BUFFON GEORGE LOUIS LECLERC, COUNT DE, a French natu ralist, born in Montbard, Burgundy, Sept. 7, 1707. In 1739 he was ap pointed Superintendent of the Royal Garden at Paris (now the Jardin des Plantes) and devoted himself to the great work on "Natural History." It is now obsolete and of small scientific value, but it for long had an extraor dinary popularity. After an assiduous labor of 10 years the three first volumes were published, and between 1749 and 1767 twelve others, which comprehended the theory of the earth, the nature of animals, and the history of man and the mammalia. The nine following volumes, which appeared from 1770 to 1783, con tain the history of birds. The five vol umes on minerals were published from 1783 to 1788. Of the seven supplemen tary volumes, of which the last did not appear until after his death in 1788, the fifth formed an independent whole, the most celebrated of all his works. It con tains his "Epochs of Nature," in which the author gives a second theory of the earth, very different from that which he had traced in the first volumes, though he assumes at the commencement the air of merely defending and developing the former. His works were translated into almost every European language. He died in Paris, April 16, 1788.
BUG, the English name of the sub order heteroptera, one of two ranked under the order hemiptera or rhyncota.
Most of the species essentially resemble the bed-bug, except that they have wings. Some suck the blood of animals, and others subsist on vegetable juices. Not a few species are beautiful, but many have the same unpleasant smell which emanates from the bed-bug. The unat tractive form and manner of life of the bed-bug are too well known to require description. The eggs, which are white, are deposited in the beginning of sum mer. They are glued to the crevices of bedsteads or furniture, or to the walls of rooms. Before houses existed, the bug probably lived under the bark of trees.
BUG, the name of two Russian rivers. The western Bug rises in the Republic of Ukraine, near Lemberg, and after a course of about 470 miles, forming, for the most way, the E. frontier of Poland, it joins the Vistula, near Warsaw. The eastern Bug, the Hypanis of the an cients, rises in Podolia, Republic of Ukraine, and flows 520 miles S. E. into the estuary of the Dnieper. They both played an important part during the World War, and their banks and the adjoining regions saw much and very heavy fighting.