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CHAMBERSS

ENCYCLOPEDIA

A DICTIONARY OF

UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE FOR THE PEOPLE

PUERTO BELLO-PUERTO RICO.

PUERTO BELLO, a small decayed seaport town of the United States of Colombia, on the northern shore of the Isthmus of Panama, and 40 miles north of the town of that name. It is surrounded by mountains, has an excellent harbour, is very unhealthy, and has fallen into decay since 1739, when it was stormed by Admiral Vernon, during the war between England and Spain. Pop. 1300.

-18° 30′ N., long. 65° 39′-67° 11′ W. It is in
size somewhat less than Jamaica, being fully 100
miles from east to west, 40 miles from north to
south, and closely resembling a rectangle in shape.
The island is traversed from east to west by a
range of mountains, 1500 feet in average height,
though rising in one peak to 3678 feet above the
sea. From the base of the mountains, rich alluvial
tracts extend to the sea, and there are numerous
well-wooded and abundantly watered valleys. The
soil is remarkably fertile. The principal crops
and cotton remarkable for its length of fibre,
are sugar, coffee, and tobacco of the finest quality,
tenacity, and whiteness. Cattle and sheep are
extensively reared, of a quality superior to any
others in the West Indies. The imports consist of
cotton, woollen, linen, silk, and embroidered goods,
fruits, wines, &c. The exports are sugar, tobacco,
metals, hardware, and provisions, as ale, porter,
coffee, cotton, molasses, rum, hides, and cattle.
The chief ports are San Juan, commonly called
Puerto Rico, in the north-east, Ponce in the
south-west, and Mayaguez in the west.
West Indies. Area, 3897 sq. m.; pop. 700,000, of
one of the coolest and healthiest places in the
whom the majority are whites, and of the coloured

PUERTO DE SANTA MARI'A (usually called EL PUERTO, the Port), a seaport of Spain, in the modern province of Cadiz, stands at the mouth of the Guadalete, in a most fertile district, on the Bay of Cadiz, 6 miles north-east of the city of that name, and 9 miles by railway south-west of Xeres. Suspension-bridges cross the Guadalete and the Rio de S. Pedro. The mouth of the Guadalete forms the harbour; but the bar is dangerous and much neglected. P., a pleasant and well-built town, resembling Cadiz in its houses, and containing only one long and handsome street, while the others are narrow and ill paved, is the port for the shipment of Xeres wines. The wines are lodged in numerous bodegas, or wine-stores, lofty buildings built with thick walls and narrow windows, in order to secure an even temperature inside. This town vies with Cadiz and San Lucar as a wine-exporting place; race not more than 20,000 are now slaves. In 1871, the principal exporting houses are English or French. The bull-fights which take place here in the total exports were valued at £3,118,492 (of May are among the most famous in the country. which £2,062,067 were for sugar); the imports at Steamers ply frequently between this town and £3,500,000. A great portion of the trade is with Cadiz, and P. supplies that city with drinking- Britain, but owing to high differential duties and water at a cost of several thousand pounds a year. port charges, it is carried on in Spanish bottoms. Pop. 21,278.

PUERTO PRINCIPE, SANTA MARIA DE, an important inland town, in the east of the island of Cuba, about 325 miles east-south-east of Havana, and 45 miles south-west of its port, Las Nuevitas, with which it is connected by railway. Pop. 30,000. PUERTO RICO, an island in the West Indies, belonging to Spain, is one of the Greater Antilles, and lies east of Hayti or St Domingo, lat. 17° 55'

P. R. is

The frequent changes in the executive government of P. R. do not appear to affect its commercial stability. The commerce of the island is almost wholly in the hands of foreigners and Spaniards from the Peninsula. The Preliminary Act of Emancipation, which came into operation at the beginning of 1871, has decreased the number of slaves by 100,000, and the number is daily diminishing. The slave-trade is extinct; and there is a unanimous feeling against any immigration of

PUFF-ADDER-PUFFIN.

labourers, whether Chinese, coolies, or others. A to the removal of the honey, but have been used as deep-sea cable now unites P. R. with Europe, an anesthetic instead of chloroform. The same America, and the other Antilles; railways, irriga-properties belong also to other species. Some of tion, drainage, &c., are still things in embryo. It is them, in a young state, are used in some countries remarkable that, notwithstanding the fertility and as food, and none of them is known to be poisonous. healthiness of P. R., the poverty of the island flora PUFF-BIRD. See BARBET. and fauna is very great; there are hardly any flowers, birds, or wild animals.

PUFF-ADDER (Clotho arietans), a serpent of the family Viperidæ, having a short and broad flat head, with scales so sharply keeled as to end in a kind of spine. It is one of the most venomous and dangerous serpents of South Africa. It attains a length of four or almost five feet, and is thick in proportion to its length, often as thick as a man's arm. Its head is very broad; its tail suddenly tapered; its colour brown, chequered with dark

Puff-adder (Clotho arielans).

brown and white; a reddish band between the eyes; the under parts paler than the upper. Its movements are generally slow, but it turns very quickly if approached from behind. It usually creeps partially immersed in the sand of the South African deserts, its head alone being completely raised above ground. When irritated, it puffs out the upper part of its body, whence its name. The P. is easily killed by the oil, or even by the juice of tobacco. Its poison is used by the Bosjesmans for their arrows.-South Africa produces several other species of Clotho, similar in their habits to the P., and almost equally dangerous.

PUFFBALL (Lycoperdon), a Linnæan genus of Fungi, now divided into many genera, belonging to the section Gasteromycetes, and to the tribe Trichospermi. They mostly grow on the ground, and are roundish, generally without a stem, at first firm and fleshy, but afterwards powdery within; the powder consisting of the spores, among which are many fine filaments, loosely filling the interior of the peridium, or external membrane. The peridium finally bursts at the top, to allow the escape of the spores, which issue from it as very fine dust. Some of the species are common everywhere. Most of them affect rather dry soils, and some are found only in heaths and sandy soils. The most common British species is L. gemmatum, generally from one to two and a half inches in diameter, with a warty and mealy surface. The largest British species, the GIANT P. (L. giganteum), is often many feet in circumference, and filled with a loathsome pulpy mass, when young; but in its mature state, its contents are so dry and spongy that they have often been used for stanching wounds. Their fumes, when burned, have not only the power of stupifying bees, for which they are sometimes used, in order

PUFFENDORF, SAMUEL, Son of a Lutheran clergyman, was born in 1632 at Chemnitz, in Saxony. He received the early part of his education at Grimma; whence he removed to the university of Leipzig. There he studied theology for several years. In 1656 he went to the university of Jena, where he seems to have devoted himself at first chiefly to mathematics, and subsequently to the study of the Law of Nature, as he, and others who have treated on the same subject, have termed the law which regulates the duties of men to one another, independent of the mutual obligation which is enforced by political government, or by revelation of divine will. After quitting Jena, he was appointed tutor to the son of the Swedish ambassador at Copenhagen. Soon after he had received this appointment, a rupture having taken place between Denmark and Sweden, P. was detained as a prisoner in the Danish capital. The power of his mind here shewed itself in a remarkable manner. Deprived of books and of society, he threw himself vigorously into meditating on what he had formerly read in the treatise of Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, and in the writings of Hobbes on the principles of general law. The result was the production of the Elementa Jurisprudentia Universalis -a work which was the foundation of its author's fortune. It was dedicated to the Elector Palatine; and by this prince, P. was appointed to the Professorship of the Law of Nature and Nations at the university of Heidelberg. He now gave his attention to the tissue of absurdities which existed in the constitution of the Germanic Empire. As was to have been expected, the work (De Statu Reipublicae Germanicae, 1667), in which he exposed the defects of the system, raised a storm of controversy. Austria was especially furious. P. had taken care to publish it under a pseudonym-that of Severinus a Mozambano, but still, to avoid the possible consequences, he accepted an invitation from Charles XI. of Sweden, in 1670, to become Professor of the Law of Nations at Lund. During his residence there, he published the work on which his fame now principally rests, De Jure Naturæ et Gentium. He then removed to Stockholm, where the king of Sweden made him his historiographer, with the dignity of a counsellor of state. In his official character, he published a very uninteresting history of Sweden, from the expedition of Gustavus Adol phus into Germany to the death of Queen Christine. Berlin to write the history of his life and reign. P. In 1688, the Elector of Brandenburg invited him to accepted the invitation, and executed the required work in 19 dreary volumes. His intention was to have returned to Stockholm, but death overtook him at Berlin in 1694. P. lacked the genius to render the subjects on which he wrote generally interesting, but his intellectual power was nevertheless very considerable, and it appears to have throughout been honestly exercised and with dorfii in the Memoirs of the Academy of Stockholm, unflagging industry. See Jenisch's Vita Pufen

1802.

PUFFIN (Fratercula), a genus of birds of the Auk (q. v.) family, Alcade, having the bill shorter than the head, very much compressed, its height at the base equal to its length, the ridge of the upper mandible as high as the top of the head, both mandibles arched, and transversely grooved. The

PUG-PUGILISM.

bill gives to the birds of this genus a very extraordinary appearance. They have short legs, very short tail, and short wings; their legs are placed far back, and they sit very erect, like auks and penguins, resting not merely on the foot, but on the tarsus. Notwithstanding their shortness of wing, they fly rapidly, although they seem incapable of long-sustained flights. They swim and dive admirably. The best known and most widely distributed species is the COMMON P. (F. arctica), a native of the arctic and northern temperate regions, breeding not only in high northern latitudes, but as far south as the coasts of England, and migrating from the colder regions in winter, when it is to be found even on the coasts of Spain and of Georgia. The P. is a little larger than a pigeon; the forehead, crown, back of the head, a collar round the neck, the back, wings, and tail are black, the other parts of the plumage white. The P. lays only a single egg, sometimes in a rabbit burrow, but more

and good-natured, bearing without resentment the roughest handling to which children can subject them. They are all of small size. The common English Pug is usually yellowish with a black snout, the tail firmly curled over the back. New breeds have

Pekin. Presented to Her Majesty.

of late been introduced from China and Japan,
interesting from their peculiar appearance, gentle-
ness, and docility, with extremely short puggish
muzzle; the Chinese breed very small, with smooth
hair;
the Japanese rather larger, with an exuberance
of long soft hair and a very bushy tail.

frequently in a burrow of its own, which often Chinese Pug (Looty), found in the Summer Palace at extends three feet, and is not unfrequently curved; sometimes in deep fissures or crevices of cliffs. Great numbers congregate together, and their chosen breeding-places are crowded with them. These are mostly on unfrequented islands and headlands, where there is some depth of soil. In some of them, the ground is covered by puffins, old and young, in thousands. The eggs are sought after by fowlers, and also the young birds, the flesh of which is used for food. The Scilly Isles were held in the 14th c., under the king as Earl of Cornwall, by Ranulph de Blancminster, for an annual payment of 6s. 8d., or 300 puffins at Michaelmas. Puffins are not readily

Common Puffin (Fratercula arctica).

alarmed by the approach of man, and many are taken by means of a noose at the end of a rod. Their food consists of small crustaceans and fishes. Other species are found in different parts of the world; one in Kamtchatka, the Kurile Islands, &c., with two silky tufts of long feathers on its head. -The name P. is given in France to the Shearwaters (q. v.), or Puffin Petrels, the genus Puffinus of some ornithologists.

PUG, or PUG-DOG, a kind of dog much like the bull-dog in form, and in particular, in its much abbreviated muzzle. The nose is often a little turned up. The disposition is, however, extremely unlike that of the bull-dog, being characterised by great timidity and gentleness. Pug-dogs are only kept as pets. They are often very affectionate

1

PU'GET SOUND, a collection of inlets on the north-western border of Washington Territory, U.S., forming the southern termination of Admiralty Inlet, which communicates with the Pacific by the Strait of St Juan de Fuca, south-east of Vancouver's Island. It forms a sheltered bay and harbour of about 15 square miles, surrounded by a fertile well-timbered country.

PU'GGING, a coarse kind of plaster laid on deafening-boards between the joists of floors, to prevent sound.

PU'GILISM, or BOXING, is the art of defending one's self or attacking others with the weapons which nature has bestowed-viz., fists and arms. The origin of boxing, or the use of the fists, is likely as old as man himself. We find numerous allusions to it in the classic authors. Pollux, the twin-brother of Castor in the heathen mythology, was reckoned the first who obtained distinction by the use of his fists, conquering all who opposed him, and obtaining, with Hercules, a place among the gods for his sparring talents. The ancients were not, however, satisfied with the use of the weapons of nature, but increased their power by the addition of the Cestus (q. v.). With the ancients, pugilism was considered an essential part in the education of youth, and formed part of the course of training practised in their gymnasia; it was valued as a and banishing fear; but it was practised in public means of strengthening the body rather with a view to the exhibition of the power of endurance than for mere skilful self-defence. The earliest account we have of systematic British boxing is in 1740, when public exhibitions of professors of the art attracted general attention. to this period, the science of self-defence had made but little progress, and strength and endurance constituted the only recommendations of the practitioners at Smithfield, Moorfield, and Southwark fair, which had long had booths and rings for the display of boxing. Broughton, who occupied the position of champion of England,' built a theatre in Hanway Street, Oxford Street, in 1740, for the display of boxing; advertisements were issued an nouncing a succession of battles between first-rate

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