to his customers, and by this method most books issued are at
once placed at the disposal of any buyer interested in the particular
subject. The large sums spent in other countries upon advertisements
are thus saved. At the book fairs held in Leipzig at Easter
and Michaelmas the accounts for books sent on sale are made up
and paid. In France all books have to be licensed before publication,
but the methods of publication differ little from those of other
continental countries, in all of which book prices are much lower
than in England.
PUCCINI, GIACOMO (1858–), Italian operatic composer, was born at Lucca, of a family already distinguished in music; his great-great-grandfather Giacomo, great-grandfather Antonio, grandfather Domenico, and father Michele, being all well known in the art. He was educated at the Milan Conservatoire, and in 1884 his opera Le Villi was performed at the Teatro del Verme. In 1889 his Edgar was performed at La Scala, and in 1893 his Manon Lescaut in Turin. But it was the production of La Bohème in 1896 that made him famous, and this opera had a great success everywhere. Tosca followed in 1900, and in 1904 Madama Butterfly confirmed the highest opinions of his talent.
PUCHTA, GEORG FRIEDRICH (1798–1846), German jurist, born at Kadolzburg in Bavaria on the 31st of August 1798, came of an old Bohemian Protestant family which had immigrated into Germany to avoid religious persecution. His father, Wolfgang Heinrich Puchta (1769–1845), a legal writer and district judge, imbued his son with legal conceptions and principles. From 1811 to 1816 young Puchta attended the gymnasium at Nuremberg, where he acquired a taste for Hegelianism. In 1816 he went to the university of Erlangen, where, in addition to being initiated by his father into legal practice, he fell under the influence of the writings of Savigny and Niebuhr. Taking his doctor’s degree at Erlangen, he established himself here in 1820 as privatdozent, and in 1823 was made professor extraordinary of law. In 1828 he was appointed ordinary professor of Roman law at Munich. In 1835 he was appointed to the chair of Roman and ecclesiastical law at Marburg, but he left this for Leipzig in 1837, and in 1842 he succeeded Savigny at Berlin. In 1845 Puchta was made a member of the council of state (Staatsrat) and of the legislative commission (Gesetzgebungskommission). He died at Berlin on the 8th of January 1846. His chief merit as a jurist lay in breaking with past unscientific methods in the teaching of Roman law and in making its spirit intelligible to students. Among his writings must be especially mentioned Lehrbuch der Pandekten (Leipzig, 1838, and many later editions), in which he elucidated the dogmatic essence of Roman law in a manner never before attempted; and the Kursus der Institutionen (Leipzig, 1841–1847, and later editions), which gives a clear picture of the organic development of law among the Romans. Among his other writings are Das Gewohnheitsrecht (Erlangen, 1828–1837); and Einleitung in das Recht der Kirche (Leipzig, 1840).
Puchta’s Kleine zivilistische Schriften (posthumously published in 1851 by Professor A. A. Friedrich Rudorff), is a collection of thirty eight masterly essays on various branches of Roman law, and the preface contains a sympathetic biographical sketch of the jurist. See also Zeher, Über die von Puchta der Darstellung des römischen Rechts zu Grunde gelegten rechtsphilosophischen Ansichten (1853).
PÜCKLER-MUSKAU, HERMANN LUDWIG HEINRICH, Fürst Von (1785–1871), German author, was born at Muskau in Lusatia on the 30th of October 1785. He served for some time in the bodyguard at Dresden, and afterwards travelled in France and Italy. In 1811, after the death of his father, he inherited the barony of Muskau and a considerable fortune. As an officer under the duke of Saxe-Weimar he distinguished himself in the war of liberation and was made military and civil governor of Bruges. After the war he retired from the army and visited England, where he remained about a year. In 1822, in compensation for certain privileges which he resigned, he was raised to the rank of Fürst by the king of Prussia. Some years earlier he had married the Gräfin von Pappenheim, daughter of Fürst von Hardenberg; in 1826 the marriage was legally dissolved though the parties did not separate. He again visited England and travelled in America and Asia Minor, living after his return at Muskau, which he spent much time in cultivating and improving. In 1845 he sold this estate to Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, and, although he afterwards lived from time to time at various places in Germany and Italy, his principal residence was his seat, Schloss Branitz near Kottbus, where he laid out splendid gardens as he had already done at Muskau. In 1863 he was made an hereditary member of the Prussian Herrenhaus, and in 1866 he attended the Prussian general staff in the war with Austria. He died at Branitz on the 4th of February 1871, and, in accordance with instructions in his will, his body was cremated. As a writer of books of travel he held a high position, his power of observation being keen and his style lucid and animated. His first work was Briefe eines Verstorbenen (4 vols., 1830–1831), in which he expressed many independent judgments about England and other countries he had visited and about prominent persons whom he had met. Among his later books of travel were Semilassos Vorletzter Weltgang (3 vols., 1835), Semilasso in Afrika (5 vols., 1836), Aus Mehemed-Alis Reich (3 vols., 1844) and Die Rückkehr (3 vols., 1846–1848). He was also the author of Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei (1834).
See Ludmilla Assing, Pückler-Muskaus Briefwechsel und Tagebücher (9 vols., 1873–1876); Fürst Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1873); and Petzold, Fürst Hermann von Pückler-Muskau in seiner Bedeutung für die bildende Gartenkunst (1874).
PUDDING, a term, now of rather wide application, for a dish consisting of boiled flour enclosing or containing meat, vegetables or fruit, or of batter, rice, sago or other farinaceous foods boiled or baked with milk and eggs. Properly a pudding should be one boiled in a cloth or bag. There are countless varieties, of which the most familiar are the Christmas plum-pudding, the Yorkshire pudding and the suet pudding. The word was originally and is still so used in Scotland for the entrails of the pig or other animal stuffed with meat, minced, flavoured and mixed with oatmeal and boiled. The etymology is obscure. The French boudin occurs in the Scottish original sense at the same time as poding (13th century) in English. Boudin has been connected with Italian boldone and Latin botulus, sausage, but the origins of these words are quite doubtful. Attempts have been made to find the origin in a stem pud-, to swell, cf. “podgy,” L. Ger. Pudde-wurst, black-pudding, &c.
PUDSEY, a municipal borough in the Pudsey parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 6 m. W. by S. of Leeds, on the Great Northern railway. Pop. (1891), 13,444; (1901), 14,907. The principal buildings are the church of St Lawrence in Gothic style, erected in 1821, and the mechanics’ institute, a fine building, comprising class-rooms, a library, a public hall and a lecture hall. A public park was opened in 1889. The town has an important woollen trade and possesses dyeing and fulling mills. Part of the parish, Tyersall, is in the borough of Bradford. Pudsey is mentioned in Domesday. It was sold by Edward II. to the Calverley family, from which it passed to an ancestor of the Milners. The town was incorporated in 1899, and the corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 2399 acres.
PUDUKKOTTAI, a state of southern India, in subordination to Madras, lying between the British districts of Tanjore and Madura. Area, 1100 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 380,440, showing an increase of 2% in the decade. The state consists mainly of an undulating plain, nowhere of great fertility and in many parts barren; it is interspersed with rocky hills, especially in the south-west. Granite and laterite are quarried, red ochre is worked, and silk and cotton fabrics, bell-metal vessels and perfumes are among the principal manufactures. There is also some export trade in groundnuts and tanning bark. The chief, whose title is tondaman, is of the Kallan or robber caste. His ancestors received a grant of territory for loyal services to the British during the wars in the Carnatic at the end of the 18th century. Estimated gross revenue, £80,000; no tribute. The state has for some years past been well administered under a council, with a representative assembly. The town of Pudukkottai had a population in 1901 of 20,347. It is well laid out, and contains several fine new buildings.
