VOLUME 1 



Pensnett. Town of Staffordshire, 

 England. It is 2 m. from Dudley. 

 The chief industries are coal- 

 mining, and the making of iron, 

 glass, and hardware. Pop. 5,400. 



Pentacle. Five-pointed star, 

 drawn with a continuous line, used 

 by magicians and other occultists 

 as a mystic emblem, and supposed 

 to have power against evil spirits. 

 It is also called a pentagram and a 

 pentalpha. 



Pentameter (Gr. pente, five ; 

 metron, measure). In prosody, a 

 metrical line of 5 feet of whatever 

 kind. In English heroic verse it 

 consists of five accentual iambuses. 

 In classical elegiac verse, composed 

 of alternate hexameters and penta- 

 meters, the pentameter is divided 

 into two clean-cut halves of 2^ feet 

 each, of which the first may be 

 dactylic or spondaic, but the 

 second must contain two dactyls. 

 Schiller defined the two in an 

 illustrative distich which Coleridge 

 reproduced in English as follows : 



In the hexameter rises the fountain's 



silvery column ; 

 In the pentameter aye falling in melody 



back. 



See Poetry. 



Pentane. Hydrocarbon of the 

 paraffin series (C 5 H 12 ). It occurs 

 in considerable quantity in Ameri- 

 can crude petroleum, and is pre- 

 pared from light American petro- 

 leum by purifying the fraction 

 which distils over at 45 C. Pen- 

 tane is employed in the standard 

 lamp used in testing the illuminat- 

 ing power of coal gas, a mixture of 

 air and pentane vapour producing 

 a light equivalent to that given by 

 10 standard candles. 



Pentateuch (Gr. pente, five ; 

 teuckos, volume). Term used by 

 Christian scholars from the time of 

 Tertullian and Origen to designate 

 collectively the first five books of 

 the O.T. (Genesis, Exodus, Le- 

 viticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). 

 These books were called by the 

 Jews "the five-fifths of the law." 

 Some scholars contend that the 

 sixth book (Joshua) is inseparable 

 from the other five, and that it is 

 better to use the term hexateuch. 

 See Bible ; Hexateuch. 



Pentathlon. Series of five 

 events hi the athletic festivals of 

 ancient Greece foot race, long 

 jump, throwing the discus and the 

 javelin, and wrestling. A special 

 prize was awarded to the com- 

 petitor who excelled in the series. 



Pentaur, POEM OF. Ancient 

 Egyptian epic composition. Writ- 

 ten by a court poet of unknown 

 name, it describes Rameses II's 

 Hittite campaign, culminating in 

 the battle of Kadesh, about 1288 

 B.C. Versions were incised upon 

 temple walls at Luxor and Karnak. 

 From a papyrus copy made by a 

 scribe of that name, now in the 

 British Museum, E. de Rouge 

 mistakenly attributed the author- 

 ship to Pentaur. 



Pentecost (Gr. pentecoste, the 

 50th). Jewish festival, also known 

 as the Feast of Weeks. It is ob- 

 served on Sivan 6-7, and was so 

 called because it was celebrated 50 

 days from the morrow of the Sab- 

 bath after the Passover (q.v.). It 

 corresponds with the Christian 

 Whitsuntide (q.v.). 



Pentelicus OK PENTELIKON OROS. 

 Mt. in ancient Greece, 12 m. N.E. 

 of Athens. It was famous for its 

 quarries of white marble, which 

 are still worked. 



Peutland. JOHN SINCLAIR, IST 

 BARON (1800-1925). British politi- 

 cian. Son of Capt. G. Sinclair, he was 

 born July 7, 

 1860, and edu- 

 cated at Edin- 

 burgh Acade- 

 my and Wel- 

 lington, after- 

 wards passing 

 through Sand- 

 hurst into the 

 army, 5th 

 1st Baron Pentland, Lancers, in 

 British politician 1879 He 

 Elliott* pry served' in the 

 Sudan, 1885. He was M.P. for 

 Dumbartonshire, 1892-95, and for 

 Forfarshire, 1897-1909. A close 

 friend of Campbell-Bannerman, 

 Sinclair was made secretary for 

 Scotland in 1905, and in 1912, 

 having been a peer since 1909, be- 

 came governor of Madras, resigning, 

 1919. He died Jan. 11, 1925. 



Pentland Firth. Navigable 

 strait separating the Orkney Is- 

 lands from Caithness, Scotland, 

 and connecting the North Sea with 

 the Atlantic Ocean. Its passage is 

 rendered dangerous by a strong 

 tidal current flowing from W. to E. 

 at the rate of from 6-10 m. an hour, 

 and by eddies or whirlpools at the 

 change of tide. The channel 

 measures 14 m. in length and from 

 6 to 8 m. in breadth. The Pentland 

 Skerries, at the E. entrance, con- 



sist of two islets, on one of which is 

 a lighthouse, with light visible at 

 19 m., and of a number of rocks. 



Pentland Hills. Range in Scot- 

 land. It extends for about 16 m. 

 S.W. through Edinburghshire, Pee- 

 blesshire, and Lanarkshire, and has 

 a breadth of from 4 to 6 m. The 

 highest summits are Scald Law 

 (1,898 ft.) and Carnethy (1,980 ft.). 

 Springs in the hills provide Edin- 

 burgh with excellent water. See 

 Edinburgh. 



Pentonville. Dist. of London. 

 A ward of the bor. of Islington, and 

 once an outskirt of Clerkenwell, it 

 was, by gift of the Mandeville 

 family, a possession of the priory 

 of S. John of Jerusalem. It is 

 named after the estate of Henry 

 Penton, M.P. (d. 1812), which 

 began to be built upon about 1773. 



Pentonville Prison. English 

 convict prison. It was erected in 

 1842 by Sir Joshua Jebb, in the 

 Caledonian Road, Islington, 

 London, and was the first of what 

 were known as model prisons to 

 deal with the new solitary con- 

 finement of convicts. See Prison. 



Pentstemon. Genus of herb- 

 aceous plants, belonging to the 

 order Scrophulariaceae, also known 

 as beard tongue (q.v. ). 



Penumbra (Lat. pene, almost ; 

 umbra, shade). The lighter shadow 

 surrounding the darker central 

 portion of any shadow thrown by 

 an opaque object. The central dark 

 shadow is known as the umbra. It is 

 specifically applied in astronomy 

 to the shadow thrown by the earth 

 or moon. Where the penumbra of 

 the moon falls on the earth, a 

 partial eclipse of the sun is seen ; 

 within the umbra a total eclipse 

 is seen ; in an annular eclipse of the 

 sun the umbra of the moon falls on 

 the earth. See Eclipse. 



Penza. Govt. of Central Russia. 

 It is bounded by the govts. of 

 Nijni-Novgorod, Simbirsk, Saratov, 

 and Tambov, and its area is about 

 15,000 sq. m. The chief occupations 

 and industries are agriculture and 

 cattle-breeding, distilling, wool- 

 beating, pottery, cloth, sugar, and 

 paper making. 



Penza. Town of Central Russia, 

 capital of the govt. of the same 

 name. It stands at the confluence 

 of the rivers Penza and Sura, and is 

 on the Morshansk-Sy/ran rly. It 

 is the seat of a Greek Catholic 

 bishop. Pop. 80,000. 



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