Kangaroo-Rat, but differ in having rooted molar teeth. The typical pocket-mouse P. fasciatus, which is a native of Montana, Missouri, and Wyoming, is a sandy-coloured rodent marked with black lines above and with white beneath, and measuring about 6 in. in length, this length being equally divided between the head and body and the tail. (See Rodentia.)
POCOCK, SIR GEORGE (1706–1792), British admiral, son
of Thomas Pocock, chaplain in the navy, was born on the 6th
of March 1706, and entered the navy under the protection of
his maternal uncle, Captain Streynsham Master (1682–1724),
in the “Superbe” in 1718. He became lieutenant in April
1725, commander in 1733, and post-captain in 1738. After
serving in the West Indies he was sent to the East Indies in
1754 as captain of the “Cumberland” (58) with Rear-Admiral
Charles Watson (1714–1757). Watson’s squadron co-operated
with Clive in the conquest of Bengal. In 1755 Pocock became
rear-admiral, and was promoted vice-admiral in 1756. On the
death of Watson he took the command of the naval forces in
the eastern seas. In 1758 he was joined by Commodore Charles
Steevens (d. 1761), but the reinforcement only raised the squadron
to seven small line-of-battle ships. War being now in progress
between France and England the French sent a naval
force from their islands in the Indian Ocean into the Bay of
Bengal to the assistance of Pondicherry. To intercept the
arrival of these reinforcements for the enemy now became
the object of Pocock. The French force was indeed of less
intrinsic strength than his own. Count D’Aché (1700?–1775),
who commanded, had to make up his line by including several
Indiamen, which were only armed merchant ships. Yet the
number of the French was superior and Pocock was required
by the practice of his time to fight by the old official fighting
instructions. He had to bring his ships into action in a line
with the enemy, and to preserve his formation while the engagement
lasted. All Pocock’s encounters with D'Aché were
indecisive. The first battle, on the 29th of April 1758, failed to
prevent the Frenchmen from reaching Pondicherry. After a
second and more severe engagement on the 3rd of August,
the French admiral returned to the Mauritius, and when the
monsoon set in Pocock went round to Bombay. He was back
early in spring, but the French admiral did not return to the
Bay of Bengal till September. Again Pocock was unable to
prevent his opponent from reaching Pondicherry, and a well contested
battle between them on the 10th of September 1759
proved again indecisive. The French government was nearly
bankrupt, and D'Aché could get no stores for his squadron.
He was compelled to return to the islands, and the English
were left in possession of the Coromandel and Malabar coasts.
Pocock went home in 1760, and in 1761 was made Knight of the
Bath and admiral. In 1762 he was appointed to the command
of the naval forces in the combined expedition which took
Havana. The siege, which began on the 7th of June, and
lasted till the 13th of August, was rendered deadly by the climate.
The final victory was largely attributable to the vigorous and
intelligent aid which Pocock gave to the troops. His share in
the prize money was no less than £122,697. On his return to
England Pocock is said to have been disappointed because
another officer, Sir Charles Saunders (1713–1775), was chosen
in preference to himself as a member of the admiralty board,
and to have resigned in consequence. It is certain that he resigned
his commission in 1766. He died on the 3rd of April
1792. His monument is in Westminster Abbey.
POCOCKE, EDWARD (1604–1691), English Orientalist and
biblical scholar, was born in 1604, the son of a Berkshire clergyman,
and received his education at the free school of Thame in
Oxfordshire and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (scholar in
1620, fellow in 1628). The first-fruit of his studies was an edition
from a Bodleian MS. of the four New Testament epistles (2 Peter,
2 and 3 John, Jude) which were not in the old Syriac canon, and
were not contained in European editions of the Peshito This
was published at Leiden at the instigation of G. Vossius in 1630,
and in the same year Pococke sailed for Aleppo as chaplain to the
English factory. At Aleppo he made himself a. profound Arabic
scholar, and collected many valuable MSS. At this time Wm.
Laud was bishop of London and chancellor of the university of
Oxford, and Pococke became known to him as one who could
help his schemes for enriching the university. Laud founded
an Arabic chair at Oxford, and invited Pococke home to fill it,
and he entered on his duties on the 10th of August 1636; but
next summer he sailed again for Constantinople to prosecute
further studies and collect mo1e books, and remained there for
about three years. When he returned to England Laud was in
the Tower, but had taken the precaution to place the Arabic
chair on a permanent footing. Pococke does not seem to have
been an extreme churchman or to have meddled actively in
politics. His rare scholarship and personal qualities raised him
up influential friends among the opposite party, foremost among
these being John Selden and John Owen. Through their offices
he was even advanced in 1648 to the chair of Hebrew, though as
he could not take the engagement of 1649 he lost the emoluments
of the post soon after, and did not recover them till the Restoration.
These cares seriously hampered Pococke in his studies, as
he complains in the preface to his Eutychius; he seems to have
felt most deeply the attempts to remove him from his parish of
Childrey, a college living which he had accepted in 1643. In
1649 he published the Specimen historiae arabum, a short
account of the origin and manners of the Arabs, taken from
Barhebraeus (Abulfaragius), with notes from a vast number of
MS. sources which are still valuable. This was followed in 1655
by the Porta Mosis, extracts from the Arabic commentary of
Maimonides on the Mishna, with translation and very learned
notes; and in 1656 by the annals of Eulychius in Arabic and
Latin. He also gave active assistance to Brian Walton’s polyglot
bible, and the preface to the various readings of the Arabic
Pentateuch is from his hand. After the Restoration Pococke’s
political and pecuniary troubles were removed, but the reception
of his Magnum opus—a complete edition of the Arabic history of
Barhebraeus (Greg. Abulfaragii historia compendiosa dynastiarum),
which he dedicated to the king in 1663, showed that the new
order of things was not very favourable to profound scholarship.
After this his most important works were a Lexicon heptaglotton
(1669) and English commentaries on Micah (1677), Malachi
(1677), Hosea (1685) and Joel (1691), which are still worth reading.
An Arabic translation of Grotius’s De veritate, which appeared in
1660, may also be mentioned as a proof of Pococke’s interest in
the propagation of Christianity in the East. This was an old
plan, which he had talked over with Grotius at Paris on his way
back from Constantinople. Pococke married in 1646, and died in
1691. One of his sons, Edward (1648–1727), published several
contributions to Arabic literature—a fragment of Abdallatif’s
description of Egypt and the Philosophus autodidactus of Ibn
Tufail.
The theological works of Pococke were collected, in two volumes, in 1740, with a curious account of his life and writings by L. Twells.
PODĚBRAD, GEORGE OF (1420–1471), king of Bohemia, was the son of Victoria of Kunstat and Poděbrad, a Bohemian nobleman, who was one of the leaders of the “Orphans” or modern Taborites during the Hussite wars. George himself as a boy of fourteen took part in the great battle of Lipan, which marks the downfall of the more advanced Taborites. Early in life, as one of the leaders of the Calixtine party, he defeated the Austrian troops of the German King Albert II., son-in-law and successor of King Sigismund. He soon became a prominent member of the national or Calixtine party, and after the death of Ptacek of Pirkstein its leader. During the minority of Ladislas, son of Albert, who was born after his father’s death, Bohemia was divided into two parties—the Romanist or Austrian one, led by Ulrich von Rosenberg (1403–1462), and the national one, led by Poděbrad. After various attempts at reconciliation, Poděbrad decided to appeal to the force of arms. He gradually raised an armed force in north-eastern Bohemia, where the Calixtine cause had most adherents and where his ancestral castle was situated. With this army, consisting of about 9000 men, he marched in 1448 from Kutna Hora to Prague, and obtained possession of the capital almost without resistance. Civil war, however, broke
