PARTRIDGE BERRY 



PASCAL 



789 



arc generally the food sought at first for the young. 

 The nest is usually on the ground, among brush- 

 wood and long grass, or in fields of clover or corn, 

 and generally contains from twelve to twenty eggs. 

 The young run as soon as they are hatched. Both 

 parents show a very strong attachment to their 

 young, and great courage in repelling assailants ; 

 they nave also recourse, like many other birds, to 

 stratagem to draw off the most powerful and 

 dangerous enemies, such as dogs, in another direc- 

 tion, fluttering close before them, as if broken- 

 winged, whilst the brood escape. Until the end 

 of autumn the parent birds and their brood keep 

 together in a covey ; late in the season several 

 coveys often unite into a pack, when it becomes 

 much more difficult for the sportsman to approach 

 them. The flight of the partridge is strong and 

 rapid for a short distance, but it does not seem to 

 be capable of a long-sustained flight. The eggs of 

 partridges are often hatched, and the young birds 

 reared, by the domestic hen, the chief requisite 

 being a plentiful supply of ants when the birds are 

 very young. Partridges thus reared become very 

 tame, but they seldom breed in the aviary. 



The Ked-legged Partridge (P. rufa or Citn-nlijs 

 rnfft, the genus or sub-genus Caccabis being dis- 

 tinguished by a rudimentary blunt spur on the 

 tarsi) is a native of the south of Europe and of the 

 Channel Islands, often called the French Partridge. 

 It in now also plentiful in some parts of England, 

 particularly Norfolk and Suffolk, into which it has 

 been introduced, and whence it has largely driven 

 out the common breed. It is said to have been 

 brought to England from Guernsey during the 

 reign of Charles II. ; ami the French Revolution 

 of 1789, with its sudden abolition of the game-laws, 

 is said by Carlyle to have caused ' two signs 

 emigrant 'flights of French seigneurs, emigrant 

 winged flights of French game/ The red-leg is 

 rather larger than the common partridge, stronger 

 on the wing, and less easily approached by the 

 sportsman, whilst it is also less esteemed for the 

 table. The upper parts are of a reddish-ash colour ; 

 the throat and cheeks white, bounded by a collar 

 of black, which expands in black spots on the 

 breast ; and the sides exhibit bars of black. The 

 plumage is smooth. Two other species, nearly 

 allied to this, are found in some of the southern 

 parts of Europe, and one of them is found as far 

 east as India. In Africa there is the Barbary 

 Partridge ( P. petrosa). Thehabitsof all the species 

 much resemble those of the common partridge, but 

 the P. rufa prefers heavy clay land and heaths, in 

 which respect it greatly differs from the gray 

 partridge. The name is loosely used for a North 

 American Grouse (q.v.), the Virginian Quail (q.v.), 

 the Tinamou (q.v.), and other birds. See H. A. 

 Macpherson, The Partridge ( 1893). 



Partridge Berry. See GAULTHERIA. 



Partridge-WOOd, a very pretty hardwood 

 from the West Indies and Brazil; the product of 

 the leguminous tree Aiulira hiermis. See ANDIRA. 



Pasadena, a residential city of the San Gabriel 

 valley, southern California, 10 miles by rail NE. of 

 Los Angeles ; the valley is noted for its groves of 

 oranges and lemons. Pop. ( 1900) 9117. 



Pasar'gadae, one of the most ancient cities 

 of the Persians, containing a palace and great 

 treasures, was in the province of Persia, and stood 

 in a plain surrounded by mountains, on the river 

 Cyrus. It is identified with ruins near the modern 

 Ikfurghab, north-east of ancient Persepolis, and 70 

 wiles north-east of the modern Shiraz. 



PascagOIlIa, a navigable river in the south- 

 eastern part of Mississippi, and formed by the 

 junction of the Leaf and Chickasawha. It flows 



85 miles south to a small bay of the same name 

 on the Gulf of Mexico. 



Pascal, BI.AISE, one of the best writere and 

 profoundest thinkers France has produced, was 

 born of a good legal family, at Clermont-Ferrand 

 in Auvergne, 19th June 1623. His father, Etieime 

 Pascal, was a president of the Court of Aids there, 

 and was himself a man of high character and 

 capacity ; bis two surviving sisters, Gilberte and 

 Jacqueline, grew up beautiful and accomplished 

 women, with something of their brother's intellect 

 and all his spiritual elevation of character. The 

 elder of the two, Gilberte (born 1620), married her 

 cousin M. Perier in 1641, penned a tender and 

 touching sketch of her brother's life, as well as her 

 sister's, and had her own history written by her 

 gifted and austere daughter Marguerite ( 1646-1733). 

 Jacqueline (born 1625) wrote verses as a child, and 

 in maturer life remarkable letters and Thoughts 

 on the ' Mystery of the Death of Christ." After a 

 trembled spiritual experience she became one of the 

 sisters of Port Royal in 1652, but failed to find all 

 the happiness she sought for, and died nine years 

 later, immediately after having been persuaded 

 into subscribing against her conscience the formu- 

 lary required from the Port-Koyalists, which she had 

 vehemently resisted as a treasonable betrayal of 

 the cause. Her brother, at first willing to submit, 

 now offered the strongest opposition to any further 

 concessions, and, at an interview with Arnauhl, 

 Nicole, and Sainte Marthe, argued the point with 

 such vehemence that he fell fainting to the ground. 



Their mother died in Ki26 or 1628, and in 1630 

 their father went to live in Paris amongst the men 

 of science of his time. He trained his gifted son 

 with the greatest care, and Madame Perier has 

 told us of the child's astonishing precocity, how he 

 refused to rest without knowing the reason for 

 even-thing, and how, when purposely kept from 

 mathematical liooks, he worked out for himself 

 at twelve the propositions of Euclid as far as the 

 thirty-second in the first book. Still more, at 

 sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections which 

 called forth the mingled incredulity and astonish- 

 ment of Descartes, and indeed forms the foundation 

 of the modern treatment of the subject. It was 

 never published, but Leibnitz saw it, and Pascal 

 himself gave a resume of it in his Esstii pour les 

 Con-tones (1640). His father's protest against one 

 of Richelieu's financial measures brought him into 

 trouble, and indeed drove him awhile into hiding, 

 but the cardinal's anger was abated by the inter- 

 cessions of Jacqueline and her charming acting 

 in a representation by young girls of Scudery's 

 L'Amovr Tynmnique. Richelieu sent him as 

 Intendant to Rouen in 1641, and here about 1646 

 an accident brought him into contact with the 

 Jansenists, and turned into a new current the 

 destinies of his children. Here the boy gave him- 

 self to study with unbroken devotion, despite 

 wretched health and almost incessant sufferings 

 from nervous prostration. To this period belongs 

 his first conversion, and we find him in the 

 intemperate zeal of a first love testifying to the 

 earnestness of his convictions by denouncing to the 

 archbishop the errors in the teaching of a Capuchin 

 monk at Rouen. In 1647 he published his Nuiivelles 

 Experiences stir le Vide, and next year occurred his 

 famous Puy de D6me experiments on atmospheric 

 pressure, which may be said to have completed the 

 work of Galileo and Torricelli. The reputation he 

 gained earned him the jealousy of Descartes, and 

 the attacks of the Jesuit fathers of Montferrand 

 and Paris. 



His calculating machine was a brilliant achieve- 

 ment of the first years at Rouen ; the later scien- 

 tific labours of his life were contributions to the 

 infinitesimal calculus, to the theory of the equilib- 



