Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/132

Rh 120 P Y ^E P Y M Bourg-Lastic and Messeix on the borders of Correze. The depart- ment also works peat, asphalt, and bituminous schists. Mines of argentiferous lead employ 640 men and produce 33,695 tons of lead or silver, worth 45,600. The most important mines and foundries are at Pontgibaud on the Sioule. Copper, arsenic, iron, antimony, barium sulphate, alum, manganese, white lead, sulphur, sulphuretted zinc, loadstone, and (of precious stones) amethysts, jacinths, rubies, agates, chalcedonies, opals, are also found in the department. Quarries of porphyry and lava are worked (Volvic with 900 men), as well as marl, limestone, and gypsum. The hot springs of Mont Dore, known in the days of the Romans, contain a mixture of arsenic and iron bicarbonates, and are used especially for affections of the respiratory organs. The waters of La Bour- boule, containing sodium chlorides and bicarbonates, are particularly rich in arsenic, and efficacious against affections of the lymphatic glands, scrofula, diseases of the skin and air-passages, and rheuma- tism. The springs of St Nectaire, containing sodium and iron chlorides and bicarbonates, are efficacious in liver complaints, rheumatism, and gravel. Some of them are petrifying, as the spring of St Allyre at Clermont-Ferrand. The waters of Royat, in use in the time of the Romans, containing sodium and iron chlorides and bicarbonates, sparkling and rich in lithia, are used in cases of ansmia, rheumatism, gout, diabetes, and gravel. The waters of Chateauneuf (on the Sioule), also known to the Romans, contain iron bicarbonates and are resorted to for skin diseases. Those of Chatelguyon, like the waters of Carlsbad and Marienbad, are used for disorders of the digestive organs, congestions of the liver, rheumatism, &c. The waters of Chateldon are used for the table. There are other chalybeate waters at St Martial, Beaulieu, Pontgibaud, St Myon, St Maurice, Arlanc, and many other mineral springs of varied character. Manufactures are for the most part grouped around Thiers, which produces a large amount of cheap cutlery, pasteboards (especially adapted for stamps or playing- cards), and leather; 20,000 workmen are thus employed, and the annual turn -over amounts to 1,200,000. The department con- tains important paper-mills, factories for lace and braid (in the mountains), for buntings, and camlets. Those for wool, cotton, and hemp contain 3500 spindles and more than 400 looms. There are wool-carding works and factories for linens, cloths, and counter- panes, also silk-mills, tanneries, manufactories for chamois and other leathers, for caoutchouc, important sugar-works, starch-works, manufactures of edible pastes with a reputation as high as those of Italy, and manufactures of fruit-preserves. The saw-mills and the cheese industry in the mountains complete the list, which includes 201 establishments employing 75,553 persons. The department exports grain, fruits, cattle, wines, cheese, wood, and mineral waters. Traffic is carried on over 294 miles of Government roads, 9591 miles of other roads, and 178 miles of railway. The depart- ment is crossed from north to south by the railway from Paris to Nimes, and that of Vichy to Thiers; from west to east by that from Bordeaux to Lyons by Tulle, Clermont-Ferrand, and Thiers, with branches from Eygurande to Largnac and from Vertaison to Billom. It is skirted on the north-west by the line from Montlucon to Gannat, with a branch line for goods to the mines of St Eloi. Twenty thousand inhabitants of the department, belonging chiefly to the district of Ambert, leave it during winter and find work elsewhere as navvies, chimney-sweeps, pit-sawyers, &c. The de- partment in 1881 contained 566,064 inhabitants and includes five arrondissements CLERMONT-FERRAND (q.v. Ambert (town, 3940 inhabitants), Issoire (6137), Riom (9590). Thiers (10,583) 50 can- tons, and 467 communes. It is attached to the bishopric of Cler- mont-Ferrand and to the 13th Army Corps in the same town; the superior court is at Riom. (G. ME. ) PYAEMIA. See PATHOLOGY (vol. xviii. p. 401) and SURGERY. PYATIGORSK, a district town and watering-place of Caucasus, Russia, in the government of Terek, 124 miles by rail to the north-west of Vladikavkaz. It owes its origin to its mineral waters, which had long been known to the inhabitants of Caucasus, and even at the begin- ning of the present century attracted many Russians, who used to stay at the Konstantinogorsk fort, 2 miles off. The first buildings at the mineral springs were erected, however, in 1812, and in 1830 the name of Pyatigorsk ("town of the five mountains"), referring to the five summits of the Beshtau, was given to the new settlement. Its subsequent rapid increase was greatly stimulated by the completion of its railway connexion with Rostoff, and it has now nearly 14,000 inhabitants (13,670 in 1882). The town is charmingly situated on a small plateau on the south-western slopes of the Mashuka mountain, by which and the Beshtau it is protected on the north. The snow- covered summits of the Elburz are seen on the south. The sulphur springs, about fifteen in number, come from a great depth, from trachytic rocks, and vary in temperature from 72 to 115 Fahr.; they are used both for drinking and for bathing. Before the opening of the railway the summer patients already numbered thousands and have become more numerous since; but defective accommodation and high prices tend to prevent their further in- crease, notwithstanding the very high esteem in which these mineral waters are held by medical authorities, both Russian and West European. The industries of Pyatigorsk are insignificant, but its trade has always had some importance, and it is still visited during its fairs by a few Persian merchants. PYGMALION is the Greek form of a Phoenician name probably derived from the name of a god, DJ?D (C.I.S., par. i. t. i. p. 133). Pygmalion or, as Josephus writes, Phygmalion, brother of Dido (Elissa), has been spoken of in PHOENICIA (vol. xviii. p. 807). Another Pygmalion, son of Cilix and grandson of Agenor, king of Cyprus, is the subject of a famous story. He fell in love with an ivory statue he had made; Aphrodite granted life to the image, and Pygmalion married the miraculously born virgin (Ovid, Metam., x. 243 sq.). PYGMIES. The name " pygmy " (Greek Trvy/mios, from Trvy/^) means one whose height is measured by the distance between the elbow and the knuckles of an ordinary man, or rather less than an ell. The pygmies appear in Homer (II., iii. 6) as a tiny folk who dwelt by the streams of Ocean in the far southern land whither the cranes fly at the approach of our northern winter. The cranes made war on them and slaughtered them. These battles between the pygmies and the cranes are often mentioned by later writers and are frequently represented on vases. Philo- stratus describes a picture of the sleeping Hercules beset by swarms of pygmies, as Gulliver was by the Lilliputians. Aristotle held that the pygmies were a race of little men inhabiting the marshes out of which he supposed the Nile to flow. Other writers localized them in various parts of the world. Ctesias describes at some length a race of pygmies in the heart of India. They were black and ugly; the tallest of them were only two ells high; their hair and beards were so long that they served them as garments; they were excellent bowmen, and hunted hares and foxes with hawks, ravens, and eagles; their language and customs were those of the rest of the Indians, and they were very honest; their cattle were small in proportion. Pygmies are also mentioned in Thrace (where they were called Catizi by the natives, according to Pliny) and in Caria. Eustathius speaks of pygmies in the far north, near Thule. Strabo was inclined to regard them as fabulous; no trust- worthy person, he says, had seen them. There is, how- ever, a story in Herodotus which would seem to show that the belief in the pygmies originated in well-founded reports of a race of undersized men in the heart of Africa. According to Herodotus (ii. 32), five men of the Nasamon- ians (a Libyan people near the Greater Syrtis) journeyed westward through the desert for many days till they came to a tribe of little black men of a strange speech, by whose city ran a great river flowing from west to east, and in it there were crocodiles; moreover, there were fruit-bearing trees in that country and great marshes. This story is not improbable; the river may have been the Niger ( Joliba or Quorra) and the people may have been allied to the Akka, an undersized race discovered within recent years near the equator by Schweinfurth, who thinks that they, as well as the Bushmen of South Africa, are remnants of an abori- ginal population of Africa now becoming extinct. PYM, JOHN (1584-1643), was born at Brymore in Somer- set in 1584. In 1599 he entered Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. He is said by Clarendon to have held at a later date an office in the exchequer, in which he no doubt acquired that