m it had been substituted by Uranus
and Gaea, his wife's parents (_Etymologicum Magnum_, s.v.). This stone was
carefully preserved at Delphi, anointed with oil every day and on festal
occasions covered with raw wool (Pausanias x. 24). In Phoenician mythology,
one of the sons of Uranus is named Baetylus. Another famous stone was the
effigy of Rhea Cybele, the holy stone of Pessinus, black and of irregular
form, which was brought to Rome in 204 B.C. and placed in the mouth of the
statue of the goddess. In some cases an attempt was made to give a more
regular form to the original shapeless stone: thus Apollo Agyieus was
represented by a conical pillar with pointed end, Zeus Meilichius in the
form of a pyramid. Other famous baetylic idols were those in the temples of
Zeus Casius at Seleucia, and of Zeus Teleios at Tegea. Even in the
declining years of paganism, these idols still retained their significance,
as is shown by the attacks upon them by ecclesiastical writers.

See Munter, _Ueber die vom Himmel gefallenen Steine_ (1805); Boesigk, _De
Baetyliis_ (1854); and the exhaustive article by F. Lenormant in Daremberg
and Saglio's _Dictionary of Antiquities_.

BAEYER, JOHANN FRIEDRICH WILHELM ADOLF VON (1835- ), German chemist, was
born at Berlin on the 31st of October 1835, his father being Johann Jacob
von Baeyer (1794-1885), chief of the Berlin Geodetical Institute from 1870.
He studied chemistry under R. W. Bunsen and F. A. Kekule, and in 1858 took
his degree as Ph.D. at Berlin, becoming privat-docent a few years
afterwards and assistant professor in 1866. Five years later he was
appointed professor of chemistry at Strassburg, and in 1875 he migrated in
the same capacity to Munich. He devoted himself mainly to investigations in
organic chemistry, and in particular to synthetical studies by the aid of
"condensation" reactions. The Royal Society of London awarded him the Davy
medal in 1881 for his researches on indigo, the nature and composition of
which he did more to elucidate than any other single chemist, and which he
also succeeded in preparing artificially, though his methods were not found
commercially practicable. To celebrate his seventieth birthday his
scientific papers were collected and published in two volumes (_Gesammelte
Werke_, Brunswick, 1905), and the names of the headings under which they
are grouped give some idea of the range and extent of his chemical
work:--(1) organic arsenic compounds, (2) uric acid