ORGAN IZ . 

 KNOWLEDGE; 



_ STORY 

 D PICTURE 



PP 



P is the sixteenth letter of the English alphabet. 

 It comes from the Phoenician pe, through the Greek 

 and Latin, but the form has changed considerably. 

 The Phoenician name meant mouth, but there is lit- 

 tle in the vertical line bent to the left at the top 

 which particularly resembles that feature. The Greeks 



changed the form, and the Romans altered it still further, making of it the modern capi- 

 tal P. 



In sound it has remained constant, having possessed always the explosive character 

 which it has to-day. Occasionally it is silent, as before s and n in such words as psalm, 

 pneumonia, and it is used in one common combination, ph. This is really an unnecessary 

 digraph, as / represents the same sound, and some words are correctly spelled in either 

 manner, as in fantasy, phantasy. 



PACIFIC, pasij'ik, OCEAN, the greatest of 

 the oceans, a body of water so vast that it oc- 

 cupies more than a third of the entire area of 

 our planet and comprises about half its water 

 surface. It lies between America and Asia and 

 Australia, and sweeps from the Arctic on the 

 north to the great ring of shoreless water known 

 as the Southern Ocean. A happy accident gave 

 it its poetic name. Moderate winds favored 

 Magellan on his first cruise, and the name 

 Pacific, which he chose, records his own impres- 

 sion of its peaceful aspect. As a matter of fact, 

 however, this ocean is not more free from 

 storms than the Atlantic. 



The area of the Pacific has been estimated at 

 about 70,000,000 square miles. It is broadest 

 at the equator, where it measures 10,000 miles 

 from east to west. Its greatest length from 

 north to south is about 7,353 miles. Its depth 

 is greater than that of the Atlantic, the aver- 

 age reading being about 2,530 fathoms (15,180 

 feet). The deepest place thus far discovered 

 is near Mindanao, one of the Philippines, the 

 soundings showing a depth there of 32,088 feet, 

 or more than six miles. There are seven other 

 places in the Pacific where the soundings show 

 over 30,000 feet. 



The bed of this ocean may be regarded as a 

 sunken plain, dotted here and there, especially 



in its western part, with plateaus, volcanic 

 islands, coral reefs and atolls. Some of the 

 plateaus emerge to form islands like Australia. 



Thou wert before the Continents, before 

 The hollow heavens, which like another sea 

 Encircles them and thee, but whence thou wert, 

 And when thou wast created, is not known, 

 Antiquity was young when thou wast old. 



STODDARD : Hyihn to the Sea. 



The circulation of currents, which is produced 

 by the action of the wind, is precisely similar 

 to that in the Atlantic, but on a more impos- 



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