a genus of birds of the order Passeres. Generic character: bill strait, somewhat compressed, strong, hard, and pointed; nostrils round, and covered with bristles turned back over them from the base of the bill; tongue truncated, and bristly at the end; toes divided to their origin, the back one very large and strong. These birds are found in almost every part of the old Continent, from the north of Europe to the south of India, and are highly prolific, laying eighteen or twenty eggs, which they hatch with unwearied patience. They build their nest with particular neatness and skill, and frequently on the extremity of some branch suspended over water, by which they secure it from the attack of various animals to which it might otherwise fall a prey. They are wonderfully active and alert, rapid and assiduous in their search for insects, on which they princi. pally subsist, under the bark and in the crevices of trees, which they clear of the immense multitudes of caterpillars covering them in spring, and which would totally blast their vegetation. They are in no country migratory, though they occasionally change their residence for short distances. They are impassioned and irascible to a great degree, and when irritated will display that ardent eye and muffled plumage which indicate the paroxysm of agitation. Their courage is of the first order, as they are known sometimes to attack birds three times their size. Even the owl is by no means secure from their rage, and whatever bird they pursue, their first attempts are levelled at the head, and particularly at the eyes and brains, the latter of which they eat with particular avidity and relish. Gmelin enumerates thirty-one species, and Latham twenty-seven. P. major, or the greater titmouse, weighs about an ounce. The male and female associate for some time before they begin to build, which they do with the most downy materials, and generally in the hole of some tree. The young continue blind for several days, and after they have left the nest never return to it, but continue, however, in the same neighbourhood, with the appearance of great family attachment, till the ensuing spring. See Aves, Plate X. fig. 7. P. cæruleus, or the blue titmouse, is eminently beautiful, and highly serviceable in destroying caterpillars in orchards and gardens. It picks the bones of small birds to the most complete cleanness, and is dis tinguished by the bitterness of its aversion to the owl. See Aves, Plate X. fig. 8. P. caudatus, or the long-tailed titmouse, lives in the same manner as the former, and has the same general habits with the rest of the genus, but builds its nest with peculiar care and elegance, securing, in the completest manner, the two important circumstances of dryness and warmth; the silken threads of aurelias constitute a principal article for those purposes. It is active even to restlessness, perpetually flying backwards and forwards, and running up and down the branches of trees in every possible direction. It possesses all the fullness of plumage of the owl. PASCAL (BLAISE), a respectable French mathematician and philosopher, and one of the greatest geniuses and best writers that country has produced. He was born at Clermont in Auvergne, in the year 1623. His father, Stephen Pascal, was president of the Court of Aids in his province: he was also a very learned man, an able mathematician, and a friend of Des Cartes. Having an extraordinary tenderness for this child, his only son, he quitted his province, and settled at Paris in 1631, that he might be quite at leisure to attend to his son's edu`cation, which he conducted himself, and young Pascal never had any other master. From his infancy Blaise gave proofs of a very extraordinary capacity. He was extremely inquisitive; desiring to know the reason of every thing; and when good reasons were not given him, he would seek for better; nor would he ever yield his assent but upon such as appeared to him well grounded. What is told of his manner of learning the mathematics, as well as the progress he quickly made in that science, seems almost miraculous. His father, perceiving in him an extraordinary inclination to reasoning, was afraid lest the knowledge of the mathematics might hinder his learning the languages, so necessary as a foundation to all sound learning. He therefore kept him as much as he could from all notions of geometry, locked up all his books of that kind, and refrained even from speaking of it in his presence. He could not however prevent his son from musing on that science; and one day in particular he surprised him at work with charcoal upon his chamber floor, and in the midst of figures. The father asked him what he was doing: I am searching, says Pascal, for such a thing; which was just the same as the Sed proposition of the 1st book of Euclid. He Plate 10. Fig.1. Motacilla maderaspatensis: Pied Wagtail Fig. 2. Muscicapa atricappilla: Pied London Published by Longman Hurst Reas & Orme.Sep.1.1808. asked him then how he came to think of this: it was, said Blaise, because I found out such another thing; and so, going backward, and using the names of bar and round, he came at length to the definitions and axioms he had formed to himself. From this time he had full liberty to indulge his genius in mathematical pursuits. He understood Euclid's Elements as soon as he cast his eyes upon them. At sixteen years of age he wrote a treatise on Conic Sections, which was accounted a great effort of genius; and therefore it is no wonder that Des Cartes, who had been in Holland a long time, upon reading it, should choose to believe that M. Pascal the father I was the real author of it. At nineteen he contrived an admirable arithmetical machine, which would have done credit as an invention to any man versed in science. About this time his health became impaired, so that he was obliged to suspend his labours for the space of four years. After this, having seen Torricelli's experiment respecting a vacuum and the weight of the air, he turned his thoughts towards these objects, and undertook several new experiments, by which he was fully convinced of the general pressure of the atmosphere; and from this discovery he drew many use. ful and important inferences. He composed also a large treatise, in which he fully explained this subject, and replied to all the objections that had been started against it. As he afterwards thought this work rather too prolix, and being fond of brevity and precision, he divided it into two small treatises, one of which he entitled, "A Dissertation on the Equilibrium of Fluids," and the other, "An Essay on the Weight of the Atmosphere." These labours procured Pascal so much reputation, that the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of the age proposed various questions to him, and consulted him respecting such dif ficulties as they could not resolve. Upon one of these occasions he discovered the solution of a problem proposed by Mersenne, which had baffled the penetration of all that had attempted it. This problem was to determine the curve described in the air by the nail of a coach-wheel, while the machine is in motion; which curve was thence called a roullette, but now commonly known by the name of cycloid. Pascal offered a reward of forty pistoles to any one who should give a satisfactory answer to it. No person having succeeded, he published his own at Paris; but under the name of A. d'Ettonville. This was the last work which he published in the mathematics ; his infirmities, from a delicate consitution, though still young, now increasing so much, that he was under the necessity of renouncing severe study, and of living so recluse, that he scarcely admitted any person to see him. After having thus laboured abundantly in mathematical and philosophical disquisitions, he forsook those studies and all human learning at once, to devote himself to acts of devotion and penance. He was not twenty-four years of age, when the reading some pious books had put him upon taking this resolution; and he became as great a devotee as any age has produced. He now gave himself up entirely to a state of prayer and mortification; and he had always in his thoughts these great maxims of renouncing all pleasure and all superfluity; and this he practised with rigour even in his illnesses, to which he was frequently subject, being of a very invalid habit of body. He died at the age of thirty-nine. His works were collated and published at the Hague in five volumes 8vo, by the Abbé Bossu, 1779. PASCAL rents, rents or annual duties paid by the inferior clergy to the bishop or archdeacon, at their Easter visitation. PASPALUM, in botany, a genus of the Triandria Digynia class and order. Natural order of Gramina, Gramineæ, or Grasses. Essential character: calyx two-valved, orbicular; corolla of the same size; stigmas pencilled. There are fifteen species. All these grasses are of foreign growth, none of them natives of Europe. PASSAGE. In stat. 4 Edward III. c. 7, this term is used for the hire a man pays for being transported over any sea or river. Various statutes of a local nature have been passed for regulating the passage of parti cular rivers. By a statute of Edward IV. the passage from Kent to Calais is restrained to Dover. PASSAGE, birds of, a name given to those birds which at certain stated seasons of the year remove from certain countries, and at other stated times return to them again, as our quails, woodcocks, storks, nightingales, swallows, and many other species. The generality of birds that remain with us all the winter have strong bills, and are enabled to feed on what they can find at that season; those which leave us, have usually very slender bills, and their food is the insects of the fly kind, which disap pearing towards the approach of winter, compel them to seek them in the warmer regions where they are to be found. Among the birds of passage, the fieldfare, the redwing, the woodcock, and the snipe, come to us in the autumn, at the time when the summer birds are leaving us, and go from us again in spring, at the time when these retern; and of these the two last often continue with us through the summer, and breed; so that the two first seem the only kinds that certainly leave us at the approach of spring, retiring to the northern parts of the continent, where they live during the summer, and breed; and, at the return of winter, are driven southerly from those frigid climes, in search of food, which there the ice and snow must deprive them of. PASSAGE, right of, in commerce, is an imposition or duty exacted by some princes, either by land or sea, in certain close and narrow places in their territories, on all vessels and carriages, and even sometimes on persons or passengers coming in or going out of ports, &c. The most celebrated passage of this kind in Europe is the Sound, the dues for passing which straight belong to the King of Denmark, and are paid at Elsenore or Cronenburg. PASSANT, in heraldry, a term applied to a lion, or other animal, in a shield, appearing to walk leisurely for most beasts, except lions, the term trippant is frequently used instead of passant. : PASSERES, in natural history, the sixth order of birds according to the Linnæan system, they are distinguished by a conical and pointed bill; nostrils oval, pervions, naked; legs formed for hopping; toes slender, divided; body slender, flesh of such as feed on grain pure; of those which feed on insects impure; nest formed with much art. They live chiefly in trees and hedges, are monogamous, vocal, and feed the young by thrusting the food down their throats, They are thus divided: the genera in A have thick bills, as the PASSERINA, in botany, sparrow-wort, a genus of the Octandria Monogynia class and order. Natural order of Vepreculæ. Thymelææ, Jussieu. Essential character: calyx none; corolla four-cleft; stamina placed on the tube; seed one, corticate. There are nineteen species, chiefly natives of the Cape of Good Hope and New Zealand. PASSIFLORA, in botany, passion flower, a genus of the Gynandria Pentandria class and order. Natural order of Cucurbitaceæ. Essential character: styles three; calyx five-leaved; petals five; nectary a crown; berry pedicelled. There are thirty-seven species, of which we shall notice the P. cærulea, common or blue passion flower. This tree rises in a few years to a great height, with proper support, the shoots often growing to the length of ten or twelve feet in one summer; at each joint is one leaf, composed of five smooth entire lobes; their footstalks are nearly two inches long, having two embracing stipules at their base; from the same point issues a long clasper, or tendril, the flowers come out at the same joint with the leaves, on peduncles three inches long; they have a faint scent, lasting only one day; fruit egg-shaped, the size and shape of the Mogul plum, when ripe of the same yellow colour, inclosing a sweetish disagreeable pulp, in which are lodged oblong seeds. The blue passion flower grows naturally in Brazil. It is now become the most common species in England, being sufficiently hardy to thrive in the open air. These beautiful plants were unknown till the discovery of America; they are found in various parts, both of the continent, chiefly of South America, and the islauds. PASSION, or the Passions. The latter term serves to express those sensations of the soul excited by pleasure and pain; which two principal feelings are divided into a variety of branches, and those we shall endeavour, in the succeeding pages, to explain, as far as our limited powers will permit. The passions are, in a great degree, self Those in C have the upper mandible ish; and yet, fortunately for the general notched near the end: as the benefit of the human race, they are far from being entirely so. Fear may be said to be entirely confined |