nation,
would turn to the judge and exclaim, "A fair mark, my lord." Criminals
were formerly ordered to hold up their hands before sentence to show if
they had been previously convicted.

Cold branding or branding with cold irons became in the 18th century the
mode of nominally inflicting the punishment on prisoners of higher rank.
"When Charles Moritz, a young German, visited England in 1782 he was
much surprised at this custom, and in his diary mentioned the case of a
clergyman who had fought a duel and killed his man in Hyde Park. Found
guilty of manslaughter he was _burnt_ in the hand, if that could be
called burning which was done with a cold iron" (Markham's _Ancient
Punishments of Northants_, 1886). Such cases led to branding becoming
obsolete, and it was abolished in 1829 except in the case of deserters
from the army. These were marked with the letter D, not with hot irons
but by tattooing with ink or gunpowder. Notoriously bad soldiers were
also branded with BC (bad character). By the British Mutiny Act of 1858
it was enacted that the court-martial, in addition to any other penalty,
may order deserters to be marked on the left side, 2 in. below the
armpit, with the letter D, such letter to be not less than 1 in. long.
In 1879 this was abolished.

See W. Andrews, _Old Time Punishments_ (Hull, 1890); A.M. Earle,
_Curious Punishments of Bygone Days_ (London, 1896).

BRANDIS, CHRISTIAN AUGUST (1790-1867), German philologist and historian
of philosophy, was born at Hildesheim and educated at Kiel University.
In 1812 he graduated at Copenhagen, with a thesis _Commentationes
Eleaticae_ (a collection of fragments from Xenophanes, Parmenides and
Melissus). For a time he studied at Gottingen, and in 1815 presented as
his inaugural dissertation at Berlin his essay _Von dem Begriff der
Geschichte der Philosophie_. In 1816 he refused an extraordinary
professorship at Heidelberg in order to accompany B.G. Niebuhr to Italy
as secretary to the Prussian embassy. Subsequently he assisted I. Bekker
in the preparation of his edition of Aristotle. In 1821 he became
professor of philosophy in the newly founded university of Bonn, and in
1823 published his _Aristotelius et Theophrasti Metaphysica_. With
Boeckh and Niebuhr he edited the _Rheinisches Museum_, to which he
contributed important articles on Socrates (1827, 1829). In 1836-1839 he
was tutor to the young king Otho of Greece. His great work, the
_Handbuch der Ges