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PHCENI'CUS POR'TUS, a port of the Peloponnefus, 
in Meffenia, near the promontory Acritas, fouth-weft of 
Colonis.—A port of the fen, on the eaft coaft of Sicily, 
near the promontory Pachynus. Ptolemy. —A port of the 
nome of Libya.—A port on the fouthern coaft of the ifle 
of Crete.—A port of Afia Minor, on the coaft of Lycia, 
two miles from the town of Patara. Livy. —A port of 
Afia Minor, on the coaft of Ionia, at the foot of the pro¬ 
montory Mimas. 
PHCENICU'SA, or Phcenicodes, one of the feven 
JEolian ifies of the ancients, called Feliciida , fituated to¬ 
wards the weft, to the eaft of the ifle of Ericufa. It took 
its name, according to Strabo, from its production, which 
was the pheenix, or palm-tree. 
PHCENICUS'S-dE, a town of Afia, in Syria, which be¬ 
longed to the Phoenicians.— Alfo, the name of two 
iflands, placed by Steph. Byz. on the coaft of Africa, in 
the gulf of Carthage. 
PHCENIG'MUS, /. [Greek.] That rednefs of the Jkin, 
which is occaficned by certain ftimulating fubftances, 
muftard, cantharides, &c. which have, baen therefore 
ca’led rubefacients. The appellation of pheenigmus has 
alfo been lometimes given to the rubefacient fubftance 
itfelf. Sauvages has applied the term to a difeafe, which 
confifts of red or purple fpots or blotches upon the Ikin, 
without any elevation, inflammation, or fever. His phoe- 
nigmus is, in fa£t, the petechia: fine fibre of fome writers, 
and the Purpura fimplex of Dr. Willan; the Porphyra 
fimplex of our Pathology, vol. xix. p. 295. 
PHCE'NIX,/. A bird famous among the ancients, but 
which is generally looked upon by the moderns as fabu¬ 
lous. The ancients fpeak of this bird as fingle, or the 
only one of its kind ; they deferibe it as of the fize of an 
eagle ; its head finely crelted with a beautiful plumage, 
its neck covered with feathers of a gold colour, and the 
reft of its body purple, only the tail white, and the eyes 
fparkling like ftars : they hold, that it lives 500 or 6co 
years in the wildernefs ; that, when thus advanced in age, 
it builds itfelf a pile of fweet wood and aromatic gums, 
and fires it with the wafting of its wings, and thus burns 
itfelf; and that from its afhes arifes a worm, which in 
time grows up to be a phoenix. Hence the Phoenicians 
• gave the name of phoenix to the palm-tree ; becaufe when 
burnt or cut down to the root it rifes again fairer than 
ever. And hence, as we fuppofe, has arifen a curious 
miftake in tranflatinga paflage from Plutarch’s Rules for 
the Prefervation of Health. The paflage is this : Tov pm 
iyy.i(pa,\ov ts (pennies, yXvxvv ovra atpocipa. xe(pa-hahyot/ 
Asyecrii/ &vxi ; which Amyot in French, and Dr. Poole in 
Englifh, 1684., render thus; “Though the brain of the 
phoenix be very fweet, it will caufe the head-ache.” Now 
is it pofllble that fo fenfible a writer as Plutarch could 
ever have entertained a fancy fo irrational as that any 
man had ever eaten the brains of a phoenix ? No doubt 
the buds, or tops, (iy xstpaXov, head,) of the date-tree, are 
meant. In confirmation of this opinion, we may obferve, 
that feveral ancient naturalifts, and Pliny in particular, 
(lib. xvi. cap. 3?.) attribute to trees in general all the 
main component parts of the animal body ; fkin, flefh, fat, 
bones, marrow, finews, veins, and blood. For inftance ; 
“ Humor et cortici arborum eft qui fanguis earum intelligi 
debet. Atque in toto corpora arborum, ut reliquorum 
animalium, cutis, fanguis, caro, nervi, venae, offa, medul¬ 
las. Pro cute cortex. Proximi plerifque adipes: ii vo- 
cantur a calore alburnum: mollis et peflima pars ligni, 
etiam in robore facile putrefeens, et teredini obnoxia: 
quare femper amputatur.” He aflimilates the heavieft 
folid parts of the tree to bone ; the grain (as I think we 
improperly term it) to the veins, and the foft and po¬ 
rous parts to marrow. And more particularly on thefub- 
je6t of the palm-tree, Pliny obferves, “Dulcis media 
earum in cacumine quod cerebrum appellant which 
Theophraftus, Galen, Strabo, and Philoftratus, term 
eyy.£<pu\ov : and this is the bud of that genus of the palm- 
tree, called by Theophraftus, ^xpemppitp^, the g.round- 
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palm. Thefe buds are enclofed in feveral envelopes, and 
are delicious to the tafte. Matheolus, in his elegantly- 
written Comments on Diofcorides, lays, they are ferved 
up in Italy as a defert, and eaten with pepper and fait. 
I think we can no longer be under the leaft doubt as to 
the proper tranflation of <pon/ixo; syxEpaAon—the “palm- 
bud,” (not the phoenix’s brains!) which is very de¬ 
licious, “but caufes pain in the head.” (See Gent. 
Mag. 1819.) 
In the fixth book of the Annals of Tacitus, fe£t. 28. it 
is obferved that, in the year of Rome 787, the pheenix 
revifited Egypt; which occafioned among the learned 
much fpeculation. This being is facred to the fun. Of 
its longevity the accounts are various. The common 
perfuafion is, as we have mentioned above, that it lives 
500 years; though by fome the date is extended to 1461. 
The feveral eras when the pheenix has been feen are fixed 
by tradition. The firft, we are told, was in the reign of 
Sefoftris ; the fecond in that of Amafis; and, in the 
period when Ptolemy the third of the Macedonian race 
was feated on the throne of Egypt, another pheenix 
directed its flight towards Heliopolis. When to thefe 
circumftances are added the brilliant appearance of the 
pheenix, and the tale that it makes frequent excurfions 
with a load on its back, and that when, by having made 
an experiment through a long tradl of air, it gains fuffi- 
cient confidence in its own vigour, it takes up the body 
of its father and flies with it to the altar of the fun to be 
there confumed; it cannot but appear probable, that the 
learned of Egypt had enveloped under this allegory the 
philofophyof comets. The ancient Chriftians refer to 
the pheenix (in fome of their accounts) as a type of the 
refurreN ion. 
PHCE'NIX, in aftronomy, a conftellation of the fouthern 
liemifphere ; unknown to the ancients, and invilible in 
our northern parts. The number of ftars in this conftel¬ 
lation is thirteen. It took its name and form from that 
of the famous bird juft mentioned. 
PHCE'NIX, f. [from the red hue of the fpatha, or 
fheath, when arrived at maturity; or from the peculiar 
habit of the tree, as noticed above.] The Date Palm- 
tree ; in botany, a genus of the clafs dicecia, order trian- 
dria, natural order palmae. Generic characters—I. Male 
flowers. Calyx: fpathe univerfal, one-valved; fpadix 
branched ; perianthium three-parted, very fmall, perma¬ 
nent. Corolla: petals three, concave, ovate, fomewhat 
oblong. Stamina: filaments three, very fhort; antheras 
linear, four-cornered, the length of the corolla. II. Fe¬ 
male flowers on a different plant, or on the fame fpadix. 
Calyx as in the male. Piftillum : germ roundifh; ftyle 
awl-fliaped, fhort; ftigma acute. Pericarpium : drupe 
ovate, one-celled. Seed fingle, bony, fubovate, with a 
longitudinal groove.— Effential Charafler. Calyx three- 
parted; corolla three-petalled. Male: ftamina three. 
Female: piftillum one; drupeovate. There are four fpecies. 
1. Phoenix da&ylifera, the common date palm-tree : 
fronds pinnate; leaves folded together, enfiform. This 
rifes to a great height in the warm countries ; the ftalks 
are generally full of rugged knots, which are the veftiges 
of the decayed leaves; tor the trunks of thefe trees are not 
folid like other trees, but the cefitre is filled with pith, 
round which is a tough bark full of ftrong fibres while 
young ; but, as the trees grow old, this bark hardens and 
becomes woody; to this bark the leaves are clofely joined, 
and in the centre rife eredf, being clofely folded or plaited 
together, but, after they are advanced above the fheath 
which furrounds them, they expand very wide on every 
fide the Hem, and, as the older leaves decay, the ftalk ad¬ 
vances in height. The leaves of thefe trees, when grown 
to a fize for bearing fruit, are fix or eight feet long, and 
may be termed branches, (for the trees have no other:) 
thefe have narrow long leaves, (or pinr.x,) fet on alter¬ 
nately their whole length. The final! leaves, or lobes, 
are towards the bafe three feet long, and little more than 
one inch broad; they are clofely folded together when 
3 ’ they/ 
