BAULK, or BALK (a word common to Teutonic languages, meaning a ridge, partition, or beam), the ridge left unploughed between furrows or ploughed fields; also the uncultivated strip of land used as a boundary in the "open-field" system of agriculture. From the meaning of something left untouched comes that of a hindrance or check, so of a horse stopping short of an obstacle, of the "baulk-line" in billiards, or of the deceptive motion of the pitcher in baseball. From the other original meaning, i.e. "beam," comes the use of the word for the cross or tie-beam of a roof, or for a large log of timber sawn to a one or one and a half foot square section (see JOINERY).
BAUMBACH, RUDOLF (1840-1905), German poet, was born at Kranichfeld on the Ilm in Thuringia, on the 28th of September 1840, the son of a local medical practitioner, and received his early schooling at the gymnasium of Meiningen, to which place his father had removed. After studying natural science in various universities, he engaged in private tuition, both independently and in families, in the Austrian towns of Graz, Brünn, Görz and Triest respectively. In Triest he caught the popular taste with an Alpine legend, _Zlatorog_ (1877), and songs of a journeyman apprentice, _Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen_ (1878), both of which have run into many editions. Their success decided him to embark upon a literary career. In 1885 he returned to Meiningen, where he received the title of _Hofrat_, and was appointed ducal librarian. His death occurred on the 14th of September 1905.
Baumbach was a poet of the breezy, vagabond school, and wrote, in imitation of his greater compatriot, Victor Scheffel, many excellent drinking songs, among which _Die Lindenwirtin_ has endeared him to the German student world. But his real strength lay in narrative verse, especially when he had the opportunity of describing the scenery and life of his native Thuringia. Special mention may be made of _Frau Holde_ (1881), _Spielmannslieder_ (1882), _Von der Landstrasse_ (1882), _Thüringer Lieder_ (1891), and his prose, _Sommermärchen_ (1881).
BAUMÉ, ANTOINE (1728-1804), French chemist, was born at Senlis on the 26th of February 1728. He was apprenticed to the chemist Claude Joseph Geoffroy, and in 1752 was admitted a member of the École de Pharmacie, where in the same year he was appointed professor of chemistry. The money he made in a business he carried on in Paris for dealing in chemical products enabled him to retire in 1780 in order to devote himself to applied chemistry, but, ruined in the Revolution, he was obliged to return to a commercial career. He devised many improvements in technical processes, e.g. for bleaching silk, dyeing, gilding, purifying saltpetre, &c., but he is best known as the inventor of the hydrometer associated with his name (often in this connexion improperly spelt Beaumé). Of the numerous books and papers he wrote the most important is his _Élémens de pharmacie théorique et pratique_ (9 editions, 1762-1818). He became a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1772, and an associate of the Institute in 1796. He died in Paris on the 15th of October 1804.