in the province of
Pavia, 32-1/2 m. S.W. of Piacenza by road. Pop. (1901) 4848. Its most
important building is the church dedicated to St Columban, who became
first abbot of Bobbio in 595 or 612, and died there in 615. It was
erected in Lombard style in the 11th or 12th century (to which period
the campanile belongs) and restored in the 13th. The cathedral is also
interesting. Bobbio was especially famous for the manuscripts which
belonged to the monastery of St Columban, and are now dispersed, the
greater part being in the Vatican library at Rome, and others at Milan
and Turin. The cathedral archives contain documents of the 10th and 11th
centuries.

See M. Stokes, _Six Months in the Apennines_ (London, 1892), 154 seq.;
C. Cipolla, in _L'Arte_ (1904), 241.

BOBER, a river of Germany, the most considerable of the left bank
tributaries of the Oder; it rises at an altitude of 2440 ft., on the
northern (Silesian) side of the Riesengebirge. In its upper course it
traverses a higher plateau, whence, after passing the town of Landeshut,
it descends through a narrow and fertile valley to Kupferberg. Here its
romantic middle course begins, and after dashing through a deep ravine
between the towns of Hirschberg and Lowenberg, it gains the plain. In
its lower course it meanders through pleasant pastures, bogland and pine
forests in succession, receives the waters of various mountain streams,
passes close by Bunzlau and through Sagan, and finally, after a course
of 160 m., joins the Oder at Crossen. Swollen by the melting of the
winter snows and by heavy rains in the mountains, it is frequently a
torrent, and is thus, except in the last few miles, unnavigable for
either boats or rafts.

BOBRUISK, a town and formerly a first-class fortress of Russia, in the
government of Minsk, and 100 m. by rail S.E. of the town of Minsk, in 53
deg. 15' N. lat. and 28 deg. 52' E. long., on the right bank of the
Berezina river, and on the railway from Libau and Vilna to
Ekaterinoslav. Pop. (1860) 23,761; (1897) 35,177, of whom one-half were
Jews. In the reign of Alexander I. there was erected here, at the
confluence of the Bobruiska with the Berezina, nearly a mile from the
town, a fort, which successfully withstood a bombardment by Napoleon in
1812, and was made equal to the best in Europe by the emperor Nicholas
I. It was demolished in 1897, the defences being antiquated. The town
has a military hospital and a departmental col