P

THE sixteenth letter of the English and other western European alphabets, was in Hebrew called Pe, i. e., mouth, and was most likely, in its original form, a rude sketch of a mouth. P is the thin letter of the labial series (p, b, f, v) and is interchangeable with the other letters of the series. P, in Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin, is replaced by f in the Teutonic tongues. See F. Words beginning with p in English, and its kindred Teutonic tongues, are almost all of foreign origin (Slavic, Celtic, Latin), as pain (Fr. peine, Lat. pana), plough (Pol. plug), pit (Lat. puteus, a well). The Greek prep. apo (Sans. apa) became in Lat. ab; Gr. hupo, Lat. sub; Sans. upa, Lat. ob; but before sharp letters, as t and 8, the original p was retained in pronunciation, as is shewn by inscriptions (apstulit, optinui). There are remarkable interchanges of p with the sharp guttural k or q. Thus, for Lat. quis, quod, quam, the Oscan dialect had pis, pod, pam; Lat. equus, coquo, corresponded to Gr. hippos (Aol. hikkos), pepo; similarly, Gaelic mac (son), ceathair (Lat. quatuor, four), coig (Lat. quinque, five), correspond to Welsh map, pedwar (Gr. pettores), pump (Gr. pente or pempe). In Gr., p is sometimes replaced by t, as tis, tessares, for pis, pettores. In such words as redemption, consumption, p has been introduced as an intermediary between the incompatible sounds m and t. The initial p of Latin words has for the most part passed into French unaltered; in other positions, p has become ; thus, Fr. évêque, cheveu, décevoir, pauvre, from Lat. episcopus, capillus, decipere, pauper.

colour, with four rows of white spots along the sides, the throat and belly white. A lighter coloured species has been described, but is perhaps a mere variety. The flesh of the P. is much esteemed, and is very fat.

order Leguminosae, sub-order Mimosea; a native of PACAY (Prosopis dulcis), a tree of the natural Peru, of rather large size, with broad head; producing pods from twenty inches to two feet long, which contain black seeds imbedded in a sweet flaky substance as white as snow. This flaky substance is used as an article of food and much relished by the Peruvians.

PACE (Lat. passus), in its modern acceptation, is the distance, when the legs are extended in walking, between the heel of one foot and that of the other. Among disciplined men the pace becomes of constant length, and as such is of the utmost value in determining military movements, the relative distances of corps and men being fixed by the number of paces marched, and so on. The pace in the British army is 24 feet for ordinary marching, and 3 feet for double-quick' or running time. With the Romans, the pace had a different signification, and it is important to bear the distinction in mind, when reading of distances in Latin works; the single extension of the legs was not with them a pace, (passus), but a step (gradus); their pace (passus) being the interval between the mark of a heel and the next mark of the same heel, or a double step. This pace was equivalent to 4.84 English feet. The pace was the Roman unit in itinerary measure; the mile being 1000 paces, or 5000 Roman feet, equal to 917 of an English mile. See MILE. Whether measurements were effected by actually counting the paces, or by the time occupied, is not clear; but either method would, with disciplined troops, give a

safe result.

In the middle ages, writers confuse accounts of distances by allusion to a geometrical pace, a measure which varied with different authors.

PA'CA (Coelogenys), a genus of rodent quadrupeds, allied to the agoutis, cavics, and capybara, and inhabiting Brazil, Guiana, and some of the West India Islands. The dentition very nearly resembles that of the agoutis. The cheek-bones are prodigiously developed, in a way of which no example exists in any other mammalian animal, so that the zygomatic arches enclose a large hollow space, whilst the bone also descends to an unusual depth from the arch, even below the lower jaw- PACHO'MIUS, an Egyptian monk of the 4th bone. Within this structure, which gives an extra-c., is held in high estimation by the Roman Catholic ordinary breadth and peculiar aspect to the face, is a sac in each cheek, opening in front, and lined with a fold of the skin of the face. The whole of this seems to be intended to preserve the true cheekpouches from external shocks. The cheek pouches open from the mouth in the usual way, and are capable of very great distention. The lip is cloven; the ears are small; the eyes are large and full; the neck is short; the tail is a mere tubercle; the feet have each five toes; the legs are thick; the back is rounded. The form and gait are clumsy, yet the P. (C. paca) is very quick and active. It lives in moist grounds, burrowing like the rabbit, but not so deeply; its burrow, however, is always provided with three rpenings. It feeds on vegetable substances, and ofter does great damage to plantations of sugarcane It is one of the largest rodents, being about two feet long. It is generally of a dark brown

church, as being the first to substitute for the free asceticism of the solitary recluse, a regular conobitic system. He was born towards the close of the 3d c., was brought up as a pagan, but converted to Christianity by the kindness of certain Christians whom he encountered at Thebes. About 310 A. D., at Tabenna, an island in the Nile, he founded the first monastic institution. The members agreed to follow certain rules of life and conduct drawn up by P., and to subject themselves to his control and visitation. He also established the first convent for nuns, which was under the presidency of his sister, and laboured with so much diligence and zeal, that at his death, according to Palladius, not fewer than 7000 monks and nuns were under his inspection. The various writings extant under the name of P. are- -Regula Monastica (of doubtful genuineness), Monita, SS. PP. Pachomii et Theodori,

PACHYDERMATA-PACIFIC OCEAN.

Epistolæ et Verba Mystica (a farrago of unintelligible is found in the common hog. allegory), and Præcepta S. Pachomii. See Acta however, they manifest their fierceness in their Sanctorum, vol. iii. eyes; and although, in general, mild and gentle, they are capable of being aroused to great fury.

Winds. The trade-winds of the Pacific have certain peculiarities, which have only lately been discovered. In general, they are not found to preserve their peculiar characteristics except within The physiognomy of the P. in general is rather certain limits, thus, the south-cast trades dull and unexpressive, the eyes being small, and found to blow steadily only between 92° and 140° having that character of which a familiar example of west longitude; while the north-east trades

PACIFIC OCEAN-PACKFONG.

are simuarly fluctuating, except between long. 115° W. and 214° W. Beyond these limits, their action is in whole or in part neutralised by the monsoons and other periodical winds peculiar to the tropical regions of the Pacific. In Polynesia, especially near the New Hebrides group, hurricanes are of frequent occurrence from November to April, but they exhibit few of the terrible characteristics which distinguish the hurricanes of the West Indies and Indian Ocean. North and south of the tropical zone, the winds exhibit little periodicity, being found to blow from all parts of the compass at any given season of the year, though a general westerly direction is most frequent among them. On the coast of Patagonia and at Cape Horn, west winds prevail during the greater part of the year, while in the Sea of Okhotsk they are of rare occurrence. The frightful Typhoon (q. v.) is the terror of mariners in the Chinese seas, and may occur at all seasons of the There are many other winds and storms, such as white squalls, cyclones, 'tempestades,' &c., which are confined to particular localities, and will be found noticed under other heads, and also under

year.

STORMS.

flows eastward at the rate of half a mile

eight years afterwards; but its size, limits, and the number and position of its islands, &c., were little known till long afterwards, and even now it presents a rich field for the labours of discoverers. Captain Cook deserves the first place among those who have devoted themselves to the investigation of the P. O.; and after him come Anson, the two Bougainvilles, La Perouse, D'Entrecasteaux, Carteret, Vancouver, Kruzenstern, Kotzebue, &c.

able structures appended to the nerves. PACI'NIAN CORPUSCLES are very remark. human subject, they are found in great numbers in In the connection with the nerves of the hand and foot, and sparingly on other spinal nerves, and on the plexuses of the sympathetic, but never on nerves of motion. They always present a proximal end, attached to the nerves by a stalk of fibrous tissue prolonged from the neurilemma, and occasionally in the connective or areolar tissue. In the human one-tenth of an inch long; and a distal end, lying free subject, the corpuscles vary in length from onetwentieth to one-tenth of an inch. They are usually seen very readily in the mesentery of the cat, appearing as pellucid oval grains, rather smaller these bodies discloses an internal structure of a very than hemp-seed. The microscopic examination of remarkable kind. They consist, first, of a series of membranous capsules, from thirty to sixty or more in number, enclosed one within the other; and secondly, of a single nervous fibre, of the tubular kind, enclosed in the stalk, and advancing to the to end, and where it finally terminates in a fixed central capsule, which it traverses from beginning swollen extremity. The ten or fifteen innermost capsules are in contact with one another, while the rest are separated by a clear space containing fluid, which is so abundant as to constitute far the largest portion of the bulk of the entire corpuscle. Such are the views of Pacini (as given in his Nuovi Organi Scoperte nel Corpo Umano, 1810), who is had been noticed and roughly described nearly a usually regarded as their discoverer, although they century before by Vater, of Henle, and of Todd and Bowman; but later observations made by Huxley, Leydig, Kölliker, and others, shew that the question of their true nature is still an open one. Huxley hollow; that in birds, and in the human hand, asserts that their central portion is solid, and not there is no fluid between the lamina-and indeed, that the lamina themselves have no real existencethe Pacinian corpuscle being merely a solid mass of connective tissue (a thickened process of the neurilemma of the nerve to which it is attached), whose

Currents.-The currents of the P. O., though less marked in character and effects than those of the Atlantic, are yet of sufficient importance to require a brief notice. The Southern Pacific current takes its rise south of Van Diemen's Land, and per hour, dividing into two branches about long. 98 W., the northern branch or Current of Mentor turning northward, and gradually losing itself in the counter equatorial current; the southern branch continuing its eastward course till it is subdivided by the opposition of Cape Horn into two branches, one of which, the cold Current of Peru or Humboldt's current, advances northward along the west coast of South America, becoming finally absorbed in the equatorial current; the other washing the coast of Brazil, and becoming an Atlantic current. The P. O., like the Atlantic, also possesses its equatorial current, separated into a northern and southern current by the equatorial counter-current. It sweeps across the whole ocean from east to west. Two subdivisions of the southern current, called respectively the 'current of Rossel' and the 6 warm current of Australia,' flow, the one through the Polynesian Archipelago to New Guinea, and the other along the east coast of Australia. The northern equatorial current, after reaching the coast of Asia, turns northeast, washing the shores of China and Japan, under the name of the Black or Japan current; it then sends off a branch along the coast of Kamtchatka, and advances eastward till it becomes lost on the north-apparent lamination depends on the regular disposi west coast of North America. There are other

minor currents, the most remarkable of which is that of Fleurieu, which describes a kind of irregular circle with a radius of about 240 miles. It is situated in lat. 25°—40° N., and long. 133°-155° W. All these currents have their corresponding countercurrents.

There are two 'sargassos' or weedy seas of considerable extent in the P. O., one lying 15° east-south-east of New Zealand; the other, and by far the larger, about 15° west of San Francisco in California. There is also a large region lying nearly half-way between Cape Horn and New Zealand, which seems to correspond to the deserts on land, as mariners report it almost wholly destitute of any signs of life either in sea or air.

tion of its elastic elements. If Pacini's view of

these structures be correct, there is probably soine general analogy between the electric organs of the torpedo and these corpuscles; at present, we know nothing with certainty regarding their office.

PACKFO'NG, or PETO'NG, a Chinese alloy or white metal, consisting of arsenic and copper. It is formed by putting two parts of arsenic in a crucible with five parts of copper turnings, or finely divided copper; the arsenic and copper require to be placed in alternate layers, and the whole is covered with a layer of common salt, and pressed down. When melted, the alloy contains nearly the whole of the arsenic, and is yellowish-white in colour when in the rough state, but takes a fine white polish resembling silver It is not very ductile, and cannot be History. The existence of this ocean first became fused without decomposition, as the arsenic is easily known to Europeans through Columbus, who had dissipated. It was formerly much used in this received accounts of it from some of the natives country, as well as China and India, for making of America, though it was first seen by Balboa. the pans of small scales, dial-plates, and a variety September 29, 1513, and first traversed by Magellan | of other articles requiring nicety of make, such as

PACKHORSE-PADANG.

ing to legend, was the source of Croesus's vast
wealth. But as early even as the time of Strabo,
The brook is now called Sarabat.
P. had ceased to yield any of the precious dust.

graduated scales for philosophical instruments. It its waters from the bosom of Tmolus-a hill rich is probably never imported now, the nickel alloys in metals. The collection of these particles, accordof Europe having quite superseded its use; in China, however, it is still extensively employed. PA'CKHORSE, a horse employed in the carriage of goods, which are either fastened on its back in bundles, or, if weighty, are placed in panniers, slung one on each side across the horse's back. The saddle to which the bundles were fastened consisted of two pieces of wood, curved so as to fit the horse's back, and joined together at the ends by other two straight pieces. This frame was well padded underneatli, to prevent injury to the horse's back, and was firmly fastened by a girth. To each side of the saddle, a strong hook was attached, for the purpose of carrying packages, panniers, &c. Panniers were sometimes simply slung across the horse's back with

Packhorse and Panniers.

PACTUM ILLICITUM is, in the law of Scotland, a contract or agreement for some illegal purpose, i. e., a purpose either expressly prohibited by statute, or by the general policy of the law. Thus, an immoral contract between a man and woman would be held void on the ground, that the law discountenances practices contra bonos mores. A contract between a client and agent, called a pactum de quota litis, whereby a share of the property which is the subject of litigation is given to the agent instead of his usual fees, is void in most cases; though it is often difficult to determine what contracts fall within this rule. The courts, however, have construed very jealously every contract which tends to corrupt the administration of the law, and hence an agreement between a town and country agent to divide the profits has been held a pactum illicitum. So agreements by a client to give an excessive sum to his law-agent as a gift have been often set aside.-In England, similar doctrines prevail, though the phrase pactum illicitum, which was borrowed from the Roman law, is not used, contracts of this description being technically described as illegal contracts.

PADA'NG, the capital of the Dutch government of the west coast of Sumatra, is situated in 1° S. lat., and 100° 22 E. long., and has about 12,000 inhabitants. The river Padang flows through the town, but is only navigable for small vessels, the a pad under the band. The panniers were wicker larger requiring to anchor in the roadstead, about baskets, and of various shapes, according to the three miles distant. On the left bank, stand the nature of their usual contents, being sometimes long elevated about eight feet from the ground by houses of the natives, unsightly bamboo erections, and narrow, but most generally having a length of three feet or upwards, a depth of about two-thirds posts of the cocoa-nut tree, and covered with of the length, and a width of from one to two feet Europeans and Chinese, &c., are on the right, and leaves. The government buildings, houses of the (see fig.). The packhorse with panniers was at one time in general use for carrying merchandise, and mostly built of wood or stone, and roofed with tile. for those agricultural operations for which the horse. is picturesquely enclosed by a semicircle of and cart are now employed; and in the mountainous regions of Spain and Austria, and in other parts of the world, it still forms the sole medium for transport; though the mule has, especially in Europe, been substituted for the horse.

mountains, behind which rises a loftier chain, two being volcanoes. There are a Protestant church, a Roman Catholic church, flourishing schools, a fort, military hospital, government workshops, large warehouses, &c. An agent of the Netherlands An army requires to be accompanied by several the centre of the exports and imports of Sumatra's Trading Company (q. v.) resides at Padang. Being thousand pack-animals, sometimes horses, but pre-west coast, P. has a lively trade, not only with ferably mules; and in Asia, commonly camels, or even elephants. Pack-saddles are variously fitted, according to the objects to be carried: some for provisions or ammunition; others for carrying wounded men, tents, and, in mountain-warfare, even small cannon. In battle, the immediate of small-arm ammunition are borne in the rear of divisions by pack-animals; the heavy reserves being in wagons between the army and its base of operations.

reserves

PACOURY-UVA, a sweet and delicious Brazilian fruit, a large berry, produced by the Platonia insignis, a tree of the natural order Clusiaceae. The seeds have the taste of almonds.

PACTO'LUS, anciently the name of a small brook of Lydia, in Asia Minor, which rises on the northern slope of Mount Tmolus (modern Buz Dagh), flows north past Sardis, and empties itself into the Hermus (modern Kodus). It is never more than ten feet broad, and one foot deep. The sands or mud of P. were long famous in antiquity for the particles of gold dust which they contained, and which are supposed to have been carried down by

Java, the other islands of the Eastern Archipelago, and Europe, but also with the interior of the island.

The climate is considered healthy, although the heat is great. Colonel Nahuys found the thermometer range from 70° to 80° at 6 A.M., from 82° to SS° at noon, 84° to 90° at 2 P.M., 78° to 81° at 6 P.M., from 72° to 80° at 10 in the evening.

and a half miles above P., and rules over a territory The governor resides at a country-house about two stretching, from the Residency of Bencoolen, which has a population of 136,000 souls, and stands immediately under the government at Batavia, northwest over seven degrees of latitude. It is divided into the residencies of Lower Padang, Upper Padang, and Tapanoeli; the population, in 1870, being 1,600,730 natives, 2178 Europeans, and nearly 3000 Chinese.

Lower Pabang was the first district of the west coast of Sumatra which submitted to the Dutch, who had formed a settlement at Padang as early as 1660, and by repeated wars, gradually extended their territory.

Upper Padang lies to the north-west of the lower

PADDLE-PADDLE-WHEEL