Page:EB1911 - Volume 22.djvu/62

 of the duchy of Lauenburg, finally succeeded in uniting the whole of Pomerania under her rule.

POMEROY, a village and the county-seat of Meigs county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, about 85 m. S.S.E. of Columbus. Pop. (1890) 4726; (1900) 4639, including 453 foreign-born and 280 negroes; (1910) 4023. Pomeroy is served by the Hocking Valley and (across the river) Baltimore & Ohio railways, by inter-urban electric railway, and by passenger and freight boats to the leading river ports. It occupies a strip of ground between the river and a range of steep hills. Bituminous coal and salt abound in the district, and there are deposits of building stone, fireclay and glass sand. The first settlement here was established in 1816, coal mining was begun three years later, and in 1827 a town was laid out and named Nyesville. There was little progress, however, until 1833, when Samuel W. Pomeroy (in whose honour the present name was adopted) formed a company, which began mining coal on a large scale. Pomeroy was incorporated as a village and was made the county-seat in 1841. In 1850 the first of several salt wells, from 1000 to 1200 ft. in depth, was operated.

POMFRET, JOHN (1667–1702), English poet, son of Thomas Pomfret, vicar of Luton, was born in 1667. He was educated at Bedford grammar school and at Queens’ College, Cambridge. He became rector of Maulden, Bedfordshire, in 1695, and of Millbrook in the same.county in 1702. Dr Johnson says that the bishop of London refused to sanction preferment for him because in his Choice he declared that he would have no wife, although he expressed a wish for the occasional company of a modest and sprightly young lady. The poet was married in real life all the same, and-while waiting to clear up the misunderstanding with the bishop-he died in November 1702. The Choice or Wish: A Poem written by a Person of Quality (1700) expresses the epicurean desires of a cultivated man of Pomfret's time. It is smoothly written in the heroic couplet, and was widely popular. His Miscellany Poems were published in 1702.

POMMEL (through O. Fr. pomel, from a diminutive pomellus of Lat. pomum, fruit, apple), any rounded object resembling an apple, e.g. the rounded termination of a saddle-bow; in architecture, any round knob, as a boss, finial, &c.; more particularly the rounded end to the hilt of a sword, dagger or other hand weapon, used to prevent the hand from slipping, and as a balance to the blade. “Pommel” is also a term used of a piece of grooved wood used in graining leather. This word may be the same in origin, or more probably from Fr. paumelle, from paame, the hand, palm.

POMMER, or (Fr. hautbois; Ital. bombardo, bombardone), the alto, tenor and basses of the shawm or Schalmey family, and the forerunners respectively of the cor-anglais, bassoon or fagotto, and double bassoon or contrafagotto. The main difference to the casual observer between the medieval instruments and those of our orchestra which were evolved from them would be one of size. In the Pommers no attempt had been made to bend the tube, and its length, equal to that of an open organ pipe of the same pitch, was outstretched in all its unwieldiness in an oblique position in front of the performer. The great contrabass Pommer was 9 ft. long without the crook and reed, which, however, were bent downwards. It had five open fingerholes and five keys working inside a perforated case; in order to bring the holes within reach of the finger, they were cut obliquely through the tube. The compass extended

from F below 8 ft. C to E or F in the bass stave, two octaves in all. The other members of the family were the bass Pommer, from 8 ft. C to middle C, corresponding to the modern bassoon or fagotto; the tenor or basset Pommer, a fifth higher in pitch; the alto pommer or nicolo, a fourth or a fifth above the tenor; and the high alto, or Klein Alt Pommer, an octave higher than the tenor, corresponding approximately to the cor-anglais.


 * (K. S.)

POMONA, an old Italian goddess of fruit and gardens. Ovid (Met. xiv. 623) tells the story of her courtship by the silvan deities and how Vertumnus, god of the turning year, wooed and won her. Corresponding to Pomona there seems to have been a male Italian deity, called Pomunus, who was perhaps identical with Vertumnus. Although chiefly worshipped in the country, Pomona had a special priest at Rome, the flamen Pomonalis, and a sacred grove near Ostia, called the Pomonal. She was represented as a beautiful maiden, with fruits in her bosom and a pruning-knife in her hand.

POMONA, a city of Los Angeles county, in southern California, U.S.A., about 33 m. E. of the city of Los Angeles. Pop. (1890) 3634; (1900) 5526 (567 foreign-born); (1910) 10,207. It is served by the Southern Pacific, the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake, and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railways, and by an inter-urban electric line. The city is about 850 ft. above sea-level, and has a Carnegie library and several parks, including Ganesha park (45 acres), which commands a fine view. At Claremont, about 3 m. north, is Pomona College (1888, coeducational), which in 1908 had 34 instructors and 488 students. Pomona is in the midst of a prosperous fruit region, devoted especially to, the, growing of oranges. Orchards of oranges, lemons, apricots, peaches and prunes surround the city for miles, and some olives are grown; alfalfa and sugar-beets are raised in large quantities in the immediate neighbourhood; Pomona was settled by a colony of fruit-growers in 1875, and was chartered as a city in 1888.

POMONA, or, the central and; largest island of the Orkneys, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 16,235. It is 25 m. long from N.W. to S.E. and 15 m. broad from E. to W.; area, 190 sq. m.; but where the coast is cut into, on the N. by Kirkwall Bay and on the S. by Scapa Flow, the land is less than 2 m. across. Consequently, the portion of the island to the west of the waist of Pomona is sometimes described as the West Island, and the portion to the East as the East Island. *The West coast is almost unbroken, the bays of Birsay and Skaill beingthe only bays of any importance. 'The east and south shores, on the other hand, are extensively carved out. Thus on the east side are found Eynhallow Sound, Wood Wick, the bays of Isbister, Firth, Kirkwall, and Inganess and Dee Sound, and on the south Holm Sound, Scapa Bay, Swanbister Bay and Bay of Ireland. The highest points of the watershed from Costa, Head to the Scapa shore are Milldoe (734 ft.) to the north-east of Isbister and Wideford Hill (740 ft.) to the west of Kirkwall. There are also a few eminences towards the south-west, Ward Hill (880 ft.) in the parish of Orphir being the highest peak in the island. There are numerous lakes, some of considerable size and most of them abounding with trout. Loch Harray is 4 m. long by from m. to about 2 m. wide, and Loch Stenness 3 m. long by from  to 2 m. wide. Lochs Swannay, Boardhouse and Hundland are situated in the extreme north, while Loch Kirbister lies near the south coast and Loch Tankerness adjoins Deer Sound. Off the east coast lie the islands of Rousay, Egilshay, Viera, Eynhallow, Gairsay and Shapinshay, and off the south Copinshay and Lamb Holm. The hilly country is mostly moorland, and peat-messes are met with in some of the low-lying land, but many of the valleys contain fertile soil, and there are productive tracts on the eastern and northern seaboard. Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkneys, and Stromness are the only towns.

In Harray, the only parish in the Orkneys not trenched at some point by the sea, Norse customs have survived longer than else wherein the group save in North Ronaldshay. In Deerness