BUSSU PALM, a plant (Manicaria suc cifera), common in the swamps of northern Brazil. Though it rarely exceeds 15 feet in height, it has huge leaves, said to be the largest undivided leaves produced by any palm, even reaching 30 feet m length by 4 or 5 feet in width. After splitting the midrib from end to end the leaves are laid obliquely upon rafters to form thatch for houses. This position makes the spaces between the veins act as gutters to carry off water. The spathes are used by the Indians for caps and bags and for cloth-making. The large, hard, three-seeded, olive-green fruits do not seem to be used commercially.
bit-se-ra-ba-tin, or ROGER DE RABUTIN, COMTE DE BUSSY : b. Epiry, Nivernois, 1618; d. Autun 1693. He entered the army at the age of 13, and made several campaigns. Turenne, in a letter to the King, describes him as the best officer in his army, as far as songs were concerned. His scandalous chronicle, entitled 'Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules,' cost him the loss of his official appointment and a year's imprison ment in the Bastile. He was a correspondent of Madame de Sevigne, and is often mentioned in her letters. He had the vanity to suppose that he excelled her in her peculiar art, and his letters were afterward published in seven volumes.
BUST (French baste, Italian busto, of un certain origin), in sculpture, the representation of that portion of the human figure which corn prises the head and the upper part of the body.
The bust did not become common among the Greeks until the time of Alexander, nor among the Romans till the time of the empire. Among the Greeks, the portrait busts of the learned formed an important branch of art. The artists in these works exhibited a singular power of expressing character, and in this way we possess what are probably faithful likenesses of Socrates, Plato and other distinguished per sons. The first roman bust that can be de pended upon as giving a correct likeness is that of Scipio Africanus the elder. The number of busts of the time of the Roman empire is very considerable, but those of the Roman poets and men of letters have not been preserved in so large numbers as those of the Greeks. A col lection of drawings of antique busts was made by Fulvius Ursinus, and published with the title, (Virum Illustrium Imagines' (Rome 1569; Antwerp 1606) • subsequently a similar collec tion was published in the 'Iconographic Grecque' of Visconti (Paris 1811), which was followed by his qconographie in 1817.