among sportsmen, a young hawk, newly taken out of the nest, that can hop from bough to bough.

BRANCHIÆ, or GILLS, in the anatomy of fishes, the parts corresponding to the lungs of land-animals. All fishes, except the cetaceous ones, and the pteromyzum, which have lungs, are furnished with these organs of respiration. See Anatomy Index.

BRANCHIDÆ, in Grecian antiquity, priests of the temple of Apollo, which was at Didymus in Ionia, a province of Lesser Asia, towards the Ægean sea, upon the frontier of Caria. They opened to Xerxes the temple of Apollo, the riches whereof he took away. After which, thinking it unsafe to stay in Greece, they fled to Sogdiana, on the other side of the Caspian sea, upon the frontiers of Persia, where they built a city called by their own name; but they did not escape the punishment of their crime; for Alexander the Great having conquered Darius king of Persia, and being informed of their treachery, put them all to the sword, and razed their city, thus punishing the impiety of the fathers in their posterity.