BAER 156 BAGDAD

BAER                                                                            156                                                                     BAGDAD

its feet armed with long claws, used for digging and also for defense. All badgers have heavy fur marked very distinctly. They are creatures of great strength and courage and wonderful acuteness. Left alone, they are timid and gentle. They live in burrows dug by themselves, are very shy about being

BADGER

seen, usually come forth only at night. The fur is valuable, the hairs used in making artists' brushes. The European badger, unlike the American, is fond of deep woods. Badger-baiting, a low sport once practiced in England, had to do with the arraying of one badger's strength against that of a number of dogs; from this comes the word "badgering," meaning persistent annoying. In Scotland the badger is sometimes domesticated. The American badger belongs to the west, and shows a fondness for open prairie. He is about two feet ¹ong, his color greyish with irregular black bands on the back, underneath whitish, throat and sides of the face white, in front of each eye a black'patch, legs and feet black. The markings of the face remind one of a clown. With his strong claws he lays open the burrows of prairie dogs, ground squirrels, gophers, field-mice, etc. ; feeds on these and on birds, frogs, small snakes, lizards, grasshoppers and other insects. He very seldom shows himself; if ever caught a distance from home will flatten himself " almost like a doormat or a turtle. His long, silky, grey hairs, parted in the middle down along his spine, spread out into the grass on each side, so that he seems to be only a slight hummock in the prairie." (American Animals. Stone and Cram).

Baer, Karl Ernst von (Jon bar) (1792-1876), a distinguished Russian naturalist, the founder of modern embryology. He was educated in Germany and became a professor in the University at Königsberg, where, in 1828, he published The Development of Animals (Entwicklungsgeschichte der Tiere), a set of careful observations and philosophical reflections that are most remarkable for clearness and thoroughness. This book made an epoch in the science of the development of animal life.

Baffin's Bay, a gulf on the northeast coast of North America, lying between

Greenland and the great islands northeast of Hudson Bay. It is open to the Atlantic Ocean by Davis Strait, and to the Arctic Ocean by Smith Sound and Lancaster Sound. It is about 800 miles long, and on an average 200 miles in width. The shores are for the most part lofty and steep, and backed by snow-clad mountains. Baffin's Bay was discovered in 1562, but was named from William Baffin, who as pilot of an expedition in 1615 first explored it. It is navigable for only about four months in the summer, on account of the ice. Whaling and seafishing are carried on in its waters.

Bag'dad, the capital of the province of the same name in the southeast of Asiatic Turkey. It lies on both sides of the Tigris, which is spanned by a bridge of boats 220 yards long. The city is surrounded by a brick wall five miles around and forty feet high, with four gates. The place looks picturesque from the outside, but a closer view shows dirty, narrow streets and houses without windows in front. The insides of the buildings, however, are often gorgeous, with vaulted ceilings, rich mouldings, inlaid mirrors and massive gildings. The mosques and bazaars are the. most noticeable of the buildings. Though the former great traffic of Bagdad has been greatly cut off since Persia began to trade with Europe through Trebizond on the north and by the Persian Gulf on the south, the bazaars are still filled with the produce of both Turkish and European markets, and many European houses keep agents in the town. Red and yellow leather, silk and cotton goods are manufactured, and dates, wool, grain and timbac (a substitute for tobacco) are exported. Rain does not fall for more than twenty or thirty days during the year,but when the snows melt on the hills of Armenia, the Tigris is filled, and floods often lay waste the country. In 1831 a flood destroyed half the town and several thousand people. Bagdad is sometimes visited with the cholera, from which disease 4,000 people perished daily for several days in 1830.

Discoveries around Bagdad have shown that it dates back to the time of Nebuchadrezzar. About 754 it became the seat of the Mohammedan empire, and was long famous as the home of the caliphs. The Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid and his son in the 9th century greatly improved the city and made it the seat of Arabic learning and literature. It has been frequently taken by the Turks and Persians. While at one time its population was estimated at 2,000,000, it is reported now to have oply 150,000, made up of Turks, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Armenians, Hindoos, Afghans and Persians. The province or vilayet of Bagdad (in Mesopotamia), lying between Persia and Arabia, includes the greater part of the basin of the lower Tigris and Euphrates—