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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Paraná (Argentina)

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​PARANÁ, a city and port of Argentina, capital of the province of Entre Rios, and the see of a bishopric, situated on the left bank of the Paraná river, 410 m. by navigable channels (about 240 m. direct) N.W. of Buenos Aires. Pop. (1895), 24,261; (1904, estimate), 27,000. The city occupies a gently rolling site 120 ft. above the river and about 2 m. from its riverside port of Bajada Grande, with which it is connected by railway, tramway and highway. It is classed as a seaport, and oceangoing vessels of not over 12 ft. draught can ascend to Bajada. There is also a daily ferry service across the river to Santa Fé (7 m. distant), which is connected by railway with Rosario and Buenos Aires. Paraná is also the western terminus of a provincial railway system, which connects with Concepción and Concordia, on the Uruguay river, and with other important towns of the province. The mean annual temperature is about 66° F. and the climate is bracing and healthful. Its port of Bajada Grande, on the river shore below the bluffs, has the custom-house and a fine wharf for the accommodation of the Entre Rios railway and river craft. Paraná was founded in 1730 by colonists from Santa Fé and was at first known as Bajada (a landing place). It was made the capital of the province by General Mansilla in 1821 (Concepción had previously been the capital), but in 1861 General Urquiza restored the seat of government to Concepción, where it remained until 1882, when Paraná again became the capital. Paraná was also the capital of the Argentine Confederation from 1852 to 1861.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Paraphrase

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​PARAPHRASE (Gr. παράφρασις, from παραφράζειν, to relate something in different words, παρά, beside, and φράζειν, speak, tell), a rendering into other words of a passage in prose or verse, giving the sense in a fuller, simpler or clearer fashion, also a free translation or adaptation of a passage in a foreign language. The term is specifically used in the Scottish and other Presbyterian churches of metrical versions for singing of certain passages of the Bible.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Parascenium

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​PARASCENIUM (Gr. παρασκήνιον), in a Greek theatre, the wall on either side of the stage, reaching from the back wall (σκηνή) to the orchestra.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Parasite

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​PARASITE (From Gr. παρά, beside, (σῖτος food), literally “mess-mate,” a term originally conveying no idea of reproach or contempt, as in later times. The early parasites may be divided into two classes, religious and civil. The former were assistants of the priests, their chief duty being to collect the corn dues which were contributed by the farmers of the temple lands or which came in from other sources (Athenaeus vi. 235; Pollux vi. 35). Considerable obscurity exists as to their other functions, but they seem to have been charged with providing food for the visitors to the temples, with the care of certain offerings, and with the arrangement of the sacrificial banquets. In Attica the parasites appear to have been confined to certain demes (Acharnae, Diomeia), and were appointed by the demes to which the temples belonged. The “civil” parasites were a class of persons who received invitations to dine in the prytaneum and subsequently in the tholos) as distinguished from those who had the right to dine there ex officio. An entirely different meaning (“sponger”) became attached to the word from the character introduced into the Middle and New Comedy, first by Alexis, and firmly established by Diphilus. The chief object of this class of parasites was a good dinner, for which they were ready to submit to almost any humiliation. Numerous examples occur in the comedies of Plautus; and Alciphron and Athenaeus (vi. 236 sqq.) give instances of the insults they had to put up with at the hands of both host and guests. Some of them played the part of professional jesters (like the later buffoons and court fools), and kept collections of witticisms ready for use at their patrons’ table; others relied upon flattery, others again condescended to the most degrading devices (Plutarch, De adulatore, 23; De educatione puerorum, 17). The term parasite, from meaning a “hanger-on,” has been transferred to any living creature which lives on another one.
See Juvenal v. 170 with J. E. B. Mayor’s note, and the exhaustive article by M. H. Meier in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pendentive

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​PENDENTIVE, the term given in architecture to the bridging across the angles of a square hall, so as to obtain a circular base for a dome or drain. This may be done by corbelling out in the angles, in which case the pendentive may be a portion of a hemisphere of which the half diagonal of the square hall is the radius; or by throwing a series of arches across the angle, each ring as it rises advancing in front of the one below and being carried by it during 1ts construction; in this case the base obtained is octagonal, so that corbels or small pendentives are required for each angle of the octagon, unless as in the church of SS Sergius and Bacchus at Constantinople a portion of the dome is set back; or again, by a third method, by sinking a semicircular niche in the angle. The first system was that employed in St Sophia at Constantinople, and in Byzantine churches generally, also in the domed churches of Perigord and Aquitaine. The second is found in the Sassanian palaces of Serbistan and Firuzabad, and in medieval architecture in England. France and Germany, where the arches are termed “ squinches ”. The third system is found in the mosque at Damascus, and was often adopted in the churches in Asia Minor. There is still another method in which the pendentive and cupola are part of the same hemispherical dome, and in this case the ring courses lie in vertical instead of horizontal planes, examples of which may be found in the vault of Magnesia on Maeander in Asia Minor, and in the tomb at Valence known as le pendentif de Valence. The problem is one which has taxed the ingenuity of many builders in ancient times; the bas-reliefs found at Nimrud show that in the 9th century B.C. domes were evidently built over square halls, and must have been carried on pendentives of some kind.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Penda

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​PENDA, king of Mercia (d. 654 or 655), son of Pybba, probably came to the throne in 626, but It is doubtful whether he actually became king of Mercia until 633, the year of the defeat and death of Edwin of Northumbria. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he was eighty years old at his death, but the energy of his administration and the evidence with regard to the ages of his children and relatives render it almost impossible. In 628 the Chronicle records a battle between him and the West Saxons at Cirencester in that year. In 633 Penda and Ceadwalla overthrew Edwin at Hatfield Chase; but after the defeat of the Welsh king at Oswald at “Hefenfelth” in 634, Mercia seems to have been for a time subject to Northumbria. In 642 Penda slew Oswald at a place called Maerfeld. He was continually raiding Northumbria and once almost succeeded in reducing Bamborough. He drove Cenwalh of Wessex, who had divorced his sister, from his throne. In 654 he attacked the East Angles, and slew their king Anna (see East Anglia). In 6544 or 655 he invaded Northumbria in spite of the attempts of Oswio to buy him off, and was defeated and slain on the banks of the “Winwaed.” In the reign of Penda the districts corresponding to Cheshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire were probably acquired, and he established his son Peada as a dependent prince in Middle Anglia. Although a pagan, he allowed his daughter Cyneburg to marry Alchfrith, the son of ​Oswio, and it was in his reign that Christianity was introduced into Middle Anglia by his son Peada.
See Bede, Hist. Eccl. (ed. C. Plummer, Oxford, 1896); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ed. Earle and Plummer, Oxford, 1899).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pender, Sir John

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​PENDER, SIR JOHN (1816–1896), British cable pioneer, was born in the Vale of Leven, Scotland, on the 10th of September 1816, and after attending school in Glasgow became a successful merchant in textile fabrics in that city and in Manchester. His name is chiefly known connexion with submarine cables, of which on the commercial side he was an important promoter. He was one of the 345 contributors who each risked a thousand pounds in the Transatlantic Cable in 1857, and when the Atlantic Telegraph Company was ruined by the loss of the 1865 cable he formed the Anglo-American Telegraph Company to continue the work, but it was not till he had given his personal guarantee for a quarter of a million pounds that the makers would undertake the manufacture of a new cable. But in the end he was justified, and telegraphic communication with America became a commercial success. Subsequently he fostered cable enterprise in all parts of the world, and at the time of his death, which occurred at Footscray Place, Kent, on the 7th of July 1896, he controlled companies having a capital of 15 millions sterling and owning 73,640 nautical miles of cables. He represented Wick Burghs in parliament from 1872 to 1885 and from 1892 to 1896 He was made a K.C.M.G. in 1888 and was promoted in 1892 to be G.C.M.G. His eldest son James (b. 1841), who was M.P. for Mid-Northamptonshire in 1895–1900, was created a baronet in 1897, and his third son, John Denison (b. 1855), was created a K.C.M.G. in 1901.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Penarth

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​PENARTH, an urban district and seaport in the southern parliamentary division of Glamorganshire, Wales, 166 m. by rail from London, picturesquely situated on rising ground on the south side of the mouth of the Ely opposite Cardiff, from which it is 4 m. distant by rail and 2 m. by steamer. Pop (1901), 14,228. The place derives its name from two Welsh words, “pen,” a head, and “garth,” an enclosure. Penarth was a small and unimportant village until a tidal harbour at the mouth of the Ely was opened in 1859, and a railway, 6 m. long, was made about the same time, connecting the harbour with the Taff Vale railway at Radyr. A dock, authorized in 1857, was opened in 1865, when all three undertakings, which had cost £775,000, were leased in perpetuity to the Taff Vale Railway Company. The monopoly which the Bute Docks at Cardiff had previously enjoyed in shipping coal from the valleys of the Taff and Rhondda was thus terminated. The town is frequented in summer as a bathing-place, and the Rhaetic beds at the head are of special interest to geologists On this head there stood an old church, probably Norman, which served as a landmark for sailors. The remains of an old chantry have been converted into a barn. Besides two Established and one Roman Catholic church, the principal buildings of Penarth are its various Nonconformist chapels, intermediate and technical school (1894), custom house, dock offices, and Turner House with a private art gallery which is thrown open on certain days to the public. Three miles to the west is Dinas Powis Castle. In 1880–1883 gardens were laid out along the cliff, in 1894 a promenade and landing-pier with a length of 630 ft. were constructed, and in 1900 a marine subway open at all times for foot passengers was made under the river Ely. The dock as first constructed comprised 17½ acres, was extended in 1884 at a cost of £250,000, and now covers 23 acres with a basin of 3 acres. It is 2900 ft in length, has a minimum depth of 26 ft, and is furnished with every modern appliance for the export of coal, of which from 20,000 to 30,000 tons can be stored in the sidings near by. The Penarth-Ely tidal harbour has a water area of 55 acres with a minimum depth of 20 ft., and a considerable import trade is carried on here mainly by coasting vessels, but as only one of its sides has wharves (about 3000 ft. along) scarcely more than 5% of the total shipping of the port is done here It has commodious warehouses, also tanks to hold about 6000 tons of oil.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pendant

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​PENDANT (through Fr. from Lat. pendere, to hang), any hanging object, such as a jewel or other ornament hanging from a brooch, bracelet, &c, or the loose end of a knight's belt left hanging after passing through the buckle, and terminating in an ornamental end. In architecture the word is applied to an elongated boss, either moulded or foliated, such as hangs down from the intersection of ribs, especially in fan tracery, or at the end of hammer beams Sometimes long corbels, under the wall pieces, have been so called. The name has also been given to the large masses depending from enriched ceilings, in the later works of the Pointed style. “ Pendants ” or “ Pendent posts ” are those timbers which are carried down the side of the wall from the plate, and receive the hammer braces.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Quassia

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​QUASSIA, the generic name given by Linnaeus to a small tree of Surinam in honour of the negro Quassi or Coissi, who employed the intensely bitter bark of the tree (Quassia amara) as a remedy for fever. The original quassia was officially recognized in the London Pharmacopoeia of 1788. In 1809 it was replaced by the bitter wood or bitter ash of Jamaica, Picraena excelsa, which was found to possess similar properties and could be obtained in pieces of much larger size. Since that date this wood has continued in use in Britain under the name of quassia to the exclusion of the Surinam quassia, which, however, is still employed in France and Germany. Picraena excelsa is a tree 50 to 60 ft. in height, and resembles the common ash in appearance. It has large compound leaves composed of four or five pairs, with a terminal odd one, of short-stalked, oblong, blunt, leathery leaflets, and inconspicuous green flowers. The fruit consists of black shining drupes about the size of a pea. It is found also in other West Indian islands, as Antigua and St Vincent. Quassia amara is a shrub or small tree belonging to the same natural order as Picraena, viz. Simarubaceae, but is readily distinguished by its large handsome red flowers arranged in terminal clusters. It is a native of Panama, Venezuela, Guiana and northern Brazil. Jamaica quassia is imported into England in logs several feet in length and often nearly one foot in thickness, consisting of pieces of the trunk and larger branches. The thin greyish bark is usually removed. The wood is nearly white, or of a yellowish tint, but sometimes exhibits blackish markings due to the mycelium of a fungus. The wood has a pure bitter taste, and is without odour or aroma. It is usually to be met with in the form of turnings or raspings, the former being obtained in the manufacture of the “bitter cups” which are made of this wood. The chief constituent is a bitter neutral principle known as quassin. It exists in the wood to the extent of about 1/10%. It forms crystalline needles soluble in alkalis, chloroform and zoo parts of water. There is also present a volatile oil. The wood contains no tannin, and for this reason quassia, like chiretta and calumba, may be preserved with iron. The infusion is useful as a bitter tonic—a group of substances of which calumba is the type—and is also a very efficient anthelmintic for the thread worm (Oxyuris vermicularis). It is used by brewers as a substitute for hops.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Quatorzain

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​QUATORZAIN (from Fr. quatorze, fourteen), the term used in English literature, as opposed to “sonnet,” for a poem in fourteen rhymed iambic lines closing (as a sonnet strictly never does) with a couplet. The distinction was long neglected, because the English poets of the 16th century had failed to apprehend the true form of the sonnet, and called Petrarch's and other Italian poets' sonnets quatorzains, and their own incorrect quatorzains sonnets. Almost all the so-called sonnets of the Elizabethan cycles, including those of Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser and Daniel, are really quatorzains. They consist of three quatrains of alternate rhyme, not repeated in the successive quatrains, and the whole closes with a couplet. A more perfect example of the form could hardly be found than the following, published by Michael Drayton in 1602:—
Dear why should you commend me to my rest,  When now the night doth summon all to sleep? Methinks this time becometh lovers best,  Night was ordained together friends to keep. How happy are all other living things  Which though the day conjoin by several flight, The quiet evening yet together brings,  And each returns unto his love at night, O thou that art so courteous unto all,  Why should'st thou, Night, abuse me only thus, That every creature to his kind dost call,  And yet 'tis thou dost only sever us? Well could I wish it would be ever day,  If, when night comes, you bid me go away.
Donne, and afterwards Milton, fought against the facility and incorrectness of this form of metre and adopted the Italian form of sonnet. During the 10th century, most poets of distinction prided themselves on following the strict Petrarchan model of the sonnet, and particularly in avoiding the final couplet. In his most mature period, however, Keats returned to the quatorzain, perhaps in emulation with Shakespeare; and some of his examples, such as “When I have fears,” “Standing aloof in giant ignorance,” and “Bright Star,” are the most beautiful in modern literature. The “Fancy in Nubibus,” written by S. T. Coleridge in 1819, also deserves notice as a quatorzain of peculiar beauty.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Quaternary

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​QUATERNARY, in geology, the time-division which embraces the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, i.e. the later portion of the Cainozoic era, equivalent to the "Post-Pliocene" or “Post-Tertiary” of certain writers. The term was proposed by J. Desnoyers in 1829 to cover those formations which were formed just anterior to the present. There are other ways of regarding the Quaternary time. Sir A. Geikie (Text Book of Geology, 4th ed., 1903) divides it into an upper, post-glacial or Human period, and a lower, Pleistocene or Glacial period; but he subdivides the former into a Historic and a Prehistoric epoch, a scheme presenting difficulties, for the Palaeolithic or lower stage of prehistoric time cannot really be separated from the Pleistocene (q.v.). E. Kayser Formationskunde, 3rd. ed., 1906), who is in agreement with the definition accepted above, employs a nomenclature which is rarely adopted by British geologists; he divides the Quartarformation (Quartär) into a younger, modern epoch, the Alluvium, and an older epoch, the Pleistocene or Diluvium (＝Glacial). A. de Lapparent, on the other hand (Traité de géologie', 5th ed., 1906), treats the Era moderne or Quaternaire as a great time division equivalent in value to the Tertiary, Secondary, &c., which is so far represented only by a first epoch, the Pleistocene.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Quarterdeck

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​QUARTERDECK, the after part of the upper deck of a ship. In former times the upper deck of a line-of-battle ship or frigate ended at the mainmast, and was connected with the forecastle by two narrow passages, or gangways running along the sides. The quarterdeck is the residence and symbol of authority in a warship. The starboard, or right side looking forward, is reserved to the senior officer. A sailor who had a complaint to make was said to come to the mainmast, because he placed himself at the forward end of the quarterdeck near the mast. According to the ancient custom of the sea, the quarterdeck is to be saluted by all who come upon it, and the salute is returned by all officers present.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Quarto

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​QUARTO, a shortened form of Lat. in quarto, “in a fourth,” i.e. of a sheet of paper, applied to a size of paper, and to a size of a printed volume. Paper is in quarto when a whole single sheet is folded twice so as to form four leaves; a book is technically termed of “quarto” size when made up of sheets folded twice.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Isla, José Francisco de

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​ISLA, JOSÉ FRANCISCO DE (1703–1781), Spanish satirist, was born at Villavidanes (León) on the 24th of March 1703. He joined the Jesuits in 1719, was banished from Spain with his brethren in 1767, and settled at Bologna, where he died on the 2nd of November 1781. His earliest publication, a Carta de un residente en Roma (1725), is a panegyric of trifling interest, and La Juventud triunfante (1727) was written in collaboration with Luis de Lovada. Isla’s gifts were first shown in his Triunfo del amor y de la lealtad: Dia Grande de Navarra, a satirical description of the ceremonies at Pamplona in honour of Ferdinand VI.’s accession; its sly humour so far escaped the victims that they thanked the writer for his appreciation of their local efforts, but the true significance of the work was discovered shortly afterwards, and the protests were so violent that Isla was transferred by his superiors to another district. He gained a great reputation as an effective preacher, and his posthumous Sermones morales (1792–1793) justify his fame in this respect. But his position in the history of Spanish literature is due to his Historia del famoso predicador fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes (1758), a novel which wittily caricatures the bombastic eloquence of pulpit orators in Spain. Owing to the protests of the Dominicans and other regulars, the book was prohibited in 1760, but the second part was issued surreptitiously in 1768. He translated Gil Blas, adopting more or less seriously Voltaire’s unfounded suggestion that Le Sage plagiarized from Espinel’s Marcos de Obregón, and other Spanish books; the text appeared in 1783, and in 1828 was greatly modified by Evaristo Peña y Martín, whose arrangement is still widely read.
See Policarpo Mingote y Tarrazona, Varones ilustres de la provincia de León (León, 1880), pp. 185–215; Bernard Gaudeau, Les Prêcheurs burlesques en Espagne au XVIII$^e$ siècle (Paris, 1891); V. Cian, L’ Immigrazione dei Gesuiti spagnuoli letterati in Italia (Torino, 1895). (J. F.-K.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Isles of the Blest

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​ISLES OF THE BLEST, or Fortunate Islands (Gr. αἱ τῶν μακάρων νῆσοι: Lat., Fortunatae Insulae), in Greek mythology a group of islands near the edge of the Western Ocean, peopled not by the dead, but by mortals upon whom the gods had conferred immortality. Like the islands of the Phaeacians in Homer (Od. viii.) or the Celtic Avalon and St Brendan’s island, the Isles of the Blest are represented as a land of perpetual summer and abundance of all good things. No reference is made to them by Homer, who speaks instead of the Elysian Plain (Od. iv. and ix.), but they are mentioned by Hesiod (Works and Days, 168) and Pindar (Ol. ii.). A very old tradition suggests that the idea of such an earthly paradise was a reminiscence of some unrecorded voyage to Madeira and the Canaries, which are sometimes named Fortunatae Insulae by medieval map-makers. (See Atlantis.)