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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Simeon Stylites, St

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​ SIMEON STYLITES, ST (390-459), the first and most famous of the Pillar-hermits (Gr. στύλος, pillar), was born in N. Syria. After having been expelled from a monastery for his excessive austerities, at thirty years of age he built a pillar six feet high on which he took up his abode. He made new pillars higher and higher, till after ten years he reached the height of sixty feet. On this pillar he lived for thirty years without ever descending. A railing ran round the capital of the pillar, and a ladder enabled his disciples to take him the necessaries of life. From his pillar he preached and exercised a great influence, converting numbers of heathen and taking part in ecclesiastical politics. The facts would seem incredible were they not vouched for by Theodoret, who knew him personally (Historia religiosa, c. 26). Moreover, Simeon had many imitators, well authenticated Pillar-hermits being met with till the 16th century.
The standard work on the subject is Les Stylites (1895), by H. Delehaye, the Bollandist; for a summary see the article “Säulenheilige,” in Herzog's Realencyklopädie (ed. 3). On Simeon see Th. Nöldeke's Sketches from Eastern History (1892), p. 210, and the Dictionary of Christian Biography.
    (E. C. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Simferopol

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​ SIMFEROPOL, a town of Russia, capital of the government of Taurida, in the S. of the Crimea, 78 m. by rail N.E. of Sevastopol and 800 from Moscow. Pop. (1897) 60,876. It occupies an admirable site on the N. slopes of the Chatyr-dagh Mountains, and is divided into two parts—the European, well built in stone, and the Tatar, with narrow and filthy streets peopled by some 7000 Tatars and by Jews. Although it has grown since the railway brought it into connexion with the rest of the empire, it still remains a mere administrative centre. It is the see of a bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church and the headquarters of the 7th Russian army corps. There are a museum and monuments to Dolgoruki, conqueror of the Crimea, and to the empress Catherine II. (1890). The town is famous for its fruit.
In the neighbourhood stood the small fortress of Napoli, erected by the ruler of Taurida some hundred years before the Christian era, and it existed until the end of the 3rd century. Afterwards the Tatar settlement of Ak-mechet, which in the 17th century was the residence of the chief military commander of the khan, had the name of Sultan-serai. In 1736 it was taken and burnt by the Russians, and in 1784, after the conquest of the Crimea by the Russians, it received its present name and became the capital of Taurida.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Simmons, Edward Emerson

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​SIMMONS, EDWARD EMERSON (1852-), American artist, was born at Concord, Massachusetts, on the 27th of October 1852. He graduated from Harvard College in 1874, and was a pupil of Lefebvre and Boulanger. in Paris, where he took a gold medal. He was awarded the prize by the Municipal Art Society of New York for a mural decorative scheme, which he carried out for the criminal courts building, later decorating the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, the Library of Congress, Washington, and the Capitol at Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was one of the original members of the Ten American Painters.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Smith, Richard Baird

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​SMITH, RICHARD BAIRD (1818-1861), British engineer officer, son of a surgeon in the royal navy, was born on the 31st of December 1818. He was educated at Lasswade and Addiscombe, and joined the Madras Engineers in 1838. Being transferred to the Bengal Engineers, he served through the second ​Sikh war, and was present at the battles of Badiwal, Aliwal and Sobraon. He was then for some years employed on canal work, and when the Mutiny broke out was in charge of Roorkee. He promptly concentrated the Europeans in the workshops, and though the native sappers deserted, his forethought prevented any loss of life. When Delhi was invested he was appointed chief engineer in charge of the siege works. He reached Delhi on the 2nd of July, and immediately advised General Barnard to assault the city. Barnard died while the advice was still under consideration, and his successor, General Reed, could not be induced to follow it; and when Reed in turn was succeeded by Archdale Wilson, the besiegers were so weakened by losses that the moment for a successful attack had passed. Baird Smith, however, prevented Wilson from relaxing his hold on Delhi until the arrival of John Nicholson with reinforcements from the Punjab, and of the siege train from Phillour. Nicholson then joined Baird Smith in compelling Wilson to make the assault, which proved successful, on the 14th of September. Baird Smith was ably assisted by Captain Alexander Taylor, but Nicholson was unjust to Baird Smith in assigning to Taylor the chief credit for the siege operations. After the capture of Delhi he returned to Roorkee and to civil employment, and for a time the value of his military services was insufficiently recognized. After the Mutiny he was made A.D.C. to Queen Victoria, became secretary to the government of India in the public works department, and gained well-deserved credit in the famine of 1861. But the onerous character of this work, following a wound and illness at Delhi, broke down his constitution, and he died at sea on the 13th of December 1861. He married a daughter of De Quincey, who long survived him.
See Colonel H. M. Vibart, Richard Baird Smith (1897).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Smith, Sir Thomas

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​SMITH, SIR THOMAS (1513–1577), English scholar and diplomatist, was born at Saffron Walden in Essex on the 23rd of December 1513. He became a fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge, in 1530, and in 1533 was appointed a public reader or professor. He lectured in the schools on natural philosophy, and on Greek in his own rooms. In 1540 Smith went abroad, and, after studying in France and Italy and taking a degree of law at Padua, returned to Cambridge in 1542. He now took the lead in the reform of the pronunciation of Greek, his views after considerable controversy being universally adopted. He and his friend Sir John Cheke were the great classical scholars of the time in England. In January 1543/4 he was appointed first regius professor of civil law. He was vice-chancellor of the university the same year, and became chancellor to the bishop of Ely, by whom he was ordained priest in 1546. In 1547 he became provost of Eton and dean of Carlisle. He early adopted Protestant views, a fact which brought him into prominence when Edward VI. came to the throne. During Somerset’s protectorate he entered public life and was made a secretary of state, being sent on an important diplomatic mission to Brussels. In 1548 he was knighted. On the accession of Mary he was deprived of all his offices, but in the succeeding reign was prominently employed in public affairs. He became a member of parliament, and was sent in 1562 as ambassador to France, where he remained till 1566; and in 1572 he again went to France in the same capacity for a short time. He remained one of Elizabeth’s most trusted Protestant counsellors, being appointed in 1572 chancellor of the order of the Garter and a secretary of state. He died on the 12th of August 1577. In 1661 the grandson of his ​brother George was created a baronet, and from him the title has descended to the Smith family of the present day.
His best-known work, entitled De Republica Anglorum: the Maner of Government or Policie of the Realme of England, was published posthumously in 1583, and passed through many editions. His epistle to Gardiner, De recta et emendata linguae Graecae pronunciatione, was printed at Paris in 1568; the same volume includes his dialogue De recta et emendata linguae Anglicanae scriptione. A number of his letters from France are in the foreign state papers.
See A. F. Pollard’s article in the Dict. Nat. Biog. A life by Strype was published in 1698 (Oxford edition, 1820).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Smith, Morgan Lewis

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​SMITH, MORGAN LEWIS (1822-1874), American general, was born in Oswego county, New York, on the 8th of March 1822. In 1843 he settled in Indiana, and later had some military experience in the United States army. At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised the 8th Missouri regiment, of which he was elected colonel in 1861. He commanded a brigade at the capture of Fort Donelson, and did good service at Shiloh. In July 1862 he was made a brigadier-general U.S.V., and served under Sherman in the river expedition against Vicksburg. At the battle of Chickasaw Bayou he received a severe wound, from which he recovered only in time to join the Army of the Tennessee before Chattanooga. He led his division in the battles of the Chattanooga campaign, as also, in the following year, in the Atlanta campaign. At the battle of Atlanta he commanded Logan's corps. Afterwards he was placed in charge of Vicksburg. General Sherman said of M. L. Smith, " He was one of the bravest men in action I ever knew." He died at Jersey City on the 29th of December 1874.
His brother, Giles Alexander Smith (1829-1876), also a distinguished soldier of the Federal army, was born in Jefferson county, N.Y., on the 29th of September 1829. At the beginning of the Civil War he joined the Missouri volunteers, in which he became a captain. He took part in the capture of Fort Donelson, the battle of Shiloh and the Operations against Corinth, becoming, later in 1862, colonel of a regiment which he led at Chickasaw Bayou. After the final campaign against Vicksburg he was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers. He was wounded at the battle of Chattanooga. He took part in the Atlanta campaign, the "March to the Sea" and the Carolinas campaign, rising to the rank of major-general of volunteers. After the war he declined the offer of a colonelcy in the regular army, and was subsequently engaged in politics, retiring from public life in 1872. He died at Bloomington, 111., on the 8th of November 1876.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Smith, Robert

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​SMITH, ROBERT (1680–1768), English mathematician, was born in 1680, probably at Lea near Gainsborough. After attending Leicester grammar school he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1708, and becoming minor fellow in 1714, major fellow in 1715 and senior fellow in 1739, was chosen master in 1742, in succession to Richard Bentley. From 1716 to 1760 he was Plumian professor of astronomy, and he died in the master's lodge at Trinity on the 2nd of February 1768. Besides editing two works by his cousin, Roger Cotes, who was his predecessor in the Plumian chair, he published A Compleat System of Opticks in 1738, which gained him the sobriquet of "Old Focus," and Harmonics, or the Philosophy of Musical Sounds in 1749. He was the founder of the Smith's prizes at Cambridge, having by his will left £3500 South Sea stock to the university, a portion of the interest from which was to be divided yearly between the two junior B.A.'s who had made the greatest progress in mathematics and natural philosophy.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Smith, Henry Preserved

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​SMITH, HENRY PRESERVED (1847–) , American Biblical scholar, was born in Troy, Ohio, on the 23rd of October 1847. He graduated at Amherst College in 1869 and studied theology in Lane Theological Seminary in 1869–1872, in Berlin in 1872–1874 and in Leipzig in 1876–1877. He was instructor in church history in 1874–1875, and in Hebrew in 1875–1876, and was assistant-professor in 1877–1879 and professor in 1879–1893 of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis in Lane Theological Seminary. In 1892 he was tried for heresy by the Presbytery of Cincinnati, was found guilty of teaching (in a pamphlet entitled Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration, 1891) that there were “errors of historic fact,” suppressions of “historic truths,” &c., in the books of Chronicles, and that the “inspiration of the Holy Scriptures is consistent with the unprofitableness of portions of the sacred writings,”—in other words, that inspiration does not imply inerrancy,—and he was suspended from the ministry. Dr Smith retired from the denomination, and in 1893, upon becoming a professor at Andover Theological Seminary, entered the ministry of the Congregational Church. From 1897 to 1906 he was a professor in Amherst College, and in 1907 became a professor in the Meadville (Pennsylvania) Theological School.
He published The Bible and Islam (1897), Commentary on the Books of Samuel (1899, in the “International Critical Commentary”) and Old Testament History (1903, in the “International Theological Library”). In Inspiration and Inerrancy (Cincinnati, 1893), he reprinted the papers on which the heresy charge was made, and outlined the case.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Smith, John Raphael

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​SMITH, JOHN RAPHAEL (1752-1812), English painter and mezzotint engraver, a son of Thomas Smith of Derby, the landscape painter, was born in 1752. He was apprenticed to a linen-draper in Derby, and afterwards pursued the same business in London, adding, however, to his income by the production of miniatures. He then turned to engraving and executed his plate of the “Public Ledger,” which had great popularity, and was followed by his mezzotints of “Edwin the Minstrel” (a portrait of Thomas Haden), after Wright of Derby, and “Mercury Inventing the Lyre,” after Barry. He reproduced some forty of the works of Reynolds, some of these plates ranking among the masterpieces of the art of mezzotint, and he was appointed engraver to the prince of Wales. Adding to his artistic pursuits an extensive connexion as a print-dealer and publisher, he would soon have acquired wealth had it not been for his dissipated habits. He was a boon companion of George Morland, whose figure-pieces he excellently mezzotinted. He painted subject-pictures such as the “Unsuspecting Maid,” “Inattention” and the “Moralist,” exhibiting in the Royal Academy from 1779 to 1790. Upon the decline of his business as a printseller he made a tour through the N. and midland counties of England, producing much hasty and indifferent work, and settled in Doncaster, where he died on the 2nd of March 1812.
As a mezzotint engraver Smith occupies the very highest rank. His prints are delicate, excellent in drawing and finely expressive of colour. His small full-lengths in crayons and his portraits of Fox, Home Tooke, Sir Francis Burdett and the group of the duke of Devonshire and family support his claims as a successful draughtsman and painter. He had a very thorough knowledge of the principles and history of art, and was a brilliant conversationalist.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Smith, Joseph

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​SMITH, JOSEPH, Jr. (1805-1844), the founder, in April 1830, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was born in Sharon, Vermont, on the 23rd of December 1805. He was killed by a mob in a jail at Carthage, Illinois, on the 27th of June 1844. (See Mormons.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Picknell, William Lamb

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​PICKNELL, WILLIAM LAMB (1854–1897), American landscape-painter, was born at Hinesburg, Vermont, on the 23rd of October 1854. He was a pupil of George Inness in Rome for two years, and of J. L. Gérôme in the École des Beaux Arts, Paris. With Robert Wylie he worked for several years in Brittany, at Pont Aven and Concarneau, where he painted his “Route de Concarneau” (Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D.C.). His “Morning on the Loing” received a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1895. In 1880 he became a member of the Society of American Artists, and in 1891 an associate of the National Academy of Design. He died at Marblehead, Massachusetts, on the 8th of August 1897.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Picnic

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​PICNIC, a form of entertainment in which the guests are invited to join an excursion to some place where a meal can be taken in the open air. During the first half of the 19th century the essential of a picnic was that the guests should each bring with them a contribution of provisions. At the beginning of the 19th century a society was formed in London called the “Picnic Society,” the members of which supped at the Pantheon in Oxford Street, and drew lots as to what part of the meal each should supply (see L. Melville, The Beaux of the Regency, 1908, i. 222). The French form pique-nique is said to be of recent introduction in 1692 (Ménage, Diet. etym.). It is doubtful whether picnic is merely a rhyming word, or can be referred to pique, pick, and nique, small coin.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Picrotoxin

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​PICROTOXIN, a neutral principle obtained from the Cocculus indicus, which is the fruit of the Anamirta paniculata. It is used in medicine externally as an antiparasite. Internally it has been successfully used to check the night sweats of phthisis. In large doses it is a powerful poison, causing unconsciousness, delirium, convulsions, gastro-enteritis and stimulation of the respiratory centre followed by paralysis, from which death sometimes results. Formerly low class publicans sometimes added Cocculus indicus berries to beer to increase the intoxicating effects. Its chemical formula is C$_{15}$H$_{16}$O$_6$•H$_2$O.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Picket

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​PICKET, Piquet or Piquet (Fr. piquet, a pointed stake or peg, from piquer, to point or pierce), a military term, signifying an outpost or guard, supposed to have originated in the French army about 1690, from the circumstance that an infantry company on outpost duty dispersed its musketeers to watch, the small group of pikemen called piquet remaining in reserve. Thus at the present day the word “picquet” is, in Great Britain at any rate, restricted to an infantry post on the outpost line, from which the sentries or “groups” of watchers are sent out. In the United States a “picket” is synonymous with a sentry, and the “picket-line” is the extreme advanced line of observation of an army. In the French army picquets are called “grand' gardes,” and the phrase “grand guard” is often met with in English military works of the 17th and 18th centuries. A body of soldiers held in readiness for military or police duties within the limits of a camp or barracks is also called a picquet or “inlying picquet.” These special uses of the word in English axe apparently quite modern (after about 1750). “Picket” in its ordinary meaning of a peg or stake, has always been in common military use, being applied variously to the picketing pegs in horse-lines, to long pointed stakes employed in palisades or stockades, to straight thin rods used for marking out the line of fire for guns, &c. Of the various spellings “picquet” is officially adopted in Great Britain and “picket” in the United States, but the latter is now invariably used when a peg or stake is meant.
Two obsolete meanings of the word should also be mentioned. The “picket” was a form of military punishment in vogue in the 16th and 17th centuries, which consisted in the offender being forced to stand on the narrow flat top of a peg for a period of time. The punishment died out in the 18th century and was so far unfamiliar by 1800 that Sir Thomas Picton, who ordered a mulatto woman to be so punished, was accused by public opinion in England of inflicting a torture akin to impalement. It was thought, in fact, that the prisoner was forced to stand on the head of a pointed stake, and this error is repeated in the New English Dictionary. In the middle of the 19th century, when elongated rifle bullets were a novelty, they were often, and especially in America, called pickets. The ordinary military use of the word gives rise to compound forms such as “picket boat” or “picket launch,” large steam launch or pinnace fitted with guns and torpedoes, and employed for watching the waters of harbours, &c. For picketing in strikes, &c., see below.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pickle

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​PICKLE. In the wider sense the term “pickle” is applied to any saline or acid preservative solution; in the narrower to vegetables preserved in vinegar. The word appears to be an adaptation of Dutch pekel, brine, pickle; cf. Ger. Pökel. The ultimate origin is unknown; connexions with a supposed inventor’s name, such as Beukeler or Böckel are mere inventions. A solution of copper or zinc sulphate is used as a “pickle” for railway-sleepers or other wood, a brine containing salt and saltpetre as a preservative for meat, lime-water as “pickle” for eggs. Domestic pickles are made from small cucumbers, onions, cauliflowers, cabbages, mangoes and unripe walnuts, by either steeping or boiling them in salt-brine and vinegar. On account of the large proportion of water natural to these vegetables, only the strongest vinegar, containing from 5 to 6% of acetic acid, can be used. For the better kinds vinegar made from malted or unmalted barley is as a rule employed, for cheaper varieties simply dilute acetic acid obtained from acetate of lime. Sauces such as Worcestershire sauce, or Yorkshire relish, consist of fluid pickles, that is of salted and variously spiced vinegar solutions or emulsions containing tissue of vegetables (tomatoes, mushrooms, &c.), or of fish (sardines or anchovies).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pico

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​PICO, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, belonging to Portugal, and forming part of the Azores archipelago. Pop. (1900), 24,028; area 175 sq. m. Pico is a conical mountain, rising to the height of 7612 ft. The soil consists entirely of pulverized lava. The so-called Fayal wine, though named after an adjacent island, was formerly produced here, and largely exported to Europe. But in 1852 the vines were attacked by the Oidium fungus and completely destroyed, while the orange-trees suffered almost as much from the Coccus hesperidum. The people were consequently forced to emigrate in great numbers, till the planting of fig-trees and apricots alleviated the evil. Pico also produces a species of wood resembling mahogany, and equal in quality to it. Its chief town is Lagens do Pico. Pop. (2975).