in Scots law, a formal writing by which a person binds himself to pay a certain sum of money to another, or to perform a certain deed, under a penalty. Bonds respecting money are divided into heritable and moveable. See Law, tit. Heritable and moveable rights.

Bond, in carpentry, a term among workmen; as, to make good bond, means that they should fasten two or more pieces together, either by tenanting, mortising, or dovetailing, &c.

Bondage, properly signifies the same with slavery; but, in old law-books, is used for villainage. See Villenage.

Bond-man, the same with villain. See Villain.

Bondour, a city of Natolia in Asia.

Bonduc, in botany, the trivial name of a species of guilandria. See Guilandria.

Bone, in anatomy. See Part I.

Bone-ace, an easy but licking game at cards, played thus: The dealer deals out two cards to the first hand, and turns up the third, and so on through all the players, who may be seven, eight, or as many as the cards will permit; he that has the highest card turned up to him, carries the bone, that is, one half of the stake, the other remaining to be played for: Again, if there be three kings, three queens, three tens, &c., turned up, the eldest hand wins the bone: But it is to be observed, that the ace of diamonds is bone-ace, and wins all other cards whatever. Thus much for the bone; and as for the other half of the stake, the nearest to thirty-one wins it; and he that turns up or draws thirty-one, wins it immediately.

Bon-Espérance, the same with the Cape of Good-hope. See Good-hope.

Bongo, or Bungo, the capital of one of the islands of Japan, to which it gives name; in 132° E. long. and 32° 30' N. lat. It is a sea port town, situated on the east side of the island, opposite to the island of Tonfa, from which it is separated by a narrow channel.

Bonifacio, in geography, a port-town of Corsica, situated at its fourth end, in 9° 20' E. long. and 41° 20' N. lat. It is one of the best towns in the whole island, and gives name to the strait between Corsica and Sardinia.

Bonis non amovendi, in law, is a writ directed to the sheriffs of London, &c., charging them, that a person, against whom judgment is obtained, and prosecuting a writ of error, be not suffered to remove his goods until the error is determined.

Bonnet, in a general sense, denotes a cover for the head, in common use before the introduction of hats. See Hat.

Bonnets are still used in many parts of Scotland.

Bonnet, in fortification, a small work, consisting of two faces, having only a parapet with two rows of palisadoes, of about ten or twelve feet distance: It is generally raised before the salient angle of the counterscarp, and has a communication with the covered way, by a trench cut through the glacis, and palisadoes on each side.

Bonnet à pretre, or Priest's Bonnet, in fortification, Vol. I. No. 25.

Bonnet, in the sea-language, denotes an addition to a sail: Thus they say, Face on the bonnet, or Shake off the bonnet.

Bonville, a town of Savoy, situated on the north side of the river Arve, about twenty miles southeast of Geneva, in 6° 16' E. long. and 46° 18' N. lat.

Bonny, among miners, a bed of ore, differing only from a squat as being round, whereas the squat is flat. See Squat.

Bononian. See Bolonian.

Bonos-Ayres. See Buenos-Ayres.

Bontia, in botany, a genus of the didynamia angiospermae class. The calyx is divided into five pieces; the corolla is bilabiated, with the superior labium emarginated, and the inferior consists of three deep-cut segments; the berry, which is of the drupa kind, is oval, oblique at the apex, and contains but one plaited seed. The species are two, viz., the dapnoides and the germinata, both natives of the Indies.

Bonzes, Indian priests, who, in order to distinguish themselves from the laity, wear a chaplet round their necks, consisting of an hundred beads, and carry a staff, at the end of which is a wooden bird. They live upon the alms of the people, and yet are very charitably disposed, maintaining several orphans and widows out of their own collections. The Tonginese have a pagod, or temple, in each town, and every pagod has at least two bonzes belonging to it; some have thirty or forty. The bonzes of China are the priests of the Fohists, or sects of Fohi; and it is one of their established tenets, that there are rewards allotted for the righteous, and punishments for the wicked in the other world; and that there are various mansions, in which the souls of men will reside, according to their different degrees of merit. The bonzes of Pegu are generally gentlemen of the highest extraction.

Book, the general name of almost every literary composition; but, in a more limited sense, is applied only to such compositions as are large enough to make a volume. As to the origin of books or writing, those of Moses are undoubtedly the most ancient that are extant: But Moses himself cites many books that behoved to be wrote before his time. See Character.

Of profane books, the oldest extant are Homer's poems, which were so even in the time of Sextus Empiricus; though we find mention in Greek writers of seventy others prior to Homer; as Hermes, Orpheus, Daphne, Horus, Linus, Muzius, Palamedes, Zoroaster, &c.; but of the greater part of these there is not the least fragment remaining; and of others, the pieces which go under their names are generally held, by the learned, to be spurious.

Several sorts of materials were used formerly in making making books: Plates of lead and copper, the barks of trees, bricks, stone, and wood, were the first materials employed to engrave such things upon as men were willing to have transmitted to posterity. Josephus speaks of two columns, the one of stone, the other of brick, on which the children of Seth wrote their inventions and astronomical discoveries: Porphyry makes mention of some pillars, preserved in Crete, on which the ceremonies practised by the Corybantes in their sacrifices were recorded. Helioid's works were originally written upon tables of lead, and deposited in the temple of the Muses, in Boeotia: The ten commandments, delivered to Moses, were written upon stone; and Solon's laws upon wooden planks. Tables of wood, box, and ivory, were common among the ancients: When of wood, they were frequently covered with wax, that people might write on them with more ease, or blot out what they had written. The leaves of the palm-tree were afterwards used instead of wooden planks, and the finest and thinnest part of the bark of such trees, as the lime, the ash, the mapple, and the elm; from hence comes the word liber, which signifies the inner bark of the trees: and these barks were rolled up, in order to be removed with greater ease, these rolls were called volumen, a volume; a name afterwards given to the like rolls of paper or parchment.

Thus we find books were first written on stones, witness the Decalogue given to Moses: Then on the parts of plants, as leaves chiefly of the palm-tree; the rind and barks, especially of the tilia, or phillyrea, and the Egyptian papyrus. By degrees wax, then leather, were introduced, especially the skins of goats and sheep, of which at length parchment was prepared: Then lead came into use; also linen, silk, horn, and lastly paper itself.

The first books were in the form of blocks and tables; but as flexible matter came to be wrote on, they found it more convenient to make their books in the form of rolls: These were composed of several sheets, fastened to each other, and rolled upon a stick; or umbilicus; the whole making a kind of column, or cylinder, which was to be managed by the umbilicus as a handle, it being reputed a crime to take hold of the roll itself: The outside of the volume was called frons; the ends of the umbilicus, cornua, which were usually carved, and adorned with silver, ivory, or even gold and precious stones: The title συλλογής, was struck on the outside; the whole volume, when extended, might make a yard and a half wide, and fifty long. The form which obtains among us is the square, composed of separate leaves; which was also known, though little used, by the ancients.

To the form of books belongs also the internal economy, as the order and arrangements of points and letters into lines and pages, with margins and other appurtenants: This has undergone many varieties; at first the letters were only divided into lines, then into separate words, which, by degrees, were noted with accents, and distributed, by points and stops, into periods, paragraphs, chapters, and other divisions. In some countries, as among the orientals, the lines began from the right and ran leftward; in others, as the northern and western nations, from left to right; others, as the Greeks, followed both directions, alternately going in the one, and returning in the other, called boukropbedon: In most countries, the lines run from one side to the other; in some, particularly the Chinese, from top to bottom. See Composition.