BEUTHEN

beuthen, or oberbeuthen, a town of germany, in the extreme south-east of prussian silesia, on the railway between breslau and cracow, 121 m. s.e. of the former. pop. (1905) 60,078. it is the centre of the mining district of upper silesia, and its population is mainly engaged in such operations and in iron and zinc smelting. beuthen is an old town, and was formerly the capital of the bohemian duchy of beuthen, which in 1620 was ultimately granted, as a free lordship of the empire, to lazarus, baron henckel von donnersmarck, by the emperor ferdinand ii., and parts of which, now mediatized, are held by two branches of the counts henckel von donnersmarck. bevel (from an o. fr. word, cf. mod. _biveau_, a joiner's instrument), the inclination of one surface of a solid body to another; also, any angle other than a right angle, and particularly, in joinery, the angle to which a piece of timber has to be cut. the mechanic's instrument known as a bevel consists of a rule with two arms so jointed as to be adjustable to any angle. in heraldry, a bevel is an angular break in a line. bevelment, as a term of crystallography, means the replacement of an edge of a crystal by two planes equally inclined to the adjacent planes. as an architectural term "bevel" is a sloped or canted edge given to a sill or horizontal course of stone, but is more frequently applied to the canted edges worked round the projecting bands of masonry which for decorative purposes are employed on the quoins of walls or windows and in some cases, with vertical joints, cover the whole wall. when the outer face of the stone band is left rough so that it forms what is known as rusticated masonry, the description would be bevelled and rusticated. the term is sometimes applied to the splaying of the edges of a window on the outside, but the wide expansion made inside in order to admit more light is known as a splay.