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 PAKA PARADOXURUS 61 vated products are rice, cotton, the sugar cane, coffee, and some vegetables; and the export staples are caoutchouc in prodigious quanti- ties, cacao, Maranhao chestnuts, rice, sugar, honey, hides, tapioca, with urucu (said to be superior to Brazil wood as a dye), sarsaparilla, balsam copaiba, and many other drugs, isin- glass, &c. Cattle are largely reared. Besides the ocean steamers visiting Belem, there are about 12 lines of steamers plying between that city and the more important towns on the Amazon and its tributary streams. There are about 250 primary and 13 grammar schools in the province. Para is divided into nine dis- tricts: Para, Cameta, Marajo, Braganca, Gu- rupa, Macapa, Santarem, Breves, and Obidos. Capital, Belem or Para. (See BELEM.) PARA, Rio. See AMAZON. PARACELSUS (PHILIPPUS AUKEOLUS THEO- PHKASTUS BOMBASTUS VON HoHENHEIM), a Swiss alchemist, born at Einsiedeln, Schwytz, in 1493, died in Salzburg, Sept. 23, 1541. He was the son of a physician, from whom he learned something of medicine, alchemy, and astrology, and made himself proficient in the arts of conjuring and juggling. He travelled on foot through the principal cities of Europe, visited Constantinople in the suite of a Tartar prince to learn from a Greek the secret of the elixir of Trismegistus, and, having become ac- quainted with some remedies not in common use among the faculty, returned to Switzer- land, where he became celebrated for remark- able cures. In 1526 he was appointed profes- sor of physic and surgery in the university of Basel. He proclaimed himself the sole monarch of physic, publicly burned the works of Galen and Avicenna, and professed to know the art of prolonging life and curing all dis- eases, and to hold more learning in the hairs of his beard than was possessed by all the universities and medical writers united. To the four elements of Aristotle he opposed the three compound principles of salt, sulphur, and mercury. The soul, according to him, was united to the body by an animal fluid. Man an image of the Trinity, his intellect representing God, his body the world, and the fluid the stars. He recognized a mysterious harmony between the body and the earth and salt, between the soul and water and mercury, and between the intellect and the air and sul- phur. His lectures were delivered sometimes in Latin, but generally in German, which made him popular and for a while attracted large au- diences. Erasmus consulted him for the stone, and the correspondence between the quack and the philosopher has been preserved. In his personal habits as well as his language Para- elsus affected oddity. He slept in his clothes, and in later life became very intemperate. After the first year his lectures were deserted. About the end of 1527 he was compelled to leave Basel for abusing a magistrate, and after wandering through Germany for several years obtained a temporary success in Moravia. He next visited successively Vienna, Villach, Min- delheim, and Salzburg, where he closed his life in poverty. He published a few works, and left several which were printed posthumously. One of the latest editions of his writings is in Latin in 3 vols. fol. (Geneva, 1658). PARADISE (Sans. para-de$a, a foreign coun- try ; Heb. parties, park ; Arab. Jirdaus ; Gr. 7rapd<fo<70f), literally, a garden or pleasure ground planted with trees and flowers, whence the ternris used metaphorically to express the abstract idea of perfect felicity and heavenly blessedness. In the Septuagint it is employed to express the Hebrew "garden of Eden." The nature and locality of the Biblical paradise have been discussed under EDEN. Metaphori- cally the word expresses the happiness of the righteous in a future state, an application adopted by the later Jews, and the general idea of which is to be found in the mytholo- gies of various races. The mediaeval rabbini- cal literature contains various fanciful descrip- tions of an earthly and a heavenly paradise, the latter being reserved for the final abode of the souls of the blessed. The celestial para- adise is generally regarded as identical with heaven, or the place of future bliss accord- ing to the Christian dispensation; but Bibli- cal critics have differed as to the signification to be given to the term in Luke xxiii. 43, where Christ says to the penitent thief, " To- day shalt thou be with me in paradise ;" some considering the existence of a distinct abode for the reception of the blessed previous to the last judgment to be indicated, while oth- ers have found a stumbling block in the supposed doctrine of the Scriptures that be- tween his death and resurrection the Saviour descended into hell. In the later history of the word it is to be observed that the narthex or atrium in which those who, on account of not being of the faithful in full communion, were assembled, was known as the paradise of the church; and Athanasius, speaking scorn- fully of Arianism, represents it as creeping into paradise, implying that it was befitting the low and ignorant. The paradise of the Moham- medans, termed in the Koran Gannah, or the happy gardens, is a place of infinite sensual delights conceived with all the warmth of ori- ental fancy, where devout followers of the prophet are received after death. PARADISE, Bird of. See BIRD OF PAEADISE. PARADOXURCS, a carnivorous mammal, allied to the ichneumons, inhabiting Asia and the neighboring southern islands. It 'has the habit of tightly coiling in a spiral manner its long tail, which however is not prehensile, whence the generic name given by Cuvier ; the claws are retractile and cat-like, and the teeth like those of the civets. In the best known species, the luwack (P. typus), about the size of a cat, the general color is yellowish black, with three longitudinal rows of dark spots on each side of the back ; it is plantigrade, and quick in its movements both on the ground and in trees;