by his
contemporaries; they have supplied material for dramatic treatment in
modern times (227-184 B.C.).

PLAYFAIR, JOHN, Scotch mathematician, born at Benvie; bred for the
Church, became professor first of Mathematics and then of Natural
Philosophy at Edinburgh University; wrote on geometry and geology, in the
latter supported the Huttonian theory of the earth (1748-1819).

PLEIADES, in the Greek mythology seven sisters, daughters of Atlas,
transformed into stars, six of them visible and one invisible, and
forming the group on the shoulders of Taurus in the zodiac; in the last
week of May they rise and set with the sun till August, after which they
follow the sun and are seen more or less at night till their conjunction
with it again in May.

PLEIADES, THE, the name given to the promoters of a movement in the
middle of the 16th century that aimed at the reform of the French
language and literature on classical models, and led on by a group of
seven men, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Belleau, Baif, Daurat, Jodelle, and Pontus
de Tyard. The name "Pleiad" was originally applied to seven contemporary
poets in ancient Greece, and afterwards to seven learned men in the time
of Charlemagne.

PLENIST, name given to one who holds the doctrine that all space is
filled with matter.

PLESIOSAURUS, an extinct marine animal with a small head and a long
neck.

PLEURA, the serous membrane that lines the interior of the thorax
and invests the lungs.

PLEURA-PNEUMONIA, an inflammation of the lungs and pleura, Pleurisy
being the inflammation of the pleura alone.

PLEVNA (14), a fortified town in Bulgaria, in which Osman Pasha
entrenched himself in 1877, and where he was compelled to capitulate and
surrender to the Russians with his force of 42,000 men.

PLEYDELL, MR. PAULUS, a shrewd lawyer in Scott's "Guy Mannering."

PLIMSOLL, SAMUEL, "the sailor's friend," born at Bristol; after
experience in a Sheffield brewery entered business in London as a
coal-dealer; interesting himself in the condition of the sailor's life in
the mercantile marine, he directed public attention to many scandalous
abuses practised by unscrupulous owners, the overloading, under-manning,
and insufficient equipment of ships and sending unseaworthy vessels out
to founder for the sake of insurance money; entering Parliament for Derby
in 1868, he secured the passing of the Merchant Shipping Act in 1876
levelled against these abuses; his name has