BOSMI’NA, daughter of Fingal king of Morven (north-west coast of Scotland).—­Ossian.

BOS’N HILL.  In Poems by John Albee (1883) we find a legend of a dead Bos’n (boatswain) whose whistle calls up the dead on stormy nights when

  The wind blows wild on Bos’n Hill,
  But sailors know when next they sail
  Beyond the hilltop’s view,
  There’s one amongst them shall not fail
  To join the Bos’n’s crew.

BOSSU (Rene le), French scholar and critic (1631-1680).

And for the epic poem your lordship bade me look at, upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu’s, ’tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions.—­Sterne (1768).

BOSSUT (Abbe Charles), a celebrated mathematician (1730-1814).

(Sir Richard Phillips assumed a host of popular names, among others that of M. l’Abbe Bossut in several educational works in French.)

BOSTA’NA, one of the two daughters of the old man who entrapped prince Assad in order to offer him in sacrifice on “the fiery mountain.”  His other daughter was named Cava’ma.  The old man enjoined these two daughters to scourge the prince daily with the bastinado and feed him with bread and water till the day of sacrifice arrived.  After a time, the heart of Bostana softened towards her captive, and she released him.  Whereupon his brother Amgiad, out of gratitude, made her his wife, and became in time king of the city in which he was already vizier.—­Arabian Nights ("Amgiad and Assad").

BOSTOCK, a coxcomb, cracked on the point of aristocracy and family birth.  His one and only inquiry is “How many quarterings has a person got?” Descent from the nobility with him covers a multitude of sins, and a man is no one, whatever his personal merit, who “is not a sprig of the nobility.”—­James Shirley, The Ball (1642).

BOT’ANY (Father of English), W. Turner, M.D. (1520-1568).

J.P. de Tournefort is called The Father of Botany (1656-1708).

[Illustration] Antoine de Jussieu lived 1686-1758, and his brother Bernard 1699-1777.

BOTHWELL (Sergeant), alias Francis Stewart, in the royal army.—­Sir W. Scott, Old Mortality (time, Charles II.).

Bothwell (Lady), sister of lady Forester.

Sir Geoffrey Bothwell, the husband of lady Bothwell.

Mrs. Margaret Bothwell, in the introduction of the story.  Aunt Margaret proposed to use Mrs. Margaret’s tombstone for her own.—­Sir W. Scott, Aunt Margaret’s Mirror (time, William III.).

BOTTLED BEER, Alexander Nowell, author of a celebrated Latin catechism which first appeared in 1570, under the title of Christianae pietatis prima Institutio, ad usum Scholarum Latine Scripta.  In 1560 he was promoted to the deanery of St. Paul’s (1507-1602).—­Fuller, Worthies of England ("Lancashire").