ia, of French parents.
After studying at Weissenburg, Metz and Paris, he entered the Ecole
Normale in 1852. In 1857 he went to Berlin, where he studied Sanskrit
under Bopp and Weber. On his return to France he obtained an appointment
in the department of oriental MSS. at the Bibliotheque Imperiale. In
1864 he became professor of comparative grammar at the College de
France, in 1875 member of the Academie des Inscriptions et
Belles-lettres, in 1879 _inspecteur-general_ of public instruction for
higher schools until the abolition of the office in 1888. In 1890 he was
made commander of the Legion of Honour. Among his works, which deal
mainly with mythological and philological subjects, may be mentioned:
_L'Etude des origines de la religion Zoroastrienne_ (1862), for which a
prize was awarded him by the Academie des Inscriptions; _Hercule et
Cacus_ (1863), in which he disputes the principles of the symbolic
school in the interpretation of myths; _Le Mythe d'Oedipe_ (1864); _Les
Tables Eugubines_ (1875); _Melanges de mythologie et de linguistique_
(2nd. ed., 1882); _Lecons de mots_ (1882,1886), _Dictionnaire
etymologique latin_ (1885) and _Grammaire latine_ (1890). His _Essai de
Semantique_ (1897), on the signification of words, has been translated
into English by Mrs H. Cust with preface by J.P. Postgate. His
translation of Bopp's _Comparative Grammar_ (1866-1874), with
introductions, is highly valued. He has also written pamphlets on
education in France, the teaching of ancient languages, and the reform
of French orthography. In 1906 he published _Pour mieux connaitre
Homere_.

BREAM (_Abramis_), a fish of the Cyprinid family, characterized by a
deep, strongly compressed body, with short dorsal and long anal fins,
the latter with more than sixteen branched rays, and the small inferior
mouth. There are two species in the British Isles, the common bream, _A.
brama_, reaching a length of 2 ft. and a weight of 12 lb., and the white
bream or bream flat, _A. blicca_, a smaller and, in most places, rarer
species. Both occur in slow-running rivers, canals, ponds and
reservoirs. Bream are usually despised for the table in England, but
fish from large lakes, if well prepared, are by no means deserving of
ostracism. In the days of medieval abbeys, when the provident Cistercian
monks attached great importance to pond culture, they gave the first
place to the tench and bream, the carp still being unknown in the
greater part of E