PRIAPUS 



PRICKLY PEAR 



401 



Pria'pus, son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, born 

 at Lampsacus on the Hellespont, considered as a 

 divinity of fruitfulness, especially of flocks of sheep 

 and goats, of bees, the vine, and of all kinds of 

 garden produce. His statues usually stood in 

 gardens, in the form of rude wooden images, 

 painted vermilion, with a club, sickle, and phallic 

 symbol of exaggerated dimensions. 



Pribraill. a mining town of Bohemia, 48 miles 

 by rail SSW. of Prague, employs 6000 men in the 

 royal lead and silver mines, and various manu- 

 factures. There is a mining academy, and a church 

 much frequented by pilgrims. Pop. (1890) 13,412. 



Pribylof Islands. See ALASKA. 



Price, RICHARD, philosopher, was born at Tyn- 

 ton, in Glamorganshire, on 22d February 1723. His 

 father was a dissenting minister, morose, bigoted, 

 and intolerant, in complete antithesis to the dis- 

 position of the son. As a boy he read Clarke and 

 Butler, went at eighteen to a dissenting academy 

 in London, and at the close of his studies became 

 chaplain to a Mr Streatfield at Stoke-Newington, 

 with whom he lived for thirteen years. Legacies 

 from his patron and an uncle in 1 7-"><> enabled him 

 to marry. He laboured as a preacher at Newington 

 Green and at Hackney, and established a reputation 

 by his somewhat heavy but able Review of the Prin- 

 cipal Questions in Morals (1758). His apologetic 

 work, On the Importance of Christianity, appeared 

 in 1766. In 1769 he received from Glasgow the 

 degree of D.D., and published his Treatise on 

 Jieversionary Payments; which was followed by 

 the compilation of the celebrated Northampton 

 Mortality Tables, and various other works of 

 value relating to life assurance and annuities. 

 In 1771 appeared his famous Appeal to the Public 

 on the Subject of the National Debt; in 1776 his 

 Observation on Cieil Libert]/ and the Justice and 

 Policy of the War with America. The latter 

 brought him the freedom of the city of London 

 and an invitation from congress to assist in regu- 

 lating its finances. Price lived long enough to 

 herald the promise of the French Revolution, and 

 to l>e denounced in Burke's lieflections. He died 

 April 19, 1791. Price was a believer in the imma- 

 teriality of the soul, holding that it remained in 

 a dormant state lietween death and resurrection. 

 Their difference of opinion on this subject led 

 to a controversy of some celebrity between him 

 and his friend Dr Priestley. His views respecting 

 the divinity of Christ were what is called Low or 

 semi-Arian. As a moralist he has a close affinity 

 with Cudworth, and in some points strangely fore- 

 shadows the greater name of Kant. Of his great 

 treatise on morals the chief positions are these : 

 actions are in themselves right or wrong ; right and 

 wrong are simple ideas incapable of analysis ; these 

 ideas are received immediately by the intuitive 

 imwer of the reason or understanding. See the 

 Life by his nephew, William Morgan (1815). 



Price, THOMAS (1787-1848), a distinguished 

 Welsh scholar. See WALES (LANGUAGE AND 

 LITERATURE). 



Prichard, JAMBS COWLES, ethnologist, was 

 born at Ross in Herefordshire, llth February 1786. 

 The son of a Quaker merchant, he received a 

 careful home education at Ross and in Bristol, 

 where he lind many chances of picking up foreign 

 I/manages. There, at St Thomas's, London, and 

 in Edinburgh he studied medicine; and in 1810, 

 after a resilience both at Cambridge and at Oxford, 

 he commenced practice in Bristol as a physician. 

 His talents were soon recognised. He was 

 appointed physician first to the Clifton dispensary 

 and St Peter's Hospital, and afterwards to the 

 Bristol infirmary. In 1813 appeared his Researches 

 into the Physical History of Mankind, which at 

 390 



once secured him a high standing as an ethnologist. 

 The different editions of this work (4th, 5 vols. 

 1841-51) gave further proofs of the zeal with which 

 he pursued his ethnological inquiries ; and at the 

 same time he devoted himself much to philology, 

 which he rightly judged to be absolutely indispens- 

 able for an enlarged study of ethnology. He made 

 himself master not only of the Romance, Teutonic, 

 and Celtic languages, but also of Sanskrit, Hebrew, 

 Arabic ; and in The Eastern Origin of the Celtic 

 Nations (1831 ; 2d ed. by Latham, 1857) he com- 

 pared the different dialects of Celtic with the 

 Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Teutonic languages, 

 and succeeded in establishing a close affinity 

 between them all, from which lie argued in favour 

 of a common origin for all the peoples speaking 

 those languages. Besides several medical works, 

 he also published an Analysis of Egyptian Myth- 

 ology (1819; Ger. trans, by A. W. von Schlegel, 

 1837) and The Natural History of Man (2 vols. 

 1843 ; 4th ed. by E. Norris, 1855). As a tribute to 

 his eminence as an ethnologist, Dr Prichard was 

 elected president of the Ethnological Society ; 

 while in recognition of his researches into the 

 nature and various forms of insanity he was 

 appointed in 1845 a commissioner in lunacy. This 

 occasioned his removal to London, where on 22d 

 Deceml>er 1848 he died of rheumatic fever. The 

 first to raise ethnology to the rank of a science, lie 

 was himself a monogenist, maintaining that man 

 is one in species, and that the negro is the primi- 

 tive type of the human race. 



Prickle (Aculens), in Botany, is simply a hard, 

 pointed hair. See HAIRS OF PLANTS. 



Prickly Heat is the popular name in India 

 and other tropical countries for a form of skin 

 disease sometimes known as Lichen tropints (see 

 LICHEN ). It more frequently attacks strangers from 

 temperate climates than the natives, although the 

 latter are not altogether exempt from it. It consists 

 in a copious eruption of small red papules. The 

 sensations of itching and stinging which attend if 

 are intense, and give rise to an almost irresistible 

 propensity to scratching, which of course only 

 aggravates the irritation. Little or nothing can bo 

 done in the way of treatment, except keeping as 

 cool as possible. 



Prickly Pear, or INDIAN FIG (Opvntia), a 

 genus of plants of the natural order Cactacere 

 (q.v.), having a fleshy stem, generally formed of 

 compressed articulations ; leafless, except that the 

 youngest shoots produce small cylindrical leaves 

 which soon fall oft ; generally covered with clusters 

 of strong hairs or of prickles ; the flowers springing 

 from among the clusters of prickles, or from the 

 margin or summit of the articulations, solitary, . 

 or corymbose-paniculate, generally yellow, rarely ) 

 white or red ; the fruit resembling a fig or pear, 

 with clusters of prickles on the skin, mucilaginous, 

 generally eatable that of some species pleasant, 

 that of others insipid. The prickles of some species 

 are so strong, and their stems grow up in such 

 number and strength, that they are used for hedge- 

 plants in warm countries. The Common Prickly 

 Pear or Indian Fig (0. vulgaris), a native of Vir- 

 ginia and more southern parts of North America, 

 is now naturalised in many parts of the south of 

 Europe and north of Africa, and in other warm 

 countries. It grows well on the barest rocks, and 

 spreads over expanses of volcanic sand and ashes 

 too arid for almost any other plant. It is of 

 humble growth ; its fruit oval, rather larger than 

 a lien's egg, yellow, and tinged with purple, the 

 pulp red or purple, juicy, and pleasantly com- 

 bining sweetness with acidity. It is extensively 

 used in many countries as an article of food. 

 In the south of England the prickly uear lives 



