PICO 



6142 



P1CTON CASTLE 



Robert Seymour setting forth the 

 adventures of a Nimrod Club. The 

 work introduces between 300 and 

 400 characters, including Pickwick ; 

 Mrs. Bardell ; Sam Weller, one of 

 the supreme successes of fiction ; 

 his father Tony ; Alfred Jingle, 

 the trolling player; Joe the Fat 

 Boy .- Bob Sawyer, the medical 

 student ; Stiggins, the unspeakable 

 " shepherd " ; Mrs. Leo Hunter, 

 and many others. Thackeray and 

 Leech offered to illustrate the 

 story, but the original drawings 

 are by Seymour (seven), R. W. Buss 

 (two), and Phiz (34). In James 

 Albery's play, Pickwick, Sir Henry 

 Irving found one of his most 

 popular characters, Jingle (q.v.). 



Pico. Island of the Azores, 

 midway between Flores and St. 

 Michael's. It culminates in the 

 volcanic height, Gran Pico, 7,613 

 ft. Much of the surface is covered 

 with lava. The chief product is 

 wine. San Antonio and Lagens do 

 Pico are the chief towns. Its area 

 is 176 sq. m. Pop. 15,000. 



PICO DELLA MlEANDOLA, GlO- 



VANNI (1463-94). Full name of the 

 15th century Italian humanist, 

 Mirandola (q.v.). 



Picon, JACUJTO OCTAVIO (b. 

 1853). Spanish novelist and critic. 

 Born in Madrid, Pic6n established 

 iiis reputation as a novelist by his 

 Lazaro, 1883, an able study of ec- 

 clesiastical problems which aroused 

 keen controversy. Other works 

 of fiction, marked by independence 

 of outlook and shrewd psychology, 

 are La Hijastra del Amor, 1884 ; 

 El Enemigo, 1887; Dulce y Sa- 

 brosa, 1891 ; and Cuentos di mi 

 Tiempo, 1895. He is also a dis- 

 tinguished critic, having published 

 several volumes of artistic and dra- 

 matic criticism, notably on Velaz- 

 quez, 1899. His collected works ap- 

 peared in 1909, and he is librarian 

 of the Real Academia Espanola. 



Picotee (Fr., marked). Horti- 

 cultural term for a show class of 

 carnations, in which the petals of 

 the flower are edged with a colour 

 contrasting with the ground tint. 

 They are further distinguished as 

 " heavy " and " light " according 

 to the breadth of the edging, which 

 may be in yellow, rose, purple, or 

 red. See Carnation. 



Picotite. In mineralogy, one oi 

 the spinel group of minerals. It is 

 a chrome-spinel containing man- 

 ganese, aluminium, iron, and chro- 

 mium, and is found in black grains 

 and crystals in serpentine and 

 olivine rocks. See Spinel. 



Picquart, MARIE GEORGES (1854- 

 1914). French soldier. Born at 

 Strasbourg, Sept. 6, 1854, he en- 

 tered the army from St. Cyr, and 

 served in Algeria and the East, be- 

 coming a staff officer at home in 



M. G. Picquart, 

 French soldier 



1894. H i s 

 duties led him 

 to suspect the 

 genuineness of 

 the Esterhazy 

 bordereau in 

 the Dreyfus 

 case. He was 

 sent abroad, 

 but returned, 

 1898, and gave 

 important evi- 

 dence then and at the Rennes trial, 

 in spite of bitter professional hostil- 

 ity. General in 1906, he was minis- 

 ter of war under Clemenceau, 

 1906-9, and then was made com- 

 mander of an army corps. He died 

 at Amiens, Jan. 19, 1914, and re- 

 ceived a public funeral in Paris on 

 the grounds of his services to the 

 state in the Dreyfus affair. 



Picric acid OR TBINITBO-PHENOL. 

 Bright yellow crystalline powder 

 obtained by the action of nitric 

 acid on phenol or carbolic acid. 

 Picric acid is a powerful anti- 

 septic, but its chief use is in the 

 manufacture of explosives. See 

 Lyddite; Melinite; T.N.T. 



Picrite (Gr. pihros, bitter). 

 Crystalline igneous rock of the 

 ultrabasic group of rocks. Its chief 

 constituents are olivine and augite, 

 but it usually contains hornblende, 

 biotite, etc., in varying quantities. 

 Usually dark green to black in 

 colour, the rocks are very similar 

 to peridotites in composition, and 

 are found in Great Britain, Ger- 

 many, Silesia, N. America, etc 

 See Peridotite. 



Pictography OB PICTURE-WRIT- 

 ING (Lat. pictus, painted; Gr. 

 graphein, to write). Representa- 

 tion of facts and ideas by means of 

 pictorial symbols. The earliest 

 form of self-explanatory record 

 devised by man, it sprang from the 

 primeval arts of design. In palae 

 olithic Europe naturalistic paint- 

 ings on cave-walls became con 

 ventiona iss and during the 

 Azilian period pictorial symbolism 

 emerged as an aid to memory and 

 a method of communication. 

 Neolithic Egypt and W. Asia 

 carried to further lengths this 

 effort of the mind. In the early 

 metal age pictographic symbols 

 passed into ideograms, each defi- 

 nitely related to spoken phrase or 

 word. Hereupon the independent 

 designer became the scribe, and 

 had to learn to read and write 

 a recognized system ; school-exer- 

 cises in early Sumerian and Egyp- 

 tian pictographs are extant. These 

 symbols were destined, in Baby- 

 lonia, Egypt, the Aegean, and 

 China, to develop into syllabic and 

 alphabetic writing. 



The primitive pictography of the 

 pre-metallic age drifted. with early 



migrations to other parts of the 

 world. In neolithic India it was 

 practised by Vindhya hill cave- 

 dwellers, and is still traceable in 

 Melanesia. At the continental ex- 

 tremities it survives among Bush- 

 men, Veddas, and Australian 

 aborigines. Eskimo bone-engrav- 

 ings, which resemble prehistoric 

 hunting scenes, depict not only 

 concrete objects, but also actions 

 and relations. The symbols are 

 more or less self-explanatory, but 

 are transposed into speech in para- 

 phrases varying with each inter- 

 preter. This form of pictography, 

 conveniently called picture-writing, 

 was highly developed among the 

 N. American plains Indians, while 

 some Brazilian tribes still inscribe 

 pictorial diaries upon dried cala- 

 bashes. In pre-Columbian America 

 the Maya and Aztec peoples 

 developed pictographic scripts of 

 true ideographic form, and pre- 

 pared pictorial codices of con- 

 siderable skill. This achievement 

 may have had behind it some 

 cultural impulse, more or less 

 remote, derived from the Old 

 World systems. They do not appear 

 to have passed beyond the stage of 

 rebus-writing, for proper names. 



Pictographs are often employed 

 in modern Europe for the sake of 

 emphasis, as when arrows or point- 

 ing hands appear on sign-posts to 

 indicate direction. See Alphabet ; 

 Aztec ; Cuneiform ; Hieroglyphs ; 

 Maya ; consult also Picture-writing 

 of American Indians, G. Mallery, 

 1893; The Races of Man, J. 

 Deniker, 1900. 



Picton, SIB THOMAS (1758- 

 1815). British soldier. Born at 

 Poyston, Pembrokeshire, he en- 

 tered the army 

 in 1771, but re- 

 tired on half- 

 pay, 1783. Re- 

 turning to the 

 service, 1794, 

 he took part 

 in the capture 

 of St. Lucia, 

 1795, and be- 

 came governor 

 of Trinidad, 

 1797. Resign- 

 ing in 1803, he 

 was acquitted after trial of charges 

 of using torture. Major-general, 

 1808, Picton accompanied the 

 Walcheren expedition, 1809 ; he 

 went to the Peninsula, 1810, and 

 took prominent part in the fighting 

 at Fuentes d'Onoro, Torres Vedras, 

 Badajoz, Vittoria, and elsewhere. 

 He was killed at Waterloo, when 

 leading a charge, June 18, 1815. 



Picton Castle. Residence of Sir 

 Charles E. G. Phillips. It is 3 m. 

 from Haverfordwest, Pembroke- 

 shire, Wales. A fortified residence 



