a small seaport town, and a royal and parliamentary burgh in the district of Kirkcaldy, in the county of Fife, on the opposite shore of the Frith of Forth from Leith, from which it is about six miles distant, in Lat. 56° 4'. N. Long. 3° 13'. W. The town is pleasantly situated on the sea-coast, and is clean and well built. The beach is sandy and admirably adapted for bathing, and the town is on this account much frequented by the people of Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland during the summer months. A large proportion of the inhabitants are engaged in the herring and whale fisheries; and there is a considerable though decreasing trade in ship-building. The quantity of spirits manufactured at the distilleries is very large. The general aspect of the town has greatly improved since the completion of the Edinburgh and Northern railway, which connects Burntisland with Edinburgh on the one side, and the most important towns of the north of Scotland on the other. Steamers pass and repass between Burntisland and the opposite shore every hour. There are no public buildings of any importance in the town except the town-hall, the church, a dissenting chapel, and the school-house. The town is governed by a municipal council, consisting of a provost and twenty-one councillors, and its revenue amounts to L1,1022. It is in the presbytery of Kirkcaldy; and the living, which is worth L1,850 per annum, is in the patronage of the crown. There is a lighthouse at the end of the pier, erected in 1845, which is seen at the distance of eight miles. Pop. (1851) 2329.

BURHLOW, Sir James, master of the Crown-office, was born in 1701. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Arts in 1751; and on the death of Mr West in 1772, he filled the president's chair at the Royal Society till the anniversary election, when he resigned it to Sir John Pringle. In 1773, when the society presented an address to His Majesty, he received the honour of knighthood. He published two volumes of valuable law reports in 1766; two others in 1771 and 1776; and a volume of decisions of the court of king's bench upon settlement cases from 1732 to 1772, to which was subjoined an Essay of Punctuation, in three parts, 4to, 1768, 1772, 1776. The Essay was also printed separately in 4to, 1773. He published, without his name, A few Anecdotes and Observations relating to Oliver Cromwell and his family, serving to rectify several errors concerning him, published by Nicol. Comm. Papadopoli, in his Historia Gymnasi Patarini, 1763, 4to. Sir James died in 1782.