Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/831

 PKECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES were driven ashore ; the rest retreated. The Constitution lay three quarters of an hour within musket shot of the mole, pouring a destructive fire upon the town batteries. On Sept. 3 a fourth attack was made. The Tripo- litans had in the mean time raised and added to their flotilla their boats which had been sunk on Aug. 3 and 28. Com. Preble brought to in the Constitution, in a position where 70 heavy guns bore upon his ship. After throw- ing more than 300 round shot and receiving great damage she hauled off, Preble having before directed the other vessels to do so. The Intrepid, a ketch captured from the enemy, which Lieut. Decatur had used in destroying the Philadelphia, was converted into a fire ship, carrying 100 barrels of gunpowder in bulk, and on the deck immediately above 150 shells, with a, large quantity of shot ; and on the night of Sept. 4, under command of Capt. Somers and Lieut. Wadsworth, both volunteers, with a vol- unteer crew, she was taken into the harbor to be exploded by a train. The batteries opening upon her, she exploded prematurely, and none of the adventurers escaped. One of the Tri- politan gunboats was missing, but on the whole a serious loss was sustained by the Americans without any commensurate damage to the ene- my. On Sept. 10 Com. Samuel Barren arrived off Tripoli in the President, and relieved Com. Preble, who soon after sailed in the John Ad- ams for the United States, where he arrived Feb. 26, 1805. He received a gold medal and a vote of thanks from congress. His nephew, Capt. GEORGE HENRY PREBLE, U. S. N., born in Portland, Me., Feb. 25, 1816, served with dis- tinction in Mexican and Chinese waters and du- ring the civil war, and has published " Geneal- ogy of the Preble Family " (8vo, 1868) and " His- tory of the American Flag" (Albany, 1872). PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES, a slow re- gression of the equinoctial points upon the plane of the ecliptic. It is so called from its causing the sun to arrive in either equinox a little earlier than he otherwise would. The effect is to increase the longitudes of the fixed stars at the rate of about 50|" annually. The discovery of the movement is due to Hippar- chus, about 150 B. C. Copernicus was the first to give a true explanation of the phenom- enon. Newton discovered its physical cause. This cause is the attraction of the sun, moon, and planets upon the spheroidal figure of the earth, giving to the axis a gyratory or conical motion well represented by the waving or nod- ding of a top in spinning. The pole of the equator is thus made to shift its place, per- forming a complete revolution around the pole of the ecliptic in 25,868 years. Ptolemy's as- sumption of the value of precession led him to assign incorrect positions to stars which he catalogued as if observed by him. Delambre compared the positions of 312 stars catalogued "by Ptolemy with the positions observed by Flamsteed, and found that the deduced pre- cession amounted to 52-4". But by treating PREMONSTRATENSIANS 807 Ptolemy's longitudes as simply deduced from Hipparchus's by adding 2 40' for the interval of 267 years between Hipparchus and Ptolemy, Delambre deduced 50-12", which is very nearly correct. Ptolemy ought to have added 3 37' instead of 2 40'. But the most serious error was his publishing as his own a catalogue derived from that of his illustrious predeces- sor, instead of indicating the manner in which the catalogue was obtained. The result is the same as though he had handed down Hip- parchus's catalogue, otherwise unknown ; but grave doubts have been thrown on all Ptolemy's observations since his detection, 1,700 years after the deed, in this serious offence. The Arabian astronomers reached a result much truer than that assumed by Ptolemy. PREGNANCY. See MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE, and OBSTETRICS. PREHISTORIC REMAINS. See AMERICAN AN- TIQUITIES, ARCHAEOLOGY, BONE CAVES, FINDS, and LAKE DWELLINGS. PRELLER, Friedrich, a German painter, born in Eisenach, April 25, 1804. He studied in Weimar, Dresden, Antwerp, and Italy, and be- came professor at Weimar in 1831. His prin- cipal works are his frescoes and cartoons illus- trative of the Odyssey at Leipsic and Weimar, each including 40 designs, which were pub- lished at Leipsic in 1872 with the translation of Voss. His other productions include " Ca- lypso," "Leucothea," "Nausicaa," historical landscapes, and marine pieces. PREMONSTRATENSIANS(Fr.^r0 montre, mea- dow pointed out), or Norbertines, a religious order in the Roman Catholic church, founded in the diocese of Laon, France, in 1120, by St. Norbert, a canon regular from Xanten, Ger- many, who became archbishop of Magdeburg in 1126, died in 1134, and was canonized in 1582. On a meadow in the forest of Coucy, pointed out to him as he believed from heav- en, Norbert gathered his first disciples, and gave them the strict rule of St. Augustine. They were at first a congregation of regular canons, and as such were confirmed in 1126 by Pope Honorius II. ; but gradually they assumed all the distinctive peculiarities of a monastic community. The order spread very rapidly, and became very popular in France by aiding in the suppression of the Albigen- ses ; and in Germany it accumulated immense riches, and several of the abbots were raised to the rank of princes of the empire. The abbot of the parent convent of Premontre, near Coney, had the title of general, and he formed with three other French abbots the supreme council of the order. A female branch of the order was established simultaneously with that of monks, and, as in several other orders founded at that time, the female convents were at first contiguous to those of the monks, and only separated from them by a wall, the time of the reformation the order had about 2 000 convents, of which about 500 were for women. The strictness of the primitive