Continental Congress. In 1776, as president of the provincial convention, which adopted a state constitution for Virginia, he drew up the instructions to the Virginia members of Congress directing them to advocate the independence of the American colonies In the same year he became president of the Virginia committee of safety, and in October was chosen the first speaker of the House of Delegates. With Jefferson and Chancellor George Wythe he drew up a new law code for Virginia. He was president of the court of chancery in 1777–1788, and from 1779 until his death was president of the Virginia court of appeals. He was an enthusiastic advocate of the Federal constitution, and in 1788 exerted strong influence to secure its ratification by his native state. He was a leader of the Federalist party in Virginia until his death at Richmond, Va., on the 23rd of October 1803.
PENDLETON, GEORGE HUNT (1825–1889), American lawyer
and legislator, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 25th of July 1825. He was educated at the university of Heidelberg, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began to practise
at Cincinnati. He was a member of the Ohio Senate in 1854
and 1855, and from 1857 to 1865 was a Democratic member of
the national House of Representatives, in which he opposed
the war policy of Lincoln. In 1864 he was the Democratic
candidate for vice-president. After leaving Congress he became
one of the earliest champions of the “Ohio idea” (which
he is said to have originated), demanding that the government
should pay the principal of its 5–20-year 6% bonds in the
“greenback” currency instead of in coin. The agricultural
classes of the West regarded this as a means of relief, and
Pendleton became their recognized leader and a candidate for the
Democratic nomination to the presidency in 1868, but he failed
to receive the requisite two-thirds majority. In 1869 he was the
Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, but was defeated
by Rutherford B. Hayes. For the next ten years he devoted
himself to the practice of law and to the supervision of the
Kentucky Railroad Company, of which he had become president
in 1869. From 1879 to 1885 he was a Democratic member of
the United States Senate, and introduced the so-called Pendleton
Act of 1883 for reforming the civil service, hostility to which
lost him his seat in 1885. He was minister to Germany from
1885 to the summer of 1889, and died at Brussels on the 24th
of November 1889
PENELOPE, in Greek legend, wife of Odysseus, daughter of Icarius and the nymph Periboea. During the long absence
of her husband after the fall of Troy many chieftains of Ithaca
and the islands round about became her suitors, and, to rid
herself of the importunities of the wooers, she bade them wait
till she had woven a winding-sheet for old Laërtes, the father
of Odysseus. But every night she undid the piece which she
had woven by day. This she did for three years, till her maids
revealed the secret. She was relieved by the arrival of Odysseus,
who returned after an absence of twenty years, and slew the
wooers. The character of Penelope is less favourable in late
writers than in the Homeric story. During her husband’s absence
she is said to have become the mother of Pan by Hermes, and
Odysseus, on his return, repudiated her as unfaithful (Herodotus
ii. 145 and schol.) She thereupon withdrew to Sparta and
thence to Mantineia, where she died and where her tomb was
shown. According to another account she married Telegonus
the son of Odysseus and Circe, after he had killed his father,
and dwelt with him in the island of Aeala or in the Islands of
the Blest (Hyginus Feb. 127).
PENGELLY, WILLIAM (1812–1894), English geologist and anthropologist, was born at East Looe in Cornwall on the 12th
of January 1812, the son of the captain of a small coasting vessel.
He began life as a sailor, after an elementary education in
his native village, but in 1828 he abandoned a seafaring life.
He had developed a passion for learning, and about 1836 he
removed to Torquay and started a school, in 1846 he became
a private tutor in mathematics and natural science. Geology
had in early years attracted his attention, but it was not until
he was about 30 years of age that he began seriously to cultivate
the study. In 1837 he was instrumental in the reorganization
of the Torquay Mechanics’ Institute, in 1844 mainly owing to
his energy the Torquay Natural History Society was founded,
and in 1862 he assisted in founding the Devonshire Association
for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art. Meanwhile
he had been occupied in collecting fossils from many parts
of Devon and Cornwall, and in 1860 the Baroness Burdett-Coutts
acquired and presented them to the Oxford Museum,
where they form “The Pengelly Collection.” Through the
generosity of the same lady he was called upon to examine
the lignites and clays of Bovey Tracey, in conjunction with
Dr Oswald Heer, who undertook the determination of the
plant-remains. Their report was published by the Royal
Society (1862), and Pengelly was elected F.R.S. in 1863. He
aided in the investigations of the Brixham bone-cavern from
the date of its discovery in 1858, the full report being issued
in 1873; and he was the main explorer of Kent’s Hole, Torquay,
and from 1864 for more than fifteen years he laboured with
unflagging energy in examining and recording the exact position
of the numerous organic remains that were disinterred during
a systematic investigation of this cave, carried on with the aid
of grants from the British Association. He first attended the
British Association at the Cheltenham meeting in 1856, and was
present at subsequent meetings (except that at Montreal in
1884) until 1889. His observations assisted in establishing
the important fact of the contemporaneity of Palaeolithic man
with various Pleistocene mammalia, such as the mammoth,
cave-bear, cave-lion, &c. He was awarded the Lyell medal
by the Geological Society of London in 1886. He died at
Torquay on the 16th of March 1894.
See Memoir of William Pengelly, edited by his daughter Hester Pengelly, with a summary of his scientific work by the Rev. Professor T. G. Bonney (1897).
PENGUIN, the name of a flightless sea-bird,[1] but, so far as is known, first given to one inhabiting the seas of Newfoundland as in Hore’s “Voyage to Cape Breton,” 1536 (Hakluyt, Researches, iii. 168-170), which subsequently became known as the great auk or garefowl (q.v.); though the French equivalent Pingouin[2] preserves its old application, the word penguin is by English ornithologists always used for certain birds inhabiting the Southern Ocean, called by the French Manchots, the Spheniscidae of ornithologists. For a long while their position was very much misunderstood, some systematists having placed them with the Alcidae or Auks, to which they bear only a relationship of analogy, as indeed had been perceived by a few ornithologists, who recognized in the penguins a very distinct order, Impennes. L. Stejneger (Standard Nat. Hist. vol. iv., Boston, 1885) gave the Impennes independent rank equivalent to the rest of Carinate birds; M. A. Menzbier (Vergl. Osteol. d. Penguine, Moscow, 1887) took a similar view; M. Fürbringer was first to show their relation to Procellariformes, and this view is now generally accepted.
- ↑ Of the three derivations assigned to this name, the first is by Drayton in 1615 (Polyolbion, Song 9), where it is said to be the Welsh pen gwyn, or “white head”; the second, which seems to meet with Littré’s approval, deduces it from the Latin pinguis (fat), which idea has given origin to the German name, Fettgänse, for these birds, the third supposes it to be a corruption of “pin-wing” (Ann. Nat. History, 4th series, vol. iv. p. 133), meaning a bird that has undergone the operation of pinioning or, as in one part at least of England it is commonly called, “pin-winging.” The first hypothesis has been supported on the ground that Breton sailors speaking a language closely allied to Welsh were acquainted with the great auk, and that the conspicuous white patches on the head of that bird justified the name “white head.” To the second hypothesis Skeat (Dictionary, p. 455) objects that it “will not account for the suffix -in, and is therefore wrong; besides which the ‘Dutchmen’ [who were asserted to be the authors of the name] turn out to be Sir Francis Drake” and his men. In support of the third hypothesis Mr Reeks wrote (Zoologist, 2nd series, p. 1854) that the people in Newfoundland who used to meet with this bird always pronounced its name “pin wing”. Skeat’s inquiry (loc. cit.), whether the name may not after all be South American, is to be answered in the negative, since, so far as evidence goes, it was given to the North-American bird before the South-American was known in Europe.
- ↑ Gorfou has also been used by some French writers, being a corruption of Geirfugl or Garefowl.
