PRESCOT PREVOST. 



761 



kneaded several times, drained in small baskets, 

 and simply dried in the shade. 



In some parts of Germany potatoes are put to 

 another use. The lower classes are accustomed to 

 incorporate them, after being steamed and reduced 

 to a paste, with the butter to be spread over bread. 

 It thus goes farther where economy is studied : 

 and that it may longer be preserved, is often salted. 



It will surprise many to learn, that a mode has 

 been suggested by a French chemist for converting 

 potatoes into a substance resembling coffee. He 

 mixes some best olive-oil with a certain portion of 

 dried potato-flour, and then adds a small quantity 

 of coffee-powder. He asserts that this will pro- 

 duce a liquor more agreeable than coffee. 



Chemical ingenuity has likewise converted this 

 most useful root into substitutes for many other 

 articles ; as chocolate, tapioca, arid vermicelli. A 

 chemist in Copenhagen has discovered that the 

 flowers of the plant may be used in dyeing. By 

 this means a beautiful yellow colour may be ob- 

 tained, which is solid and durable. By plunging 

 the colour into blue, it becomes a perfect green. 

 It has likewise been found, that the juice contained 

 in the potato will produce a gray colour of great 

 beauty. The liquor drawn off in the process of 

 making potato starch will clean silks, woollens, 

 or cottons, without damage to the texture or 

 colour. It is also good for cleaning wainscots. 



Potatoes are used with excellent effect in the 

 boilers of steam engines, for preventing the gather- 

 ing of a calcareous incrustation on the bottom, 

 which is gradually deposited from the water em- 

 ployed. The potatoes give out a glutinous sub- 

 stance which entangles the particles in the water, 

 and prevents them from incrusting the iron of the 

 boiler. A medical use of the potato has been lately 

 suggested in a valuable French publication ; namely, 

 as a preventive of, and even cure for, the scurvy. 

 Roasted potatoes were administered with perfect 

 success to sailors afflicted with the disorder, after 

 other approved medicines had been given in vain. 

 As roasted potatoes are the most effectual, it 

 seems probable that the remedy depends on some 

 of the substances contained in the black liquid 

 which boils out of potatoes, and which is retained 

 in roasting. 



PRESCOT ; a town in the county of Lancas- 

 ter, on the great road between Liverpool and 

 Manchester, 197 miles from London, and 8 east 

 from Liverpool. It is situated in the neighbour- 

 hood of extensive coal-mines, from which Liver- 

 pool is chiefly supplied with fuel. The Liver- 

 pool and Manchester railway passes about one 

 mile from the town. The parish church, dedi- 

 cated to St Mary, is an ancient edifice: in the 

 year 1789 the old steeple was taken down and re- 

 placed by an elegant tower and spire. Prescot has 

 long been noted for the manufacture of watch tools, 

 as also part of the watch called movement work. 

 The small files manufactured here are said to be 

 the best in the world, and great numbers are an- 

 nually exported. Several manufactories of coarse 

 earthenware, some of which are famous for the 

 making sugar moulds, are established here. The 

 cotton business, though not conducted here to any 

 great extent, gives employment to many. Popu- 

 lation of the town in 1841, 5451; of the whole 

 parish, which embraces fourteen other townships, 

 35,902. 



PREVOST, PIERRE, a voluminous writer on 

 subjects chiefly ot natural science, and the trans- 



lator, also, of many English vvoiks into French, 

 was born in 1751, and was originally destined to 

 follow the profession of his father, who vvas one of 

 the pastors of Geneva: at the age of twenty, how- 

 ever, he abandoned the study of theology for that 

 of law, the steady pursuit of which, in time, gave 

 way to his ardent passion for literature and philo- 

 sophy ; at the age of twenty two, he became private 

 tutor in a Dutch family, and afterwards accepted 

 a similar situation in the family of M. Delessert, 

 first at Lyons, and afterwards at Paris. In this latter 

 city he commenced the publication of his transla- 

 tion of Euripides, beginning with the tragedy of 

 Orestes; a work which made him advantageously 

 known to some of the leading men in that great 

 metropolis of literature, and led to his appoint- 

 ment, in 1780, to the professorship of philosophy 

 in the College of Nobles, and also to a place in the 

 academy of Berlin, on the invitation of Frederick the 

 Great. Being thus established in a position where 

 the cultivation of literature and philosophy became 

 as much a professional duty as the natural accom- 

 plishment of his own wishes and tastes, he com- 

 menced a life of more than ordinary literary acti- 

 vity and productiveness. In the course of the 

 four years which he passed at Berlin, he published 

 Observations sur les methodes employees pour en- 

 seigner la morale; Sur la thtorie des gains fortuits ; 

 sur le mouvement progressif du centre de gravite de 

 tout le systeme solaire; sur I'origine des vitesses 

 projectiles; sur I'economie des anciens gouverne- 

 ments; sur I'ctat des finances d'Anglet erre ; and he 

 also completed the three first volumes of his trans- 

 lation of Euripides. There were, in fact, few 

 departments of literature or philosophy which 

 were not comprehended in the extensive range of 

 his studies and publications. In the year 1784, 

 he returned to Geneva to attend the death-bed of 

 his father, when he was induced to accept the 

 chair of belles lettres in the university, an appoint- 

 ment which he found on trial little suited to his 

 taste, and which he shortly afterwards resigned. 

 For some years after this period, he was compelled, 

 more by circumstances than by inclination, to par- 

 take largely in those political discussions, which, 

 for some years, agitated his native city, and which 

 afterwards, resumed upon a wider theatre, shook 

 to its centre the whole framework of European 

 society ; but he gradually withdrew himself from 

 political life on his appointment to the chair of 

 natural philosophy in 1792, and devoted himself 

 from thenceforth, with renewed activity and 

 ardour, to pursuits which were more congenial to 

 his tastes. In 1790, M. Prevost published his 

 Memoire sur I'equilibre dufeu, and in the following 

 year his Recherches sur la chaleur : these import- 

 ant memoirs were followed by many others on the 

 same subject in various scientific journals; and the 

 general results of all his researches and discoveries 

 were exhibited, in a systematic form, in his well- 

 known work Sur le calorique rayonnant, which vvas 

 published in 1809, and in which he fully developed 

 his Theory of Exchanges, and was enabled to give 

 a consistent explanation of the principal facts 

 which were at that time known respecting the 

 nature and propagation of heat. He contributed 

 papers to the Transactions of the Royal Society of 

 London in 1797 and 1803; the first containing an 

 explanation of some optical experiments of lord 

 Brougham, and the second, some remarks on heat 

 and on the action of bodies which intercept it, 

 with reference to a paper by Dr Herschel ; and in 



