PITCAIRN ISLAND 



PITCHER-PLANT 



201 



sity of his native city ; but having gone to France 

 in ill-health, made final choice of medicine as his 

 life study, completing a distinguished course at 

 Paris. He practised with success in Edinburgh 

 till 1692, when the fame of his treatise on Harvey's 

 discovery of the circulation of the blood secured 

 him a call to Leyden as professor. Here he 

 remained only a year ; his lectures being ultimately 

 published as Elemento, Medicine Physico-Mathe- 

 matica (1718). He returned to Edinburgh to 

 become one of the most famous physicians of his 

 time ; producing also Dissertationes Medicos ( 1701 ). 

 But he was even more notorious as a Jacobite, an 

 Episcopalian, a satirist of Presbyterian men and 

 things, and, according to his opponents, as an 

 atheist and scoffer at religion. The Assembly is a 

 comedy in ridicule of the General Assembly of the 

 kirk; and Babell, or the Assembly (1692), is a 

 poem with the same aim. His Latin verses, some 

 of which were republished by Ruddiman in 1727, 

 are creditable. He died 20th October 1713. 



Pitcairn Island, a solitary island in the 

 Pacific Ocean, between Australia and South 

 America, in 25 3' S. lat. and 130 8' \V. long., 

 measures 2J miles by 1 mile. It was discovered by 

 Carteret in 1767, and was at that time uninhabited, 

 although there were unmistakable evidences that it 

 had been inhabited at one time. In 1790 it was 

 taken possession of by nine of the mutineers of 

 II. M.S. Bounty (see BLIGH), with six Tahitian 

 men and a dozen women, the ringleader being 

 called^ Christian. Four years later the native men 

 one night murdered all the Englishmen, except 

 Alexander Smith, who afterwards assumed the 

 name of John Adams. Thereupon the women, in 

 revenge, murdered all the Tahitian men. Accord- 

 ing to another account, the white men and the 

 Tahitiaim murdered each other at intervals, until 

 only two Englishmen were left alive. Certain it is 

 that at the end of ten years John Adams was left 

 alone, with eight or nine women and several 

 children ; and from them the present inhabitants 

 (128 in 1890) are descended. Adams, changed by 

 these tragic adventures, and sobered by his responsi- 

 bilities, set about the education of his companions 

 in Christian principles. The little colony was 

 unknown to the world until 1808, when it was 

 ' discovered ' by Captain Folger of the American 

 sealing ship Topaz; the first British vessel to visit 

 it did not arrive until 1814. The islanders were 

 visited again in 1825 ami 1830, and in 1831, as 

 their numl>ers had rapidly increased (to 87), they 

 were at their own request removed to Tahiti by 

 the British government. But, disgusted by the 

 immorality and other undesirable customs of their 

 Tahitian relatives, the most of them came back to 

 Pitcairn Island after about nine months, in a 

 vessel chartered by themselves. The island was 

 annexed to Britain in 1839. Nearly 200 of the 

 islanders were transferred to Norfolk Island in 

 Ix.'ii;. but a number of them afterwards returned. 

 I'itcairn Island enjoys a lovely climate ; its moun- 

 tainous surface reaches 1008 feet in Outlook Uidge ; 

 the soil is fertile, and produces yams, cocoa- 

 nuts, bread-fruit, sweet potatoes, bananas, &c. 

 The people are degenerating, from intermarriage 

 and their being able to live without exertion. 



See Sir J. Barrow, Mutiny of the Bounty ( 1881 ) ; Lady 

 Belcher, Mutineer* of the Bounty (1870); T. B. Murray, 

 Pitcairn Iilajid (1H54; new ed. 1KH5); Rosa Amelia 

 Young [a native], The Story of Pitcairn Island ( 1895 ). 



Pitch, the degree of acnteness of musical 

 sounds. A musical sound is produced by a series 

 of vibrations recurring on the ear at precisely 

 equal intervals ; the greater the numlier of vibra- 

 tions in a given time the more acnte or higher is 

 the pitch (see SOUND). The pitch of musical 



instruments is adjusted by means of a tuning- 

 fork, consisting of two prongs springing out of 

 a handle, so adjusted as to length that when 

 struck a particular note is produced, that note 



being 



in Britain, and A 



Germany. It is obviously important to have a 

 recognised standard of pitch by which instruments 

 and voices are to be regulated ; but there is, unfor- 

 tunately, not the uniformity that might be desired 

 in the pitch in actual use. For two centuries, 

 down to about 1827, the pitch in use was nearly 

 uniform (C = 498 to 515 vibrations per second); 

 but since then, owing mainly to an aim of wind- 

 instrument makers to obtain greater brilliance of 

 tone, it has constantly been rising, to the detri- 

 ment of soprano voices especially, till in 1859, in 

 the Covent Garden opera band, it was a semitone 

 higher (C = 538). The French government, on the 

 report of a special committee, in 1859 fixed the 

 pitch of C at 522, which continues in use in France 

 to this day, and is known as French pitch. An 

 international conference, where all the chief Euro- 

 pean countries were represented except France and 

 England, was held in Vienna in 1885, which re- 

 sulted in the adoption of French pitch as the 

 standard. In 1891 the American piano- manu- 

 facturers agreed to adopt French pitch. An 

 effort towards uniformity of pitch in Great 

 Britain, made in 1859-69 by the Society of Arts, 

 and a subsequent attempt initiated by the Koyal 

 Academy of Music in 1885, had no practical result. 

 Most British orchestras continue to play at the 

 higher pitch (known as Philharmonic), while in 

 music not orchestral, and with vocalists generally, 

 a pitch about the French is used. The main 

 obstacle to the lowering of pitch is the expense 

 of new wind-instruments, it being impossible to 

 lower the old ones to so great an extent. See 

 A. J. Ellis, History of Musical Pitch, reprinted 

 from the Journal of the Society of Arts, 1880, and 

 given in abstract in Nature, voL xxi. 



Pitch. When the tar from wood or coal is dis- 

 tilled, volatile naphtha or 'spirit' is obtained at 

 low temperatures, and as the heat is increased 

 heavy oils and other products appear in the distil- 

 late. If the temperature reaches redness, coke or 

 carbon is left as a residue, but if the fire is with- 

 drawn before the distilling vessel becomes red i.e. 

 l>efore the heavy oils in the tar begin to break up 

 the residue is pitch. A softer and tougher pitch is 

 obtained if the fire is removed early than if the 

 heat is continued till coking begins. In the latter 

 case it is more black, glossy, and brittle. An 

 elastic pitch is got from bone tar, and another from 

 stearine residues, and both are valued by varnish 

 and tarpaulin makers. Pitch is also obtained from 

 natural petroleum. Wood-tar pitch is much more 

 used in America than in England, chiefly for pro- 

 tecting timber from the weather and the attacks of 

 insects. Coal-tar pitch is most largely employed 

 in the manufacture of patent fuel, from 5 to 8 per 

 cent, of it being required to form Briquettes (q.v. ) 

 of small coal or coke breeze. It has other applica- 

 tions, such as in the manufacture of black varnishes 

 for coating iron, and to a less extent for protecting 

 wood and other substances, in the preparation of 

 artificial asphalt (see ASPHALT), and to yield lamp- 

 black when burned. Burgundy Pitch is the subject 

 of a separate article (see also PlNE). In some 

 parts of Persia and Afghanistan a kind of pitch 

 is prepared by the destructive distillation of goat 

 and sheep dung, which is applied as a remedy for 

 sores or ulcers on sheep and some other animals. 



Pitcher-plant. See INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. 



