striking it low against the wall. The side that wins the toss has the first service. The ball must be replayed by the opposing side at the wall, which it must hit over a line 3 ft. from the base of the wall and under the net fixed at the top of the wall The game is counted 15, 30, 40, game, reckoned by the number of faults made by the opposing side. A fault is scored (a) when after the service the ball is not caught on the volley or first bounce, (b) when it does not on the return strike the wall within the prescribed limits, (c) when it goes out of the prescribed limits of the court, (d) when it strikes the net fixed at the top of the court. The side making the fault loses the service. A game like this has been played in England by Spanish professionals on a court 250 ft. long, against a wall 30 ft. high and 55 ft. wide. The ball used, a trifle smaller than a base-ball, is hard rubber wound with yarn and leather-covered, weighing 5 ounces. The server bounces the ball on the concrete floor quite near the fronton, and hits it with his chistera against the wall with a force to make it rebound beyond a line 80 ft. back. It usually goes treble that distance.
PELOTAS, a city of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,
on the left bank of the São Gongalo river near its entrance into
the Lagôa dos Patos, about 30 m. N.W. of the city of Rio
Grande Pop (1900), city, about 24,000; municipio (commune,
1037 sq. m.), 43,091. The Rio Grande Bagé railway communicates
with the city of Rio Grande, and with the railways extending
to Bagé, Cacequy, Santa Maria, Passo Fundo and Porto
Alegre. The São Gonçalo river is the outlet of Lagoa Mirim,
and Pelotas is therefore connected with the inland water routes.
The city is built on an open grassy plain (campo) little above the
level of the lake (28 ft. above sea-level). The public buildings
include the church of São Francisco, dating from the early part
of the 19th century, the municipal hall, a fine theatre, the
Misericordia hospital, a public library containing about 25,000
volumes and a great central market. Pelotas is the centre of the
xarque or carne secca (jerked beef) industry of Rio Grande do Sul.
In its outskirts and the surrounding country are an immense
number of xarqueadas (slaughter-houses), with large open yards
where the dressed beef, lightly salted, is exposed to the sun and
air. There are many factories or packing houses where the byproducts
are prepared for market. Pelotas was only a small
settlement at the beginning of the 19th century and had no
parochial organization until 1812. It became a villa in 1830 and
a city in 1835.
PELOUZE, THÉOPHILE JULES (1807–1867), French chemist, was born at Valognes, in Normandy, on the 26th (or 13th) of February 1807. His father, Edmond Pelouze (d. 1847), was an industrial chemist and the author of several technical handbooks. The son, after spending some time in a pharmacy at La Fère, acted as laboratory assistant to Gay-Lussac and J. L. Lassaigne (1800–1859) at Paris from 1827 to 1829. In 1830 he was appointed associate professor of chemistry at Lille, but returning to Paris next year became repétiteur, and subsequently professor, at the École Polytechnique. He also held the chair of chemistry at the Collège de France, and in 1833 became assayer to the mint and in 1848 president of the Commission des Monnaies. After the coup d’état in 1851 he resigned his appointments, but continued to conduct a laboratory-school he had started in 1846. He died in Paris on the 1st of June 1867. Though Pelouze made no discovery of outstanding importance, he was a busy investigator, his work including researches on salicin, on beetroot sugar, on various organic acids—gallic, malic, tartaric, butyric, lactic, &c.—on oenanthic ether (with Liebig), on the nitrosulphates, on gun-cotton, and on the composition and manufacture of glass. He also carried out determinations of the atomic weights of several elements, and with E. Frémy, published Traité de chimie générale (1847–1850), Abrégé de chimie (1848); and Notions générales de chimie (1853).
PELTIER, JEAN CHARLES ATHANASE (1785–1845), French
physicist, was born at Ham (Somme) on the 22nd of February
1785. He was originally a watchmaker, but retired from
business about the age of thirty and devoted himself to experimental
and observational science. His papers, which are
numerous, are devoted in great part to atmospheric electricity,
waterspouts, cyanometry and polarization of skylight, the
temperature of water in the spheroidal state, and the boiling-point
at great elevations. There are also a few devoted to curious
points of natural history. But his name will always be associated
with the thermal effects at junctions in a voltaic circuit
His great experimental discovery, known as the “Peltier effect,”
was that if a current pass from an external source through a
circuit of two metals it cools the junction through which it passes
in the same direction as the thermo-electric current which would
be caused by directly heating that junction. while it heats the
other junction (see Thermo-Electricity). Peltier died in Paris
on the 27th of October 1845.
PELTUINUM [mod. Civita Ansidonia], a town of the Vestini,
on the Via Claudia Nova, 12 m. E.S.E. of Aquila. It was
apparently the chief town of that portion of the Vestini who
dwelt west of the main Apennine chain. Remains of the town
walls, of an amphitheatre, and of other buildings still exist.
PELUSIUM, an ancient city and port of Egypt, now represented
by two large mounds close to the coast and the edge of
the desert, 20 m. E. of Port Said. It lay in the marshes at the
mouth of the most easterly (Pelusiac) branch of the Nile, which
has long since been silted up, and was the key of the land towards
Syria and a strong fortress, which, from the Persian invasion at
least, played a great part in all wars between Egypt and the East.
Its name has not been found on Egyptian monuments, but it may
be the Sin of the Bible and of Assur-bani-pal’s inscription.
Pelusium (“the muddy”) is the Faramā of the Arabs, Peremoun
in Coptic; the name Ṭīna which clings to the locality seems
etymologically connected with the Arabic word for clay or mud.
The site, crowned with extensive ruins of burnt brick of the
Byzantine or Arab period, has not yielded any important
remains. (F. Ll. G.)
PELVIS (Lat. for “basin,” cf. Gr. πέλλις), in anatomy, the bony cavity at the lower part of the abdomen in which much of the genito-urinary apparatus and the lower part of the bowels are contained (see Skeleton, § Appendicular).
PEMBA, an island in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa, forming part of the sultanate of Zanzibar. Pemba lies 30 m. N.N.E. of Zanzibar island between 4° 80' and 5° 30′ S., and 39° 35′ and 39° 50′ E. It is some 40 m. long and 10 across at its broadest part, and has an area of 380 sq. m. It is of coralline formation. On the side facing the mainland the coast is much indented. From its luxuriant vegetation it gets its Arabic name of Al-huthera—“The Green.” The interior is diversified by hills, some of which exceed 600 ft. The land is chiefly owned by great Arab proprietors, who work their plantations with Swahili labour, and with negroes from the mainland. Prior to 1897 the labourers were all slaves. Their gradual manumission was accomplished without injury to the prosperity of the island. The population is estimated at between 50,000 and 60,000, of whom 2000 to 3000 are Arabs. Most of the inhabitants are of Bantu stock, and are known as Wapemba. In the ports there are many Hindu traders and a few Europeans. The plantations are nearly all devoted to cloves (the annual average output being 10,000,000 ℔) and coco-nut palms (for the preparation of copra). The number of coco-nut plantations is very small compared with those devoted to cloves. Yet cloves need much care and attention and yield small profit, while the coco-nut palm yields a fairly uniform crop of nuts and will grow almost anywhere. The preponderance of clove plantations dates from a cyclone which in 1872 destroyed nearly all the clove-trees in the island of Zanzibar. Thereupon, to benefit from the great rise in the price of cloves, the Pemba planters cut down their palms and planted cloves. The value of the cloves exported in 1907 was £339,000, or 92% of the total exports. India, Germany and Great Britain are, in the order named, the chief purchasers. Other exports include fire-wood, skins and hides, mother-of-pearl, wax and small quantities of rubber, cowries, tortoiseshell and so-called tortoise-nail. The “tortoise-nail” is the valve with which a shell-fish closes its shell. The Llandolphia rubber-vine is indigenous, and since 1906 Ceara rubber-trees have been
