Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 07.djvu/271

PHELAN 215 PHI BETA KAPPA highly prized game birds. The adult male pheasant is a beautiful bird, about three feet long. Head and neck deep steel-blue, shot with greenish-purple and brown; eye surrounded by a patch of scarlet skin, speckled with blue-black; ear-coverts brown; back a light golden- red, the feathers of the upper part tipped with velvet-black, of the lower part marked with brown. Quill feathers brown, of various shades, tail feathers oaken-brown, barred with a darker shade and with black. Breast and front of the abdomen golden-red with purple reflec- tions, feathers edged with black; rest of abdomen and under tail-coverts blackish- brown. The female has yellowish-brown plumage, and is about two feet in length. Other species known respectively as Shaws, the Yarkand, the Mongolian, the ring-necked, the Formosan, the ringless Chinese, the Japanese, the green-backed golden, Wallich's, Reeves', and Soemmer- ing's pheasant, the golden, Lady Am- herst's pheasant and silver pheasant. PHELAN, JAMES DUVAL, United States Senator from California. Born in San Francisco April, 1861; graduated from St. Ignatius College, 1881. Al- though a lawyer, most of his time has been occupied with the affairs of his city, state and nation. He took a prominent part in the relief work which took place after the great fire in San Francisco, and from 1896-1902 was mayor of that city. In 1913 President Wilson appointed him special commissioner to deal with Santo Domingo affairs. In 1915 the Democrats of California sent him to the Senate. PHELPS, AUSTIN, an American cler- gyman and author, born in West Brook- field, Mass., Jai, 7, 1820. He was pas- tor of the Pin^ Street Congregational Church, Boston, in 1842-1848; and Pro- fessor of Sacred Rhetoric in Andover Theological Seminary, in 1848-1879. He was noted as an original writer and an eloquent preacher. His works in- clude: "The Still Hour" (1859); "The New Birth" (1867); "Men and Books" (1882); "English Style in Public Dis- course" (1883). He died in Bar Harbor, Me., Oct. 13, 1890. PHELPS, EDWARD JOHN, an Amer- ican diplomatist; born in Middlebury, Vt., July 11, 1822; was graduated at Middle- bury College in 1840; studied at the Yale Law School; was admitted to the bar in 1843; and settled in Burlington in 1845. In 1851 he was appointed Comptroller of the Treasury. In 1881-1885 he was Professor of Law in the Yale Law School and also lecturer on constitutional law in Boston University. He was minister to England in 1885-1889. During the Ber- ing Sea dispute he was senior counsel for the United States. He died in New Haven, Conn., March 9, 1900. PHELPS, ELIZABETH STUART. See Ward, Elizabeth Stuart (Phelps). PHELPS, WILLIAM LYON, author and university professor. Bom in New Haven, Conn., in 1865; graduated from Yale in the class of 1887, receiving his doctor's degree four years later from the same university. The year following he became an instructor in English at Yale University and in 1901 Lampson profes- sor of English language and literature. He has edited many school and college textbooks in English as well as reviewed many works for periodicals. He wrote several volumes of essays on the English classics, especially the novelists. PHENACETIN, a drug prepared from carbolic acid, valuable in fevers, and, like antipyrin, of service in stilling pain and securing rest in cases of severe head- aches, insomnia, and nervousness. PHENOL, a name for Carbolic Acid iq.v.). PHER^, a powerful city of Thessaly, near Mount Pelion; according to legend, the ancient royal seat of Admetus and Alcestis, and afterward of political conse- quence under "tyrants" of its own, who repeatedly attempted to make themselves masters of Thessaly. PHI BETA KAPPA, the oldest of the American college Greek-letter societies. It takes its name from the initial letters of its motto, said to be Philosophia Biou Kubernetes, "Philosophy is the guide of life." It was founded in 1776 in the old "Raleigh Tavern" at Williamsburgh, Va., by forty-four undergraduates of William and Mary College, of whom John Marshall was one. Branches were established at Yale in 1780 and at Harvard in 1781, and to-day there are nearly a score in the principal colleges and universities of the Union. The Phi Beta Kappa is now simply "an agreeable bond of meeting among grad- uates." At Harvard there is an annual Phi Beta Kappa dinner, oration, and poem; the earliest and one of the most striking of Edward Everett's great ora- tions was delivered before the society, with Lafayette for a guest, in 1824; and among the early poets were R. T. Paine ("The Ruling Passion") and Oliver Wendell Holmes (1829). The badge of the society is a golden watch key with the initials *BK. Admission to mem- bership varies with different cha]> ters.