PRINCIP′IA (Lat., principles). A famous mathematical treatise in Latin, by Sir Isaac Newton (1687). It consists of three parts, two on the motions of bodies and one on the solar system, and contains the full development of Newton's great discovery, the principle of universal gravitation.
PRINCITES. See Agapemone.
PRIN′DLE, Cyrus (1800-77). An American abolitionist and one of the founders of the Wesleyan Church of America. He was born in Vermont, and entered the New York Conference in 1821; an abolitionist in principle, he was removed from important appointments to the poorest; in 1843 with others he seceded from the Methodist Episcopal Church and founded the Wesleyan Church; when the work of the Church was done, with about 100 others of his ministerial associates, he came back to the Methodist Episcopal Church.
PRINGLE, prĭṉ′g‘l, Sir John (1707-82). An English physician, born at Stitchel, Roxburghshire, and educated at Saint Andrews, at Edinburgh, at Leyden, and in Paris. In 1734 he was appointed professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy in Edinburgh University. He settled in London in 1748, where he became physician to the Queen in 1761 and to the King in 1774. His most important work was done as an army sanitarian, in which field his Observations on the Diseases of the Army (1752) is regarded as a classic. His life by Kippis is prefixed to Six Discourses Delivered at the Royal Society (London, 1783).
PRINGLE, Thomas (1789-1834). A Scottish poet, born at Blaiklaw, Teviotdale, Roxburghshire. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh. In 1811 he became clerk in the register office, Edinburgh, and with his friend, Robert Story, began writing clever satirical verse. A poem contributed to Hogg's Poetic Mirror (1816) resulted in a friendship with Scott. Helped by James Cleghorn, he edited Blackwood's Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (six numbers, April to September, 1817). Having quarreled with the publisher, he resigned, and Blackwood's Magazine (established October, 1817) took the place of the older periodical. In 1820, to better his fortune, Pringle sailed for South Africa, where he formed the settlement of Glen-Lynden, became librarian at Cape Town, founded an academy, and started a Whig newspaper and a magazine, both of which were suppressed by the Government. Returning to England (1826), he became secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society (1827). In his new position he displayed great energy. He died just as he was about to sail for South Africa, on December 5, 1834. Pringle's works comprise a collection of his early poems entitled Ephemerides (1828); African Sketches (1834), composed of poems inspired by South Africa and the “Narrative of a Residence in South Africa.” The latter volume contains “The Emigrants” and “A Farm in the Desert,” Pringle's finest poems. Editions by Conder (1835) and Ritchie (1838) contain biographical sketches.
PRINGLE-PAT′TISON, Andrew Seth (1856—). A British philosopher. He was born at Edinburgh; was educated there and in Germany; became professor of logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics at Saint Andrews (1887), and professor of logic and metaphysics at Edinburgh in 1891. In 1898 he assumed the name Pringle-Pattison on succeeding to the Haining estate. He has published: The Development from Kant to Hegel (1882); Essays in Philosophical Criticism, with R. B. Haldane (1883); Scottish Philosophy (1885); Hegelianism and Personality (1887); Man's Place in the Cosmos (1897); Two Lectures on Theism (1897).
PRINGSHEIM, prīngs′hīm, Nathanael (1823-94). A German botanist, born at Wziesko, near Landsberg, Silesia. For a time he studied medicine, associated himself with the Liberal political movement, and then turned definitely to natural science, in which cryptogamic botany soon became his specialty. After studying at the universities of Breslau, Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris, he submitted, at Berlin, an essay Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Achlya prolifera and became a lecturer there. As a result of his essays Grundlinien einer Theorie der Pflanzenzelle (1854) and Ueber die Befruchtung und Keimung der Algen und das Wesen des Zeugungsaktes (1855-57), he was chosen in 1858 a member of the Royal Academy of Scientists. In 1857 he founded the Jahrbuch für wissenschaftliche Botanik, which he edited up to the time of his death. He was professor of botany at Jena from 1864 to 1868 and then returned to his lectureship at Berlin, but he had little interest in teaching and devoted himself almost entirely to research. In 1882 he founded and became the first president of the German Botanical Society. Pringsheim, Thuret, and Bornet are regarded as the founders of the scientific study of the algæ, and the German was one of the first investigators to prove the existence of a sexual process in this kind of vegetation. During the last twenty years of his life his attention was directed more to plant physiology than to the morphological questions in which he won his greatest successes. He made extensive researches in the effect of light on plants and developed a new, though not wholly satisfactory, theory of the function of chlorophyll. He was one of the foremost cryptogamic botanists of the nineteenth century. Among his works which were published in four volumes at Jena in 1895-96, are the following: Beiträge zur Morpholoqie der Meeresalgen (1862); Ueber die Embryobildung der Gefässkryptogamen und das Wachstum von Salvinia natans (1863); Ueber Paarung von Schwärmsporen (1869); Weitere Nachträge zur Morphologie und Systematik der Saprolegniaceen (1873); Untersuchungen über das Chlorophyll (1874).
PRIN′SEP, James (1799-1840). An English architect and Orientalist, who studied under Pugin, the celebrated architect. Owing to impaired eyesight, he gave up for a time his studies, and went out to India (1819), where he became in turn assistant assay-master in the Calcutta mint, assay-master in the Benares mint, and eventually assay-master in the Calcutta mint (1832). At Benares he designed the mint, built a bridge over the Karamasa and took down and restored the minarets of the Mosque of Aurungzebe. At Calcutta he constructed a canal between the Hugli and the Sunderbands. In numismatics he won distinction by Useful Tables Illustrative of Indian History. At Calcutta he edited Gleanings in Science, afterwards the journal of the Asiatic
