Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/709

POLYHYMNIA POLYPUS 689 blistering when applied to the skin, whence they are known as smartweeds and water pepper ; P. hydropiper is the most common of these, a decoction of which thickened with meal is very popular with western physicians as a local stimulant. Knot grass (P. amcu- lare), also called goose grass and door weed, is a small species and one of the commonest weeds about dwellings. Black bindweed (P. convolvulus) is a small twining vine introduced from Europe, and here as well as there often troublesome among grain crops. There are several native climbing species, the most con- spicuous of which, P. dumetorum, is known as climbing buckwheat, and is abundant in moist places. Bistort (P. bistorta), so called because the root is sometimes bent twice, is a European species, occasionally seen in old gardens, where it is cultivated for its rather pretty pink flowers and for its astringent roots, which were formerly used in domestic medicine ; the roots contain an abundance of starch, and, after the astringency has been ex- tracted by steeping in water, are in times of scarcity used as food in Siberia and Russia. Polygonum cuspidatum is a hardy perennial species from Japan, introduced into our gar- dens a few years ago ; it is 3 or 4 ft. high, and an effective plant, though difficult to eradicate when once established. POLYHYMNIA, or Polymnia (Gr. voMg, many, and vfjivog, hymn), in Greek mythology, one of the nine muses. She presided over eloquence and the higher lyric poetry. The invention of the lyre was ascribed to her. On ancient monuments she is represented in an attitude of meditation. POLYNESIA (Gr. iroMs, many, and vrjoos isl- and), a name applied by geographers to all the islands, north and south of the equator, lying between the Philippines, Papua, New Britain and neighboring islands, Solomon's islands, New Hebrides, and New Zealand, and the meridian of 100 W. The principal islands included in Polynesia are the Hawaiian, Mar- quesas, Paumotou, Society, Samoan, Friendly, Feejee, Caroline, Ladrone, Marshall, and Gil- bert groups. The term Polynesia was origi- nally applied by French geographers to the va- rious islands scattered over the Pacific, inclu- ding Australia ; but it is now restricted to the limits here defined. (See MALAYO-POLYNE- BIAN RACES AND LANGUAGES.) POLYNICES. See ETEOCLES. POLYP (Gr. TroMif, many, and TTO^C, foot), a name formerly applied to the three classes of ra- diata, the coral animals and actinia, jelly fishes or medusa, and the echinoderms. The name as thus extended was given from the numerous prehensile organs around the mouth, like those of the cephalopods (cuttle fishes); now it is generally restricted to the first class, called zoophytes by Prof. J. D. Dana in his " Report" (8vo, New Haven, 1859). He defined polyps as radiated animals, usually attached at the base, with a coronet of tentacles above and a toothless mouth in the centre, with an inner alimentary cavity to which the mouth is the only opening ; they are hermaphrodite, repro- ducing by buds and eggs, with very imperfect circulation and no special organs of sense. Prof. Verrill has since divided polyps, exclu- ding the hydroids, into the three orders of alcy- onaria, actinaria, and madreporaria. Alcyo- naria include polyps with eight (occasionally six) long pinnately lobed tentacles around a narrow disk, compound by budding, with the three suborders : 1, pennatulacea or sea pens, forming free-moving communities ; 2, gorgona- cea, whose polyps are cylindrical, short, con- nected laterally, and secreting a solid central axis, varying in form, and often very delicate and beautiful ; 3, alcyonacea, comprising polyps turbinate at the base, usually incrusting other bodies ; here belongs the organ-pipe coral. Actinaria, with conical or cylindrical tentacles, and ambulacral spaces always open, have the three suborders actinacea, antipathacea, and zoanthacea, including the free sea anemones and several fixed families. Madreporaria have polyps simple or compound, with expanded form, simple conical tentacles, solid coral being usually deposited in their tissues or partitions ; they are mainly confined to warm seas, and include the madrepores, astrseas, fungias, brain corals, and others which go to make up the ordinary coral reef. Prof. Dana, in his " Corals and Coral Islands" (1872), makes the three great subdivisions : 1, actinoids, related to the anemones, with tentacles and septa a multiple of six ; 2, cyathophylloids, with tentacles and septa a multiple of four ; these were the ear- liest corals, and most abundant in palaeozoic time; 3, alcyonoids, with eight fringed ten- tacles like gorgonia. He adopts the tribes of Prof. Verrill, except that he unites the coral- making and non-coral-making species into the one division of actinoids, and separates from these the cyathophylloids. (See ACTINIA, and COEAL ; and for details of structure, mode of growth, and figures, the works of Profs. Ver- rill and Dana.) POLYPHEMUS, in classical mythology, the principal of the Sicilian Cyclops, a son of Neptune, who is represented by Homer as a gigantic shepherd, with one eye in the centre of his forehead, and dwelling alone in a cave. Ulysses and his followers, having taken ref- uge in this place, were discovered by Poly- phemus on his return from feeding his flocks, and by him were fastened in the cave with a huge stone. After he had eaten six of Ulys- ses's companions, Ulysses took revenge upon him by getting him intoxicated, and burning out his single eye. The next morning Ulysses fastened himself and his companions to the bellies of the gigantic sheep as the blind Cy- clops let them out to pasture, and thus escaped. POLYPODIUM. See FERNS. POLYPTERUS. See GAR FISH. POLYPUS, a name applied in pathology to various morbid growths projecting into the