or BOSY, a state in the island of Celebes, stretching for part of its extent along the western shores of a great cognominal bay which indents the southern side of the island to the depth of nearly 180 miles. The inhabitants of this once powerful and independent country are the Bugis—a people in many respects the most remarkable of the Eastern Archipelago. Their numbers, by the Dutch census in 1824, amounted to about 200,000. Living, as they do, surrounded by nations notorious for treachery, piracy, and indifference to the arts and objects of civilized life, they have always shown themselves honest, industrious, and ingenious. Agriculture is by them more extensively practised than by any of the adjoining tribes; and of the cotton cloth called cam-bays worn in these regions, they not only manufacture enough for their own use, but also export considerable quantities to the Malay islands. They likewise carry on a considerable traffic in the mineral and vegetable productions of their country, such as gold dust, tortoise-shell, pearls, nutmegs, camphor, and various medicinal preparations; and for these they find a ready market at Singapore, the chief commercial entrepôt of these Eastern seas. In the form and constitution of their government, likewise, they approach more nearly the spirit of true civilization than any other Asiatic people. The highest officer of state is the king or president, who is elected generally for life, and always from their own number, by the chiefs of the eight petty states that compose the nation. His power, however, is so limited that he cannot decide upon any measure of public policy, without the consent of the minor chiefs by whom he was originally appointed. In some of the petty states the office of chief is the hereditary prerogative of a family; in others any member of the privileged classes may aspire to that dignity. Hence it happens not unfrequently that the state comes to be governed by a woman, as the principle of the Salic law is here unknown. Of the history of Boni not much is known. According to Temminck, it first acquired importance in the year 1666, when the rajah Palakkah, whose father and grandfather had been murdered by the family of Hassan the tyrant of Sumatra, made common cause with the Dutch against that despot. From that date till the beginning of the present century the Dutch influence in the polity of the kingdom remained undisputed. In 1814, however, Boni fell into the hands of the British, who retained it for two years; but by the European treaties concluded on the downfall of Napoleon it reverted to its original colonizers.