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Rh of Myvyr Morganwg, who used to style himself archdruid of Wales. The place became, for a time, famous as a meeting place for neo-Druidic gatherings. Pontypridd was an insignificant village till the opening of the Taff Vale railway into the town in 1840, and it owed its progress chiefly to -the development of the coal areas of the Rhondda Valley, for which district it serves as the market town and chief business centre. It also possesses anchor, chain, and cable works, chemical works, and iron and brass foundries. Pontypridd has, jointly with Rhondda, a stipendiary magistrate since 1872.

PONY (from the Lowland Scots powney, probably from O. Fr. pouleriet diminutive of poulain, a colt or foal Late Lat. pullanus Lat. pullus, a young animal), a horse of a small breed, sometimes confined to such as do not exceed 13 hands in height, but generally applied to any horse under 14 hands (see ). The word is of frequent use as a slang term—e.g. for a sum of £25, for a liquor measure or glass containing less than a half-pint; and in America for a literal translation of a foreign or classical author, a “crib.”

 PONZA (anc. Pontiae), the principal of a small group of islands belonging to Italy. Pop. (1901), 4621. The group is of volcanic origin, and includes Palmarola (anc. Palmaria), Zannone (Sinonia), Ventotene (Pandateria, pop. in 1901, 1986) and San Stefano. It is situated about 20 m. S. of Monte Circeo and 70 m. W. of Naples, and belongs partly to the province of Caserta and partly to that of Naples (Ventotene). There is regular communication with Naples by steamer, and in summer with Anzio. The islands rise to a height of about 70 ft. above sea-level. They are now penal settlements, and their isolated character led to their being similarly used in ancient times. A colony with Latin rights was founded on Pontiae in 313 Nero, Germanicus's eldest son, and the sisters of Caligula, were confined upon it; while Pandateria was the place of banishment of Julia, daughter of Augustus, of her daughter Agrippina the elder, and of Octavia, the divorced wife of Nero.

 POOD, a Russian weight, equivalent to 40 ℔ Russian and about 36 ℔ avoirdupois. A little more than 62 poods go to the ton. The word is an adaptation of the Low German or Norse pund, pound.

 POOL. (1) A pond, or a small body of still water; also a place in a river or stream where the water is deep and still, so applied in the Thames to that part of the river known as The Pool, which reaches from below London Bridge to Limehouse. The word in Old English was pól, which may be related to pull or pyll, and the similar Celtic words, e.g. Cornish pol, a creek, common on the Bristol Channel and estuary of the Severn, on the English side in the form “pill.” A further connexion has been suggested with Lat. pallus, marsh; Gr. , mud. (2) A name for the stakes, penalties, &c., in various, card and other games when collected together to be paid out to the winners; also the name of a variety of games of billiards (q.v.). This word has a curious history. It is certainly adapted from Fr. poule, hen, chicken, apparently a slang term for the stakes in a game, possibly, as the New English Dictionary suggests, used as a synonym for plunder, booty. “Chicken-hazard” might be cited as a parallel, though that has been taken to be a corruption of “chequeen,” a form of the Turkish coin, a sequin. When the word came into use in English at the end of the 17th century, it seems to have been at once identified with “pool,” pond, as Fr. fiche (ficher, to fix), a counter, was with “fish,” counters in card games often taking the form of “fish” made of mother-of-pearl, &c. “Pool,” in the sense of a common fund, has been adopted as a commercial term for a combination for the purpose of speculating in stocks and shares, the several owners of securities “pooling” them and placing them under a single control, and sharing all losses and profits. Similarly the name is given to a form of trade combination, especially in railway or shipping companies, by which the receipts or profits are divided on a certain agreed-upon basis, for the purpose of avoiding competition (see ).

 POOLE, MATTHEW (1624–1679), English Nonconformist theologian, was born at York, educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and from 1649 till the passing of the Act of Uniformity (1662) held the rectory of St Michael le Querne, London. Subsequent troubles led to his withdrawal to Holland, and he died at Amsterdam in 1679. The work with which his name is principally associated is the Synopsis criticornm biblicorum (5 vols. fol., 1669–1676), in which he summarizes the views of one hundred and fifty biblical critics. He also wrote English Annotations on the Holy Bible, as far as Isa. lviii.-a work whi ch was completed by several of his Nonconformist brethren, and published in 2 vols. fol. in 1683.

POOLE, PAUL FALCONER (1806–1879), English painter, was born at Bristol in 1806. Though self-taught his fine feeling for colour, poetic sympathy and dramatic power gained for him a high position among British artists, He exhibited his first work in the Royal Academy at the age of twenty-five, the subject being “The Well,” a scene in Naples. There was an interval of seven years before he next exhibited his “Farewell, Farewell ” in 1837, which was followed by the “Emigrant's Departure,” “Hermann and Dorothea” and “By the Waters of Babylon.” In 1843 his position was made secure by his “Solomon Eagle,” and by his success in the Cartoon Exhibition, in which he received from the Fine Art Commissioners a prize of £300 sterling. After his exhibition of the “Surrender of Syon House” he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1846, and was made an academician in 1861. He died in 1879.

Poole’s subjects divide themselves into two orders-one idyllic, the other dramatic. Of the former his “May Day” (1852) is a typical example. Of both styles there were excellent examples to be seen in the small collection of his works shown at Burlington House in the Winter Exhibition of 1883–1884. Among his early dramatic pictures was “Solomon Eagle exhorting the People to Repentance during the Plague of 1665,” painted in 1843. To this class belongs also the “Messenger announcing to Job the Irruption of the Sabeans and the Slaughter of the Servants” (exhibited in 1850), and “Robert, Duke of Normandyand Arletta” (1848). Finer examples of his more mature power in this direction are to be found in his “Prodigal Son,” painted in 1869; the “Escape of Glaucus and Ione with the blind girl Nydia from Pompeii” (1860); and “Cunstaunce sent adrift by the Constable of Alla, King of Northumberland,” painted in 1868. More peaceful than these are the “Song of Troubadours” (painted in 1854) and the “Goths in Italy"”? (1851), the latter an important historical Work of greatwpower and beauty. Of a less lofty strain, 'but still more beautiful in its workmanship, is the “Seventh Day of the Decameron,” painted in 1857. In this picture Poole rises to his full height as a colourist. In. his pastorals he is soft and tender, as in the “Mountain Path” (1853), the “Water-cress Gatherers” (1870), the “Shepston Maiden” (1872). But when he turns to the grander and more sublime views of nature his work is bold and vigorous. Fine examples of this style may be seen in the “Vision of Ezekiel” of the National Gallery, “Solitude” (1876), the “Entrance to the Cave of Marnmon” (1875), the “Dragon’s Cavern” (1877), and perhaps best of all in the “Lion in the Path” (1873), a great representation of mountain and cloud form.

POOLE, REGINALD STUART (1832–1895), English archaeologist and orientalist, was. born in London on the 27th of January 1832. His father was the Rev. Edward Poole, a well known bibliophile. His mother, Sopha, authoress V of The Englishwoman in Egypt (1844), was the sister of E. W. Lane, the Arabic scholar, with whom R. S. Poole lived in Cairo from 1842 to 1849, thus imbibing an early taste for Egyptian antiquities. In 1852 he became an assistant in the British Museum, and was assigned to the department of coins and medals, of which in 1870 he became keeper. In that capacity he did work of the highest value, alike as a writer, teacher and administrator. In 1882 he was largely responsible for founding the, Egypt Exploration Fund, and in 1884 for starting the Society of English Medallists. He retired in 1893, and died on the 8th of February 1895, Some of Poole's best work was done in his articles for the ''Ency. Brit.'' (9th ed.) on Egypt, Hieroglyphics