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BISMUTH. This metal, it is supposed, was known to theancients, to the alchemists, and some of the earliest minera-logists, but considered by them merely as a variety of someother metal, and generally of tin and lead. It was not tillthe year 1 753, when its properties were particularly examinedby Pott and other chemists, that it was ascertained to be apeculiar metal.

BISSEXTILE or Leap Year , so named because Caesar inhis reformation of the calendar appointed an additional day inevery fourth year immediately to precede the sixth of thecalends of March, and therefore, on account of that day beingtwice reckoned, this year was called the bis-sextile year. Thisdouble day is noticed in the time of Henry III, , when, toprevent misunderstandings, the intercalary day, and that nextbefore it, were ordered to be accounted as one day.

BLANKET. This necessary piece of bed furniture is socalled from one Thomas Blanket, who in the year 1340 set uplooms at Bristol for weaving them. The ancients used sheep-skins with the wool on, as also did the Anglo-Saxons , whichthey called bed-felts, that is, bed-skins.

The ludicrous punishment of tossing in a blanket is alludedto by the Romans under the denomination sagatio, and isdescribed graphically enough by Martial—

Ibis ab excusso, missus ad astra, sago.

It is said that the emperor Otho was accustomed to strollout in dark nights, and when he met with an helpless ordrunken man to give him the discipline of the blanket.

BLINDMAN’S BUFF—was an amusement among theGreeks.

BLEACHING. The origin of this art, like that of manyothers which are subservient to the comforts or conveniencesof man, is involved in obscurity. The effects of the sun and