PARRY SOUND PARSLEY 129 knighted at the same time with Sir John Frank- lin. Both also received from the university of Oxford the degree of D. 0. L. Parry was ap- pointed commissioner of the Australian agri- cultural company, and passed five years at Port Stephens, about 90 m. from Sydney. Return- ing to England in 1834, he was appointed as- sistant poor-law commissioner for the county of Norfolk; was employed by the admiralty in 1837 to organize the packet service between Liverpool, Holyhead, and Dublin ; and in April of the same year received the newly created office of comptroller of steam machinery for the royal navy. He retired from active ser- vice in December, 1846, with the appointment of captain-superintendent of the royal Clar- ence yard and of the naval hospital at Has- lar near Portsmouth. In 1852 he was obliged to vacate this office on attaining the rank of rear admiral of the white, and in 1853 he was made lieutenant governor of Greenwich hospi- tal. He wrote a treatise on " Nautical Astron- omy by Night," "The Parental Character of God," and a " Lecture on Seamen." His life has been written by his son, the Rev. E. Parry (London, 1857). PARRY SOOTD. See MELVILLE SOUND. PARRY SOUND, a judicial district of Ontario, Canada, on the E. shore of Georgian bay ; area, 3,420 sq. m. ; pop. in 1871, 1,519. It is watered by the outlet of Lake Nipissing and several other streams. Capital, Parry Sound. PARSEES (i. e., inhabitants of Fars or Per- sia), the modern followers of Zoroaster, mostly dwelling in Yezd and neighboring towns in Persia, and in Bombay and a few other places in India. While in Persia their number has decreased to about 7,000, they are steadily in- creasing in India, where they are variously estimated at from 150,000 to 200,000. The Mohammedans apply to them in contempt the name of Guebres or Ghaurs, meaning "infi- dels." (See GUEBRES.) When the empire of the Sassanides was destroyed by the Saracens (about 650), the Zoroastrians were persecuted, and most of them embraced Islamism. Only a small number clung to the old faith, and were finally allowed to settle in one of the most barren parts of Persia. Some of the Zoroas- trians fled or emigrated to Hindostan, where the rajah of Guzerat was their principal pro- tector ; but on the spread of Mohammedan- ism they became again subject to persecution. Since the occupation of the country by the British they have fared better, and form now quite an influential portion of the population. They keep up an intercourse with their breth- ren in Persia. Their worship in the course of time became corrupted by many Hindoo prac- tices, and the reverence for fire and the sun, as emblems of the glory of Ormuzd, degenera- ted into idolatrous practices. The sacred fire which Zoroaster was said to have brought from heaven is kept burning in consecrated spots, and temples are built over subterranean fires. Priests tend the fires on the altars, chanting hymns and burning incense. After an ineffectual attempt by the Parsee punchayet or council to purify the worship, a society called the RaJinumai Mazdiasna, or " Religious Reform Association," was organized in 1852 for the regeneration of the social condition of the Parsees and the restoration of the creed of Zoroaster to its original purity. The meetings and publications of this society are said to have had a considerable effect. There is now a marked desire on the part of the Parsees to adapt themselves to the manners and customs of Europeans. The public and private schools of Bombay are largely attended by their chil- dren, and every effort is made to procure the translation of standard English works. Many follow commercial pursuits, and several of the wealthiest merchants of India belong to the sect. For their religious tenets and history, see ZEND-AVESTA, and ZOROASTER. PARSLEY, a common umbelliferous garden plant which has been in cultivation for centu- ries. The old English authors wrote the word percely, evidently from the Fr. persil, that be- ing derived from the Lat. petroselinum, which is from the Gr. nirpog, a rock, and c&ivov, some umbelliferous plant. In most works the bo- tanical name of parsley is given as petroseli- num sativum, but Bentham and Hooker, in revising this most difficult family for their Ge- nera Plantarum, found that petroselinum was not sufficiently distinct to rank as a genus, and united it with carum, the caraway ; their views are likely to be adopted, and parsley will hereafter be carum petroselinum. The family umbelliferce is often called the parsley family, and its members for the most part have a strong family resemblance ; the genera Single or Wild Parsley (Carum petroselinum). are founded upon minute differences in the fruit, puzzling to the botanist, and altogether too obscure for popular description. Parsley, like many others of the family, has hollow
