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Pupil, in the civil law, a boy or girl not yet arrived at the ageof puberty; i. e. the boy under fourteen years, the girl undertwelve.
Pupil is also used in universities, &c. for a youth under theeducation or discipline of any person.
PUR, a river of Russia , which runs into the Tazovskaia Gulf.
PURA ELEMEOSYNA, Pure Alms, denotes a tenurewhereby the churchmen hold lands in Scotland , somewhat on thefooting of the primitive clergy.
PUR BACH, George, a German astronomer, born at the vil-lage of Purbach , in 1423. He studied philosophy, divinity, andastronomy, at Vienna, and paid particular attention to the latter.He composed Astronomical Tables, and invented several mathe-matical instruments. He also translated Ptolemy’s Almagest , andpublished several tracts of his own. He died in 1462.
PURBECK ISLAND, a peninsulaled tract of England, inDorsetshire , of an ova! form, ten miles long, and six broad; nearlysurrounded by the sea and the river Frome. It lies eighteen milesS. of Blandford, and 106 W. S. W. of London .
PURCHASE, inlaw, the buying or acquiring of lands, Ac.with money, by deed or agreement, and not by descent or rightof inheritance.
Purchase, in the sea-language, is the same as draw in : thus,when they say, the capstan purchases a-pacc, they only mean, itdraws in the cable a-pace.
PURC'HENA, a town of Spain, in Grenada , 60 miles E. ofGrenada , and 66 W. of Carlhagcna.
PURE, free from any admixture of foreign or heteroge-neous matters: thus we say pure fire, &c.
Pure Hyperbola, in conics, is an hyperbola without any oval,nodes, spike, or conjugate point.
PURFLEYV, a term in heraldry, expressing ermins, peans, orany of the furs, when they compose a bordure round a coat ofarms: thus they say, He beareth gules, a bordure, purflew, vairy;meaning, that the bordure is vairy.
PURGATION, the art of purging, scouring, or purifying, athing, by separating, or carrying off, any impurities found therein.
Purgation, in law, signifies the clearing a person’s self of acrime of which he is suspected and accused before a judge.
PURGATIVE or PURGING MEDICINES, or CATHAR-TICS. See Materia Meiiica.
PURGATORY, a place in which the just, after death, are sup-posed to expiate certain offf'Hces which do not merit eternal dam-nation. Broughton has endeavoured to prove that this notion hasbeen held by Pagans, Jews , and Mohammedans, as well as byChristians . The doctrine of purgatory is a very lucrative articleto the clergy of the Romish church, who are very liberally paidfor masses and prayers for the souls of the deceased. We are toldby some of their doctors, that purgatory is a subterraneous place,situated over the hell of the damned, where such souls as have notyet made satisfaction to divine justice for their sins, are purged byfire, after a wonderful and incomprehensible manner: and herethey are purified from those dregs which hinder them from enter-ing into their eternal country, as the catechism of the council ofTrent expresses it.
PURIFICATION, in matters of religion, is a ceremony whichconsists in cleansing any tiling from a supposed defilement.
PURIM , or the FEAS T OF LO TS, a solemn festival of theJews , instituted in memory of the deliverance they received, bymeans of Mordecai and Esther , from Hainan’s wicked attempt todestroy them.
PURITAN, was a name formerly given in derision to the dis-senters from the church of England , on account of their professionto follow the pure word of God , in opposition to all traditions andhum an constitutions. It was likewise given in the primitive churchto the Novalian schismatics, because they would never admit tocommunion any one who, from dread of death, had apostatizedfrom the faith. See Novatians.
PURLIEU, all that ground near any forest, which being madeforest by king Henry II. Richard I. and king John, was afterwardsby perambulations and grants of Henry III . severed again fromtile same, and made purlieu ; that is to say, pure and free from thelaws of the forest. The word is derived from the French pur,pure, and lieu, place.
PURLINS, in architecture, those pieces of timber that lie
across the rafters on the inside, to keep them from sinking in themiddle of their length.
PURMERENT, an island near the coast of Java, on which thepeople of Batavia have an hospital.
PURPLE. See Colour-making, and Dyeing .
Purple Apple, in botany. See Annona.
PURPURA, in natural history. See Murex.
PUR PURE, in heraldry. The colour so called, which signifiespurple, is in engraving represented by diagonal-lines, from the leftto tlie right. See Heraldry. It may serve to denote an admi-nistrator of justice, a lawgiver, or a governor equal to a sovereign:and, according to G. Leigh, if it is compounded with Or, it signi-fies Riches; Argent, Quietness; Gules, Polities; Azure, Fide-lity ; Verd, Cruelty ; Sable, Sadness.
PURS1VENESS, among farriers, is a disorder in horses, other-wise called broken wind, in which the horse makes a hissing whist-ling sound in his throat, and has a greater heaving in the flanksthan in common colds.
PURSER, an officer a-board a man-of-war, who receives hervictuals from the victualler, sees that it be well stowed, and keepsan account of vvliat he every day delivers to the steward. He alsokeeps a list of the ship’s company, and sets down exactly the day.of each man’s admission, in order to regulate the quantity of pro-visions to be delivered out, and that the paymaster or treasurer ofthe navy may issue out the debursements, and pay off the men,,•according to his book.
PURSLAIN, in botany. See Portulaca.
PURSUIVANT, in heraldry, is the lowest order of officers atarms. They are properly attendants on. the heralds when theymarshal public ceremonies.
PURVEYANCE, in law, the providing corn, fuel, victuals,&c. for the king’s household.
PURVIEW, is a term used by lawyers for the body of an actof parliament, or that part which begins with “ Be it enacted-,&c.” as contradistinguished from the preamble.
PURYSBURG, or PURRYSBURG, a town of South Caro-lina, on the E. bank of the Savannah ; 64 miles W. S. W. ofCharlestown.
PUS, [Lat.] in medicine, is a white or yellowish matter designedby nature for the healing and cementing of wounds and sores.
"PUSTULE, is a small eruption on the skin full of pus; such asthe eruptions of the small-pox.
PUTAMINEJE, [from putamen, a shell,3 the name of thetwenty-fifth order of Linnaeus 's fragments of a natural method ;consisting of a few genera of plants allied in habit, whose fleshyseed-vessels, or fruit, is frequently covered with a hard woodyshell. See Botany .
PUTANISM, whoredom, or the life or condition of a cour-tesan.
PUTEOLI, an ancient city of Italy, in Naples , and in the pro-vince of Campania , so called either from its wells, there beingmany hot and cold springs thereabouts; or from its stench, putor,caused by sulphureous exhalations. It is now called Pozzuoli , orPuzzuoli, and is pleasantly and advantageously situated for trade.See Pozzuoli . 'The ruins of its ancient edifices are widely spreadalong the adjacent hills and shores. An amphitheatre still existsentire in most of its parts, and a temple ot Serapis .
PUTLITZ, a town of Upper Saxony, in Prignitz ; nine milesW. S. W. of Mayenburg, and sixty-two N. W. of Berlin.
PUTLOGS, or PUTJ-OCKS, in building, are short pieces.oftimber about seven feet long, used in building scaffolds. They lieat right angles to the wall with one of their ends resting upon it,and the other upon the poles which lie parallel to the side of thewall of the building.
PUTREFACTION, one oftbe natural processes, directly op-positc to the life o! animals and vegetables, by which organized,bodies are dissolved, and reduced to what may be called their ori-ginal elements. See Chemistry, and Fermentation. In Fe-bruary 1793, a patent was granted to the late Mr. John Donald-son, for a new method of preserving animal and vegetable sub-stances from putrefaction. His preservative is composed of wheator barley-meal, and a solution of any common gum or vegetablemucilage. 'These ingredients are made into a paste,.which is to bebaked in the moderate heat of an oven, contrived for that purpose ;so as to prevent it fiom either burning or forming a crust: the dry
mass