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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Magic/Magic and Divination

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​Magic and Divination.—Magic is an attempt to influence the course of events, divination (q.v.) to foresee them; but divination is frequently regarded as magical. It is certain that a large part of divination is religious, and the knowledge is explained as a message from the gods; but necromancy, the practice of discovering the future by consulting the dead, is in many respects essentially magical. Perhaps the magical character of divination may be in part explained, when we regard it as a group of practices in many varieties of which animism plays no part; for non-animistic ceremonies tend to be regarded as magical (cf. rain-making). Thus, heteroscopic divination seems to involve the idea of what may be termed a return current of magico-religious force; the event is not influenced, but itself determines the issue of the diviner’s experiment.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Magic/Psychology of Magic

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​Psychology of Magic.—The same causes which operated to produce a belief in witchcraft (q.v.) aided the creed of magic in general. Fortuitous coincidences attract attention; the failures are disregarded or explained away. Probably the magician is never wholly an impostor, and frequently has a whole-hearted belief in himself; in this connexion may be noted the fact that juggling tricks have in all ages been passed off as magical; the name of “conjuring” (q.v.) survives in our own day, though the conjurer no longer claims that his mysterious results are produced by demons. It is interesting to note that magical leechcraft depended for its success on the power of suggestion (q.v.), which is to-day a recognized element in medicine; perhaps other elements may have been instrumental in producing a cure, for there are cases on record in which European patients have been cured by the apparently meaningless performances of medicine-men, but an adequate study of savage medicine is still a desideratum.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Magic/Rain-making

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Rain-making.—In the lower stages of culture rain-making assumes rather the appearance of a religious ceremony, and even in higher stages the magical character is by no means invariably felt. It will, however, be well to notice some of the methods here. (a) Among the Dieri of Central Australia the whole tribe takes part in the ceremony; a hole is dug, and over this a hut is built, large enough for the old men; the women are called to look at it and then retire some five hundred yards. Two wizards have their arms bound at the shoulder, the old men huddle in the hut, and the principal wizard bleeds the two men selected by cutting them inside the arm below the elbow. The blood is made to flow on the old men, and the two men throw handfuls of down into the air. The blood symbolizes the rain; the down is the clouds. Then two large stones are placed in the middle of the hut; these two represent gathering clouds. The women are again summoned, and then the stones are placed high in a tree; other men pound gypsum and throw it into a water-hole; the ancestral spirits are supposed to see this and to send rain. Then the hut is knocked down, the men butting at it with their heads; this symbolizes the breaking of the clouds, and the fall of the hut is the rain. If no rain comes they say that another tribe has stopped their power or that the Mura-mura (ancestors) are angry with them. (b) Rain-making ceremonies are far from uncommon in Europe. Sometimes water is poured on a stone; a row of stepping-stones runs into one of the tarns on Snowdon, and it is said that water thrown upon the last one will cause rain to fall before night. Sometimes the images of saints are carried to a river or a fountain and ducked or sprinkled with water in the belief that rain will follow; sometimes rain is said to ensue when the water of certain springs is troubled; perhaps the idea is that the rain-god is disturbed in his haunts. But perhaps the commonest method is to duck or drench a human figure or puppet, who represents in many instances the vegetation demon. The gipsies of Transylvania celebrate the festival of “Green George” at Easter or on St George’s Day; a boy dressed up in leaves and blossoms is the principal figure; he throws grass to the cattle of the tribe, and after various other ceremonies a pretence is made of throwing him into the water; but in fact only a puppet is ducked in the stream.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Magic/Magic and Science

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​Magic and Science.—It is a commonplace that the sciences have developed from non-scientific beginnings; the root of astronomy is to be sought in astrology (q.v.), of chemistry in alchemy (q.v.), of leechcraft in the practices of the savage magician, who depends for much of his success on suggestion, conscious or unconscious, but also relies on a pharmacopeia of no mean extent. The dynamical theory of magic and religion brings primitive man from one point of view far nearer to the modern man of science than was previously suspected, we may fairly say that the Australians have an idea not unlike that of the transformation and conservation of energy, that this energy they store in accumulators, transmit by means of conductors, and so on. The discovery of these complicated ideas only serves to show how far the present-day peoples in the lower stages of culture have travelled from the primitive man who knew neither magic nor religion. But it is perhaps less in respect of abstract ideas than by its concrete investigations into properties, experiment and otherwise that magic has been the forerunner of science.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Prawn

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​PRAWN, the name of an edible large shrimp-like crustacean in Great Britain usually applied to Leander serratus (see Shrimp). The word is in M. Eng. prayne or prane, and no cognate forms are found in any other languages. It has often been referred to the Lat. perna, a ham-shaped shellfish, but this is due to Florio, who by a mistake glosses parnocchie, prawne-fishes or shrimps. The O. Ital. perna and pernocchia meant a shellfish which yielded “nacre” or mother-of-pearl.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Praying Wheel

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​PRAYING WHEEL, a mechanical apparatus used by the Lamaist Buddhists in Tibet and elsewhere for offering prayers. Strips of paper bearing a manifold repetition of the words “The Jewel in the Lotus, Amen,” are wrapped round cylinders of all sizes—from hand-mills to wind- or water-mills. As the wheel revolves these uncoil and the prayer is considered to be offered.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Praxilla

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​PRAXILLA, of Sicyon, Greek lyric poetess, one of the so-called nine “lyric” Muses, flourished about 450 B.C. According to Athenaeus (xv. 694), she was famous as a composer of scolia (short lyrical poems sung after dinner), which were considered equal to those of Alcaeus and Anacreon. She also wrote dithyrambs and hymns, chiefly on mystic and mythological subjects, genealogies, and the love-stories of the gods and heroes. A dactylic metre was also called by her name.
Fragments in T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeci, vol. iii.; see also C. F. Neue, De Praxillae Sicyoniae reliquiis (progr. Dorpat, 1844).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pratt, Orson

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​PRATT, ORSON (1811-1881), Mormon apostle, was born of humble parents at Hartford, New York. In 1830 he joined the Mormon Church, becoming a member of its council of twelve in 1834 and one of its twelve apostles in 1835. Pratt was also a mathematician of some note. He was professor of mathematics in the university of Deseret and wrote several books on this subject, these including Cubic and Biquadratic Equations (1866). He was a member, and several times speaker, of the Utah House of Representatives. Among his writings may be mentioned Key to the Universe (1866) and The Bible and Polygamy (1870).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Praxias and Androsthenes

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​PRAXIAS and ANDROSTHENES, Greek sculptors, who are said by Pausanias (x. 19, 4) to have executed the pediments of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Both were Athenians; Praxias a pupil of Calamnis. The statement raises historic difficulties, as, according to the leaders of the recent French excavations at Delphi, the temple of Apollo was destroyed about 373 B.C. and rebuilt by 339 B.C., a date which seems too late for the lifetime of a pupil of Calamis. In any case no fragments of the pediments of this later temple have been found, and it has been suggested that they were removed bodily to Rome.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nepos, Julius

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​NEPOS, JULIUS, the last but one of the Roman emperors of the West (474–475). He was a nephew of Marcellinus, prince of Dalmatia, whom he succeeded in his principality. After the death of Olybrius the throne of the West remained vacant for some months, during which Italy was abandoned to barbarians. Being connected by marriage with Leo I., emperor of the East, he was selected by him to succeed Olybrius on the Western throne, and proclaimed at Ravenna. After capturing his rival Glycerius, who had been nominated by the army in 473, at the mouth of the Tiber, he was recognized as emperor in Rome, Italy and Gaul. The only event of the reign of Nepos was the inglorious cession to the Visigoths of the province of Auvergne. In 475 Orestes, father of Augustulus, afterwards the last emperor of the West, raised the standard of revolt and marched against Nepos at Ravenna. The emperor fled into Dalmatia, and continued to reside at Salona until his assassination by two of his own officers in 480, possibly at the instigation of Glycerius, who had been compelled to enter the church and had been appointed bishop of Salona.
See Tillemont, Hist. des empereurs, vi.; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 36.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Neptune (god)

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​NEPTUNE (Lat. Neptuntus), an Italian god, of unknown origin and meaning, paired with Salacia, possibly the goddess of the salt water. At an early date (399 B.C.) he was identified with the Greek Poseidon (q.v.), when the Sibylline books ordered a lectisternium in his honour (Livy v. 13). His festival, Neptunalia, at which tents were made from the branches of trees, was celebrated on the 23rd of July, and his temple, containing a famous marine group by Scopas, stood near the Circus Flaminius. In earlier times it was the god Fortunus who was thanked for naval victories; but Sextus Pompeius called himself son of Neptune, and Agrippa dedicated to Neptune a temple (Basilica Neptuni) in the Campus Martius in honour of the naval victory of Actium.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nerchinsk

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​NERCHINSK, a town of Eastern Siberia, in the government of Transbaikalia, 183 m. by rail E. of Chita, on the left bank of the Nercha, 21/2 m. above its confluence with the Shilka. Pop. (1897) 6713. It is badly built of wood, and its lower parts frequently suffer from inundations. It has a small museum. The inhabitants support themselves mainly by agriculture, tobacco-growing and cattle-breeding; a few merchants trade in furs and cattle, in brick-tea from China, and manufactured wares from Russia.
The fort of Nerchinsk dates from 1654, and the town was founded in 1658 by Pashkov, who in that year opened direct communication between the Russian settlements in Transbaikalia and those on the Amur which had been founded by Cossacks and fur-traders coming from the Yakutsk region. In 1689 was signed between Russia and China the treaty of Nerchinsk, which stopped for two centuries the farther advance of the Russians into the basin of the Amur. After that Nerchinsk became the chief centre for the trade with China. The opening of the western route through Mongolia, by Urga, and the establishment of a custom-house at Kiakhta in 1728 diverted this trade into a new channel. But Nerchinsk acquired fresh importance from the influx of immigrants, mostly exiles, into eastern Transbaikalia, the discovery of rich mines and the arrival of great numbers of convicts, and ultimately it became the chief town of Transbaikalia. In 1812 it was transferred from the banks of the Shilka to its present site, on account of the floods. Since the foundation, in 1851, of Chita, the present capital of Transbaikalia, Nerchinsk has been falling into decay.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nereus

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​NEREUS, in Greek mythology, the eldest son of Pontus and Gaea, and father of the fifty Nereïds. He is a beneficent and venerable old man of the sea, full of wisdom and skilled in prophecy, but, like Proteus, he will only reveal what he knows under compulsion. Thus Heracles seized him when asleep, and, although he attempted to escape by assuming various forms, compelled him to reveal the whereabouts of the apples of the Hesperides (Apollodorus ii. 5). His favourite dwelling-place is a cavern in the depths of the Aegean. The fifty daughters of Nereus, the Nereïds, are personifications of the smiling, quiet sea. Of these, Thetis and Amphitrite rule the sea according to the legend of different localities; Galatea is a Sicilian figure, who plays with and deludes her rustic lover of the shore, Polyphemus. Nereus is represented with the sceptre and trident; the Nereïds are depicted as graceful maidens, lightly clad or naked, riding on tritons and dolphins. The name has nothing to do with the modern Greek νερό (really νεαρόν, “fresh” [water]): it is probably a short form of Νήριτος.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nerchinskiy Zavod

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​NERCHINSK (in full Nerchinskiy Zavod), a town and silver mine of East Siberia, in the government of Transbaikalia, 150 m. E.S.E. of another Nerchinsk (q.v.) (with which it is often confused), on a small affluent of the Argun. Pop. (1897) 3000. It lies in a narrow valley between barren mountains, and is much better built than any of the district towns of East Siberia. It has a chemical laboratory for mining purposes, and a meteorological observatory (51° 18′ N., 119° 37′ E., 2200 ft. above sea-level), where meteorological and magnetical observations have been made every hour since 1842. The average yearly temperature is 25·3° F., with extremes of 97·7° and −52·6°.
Nerchinsk Mining District extends over an area of 29,450 sq. m., and includes all the silver-mines and gold-fields between the Shilka and the Argun, together with a few on the left bank of the Shilka. It is traversed by several parallel chains of mountains which rise to 4500 ft., and are intersected by a complicated system of deep, narrow valleys, densely wooded, with a few expansions along the larger rivers, where the inhabitants with difficulty raise some rye and wheat. The population (75,625 in 1897) consists of Russians, Buryats and Tunguses. Included in this number were some 2300 convicts. The mountains, so far as they have been geologically explored, consist of crystalline slates and limestones—probably Upper Silurian and Devonian—interspersed with granite, syenite and diorite; they contain rich ores of silver, lead, tin and iron, while the diluvial and alluvial valley formations contain productive auriferous sands.
The Nerchinsk silver mines began to be worked in 1704, but during the first half of the 18th century their yearly production did not exceed 8400 oz., and the total amount for the first 150 years (1704–1854) amounted to 11,540,000 oz. The lead was mostly neglected on account of the difficulties of transport, but its production is at present on the increase. Gold was first discovered in 1830, and between 1833 and 1855 260,000 oz. of gold dust were obtained. In 1864 a large number of auriferous deposits were discovered. Until 1863 all the labour was performed by serfs, the property of the emperor, and by convicts, numbering usually nearly four thousand.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nerbudda

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​NERBUDDA, or Narbada, a river of India. It is traditionally regarded as the boundary between Hindustan proper and the Deccan. It rises on the summit of Amarkantak hill in Rewa state, and for the first 200 m. of its course winds among the Mandla hills, which form the head of the Satpura range; then at Jubbulpore, passing through the “Marble Rocks,” it enters its proper valley between the Vindhyan and Satpura ranges, and pursues a direct westerly course to the Gulf of Cambay. Its total course through the Central Provinces and Gujarat amounts to about 800 m., and it falls into the sea in the Bombay district of Broach. It receives the drainage of the northern slopes of the Satpuras, but not that of the Vindhyan tableland, the streams from which flow into the Ganges and Jumna. After leaving the Central Provinces, the river widens out in the fertile district of Broach, with an average breadth of 1/2 m. to 1 m. Below Broach city it forms an estuary which is 13 m. broad where it enters the Gulf of Cambay. The Nerbudda is nowhere utilized for irrigation, and navigation is confined to the lower section. In the rainy season boats of considerable size sail about 60 m. above Broach city. Sea-going vessels of about 70 tons frequent the port of Broach, but they are entirely dependent on the tide. In sanctity the Nerbudda ranks only second to the Ganges among the rivers of India, and along its whole course are special places of pilgrimage. The most meritorious act that a pilgrim can perform is to walk from the sea to the source of the river and back along the opposite bank. This pilgrimage takes from one to two years to accomplish.
The Nerbudda has given its name to a division of the Central Provinces, comprising the five districts of Narsinghpur, Hoshangabad, Nimar, Betul and Chhindwara. Area, 18,382 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 1,785,008.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oppel, Carl Albert

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​OPPEL, CARL ALBERT (1831–1865), German palaeontologist, was born at Hohenheim in Württemberg, on the 19th of December 1831. After studying mineralogy and geology at Stuttgart, he entered the university of Tübingen, where he graduated Ph.D. in 1853. Here he came under the influence of Quenstedt and devoted his special attention to the fossils of the Jurassic system. With this object he examined in detail during 1854 and the following year the succession of strata in England, France and Germany and determined the various palaeontological stages or zones characterized by special guide-fossils, in most cases ammonites. The results of his researches were published in his great work Die Juraformation Englands, Frankreichs und des südwestlichen Deutschlands (1856–1858). In 1858 he became an assistant in the Palaeontological Museum at Munich. In 1860 he became professor of palaeontology in the university at Munich, and in 1861 director of the Palaeontological Collection. There he continued his labours on the Jurassic fauna, describing new species of crustacea, ammonites, &c. To him also we owe ​the establishment of the Tithonian stage, for strata (mainly equivalent to the English Portland and Purbeck Beds) that occur on the borders of Jurassic and Cretaceous. Of his later works the most important was Paläontologische Mittheilungen aus dem Museum des Königl. Bayer. Staats. (1862–1865). He died at Munich on the 23rd of December 1865.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oppenheim

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​OPPENHEIM, a town of Germany, in the grand duchy of Hesse, picturesquely situated on the slope of vine-clad hills, on the left bank of the Rhine, 20 m. S. of Mainz, on the railway to Worms. Pop. (1905) 3696. The only relic of its former importance is the Evangelical church of St Catherine, one of the most beautiful Gothic edifices of the 13th and 14th centuries in Germany, and recently restored at the public expense. The town has a Roman Catholic church, several schools and a memorial of the War of 1870–71. Its industries and commerce are principally concerned with the manufacture and export of wine. Above the town are the ruins of the fortress of Landskron, built in the 11th century and destroyed in 1689.
Oppenheim, which occupies the site of the Roman Bauconica, was formerly much larger than at present. In 1226 it appears as a free town of the Empire and later as one of the most important members of the Rhenish League. It lost its independence in 1375, when it was given in pledge to the elector palatine of the Rhine. During the Thirty Years’ War it was alternately occupied by the Swedes and the Imperialists, and in 1689 it was entirely destroyed by the French.
See W. Franck, Geschichte der ehemaligen Reichsstadt Oppenheim (Darmstadt, 1859).