PLEVNA 



PLINY 



239 



removed as soon as possible after the slaughter of 

 an animal not too severely affected with pleuro. 

 It should be a very light straw colour, the paier the 

 better, and free from all blood and frothy mucus. 

 It is removed from the borders of the diseased por- 

 tion, collected with a porcelain spoon rendered 

 aseptic, and conveyed into vials containing pieces 

 of worsted thread a few inches long, which, as well 

 as the bottles, have been aseptised. One of these 

 worsted threads is inserted, by means of a needle 

 made for the purpose, under the skin of the tip of 

 the tail of each animal. Inoculation is practised 

 to an enormous extent in Australia, many stock- 

 owners there now lelieving that but for this it 

 would be impossible to rear cattle successfully. 



Plevna, a town of Bulgaria, 19 miles S. of the 

 Danube ami x.~> XK. of Sofia, with 14,474 inhabit- 

 ants. Here in 1877 Osman Pasha, the Turkish 

 general, after defeating the Russians in several 

 engagements, entrenched himself against their 

 reinforced and superior numbers early in September, 

 and repulsed their endeavours to take the place by 

 storm ; but, after making an unsuccessful attempt 

 to cut his way through the investing Russian army, 

 he was compelled, provisions and ammunition 

 running short, to capitulate ( 10th December) with 

 42,000 men and 77 guns. The siege cost the 

 Russians 55,000 men, the Roumanians 10,000, the 

 Turks 30,000. See W. V. Herbert, The Defence 

 of Plevna (1895). 



Pleximeter. See PERCUSSION. 



Pleyel, IGNAZ JOSEPH, born 1st June 1757 at 

 Rnppertsthal, near Vienna, studied under Haydn 

 and in Italy, and in 1783 was made Kapellmeister 

 of Strasburg Cathedral. In 1791 he visited London, 

 and he harmonised many of the melodies for 

 Thomson's Collection of Scottish Songs. At Stras- 

 burg, during the French Revolution, he barely 

 escaped with his life as a royalist. In 1795 he 

 opened a large music shop in Paris, and in 1807 

 joined thereto a pianoforte manufactory. He died 

 in Paris, 14th November 1831. His compositions 

 consisted of quartets, concertas, and sonatas. 



Plica Polonlca is the name given to a 

 disease of the scalp, in which the hairs become 

 matted together by an adhesive and often fetid 

 secretion, and which is especially prevalent in 

 Poland, although it occasionally occurs in other 

 countries. Theliair is found, on microscopic inves- 

 tigation, to be infested with a fungus of the genus 

 Trichophyton. The only treatment that is beneficial 

 is the removal of the hair, and strict attention to 

 cleanliness ; but, as it is popularly l>elieved in 

 Poland that this affection affords a security from 

 all other sickness and misfortune, it is often diffi- 

 cult to persuade patients to have recourse to these 

 means. 



I'lillisoll, SAMUEL, 'the sailors' friend,' was 

 born at Bristol on 10th February 1824. In his 

 seventeenth year he became clerk in a Sheffield 

 brewery, and rose to a position of trust in the firm. 

 In 1854 he started business on his own account, in 

 the coal trade, in London. Shortly afterwards he 

 l>egan to interest himself in the sailors of the 

 mercantile marine, and the dangers to which they 

 were exposed. He accumulated a mass of facts 

 proving that the gravest evils resulted from the 

 wilful employment of unseaworthy ships, from over- 

 loading them, and undr-manning them, from bad 

 stowage, and from over-insurance ; unscrupulous 

 owners insured rotten or 'coffin' ships at a value 

 greatly exceeding their real value, and sent them 

 to sea, hoping they would founder, by which means 

 they would make bigger profits than they could 

 make by legitimate carrying of merchandise. Fail- 

 ing to induce parliament to take legislative steps 

 to put an end to these evils, Mr Pliinsoll himself 



entered parliament, for Derby, in 1868 ; but it was 

 not until he had published Our Seamen ( 1873) and 

 had made an appeal to the general public that he 

 succeeded in getting passed the Merchant Shipping 

 Act in 1876, to supersede temporary measures 

 passed during three preceding sessions. By 

 this act the Board of Trade was empowered to 

 detain, either for survey or permanently, any vessel 

 deemed unsafe, either on account of defective hull, 

 machinery, or equipments, or improper loading, or 

 overloading ; a penalty not exceeding 300 was 

 incurred by any owner who should ship a cargo of 

 grain in bulk exceeding two- thirds of the entire 

 cargo, grain in bulk being especially liable to shift 

 on the voyage ; the amount of timber that might 

 be carried as deck cargo was defined, and enforced 

 by penalties ; finally, every owner was ordered to 

 mark (often called the ' Plimsoll Mark') upon 

 the sides of his ships, amidships, a circular 

 disc, 12 inches in diameter, with a horizontal 

 line 18 inches long drawn through its centre, 

 this line and the centre of the disc to mark the 

 maximum load-line i.e. the line down to which 

 the vessel might be loaded, in suit water. Failure 

 to comply with this last regulation exposed the 

 owner to a fine not exceeding 100 for each offence. 

 In 1890 this act was amended, the fixing of the 

 load-line being taken out of the owner's discretion 

 and made a duty of the Board of Trade. Mr 

 Plimsoll retired from parliamentary life in 1880. 

 But he did not slacken his efforts to make the 

 sailors' calling safer : in 1890 he published a work 

 on Cattle-ships, exposing the cruelties and great 

 dangers connected with the shipping of live cattle 

 across the ocean to British ports. He died 3d June 

 1898. See Japp, Good Men and True ( 1890). 



I' I in 11 ill m oil, or PLYNLIMMON, a large moun- 

 tain-mass (2469 feet) of Wales with three sum- 

 mits, on the boundary between Montgomery and 

 Cardigan, 10 miles W. of Llanidloes. The name is 

 said to be a corruption of a Celtic word signifying 

 Five Rivers, five nvers having their sources on its 

 slopes ; one is the Severn, another the Wye. 



Plinth* the square member at the bottom of 

 the base of a Column (q.v. ). Also the plain pro- 

 jecting band forming a base of a wall. 



Pliny (GAius PLINIUS SECUNDUS), called the 

 Elder, to distinguish him from his nephew, came 

 of a North Italian stock possessing estates at Novnm 

 Column (Como), where he was born 23 A.D. He 

 claimed to be a compatriot of Catullus, but the 

 reference is too vague to warrant the assumption 

 that their common birthplace was Verona. His 

 education was carried on in Rome, under every 

 advantage of wealth and family connection, till, 

 when about twenty-three years old, he entered 

 the army, serving on the staff of L. Pomponius 

 Secundus, then conducting a campaign in Germany. 

 He became colonel of his regiment (a cavalry one), 

 ami while attentive enough to his military duties 

 to make a special study of the throwing of missiles 

 from horseback, on which he wrote a treatise (De 

 Jaculatione Equestri), and to compile a history 

 (afterwards published in twenty books) of the Ger- 

 manic wars, he gratified his thirst for miscellaneous 

 knowledge by a series of scientific tours, investigat- 

 ing the region between the Ems, the Elbe, and the 

 Weser, and the sources of the Danube. Returning 

 to Rome in 52 with Pomponius, he studied for the 

 bar, at which he practised just long enough to satisfy 

 himself th.it his aptitudes were not of the forensic 

 order. Accordingly he withdrew to his native 

 Como, and there, during the greater part of Nero's 

 reign, devoted himself to reading and authorship 

 encyclopaedic in their range. Apparently for the 

 guidance of his nephew he wrote in three books his 

 iitudiosus, a treatise defining the culture necessary 



