Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/253

 PEMISCOT PEN 243 The principal towns are Pembroke, Haverford- west (the capital), St. Davids, Milford, and Tenby. Milford Haven is the chief port. PEMISCOT, a S. E. county of Missouri, in the extreme corner of the state, bordering S. on Arkansas and bounded E. by the Mississippi river, which separates it from Tennessee ; area, 300 sq. in. ; pop. in 1870, 2,059, of whom 148 were colored. Its surface is nearly level, much of it being covered by swamps, the largest of which, Lake Pemiscot, has an area of about 75 sq. m. The chief productions in 1870 were 210,145 bushels of Indian corn and 136 bales of cotton. There were 791 horses, 1,167 milch cows, 2,446 other cattle, 635 sheep, and 9,377 swine. Capital, Gayoso. PEMMICAN, a preparation of preserved meat, made by cutting lean meat into thin strips, and, after they are thoroughly dried, reducing the substance to powder and mixing it with melted fat. It is largely used by the northern voya- geurs, and constitutes an important item in the supplies furnished by the Hudson Bay com- pany to their employees. PEN, an instrument for writing with a fluid. Pens of some sort have been in use from very ancient times, adapted to the material upon which the written characters were to be im- pressed. Upon stone or metallic plates gra- vers of steel served for writing, and such are referred to by Job in speaking of an "iron pen." For the waxen tablets of the ancients a metallic stylus was employed, one end of which was sharpened for marking, and the other was flattened for erasing the marks and smoothing the wax. It was also the practice in ancient times, as among the Chinese at the present day, to paint the letters with a fine hair pencil. Pens of reed also were made at a very early period for the use of a fluid ink upon papyrus. The reed selected for this pur- pose is described as small and hard, and about the size of a swan's quill. It was found in Egypt and Armenia and along the shores of the Persian gulf. The introduction of paper rendered finer pens necessary, and quills of the goose and swan next came into use, and for extremely fine writing those of other birds, as of the crow, were found well adapted. A great trade grew up in these articles, and continued for several centuries. Poland and Russia were' largely engaged in it, and immense flocks of geese were raised in those countries chiefly for their quills. In a single year St. Petersburg furnished to England over 27,000,000 quills. Germany and the Netherlands have also been large producers of goose quills. To prepare them for use, they are sorted according to quality, dried in hot sand, cleaned of the out- er skin, and hardened by dipping them into a boiling solution of alum or of diluted nitric acid. Quills are still preferred by many to all other pens. In 1803 Mr. Wise of Great Britain produced pens of steel of barrel form, mount- ed in a bone case for carrying in the pocket. These were expensive and little used. The late Mr. Gillott of Birmingham began the manu- facture about 1820, and introduced great im- provements in the steel pen, making it of thin- ner and more elastic steel, and of higher finish and temper. Mr. Perry also was among the first large manufacturers ; and the improve- ments which followed reduced the cost so much that a gross of the pens, now made without the barrel, could be purchased for about tho price of one of those made by Mr. Wise. Oth- er makers succeeded, and a great variety of forms of pen were devised to give the required elasticity and the capacity of holding a proper supply of ink. The trade centred in Birming- ham, which supplies many countries in Europe, as also the principal demand for steel pens in the United States. Many unsuccessful attempts were made in the United States to compete with the English manufacturers, but within a few years large quantities have been made in this country of a good quality. The process of making steel pens, as carried on by Mr. Gillott, is briefly as follows. Fine sheet steel, made at Sheffield, about 8 ft. long by 3 ft. broad, generally prepared from Swedish bloom, is cleaned of scale by sulphuric acid and washed. After being passed through rollers to reduce it to the exact thickness re- quired, the steel is slit into strips wide enough to allow of the cutting of three or four pens. These are passed through a cutting machine, which by means of dies punches out the pens, or, as they are now called, the blanks. The blanks are passed through a succession of operations, each per- FIG. 1. formed separately, general- ly by women or girls. The side slits (, fig. 1) are first cut by punches worked by small hand levers. Then the hole between these is punched (5, fig. 1). The preceding processes have now FIG. 2. made the steel brittle; the blanks are there- fore annealed by putting a quantity of them into an iron box, which is heated. They are