Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/656

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PINKERTON, A.—PINKNEY
627

have the margin of the petals entire, and which are well marked in the centre with bright crimson or dark purple. Its grassy but glaucous foliage is much like that of the carnation, but the whole plant is smaller and more tufted. Pinks require a free loamy soil deeply trenched, and well enriched with cow-dung. They are readily increased by cuttings (pipings), by layers and by seed. Cuttings and layers should be taken as early in July as practicable. The former should be rooted in a cold frame or in a shady spot out of doors. When rooted, which will be about August, they should be planted 4 in. apart in a nursery bed, where they may remain till the latter part of September or the early part of October. The chief attention required during winter is to press them down firmly should they become lifted by frosts, and in spring the ground should be frequently stirred and kept free from weeds. The pink is raised from seeds, not only to obtain new varieties, but to keep up a race of vigorous growing sorts. The seeds may be sown in March or April in pots in a warm frame, and the young plants may be pricked off in to boxes and sheltered in a cold frame. They should be planted out in the eaily part of the summer in nursery beds, in which, if they have space, they may remain to flower, or the alternate ones may be transplanted to a blooming bed in September or the early part of October; in either case they will bloom the following summer. These w1ll grow in any good garden soil, but the richer it is the better.

The border varieties are useful for forcing during the early spring months. These are propagated from early pipings and grown in nursery beds, being taken up in October, potted in a rich loamy compost, and wintered in a cold pit till required for the forcing house.

The following varieties are among the best. For borders and forcmg: Ascot, Carnea, Delicata, Derby Day, Her Majesty, Hercules, Anne Boleyn, Lady Blanche, Mrs Sinkins, Mrs James Welsh, Pilrig Park, Rubens, Snowdon, Tom Welsh. Florists show and laced varieties: Attraction, Beauty of Bath, Clara, Criterion Ensign, Galopln, Harry Hooper, John Ball, Malcolm Dunn, Mrs D. Gray, Reliance, William Paul.

The Carnation (q.v.) and Picotee are modifications of Dianthus Caryophyllus, the Clove Pink. This is a native of Europe, growing on rocks in the south, but in the north usually found on old walls Its occurrence in England on some of the old Norman castles, as at Rochester, 15 supposed by Canon Ellacombe to indicate its introduction by the Normans; in any case the plant grows in similar situations in Normandy. The carnation includes those flowers which are streaked or striped lengthwise–the picotees are those in which the petals have a narrow band of colour along the edge, the remainder of the petal being free from stripes or blotches. These by the old writers were called “ gillyflowers.” The Sweet William of gardens is a product from Dianthus barbatus.

The Sea-Pink, or Thrift, Statice Armeria (Armeria vulgaris), is a member of the natural order Plumbagineae; it is a widely distributed plant found on rocky and stony sea-shores and on loft mountains. There are many improved varieties of it now in cultivation, one with almost pure white flowers.


PINKERTON, ALLAN (1819–1884), American detective, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on the 25th of August 1819. His father, a sergeant of the Glasgow municipal police, died in 1828 of injuries received from a prisoner in his custody. In 1842 Allan emigrated to Chicago, Illinois. In 1843 he removed to Dundee, Kane county, Illinois, where he established a cooperage business. Here he ran down a gang of counterfeiters, and he was appointed a deputy-sheriff of Kane county in 1846 and immediately afterwards of Cook county, with headquarters in Chicago. There he organized a force of detectives to capture thieves who were stealing railway property, and this organization developed in 1852 into Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, of which he took sole charge in 1853. He was especially successful in capturing thieves who stole large amounts from express companies. In 1866 his agency captured the principals in the theft of $700,000 from Adams Express Company safes on a train of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, and recovered all but about $12,000 of the stolen money. In February 1861 Pinkerton found evidence of a plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln upon his arrival in Baltimore on his way to Washington; as a result, Lincoln passed through Baltimore at an early hour in the morning without stopping. In April 1861 Pinkerton, on the suggestion of General George B. McClellan, organized a system of obtaining military information in the Southern states. From this system he developed the Federal secret service, of which he was in charge throughout the war, under the assumed name of Major E. J. Allen. One of his detectives, James McParlan, in 1873–1876 lived among the Molly Maguires (q.v.) in Pennsylvania and secured evidence which led to the breaking up of the organization. In 1869 Pinkerton suffered a partial stroke of paralysis, and thereafter the management of the detective agency devolved chiefly upon his sons, William Allan (b. 1846) and Robert (1848–1907). He died in Chicago on the 1st of July 1884. He published The Molly Maguires and the Detectives (1877), The Spy of the Rebellion (1883), in which he gave his version of President-elect Lincoln's journey to Washington; and Thirty Years a Detective (1884).


PINKERTON, JOHN (1758–1826), Scottish archaeologist, numismatist and author, was born at Edinburgh on the 17th of February 1758. He was articled as a law clerk in Edinburgh, and his Elegy on Craigmillar Castle (1776) was printed during his clerkship. In 1781 he removed to London to devote himself to literary work, publishing in the same year a volume of Rimes of no great merit, and Scottish Tragic Ballads. These were followed in 1782 by Two Dithyrambic Odes on Enthusiasm and Laughter, and by a series of Tales in Verse. Under the title of Select Scottish Ballads he reprinted in 1733 his tragic ballads, with a supplement comprising Ballads of the Comic Kind. Ritson pointed out in 1784 that the so-called ancient ballads were some of them of modern date, and Pinkerton confessed that he was the author of the second part of Hardy Kanute and part author of some others. He published an Essay on Medals in 1784, and in 1785, under the pseudonym of “Robert Heron,” his bold but eccentric Letters of Literature depreciating the classical authors of Greece and Rome. In 1786 he edited Ancient Scottish Poems from the MS. collections of Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington—a genuine reproduction. It was succeeded in 1787 by a compilation, under the new pseudonym of “H. Bennet,” entitled The Treasury of Wit, and by his first important historical work, the Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of the Scythians or Goths, to which Gibbon acknowledged himself indebted. Pinkerton next collected and printed in 1789 certain Vitae sanctorum scotiae, and, a little later, published his Enquiry into the History of Scotland preceding the Reign of Malcolm III. His assertion that the Celtic race was incapable of assimilating the highest forms of civilization excited “violent disgust,” but the Enquiry was twice reprinted, in 1794 and 1814, and is still of value for the documents embodied in it. His edition of Barbour's Bruce and a Medallic History of England to the Revolution appeared in 1790; a collection of Scottish Poems reprinted from scarce Editions in 1792; and a series of biographical sketches, the Iconographia scotica, in the years 1795–1797. In 1797 he published a History of Scotland from the Accession of the House of Stuart to that of Mary, containing much valuable material. A new biographical collection, the Gallery of Eminent Persons of Scotland (1799), was succeeded after a short interval by a Modern Geography digested on a New Plan (1802; enlarged, 1807). About this time he left London for Paris, where he made his headquarters until his death on the 10th of March 1826. His remaining publications were the Recollections of Paris in the years 1802–3–4–5 (1806); a very useful General Collection of Voyages and Travels (1808–1814); a New Modern Atlas (1808–1819); and his Petralogy (1811).


PINKNEY, WILLIAM (1764–1822), American lawyer- and statesman, was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on the 17th of March 1764. He was admitted to the bar in 1786, and in 1788–1792 practised in Harford county. In 1788 he was a member of the state convention which ratified the Federal constitution for Maryland, in 1788–1792 and in 1795 of the House of Delegates (where in 1788 and 1789 he defended the right of slave-owners to manumit their slaves), and in 1792–1795 of the state executive council. In 1796–1804 he was a commissioner under article 7 of Jay's Treaty of 1794 to determine the claims of American merchants for damage through “irregular or illegal captures