I agree with Sir William Temple, that the word humour is peculiar to our English tongue, but not that the thing itself is peculiar to the English, because the contrary may be found in many Spanish, Italian, and French productions. Swift. If an author possessed any distinguishing marks of style, or peculiarity of thinking, there would remain in his least successful writings some few tokens whereby to discover him. Id. Every man hath something peculiar in the turn or cast of his mind, which distinguishes him as much as the particular constitution of his body. Mason. PECULIAR, in the canon law, signifies a particular parish or church that has jurisdiction within itself for granting probates of wills and administrations, exempt from the ordinary or bishop's court. The king's chapel is a royal peculiar, exempt from all spiritual jurisdiction, and reserved to the visitation and immediate government of the king himself. There is likewise the archbishop's peculiar: for it is an ancient privilege of the see of Canterbury, that wherever any manors or advowsons belong to it, they forthwith become exempt from the ordinary, and are reputed peculiars: there are fifty-se y-seven such peculiars in the see of Canterbury. Besides these, there are some peculiars belonging to deans, chapters, and prebendaries, which are only exempted from the jurisdiction of the archdeacon: these are derived from the bishop, who may visit them, and to whom there lies an appeal. PECULIARS, COURT OF, is a branch of, and annexed to, the court of arches. It has a jurisdiction over all those parishes dispersed through the province of Canterbury in the midst of other dioceses, which are exempt from the ordinary's jurisdiction, and subject to the metropolitan only. All ecclesiastical causes, arising within these peculiar or exempt jurisdictions, are originally cognizable by this court: from which an appeal lay formerly to the pope, but now, by the statute 25 Henry VIII. c. 19, to the king in chancery. PECULIUM, in law, the stock or estate which a person, in the power of another, whether male or female, either as his or her slave, may acquire by his industry. Roman slaves frequently amassed considerable suns in this way. The word properly signifies the advanced price which a slave could get for his master's cattle, &c., above the price fixed upon them by his master, which was the slave's own property. PECUNIA, in mythology, a goddess among the Romans, whom they invoked with a view of procuring money in abundance. But as the specie was coined of different metals, especially of gold, silver, and brass, and as one divinity had too much occupation in taking care of the different coinages, a particular one was appointed for each. Three goddesses represented upon some medals of the emperor Commodus and his successors, with a pair of scales, the cornucopia, and a heap of money by them, prove that there was at least that number, and the antiquaries agree that they presided over the coinage of three metals, æs, aurum, argentum. PECUNIARY, adj. Fr. pecuniaire; Lat. pecuniarius, pecunia. Relating to money; consisting of money. Pain of infamy is a severer punishment upon ingenuous natures than a pecuniary mulct. Bacon. Their impostures delude not only unto pecuniary defraudations, but the irreparable deceit of death. Browne. Broome. The injured person might take a pecuniary mulct by way of atonement. PED, n. s. From pad, a road. Commonly pronounced pad. A small pack-saddle, basket, or hamper. fish. A pannel and wanty, packsaddle and ped. Tusser. A hask is a wicker ped, wherein they use to carry Spenser. PEDAGOGUE, n. s. & v. a. Į Lat. padaPEDAGOGY, adj. gogus; Gr. maidαywyos, mais, a boy, and αγω, to teach. One who teaches boys; a school master: a pedant: to pedagogue is to teach with supercilious airs: pedagogy, early or first discipline. Few pedagogues but curse the barren chair, Like him who hanged himself for mere despair And poverty. Dryden. In time the reason of men ripening to such a pitch, as to be above the pedagogy of Moses's rod and the discipline of types, God thought fit to display the substance without the shadow. South's Sermons. Prior. This may confine their younger stiles, Whom Dryden pedagogues at Will's: But never could be meant to tie, Authentic wits, like you and I. The old sabbath appertained to the pedagogy and rudiments of the law; and therefore when the great master came and fulfilled all that was prefigured by it, it then ceased. White. A PEDAGOGUE, or PEDAGOGUE, is an instrucformed from the Greek awr aywyos, puerorum The word is tor in grammar and other arts. ductor, i. e. a leader of boys. M. Fleury observes, that the Greeks gave this name to slaves appointed to attend their children, lead them, and teach them to walk, &c. The Romans gave the same denomination to the slaves who were intrusted with the care and instruction of their children. PEDALS, n. s. The large pipes of an organ: so called because Lat. pedalis; Fr. pedales. played upon and stopt with the foot. The organ which Dr. Kemp exhibited in his lectures at the Russel Institution, for which Mr. Loeschvol. xxxvii. p. 326, and vol. xxxviii. p. 47), has man has a patent (see the Philosophical Magazine, twenty-four sounds, and as many pipes in each oc tave. By the help of six pedals, and the twelve usual finger-keys, the performer is enabled to execute the mean-tone system correctly, or any other, in the twenty-four usual keys. Dr. A. Rees. PED'ANT, n. s. Fr. pedant; of Gr. PEDAN'TICAL, adj. παιδεύω. A schoolPEDANTICALLY, adv. (master; a man vain of PED ANTRY, n. s. his learning the derivatives all follow this sense. A pedant treads in a rule; while one hand scans verses, and the other holds his sceptre he dares not think a thought that the nominative case governs not the verb. To be brief he is a heteroclite; for he wants the plural number, having only the single quality of words. Sir T. Overbury. A pedant that keeps a school i' the church. Shakspeare. Mr. Cheecke had eloquence in the Latin and Greek tongues; but for other sufficiences pedantick enough. Hayward. Horace has enticed me into this pedantry of quotaCowley. The pedant can hear nothing but in favour of the tion. conceits he is amorous of. Glanville. Pursuit of fame with pedants fills our schools. And into coxcombs burnishes our fools. Young. PEDANT is used for a rough, unpolished, man of letters, who makes an impertinent use of the sciences, and abounds in unseasonable criticisms and observations. Madam Dacier defines a pedant, a person who has more reading than good sense. Malebranche describes a pedant as a man full of false erudition, who makes a parade of his knowledge, and is ever quoting some Greek or Latin author, or hunting back to a remote etymology. Lord Chesterfield justly and successfully ridiculed this species of pedantry, but set the example, which has been since very much followed, of what may be styled modern pedantry, by constantly interlarding his letters and other works with French, Spanish, and Italian quotations. St. Evremont says, that to paint the folly of a pedant, we must represent him as turning all conversation to some one science or subject he is best acquainted with. There are pedants of all conditions, and all robes. Wicquefort says, an ambassador always attentive to formalities and decorums is nothing else but a political pedant. PEDARIANS, in Roman antiquity, a name anciently given to such of the Roman senators as by merely walking over to their party signified their opinion with their feet. According Rome had a right to a place and vote in the seto Dr. Middleton, though the magistrates of before they were put upon the roll by the cennate both during their office and after it, and sors, yet they had not probably a right to speak or debate there on any question, at least in the earlier ages of the republic. For this seems to have been the original distinction between them and the ancient senators, as it is plainly intimated in the formule of the consular edict sent abroad to summon the senate, which was addressed to all senators, and to all those who had a right to vote in the senate. From this distinctinction, those who had only a right to vote were called in ridicule pedarian; because they signified their votes by their feet, not their tongues, and, upon every division of the senate, went over to the side of those whose opinion they approved. It was in allusion to this old custom, which seems to have been wholly dropt in the latter ages of the republic, that the mute part of the senate continued still to be called by the name pedarians, as Cicero informs us, who, in giving an account to Atticus of a certain debate and decree of the senate upon it, says that it was made with the eager and general concurrence of the pedarians, though against the authority of all the consulars. PEDDABALABARAM, or GREAT BALIPOOR, a large trading town and fortress of Mysore, south of India. The latter, although entirely built of mud, is strong, as the shot buries itself in the rampart. The town is fortified likewise by a wall and hedge. On the dissolution of the Hindoo kingdom of Bijanagur, the polygar, or chief of Balipoor, kept possession of this fortress, and it was not taken from his successor until about the middle of the last century, by the nizam. It was then conferred as a jagire on a Mogul named Abdool Russoul, from whose family it was taken in 1761, by Hyder Aly; since which period it has been subject to the ruler of Mysore. Long. 77° 47′ E., lat. 13° 17′ N. Fourteen miles to the eastward is Little Balipoor, the capital of a small district. PË’DESTAL, n. s. Fr. piedestal. The lower member of a pillar; the basis of a statue. The poet bawls, And shakes the statues and the pedestals. Dryden. In the centre of it was a grim idol; the forepart of the pedestal was curiously embossed with a triumph. Addison. So stiff, so mute! some statue would you swear Stept from its pedestal to take the air. Pope. View him at Paris in his last career, Surrounding throngs the demigod revere, Statue, Pedestrian [is], a statue standing on foot; as that of king Charles II. in the Royal Exchange, and that of king James II. in the Privy Gardens. Dr. A. Rees. PEDIACI, or PEDIEANS, in Grecian antiquity. The city of Athens was anciently divided into three different parts; one on the descent of a hill; another on the sea shore; and a third in a plain between the other two. The inhabitants of the middle region were called Hectar, Pediæans; or, as Aristotle will have it, Pediaci; formed from rectov, plain or flat: those of the hill, Diacrians; and those of the shore, Paralians. These quarters usually composed so many different factions. Pisistratus made use of the Pediaans against the Diacrians. In the time of Solon, when a form of government was to be chosen, the Diacrians chose the democratic; the Pediæans demanded an aristocracy, and the P'aralians a mixed government. PEDICLE, n. s. Fr. pedicule; Lat. pedis. The footstalk, that by which a leaf or fruit is fixed to the tree. The cause of the holding green, is the close and compact substance of their leaves and pedicles. Bacon. PEDICULARIS, in botany, rattle coxcomb, or louse-wort, a genus of the angiospermia order and didynamia class of plants; natural order fortieth, personatæ. Species thirty-four, all European plants. PEDICULUS, the louse, in entomology, a genus of insects belonging to the order of aptera. It has six feet, two eyes, and a sort of sting in the mouth: the feelers are as long as the thorax; and the belly is depressed and sublobated. It is an oviparous animal, not peculiar to man, but infesting other animals, as quadrupeds and birds, and even fishes, insects, and vegetables; but these are of peculiar species on each animal, according to the particular nature of each. Nay, even insects are infected with vermin which feed on and torment them. Several kinds of beetles are subject to lice; but particularly that kind called the lousy beetle. The lice on this are very numerous, and cannot be shaken off. The earwig is often infested with lice, just at the setting on of its head; these are white, and shining like mites, but they are much smaller; they are round-backed, flat-bellied, and have long legs, particularly the foremost pair. Snails of all kinds, but especially the large naked sorts, are very subject to lice; which are continually seen running about them and devouring them. Numbers of little red lice, with a very small head, and in shape resembling a tortoise, are often seen about the legs of spiders, and they never leave the animal while he lives; but, if he of the body, the lesser towards the tail; the motions of which are followed by the pulsation of the dark bloody spot, in or over which the white bladder seems to lie. This motion of the systole and diastole is best seen when the creature begins to grow weak; and on pricking the white bladder, which seems to be the heart, the crea ture instantly dies. The lower dark spot is supposed to be the excrement in the gut. Lice have been supposed to be hermaphrodites but this is erroneous; for Mr. Lieuwenhoeck observed, that the males have stings in their tails, which the females have not. And he supposes the smarting pain which those creatures sometimes give, to be owing to their stinging when made uneasy by pressure or otherwise. He says that be felt little or no pain from their suckers, though six of them were feeding on his hand at once. To know the true history and manner of breeding of these creatures, Mr. Lieuwenhoeck put two female lice into a black stocking, which he wore night and day. He found, or examination, that in six days one of them had laid above fifty eggs; and, upon dissecting it, he found as many yet remaining in the ovary: whence he concludes that in twelve days it would have laid 100 eggs. These eggs naturally hatch in six days, and would then probably have produced fifty males, and as many females; and these females, coming to their full growth in eighteen days, might each of them be supposed after twelve days more to lay 100 eggs; which eggs, in six days more, might produce a young brood of 5000: so that in eight weeks, one louse may see 5000 of its own descendants. Signior Rhedi, who has more attentively observed these animals than any other author, has given several engravings of the different species of lice found on different animals. Men, he observes, are subject to two kinds; the common and the crablouse. He observes, also, that the size of the lice is not at all proportioned to that of the animal which they infest; since the starling has them as large as the swan. Some kinds of constitutions are more apt to breed lice than others; and in some places of different degrees of heat, they are certain to be destroyed upon people who in other climates are over-run with them. Cleanliness is doubtless the grand secret by which to keep clear from them, especially in wearing woollen clothes. Monkeys and some Hottentots, we are told, eat lice; and are thence denominated phthirophages. On the coast of the Red Sea it is reported that there is a nation, of small stature and of a black color, who use locusts for the greatest part of their food, prepared only with salt. On such food these men live till forty, and then die of a pedicular or lousy disease. It is also a fact that the negroes on the west coast of Africa take great delight in making their women clear their bodies of lice, and the latter devour them with greediness. In ancient medicine lice were esteemed aperient, febrifuge, and proper for curing a pale complexion. The natural repugnance to those ugly creatures (says Lemery) perhaps contributed more to banish the fever than the remedy itself. In the jaundice five or six were swallowed in a soft egg. In the suppression of urine, which happens frequently to children at their birth, living louse is introduced into the urethra, which, by the tickling it occasions in the canal, forces the sphincter to relax, and permits the urine to flow. A bug produces the same effect. Farriers have also a custom (says M. Bourgeois) of introducing one or two lice into the urethra of horses when they are seized with a retention of urine, a disease pretty common among them. But, according to the Continuation of the Materia Medica, to use the pedicular medicine with the greatest advantage, one would need to be in Africa, where those insects are carefully sought after and swallowed as a delicious morsel. The great distinction between those which infest mankind is into the head and body louse. The former is hard and high colored, and the latter less compact and more of ashen color. If it were possible to give a reason why some families of the same species stick to the head and others to the clothes, &c., it would also, in all probability, be possible to understand the nature of many contagious diseases. PEDIGREE, n. s. Per and degré. Skinner. Rather from Fr. pied; Lat. pes, a stem or root and degré. Genealogy; lineage; account of descent. I am no herald to enquire of men's pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues. Sidney. You tell a pedigree Of threescore and two years, a silly time. Shakspeare. Alterations of sirnames, which in former ages have been very common, have obscured the truth of our padigrees, that it will be no little labour to deduce many of them. To the old heroes hence was given Camden. A pedigree which reached to heaven. Waller. The Jews preserved the pedigrees of their several tribes with a more scrupulous exactness than any other nation. Atterbury. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin The vellum of the pedigree they claim. Cowper. And he would gaze upon his store, And o'er his pedigree would pore, Until by some confusion led, Which almost looked like want of head, He thought their merits were his own. Byron. PEDILUVIUM, bathing of the feet. The uses of warm bathing in general, and of the pediluvium in particular, are so little understood, that they are often preposterously used, and sometimes as injudiciously abstained from. Warm bathing is of no service where there is an irresoluble obstruction, though, by its taking off from a spasm in general, it may seem to give a moment's ease; nor does it draw from the dis. tant parts, but often hurts by pushing against matter that will not yield with a stronger impetus of circulation than the stretched and diseased vessel can bear: so that, where there is any suspicion of scirrhus, warm bathing of any sort should never be used. On the other hand, where obstructions are not of long standing, and the impacted matter is not obstinate, warm baths may be of great use to resolve them quickly. In recent colds, with slight humoral peripneumonies, they are frequently an immediate cure. This they effect by increasing the force of the circulation, opening the skin, and driving freely through the lungs that lentor which stagnated or moved slowly in them. As thus conducing to the resolution of obstructions, they may be considered as short and safe fevers; and in using them we imitate nature, which by a fever often carries off an obstructing cause of a chronical ailment. Borelli, Boerhaave, and Hoffman, are all of opinion, that the warm pediluvium acts by driving a large quantity of blood into the parts immersed. But arguments must give way to fact: the experiments related in the Medical Essays seem to prove to a demonstration, that the warm pediluvium acts by rarifying the blood. A warm pediluvium, when rightly tempered, may be used as a safe cordial, by which circulation can be roused, or a gentle fever raised; with this advantage over the cordials and sudorifics, that the effect of them may be taken off at pleasure. See BATHING. PEDIR, a town on the west coast of Sumatra. The principal trade of this place is in pepper, betel nut, gold dust, canes, rattans, bees'-wax, camphor, and benzoin. The soil is fertile, and well watered with rivulets; though the low lands next the sea are bogs, which produce only reeds, and bamboo canes, the,soil is in general fertile. The animals found are horses of a small breed, oxen, buffaloes, goats, and hog deer. Wild animals abound in the woods and mountains; there are also alligators, guanas, porcupines, serpents, and other venomous animals, together with abundance of poultry. PEDLER, n. s. PEDLERY, A petty dealer. A contraction produced by PEDDLING. frequent use,' says Dr. Johnson. Minsheu more probably from French pied aller, to go on foot. One who travels the country with small wares: pedlery, the wares of a pedler: peddling, his habit of dealing. All as a poor pedler he did wend, Spenser If you did but hear the pedler at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and a pipe. Shakspeare. He is wit's pedler, and retails his wares At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs. sons to the Indies to retrieve their fortunes in this way. In Poland, where there are few or no manufactures, almost all the merchandise is carried on by pedlars, who are said some time since to have been generally Scotsmen,and who, in the reign of Charles II., amounted to no fewer than 50,000. PEDOMETER, or PODOMETER, from Greek eç, pes, foot, and μerpov, measure, a mechanical insurment, in form of a watch, consisting of various wheels with teeth, catching in one another, all disposed in the same plane; which by means of a chain or string fastened to a man's foot, or to the wheel of a chariot, advance a notch each step, or each revolution of the wheel; so that the number being marked on the edge of each wheel, one may number the paces, or measure exactly the distance from one place to another. There are some of them which mark the time on a dial-plate, and are in every respect much like a watch, and are accordingly worn in the pocket like a watch. PEEBLES, a royal burgh and county town of the shire in Scotland to which it gives its name. It is situate on a fine plain on the north bank of the Tweed, over which there is a bridge of five arches, and is wholly surrounded with high hills. It is twenty-one miles south of Edinburgh. The town is well built, and is divided into the Old and New Town by the Eddlestone-Water. In the Old Town are the ruins of two ancient churches. The New consists chiefly of one street, which is broad and spacious, and the houses are neat and tolerably well built. At the west end stands the church, on a small eminence, where formerly the castle stood, and beside it is the county-jail. Besides these it has apartments for the sheriffs' and town-courts, and a hall where the business of the county is transacted; together with an elegant inn and assembly rooms. Peebles has an excellent grammar-school, and another for English, arithmetic, &c. It manufactures stockings, and a great deal of weaving is carried on here. Here is also an extensive brewery, famous for its excellent ale. The town is governed by a council of eighteen persons, of which a provost and two bailies make a part. It joins with Lanark, Linlithgow, and Selkirk, in sending a member to parliament. It has a weekly market on Tuesday, and eight annual fairs, viz. second Tuesday in January, first Tuesday in March, second Wednesday in May, first Tuesday in July, Tuesday before August 24th, first Tuesday in September, 17th of October, and first Tuesday before November 12th. PEERLES, a small river in the above parish, which runs through the north part of the town into the Tweed, called also Eddlestone Water. PEEBLESHIRE, or TWEEDALE, a county of Scotland, bounded on the east and south east by the shires of Berwick and Selkirk, on the south by Dumfries, on the west by Lanark, and on the north by Mid-Lothian, being about thirty-six miles in length, and about ten in breadth. It contains one royal borough, Peebles; and is divided into sixteen parochial districts. It is a hilly country, watered by the rivers Tweed, Yarrow, and Leithen, and several smaller streams; on the banks of which the soil is fertile, and adapted to every kind of husbandry; but the |