Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/96

 88 PUNCH PUNCTUATION best variety for table use is the sugar pumpkin, which, though not large, is an abundant bear- er; it has a very long stalk, is of a bright orange color, and has a fine-grained, sweet flesh. Another esteemed variety is the cheese pumpkin, so called from its shape ; it is large, and of a deep reddish orange color. The long pumpkin is twice as long as broad ; the striped is like the common field pumpkin, but marked with alternate bands of green and yellow, while the Nantucket is deep green when ripe, and a little yellowish on the sunny side, while its surface is marked by warty excrescences ; this is much esteemed for its good quality and long keeping. The flesh of the pumpkin contains much sugar, and it is said that during the war of independence housekeepers boiled it in wa- ter and evaporated the decoction to a sirup, as a substitute for sugar. Besides the diuret- ic property already referred to, the seeds are among the most valued anthelmintics for the removal of tapeworm ; though this property was ascribed to them a long while ago, they have only recently come into very general use. Dr. Patterson of Philadelphia about 20 years ago published an account of a remarkable cure by their use, followed in an hour and a half by castor oil. The dose of the seeds is two ounces ; they are first deprived of their coats, and the kernels beaten in a mortar to a paste, to which water is gradually added. PUNCH, or Punchinello, a humorous character in a species of puppet show exhibited in the streets of European cities. The exhibition is of Italian origin, and its Italian name Polici- nella or Pulemella, according to Gallani in his Vocdbolario del dialetto Napoletano, was de- rived from Puccio d'Aniello, a buffoon of Acer- ra, near Naples, whose humorous eccentricities were in the 17th century transferred to the Neapolitan stage ; and the character continues to be the medium of local and political satire in the Italian exhibitions of fantoccini, or puppet shows. Another theory derives the name from pollice, thumb, a name of dwarfs in several languages. It is thought that the grotesque face is only a modification of the ancient comic mask, and that the character of Punch is kin- dred to the "Vice" of the old moralities, and the clown of the later drama. The modern drama of " Punch " is supposed to have been composed by Silvio Fiorello, an Italian come- dian, about 1 600. It embodies a domestic trage- dy followed by a supernatural retribution, the whole of which is treated in a broadly farcical manner. Punch is a short obese personage, with an enormous hump on his back, a wide mouth, long chin, and hooked nose, and wear- ing a three-pointed cap. His wife Judy and his dog Toby are important characters in the performance. A similar puppet show, con- taining the same leading characters, has been known for ages in China. It is managed by a single individual, who exhibits the theatre on his head, the moving wires being concealed un- der his gown. PUNCTUATION, in grammar, the art of divi- ding a written or printed discourse into sen- tences and parts of sentences, for the purpose of indicating the mutual relations of the words, by means of points. The principal points used in English composition are the comma, semi- colon, colon , period (.), note of interro- gation (?), note of exclamation or admiration (!), dash, and parenthesis. Of these, only the first four are marks of punctuation aa the term is usually understood, or grammatical points indicating the length and character of the pauses to be made in reading. The others are mainly rhetorical or syntactical aids, regulating the modulation of the tone rather than the sus- pension of the voice ; but the interrogation or exclamation point may take the place of either of the former, according to the structure of the sentence, and the dash partakes of both char- acteristics. The comma marks the smallest grammatical division in written or printed lan- guage. The semicolon separates such parts of a sentence as are somewhat less closely con- nected than those separated by a comma. The colon denotes a still longer pause than the semicolon. The period indicates the end of an assertive sentence which is grammatically in- dependent of any that follows, and is also used after every abbreviated word, after headings, titles of books, &c., and generally (though im- properly) after Roman numerals. The note of interrogation is placed after a question, and in Spanish is also placed inverted at the begin- ning of a question. The note of exclamation indicates an ardent wish, admiration, or other strong emotion, and is placed after interjec- tions, words used as interjections, and clauses or sentences expressing strong emotion of any kind ; it is also duplicated in Spanish like the preceding. The dash is employed where a sentence breaks off abruptly and the subject is changed ; where the sense is suspended, and is continued after a short interruption,; where there is an unexpected or epigrammatic turn in the sentiment; after a long member, or se- ries of phrases or clauses, leading to an im- portant conclusion; before a word or phrase repeated in an exclamatory or emphatic man- ner what elocutionists term an echo ; where there is an ellipsis of such words as " namely " and "that is;" where there is an ellipsis of let- ters or figures; and in numerous other cases. Sometimes, as in this work, it is used instead of paragraphs. The parenthesis encloses a word or phrase introduced into the body of a sentence with which it has no grammatical connection, or an explanatory or other sentence or passage independent of the context. Other marks in frequent use, and generally treated under the head of punctuation, though not strictly included in it, are the apostrophe ( ' ), used to indicate the omission of a letter or let- ters, and also as a sign of the possessive case ; the hyphen (-), placed between the constituent parts of a compound word, and at the end of a line when a word is divided ; quotation marks