the son of Cretheus. He and his twin-brother Neleus were exposed by their mother, but were nurtured by a herdsman. When grown to manhood they were acknowledged by their mother. After the death of Cretheus, Pelias made himself master of the kingdom of Iolous, having previously quarrelled with Neleus, who removed to Messenia, where he founded Pylos. In order to rid himself of Jason, Pelias sent him to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece, and took advantage of his absence to put to death his father, Aeson, his mother and brother. When Jason returned he sought to avenge the death of his parents, and Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut in pieces and boil their father, assuring them that he would thus be restored to youth. Acastus, son of Pelias, drove out Jason and Medea and celebrated funeral games in honour of his father, which were celebrated by the poet Stesichorus and represented on the chest of Cypselus. The death of Pelias was the subject of Sophocles' Rhizotomoi (Root-cutters), and in the Tyro he treated another portion of the legend. Peliades (the daughters of Pelias) was the name of Euripides' first play.

PELICAN (Fr. Pélican; Lat. Pelecanus or Pelicanus), a large fish-eating water-fowl, remarkable for the enormous pouch formed by the extensible skin between the lower jaws of its long, and apparently formidable but in reality very weak, bill. The ordinary pelican, the Onocrotalus of the ancients, to whom it was well known, and the Pelecanus onocrotalus of ornithologists, is a very abundant bird in some districts of south-eastern Europe, south-western Asia and north-eastern Africa, occasionally straying, it is believed, into the northern parts of Germany and France; but the possibility of such wanderers having escaped from confinement is always to be regarded,1 since few zoological gardens are without examples. Its usual haunts are the shallow margins of the larger lakes and rivers, where fishes are plentiful, since it requires for its sustenance a vast supply of them. The nest is formed among reeds, placed on the ground and lined with grass. Therein two eggs, with white, chalky shells, are commonly laid. The young during the first twelvemonth are of a greyish-brown, but when mature almost the whole plumage, except the black primaries, is white, deeply suffused by a rich blush of rose or salmon-colour, passing into yellow on the crest and lower part of the neck in front. A second and somewhat larger species, Pelecanus crispus, also inhabits Europe, but has a more eastern distribution. This, when adult, is readily distinguishable from the ordinary bird by the absence of the blush from its plumage, and by the curled feathers that project from and overhang each side of the head, which with some difference of coloration of the bill, pouch, bare skin round the eyes and irides give it a wholly distinct expression. Two specimens of the humerus have been found in the English fens (Ibis, 1868, p. 363; Proc. Zool. Society, 1871, p. 702), thus proving the existence of the bird in England at no very distant period, and one of them being that of a young example points to its having been bred in this country. It is possible from their large size that they belonged to P. crispus. Ornithologists have been much divided in opinion as to the number of living species of the genus Pelecanus (cf. op. cit., 1868, p. 264; 1869, p. 571; 1871, p. 631)-the estimate varying from six to ten or eleven; but the former is the number recognized by M. Dubois (Bull. Mus. de Belgique, 1883). North America has one, P. erythrorhynchus, very similar to P. onocrotalus both in appearance and habits, but remarkable for a triangular, horny excrescence developed on the ridge of the male's bill in the breeding season, which falls off without leaving trace of its existence when that is over. Australia has P. conspicillatus, easily distinguished by its black tail and wingcoverts. Of more marine habit are P. philippensis and P. fuscus, the former having a wide range in Southern Asia, and, it is said, reaching Madagascar, and the latter common on the coasts of the warmer parts of both North and South America.

The genus Pelecanus as instituted by Linnaeus included the 1 This caution was not neglected by the prudent, even so long ago as Sir Thomas Browne's days; for he, recording the occurrence of a pelican in Norfolk, was careful to notice that about the same time one of the pelicans kept by the king (Charles II.) in St James's Park, had been lost.

cormorant (q.v.) and gannet (q.v.) as well as the true pelicans, and for a long while these and some other distinct groups, as the snake-birds (q.v.), frigate-birds (q.v.) and tropic-birds (q.v.), which have all the four toes of the foot connected by a web, were regarded as forming a single family, Pelecanidae; but this name has now been restricted to the pelicans only, though all are still usually associated in the suborder Steganopodes of Ciconiiform birds. It may be necessary to state that there is no foundation for the venerable legend of the pelican feeding her young with blood from her own breast, which has given it an important place in ecclesiastical heraldry, except that, as A. D. Bartlett suggested (Proc. Zool. Society, 1869, p. 146), the curious bloody secretion ejected from the mouth of the flamingo may have given rise to the belief, through that bird having been mistaken for the "Pelican of the wilderness."2 (A. N.)

PELION, a wooded mountain in Thessaly in the district of Magnesia, between Volo and the east coast. Its highest point (mod. Plessidi) is 5340 ft. It is famous in Greek mythology; the giants are said to have piled it on Ossa in order to scale Olympus, the abode of the gods; it was the home of the centaurs, especially of Chiron, who had a cave near its summit, and educated many youthful heroes; the ship "Argo" was built from its pine-woods. On its summit was an altar of Zeus Actaeus, in whose honour an annual festival was held in the dog-days, and worshippers clad themselves in skins.

PELISSE (through the Fr. from Lat. pellicia: sc. vestis, a garment made of fur, pellis, skin), properly a name of a cloak made of or lined with fur, hence particularly used of the furtrimmed dolman worn slung from the shoulders by hussar regiments. The word is now chiefly employed as the name of a long-sleeved cloak of any material worn by women and children.

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PÉLISSIER, AIMABLE JEAN JACQUES (1794-1864), duke of Malakoff, marshal of France, was born on the 6th of November 1794 at Maromme (Seine Inférieure), of a family of prosperous artisans or yeoman, his father being employed in a powdermagazine. After attending the military college of La Flèche and the special school of St Cyr, he in 1815 entered the army as sub-lieutenant in an artillery regiment. A brilliant examination in 1819 secured his appointment to the staff. He served as aide-de-camp in the Spanish campaign of 1823, and in the expedition to the Morea in 1828-29. In 1830 he took part in the expedition to Algeria, and on his return was promoted to the rank of chef d'escadron. After some years' staff service in Paris he was again sent to Algeria as chief of staff of the province of Oran with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and remained there till the Crimean War, taking a prominent part in many important operations. The severity of his conduct in suffocating a whole Arab tribe in the Dahra or Dahna caves, near Mustaganem, where they had taken refuge (June 18, 1845), awakened such indignation in Europe that Marshal Soult, the minister of war, publicly expressed his regret; but Marshal Bugeaud, the governor-general of Algeria, not only gave it his approval, but secured for Pélissier the rank of general of brigade, which he held till 1850, when he was promoted general of division. After the battles of October and November 1854 before Sevastopol, Pélissier was sent to the Crimea, where on the 16th of May 1855 he succeeded Marshal Canrobert as commander-in-chief of the French forces before Sevastopol (see CRIMEAN WAR). His command was marked by relentless pressure of the enemy and unalterable determination to conduct the campaign without interference from Paris. His perseverance was crowned with

2 The legend was commonly believed in the middle ages. Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia, in his Physiologus (1588), writes that the female bird, in cherishing her young, wounds them with loving, and pierces their sides, and they die. After three days the male pelican comes and finds them dead, and his heart is pained. He smites his own side, and as he stands over the wounds of the dead young ones the blood trickles down, and thus are they made alive again. The pelican "in his piety "i.e. in this pious act of reviving his offspring-was a common subject for 15th-century emblem books; it became a symbol of self-sacrifice, a type of Christian redemption and of the Eucharistic doctrine. The device was adopted by Bishop Fox in 1516 for his new college of Corpus Christi, Oxford.-H. CH.1

prevalent. The malady is essentially chronic in character. The indications usually begin in the spring of the year, declining towards autumn, and recurring with increasing intensity and permanence in the spring seasons following. A peasant who is acquiring the malady feels unfit for work, suffers from headaches, giddiness, singing in the ears, a burning of the skin, especially in the hands and feet, and diarrhoea. At the same time a red rash appears on the skin, of the nature of erysipelas, the red or livid spots being tense and painful, especially where they are directly exposed to the sun. About July or August

PELL, JOHN (1610-1685), English mathematician, was born on the 1st of March 1610 at Southwick in Sussex, where his father was minister. He was educated at Steyning, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen. During his university career he became an accomplished linguist, and even before he took his M.A. degree (in 1630) corresponded with Henry Briggs and other mathematicians. His great reputation and the influence of Sir William Boswell, the English resident, with the states-general procured his election in 1643 to the chair of mathematics in Amsterdam, whence he removed in 1646, on the invitation of the prince of Orange, to Breda, where he remained till 1652.

From 1654 to 1658 Pell acted as Cromwell's political agent to the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. On his return to England he took orders and was appointed by Charles II. to the rectory of Fobbing in Essex, and in 1673 he was presented by Bishop Sheldon to the rectory of Laindon in the same county. His devotion to mathematical science seems to bave interfered alike with his advancement in the Church and with the proper management of his private affairs. For a time he was confined as a debtor in the king's bench prison. He lived, on the invitation of Dr Whistler, for a short time in 1682 at the College of Physicians, but died on the 12th of December 1685 at the house of Mr Cothorne, reader of the church of St Giles-in-the Fields. Many of Pell's manuscripts fell into the hands of Dr Busby, master of Westminster School, and afterwards came into the possession of the Royal Society; they are still preserved in something like forty folio volumes, which contain, not only Pell's own memoirs, but much of his correspondence with the mathematicians of his time.

The Diophantine analysis was a favourite subject with Pell; he lectured on it at Amsterdam; and he is now best remembered for the indeterminate equation ax2+1=y, which is known by his name. This problem was proposed by Pierre de Fermat first to Bernhard Frenicle de Bessy, and in 1657 to all mathematicians. Pell's connexion with the problem simply consists of the publication of the solutions of John Wallis and Lord Brounker in his edition of Branker's Translation of Rhonius's Algebra (1668). His chief works are: Astronomical History of Observations of Heavenly Motions and Appearances (1634); Ecliptica prognostica (1634); Controversy with Longomontanus concerning the Quadrature of the Circle (1646?); An Idea of the Mathematics, 12mo (1650); A Table of Ten Thousand Square Numbers (fol.; 1672).

PELLA, the capital of ancient Macedonia under Philip II. (who transferred the seat of government hither from Edessa) and Alexander the Great, who was born here. It seems to have retained some importance up to the time of Hadrian. Scanty remains exist and some springs in the neighbourhood are still known as the baths of Pel. The site (identified by Leake) is occupied by the village of Neochori (Turk. Yeni-Keui) about 32 m. north-west of Salonika.

PELLAGRA (Ital. pelle agra, smarting skin), the name given, from one of its early symptoms, to a peculiar disease, of comparatively modern origin. For some time it was supposed to be practically confined to the peasantry in parts of Italy (particularly Lombardy) and France, and in the Asturias (mal de la rosa), Rumania and Corfu. But it has recently been identified in various outlying parts of the British Empire (Barbadoes, India) and in both Lower and Upper Egypt; also among the Zulus and Basutos. In the United States sporadic cases had been observed up to 1906, but since then numerous cases have been reported. It is in Italy, however, that it has been most

skin remaining rough and dry. The spring attack of the year following will probably be more severe and more likely to leave traces behind it; with each successive year the patient becomes more like a mummy, his skin shrivelled and sallow, or even black at certain spots, as in Addison's disease, his angles protruding, his muscles wasted, his movements slow and languid, and his sensibility diminished. Meanwhile there are more special symptoms relating to the nervous system, including drooping of the eyelid, dilatation of the pupil, and other disorders of vision, together with symptoms relating to the digestive system, such as a red and dry tongue, a burning feeling in the mouth, pain on swallowing, and diarrhoea. After a certain stage the disease passes into a profound disorganization of the nervous system; there is a tendency to melancholy, imbecility, and a curious mummified condition of body. After death a general tissue degeneration is observed.

The causation of this obscure disease has recently come up for new investigation in connexion with the new work done in relation to sleeping-sickness and other tropical diseases. So long as it was supposed to be peculiar to the Italian peasantry, it was associated simply with their staple diet, and was regarded as due to the eating of mouldy maize. It was by his views in this regard that Lombroso (q.v.) first made his scientific reputation. But the area of maize consumption is now known to be wider than that of pellagra, and pellagra is found where maize is at least not an ordinary diet. In 1905 Dr L. W. Sambon, the meeting of the British Medical Association, suggested that pellagra was probably protozoal in origin, and subsequently he announced his belief that the protozoon was communicated by sand-flies, just as sleeping-sickness by the tsetse fly; and this opinion was supported by the favourable action of arsenic in the treatment of the disease. His hypothesis was endorsed by Sir Patrick Manson, and in January 1910 an influential committee was formed, to enable Dr Sambon to pursue his investigations in a pellagrous area.

PELLETAN, CHARLES CAMILLE (1846- ), French politician and journalist, was born in Paris on the 28th of June 1846, the son of Eugène Pelletan (1813-1884), a writer of some distinction and a noted opponent of the Second Empire. Camille Pelletan was educated in Paris, passed as licentiate in laws, and was qualified as an archiviste paléographe." At the age of twenty he became an active contributor to the press, and a bitter critic of the Imperial Government. After the war of 1870-71 he took a leading place among the most radical section of French politicians, as an opponent of the "opportunists" who continued the policy of Gambetta. In 1880 he became editor of Justice, and worked with success to bring about a revision of the sentences passed on the Communards. In 1881 he was chosen member for the tenth arrondissement of Paris, and in 1885 for the Bouches du Rhone, being re-elected in 1889, 1893 and 1898; and he was repeatedly chosen as reporter "to the various bureaus. During the Nationalist and Dreyfus agitations he fought vigorously on behalf of the Republican government and when the coalition known as the "Bloc" was formed he took his place as a Radical leader. He was made minister of marine in the cabinet of M. Combes, June 1902 to January 1905, but his administration was severely criticized, notably by M. de Lanessan and other naval experts. During the great sailors' strike at Marseilles in 1904 he showed pronounced sympathy with the socialistic aims and methods of the strikers, and a strong feeling was aroused that

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See Piero Maroncelli, Addizioni alle mie prigioni (Paris, 1834); the biographies by Latour; Gabriele Rosselli; Didier, Revue des deux mondes (September 1842); De Loménie, Galerie des contemp. illustr. iv. (1842); Chiala (Turin, 1852); Nollet-Fabert (1854); Giorgio Briano (1854); Bourdon (1868); Rivieri (1899-1901).

PELLISSON, PAUL (1624-1693), French author, was born at Béziers on the 30th of October 1624, of a distinguished Calvinist family. He studied law at Toulouse, and practised at the bar of Castres. Going to Paris with letters of introduction to Valentin Conrart, who was a co-religionist, he became through him acquainted with the members of the academy. Pellisson undertook to be their historian, and in 1653 published a Relation contenant l'histoire de l'académie française. This panegyric was rewarded by a promise of the next vacant place and by permission to be present at their meetings. In 1657 Pellisson became secretary to the minister of finance, Nicolas Fouquet, and when in 1661 the minister was arrested, his secretary was imprisoned in the Bastille. Pellisson had the courage to stand by his fallen patron, in whose defence he issued his celebrated Mémoire in 1661, with the title Discours au roi, par un de ses fidèles sujets sur le procès de M. de Fouquet, in which the facts in favour of Fouquet are marshalled with great skill. Another pamphlet, Seconde défense de M. Fouquet, followed. Pellisson was released in 1666, and from this date sought the royal favour. He became historiographer to the king, and in that capacity wrote a fragmentary Histoire de Louis XIV., covering the years 1660 to 1670. In 1670 he was converted to Catholicism and obtained rich ecclesiastical preferment. He died on the 7th of February 1693. He was very intimate with Mlle de Scudéry, in whose novels he figures as Herminius and Acante. His sterling worth of character made him many friends and justified Bussy-Rabutin's description of him as encore plus honnête homme que bel esprit."

See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xiv.; and F. L. Marcon, Étude sur la vie et les œuvres de Pellisson (1859).

PELLITORY, in botany, the common name for a small hairy perennial herb which grows on old walls, hedgebanks and similar localities, and is known botanically as Parietaria officinalis (Lat. paries, a wall). It has a short woody rootstock from which spring erect or spreading stems 1 to 2 ft. long, bearing slender leafy branches, and axillary clusters of small green flowers. It belongs to the nettle order (Urticaceae), and is nearly allied to the nettle, Urtica, but its hairs are not stinging. PELLOUX, LUIGI (1839- ), Italian general and politician, was born on the 1st of March 1839, at La Roche, in Savoy, of parents who retained their Italian nationality when Savoy was annexed to France. Entering the army as lieutenant of artillery in 1857, he gained the medal for military valour at the battle of Custozza in 1866, and in 1870 commanded the brigade of artillery which battered the breach in the wall of Rome at Porta Pia. He was elected to the Chamber in 1881 as deputy for Leghorn, which he represented until 1895, and joined the party of the Left. He had entered the war office in 1870, and in 1880 became general secretary, in which capacity he introduced many useful reforms in the army. After a succession of high military commands he received the appointment of chief of the general staff in 1896. He was minister of war in the Rudini and Giolitti cabinets of 1891-1893. In July 1896 he resumed the portfolio of war in the Rudini cabinet, and was appointed senator. In May 1897 he secured the adoption of the Army Reform Bill, fixing Italian military expenditure at a maximum of £9,560,000 a year, but in December of that year he was defeated in the Chamber on the question of the promotion of officers. Resigning office, he was in May 1898 sent as royal commissioner to Bari, where, without recourse to martial law, he succeeded in restoring

of a cabinet, and took for himself the post of minister of the interior. He resigned office in May 1899, but was again entrusted with the formation of the ministry. He took stern measures against the revolutionary elements in southern Italy, and his new cabinet was essentially military and conservative. The Public Safety Bill for the reform of the police laws, taken over by him from the Rudini cabinet, and eventually promulgated by royal decree, was fiercely obstructed by the Socialist party, which, with the Left and Extreme Left, succeeded in forcing General Pelloux to dissolve the Chamber in May 1900, and to resign office after the general election in June. In the autumn of 1901 he was appointed to the command of the Turin army corps.

PELOMY XA, so named by R. Greeff, a genus of Lobose Rhizopoda (q.v.), naked, multinucleate, with very blunt rounded pseudopodia, formed by eruption (see AMOEBA), often containing peculiar vesicles (glycogen?), and full of a symbiotic bacterium. It inhabits the ooze of decomposing organic matter at the bottom of ponds and lakes.

PELOPIDAS (d. 364 B.C.), Theban statesman and general. He was a member of a distinguished family, and possessed great wealth which he expended on his friends, while content to lead the life of an athlete. In 385 B.C. he served in a Theban contingent sent to the support of the Spartans at Mantineia, where he was saved, when dangerously wounded, by Epaminondas (q.v.). Upon the seizure of the Theban citadel by the Spartans (383 or 382) he fled to Athens, and took the lead in a conspiracy to liberate Thebes. In 379 his party surprised and killed their chief political opponents, and roused the people against the Spartan garrison, which surrendered to an army gathered by Pelopidas. In this and subsequent years he was elected boeotarch, and about 375 he routed a much larger Spartan force at Tegyra (near Orchomenus). This victory he owed mainly to the valour of the Sacred Band, a picked body of 300 infantry. At the battle of Leuctra (371) he contributed greatly to the success of Epaminondas's new tactics by the rapidity with which he made the Sacred Band close with the Spartans. In 370 he accompanied his friend Epaminondas as boeotarch into Peloponnesus. On their return both generals were unsuccessfully accused of having retained their command beyond the legal term. In 369, in response to a petition of the Thessalians, Pelopidas was sent with an army against Alexander, tyrant of Pherae. After driving Alexander out, he passed into Macedonia and arbitrated between two claimants to the throne. In order to secure the influence of Thebes, he brought home hostages, including the king's brother, afterwards Philip II., the conqueror of Greece. Next year Pelopidas was again called upon to interfere in Macedonia, but, being deserted by his mercenaries, was compelled to make an agreement with Ptolemaeus of Alorus. On his return through Thessaly he was seized by Alexander of Pherae, and two expeditions from Thebes were needed to secure his release. In 367 Pelopidas went on an embassy to the Persian king and induced him to prescribe a settlement of Greece according to the wishes of the Thebans. In 364 he received another appeal from the Thessalian towns against Alexander of Pherae. Though an eclipse of the sun prevented his bringing with him more than a handful of troops, he overthrew the tyrant's far superior force on the ridge of Cynoscephalae; but wishing to slay Alexander with his own hand, he rushed forward too eagerly and was cut down by the tyrant's guards.

Plutarch and Nepos, Pelopidas; Diodorus xv. 62-81; Xenophon, Hellenica, vii. 1. See also THEBES. (M. O. B. C.) PELOPONNESIAN WAR, in Greek history, the name given specially to the struggle between Athens at the head of the Delian League and the confederacy of which Sparta was the leading power. According to Thucydides the war, which was 1 Some historians prefer to call it the Second Peloponnesian War, the first being that of 457, which ended with the Thirty Years' Peace.