Bast is the inner bark of exogenous trees, especially of thel ime or linden, consisting of several layers of fibres. The manufacture of bast into mats, ropes, shoes, etc, was in some districts of Russia a considerable branch of industry, bast mate, used for packing- furniture, covering' plants in gardens, etc, being exported in large quantities during the 19th century. Though the term is usually restricted, many of the most important fibres of former commerce, such as hemp, flax, jute, etc, were the products of bast or liber. Research Bast
The blind are those who want, or are deficient in, the sense of sight. Blindness may vary in degree from the slightest impairment of vision to total loss of sight; it may also be temporary or permanent. It is caused by defect, disease, or injury to the eye, to the optic nerve, or to that part of the brain connected with it. Old age is sometimes accompanied with blindness, occasioned by the drying up of the humours of the eye, or by the opacity of the cornea, the crystalline lens, etc. The blind are often distinguished for a remarkable mental activity, and a wonderful development of the intellectual powers. Their touch and hearing, particularly, become very acute.
As early as 1260 an asylum for the blind (L'hospice des Quinze-Vingts) was founded in Paris by St Louis for the relief of the Crusaders who lost their sight in Egypt and Syria; but the first institution for the instruction of the blind was the idea of Valentin Hauy, brother of the celebrated mineralogist. In 1784 he opened an institution in which the blind were instructed not only in appropriate mechanical employments, as spinning, knitting, making ropes or fringes, and working in paste-board, but also in music, in reading, writing, ciphering, geography, and the sciences. For instruction in reading he procured raised letters of metal; for writing he used particular writing-cases, in which a frame, with wires to separate the lines, could be fastened upon the paper; for ciphering there were movable figures of metal, and ciphering-boards in which the figures could be fixed; for teaching geographymaps were prepared upon which mountains, rivers, cities, and the boundaries of countries were indicated to the sense of touch in various ways, etc.
Similar institutions were soon afterwards founded in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dresden, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London, Vienna, and in many towns of the United States. By 1900 there were comparatively few large cities that did not possess a school or institution of some kind for the blind.
At the start of the 20th century the attitude towards the blind was rather patronising, and one source may be quoted as saying 'the occupations in which the blind are found capable of engaging are such as the making of baskets and other kinds of wicker-work, brushmaking, rope and twine making, the making of mats and matting, knitting, netting, fancy work of various kinds, cutting fire-wood, the sewing of sacks and bags; the carving of articles in wood, etc'. However, it was also recognised that more skilled tasks could also be performed by blind persons, and the same source notes that 'Piano-tuning is also successfully carried on by some, and the cleaning of clocks and watches has even been occasionally practised by them'.
Around 1900 an impetus was given, in Britain, to the higher education of the blind by the formation of the British and Foreign Blind Association, the establishment of a college for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen at Worcester, and the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind, Upper Norwood.
Various systems were devised for the purpose of teaching the blind to read, some of which consisted in the use of the ordinary Roman alphabet, with more or less modification, and some of which employ types quite arbitrary in form. In all systems the characters rise above the surface of the paper so as to be felt by the fingers. The type adopted by Hauy was the script or italic form of the Roman letter. This was introduced into England by Sir C. Lowther, who printed the Gospel of St. Matthew in 1832 with type obtained from Paris. Before this Gall of Edinburgh made use of an embossed alphabet based on the ordinary Roman small letters, in which all curves were replaced by angular lines, and in 1834 he published the Gospel of St John in this character. Subsequently he introduced various improvements, and in particular the letters were produced with serrated surfaces, thus giving greater distinctness. Alston of Glasgow, Howe of Boston, and others also used the Roman form; but the former (who was the first to print the whole Bible, in 1840) adopted the Roman capitals, while the latter adopted the small letters, printing in this type the Bible and many other books. Of alphabets deviating entirely or nearly so from the Roman letter, one consists of a stenographic shorthand invented by Lucas of Bristol; another was a phonetic shorthand devised by Frere of London. In Dr. Moon's alphabet some of the characters are Roman, others are based on or suggested by the Roman characters. The Braille system, widely adopted by the laye 20th century, is one in which the letters are formed by a combination of dots. Dr. Moon's system from its simplicity and the size of its characters is in very general use in books for the blind. There are also systems by which the blind are enabled to write, and the writing may be either in relief so as to be read by the blind, or in characters that may be read by those who see. Research Blind
An animal is an organized and sentient living being. Life in the earlier periods of natural history was attributed almost exclusively to animals. With the progress of science, however, it was extended to plants. In the case of the higher animals and plants there is no difficulty in assigning the individual to one of the two great kingdoms of organic nature, but in their lowest manifestations, the vegetable and animal kingdoms are brought into such immediate contact that it becomes almost impossible to assign them precise limits, and to say with certainty where the one begins and the other ends. From form no absolute distinction can be fixed between animals and plants. Many animals, such as the sea-shrubs, sea-mats, etc, so resemble plants in external appearance that they were looked upon as such. With regard to internal structure no line of demarcation can be laid down, all plants and animals being, in this respect, fundamentally similar; that is, alike composed of molecular, cellular, and fibrous tissues. Neither are the chemical characters of animal and vegetable substances more distinct. Animals contain in their tissues and fluids a larger proportion of nitrogen than plants, whilst plants are richer in carbonaceous compounds than the former. In some animals, moreover, substances almost exclusively confined to plants are found. Thus the outer wall of Sea-squirts contains cellulose, a substance largely found in plant-tissues; whilst chlorophyll, the colouring-matter of plants, occurs in Hydra and many other lower animals.
Power of motion, again, though broadly distinctive of animals, cannot be said to be absolutely characteristic of them. Thus many animals, as oysters, sponges, corals, etc, in their mature condition are rooted or fixed, while the embryos of many plants, together with numerous fully developed forms, are endowed with locomotive power by means of vibratile, hair-like processes called cilia. The distinctive points between animals and plants which are most to be relied on are those derived from the nature and mode of assimilation of the food. Plants feed on inorganic matters, consisting of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, and mineral matters. They can only take in food which is presented to them in a liquid or gaseous state. The exceptions to these rules are found chiefly in the case of plants which live parasitically on other plants or on animals, in which cases the plant may be said to feed on organic matters, represented by the juices of their hosts. Animals, on the contrary, require organized matters for food. They feed either upon plants or upon other animals. But even carnivorous animals can be shown to be dependent upon plants for subsistence; since the animals upon which Carnivora prey are in their turn supported by plants. Animals, further, can subsist on solid food in addition to liquids and gases; but many animals (such as the Tapeworms) live by the mere imbibition of fluids which are absorbed by their tissues, such forms possessing no distinct digestive system.
Animals require a due supply of oxygen gas for their sustenance, this gas being used in respiration. Plants, on the contrary, require carbon dioxide. The animal exhales or gives out carbon dioxide as the part result of its tissue-waste, whilst the plant taking in this gas is enabled to decompose it into its constituent carbon and oxygen. The plant retains the former for the uses of its economy, and liberates the oxygen, which is thus restored to the atmosphere for the use of the animal. Animals receive their food into the interior of their bodies, and assimilation takes place in their internal surfaces. Plants, on the other hand, receive their food into their external surfaces, and assimilation is effected in the external parts, as are exemplified in the leaf-surfaces under the influence of sunlight. All animals possess a certain amount of heat or temperature which is necessary for the performance of vital action. The only classes of animals in which a constantly-elevated temperature is kept up are birds and mammals. The bodily heat of the former varies from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to 112 degrees Fahrenheit and of the latter from 96 degrees to 104 degrees. The mean or average heat of the human body is about 99 degrees Fahrenheit, and it never falls much below this in health. Below birds animals are named cold-blooded, this term meaning in its strictly physiological sense that their temperature is usually that of the medium in which they live, and that it varies with that of the surrounding medium, Warm-blooded animals, on the contrary, do not exhibit such variations, but mostly retain their normal temperature in any atmosphere. The cause of the evolution of heat in the animal body is referred to the union (by a process resembling ordinary combustion) of the carbon and hydrogen of the system with the oxygen taken in from the air in the process of respiration. Research Animal
Bamboo is a genus of arborescent grasses (family Gramineae) found chiefly in warm climates. There are many species, the culms are round (rarely square), jointed, sometimes thorny, and hollow or solid with evergreen or deciduous leaves and can grow to 30 metres high and a diameter of 30 cm.
The best-known species is Bamboo arundinacea, common in tropical and sub-tropical regions. From the creeping underground rhizome, which is long, thick, and jointed, spring several round jointed stalks, which send out from their joints several shoots, the stalks also being armed at their joints with one or two sharp rigid spines. The oval leaves, about 20 cm long, are placed on short footstalks. The flowers grow in large panicles from the joints of the stalk. Some stems grow to 25 cm in diameter, and are so hard and durable as to be used for building purposes. The smaller stalks are used for walking sticks, flutes, etc; and indeed the plant is used for innumerable purposes in the East Indies, China, and other Eastern countries. Cottages are almost wholly made of it; also, bridges, boxes, water-pipes, ladders, fences, bows and arrows, spears, baskets, mats, paper, masts for boats, etc. The young shoots are pickled and eaten, or otherwise used as food; the seeds of some species are also eaten. The substance called tabasheer is a siliceous deposit that gathers at the internodes of the stems. The bamboo is imported into Europe and America as a paper material as well as for other purposes. Research Bamboo
In botany, bast is a structural element in the stem of dicotyledons and gymnosperms. In most plants long, tough, elastic fibres form part of the
bast, and it is on account of this that it has economic value, these fibres being extracted and used to make Russian bast or bast mats and for tying plants. Research Bast
Coconut (formerly Cocoa-nut, or coco-nut), IS a woody fruit of an oval shape, from 7 or 10 to 15 or 20 cm in length, covered with a fibrous husk, and lined internally with a white, firm, and fleshy kernel. The tree (Cocos nucifera) which produces the coconut is a palm, from 12 to 18 metres high. The trunk is straight and naked, and surmounted by a crown of feather-like leaves. The nuts hang from the summit of the tree in clusters of a dozen or more together. The external rind of the nuts has a smooth surface. This encloses an extremely fibrous substance, of considerable thickness, which immediately surrounds the nut. The latter has a thick and hard shell, with three black scars at one end, through one of which the embryo of the future tree pushes its way. This scar may be pierced with a pin; the others are as hard as the rest of the shell. The kernel encloses a considerable quantity of sweet and watery liquid, of a whitish colour, which has the name of milk.
This palm is a native of Africa, the East and West Indies, and South America, and is now grown almost everywhere in tropical countries. Food, clothing, and the means of shelter and protection are all afforded by the coconut tree. The kernels are used as food in various modes of dressing, and yield on pressure an oil which is largely imported into various countries. When dried before the oil is expressed they are known as copra. The fibrous coat of the nut is made into the well-known coconut matting; the coarse yarn obtained from it is called coir, which is also used for cordage. The hard shell of the nut is polished and made into a cup or other domestic utensil. The fronds are wrought into baskets, brooms, mats, sacks, and many other useful articles; the trunks are made into boats or furnish timber for the construction of houses.
By boring the tree a white sweetish liquor called toddy exudes from the wound, and yields by distillation one of the varieties of the spirit called arack. A kind of sugar called jaggery is also obtained from the juice by inspissation. Research Coconut
Esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) is a tall-growing grass formerly grown in Spain and other Mediterranean countries, and used initially by the Romans for making whip-thongs, and later for weaving and plaiting into mats and light baskets. It was later still used for making paper. Esparto grass is a species of grass about one metre high, covering large tracts in its native regions, and also cultivated, especially in Spain. Formerly the supply of esparto was almost wholly obtained from Spain, but it was later obtained in still, larger quantity from Algeria (where it is called a1fa), and from Tripoli and Tunis. The paper made from it is excellent; it was also reduced to a fibrous state and used for stuffing mattresses, etc. Research Esparto Grass
In zoology, gemmation is a mode of reproduction among certain animals of low type, which consists in the production of a bud or buds, generally from the exterior, but sometimes from the interior, of the body of the animal, which buds are developed into independent beings that may or may not remain attached to the parent organism. This mode of reproduction is seen in the sea-mats, the fresh-water polyp, etc. Research Gemmation
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Bast
