Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/89

PITCHBLENDE. PITCHBLENDE. The common name for the mineral uraninite (q.v.).

PITCH′ER, (1824-95). An American soldier, born at Rockport, Ind. He graduated at West Point in 1845, and was assigned to the infantry. During the Mexican War he won the brevet of first lieutenant. He was promoted to be captain in 1858, and during the Civil War participated in the defense of Harper's Ferry (June, 1862), and the Virginia campaign of the same year, until the battle of Cedar Mountain (August 9, 1862), where he was severely wounded. For his gallantry on this occasion he was brevetted major in the Regular Army. Three months later he was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers, but saw no further active service. On March 13, 1865, he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel, colonel, and brigadier-general in the Regular Army, for gallant and meritorious services during the war, and on July 28, 1866, was commissioned colonel of the Forty-fourth Infantry. From 1866 to 1870 he was superintendent of the United States Military Academy, and from 1870 until 1877 was governor of the Soldiers' Home near Washington. The next year he retired from the service, and from 1880 until 1887 was superintendent of the New York Soldiers' and Sailors' Home.

PITCHER PLANT. A plant whose leaves are mofified so as to form pitchers, as in Sarracenia. See

PITCHSTONE. An igneous rock of glassy or lithoidal texture, rich in contained water. To this abundance of water in their composition pitchstones owe their lustre, from which they receive their name. The term pitchstone is not used to indicate any particular composition of rock, but rather to designate a texture which may occur with rocks of any chemical composition, though it is developed in larger masses in the case of magmas of siliceous composition. From obsidian pitchstone differs in containing much water, while obsidian (q.v.) is nearly or quite water-free. The most remarkable pitchstones occur upon the island of Arran, Hebrides, and near Meissen, Saxony.

PITCH′URIM BEAN. The seed of a tropical tree. See.

PITESCI, pḗ-tēsht′y'. A town of Rumania, on the main railroad. 65 miles northwest of Bucharest (Map: Balkan Peninsula, E 2). It has some trade. Population, in 1899, 15,570.

PITH (AS. piþa, pith). The central cylinder of soft tissues (parenchyma) inclosed by the woody cylinder of dicotyledonous and gymnospermous plants. It frequently dies, decays, and leaves the stems hollow, as in the elder.

PITH′ECAN'THROPUS (NeoLat., from Gk., pithēkos, ape, monkey + , anthrōpos, man). An organic genus combining the structural characters of man and the higher apes or monkeys. The type and sole species is Pithecanthropus erectus, founded by Eugene Dubois in 1894 on a calvarium (skullcap), two upper molars, and a femur found in marine Pliocene deposits near Trinil, Java, in association with bones of about a dozen extinct mammalian species. The cranium has been discussed critically by more than a score of the world's leading anatomists, of whom about one-fourth regard it as simian, about one-third as human, and the others (including Baker, Dubois, Gill, Haeckel, Manouvrier, Marsh, Nehring, Pettit, and Verneau) as an intermediate form. All agree that if human it is more ape-like in form and size, and that if simian or pithecoid it more nearly approaches the human type, than any other known cranium. The capacity is estimated at about, or slightly above, 900 cubic centimeters, that of the largest known anthropoid apes being 500 to 600, that of the Neanderthal skull (as estimated by Huxley) 1236, and the average human cranium running from about 1200 to 1600, with an extreme range of about 1100 to 2200. The teeth combine human and simian characters, while the femur clearly indicates an habitual erect attitude. The genus is of special interest as representative of the 'missing link' much discussed by students of human development during the third quarter of the nineteenth century; indeed, its characters were prevised by Haeckel, who in 1886 applied the name Pithecanthropus to the still hypothetical form, and by McGee, who in 1892 pointed out that the assumption of the erect attitude was necessarily the first essential step in the development of the human genus from lower forms. Dubois's earlier publications, including Pithecanthropus erectus, eine menschenähnliche Uebergangsform aus Java, are not readily accessible; a later paper, read before the Berlin Anthropological Society and printed in the Anatomischer Anzeiger, vol. xii., was translated and widely reprinted, in the Smithsonian Report for 1898 and elsewhere.

PI′THO (Gk. ). The Greek goddess of persuasion, called by the Romans Suada or Suadela, and considered the daughter of Aphrodite, in whose train she appears with Eros and the Graces.

PI′THOM. One of the store-cities which, according to Ex. i. 11, were built by the Israelites during the Egyptian bondage. Through the excavations conducted by Naville in 1883 for the Egypt Exploration Fund, it has been identified with the Egyptian city of Per-Tum, 'Abode of Tum' (Coptic Pethôm ), whose site is occupied by the mound of Tel-el-Maskhutah, or 'Hill of the Statue,' so called from a sculpture found there representing Rameses II, standing between the gods Rê-Harmachis and Tum. It is situated in the Wâdi Tûmîlât, about 12 miles from Ismailiah, near the railway station Rameses. Pithom seems to have been built by Rameses II. to serve as a base of supplies for his armies operating in Asia, and was strongly fortified. Naville found there the remains of a great quadrangular wall of brick inclosing a space of about 55,000 square yards, within which were the ruins of a temple and a number of chambers constructed for the storage of grain. In later times, especially under the Ptolemies, the city was a place of considerable importance, and it w:is still in existence at a late date under the Roman Empire. By the Greeks it was called Heroopolis. Consult Naville, The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus, Memoir I. of the Egypt Exploration Fund (3d ed., London. 1888).

PIT′KIN, (1766-1847). An American lawyer, politician, and historian. He was born in Farmington, Conn., graduated at Yale