Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/262

Rh P O C P C Length of, Embankment. FroMo. Golen;i. Po Miles. .. 509-97 Miles. 71-93 Miles. 438-03 Adi^e 156-12 109-81 46-30 Tartaro and Po di Levante.... Reno .. 148-30 .. 146-72 35-62 33-68 112-68 113-04 Panaro 100-34 48-26 52-07 Sacchia &amp;lt; S975 2S 21 6T54 Recent researches (see Helbig, Die Italiker in der To-Ebcnr, Leipsic, 1S79) show that the lower valley of the Po was at an early period occupied by people of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic stages of civilization, who built houses on piles along the swampy borders of the streams. It is possible that even the} 7 may have begun by crude dykes the great system by which the waters are now con trolled ; at least it is certain that these works date their origin from pre-Roman antiquity. Pliny refers them to the Etruscaiis, who occupied the country before the arrival of the Gauls. The reclaim ing and protecting of the riparian lands went on rapidly under the Romans, and in several places the rectangular divisions of the ground, still remarkably distinct, show the military character of some of the agricultural colonies. During the time of the barba rian invasions much of the protective system was allowed to fall into decay; but the later part of the Middle Ages saw the works resumed and carried out with great energy, so that the main features of the present arrangement were in existence by the close of the 15th century. The usual name for the Po among Greek and Latin authors was Padus (ITaSor) ; but the Greek writers of the empire began to apply to it the poetic name of Eridanus, familiar in the Phaethon myth. POCHARD, POCHARD, or PoKER, 1 names properly belonging to the male of a species of Duck (the female of which is known as the Dunbird), the Anas ferina of Linnasus, and Fuligula or jEthyia ferina of later ornitho logists but names very often applied by writers in a general way to most of the group or Subfamily Fuligulinx, commonly called Diving or Sea-Ducks (cf. DUCK, vii. p. 505). The Pochard in full plumage is a very handsome bird, with a coppery-red head, on the sides of which sparkle the ruby irides of his eyes, relieved by the greyish- blue of the basal half of his broad bill, and the deep black of his gorget, while his back and flanks appear of a light grey, being really of a dull white closely barred by fine undulating black lines. The tail-coverts both above and below are black, the quill feathers brownish-black, and the lower surface of a dull white. The Dunbird has the head and neck reddish-brown, with ill-defined whitish patches on the cheeks and chin, the back and upper tail-coverts dull brown, and the rest of the plumage, except the lower tail-coverts, which are brownish-grey, much as in the Pochard. This species is very abundant in many parts of Europe, northern Asia, and North America, generally fre quenting in winter the larger open waters, and extending its migrations to Barbary and Egypt, but in summer retiring northward and inland to breed, and is one that certainly seems to have profited by the legislative protec tion lately afforded to it in Britain, for, whereas during many years it had but a single habitual breeding-place left in England, it is now known to have several, to some of which it resorts in no inconsiderable numbers. American examples seem to be slightly larger and somewhat darker in colour, and hence by some writers have been regarded as specifically distinct under the name of Fuligula americana ; but America has a perfectly distinct though allied species in the celebrated Canvas-back Duck, F. vallisneri ina, a much larger bird, with a longer, higher, 1 The derivation of these words, in the first of which the ch is pro nounced hard, and the o in all of them generally long, is very uncer tain. Cotgrave lias Pocheculler, which lie renders &quot; Shoueler,&quot; now- a-days the name of a kind of Duck, but in his time meaning the bird we commonly call SPOONBILL (7.^). Littre gives Pochard as a popular French word signifying drunkard. That this word would in the ordinary way become the English Pochard or Poker may be re garded as certain ; but then it is not known to be used in French as a bird s name. and narrower bill, which has no blue at the base, and, though the plumage of both, especially in the females, is very similar, the male Canvas-back has a darker head, and the black lines on the back and flanks are much broken up and further asunder, so that the effect is to give these parts a much lighter colour, and from this has arisen the bird s common though fanciful name. Its scientific epithet is derived from the freshwater plant, a species of Vallis- neria, usually known as &quot;wild celery,&quot; from feeding on which its flesh is believed to acquire the delicate flavour that is held in so great a repute. The Pochard and Dunbird, however, in Europe are in much request for the table (as the German name of the species, Tafeltnte, testi fies), though their quality in this respect depends almost wholly on the food they have been eating, for birds killed on the sea-coast are so rank as to be almost worthless, while those that have been frequenting fresh water are generally well-tasted. 2 Among other species nearly allied to the Pochard that frequent the northern hemisphere may be mentioned the Scaup-Duck, F. marila, with its American representative F. affinis, in both of which the male has the head black, glossed with blue or green ; but these are nearly always uneatable from the nature of their food, which is mostly gathered at low tide on the &quot;scaups&quot; or &quot;scalps,&quot; 3 as the banks on which mussels and other marine molluscs grow are in many places termed. Then there are the Tufted Duck, F. cristata black with a crest and white flanks and its American equivalent F. collaris, and the &quot;White-eyed or Castaneous Duck, F. nyroca, and the Red-crested Duck, F. rufina both peculiar to the Old World, and the last, conspicuous for its red bill and legs, well known in India. In the southern hemisphere the genus is represented by three species, F. cajiensis, F. australis, and F. novse-zealandice, whose respective names indicate the country each inhabits, and in South America exists a somewhat divergent form which has been placed in a distinct genus as Metopiana j)eposaca. Generally classed with the Fuligulinx is the small group known as the Eiders, 4 which differ from them in several respects : the bulb at the base of the trachea in the male, so largely developed in the members of the genus Fuligula, and of conformation so similar in all of them, is here much smaller and wholly of bone ; the males take a much longer time, two or even three years, to attain their full plumage, and some of the feathers on the head, when that plumage is completed, are always stiff, glistening, and of a peculiar pale-green colour. This little group of hardly more than half a dozen species may be fairly considered to form a separate genus under the name of Somateria. Many authors indeed have un justifiably, as it seems to the present writer broken it up into three or four genera. The well-known Eider, 8. mollissima, is the largest of this group, and, beautiful as it is, is excelled in beauty by the King-Duck, S. spcctabilis, and the little S. stcllcri. Space fails here to treat of the rest, but the sad fate which has overtaken one of them, S. labradoria, has been before mentioned (BiKDs, vol. iii. p. 735) ; and only the briefest notice can be taken of a most interesting form generally, but obviously in error, placed among them. This is the Logger-head, Racehorse, or Steamer-Duck, Microptcrus (or more properly Tachyeres) cinereus of the Falkland Islands and Straits of Magellan nearly as large as a tame Goose, and subject to the, so far ns known, unique peculiarity of losing its power of flight after reaching maturity. Its habits have beeii well described by Darwin in his Journal nf Researches, and its anatomy is the subject of an excellent paper in the Zoological Society s Transactions (vii., pp. 493-501, pis. Iviii.-lxii.) by Prof. R. 0. Cunningham. (A. N.) POCOCK, EDWARD (1 604-1 G91), one of the most eminent of English Oriental and Biblical scholars, was born in 1604, the son of a Berkshire clergyman, and re ceived his education up to his fourteenth year at the free school of Tame in Oxfordshire and then at Oxford, where he became scholar of Corpus Christi College in 1620 and fellow in 1628. The foundation of his Eastern learning was laid at Oxford under Matthias Pasor, son of the better 2 The plant known in some parts of England as &quot; willow-weed &quot; not to be confounded, as is done by some writers, with the willow- wort (Epilobium) one of the many species of J olygrmum, is especially a favourite food with most kinds of Ducks, and to its effects is attri buted much of the fine flavour which distinguishes the birds that have had access to it. 3 Cognate with scallop, and the Dutch schelp, a shell. 4 Icelandic, jfldur.