hat they intended his ruin thereby, and advised him, in
order to avert his impending doom, to throw the most valuable of his
possessions into the sea, upon which he threw a signet ring of great
price and beauty, to find it again in the mouth of a fish a fisherman had
sold him; still, though upon this Amasis broke alliance with him, his
prosperity clung to him, till one day he was allured by a Persian satrap,
his enemy, away from Samos, and by him crucified to death, 521 B.C.

POLYGNOTUS, an early Greek painter, born in Thasos, and settled in
Athens 463 B.C.; is considered the founder of historical painting, and
is praised especially by Aristotle, who pays a high tribute to him; was
the first to attempt portrait-painting and exhibit character by his art.

POLYHYMNIA, one of the nine MUSES (q. v.); she is
represented as in a pensive mood, with her forefinger on her mouth; she
was the inventress of the lyre and the mother of Orpheus.

POLYNESIA is the collective name of all the islands of the Pacific
of coral or volcanic origin. These South Sea islands are scattered,
isolated, or more usually in groups over a stretch of ocean 7000 m. from
N. to S. and 6000 from E. to W.; with the exception of the two chief
members of the New Zealand archipelago they are mostly small, and exhibit
wonderful uniformity of climate; the temperature is moderate, and where
there are any hills to intercept the moisture-laden trade-winds the
rainfall is high; they are extremely rich in flora; characteristic of
their vegetation are palms, bread fruit trees, and edible roots like yams
and sweet potatoes, forests of tree-ferns, myrtles, and ebony, with
endless varieties of beautiful flowering plants; their fauna is
wonderfully poor, varieties of rats and bats, a few snakes, frogs,
spiders, and centipedes, with the crocodile, being the chief indigenous
animals; the three divisions of Polynesia are Micronesia, comprising five
small archipelagoes in the NW., N. of the equator, of which the chief are
the Mariana and Caroline groups; Melanesia, comprising eleven
archipelagoes in the W., S. of the equator, of which the largest are the
Solomon, Bismarck, Fiji, New Caledonia, and New Hebrides groups; and
Eastern Polynesia, E. of these on both sides of the equator, including
New Zealand, Hawaii, and Samoa, ten other archipelagoes, and numerous
sporadic islands; the first of these divisions is occupied by a mixed
population embracing many distinct elemen