Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/684

Rh C60 P R A P R E G. pratincola, breeds abundantly in many parts of Spain, Barbary, and Sicily, along the valley of the Danube, and in Southern Russia, while owing to its great powers of flight it frequently wanders far from its home, and more than a score of examples have been recorded as occurring in the British Islands. In the south-east of Europe a second and closely -allied species, G. nordmanni or G. melanoptera, which has black instead of chestnut inner wing-coverts, accompanies or, further to the eastward, re places it ; and in its turn it is replaced in India, China, and Australia by G. orientalis. Australia also possesses another species, G. yrallaria, remarkable for the great length of its wings and much longer legs, while its tail is scarcely forked peculiarities that have led to its being considered the type of a distinct genus or subgenus Stiltia. Two species, G. lactea and G. dnerea, from India and Africa respectively, seem by their pale coloration to be desert forms, and they are the smallest of this curious little group. The species whose mode of nidification is known lay either two or three eggs, stone-coloured, blotched, spotted, and streaked with black or brownish-grey. The young when hatched are clothed in down and are able to run at once just as are young Plovers. (A. N.) PRATO, a city and bishop s see of Italy, in the province of Florence, on the north edge of the alluvial plain which extends between Florence and Pistoia. By rail it is dis tant from the former city 11^ miles and from the latter 9|. The cathedral of St Stephen, which stands in a square surrounded by houses of the 16th century, is partly of the 12th and partly of the 14th and 15th centuries. The fagade, in alternate bands of white calcareous sand stone and green serpentine, has a fine doorway and a bas- relief by Luca della Robbia ; but the most striking external feature is the lovely open-air pulpit at an angle of the building, erected (1428) by Donatello and Michelozzo for displaying to the people without risk the Virgin s girdle, brought from the Holy Land by a knight of Prato in 1130. The chapel of the Girdle has frescos by Agnolo Gaddi and a statue of the Virgin by Giovanni Pisano; and the frescos in the choir are considered the most im portant work of Fra Filippo LIPPI (q.v.). The municipal palace also possesses a collection of Lippi s paintings. Prato is a busy industrial town, the seat of a great straw- plaiting establishment, paper-mills, brass -foundries, &c., and outside of the gates which pierce the old city walls several small suburbs have grown up. The city had 13,410 inhabitants in 1881 (inclusive of the suburbs, 15,510) and the commune 16,641. Prato is said to be first mentioned by name in 1107, but the cathedral appears as early as 1048 as the parish church of Borgo Cornio or Santo Stefano.&quot; In 1313 the town acknowledged the authority of Robert, king of Naples, and in 1350 Niccola Acciajoli, seneschal of Joanna, sold it to the Florentines for 17,500 florins of Sold. In 1512 it was sacked by the Spaniards under General Car- ona. In 1653 it obtained the rank of city. RATT, CHARLES. See CAMDEN, EARL. PRAXITELES, a Greek sculptor, son and apparently also pupil of the Athenian Cephisodotus. An account of his works is given in vol. ii. p. 361 ; but since that was written there has been found at Olympia, where it still remains, a marble statue from his hand, Hermes carrying the infant Dionysus. Though a work of comparatively youthful years, as may be inferred from his obvious in debtedness to his father Cephisodotus, particularly in the published in 1769 by Scopoli (Ann. I. hist, naluralis, p. 110) had doubtless contributed thereto, though the earlier judgment to the same effect of Brisson, as mentioned above, had been disregarded. Want of space here forbids a notice of the different erroneous assign- the form, some of them made even by recent authors, who ected the clear evidence afforded by the internal structure of the It must suffice to state that Sundevall in 1873 (Tentamen, &amp;gt;) placed Glareola among the Caprimulgidee, a position which osteology shews cannot be maintained for a moment. figure of Dionysus, it is nevertheless a masterpiece in those qualities for which Praxiteles was famed in antiquity, the representation of what is called sympathetic types of human or divine beings, and the rendering of very subtle phases of emotion. The Hermes, while massive in build, is flexible and sensitive in his skin and flesh, indolent in his attitude, his mind sufficiently occupied for the moment in trifling with the infant on his left arm. In recent years it has been sought to prove that certain of the sculptures attri buted in antiquity to Praxiteles were really the work of a grandfather of his of the same name. But the tendency of investigation has rather been to dispel these views as illusory. PRECEDENCE. This word in the sense in which it is here employed means priority of place, or superiority of rank, in the conventional system of arrangement under which the more eminent and dignified orders of the com munity are classified on occasions of public ceremony and in the intercourse of private life. In the United Kingdom there is no complete and comprehensive code whereby the scheme of social gradation has been defined and settled, once and for all, on a sure and lasting foundation. The principles and rules at present controlling it have been formulated at different periods and have been derived from various sources. The crown is the fountain of honour, and it is its undoubted prerogative to confer on any of its sub jects, in any part of its dominions, such titles and dis tinctions and such rank and place as to it may seem meet and convenient. Its discretion in this respect is altogether unbounded at common law, and is limited in those cases only wherein it has been submitted to restraint by Act of parliament. In the old time all questions of precedence came in the ordinary course of things within the juris diction of the Court of Chivalry, in which the lord high constable and earl marshal presided as judges, and of which the kings of arms, heralds, and pursuivants were the assessors and executive officers. When, however, points of unusual moment and magnitude happened to be brought into controversy, they were occasionally considered and decided by the sovereign in person, or by a special commission, or by the privy council, or even by the parlia ment itself. But it was not until towards the middle of the 16th century that precedence was made the subject of any legislation in the proper meaning of the term. 1 In 1539 an Act &quot;for the placing of the Lords in Parlia ment&quot; (31 Hen. VIII. c. 10) was passed at the instance of the king, and by it the relative rank of the members of the royal family, of the great officers of state and the household, and of the hierarchy and the peerage was de finitely and definitively ascertained. 2 In 1563 an Act &quot;for declaring the authority of the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and the Lord Chancellor to be the same &quot; (5 Eliz. c. 18) also declared their precedence to be the same. In 1689 an 1 Ample materials for the satisfaction of the curiosity of those who are desirous of investigating the history of precedence under its wider and more remote aspects will be found in such writers as Selden or Mackenzie, together with the authorities quoted or referred to by them Selden, Titles of Honor, part ii. p. 740 sq. (London, 1672) ; Mackenzie, Observations upon the Laws and Customs of Nations as to Precedency (Edinburgh, 1680, and also reprinted in Guillim, Display of Heraldry, 6th ed., London, 1724). 2 Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster king of arms, in his Book of Precedence, cites 1 Edw. VI. c. 7, an Act &quot; for the Continuance of Actions after the death of any king of this Realm,&quot; as a statute bearing on precedence, since, he says, &quot; it enumerates the then names of dignity.&quot; But, as the late Sir Charles Young, Garter king of arms, has pointed out in one of his privately printed tracts, the object of the Act was simply to prevent the abatement of suits under certain circumstances, and the names of dignity therein enumerated are enumerated in their wrong order. It the statute of Edward VI. had any effect on precedence, dukes would precede the archbishops, barons the bishops, and knights the judges, which they have never done, and which parliament could never have intended that they should do.