Piraniol, simplicity. He published an abridgement of it in 2 vols. Pigeon. 12mo. 3. A Description of the Castle and Park of Versailles, Marly, &c. in 2 vols. 12mo: it is very amusing, and pretty well executed. Piganiol had also a concern with Abbé Nadal in the journal of Trevoux. He died at Paris in February 1753, at the age of 80 years. This learned man was as much to be respected for his manners as for his talents. To a profound and varied knowledge he united great probity and honour, and all the politeness of a courtier. PIGEON, see COLUMBA, ORNITHOLOGY Index. PIGEON-House is a house erected full of holes within, for the keeping, breeding, &c. of pigeons, otherwise called a dove-cot. Any lord of manor may build a pigeon-house on his land, but a tenant cannot do it without the lord's licence. When persons shoot at or kill pigeons within a certain distance of the pigeon-house, they are liable to pay a forfeiture. In order to erect a pigeon-house to advantage, it will be necessary, in the first place, to pitch upon a convenient situation; of which none is more proper than the middle of a spacious court-yard, because pigeons are naturally of a timorous disposition, and the least noise they hear frightens them. With regard to the size of the pigeon-house, it must depend entirely upon the number of birds intended to be kept; but it is better to have it too large than too little; and as to its form, the round should be preferred to the square ones; because rats cannot so easily come at them in the former as in the latter. It is also much more commodious; because you may, by means of a ladder turning upon an axis, easily visit all the nests in the house, without the least difficulty; which cannot so easily be done in a square house. In order to hinder rats from climbing up the outside of the pigeon-house, the wall should be covered with tin plates to a certain height, about a foot and a half will be sufficient; but they should project out three or four inches at the top, to prevent their clambering any higher. The pigeon-house should be placed at no great distance from water, that the pigeons may carry it to their young ones; and their carrying it in their bills will warm it, and render it more wholesome in cold weather. The boards that cover the pigeon-house should be well joined together, so that no rain may penetrate through it: and the whole building should be covered with hard plaster, and white-washed within and without, white being the most pleasing colour to pigeons. There must be no window, or other opening in the pigeon-house to the eastward; these should always face the south, for pigeons are very fond of the sun, especially in winter. The nests or covers in a pigeon-house should consist of square holes made in the walls, of a size sufficient to admit the cock and hen to stand in them. The first range of these nests should not be less than four feet from the ground, that the wall underneath being smooth, the rats may not be able to reach them. These nests should be placed in quincunx order, and not directly over one another. Nor must they be continued any higher than within three feet of the top of the wall: and the upper row should be covered with a board projecting a considerable distance from the wall, for fear the rats should find means to climb the outside of the house. M. Duhamel thinks that pigeons neither feed upon Pigeon. the green corn, nor have bills strong enough to search for its seeds in the earth; but only pick up the grains that are not covered, which would infallibly become the prey of other animals, or be dried up by the sun. "From the time of the sprouting of the corn, says he, pigeons live chiefly upon the seeds of wild uncultivated plants, and therefore lessen considerably the quantity of weeds that would otherwise spring up; as will appear from a just estimate of the quantity of grain necessary to feed all the pigeons of a well-stocked dove-house." But Mr Worlidge and Mr Lisle allege facts in support of the contrary opinion. The latter relates, that a farmer in his neighbourhood assured him he had known an acre sowed with pease, and rain coming on so that they could not be harrowed in, every pea was fetched away in half a day's time by pigeons: and the former says, It is to be observed, that where the flight of pigeons falls, there they fill themselves and away, and return again where they first rose, and so proceed over a whole piece of ground, if they like it. Although you cannot perceive any grain above the ground, they know how to find it. I have seen them lie so much upon a piece of about two or three acres sown with pease, that they devoured at least three parts in four of the seed, which, I am sure, could not be all above the surface of the ground. That their smelling is their principal director, I have observed; having sown a small plat of pease in my garden, near a pigeon-house, and covered them so well that not a pea appeared above ground. In a few days, a parcel of pigeons were hard at work in discovering this hidden treasure; and in a few days more I had not above two or three peas left out of about two quarts that were planted; for what they could not find before, they found when the buds appeared, notwithstanding they were hoed in, and well covered. Their smelling alone directed them, as I supposed, because they followed the ranges exactly. The injury they do at harvest on the pease, vetches, &c. is such that we may rank them among the greatest enemies the poor husbandman meets withal; and the greater, because he may not erect a pigeon-house, whereby to have a share of his own spoils; none but the rich being allowed this privilege, and so severe a law being also made to protect these winged thieves, that a man cannot encounter them, even in defence of his own property. You have therefore no remedy against them, but to affright them away by noises or such like. You may, indeed, shoot at them; but you must not kill them; or you may, if you can, take them in a net, cut off their tails, and let them go; by which means you will impound them: for when you are in their houses, they cannot bolt or fly out of the tops of them, but by the strength of their tails; after the thus weakening of which, they remain prisoners at home." Mr Worlidge's impounding the pigeons reminds us of a humorous story of a gentleman, who, upon a neighbouring farmer's complaining to him, that his pigeons were a great nuisance to his land, and did sad mischief to his corn, replied jokingly, Pound them, if you catch them trespassing. The farmer, improving the hint, steeped a parcel of pease in an infusion of coculus indicus, or some other intoxicating drug, and strewed them upon his grounds. The pigeons swallowed them, and soon remained motionless on the field: upon which the farmer threw a net over them, inclosed them in it, aud car3Zz ried Pigeon. ried them to an empty barn, from whence he sent the gentleman word that he had followed his directions with regard to the pounding of his pigeons, and desired him to come and release them. Carrier-PIGEON. See CARRIER-Pigeon and CoLUMBA, ORNITHOLOGY Index. PIGEON, Peter Charles Francis, curate of St Peter du Regard, in the diocese of Bayeux, was one of the priests lately belonging to the king's house at Winchester. He was born in Lower Normandy, of honest and virtuous parents, and of a decent fortune. His inclinations early led him to embrace the ecclesiastical state, from which neither the solicitations of his friends, nor the prospect of a more ample fortune on the death of his elder brother, could withdraw him. Several of his schoolfellows and masters, who are now resident in the king's house at Winchester, bear the most ample testimony to his assiduity, regularity, piety, and the sweetness of his disposition, during the whole course of his education. The sweetness of temper, in particular, was so remarkable, and so clearly depicted on his countenance, as to have gained him the esteem and affection of such of the inhabitants of Winchester as by any means had become acquainted with him. He was seven years employed in quality of vicar, or, as we should call it curate, of a large parish in the diocese of Seez, where his virtues and talents had ample scope for exertion. His practice was to rise at five o'clock every morning, and to spend the whole time till noon (the usual time of dining for persons in his station) in prayer and study. The rest of the day, till evening, he devoted to visiting the sick, and other exterior duties of his function. In 1789, the year of the French revolution, M. Pigeon was promoted to a curacy, or rather a rectory, in the diocese of Bayeux, called the parish of St Peter du Regard, near the town of Condè sur Noereau. It was easy for him to gain the good-will and the protection of his parishioners; but a Jacobin club in the above-mentioned town seemed to have no other subject to deliberate upon than the various ways of harassing and persecuting M. Pigeon and certain other priests in the neighbourhood, who had from motives of conscience refused the famous civic oath. It would be tedious to relate the many cruelties which were at different times exercised upon him, and the imminent danger of losing his life to which he was exposed, by the blows that were inflicted on him, by his being thrown into water, and being obliged to wander in woods and other solitary places, without any food or place to lay his head, in order to avoid his persecutors. We may form some judgment of the spirit of his persecutors from the following circumstance. Being disappointed on a particular occasion in the search they were making after M. Pigeon, with the view of amusing themselves with his sufferings, they made themselves amends by seizing his mother, a respectable lady of 74 years of age, and his two sisters, whom they placed upon asses with their faces turned backwards, obliging them in derision to hold the tails of these animals. Thus they were conducted in pain and ignominy throughout the whole town of Condè, for no other alleged crime except being the nearest relations of M. Pigeon. At length the decree for transporting all the ecclesiasties arrived; and this gentleman, with several others, after having been stripped of all their money, was shipped from Port Bessin, and landed at Portsmouth, where he Pigeon was shortly after received into the establishment at Foxton, and, upon that being dissolved in order to make room for prisoners of war, into the king's house at Win- Pignat chester. Being of a studious turn, he was accustomed, as many of his brethren also were, to betake himself to the neighbouring lanes and thickets for the sake of greater solitude. With this view having, about ten o'clock in the morning, Aug. 28. 1793, retired to a certain little valley, on the north-east side of a place called Oram's Arbour, the same place where the county elections for Hampshire are held, he was there found, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, murdered, with the upper part of his skull absolutely broken from the lower part, and a large hedge-stake, covered with blood, lying by him, as were the papers on which he had been transcribing a manuscript sermon with the hearing of which he had been much edified, and the sermon itself which he was copying, together with his pen, imbrued in blood. His watch was carried away, though part of the chain, which had been by some means broken, was left behind. He was writing the word paradise, the last letters of which remained unwritten when the fatal blow was given him, which appears evidently to have been discharged upon him from a gap in a hedge which was immediately behind him. At first the suspicion of this cruel murder fell upon the French democrats, who, to the number of 200, are prisoners of war, at the neighbouring town of Alresford, as one of that number, who had broke his parole, had, about three weeks before, being taken up at Winchester, and both there and at Alresford had repeatedly threatened to murder his uncle, a priest, whom he understood to be then at Winchester, not without fervent wishes of having it in his power to murder the whole establishment, consisting of more than 600 persons. However, as no French prisoner was seen that day in the neighbourhood of Winchester, as none of them were known to have left Alresford, it is evidently reasonable to acquiesce in the verdict of the coroner; namely, that the murder was committed by a person or persons unknown. The most noble marquis of Buckingham, whose munificence and kindness to those conscientious exiles, the emigrant French clergy, can only be conceived by those who have been witnesses of the same, with the truly respectable corps of the Buckinghamshire militia then quartered at Winchester, joined in paying the last mark of respect to the unfortunate deceased, by attending his funeral, which was performed at the Roman Catholic burying-ground, called St James's, near the said city, on Saturday, Aug. 29. He was just 38 years of age when he was murdered. PIGMENTS, preparations used by painters, dyers, &c. to impart colours to bodies, or to imitate particular colours. See COLOUR-Making, and DYEING. PIGNEROL is a town of Italy in the province of Piedmont, in E. Long. 7. 15. N. Lat. 44. 45. situated on the river Chizon, 10 miles south-west of Turin, at the foot of the Alps, and the confines of Dauphiny. The town is small, but populous, and extremely well fortified by the king of Sardinia, since the treaty of Utrecht. It is defended by a citadel, on the top of the mountain near which is the castle of Perouse, which was built at the entrance of the valley of that name. PIGNUT, or Earthnut. See BUNIUM, BOTANY Index. Pigus Pike. year, which is in March. It is found in almost all fresh waters; but it is very different in goodness, according to the nature of the places where it lives. The finest pike are those which feed in clear rivers; those in ponds and meres are inferior, and the worst of all are those of the fen ditches. They are very plentiful in these last places, where the water is foul and coloured, and their food, such as frogs and the like, very plentiful, but very coarse; so that they grow large, but are yellowish and high bellied, and differ greatly from those which live in the clearer waters. PIGUS, in Ichthyology, is the name of a species of leather-mouthed fish, very much resembling the nature of the common carp; being of the same shape and size, and its eyes, fins, and fleshy palate, exactly the same; from the gills to the tail there is a crooked dotted line; the back and sides are bluish, and the belly reddish. It is covered with large scales; from the middle of each of which there rises a fine pellucid prickle, which is very sharp. It is an excellent fish for the table, being perhaps preferable to the carp; and it is in season in the months of March and April. It is caught in lakes in some parts of Italy, and is mentioned by Pliny, thongh without a name. Artedi says it is a species of cyprinus, and he calls it the cyprinus, called piclo and pigus. PI-HAHIROTH, (Moses); understood to be a mouth or narrow pass between two mountains, called Chiroth or Eiroth, and lying not far from the bottom of the western coast of the Arabian gulf; before which mouth the children of Israel encamped, just before their entering the Red sea, (Wells). PIISKER, in Ichthyology, is a fish of the mustela kind, commonly called the fossil mustela, or fossil-fish. This fish is generally found as long as an ordinary man's hand is broad, and as thick as the finger; but it sometimes grows much longer the back is of gray, with a number of spots and transverse streaks, partly black and partly blue; the belly is yellow, and spotted with red, white, and black; the white are the larger, the others look as if they were made with the point of a needle; and there is on each of the sides a longitudinal black and white line. There are some fleshy excrescen ces at the mouth, which are expanded in swimming; and when out of the water, they are contracted. These fishes run into caverns of the earth, in the sides of rivers, in marshy places, and penetrate a great way, and are often dug up at a distance from waters. Often, when the waters of brooks and rivers swell beyond their banks, and again cover them, they make their way out of the earth into the water; and when it deserts them, they are often left in vast numbers upon the ground, and become a prey to swine. It is thought to be much of the same kind with the fisgum fish; and is indeed possible that that the pæcilia of Schonefeldt is the same. PIKE. See Esox, ICHTHYOLOGY Index. The pike never swims in shoals as most other fish do, but always lies alone; and is so bold and ravenous, that he will seize upon almost any thing less than himself. Of the ravenous nature of this fish we shall give the following instances. At Rycott in Oxfordshire, in the year 1749, in a moat surrounding the earl of Abingdon's seat, there was a jack or pike of such a monstrous size, that it had destroyed young swans feathers and all. An old cobb swan having hatched five young, one after another was lost till four were gone. At length an under gardener saw the fish seize the fifth. The old one fought him with her beak, and, with the assistance of the gardener, released it, although he had got it under water. In the year 1765 a large pike was caught in the river Ouze, which weighed upwards of 28 pounds, and was sold for a guinea. On gutting the fish, a watch with a black ribbon and two steel seals were found in its stomach, which, by the maker's name, &c. was found to belong to a person who had been drowned about six weeks before. This fish breeds but once in a The fishermen have two principal ways of catching the pike; by the ledger, and by the walking-bait. The ledger-bait is fixed in one certain place, and may continue while the angler is absent. This must be a live bait, a fish or frog: and among fish, the dace, roach, and gudgeon, are the best; of frogs, the only caution is to choose the largest and yellowest that can be met with. If the bait be a fish, the hook is to be stuck through the upper lip, and the line must be 14 yards at least in length; the other end of this is to be tied to a bough of a tree, or to a stick driven into the ground near the pike's haunt, and all the line wound round a forked stick, except about half a yard. The bait will by this means keep playing so much under water, and the pike will soon lay hold of it. If the bait be a frog, then the arming wire of the hook should be put in at the mouth, and out at the side; and with a needle and some strong silk, the hinder leg of one side is to be fastened by one stitch to the wire-arming of the hook. The pike will soon seize this, and must have line enough to give him leave to get to his haunt and poach the bait.. The trolling for pike is a pleasant method also of taking them in this a dead bait serves, and none is so proper as a gudgeon. : This is to be pulled about in the water till the pike seizes it; and then it is to have line enough, and time to swallow it the book is small for this sport, and has a smooth piece of lead fixed at its end to sink the bait; and the line is very long, and runs through a ring at the end of the rod, which must not be too slender at top. The art of feeding pike, so as to make them very fat, is the giving them eels; and without this it is not to be done under a very long time; otherwise perch, while small, and their prickly fins tender, are the best food for them. Bream put into a pike-pond are a very proper food; they will breed freely, and their young ones make excellent food for the pike, who will take care that they shall not increase over much. The numerous shoals of roaches and ruds, which are continually changing place, and often in floods get into the pike's quarters, are food for them for a long time. Pike, when used to be fed by hand, will come up to the very shore, and take the food that is given them out of the fingers of the feeder. It is wonderful to see with what courage they will do this, after a while practising; and it is a very diverting sight when there are several of them nearly of the same size, to see what striving and fighting there will be for the best bits when they are thrown in. The most convenient place is near the mouth of the pond, and where there is about half a yard depth of water; for, by that means, the offal of the feedings will all lie in one place, and the deep water will Pike. Pike, Pila. will serve for a place to retire into and rest in, and will be always clean and in order. Carp may be fed in the same manner as pike; and though by nature a fish as remarkably shy and timorous as the pike is bold and fearless, yet by custom they will come to take their food out of the person's hand; and will, like the pike quarrel among one another for the nicest bits. PIKE, in War, an offensive weapon, consisting of a wooden shaft, 12 or 14 feet long, with a flat steel head, pointed, called the spear. This weapon was long in use among the infantry; but now the bayonet, which is fixed on the muzzle of the firelock, is substituted in its stead. It is still used by some of the officers of infantry, under the name of sponton. The Macedonian phalanx was a battalion of pikemen. See PHALANX. PILA MARINA, or the sea-ball, in Natural History, is the name of a substance very common on the shores of the Mediterranean, and elsewhere. It is generally found in the form of a ball about the size of the balls of horse dung, and composed of a variety of fibrilla irregularly complicated. Various conjectures have been given of its origin by different authors. John Bauhine tells us, that it consists of small hairy fibres and straws, such as are found about the sea plant called alga vitriariorum; but he does not ascertain what plant it owes its origin to. Imperatus imagined it consisted of the exuviæ both of vegetable and animal bodies. Mercatus is doubtful whether it be a congeries of the fibrilla of plants, wound up into a ball by the motion of the sea water, or whether it be not the workmanship of some sort of beetle living about the sea shore, and analogous to our common dung beetle's ball, which it elaborates from dung for the reception of its progeny. Schreckius says it is composed of the filaments of some plant of the reed kind: and Welchius supposes it is composed of the pappous part of the flowers of the reed. Maurice Hoffman thinks it the excrement of the hippopotamus; and others think it that of the phoca or sea calf. Klein, who had thoroughly and minutely examined the bodies them selves, and also what authors had conjectured concerning them, thinks that they are wholly owing to, and entirely composed of, the capillaments which the leaves, growing to the woody stalk of the alga vitriariorum, have when they wither and decay. These leaves, in their natural state, are as thick as a wheat straw, and they are placed so thick about the tops and extremities of the stalks, that they enfold, embrace, and lie over one another; and from the middle of these clusters of leaves, and indeed from the woody substance of the plant itself, there arise several other very long, flat, smooth, and brittle leaves. These are usually four from each tuft of the other leaves; and they have ever a common vagina, which is membranaceous and very thin. This is the style of the plant, and the pila marina appears to be a cluster of the fibres of the leaves of this plant, which cover the whole stalk, divided into their constituent fibres; and by the motion of the waves first broken and worn into short shreds, and afterwards wound up together into a roundish or longish ball. PILA, was a ball made in a different manner according to the different games in which it was to be used. Playing at ball was very common amongst the Romans of the first distinction, and was looked upon as a manly exercise, which contributed both to amusement and &c. PILATE, or PONTIUS PILATE, was governor of Judea when our Lord was crucified. Of his family or country we know but little, though it is believed that he was of Rome, or at least of Italy. He was sent to govern Judea in the room of Gratus, in the year 26 or 27 of the vulgar era, and governed this province for ten years, from the 12th or 13th year of Tiberius to the 22d or 23d. He is represented both by Philo and Josephus as a man of an impetuous and obstinate temper, and as a judge who used to sell justice, and to pronounce any sentence that was desired, provided he was paid for it. The same authors make mention of his rapines, his injuries, his murders, the torments that he inflicted upon the innocent, and the persons he put to death without any form of process. Philo, in particular, describes him as a man that exercised an excessive cruelty during the whole time of his government, who disturbed the repose of Judea, and gave occasion to the troubles and revolt that followed after. St Luke (xiii. 1, 2, &c.) acquaints us, that Pilate had mingled the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices; and that the matter having been related to Jesus Christ, he said, "Think you that these Galileans were greater sinners than other Galileans, because they suffered this calamity.. I tell you nay; and if you do not repent, you shall all perish in like manner." It is unknown upon what occasion Pilate caused these Galileans to be slain in the temple while they were sacrificing; for this is the meaning of that expression of mingling their blood with their sacrifices. Some think they were disciples of Judas the Gaulonite, who taught that the Jews ought not to pay tribute to foreign princes; and that Pilate had put some of them to death even in the temple; but there is no proof of this fact. Others think that these Galileans were Samaritaus, whom Pilate cut to pieces in the village of Tirataba*, as they were Joupt. preparing to go up to Mount Gerizim, where a certain Antiq. lib imposter had promised to discover treasures to them; but xvii. c. 5. this event did not happen before the year 35 of the common era, and consequently two years after the death of Jesus Christ. At the time of our Saviour's passion, Pilate made some endeavours to deliver him out of the hands of the Jews. He knew they had delivered him up, and pursued his life with so much violence, only out of malice and envy (Matt. xxvii. 18.). His wife, alse, who had been disturbed the night before with frightful dreams, sent to tell him she desired him not to meddle in the affair of that just person (ib. 19.) He attempted to appease the wrath of the Jews, and to give them some satisfaction, by whipping Jesus Christ (John xix. 1. Matt. xxvii. 26.). He tried to take him out of their hands, by proposing to deliver him or Barabbas, on the day of the festival of the passover. Lastly, he had a mind to discharge himself from pronouncing judgment against him, by sending him to Herod king of Galilee (Luke xxiii. 7, 8.). When he saw all this would not satisfy the Jews, and that they even threatened him in some manner, saying he could be no friend to the emperor if he let him go (John xix. 12, 15.), he caused water Pilate. year of Jesus Christ and sent to Rome to give an aecount of his conduct to the emperor. But thoughTiberius died before Pilate arrived at Rome, yet his successor Caligula banished him to Vienne in Gaul, where he was reduced to such extremity that he killed himself with his own hands. The evangelists call him governor, though in reality he was no more than procurator of Judea, not only because governor was a name of general use, but because Pilate in effect acted as one, by taking upon him to judge in criminal matters; as his predecessors had done, and other procurators in the small provinces of the empire where there was no proconsul, constantly did. See Calmet's Dictionary, Echard's Ecclesiastical Dictionary, and Beausobre's Annot. water to be brought, washed his hands before all the people, and publicly declared himself innocent of the blood of that just person (Matt. xxvii. 23, 24.); yet at the same time he delivered him up to his soldiers, that they might crucify him. This was enough to justify Jesus Christ, as Calmet observes, and to show that he held him as innocent; but it was not enough to vindicate the conscience and integrity of a judge, whose duty it was as well to assert the cause of oppressed innocence as to punish the guilty and criminal. He ordered to be put over our Saviour's cross, as it were an abstract of his sentence, and the motive of his condemnation (John xix. 9.), Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews, which was written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Some of the Jews found fault with it, and remonstrated to Pilate that he ought to have written Jesus of Nazareth who pretended to be king of the Jews. But Pilate could not be prevailed with to alter it, and gave them this peremptory answer, That what he had written he had written. Towards evening, he was applied to for leave to take down the bodies from the cross, that they might not continue there the following day, which was the passover and the sabbath-day (John xix. 31.). This he allowed, and granted the body of Jesus to Joseph of Arimathea, that he might pay his last duties to it, (ib. 33.). Lastly, when the priests, who had solicited the death of our Saviour, came to desire him to set a watch about the sepulchre, for fear his disciples should steal him away by night, be answered them, that they had a guard, and might place them there themselves (Matt. xxvii. 65.). This is the substance of what the gospel tells us concerning Pilate. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Eusebius, and after them several others both ancient and modern, assure us, that it was formerly the custom for Roman magistrates to prepare copies of all verbal processes and judicial acts which they passed in their several provinces, and to send them to the emperor. And Pilate, in compliance to this custom, having sent word to Tiberius of what had passed relating to Jesus Christ, the emperor wrote an account of it to the senate, in a manner that gave reason to judge that he thought favourably of the religion of Jesus Christ, and showed that he should be willing they would decree divine honours to him. But the senate was not of the same opinion, and so the matter was dropped. It appears by what Justin says of these acts, that the miracles of Jesus Christ were mentioned there, and even that the soldiers had divided his garments among them. Eusebius insinuates that they spoke of his resurrection and ascension. Tertullian and Justin refer to these acts with so much confidence as would make one believe they bad them in their hands. However, neither Eusebius nor St Jerome, who were both inquisitive, understanding persons, nor any other author that wrote afterwards, seem to have seen them, at least not the true and original acts; for as to what we have now in great number, they are not authentic, being neither ancient nor uniform. There are also some pretended letters of Pilate to Tiberius, giving a history of our Saviour, but they are universally allowed to be spurious. Pilate being a man that, by his excessive cruelties and rapine, had disturbed the peace of Judea during the whole time of his government, was at length deposed by Vitellius the proconsul of Syria, in the 36th With regard to Pilate's wife, the general tradition is, that she was named Claudia Procula or Proscula ; and in relation to her dream, some are of opinion that as she had intelligence of our Lord's apprehension, and knew by his character that he was a righteous person, her imagination, being struck with these ideas, did naturally produce the dream we read of; but others think that this dream was sent providentially upon her, for the clearer manifestation of our Lord's innocence. Pilate Pilchard. PILATRE DU ROZIER, Francis, was born at Metz the 30th of March 1756. He was first apprentice to an apothecary there, and afterwards went to Paris in quest of farther improvement. He applied himself to the study of natural history and of natural philosophy, and had already acquired some reputation, when the discovery of M. de Montgolfier had just astonished the learned world. On the 25th of October 1783, he attempted an aerial voyage with the marquis of Arlande. He performed several other excursions in this way with brilliant success, in the presence of the royal family of France, of the king of Sweden, and of Prince Henry of Prussia. He then resolved to pass into England by means of his aerial vehicle, and for that purpose he repaired to Boulogne, whence he rose about 7 o'clock in the morning of the 15th June 1785; but in half an hour after he set out, the balloon took fire, and the aeronaut, with his companion M. Romaine, were crushed to death by the fall of that machine, which was more ingenious, perhaps, than useful*. Pilatre's social virtues See Ae10and courage, which were very distinguished, heightened station, the regret of his friends for his loss. His merit as a N° 34. chemist, and his experiments as an aeronaut, procured him some pecuniary reward, and some public appointments. He had a pension from the king, was intendant of Monsieur's cabinets of natural philosophy, chemistry, and natural history, professor of natural philosophy, a member of several academies, and principal director of Monsieur's museum. PILCHARD, in Ichthyology, a fish which has a general resemblance to the herring, but differs in some essential particulars. The body of the pilchard is less compressed than that of the herring, being thicker and rounder: the nose is shorter in proportion, and turns up; the under jaw is shorter. The back is more elevated; the belly less sharp. The dorsal fin of the pilchard is placed exactly in the centre of gravity, so that when taken up by it, the body preserves an equilibrium, whereas that of the herring dips at the head. The scales of the pilchard adhere very closely, whereas those of the herring very easily drop off. The pilchard is in general less than the herring; but it is fatter, or more full of oil. The * |