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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mandoline

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​MANDOLINE (Fr. mandoline; Ger. Mandoline; It. mandolina), the treble member of the lute family, and therefore a stringed instrument of great antiquity. The mandoline is classified amongst the stringed instruments having a vaulted back, which is more accentuated than even that of the lute. The mandoline is strung with steel and brass wire strings. There are two varieties of mandolines, both Italian: (1) the Neapolitan, 2 ft. long, which is the best known, and has four courses of pairs of unisons tuned like the violin in fifths; (2) the Milanese, which is slightly larger and has five or six courses of pairs of unisons. The neck is covered by a finger-board, on which are distributed the twelve or more frets which form nuts at the correct points under the strings on which the fingers must press to obtain the chromatic semitones of the scale. The strings are twanged by means of a plectrum or pick, held between the thumb and first finger of the right hand. In order to strike a string the pick is given a gliding motion over the string combined with a down or an up movement, respectively indicated by signs over the notes. In order to sustain notes on the mandoline the effect known as tremolo is employed; it is produced by means of a double movement of the pick up and down over a pair of strings.
The mandoline is a derivative of the mandola or mandore, which was smaller than the lute but larger than either of the mandolines described above. It had from four to eight courses of strings, the chanterelle or melody string being single and the others in pairs of unisons. The mandore is mentioned in Robert de Calenson (12th cent.), and elsewhere; it may be identified with the pandura.
The Neapolitan mandoline was scored for by Mozart as an accompaniment to the celebrated serenade in Don Juan. Beethoven wrote for it a Sonatina per il mandolino, dedicated to his friend Krumpholz. Grétry and Paisiello also introduced it into their operas as an accompaniment to serenades.
The earliest method for the mandoline was published by Fouchette in Paris in 1770. The earliest mention of the instrument in England, in 1707, is quoted in Ashton’s Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne: “Signior Conti will play . . . . on the mandoline, an instrument not known yet.” (K. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mandu

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​MANDU, or Mandogarh, a ruined city in the Dhar state of Central India, the ancient capital of the Mahommedan kingdom of Malwa. The city is situated at an elevation of 2079 ft. and extends for 8 m. along the crest of the Vindhyan mountains. It reached its greatest splendour in the 15th century under Hoshang Shah (1405–1434). The circuit of the battlemented wall is nearly 23 m., enclosing a large number of palaces, mosques and other buildings. The oldest mosque dates from 1405; the finest is the Jama Masjid or great mosque, a notable example of Pathan architecture, founded by Hoshang Shah. The marble-domed tomb of this ruler is also magnificent.
For a description and history of Mandu, see Sir James Campbell’s Gazetteer of Bombay, vol. i. part ii. (1896), and Journal of the Bombay Asiatic Society (vol. xxi.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mandrake

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​MANDRAKE (Mandragora officinarum), a plant of the potato family, order Solanaceae, a native of the Mediterranean region. It has a short stem bearing a tuft of ovate leaves, with a thick fleshy and often forked root. The flowers are solitary, with a purple bell-shaped corolla; the fruit is a fleshy orange-coloured berry. The mandrake has been long known for its poisonous properties and supposed virtues. It acts as an emetic, purgative and narcotic, and was much esteemed in old times; but, except in Africa and the East, where it is used as a narcotic and antispasmodic, it has fallen into well-earned disrepute. In ancient times, according to Isidorus and Serapion, it was used as a narcotic to diminish sensibility under surgical operations, and the same use is mentioned by Ḳazwīnī, i. 297, s.v. “Luffāḥ.” Shakespeare more than once alludes to this plant, as in Antony and Cleopatra: “Give me to drink mandragora.” The notion that the plant shrieked when touched is alluded to in Romeo and Juliet: “And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, that living mortals, hearing them, run mad.” The mandrake, often growing like the lower limbs of a man, was supposed to have other virtues, and was much used for love philtres, while the fruit was supposed, and in the East is still supposed, to facilitate pregnancy (Aug., C. Faust. xxii. 56; cf. Gen. xxx. 14, where the Hebrew דּדּראֹם is undoubtedly the mandrake). Like the mallow, the mandrake was potent in all kinds of enchantment (see Maimonides in Chwolson, Ssabier, ii. 459). Dioscorides identifies it with the κιρκαία, the root named after the enchantress Circe. To it appears to apply the fable of the magical herb Baaras, which cured demoniacs, and was procured at great risk or by the death of a dog employed to drag it up, in Josephus (B. J. vii. 6, § 3). The German name of the plant (Alraune; O. H. G. Alrûna) indicates the prophetic power supposed to be in little images (homunculi, Goldmännchen, Galgenmännchen) made of this root which were cherished as oracles. The possession of such roots was thought to ensure prosperity. (See Du Cange, s.vv. “Mandragora” and Littré.)
Gerard in 1597 (Herball, p. 280) described male and female mandrakes, and Dioscorides also recognizes two such plants corresponding to the spring and autumn species (M. vernalis and M. officinarum respectively), differing in the colour of the foliage and shape of fruit.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pedigree

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​PEDIGREE, a genealogical tree, a tabular statement of descent (see Genealogy). The word first appears at the beginning of the 15th century and takes an extraordinary variety of forms, e.g. pedicree, pe de gre, petiegrew, petygru, &c. It is generally accepted that these point to a corruption of Fr. pied de grue, foot of a crane, and that the probable reference is to the marks resembling the claw of a bird found in old genealogies showing the lines of descent. Such etymologies as Minshea’s par degrés, by degrees, or père degrés, descent by the father, are mere guesses.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pediment

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​PEDIMENT (equivalents, Gr. ἀετός, Lat. fastigium, Fr. ponton), in classic architecture the triangular-shaped portion of the wall above the cornice which formed the termination of the roof behind it. The projecting mouldings of the cornice which surround it enclose the tympanum, which is sometimes decorated with sculpture. The pediment in classic architecture corresponds to the gable in Gothic architecture, where the roof is of loftier pitch. It was employed by the Greeks only as the front of the roof which covered the main building; the Romans, however, adopted it as a decorative termination to a doorway, niche or window, and occasionally, in a row of windows or niches, alternated the triangular with a segmental pediment. It was reserved for the Italian architects of the decadence to break the pediment in the centre, thus destroying its original purpose. The earliest English form of the word is periment or peremint, probably a workman’s corruption of “pyramid.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peekskill

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​PEEKSKILL, a village of Westchester county, New York, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Hudson river, about 41 m. N. of New York City. Pop. (1910, census), 15,245. It is served by the New York Central & Hudson River railway, and by passenger and freight steamboat lines on the Hudson river. The village is the home of many New York business men. At Peekskill are the Peekskill military academy (1833, nonsectarian); St Mary’s school, Mount St Gabriel (Protestant Episcopal), a school for girls established by the sisterhood of St Mary; the Field memorial library; St Joseph’s home (Roman Catholic); the Peekskill hospital, and several sanatoria. Near the village is the state military camp, where the national guard of the state meets in annual encampment. Peekskill has many manufactures, and the factory products were valued in 1905 at $7,251,897, an increase of 306·7% since 1900. The site was settled early in the 18th century, but the village itself dates from about 1760, when it took its present name from the adjacent creek or “kill,” on which a Dutch trader, Jans Peek, of New York City, had established a trading post. During the latter part of the War of Independence. Peekskill was an important outpost of the Continental Army, and in the neighbourhood several small engagements were fought between American and British scouting parties. The village was incorporated in 1816. Peekskill was the country home of Henry Ward Beecher.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pedometer

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​PEDOMETER (Lat. pes, foot, and Gr. μέτρον, measure), an apparatus in the form of a watch, which, carried on the person of a walker, counts the number of paces he makes, and thus indicates approximately the distance travelled. The ordinary form has a dial-plate marked for yards and miles. The registration is effected by the fall of a heavy pendulum, caused by the percussion of each step. The pendulum is forced back to a horizontal position by a delicate spring, and with each stroke a fine-toothed ratchet-wheel connected with it is moved round a certain length. The ratchet communicates with a train of wheels which work the dial-hands. In using the apparatus a measured mile or other known distance is walked and the indication thereby made on the dial-plate observed. According as it is too great or too small, the stroke of the pendulum is shortened or lengthened by a screw. Obviously the pedometer is little better than an ingenious toy, depending even for rough measurements on the uniformity of pace maintained throughout the journey measured.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pedro II.

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​PEDRO II. (1825–1891), emperor of Brazil, came to the throne in childhood, having been born on the 2nd of December 1825, and proclaimed emperor in April 1831, upon the abdication of his father. He was declared of full age in 1840. For a long period few thrones appeared more secure, and his prosperous and beneficent rule might have endured throughout his life but for his want of energy and inattention to the signs of the times. The rising generation had become honeycombed with republicanism, the prospects of the imperial succession were justly regarded as unsatisfactory, the higher classes had been estranged by the emancipation of the slaves, and all these causes of discontent found expression in a military revolt, which in November 1889 overthrew the seemingly solid edifice of the Brazilian Empire in a few hours. Dom Pedro retired to Europe, and died in Paris on the 5th of December 1891. The chief events of his reign had been the emancipation of the slaves, and the war with Paraguay in 1864-70. Dom Pedro was a model constitutional sovereign, and a munificent patron of science and letters. He travelled in the United States (1876), and thrice visited Europe (1871–1872, 1876–1877, 1886–1889).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peebles

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​PEEBLES, a royal and police burgh and county town of Peeblesshire, Scotland, situated at the junction of Eddleston Water with the Tweed. Pop. (1901), 5266. It is 27 m. south of Edinburgh by the North British Railway (22 m. by road), and is also the terminus of a branch line of the Caledonian system from Carstairs in Lanarkshire. The burgh consists of the new town, the principal quarter, on the south of the Eddleston, and the old on the north; the Tweed is crossed by a handsome five-arched bridge. Peebles is a noted haunt of anglers, and the Royal Company of Archers shoot here periodically for the silver arrow given by the burgh. The chief public buildings are the town and county halls, the corn exchange, the hospital and Chambers Institution. The last was once the town house of the earls of March, but was presented to Peebles by William Chambers, the publisher, in 1859. The site of the castle, which stood till the beginning of the 18th century, is now occupied by the parish church, built in 1887. Of St Andrew’s Church, founded in 1195, nothing remains but the tower, restored by William Chambers, who was buried beside it in 1883. The church of the Holy Rood was erected by Alexander III. in 1261, to contain a supposed remnant of the true cross discovered here. The building remained till 1784, when it was nearly demolished to provide stones for a new parish church. Portions of the town walls still exist, and there are also vaulted cellars constructed in the 16th and 17th centuries as hiding-places against Border freebooters. The old cross, which had stood for several years in the quadrangle of Chambers Institution, was restored and erected in High Street in 1895. The industries consist of the manufactures of woollens and tweeds, and of meal and flour mills. The town is also an important agricultural centre.
The name of Peebles is said to be derived from the pebylls, or tents, which the Gadeni pitched here in the days of the Romans. The place was early a favourite residence of the Scots kings when they came to hunt in Ettrick forest. It probably received its charter from Alexander III., was created a royal burgh in 1367 and was the scene of the poem of Peblis to the Play, ascribed to James I. In 1544 the town sustained heavy damage in the expedition led by the 1st earl of Hertford, afterwards the protector Somerset, and in 1604 a large portion of it was destroyed by fire. Though James VI. extended its charter, Peebles lost its importance after the union of the Crowns.
On the north bank of the Tweed, one mile west of Peebles, stands Neidpath Castle. The ancient peel tower dates probably from the 13th century. Its first owners were Tweeddale Frasers or Frisels, from whom it passed, by marriage, to the Hays of Yester in Haddingtonshire, earls of Tweeddale. It was besieged and taken by Cromwell in 1650. The third earl of Tweeddale (1645–1713) sold it to the duke of Queensberry in 1686. The earl of Wemvss succeeded to the Neidpath property in 1810.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pedipalpi

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​PEDIPALPI, Arachnida (q.v.) related to the spiders, and serving in a measure to bridge over the structural interval between the latter and the scorpions. The appendages of the second pair are large and prehensile, as in scorpions, but are armed with spines, to impale and hold prey. The appendages of the third pair, representing the first pair of walking legs in spiders and scorpions, are, on the contrary, long, attenuated and many-jointed at the end. Like the antennae of insects, they act as feelers. It is from this structural feature that the term “pedipalpi” has been derived. In the tailless division of the Pedipalpi, namely the Amblypygi of which Phrynus is a commonly cited type, these tactile appendages are exceedingly long and lashlike, whereas in the tailed division, the Uropygi, of which Thelyphonus is best known, the limb is much shorter and less modified. Thelyphonus and its allies, however, have a long tactile caudal flagellum, the homologue of the scorpion’s sting; but its exact use is unknown. A third division, the Tartarides, a subordinate group of the Uropygi, contains minute Arachnida differing principally from the typical Uropygi in having the caudal process unjointed and short. Apart from the Tartarides, the Pedipalpi
Mexican tailed Pedipalp (Mastigoproetus giganteus).
​are large or medium-sized Arachnida, nocturnal in habits and spending the day under stones, logs of wood or loosened bark. Some species of the Uropygi (Thelyphonidae) dig burrows, and in the east there is a family of Amblypygi, the Charontidae, of which many of the species live in the recesses of deep caves. Specimens of another species have been found under stones between tide marks in the Andaman Islands. The Pedipalpi feed upon insects, and like spiders, are oviparous. The eggs after being laid are carried about by the mother, adhering in a glutinous mass to the underside of the abdomen.
Pedipalpi date back to the Carboniferous Period, occurring in deposits of that age both in Europe and North America. Moreover, the two main divisions of the order, which were as sharply differentiated then as they are now, have existed practically unchanged from that remote epoch.
In spite of the untold ages they have been in existence, the Pedipalpi are more restricted in range than the scorpions. The Uropygi are found only in Central and South America and in south and eastern Asia, from India and south China to the Solomon Islands. The absence of the entire order from Africa is an interesting fact. The distribution of the Amblypygi practically covers that of the Uropygi, but in addition they extend from India through Arabia into tropical and southern Africa. Both groups are unknown in Madagascar, in Australia, with the exception possibly of the extreme north, and in New Zealand. Very little can be said with certainty about the distribution of the Tartarides. They have been recorded from the Indian Region, West Africa and sub-tropical America.  (R. I. P.)
Mexican tailed Pedipalp (Mastigoproetus giganteus).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peel

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​PEEL. (1) The skin or rind of a fruit; thus “to peel” is to remove the outer covering of anything. The etymology of the word is closely connected with that of “pill,” to plunder, surviving in “pillage.” Both words are to be referred to French and thence to Latin. In French peler and piller, though now distinguished in meaning (the first used of stripping bark or rind, the second meaning to rob), were somewhat confused in application, and a similar confusion occurs in English till comparatively late. The Latin words from which they are derived are pellis, skin, and pilare, to strip of hair (pilus). (2) The name of a class of small fortified dwelling-houses built during the 16th century on the borders between Scotland and England. They are also known as “bastel-houses,” i.e. “bastille-houses,” and consist of a square massive tower with high pitched roof, the lower part being vaulted, the upper part containing a few living rooms. The entrance is on the upper floor, access being gained by a movable ladder. The vaulted ground-floor chamber served for the cattle when there was danger of attack. The word appears in various forms, e.g. pele, peil, and Latinized as pelum, &c; “pile” is also found used synonymously, but the New English Dictionary (s.v. pile) considers the two words distinct. It seems more probable that the Word is to be identified with “pale,” a stake (Lat. palus). The earlier meaning of “peel” is a palisaded enclosure used as an additional defence for a fortified post or as an independent stronghold.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Traffic

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​TRAFFIC, properly the interchange or passing of goods or merchandise between persons, communities or countries, commerce or trade. The term in current usage is chiefly applied collectively to the goods, passengers, vehicles and vessels passing to and fro over the streets, roads, sea, rivers, canals, railways, &c.
The origin of the word is obscure. It occurs in Fr. trafique, and trafiquer, Ital. traffico, trafficare, Sp. trafago, trafagar. Du Cange (Gloss. Med. el Inf. Lot.) quotes the use of traffigare from a treaty between Milan and Venice of 1380, and gives other variants of the word in medieval Latin. There is a medieval Latin word transfeeator, an explorer, spy, investigator (see Du Cange, op. cit., s.v.) which occurs as early as 1243, and is stated to be from transfegare, a corruption of transfretare, to cross over the sea (trans, across, fretum, gulf, strait, channel). Diez (Etymologisches Worterbuch der romanischen Sprachen) connects the word with Port, trasfegar, to decant, which he traces to Late Lat. vicare, to exchange, Lat. vicis, change, turn. A suggestion (Athenaeum, app. 7, 1900) has been made that it is to be referred to a late Hebrew corruption (traffik) of Gr. Tpoira'Uds, pertaining to a trophy, applied to a silver coin with the figure of victory upon it and termed in Latin victoriatus.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Traherne, Thomas

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​TRAHERNE, THOMAS (1637?-1674), English writer, was, according to Anthony a Wood, a "shoemaker's son of Hereford." He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1652, and after receiving his degree in 1656 took holy orders. In the following year he was appointed rector of Credenhill, near Hereford, and in 1661 received his M.A. degree. He found a good patron in Sir Orlando Bridgeman, lord keeper of the seals from 1667 to 1672. Traherne became his domestic chaplain and also " minister " of Teddington. He died at Bridgeman's house at Teddington on or about the 27th of September 1674. He led, we are told, a simple and devout life, and was well read in primitive antiquity and the fathers. His prose works are Roman Forgeries (1673), Christian Ethics (1675), and A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God (1699). His poems have a curious history. They were left in MS. and presumably passed with the rest of his library into the hands of his brother Philip. They then became apparently the possession of the Skipps of Ledbury, Herefordshire. When the property of this family was dispersed in 1888 the value of the MSS. was unrecognised, for in 1896 or 1897 they were discovered by Mr W. T. Brooke on a street bookstall. Dr Grosart bought them, and proposed to include them in his edition of the works of Henry Vaughan, to whom he was disposed to assign them. He left this task uncompleted, and Mr Bertram Dobell, who eventually secured the MSS., was able to establish the authorship of Thomas Traherne. The discovery included, beside the poems, four complete "Centuries of Meditation," short paragraphs embodying reflexions on religion and morals. Some of these, evidently autobiographical in character, describe a childhood from which the "glory and the dream" was slow to depart. Of the power of nature to inform the mind with beauty, and the ecstatic harmony of a child with the natural world, the earlier poems, which contain his best work, are full. In their manner, as in their matter, they remind the reader of Blake and Wordsworth. Traherne has at his best an excellence all his own, but there can be no reasonable doubt that he was familiar both with the poems of Herbert and of Vaughan. The poems on childhood may well have been inspired by Vaughan's lines entitled The Retreat. His poetry is essentially metaphysical and his workmanship is uneven, but the collection contains passages of great beauty.
See Bertram Dobell's editions of the Poetical Works (1906) and Centuries of Meditation (1908).