PAR 



PAR 



French chirurgieus. Their flesh is va- 

 lued. 



P. chavaria is as large as a dunghill 

 cock, with legs extremely long and 

 strong, and toes so lengthened us to en- 

 tangle in each other in its walking, on 

 which account its usual movement on the 

 ground is slow, and without the assist- 

 ance of its wings it is incapable of run- 

 ning. Its flight, however, is rapid, and 

 it is able to swim with ease. Its princi- 

 pal residence is about Carthagena in 

 South America, where it is usual for the 

 breeders of poultry to keep one of these 

 birds tame, which attend their flocks as 

 centinel, and effectually secures them 

 from birds of prey. Its immense spurs 

 are dreaded and avoided, even by the 

 vulture. It is said to feed on vegeta- 

 bles. 



PARROT. See PSITTACUS. 



PARSON, signifies the rector of a 

 church. He is in himself a body corpo- 

 rate, in order to protect and defend the 

 rights of the church by a perpetual suc- 

 cession. When a parson is instituted and 

 inducted into a rectory, he is then, and 

 not before, in full and complete posses- 

 sion. A parson has regularly during life 

 the freehold in himself of the parsonage- 

 house, the glebe, or land annexed to the 

 parsonage, and the tythes and other dues; 

 but these are sometimes in the hands of 

 an appropriator, and then there is a vicar, 

 who is endowed with a portion of the 

 glebe and of the tythes. 



PARTS of speech, in grammar, are all 

 the sorts of words which enter the com- 

 position of discourse. 



The grammarians generally admit of 

 eight parts of speech, viz. noun, pro- 

 noun, verb, participle, adverb, preposi- 

 tion, interjection, and conjunction. See 



PARTHENIUM, in botany, a genus of 

 the Monoecia Pentandria class and or- 

 der. Natural order of Nucamentaceae. 

 Corymbiferie, Jussieu, Essential charac- 

 ter ; male, calyx common five-leaved ; 

 corolla of the disk one-petalled : female, 

 corolla of the ray five ; on each side two 

 males, with one female between supe- 

 rior. There are two species, viz. P. 

 hysterophorus, cut-leaved parthenium, 

 or bastard feverfew, and P. integrifolium, 

 entire-leaved parthenium ; the former is 

 an annual plant, growing naturally in Ja- 

 maica, where it is called wild wormwood; 

 it thrives very luxuriantly in the low 

 lands ; it is observed to possess similar 

 equalities with feverfew ; it flowers here 

 in July and August. 



PARTI, PARTIE, PARTY, or PARTED, in 

 heraldry, is applied to a shield or escut- 

 cheon, denoting it divided or marked out 

 into partitions. 



The French heralds, from whom we 

 borrow the word, have but one kind of 

 parti, the same with our parti per pale, 

 which they simply call parti ; but with us 

 the word is applied to all sorts of parti- 

 tioning-, and is never used without some 

 addition, to specify the particular kind 

 intended : thus we have parti, or part- 

 ed, per cross, per chief, per pale, per 

 fess, per bend dexter, per bend sinister^ 

 per chevi'on, &.c. 



PARTICIPLE. See GHAMMAH. 



PARTICLE, in physiology, the minute 

 part of a body, an assemblage of which 

 constitute all natural bodies. See ATOMI- 

 CAL philosophy. 



It is the various arrangement and tex- 

 ture of these particles, with the differ- 

 ence of cohesion, &c. that constitute the 

 various kinds of bodies. The smallest 

 particles cohere with the strongest at- 

 traction, and compose bigger particles of 

 weaker cohesion, and many of these co- 

 hering compose bigger particles, whose 

 vigour is still weaker ; and hereupon the 

 operations in chemistry, and the colours 

 of natural bodies depend, and which, by 

 cohering, compose bodies of sensible 

 bulk. The cohesion of the particles of 

 matter, the Epicureans imagined, was ef- 

 fected by the means of hooked atoms ; 

 the Aristotelians, by rest ; but Sir Isaac 

 Newton shews, that it is done by means of 

 a certain power, whereby the particles 

 mutually attract and tend towards each 

 other. By this attraction of the particles, 

 he shews that most of the phenomena of 

 the lesser bodies are affected, as those of 

 the heavenly bodies are, by the attraction 

 of gravity. 



In investigating the actions exerted be- 

 tween minute particles of matter, we 

 must distinguish them as acted upon by 

 the force of aggregation, or the force of 

 chemical affinity : hence the distinction 

 between the integrant and constituent 

 particles of bodies. The constituent parts 

 are substances differing in their nature 

 from each other, and from the substance 

 which they form. The integrant parts 

 are precisely similar to each other, and 

 to the general mass which is composed 

 by their union, or, in other words, they 

 are the smallest particles into which a 

 substance can be resolved without de- 

 composition ; while decomposition is al- 

 ways implied in the division of a body in- 

 to its constituent particles. The integrant 



