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Of or relating to birch. He passed where Newark's stately tower Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower. Sir W. Scott.

Seen from above, as if by a flying bird; embraced at a glance; hence, generalas, a bird's-eye view.

Flighty; passing rapidly from one subject to another; not having the faculty of attention. Bacon.

med in miniature. Meat biscuit, an alimentary preparation consisting of matters extracted from meat by boiling, or of meat ground fine and combined with flour, so as to form biscuits.

A dark brown pigment extracted from the soot of wood.

earth; calcined magnesia. -- Bitter principles (Chem.), a class of substances, extracted from vegetable products, having strong bitter taste but with no sharply defined chemical characteristics. -- Bitter salt, Epsom salts;; magnesium sulphate. -- Bitter vetch (Bot.), a name given to two European leguminous herbs, V…

The brine which remains in salt works after the salt is concreted, having a bitter taste from the chloride of magnesium which it contains.

A West Indian tree (Picræna excelsa) from the wood of which the bitter drug Jamaica quassia is obtained.

One side of an echinoderm, including a pair of ambulacra, in distinction from the opposite side (trivium), which includes three ambulacra.

The upper faceted portion of a brilliant-cut diamond, which projects from the setting and occupies the zone between the girdle and the table. See Brilliant, n.

The part of a thing which is distinguished from the rest by being black. The black or sight of the eye. Sir K. Digby.

l character, published at different times and for different purposes; -- so called either from the color of the binding, or from the character of the contents.

A tribe of North American Indians formerly inhabiting the country from the upper Missouri River to the Saskatchewan, but now much reduced in numbers.

e scullions and lower menials of a court, or of a nobleman's household, who, in a removal from one residence to another, had charge of the kitchen utensils, and being smutted by them, were jocularly called the "black guard"; also, the servants and hangers-on of an army. [Obs.] A lousy slave, that . . . rode with the bl…

wla on the night of June 20, 17656, and in which 123 of the prisoners died before morning from lack of air. A discipline of unlimited autocracy, upheld by rods, and ferules, and the black hole. H. Spencer.

and, to certain men who were allied to robbers, or moss troopers, to be by them protected from pillage. Sir W. Scott.

Easter Monday, so called from the severity of that day in 1360, which was so unusual that many of Edward III.'s soldiers, then before Paris, died from the cold. Stow. Then it was not for nothing that may nose fell a bleeding on Black Monday last. Shak.

the usher to the Chapter of the Garter, so called from the black rod which he carries. He is of the king's chamber, and also usher to the House of Lords. [Eng.]

The name of a kind of in used in copperplate printing, prepared from the charred husks of the grape, and residue of the wine press.

A name given to several dark-colored timbers. The East Indian black wood is from the tree Dalbergia latifolia. Balfour.