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PLA only curious, has been printed several times. As a specimen of its contents, we may notice that it recommends the heart of the hare to be hung round the neck as a remedy for quartan fever; puppy's flesh to be given in colic; and horse's saliva in phthisis. Two editions were published on the continent in 1538; and it is reprinted in the collections of old medical writers, Placitus borrowed largely from Pliny the naturalist, and has been copied by Constantinus Afric. Other writers, named Sextus, have been confounded with him.—F. C. W.  * PLANCHÉ,, the founder of the modern school of extravaganza, was born in London in 1796. A burlesque which he wrote soon after he was twenty-one, and without any view to its performance in public, was played at Drury Lane in 1818 with great success, and proved the precursor of very numerous extravaganzas from the same prolific and sprightly pen. Combining the attractions of the burlesque, the spectacle, and the opera, his extravaganzas in more than one theatre replaced the pantomime; and the dramatic genre which he almost created is now a, steady occupant of the British stage. In more serious departments Mr. Planché is known as the author of an instructive "History of British Costume," first published in the library of Entertaining Knowledge; of "Regal Records;" of "The Pursuivant of Arms, or Heraldry founded on truth," &c., &c. Mindful of his obligations to fairy tale literature, he published in 1855 an English version of the Countess D'Aulney's Contes des Fées. In 1854 he was appointed rouge croix pursuivant of arms.—F. E.  * PLANCHON, J. E., professor of botany at Montpellier, was born about 1813. He commenced the study of botany under Duval, and in 1846 published his first essay "On the origin and development of Arils," and on the Ovules of Veronica and Avicennia. This constituted his inaugural dissertation when he took the degree of doctor of sciences at the university of Montpellier. He thus became known as a rising botanist. He acted for some time as curator of Sir William Hooker's herbarium at Kew, where he spent five years in the diligent prosecution of systematic botany. He has published several memoirs on little-known genera and families of plants contained in the Hookerian Herbarium. These display great botanical acumen and a thorough knowledge of the structure and affinities of the natural order of plants. His papers have appeared in the Transactions of the Linnæan Society, in Hooker's Journals of Botany, and in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles.—J. H. B.  PLANCK,, one of the most distinguished church historians of Germany, was born at Nürtingen on the Neckar, in Wurtemberg, on the 15th November, 1751, and was educated in the university of Tübingen, where he finished his curriculum of theological study in 1774. From 1775 to 1780 he held the office of repetent or college tutor in the same university. From 1780 to 1784 he laboured at Stuttgart as a preacher and professor in the academy or high school of that city, and here he finished the first two volumes of his "Geschichte des Protestantischen Lehrbegriffs," a history of the protestant doctrinal system. This publication procured him in 1784, upon the death of Professor W. Fr. Walch of Göttingen, the honour of succeeding to his vacant chair, and in Göttingen he remained without any further change in his outward circumstances to the end of his life. He was for nearly forty years a member of the theological faculty, associated first with Less and Miller, then with Schleusner and Ammon, Stäudlin, Eichhorn, and Pott, and last of all with his son Heinrich Planck, Lücke, and Gieseler, all of them men of distinction in theological science. He survived till 31st August, 1833, when he died in his eighty-third year. His two principal works were the history of protestant doctrine, already named, from the commencement of the Reformation to the introduction of the Formula Concordiæ, in six volumes—with a short continuation bringing down the history to the middle of the eighteenth century, which consists almost entirely of his college lectures on that subject; and his "Geschichte der Christlich Kirchlichen Gesellschaftsverfassung," or constitutional history of the Church, in five volumes, 1803-1809, bringing down the history till the Reformation. In addition to these works he published in 1818 a History of Christianity in the period of its first introduction into the world, which, however, has been superseded by later works in the same field; a continuation in three volumes of Walch's Neueste Religionsgeschichte, including an account of the ecclesiastical revolution in France down to 1791; besides many other pieces on the existing conditions both of the protestant and Roman catholic churches. He was also the author of a valuable "Introduction to the Theological Sciences," in two volumes, 1793-95, part of which was translated by Professor Turner of America, and reprinted in this country in Clark's Biblical Cabinet; and of a work on Symbolik, entitled a "Comparative View of the dogmatical systems of the different chief sections of the Christian church," 1796, which was the first work in that department which set an example of candour and moderation in estimating confessional differences.—P. L.  PLANCK, H. L., son of the preceding, was born at Göttingen, 19th July, 1785. He studied philology and philosophy there under Heyne, Heeren, and Bouterwek, and theology under his father, and Stäudlin, Ammon, and Eichhorn. In 1806 he became repetent along with Gesenins, and in 1807 began a course of exegetical lectures on the New Testament. In these lectures he devoted special attention to the philology of the New Testament and the criticism of the text. In 1810 he was made extraordinary professor of theology, and in 1823 he became one of the ordinary professors of the faculty. His programme delivered in 1810 on taking possession of his professorship—"De vera natura atque indole orationis Græcæ Novi Testamenti" was a production of great originality and value. Winer, the chief authority upon this subject, assigns to its author the honour of being the first who discovered the errors of previous writers in this field, and gave a clear and complete view of the peculiar Greek diction of the New Testament books. A translation of this remarkable dissertation was included in the collection of philological tracts published in Clark's Biblical Cabinet, under the editorship of the late learned Dr. John Brown. Its author contemplated and partly executed a larger work on the same subject, "Isagoge philologica in Novum Testamentum," and he gave specimens of the work in successive programmes in 1818, 1821, and 1824, but the completion of it was prevented by his early death. He was long subject to epilepsy, which cut him off in 1831—two years before the death of his father. His only other works of importance were "Remarks upon the First Epistle to Timothy," 1808, in which he defended the genuineness of the epistle against Schleiermacher; "Outline of a new Harmony of the three first Gospels," 1809; and a "Sketch of the Philosophy of Religion," 1821, in which he follows closely the results of the philosophy of Fries.—P. L.  PLANTA,, an eminent philologist, sometime principal librarian to the British Museum, was born in the Grisons, Switzerland, 1744. His father resided in England from 1752, as minister of the German reformed church in London, and Italian master to Queen Charlotte. At first secretary to the British minister at Brussels, Planta was appointed in 1773 assistant librarian in the British museum; elected F.R.S. in 1774, he was soon requested to conduct the foreign correspondence of the society, and in 1776 he became one of its ordinary secretaries. About this time he wrote a memoir on the language spoken in the Grisons, which, though a philological tract, received the peculiar honour of being printed in the society's Transactions. On the resignation of Horsley, afterwards the celebrated bishop, Mr. Planta became the senior secretary. He died in 1827. He wrote two works upon Helvetic affairs, and a catalogue of the Cottonian MSS. in the British museum.—T. J.  PLANTIN,, a celebrated printer, born at Mont Louis in 1514, established at Antwerp one of the largest printing houses in Europe. Here he won the praise of Scaliger, Lipsius, and other distinguished men, not only for the beauty of his type, but for his judicious selection of authors to be printed, and for his liberality to the many men of letters whom he employed in correcting the press. At this establishment was produced what may be considered his greatest work, the Antwerp Polyglot. He was likewise the owner of printing houses at Paris and Leyden, which he bestowed as marriage portions on his daughters. From Philip II. of Spain he received the title of archi-typographus, accompanied by a princely allowance, for the maintenance of his establishments. Plantin died in 1589, and a monument is erected to him in the great church of Antwerp. He took for his device a pair of compasses, with the motto "Labors et constantia."—W. J. P.  PLANUDES,, of Constantinople, a Greek monk of the fourteenth century. Andronicus the Elder sent him to Venice in the suite of an ambassador, and he became so openly a favourer of the Latin church that he was put in prison, and only obtained <section end="753Zcontin" />