805 



PHILISTION. 



PHILLIPS, JOHN, M.A., F.K.S.' 



806 



His friend and patron Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards lord-chancellor, 

 erected a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey, which 

 carries a long inscription in very flowing latinity, said by Johnson to 

 be the composition of Bishop Atterbury, though commonly attributed 

 to Dr. Friend. There is justice in the contempt expressed by Johnson 

 for tha mimetic Miltonism of Philips, who was without any true 

 passion, or strength or elevation of fancy, and whose poetry in its 

 moat ambitious passages has little more than merely something in the 

 sound to remind us of that of Milton. 



PHILI'STION, an ancient Greek physician, the tutor of Eudoxus 

 and Chrysippus. He is called a Sicilian by Diogenes Liiertius (' Vit 

 Phil.,' lib. viii., sec. 86), but (if the same person be meant) he is said 

 to have been an Italian by Rufus Ephesius (' De Corp. Hum. Part. 

 AppelL,' p. 41, ed. Clinch), and a Locrian by Plutarch ('Sympos.,' 

 lib. va, quaest. 1, sec. 3), Aulus Gellius (' Noct. Att.,' lib. xvil, cap. 11, 

 sec. 3), and Athenaus ('Deipnos.,' lib. iii., sec. 83, p. 115). He lived 

 about B.C. 370, 01. 102, 1. According to Plutarch and Aulus Gellius, 

 he defended the opinion that part of what is drunk goes into the 

 lungs, which is the more remarkable as Galen informs us that he was 

 well skilled in anatomy. He belonged to the sect of the Empiriui, 

 and was supposed by some persons to be the author of the treatise 

 'De Victu Salubri,' commonly attributed to Hippocrates. He is 

 quoted several times by Pliny (' Hist. Nat.,' lib. xx., cap, 15, 34, 48, 

 ed. Tauchn.); Oribadus ('De Machinam.,' cap. iv.) attributes to him 

 the invention of a machine for reducing luxations of the humerus ; 

 and (if the same person be meant) Athenieus (' Deipnos.,' lib. xii., 

 sec. 12, p. 516) mentions him among those who had written on 

 cookery. 



PH1LISTUS was a native of Syracuse, and a person of great wealth 

 and influence. He was very intimate with the elder Dionysius, whom 

 he assisted in obtaining the supreme power, B.C. 406; but having 

 displeased the tyrant, he was banished from Syracuse. He retired to 

 a city on the Adriatic Gulf, probably one of the Greek cities in southern 

 Italy, and did not return to Syracuse till tha accession of the younger 

 Dionysius (Plutarch, 'Dion.,' c. 11 ; Diod. Sic., xiii. 91), during whose 

 reign the direction of public affairs appears to have been almost 

 entirely in the hands of Philistus. When Syracuse was taken by 

 Dion (uc. 356), Philistus used great exertions in favour of Dionysius. 

 He passed over into Italy, and procured from Rhegium alone 500 

 horoe. After making an unsuccessful attempt upon Leontini, which 

 had declared in favour of Dion, he joined Dionysius in the citadel, and 

 was shortly after killed in a naval engagement, or, according to other 

 accounts, was taken prisoner and put to death. (Plutarch, 'Dion.,' 

 c. 35; Diod. Sic., xvi. 16.) Philistus must have lived to a considerable 

 age, since he was an eye-witness of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, in 

 B.O. 415, fifty-nine years before his death. (Plutarch, ' Nic.,' c. 19.) 



Philistus wrote a history of Sicily, which appears to have been a 

 work of great merit, but of which we have only fragments. Cicero, 

 in a letter to bin brother (ad ' Qu. Fr.,' ii. 13), speaks of the style of 

 Philistus as brief and terse, and considers him as resembling though 

 inferior to Thucydides; and in another passage ('Brut.,' c. 85) he also 

 classes him with Thucydides, and says that these two writers were 

 superior to all others. (Compare ' De Div.,' i. 20 ; Quint, ' Inst. Orat.,' 

 X. 1, p. 222, ed. Bipont.) The Sicilian history of Philistus was divided 

 into two parts, of which the first contained seven and the second four 

 books. The first part embraced a period of 800 years, and terminated 

 at the archonship of Callias and the battle of Agrigentum, that is, 

 B.C. 406 ; the second part, which commenced at the point where the 

 first terminated, contained the history of the elder Dionysius, and 

 terminated at B.C. 863. The fragments of Philistus are printed (with 

 a life of him, by C. Muller) in the ' Fragmenta Hist. Grsoc.,' Paris, 

 1841. (Uiod. Sic., xv. 69 ; Clinton, 'Fast. Hell.,' ii. p. 119.) 



PHILLIPS, JOHN, M.A., F.R.S., Reader in (Professor of) 

 Geology in the University of Oxford, and Assistant-General Secretary 

 of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor 

 John Phillips claims attention in this work in a variety of characters; 

 as a geologist, accurately versed in the principles of the science, an 

 explorer of geological phenomena, an accomplished palaeontologist, an 

 author of valuable treatises on geology, general and local, a successful 

 public and academic teacher of that and some collateral branches of 

 knowledge, and an indefatigable secretary for scientific affairs. 

 Nephew by the mother's side of William Smith [SMITH, WILLIAM], the 

 " Father of English Geology," be was associated with him as pupil, 

 companion in geological exploration and surveying, and fellow- 

 labourer in research for twenty-five years, from 1815 till the decease 

 of his uncle in 1839. His connection with geology thus extends over 

 more than forty years, from the period of the production of Mr. 

 (afterwards Dr.) Smith's celebrated 'Map of the Strata of England and 

 Wales," to the present epoch in the ' Geological Survey of the United 

 Kingdom.' The great map having been published on the 1st of 

 August 1815, Mr. Smith commenced shortly afterwards the prepara- 

 tion of a large series of geological sections and county maps, coloured 

 upon the same system, and carrying out to greater minuteness the 

 delineation of the boundaries and areas of strata. In the surveys 

 made expressly for these works, and in their actual production, he 

 was assisted by his nephew, John Phillips. The excursions made for 

 nrpose were necessarily chiefly pedestrian. In the winter of 

 1810-20, Mr. Smith having undertaken to walk from Lincolnshire 



into Oxfordshire, and ultimately to Swindon in Wiltshire, his nephew, 

 who had been his companion on almost every journey for the pre- 

 ceding three years, accompanied him, and, according to an established 

 custom on all such tours, he was employed in sketching parts of the 

 road, and noticing in maps the geological features of the country. 

 Early in 1821 Sir. Phillips walked through the eastern parts of York- 

 shire, and rejoined his uncle at Doncaster, from this point accom- 

 panying him in a walking excursion through the coal district of the 

 West Riding. In this excursion particular attention was given to 

 determine the true general order of the coal beds, ironstone courses, 

 and characteristic rocks, and the result is seen in a comprehensive 

 section on the large and valuable geological map of Yorkshire in four 

 sheets, produced by Mr. Smith in 1821, to which nothing similar had 

 before been attempted in this country, perhaps not in Europe. For the 

 purpose of assisting in obtaining the requisite materials for this map, 

 Mr. Phillips made a variety of journeys subsequently. The desire to 

 finish others of these interesting county maps led Mr. Smith to devote 

 the whole of the remainder of 1821 to long and laborious wanderings 

 on a peculiar plan, in which his nephew was associated with him. 

 Two lines of operation were drawn through the country which required 

 to be surveyed for the purpose of completing such maps, or rather 

 such parts of the maps as had been inevitably left imperfect. On one 

 of these Mr. Smith moved with the due deliberation of a commander- 

 in-chief ; the other was traversed by his more active subaltern, who 

 found the means often to cross from his own parallel to report progress 

 at head-quarters. This mode of " strata hunting " permitted Mr. 

 Phillips to walk over 2000 miles of ground, and to preserve memo- 

 randa of almost every mile aloug that line. In these surveys, and 

 the production of the twenty-one geological county maps, in which 

 their results were graphically recorded, the uncle and nephew were 

 associated from 181 9 to 1824; and thus was acquired by the latter that 

 intimate acquaintance with the physical structure and the stratification 

 of England, by which he is distinguished, and that practical knowledge 

 of geology which has rendered him so acceptable and valuable a 

 teacher. 



One of Mr. Phillips's earliest contributions to geological literature 

 was a paper ' On the Direction of the Diluvial Currents in Yorkshire,' 

 read before the Philosophical Society, which had a few years previously 

 been founded in that county, November 7, 1826, and communicated 

 by the society to the ' Philosophical Magazine ' for August 1827. Ho 

 had now become a lecturer on geology, and also on zoology ; and 

 shortly afterwards was appointed keeper of the museum of the York- 

 shire Philosophical Society, becoming a Fellow of the Geological 

 Society of London in 1828. As a lecturer at York and iu the great 

 towns of that and the adjoining counties, he acquired a deserved 

 popularity ; his instruction being accurate aud definite, his language 

 simple and perspicuous, and his illustration, vivid. A great part of 

 the interest which is now taken by persons of almost every rank 

 among the more educated classes fn Yorkshire in the objects and 

 pursuits of natural science, may certainly be ascribed to the effect 

 produced and the knowledge diffused, by the zealous teachings of 

 Mr. Phillips. Besides these discourses of a popular character, which 

 have also been delivered in the metropolis, at the Hoyal and the London 

 Institutions, he gave at University College, London, under its former 

 style of the University of London, an extended course of lectures on geo- 

 logy for students ; and he has occupied iu succession, the chair of geology 

 in King's College, London, and iu the University of Dublin (1844). 

 His knowledge of the allied department of science of general phy.-ics, 

 chemistry, mineralogy, and natural hiatory render his lectures aa 

 well as his printed works of great value in conveying comprehensive 

 views of the earth's structure and physical history ; while the skill in 

 drawing which is shown by the graphic illustrations both of his 

 lectures and publications (and in which the late Thomas Webster was 

 his only rival among English geologists), has imparted to him great 

 advantages iu describing natural phenomena, and forcibly recommends 

 the practice of drawing to all students of natural history. 



We have next to record the circumstances relating to the connection 

 of Mr. Phillips with the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, a connection which has proved of euch inestimable benefit to 

 the association, and through it to the progress of natural knowledge, 

 in almost every department, for more than a quarter of a ceutuiy, 

 first in this country, and reflectively throughout the world. The 

 meeting in the theatre of the museum at York on the 27th of Sep- 

 tember 1831, in which the British Association originated, had been 

 proposed to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society by Dr. (now Sir 

 David) Brewster [BuEWSTEH, DAVID], in a letter to Air. Phillips, who 

 had become one of the secretaries. The proposal was approved and 

 encouraged by the society, and it received the most zealous and 

 effective support in Edinburgh from Mr. (the late Sir John) Robison, 

 Mr. (now Professor James) Forbes, and Mr. (the late Professor 

 J F. W.) Johnston; and in London, as already recorded in tho 

 proper article, from Mr. (now Sir K. I.) Murchison. The association 

 having been constituted, Viscount Milton, president of the Yorkshire 

 Philosophical Society, became the first president, and the secretaries 

 of the society were appointed secretaries of the association for that 

 city. At the second meeting, held at Oxford under the presidency of 

 the late Dr. Buckland iu Ib32, the Kev. W. Vernon Harcourt, F.U.S., 

 was made general secretary, while Mr. Phillips received the appoint- 



