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In every army the pontoon service is in the hands of technical specialists. But there are many other forms of military bridging, in which the specialist only supervises the work of the ordinary soldier, or indeed, takes no part whatever. Troops of all arms are expected to be familiar with certain methods of rough temporary bridging. In the British service the forms of temporary timber bridge usually employed are called trestle, lock and floating. The trestle bridge in its various forms consists of a series of two-legged or three-legged trestles carrying the road-bearers and chesses which form the roadway. Trestles can be improvised, but some are carried, ready for use, by mobile engineer units and they are frequently combined with pontoon bridges at the shore ends, where holding ground for the feet of the trestles is found. Lock bridges never touch water, forming single spans over a chasm. These consist of spars made into frames of which the feet rest in the banks of the river and the heads are interlocked, the whole being securely lashed. Another type of frame-bridge is the cantilever, which has been used in Indian frontier expeditions to bridge swift

steep-banked streams. Improvised suspension bridges are also used. Floating bridges are made not only of pontoons but also of boats of all sorts, casks lashed together, and rafts. They are almost always combined with one or two bays of trestle bridging at the shore ends.

 PONTOPPIDAN, ERIK (1698-1764), Danish author, was born at Aarhus on the 24th of August 1698. He studied divinity at the university of Copenhagen, and for some time acted as a travelling tutor. In 1735 he became one of the chaplains of the king. In 1738 he was made professor extraordinary of theology at Copenhagen, and in 1745 bishop of Bergen, Norway, where he died on the 20th of December 1764.

 PONTOPPIDAN, HENRIK (1857-), Danish author, son of a pastor, was born at Fredericia on the 24th of July 1857. He studied physics and mathematics at the university of Copenhagen, and when he was eighteen he travelled on foot through Germany and Switzerland. His novels show an intimate acquaintance with peasant life and character, the earlier ones showing clear evidence of the influence of Kjelland. An excellent example of his work is in the trilogy dealing with the history of Emanuel Hansted, a theorizing radical parson who marries a peasant wife. These three stories, Muld (“Soil,” 1891), Det Forjaettede Land (“The Promised Land,” 1892), and Dommens Dag (1895) are marked by fine discrimination and great narrative power. Among his other works are Fra Hytterne (1887), Folkelivsskildringer (2 parts, 1888-1890), and Skyer (1890). He began in 1898 a new series in Lykke Per, the story of a typical Jutlander.

 PONTORMO, JACOPO DA (1494-1557), whose family name was Carucci, Italian painter of the Florentine school, was born at Pantormo in 1494, son of a painter of ordinary ability, was apprenticed to Leonardo da Vinci, and afterwards took lessons from Piero di Cosimo. At the age of eighteen he became a