PODIEBRAD 



Diocleia, birthplace of Diocletian. 

 During the war Podgoritza was 

 occupied by the Austrians, Jan., 

 1916, and recovered by the Allies, 

 Nov., 1918. Pop. about 14,000. 

 See Montenegro, Conquest of. 



Podiebrad, GEORG VON (1420- 

 71). King of Bohemia. Born at 

 Podiebrad, April 6, 1420, he gained 

 a name in the 

 Hussite wars 

 against the 

 Austrians, and 

 brought about 

 the election of 

 Ladislas as 

 king o f Bo- 

 hemia in 1453, 

 himself a c t 

 ing as r e- 

 gent f or t he 



the death of 



62O8 



Georg von Podiebrad, 

 king o! Bohemia 



young king. On 

 Ladislas in 1457 he was elected, 

 early in 1458, to succeed. His 

 efforts to conciliate religious ha- 

 treds failed, and in 1466 he was 

 excommunicated, and attacked by 

 the Catholic nobles of Bohemia and 

 Silesia and by Matthias, king of 

 Hungary. Matthias was defeated 

 and had to sue for peace, but 

 Podiebrad died, March 22, 1471, 

 before the treaty was concluded. 



Podocarpus. Genus of ever- 

 green confierous trees of the 

 natural order Taxaoeae. They 

 are chiefly natives W the extra- 

 tropical regions of the S. Hemi- 

 sphere, but with representatives 

 in E. Asia and tropical America. 

 They are closely related to the 

 Yews (Taxus), which some of the 

 species resemble in their two- 

 ranked leaves and pulpy fruit. 

 Several of the species afford 

 valuable timber, as the Miro (P. 

 ferruginea) of New Zealand, with 

 close-grained reddish wood ; the 

 Totara pine (P. totara), also of New 

 Zealand ; and the Illawarra pine 

 or Kidneywallum (P. elata) of 

 Queensland and N. S. Wales, with 

 light yellow durable wood, useful 

 for piles, masts, and spars. 



Podolia. Government of S.W. 

 Russia. It is bounded N. by Vol- 

 hynia, E. by Kiev, S. by Kherson, 

 and W. by Galicia. The country is 

 flat and fertile. The capital is Ka- 

 menets-Podolsk, end the chief 

 rivers are the Dniester and the 

 Bug. Sugar, tobacco, cloth, and 

 spirits are manufactured. Area, 

 16,224 sq. m. Pop. 4,000,000. 



Podophyllum (?. peltatum) 

 OB MAY APPLE. Perennial herb of 

 the natural order Berberidaceae, 

 native of N. America. It has 

 a creeping rootstock and thick 

 fibrous roots. Barren stems end 

 in a large round leaf with lobed 

 margins, attached by the middle ; 

 flowering stems with two one- 

 sided, lobed leaves, and between 



Podocarpus. Leaves and, inset, fruit 

 of P. ferruginea 



them a solitary, nodding, white 

 flower, which is succeeded by a 

 large yellow oval fruit with edible 

 pulp, sweet and slightly acid. The 

 leaves and stems are narcotic and 

 poisonous. From the rootstocks, 

 collected in autumn, the resinous 

 extract known as podophyllin is 

 obtained, and used as a cathartic 

 medicine. 



Poe, EDGAR ALLAN (1809^9). 

 American poet, critic, and story 

 writer. He was born at Boston, 

 Massachusetts, Jan. 19, 1809, son 

 of David Poe, an actor of Irish de- 

 scent, who had abandoned law for 

 the stage, and married an English 

 actress, Elizabeth Arnold. At 

 the age of three, having lost both 

 parents, he was adopted by John 

 Allan, a tobacco merchant of 

 Virginia, who, when he went to 

 London in 1815, sent the boy to the 

 Manor School, Stoke Newington. 

 On his return to Richmond in 

 1820, Poe went first to a private 

 school there and to the new Uni- 

 versity of Virginia, where he 

 matriculated, with distinction in 

 classics and languages, in 1826, but 

 contracted card debts, which Allan 

 refused to pay. Removed to Allan's 

 office, he enlisted in the U.S. army, 

 became a serjeant-major, and in 

 1830 was entered as a cadet at 

 West Point, from which he was 

 dismissed in 1831 for insubordina- 

 tion. Henceforward he was left to 

 his own resources and a life of 



POE 



drudgery, relieved by the devotion 

 of his father's widowed sister, Mrs. 

 Clemm, whose beautiful daughter, 

 Virginia, he married in 1836, when 

 she was not quite 14 years of age. 

 Poe, who had begun to write 

 verse before he was 15, published 

 volumes of poems in 1827 and 

 1829, and in 1831 issued a third 

 containing The Sleeper, The City 

 in the Sea, The Valley of Unrest, 

 Lenore, and Israfel. His first work 

 as a story writer, A MS. Found in a 

 Bottle, won a prize offered in 1833 

 by The Baltimore Saturday Visi- 

 tor. His realistic romance of the 

 sea, The Narrative of Arthur 

 Gordon Pym, appeared in 1838 ; 

 Tales of the Grotesque and Ara- 

 besque in 1840. 



In the Southern Literary Mes- 

 senger of Richmond, and other 

 periodicals, he achieved recognition 

 as a critic, being, perhaps, the first 

 in America to place literary criti- 

 cism on a rational basis, and was 

 among the first to appreciate E. B. 

 Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, 

 Hawthorne, Lowell, and others. 



Podophyllum or May Apple. Leaves 

 and flower ; inset, fruit 



With the Adventures of one Hans 

 Pfaal and The Balloon Hoax, 

 he anticipated Jules Verne, as in 

 The Gold Bug, The Murders of the 

 Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie 

 Roget, and The Purloined Letter, 

 he may be said to have founded 

 the modern detective story ; while 

 his William Wilson might have 

 suggested Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll 

 and Mr. Hyde. Of his tales of 

 fantasy the most remarkable is The 

 Fall of the House of Usher ; with 

 it may be noted The Pit and the 

 Pendulum, The Cask of Amon- 

 tillado, and The Assignation. (_ 

 * Fame came tardily to Poe with 

 the publication in 1845 of The 

 Raven. He was then on the brink 

 of tragedy. In their little cottage 

 at Fordham, near New York, 

 his child-wife died, Jan. 30, 1847, 



