, though they 
| are common in the autumn, they are rarely found 
a few months later.” The hard stony bezoar of 
the east is believed to consist principally of phos- 
phate of lime. See the article Caucuus. 
BIENNIAL PLANTS. Plants which fructify 
and perish in the second season of their exist- 
ence,—rising from seed in one year, and flower- 
ing, seeding, and dying in the next. Familiar 
examples of biennials are celery, the carrot, and 
the swedish turnip. Buta very large proportion 
of biennials are capable of being thrown out of 
their biennial habit by excess of either heat or 
cold; some annuals are capable of being pro- 
longed into biennials; two or three plants of 
usually long existence are capable of true classi- 
fication with biennials; and a considerable num- 
ber of the briefer-lived perennials, are commonly, 
though quite illogically, classed with biennials. A 
| monocarpous plant is one which seeds only once, or 
which perishes from the effects of a single seed- 
ing ; every monocarpous plant which seeds and 
BILE. 
dies in the same season in which it is sown, is an 
annual; and any monocarpous plant which lives 
through a winter before seeding is a biennial. 
Hence in one sowing of turnips, some of the 
plants are annual, and most are biennial ; wheat 
sown in spring is annual, and wheat sown in 
autumn is biennial; some stock sown early in 
spring is annual, and the same stock sown in 
summer is biennial; any ordinary biennial, pro- 
longed by coldness of climate, through two or 
more winters before seeding, is still a biennial ; 
and the American aloe, whether flowering in its 
fourth year in the most genial parts of its native 
country, or not flowering till its fortieth or fiftieth 
year in Great Britain, is technically a true bien- 
nial. But plants which flower and seed more 
than once, no matter how visibly they degener- 
ate, or in how few years they decay, such as wall- 
flowers and hollyhocks, cannot without great 
confusion of idea be classed otherwise than as pe- 
rennials. Most true biennials form and strength- 
en their roots and root-leaves during the first 
season, pause in growth during winter, and vig- 
orously send up their flowering-stem in spring. 
BIGG. See Barry. 
BIGNONIJA. A large genus of elegant, orna- 
mental plants, forming the type of the order 
Bignoniacee. The genus will be noticed in the ar- 
ticle TRumpnt-FLiownr. The order consists wholly 
of monopetalous exogens, with irregular flowers, 
pod-like fruit, and winged seeds; and paftly of 
trees, but principally of climbing shrubs. 
trumpet-shaped flowers. Most are natives of the 
tropics; and only a few grow naturally within 
the temperate latitudes. The timber of some is 
very hard, and is said to resist the attacks of 
worms. The most interesting genera are big- 
nonia, catalpa, and eccremocarpus ; and the other 
genera are chilopsis, tecoma, jacaranda, spatho- 
dea, amphilobium, calampelis, fieldia, and strepto- 
carpus. 
BILBERRY. See WHortLEBERRY. 
BILE. A yellowish-green liquid substance, of 
a bitter taste. Man and many animals have, on 
the inferior surface of the liver, a peculiar blad- 
der, in which the bile, formed by the liver from | 
the blood, is preserved. It consists of water and 
several other substances, The water constitutes 
the greatest part, and keeps the other parts in a 
state of solution. The remaining ingredients are | 
a yellow, very bitter, fusible resin, which contri- 
butes most to the taste of the bile; a small por- 
tion of natron; some mineral alkaline salts; some 
oxyde of iron; a small quantity of a yellowish 
substance, which is only partly dissolved in the 
natron; and a considerable portion of albumen. 
Thenard and Berzelius have done much to deter- 
mine the ingredients of the bile. Its principal 
use seems to be, to separate the excrement from 
the chyle, after both have been formed, and to 
Most | 
are readily distinguished by the eye, and highly | 
admired by taste, on account of their broad pin- | 
nated leaves, and their large and richly coloured 
