large staring eyes, and a mere stump of a tail; its general colour is rufous brown. Bates's potto (P. batesi), of the Congo, is nearly allied; but the awantibo (P. [Arctocebus] calabarensis), of Old Calabar, differs by the complete loss of the tail (see Primates).
POTTSTOWN, a borough of Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Schuylkill river, 40 m. N.W. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1910 census) 15,599. Pottstown is served by the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading railways, and by electric lines to neighbouring towns. In the borough is the Hill School (1851), an excellent secondary school for boys. There is trade with the surrounding country, which is devoted to farming and dairying and abounds in iron ore and limestone, but the principal industry is the manufacture of iron and steel, the first commercially important iron furnaces in Pennsylvania having been established near the site of Pottstown in 1716-1718. In 1905 the factory products were valued at $8,144,723 (10.7% more than in 1900). Three miles from Pottstown, in an amusement park, are the “ringing rocks,” which cover about an acre, and have varying tones when struck, so that tunes may be played upon them. Pottstown was settled and laid out in 1752 and was named Pottsgrove in honour of its founder, John Potts (1710-1768); in 1815 it was incorporated as a borough and in 1829 the present name was adopted.
POTTSVILLE, a borough and the county-seat of Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., at Schuylkill Gap through Sharp Mountain on the Schuylkill river, about 90 m. N.W. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1910 census) 20,236. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley and the Philadelphia & Reading railways, and by the Eastern Pennsylvania railway company to the borough of Minersville (pop., 1910, 7240), about 4½ m. N.N.E., and to the other boroughs in the immediate neighbourhood, for which Pottsville is a business and shipping centre. It is picturesquely situated in the famous Schuylkill coalfield and on the old Schuylkill canal and Tumbling Run, and has a considerable number of summer visitors. There are large repair shops of the Pennsylvania and of the Philadelphia & Reading railways at Pottsville. In 1905 the total value of the factory products was $5,805,788.
The first settlers here, a single family, were massacred by the Indians in August 1780; a second settlement was established about 1795, and an iron furnace was erected a few years later. In 1804 this furnace was purchased by John Pott (1759-1827), the founder of the borough; in 1807 coal was discovered; in 1816 the town was laid out; in 1828 it was incorporated as a borough; and in 1851 the borough became the county-seat. In 1854-1877 Pottsville was a centre of the Molly Maguire disturbances, and here a number of the leaders were tried and convicted in 1876-1877. In 1908 the borough of Yorkville (pop., 1900, 1125) was annexed to Pottsville.
POTWALLOPER, or Potwaller, the name of a class of persons who were entitled in certain English boroughs to the parliamentary franchise. The word is usually taken to mean literally “one who boils a pot,” from “wallop” or “gallop,” which Skeat (Etym. Dict., 1898) connects with the Old Low Ger. wallen, to boil, cf. “well,” i.e. which springs or boils up. The “Potwalloper” was defined in Curry's Case, 1838 (Falc and Fitz., p. 311) as “one, whether he be a householder or a lodger, who has the sole dominion over a room with a fireplace in it, and who furnishes and cooks his own diet at his own fireplace.” The Representation of the People Act (1832) reserved these ancient franchise rights to their then holders only. In the Return of Parliamentary Constituencies (Electors, &c.), 1898, there was one “potwalloper” on the register.
POUCHED MOUSE, the colonial name for any member of the polyprotodont marsupial genus Phascologale (see Marsupalia). There are over a dozen species, none larger, the most much smaller than a rat. The food of these animals is almost entirely insects, which some pursue among the branches of trees, while others are purely terrestrial. Pouched mice are found throughout Australia, where all the species have uniformly coloured fur, and also in New Guinea and the Aru and some of the adjacent islands, most of the Papuan forms being distinguished by striping on the back. In the view of Oldfield Thomas these marsupials fill the place held in Malaya by the tree-shrews, and in South America by the smaller opossums.
POUGHKEEPSIE, a city and the county-seat of Dutchess county, New York, U.S.A., and on the east bank of the Hudson river, 73 m. N. of New York City. Pop. (1910 census), 27,936. It is served by the New York Central & Hudson River, the New York, New Haven & Hartford, the West Shore, the Central New England, and the Poughkeepsie & Eastern (merged in the Central New England) railways, and by river steamboat lines on the Hudson. A cantilever railway bridge, 2260 ft. long (6767 ft., including approaches) and 200 ft. above the water, spans the Hudson at this point. The city is built partly on terraces rising 200 ft. above the river and partly on a level plateau above. On the Hudson here is the course for the intercollegiate boat-races in which the American college crews (save those of Yale and Harvard, which row on the Thames at New London) have rowed annually, beginning in 1895, except in 1896, when the race was rowed at Saratoga. In the north-eastern part of the city is College Hill Park, and in the centre is Eastman Park (11 acres, originally the home of Harvey Gridley Eastman). Vassar College (q.v.), one of the most famous women's colleges in America, occupies extensive grounds a short distance east of the city. Other educational institutions are the Lyndon Hall School (1848) for girls, Putnam Hall (for girls), St Faith's School (Protestant Episcopal; removed in 1904 from Saratoga Springs, where it was founded in 1890), Riverview Military Academy (1836), and Eastman Business College, one of the largest commercial schools in the country, founded in 1859 by Harvey Gridley Eastman (1832–1878). Immediately north of Poughkeepsie is the Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane (1871); in the city are the Vassar Brothers' Hospital (1878), with which a nurses' training school is connected; the Vassar Brothers' Home (1881) for aged and infirm men; the Poughkeepsie Orphan House and Home for the Friendless (1847); the Old Ladies' Home (1870); the Pringle Memorial Home (1899), for aged and indigent men, and the Adriance Memorial Library (45,000 volumes in 1909). The city is a manufacturing centre of considerable importance; the factory products in 1905 were valued at $7,206,914, an increase of 29.2% over 1900.
Poughkeepsie was settled by the Dutch about 1698, taking its name from an Indian word “Apokeepsing,” or “Pooghkepesingh,” which seems to have been the name of a waterfall on the river front. The New York legislature met in Poughkeepsie in 1778, 1780, 1781, 1782, 1788 and 1795, and here in 1788 met the convention which ratified for New York the Federal constitution (July 28). Poughkeepsie was incorporated as a village in 1799 and was chartered as a city in 1854.
POULTICE, a mass of linseed-meal, bread or other substance, sometimes of medicinal herbs, mixed with boiling water and enclosed in muslin or linen and applied to the skin to reduce inflammation, to induce warmth, or when mixed with mustard, &c., as a counter-irritant. The word seems to have been taken from the plural pultes of the Lat. puls, pottage, pulse, Gr. πόλτος.
POULTRY AND POULTRY-FARMING. The term “poultry” (from “poult,” Fr. poulet, dim. of poule, a fowl) is usually regarded as including the whole of the domesticated birds reclaimed by man for the sake of their flesh and their eggs. The most important is the common fowl, which is remarkable as having no distinctive English name; but the present article also deals with the poultry-farming side of the turkey, the guinea-fowl, the duck and the goose. For purely zoological details the separate articles referred to should be consulted.
Fowls.—The common fowl (see Fowl) belongs to the restricted genus Gallus, of which four wild species are known—the Bankiva jungle fowl (G. ferrugineus), the Sonnerat jungle fowl (G. sonnerati), the Ceylon jungle fowl (G. stanleyi), and the forked-tail jungle fowl (G. furcatus). The origin of the domesticated breeds is ascribed by Darwin, Blyth and other naturalists to the Bankiva fowl, much stress being laid on the comparative want of fertility in the hybrids produced between this species
