surrounding Pickering is agricultural, and the town is a centre of the trade Agricultural implements are manufactured, and limestone and freestone are quarried in the vicinity.
PICKET, Piquet or Piquet (Fr. piquet, a pointed stake
or peg, from piquer, to point or pierce), a military term, signifying
an outpost or guard, supposed to have originated in the French
army about 1690, from the circumstance that an infantry
company on outpost duty dispersed its musketeers to watch,
the small group of pikemen called piquet remaining in reserve.
Thus at the present day the word “picquet” is, in Great Britain
at any rate, restricted to an infantry post on the outpost line,
from which the sentries or “groups” of watchers are sent out.
In the United States a “picket” is synonymous with a sentry,
and the “picket-line” is the extreme advanced line of observation
of an army. In the French army picquets are called
“grand' gardes,” and the phrase “grand guard” is often met
with in English military works of the 17th and 18th centuries.
A body of soldiers held in readiness for military or police duties
within the limits of a camp or barracks is also called a picquet
or “inlying picquet.” These special uses of the word in English
axe apparently quite modern (after about 1750). “Picket”
in its ordinary meaning of a peg or stake, has always been in
common military use, being applied variously to the picketing
pegs in horse-lines, to long pointed stakes employed in palisades
or stockades, to straight thin rods used for marking out the line
of fire for guns, &c. Of the various spellings “picquet” is
officially adopted in Great Britain and “picket” in the United
States, but the latter is now invariably used when a peg or stake
is meant.
Two obsolete meanings of the word should also be mentioned. The “picket” was a form of military punishment in vogue in the 16th and 17th centuries, which consisted in the offender being forced to stand on the narrow flat top of a peg for a period of time. The punishment died out in the 18th century and was so far unfamiliar by 1800 that Sir Thomas Picton, who ordered a mulatto woman to be so punished, was accused by public opinion in England of inflicting a torture akin to impalement. It was thought, in fact, that the prisoner was forced to stand on the head of a pointed stake, and this error is repeated in the New English Dictionary. In the middle of the 19th century, when elongated rifle bullets were a novelty, they were often, and especially in America, called pickets. The ordinary military use of the word gives rise to compound forms such as “picket boat” or “picket launch,” large steam launch or pinnace fitted with guns and torpedoes, and employed for watching the waters of harbours, &c. For picketing in strikes, &c., see below.
PICKETING, a term used to describe a practice resorted to
by workmen engaged in trade disputes, of placing one or more
men near the works of the employer with whom the dispute is
pending, with the object of drawing off his hands or acquiring
information useful for the purposes of the dispute. In England,
under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875, it
is an offence wrongfully and without legal authority to watch
or beset the house or place where another resides or works, or
carries on business or happens to be, or the approach to such
house or place, if the object of the watching, &c., is to compel
the person watched, &c., to abstain from doing or to do an act
which he is legally entitled to do or to abstain from doing (§ 7).
The definition of the offence was qualified by a proviso excluding
from punishment those who attend at or near a house or place
merely to obtain or communicate information, in other words
what is termed peaceful picketing, without intimidation, molestation
or direct efforts to influence the course of a trade dispute.
This enactment led to a great deal of litigation between trade
unions and employers, and trade unions were in some instances
restrained by injunction from picketing the works of employers,
The decisions of the courts upon this subject met with severe
criticism from the leaders of trade unions, and by the Trades
Disputes Act 1906 the proviso above quoted was repealed, and
it was declared lawful for one or more persons acting for themselves
or for a trade union or for an individual employer to attend
at or near a house &c., “if the attendance is merely for the
purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information
or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from
working.” The exact effect of this change in the law has not
yet been determined by the courts, but during the Belfast carters
strike of 1907 serious riots ensued upon the efforts of the authorities
to counteract the interference with lawful business caused
by free use of picketing. The change in the law is supplemented
by provisions forbidding actions against trade unions in respect
of any tortious acts alleged to have been committed by or on
behalf of the union.
PICKLE. In the wider sense the term “pickle” is applied
to any saline or acid preservative solution; in the narrower to
vegetables preserved in vinegar. The word appears to be an
adaptation of Dutch pekel, brine, pickle; cf. Ger. Pökel. The
ultimate origin is unknown; connexions with a supposed inventor’s
name, such as Beukeler or Böckel are mere inventions.
A solution of copper or zinc sulphate is used as a “pickle” for
railway-sleepers or other wood, a brine containing salt and
saltpetre as a preservative for meat, lime-water as “pickle”
for eggs. Domestic pickles are made from small cucumbers,
onions, cauliflowers, cabbages, mangoes and unripe walnuts,
by either steeping or boiling them in salt-brine and vinegar.
On account of the large proportion of water natural to these
vegetables, only the strongest vinegar, containing from 5 to 6%
of acetic acid, can be used. For the better kinds vinegar made
from malted or unmalted barley is as a rule employed, for
cheaper varieties simply dilute acetic acid obtained from acetate
of lime. Sauces such as Worcestershire sauce, or Yorkshire
relish, consist of fluid pickles, that is of salted and variously
spiced vinegar solutions or emulsions containing tissue of
vegetables (tomatoes, mushrooms, &c.), or of fish (sardines or
anchovies).
PICKNELL, WILLIAM LAMB (1854–1897), American landscape-painter,
was born at Hinesburg, Vermont, on the 23rd
of October 1854. He was a pupil of George Inness in Rome for
two years, and of J. L. Gérôme in the École des Beaux Arts,
Paris. With Robert Wylie he worked for several years in
Brittany, at Pont Aven and Concarneau, where he painted his
“Route de Concarneau” (Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington,
D.C.). His “Morning on the Loing” received a gold medal
at the Paris Salon of 1895. In 1880 he became a member of
the Society of American Artists, and in 1891 an associate of the
National Academy of Design. He died at Marblehead, Massachusetts,
on the 8th of August 1897.
PICNIC, a form of entertainment in which the guests are
invited to join an excursion to some place where a meal can be
taken in the open air. During the first half of the 19th century
the essential of a picnic was that the guests should each bring
with them a contribution of provisions. At the beginning of
the 19th century a society was formed in London called the
“Picnic Society,” the members of which supped at the Pantheon
in Oxford Street, and drew lots as to what part of the meal each
should supply (see L. Melville, The Beaux of the Regency, 1908,
i. 222). The French form pique-nique is said to be of recent
introduction in 1692 (Ménage, Diet. etym.). It is doubtful
whether picnic is merely a rhyming word, or can be referred
to pique, pick, and nique, small coin.
PICO, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, belonging to Portugal,
and forming part of the Azores archipelago. Pop. (1900),
24,028; area 175 sq. m. Pico is a conical mountain, rising to
the height of 7612 ft. The soil consists entirely of pulverized
lava. The so-called Fayal wine, though named after an adjacent
island, was formerly produced here, and largely exported to
Europe. But in 1852 the vines were attacked by the Oidium
fungus and completely destroyed, while the orange-trees suffered
almost as much from the Coccus hesperidum. The people were
consequently forced to emigrate in great numbers, till the
planting of fig-trees and apricots alleviated the evil. Pico also
produces a species of wood resembling mahogany, and equal in
quality to it. Its chief town is Lagens do Pico. Pop. (2975).
PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, GIOVANNI, Count (1463–1494).
Italian philosopher and writer, the youngest son of Giovanni
