as the marshes of the White Nile in about 9° N. Ptolemy's statement that the Nile derived its waters from two streams which rose in two lakes a little south of the equator was nearer the truth than any of the theories concocted in modern times before the discovery of the Victoria and Albert Nyanza. In connexion with this subject he introduces a range of mountains running from east to west, which he calls the Mountains of the Moon, and which, however little understood by Ptolemy, may be considered to represent in a measure the fact of the alpine highlands now known to exist in the neighbourhood of the Nyanzas and in British and German East Africa (Ruwenzori, Kenya, Kilimanjaro, &c.).

In Asia, as in Africa, Ptolemy had obtained, as we have seen, a vague, sometimes valuable, often misleading, half-knowledge of extensive regions, hitherto unknown to the Mediterranean world, and especially of Chinese Asia and its capital of Sera (Singanfu). North of the route leading to this far eastern land (supposed by Ptolemy to be nearly coincident with the parallel of 40°) lay a vast region of which apparently he knew nothing, but which he vaguely assumed to extend indefinitely northwards as far as the limits of the Unknown Land. The Jaxartes, which since Alexander had been the boundary of Greek geography in this direction, was still the northern limit of all that was really known of Central Asia. Beyond that Ptolemy places many tribes, to which he could assign no definite locality, and mountain ranges which he could only place at hap: hazard. As to south-east Asia, in spite of his misplacement of Cattigara and the Sinae or Thinae, we must recognize in the latter name a form of China; from the Sinae being placed immediately south of the Seres, it is possible that Ptolemy was aware of the connexion between the two-the Chinese coast known only by maritime voyages, and inland China, .known only by continental trade. As to Mediterranean countries, we have seen that Ptolemy professed (in the main) to follow Marinus; the latter, in turn, largely depended on Timosthenes of Rhodes (fl. c. 260 B.C.), the admiral of Ptolemy Philadelphus, as to coasts and maritime distances, Claudius Ptolemy, however, introduced many changes in Marinus' results, some of which he has pointed out though there are doubtless many others which we have no means of detecting. For the interior of the different countries Roman roads and itineraries must have furnished both Marinus and Ptolemy with a mass of valuable materials. But neither seems to have taken full advantage of these; and the tables of the Alexandrian geographer abound with mistakes --even in countries so well known as Gaul and Spain-which might easily have been obviated by a more judicious use of such Roman

authorities.

In spite of the merits of Ptolemy's geographical work it cannot be regarded as a complete or satisfactory treatise upon the subject. It was the work of an astronomer rather than a geographer. Not only did its plan exclude all description of the countries with which it dealt, their climate, natural productions, inhabitants and peculiar features, but even its physical geography proper is treated in an irregular and perfunctory manner. While Strabo was fully alive to the importance of the rivers and mountain chains which (in his own phrase)" geographize" a country, Ptolemy deals with this part of his subject in so careless a manner as to be often worse than useless. In Gaul, for instance, the few notices he gives of the rivers that play so important a part in its geography are disfigured by some astounding errors; while he does not notice any of the great tributaries of the Rhine, though mentioning an obscure streamlet, otherwise unknown, because it happened to be the boundary between two Roman provinces.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Ptolemy's Geographia was printed for the first time in a Latin translation, accompanied with maps, in 1462(?), and numerous other editions followed in the latter part of the 15th and earlier half of the 16th centuries, but the Greek text did not make its appearance till 1533, when it was published at Basel in quarto, edited by Erasmus. All these early editions, however, swarm with textual errors, and are critically worthless. The same may be said of the edition of P. Bertius (Gr. and Lat., Leiden, 1618, typ.| Elzevir), which was long the standard library edition. It contains a new set of maps drawn by Mercator, as well as a fresh series (not intended to illustrate Ptolemy) by Ortelius, the Roman Itineraries, including the Tabula peutingeriana, and much other miscellaneous matter. The first attempt at a really critical edition was made by F. G. Wilberg, and C. H. F. Grashof (4to, Essen, 18381845), but this only covered the first six books of the entire eight. The edition of C. F. A. Nobbe (3 vols., 18mo., Leipzig, 1843), presents the best Greek text of the whole work, and has a useful index. The best edition, so far as completed, is that published in A. F. Didot's Bibliotheca graecorum scriptorum (Claudii Ptolemaei geographia; 2 vols., Paris, 1883 and 1901), originally edited by Carl and continued by C. T. Fischer, with a Latin translation and a copious commentary, geographical as well as critical. See also, F. C. L. Sickler, Claudii Ptolemaei Germania (Hesse Cassel, 1833); W. D. Cooley, Claudius Ptolemy and the Nile (London, 1854): J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India described by Ptolemy (Bombay, 1885), reprinted from Indian Antiquary (1884); Henry Bradley, "Ptolemy's Geography of the British Isles," in Archaeologia, vol. xlviii. (1885); T. G. Rylands, Geography of Ptolemy Elucidated (Dublin, 1893); and a Polish study of Ptolemy's Germany and Sarmatia. in

the Historical-Philosophical Series (2) of the Cracow University (1902), vol. xvi. (E. H. B.; C. R. B.) PTOMAINE POISONING (Gr. Tтŵμа, corpse), a phrase now popularized in the sense of a certain class of food-poisoning. The word " ptomaine " was invented by the Italian chemist Selmi for the basic substances produced in putrefaction. They belong to several classes of chemical compounds. (See MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE.)

PUBERTY (Lat. pubertas, from pubes, puber, mature, adult), that period of life at which the generative organs in both sexes become functionally active (see REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM). In northern countries males enter upon sexual maturity between fourteen and sixteen, sometimes not much before the eighteenth year, females between twelve and fourteen. In tropical climates puberty is much earlier. In English common law the age of puberty is conclusively presumed to be fourteen in the male and twelve in the female. Puberty is of much ethnological interest, as being the occasion among many races for feasts and religious ceremonies. In Rome a feast was given to the family and friends: the hair of boys was cut short, a lock being thrown into the fire in honour of Apollo, and one into water as an offering to Neptune. Girls offered their dolls to Venus, and the bulla-a little locket of gold worn round children's necks, often by boys as well as girls-was taken off and dedicated in the case of the former to Hercules or the household lares, in the case of the latter to Juno. The attainment of puberty is celebrated by savages with ceremonies some of which seem to be directly associated with totemism. The Australian rites of initiation include the raising of those scars on the bodies of clansmen or clanswomen which serve as tribal badges or actually depict the totem. Among many savage peoples lads at puberty undergo a pretence of being killed and brought to life again.

PUBLICANI, literally men employed "in connexion with the revenue," (publicum, from populus, people), or possibly “in the public service," the name given in ancient Rome to a body of men who either hired state property or monopolies for a certain period, during which they could farm such property to their own profit, or bought of the state for a fixed sum the right to farm for a term of years the taxes due to the treasury from the public land in Italy (see AGRARIAN LAWS) or the land held by Roman subjects in the provinces. In very early times the senate entrusted to officials appointed for the purpose the control of the sale of salt (Livy ii. 9); and it was a natural development from this that the state, instead of appointing officials to manage its monopolies, should let out those monopolies to individuals. A regular system was soon established by which the censor, who held office every fifth year, placed all the sources of public revenue in the hands of certain individuals or companies, who on payment of a fixed sum into the treasury, or on giving adequate security for such payment, received the right to make what profit they could out of the revenues during the five years that should elapse before the next censorship. The assignment was made to the highest bidder at a public auction held by the censor. The same system was applied to the public works, the publicanus (or company) in this case being paid a certain sum, in return for which he took entire charge of a certain department of the public works, and winning his appointment by making the lowest tender. That this system was well established at the time of the Second Punic War is assumed in Livy's account of the various offers made by the wealthier class of citizens to relieve the exhausted treasury after the battle of Cannae. On the one hand we have companies offering a price for branches of the revenue which was calculated rather to meet the needs of the state than to ensure any profit for themselves (Livy xxiii. 49). On the other hand individuals are represented as undertaking the management of public works on the understanding that they will expect no payment until the conclusion of the war (ibid. xxiv. 18).

In very early times the publicani may have been men closely connected with the government. But since wealth was a necessary qualification for the post, and wealth at Rome became more and more confined to the commercial class, the publicani became

The law of public health in London is also affected by a number of later statutes relating to the Metropolis alone, such as the London Building Acts 1894 and 1898, the Baths and Washhouses Act 1896, the Canals Protection (London) Act 1898, &c. Scotland.-Sanitary legislation occurs as early as the reign of Alexander II. The Statuta Gilde, c. 19, forbade the deposit of dung or ashes in the street, market, or on the banks of the Tweed at Berwick, under a penalty of eight shillings. At a later date the act of 1540, c. 20, enacted that no flesh was to be slain in Edinburgh on the east side of the Leith Wynd: that of 1621, c. 29, fixed the locality of fleshers and candlemakers. The various statutes relating to public health in Scotland are now consolidated and amended by the Public Health (Scotland) Act 1897, which, together with the Infectious Diseases Notification Act 1889 and the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act 1892, constitute the statutory law of Scottish sanitary administration. The central authority is the local government board for Scotland. The local authorities are (i.) in Burghs under the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act 1892, the town council or burgh commissioners; (ii) in other burghs, the town council or board of police; (ii) in districts where the county is divided into districts, the district committee; (iv.) in counties not so divided, the county council. The substantive provisions are similar to those of the English acts.

Ireland.-Several acts of the Irish parliament dealt with specific nuisances, e.g. 5. Geo. III. c. 15, forbidding the laying of filth in the streets of cities or county towns, and making regulations as to sweeping and scavenging. There were also numerous private acts dealing with water-supply and the obstruction of watercourses. In 1878 the existing legislation was consolidated by the Public Health (Ireland) Act 1878, a close copy of the English act of 1875; Most of the English acts apply to Ireland with modifications and adaptations.

A

United States.-After the Civil War boards of health were established in the chief cities. Public health is under the control of the local authorities to a greater extent than in England. By the Act of Congress of the 25th of February 1799 officers of the United States are bound to observe the health laws of the states. national board of health was created by the act of the 3rd of March 1879, c. 202; and it was succeeded by the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, whose chief officer is the surgeon-general and which has jurisdiction in quarantine and in epidemics of a peculiarly dangerous nature.

AUTHORITIES.-English: Glen, Public Health Acts, 13th edition (London, 1906); Lumley, Public Health Acts, 7th edition (London, 1908); Redlich and Hirst, Local Government (1904); Hunter, Open Spaces (London, 1896); Hunt, London Local Government (London, 1897); Hunt, London Government Act 1899 (London, 1899); Macmorran, Lushington and Naldrett, London Government Act 1899 (London, 1899); Shaw's Vaccination Manual (London, 1899); Macmorran, Public Health (London) Act 1891 (2nd ed., 1910); Encyclopaedia of Local Government Law (by various authors), begun in 1905; Annual Report of Local Government Board; Annual Volume of Statutory Rules and Orders. Scottish: Macdougall and Murray, Handbook of Public Health (Edinburgh). Irish: Vanston, Public Health in Ireland (Dublin, 1892); Vanston's Public Health Supplement (Dublin, 1897). American: Bouvier, Law Dict., ed. Rawle (London and Boston, 1897).

PUBLIC HOUSE, in its general English acceptation, a house in respect of which a licence has been obtained for the consumption of intoxicating liquors. Public houses are frequently distinguished as "tied" and "free." A tied house is one rented from a person or firm from whom the tenant is compelled to purchase liquors or other commodities to be consumed therein. A free house has no such covenant. The keepers of public houses ("publicans or 'licensed victuallers ") are subject, in the conduct of their business, to a number of restrictions laid down by various acts of parliament; while, in order to ply their trade, they require a justices' licence and an excise licence. (See LIQUOR LAWS; TEMPERANCE.)

By the Parliamentary Elections Act (1853) a public house must not be used for elections, meetings or committee rooms. By the Payment of Wages in Public Houses Prohibition Act (1883) it is illegal to pay wages to any workman in a public house, except such wages as are paid by the resident owner of occupier. By the Sheriffs Act (1887) when a debtor is arrested he must not be taken to a public house without his free consent, nor must he be charged with any sum for liquor or food, except what he freely asks for.

PUBLILIUS (less correctly PUBLIUS) SYRUS, a Latin writer of mimes, flourished in the 1st century B.C. He was a native of Syria and was brought as a slave to Italy, but by his wit and

him. His mimes, in which he acted himself, had a great success in the provincial towns of Italy and at the games given by Caesar in 46 B.C. Publilius was perhaps even more famous as an improvisatore, and received from Caesar himself the prize in a contest in which he vanquished all his competitors, including the celebrated Decimus Laberius. All that remains of his works is a collection of Sentences (Sententiae), a series of moral maxims in iambic and trochaic verse. This collection must have been made at a very early date, since it was known to Aulus Gellius in the 2nd century A.D. Each maxim is comprised in a single verse, and the verses are arranged in alphabetical order according to their initial letters. In course of time the collection was interpolated with sentences drawn from other writers, especially from apocryphal writings of Seneca; the number of genuine verses is about 700. They include many pithy sayings, such as the famous "judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur " (adopted as its motto by the Edinburgh Review).

The best texts of the Sentences are those of E. Wölfflin (1869) A. Spengel (1874) and W. Meyer (1880), with complete critical O. Friedrich (1880), R. A. H. Bickford-Smith (1895), with full apparatus and index verborum; recent editions with notes by bibliography; see also W. Meyer, Die Sammlungen der Spruchverse des Publilius Syrus (1877), an important work.

PUBLISHING. In the technical sense, publishing is the business of producing and placing upon the market printed copies of the work of an author (see Book). Before the invention of printing the actual maker of a manuscript was to a great extent his own publisher and his own bookseller. Increase of facilities for the production of copies led to a steady though slow differentiation of functions. The author was the first factor to be isolated and confined to a well-marked province, yet we may find upon the title-page of some old books an intimation that they might be purchased either at the shop of the bookseller who published them or at the lodgings of the

author.

The separation of publishing from bookselling came later (see BOOKSELLING). Booksellers were the first publishers of printed books, as they had previously been the agents for the production and exchange of authentic manuscript copies; and as they are quite competent to make contracts with papermakers, printers and bookbinders, there is no particular reason why they should not be publishers still, except the tendency of every composite business to break up, as it expands, into specialized departments. That tendency may be seen at work in the publishing business itself. When publishers had conquered their own province, and had confined booksellers to bookselling, they held in their own hands the entire business of

distribution to the trade. But a class of wholesale booksellers has grown up, and although important retail booksellers in London continue to deal directly with the publishers, the retail booksellers throughout the country draw their supplies quite largely from the wholesale agents.

The intellectual movement which was largely responsible for the French Revolution, and the general stir and upheaval which followed that portentous cataclysm, precipitated the separation of production from distribution in the book trade, by the mere expansion of the demand for books. That separation was practically complete at the beginning of the 19th century, although it would not be difficult to find survivals of the old order of things at a much later date. The old booksellerpublishers were very useful men in their time. They met pretty fairly the actual needs of the public; and as regards the author, they took the place of the private patron upon whom he was previously dependent. No doubt the author had much to endure at their hands, still, they did undoubtedly improve his status by introducing him to public patronage and placing him upon a sounder economic basis. If in the earlier days they were less than liberal in their terms, it may be remembered that their own business was not very extensive or very remunerative. They were not equipped either with brains or with capital to extend that business in answer to the growing demand for books. By the daily routine of their shops they

Enterprise could not be expected from a committee of that kind and of that composition; hence there was not merely an opportunity, but a clamorous demand for men of larger ideas and wider outlook to undertake the proper business of publishing, unhampered by the narrowing influences of retail trade.

Besides unconsciously improving the position of authors by enabling them to appeal to the public instead of to patrons, whom Johnson ciassed with other evils in the line "toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol," the bookseller-publishers gave them, or many of them, steady employment as literary assistants and advisers.

As the demand for books increased, these worthy tradesmen felt with growing acuteness their own want of literary ability and of education. They called in men of letters to supply their own deficiencies. No doubt they expected the lowest kind of hack work from their assistants, no doubt the pay was poor, no doubt they trampled upon the sensibilities of the man of letters, and no doubt he irritated them by his unbusinesslike habits. Still, the association was useful to both parties; and indeed, one may lay down many books at the present day with a sigh of regret that the writers had never been compelled to go through an apprenticeship of the kind.

The emergence of the publishers as a separate class was accompanied by differentiation of the functions of their literary assistants. The routine drudgery which men of education and ability formerly had to undergo fell to a class now known as proof readers," who are on the watch for typographical errors, grammatical slips, ambiguities of expression, obvious lapses of memory and oversights of all kinds. Men of letters became "publishers' readers," and their duty was to appraise the worth of the manuscripts submitted, and to advise their employers as to the value of the matter, the originality of the treatment, and the excellence of the style. Their advice was also sought upon literary projects that may have suggested themselves to the publishers, and novel suggestions emanating from themselves were welcomed. Men of letters in positions of that kind could obviously exercise very considerable influence over the proceedings of the publishing firms to which they were attached, and many an unknown writer has owed the acceptance of his work to the sympathetic insight of the publishers' reader.

The man of letters as publisher's reader is, however, a transitory phenomenon in the evolution of the publishing business. His primary function is to tell the publisher what is intrinsically good, but probably he has always to some extent discharged the secondary function of advising the publisher as to what it would pay to publish. The qualities which make a man a sound critic of intrinsic worth are quite different from those that make him a good judge of what the public will buy. When books were comparatively few, and when the reading public was comparatively small, select and disposed to give considerable attention to the few books it read, the critical faculty was of more importance than the business one. But when the output of books became large, and when, as the consequence of educational changes, the reading public became numerous, uncritical and hurried and superficial in its reading, the importance of the critical faculty in the publisher's reader dwindled, while the faculty of gauging the public mind and guessing what would sell became increasingly valuable. The publisher's literary adviser belongs to the period when the publishing business had expanded sufficiently to compel the publisher to look for skilled assistance in working more or less upon the older traditions. But when, as is now the case, expansion has gone so far as to swamp the older traditions, and to make publishing a purely commercial affair, the literary reader gives place to the man of business with aptitude for estimating how many copies of a given book can be sold. This is practically recognized by at least one London publisher, who in recent years paid no salary to his reader, but gave him a small commission upon every copy

The market is flooded with books badly written, badly constructed, as poor in matter as in style, hastily flung together, and outrageously padded to suit conventional relations between size and price. They are books which no man of literary taste or judgment could ever recommend for publication on their merits, but they are published, just as crackers are at Christmas, on a calculation that a certain number will find buyers. Even if the publisher sees no prospect of an adequate sale, he publishes the books all the same, upon terms which ensure to him a manufacturing profit and throw the risk of loss upon other shoulders.

There is no reproach, stated or implied, to the publisher. He is merely a man of his age carrying on his business upon terms which the age prescribes through a number of concurrent causes. Any reproach that may fall upon him he invites by sometimes giving himself the airs of one belonging to an earlier age, and claiming credit for acting upon principles that are obsolete.

An author, even if he be an immortal genius, is, from the economic point of view, a producer of raw material. A publisher, however eminent, is from the same point of view a middleman who works up the author's raw material into a saleable form and places it upon the market. The relationship between the two is one that occurs with great frequency in business, always giving rise to efforts by each party to adjust the division of profits for his own advantage. If there be anything peculiar to the publishing business it is that the party who in that business most successfully adjusts matters for his own advantage is liable to be charged by the other with some form of moral obliquity. The diatribes of authors against publishers are familiar to every one; and publishers on their side have some hard, things to say about authors, though their sentiments are less piquantly and less publicly expressed. The publisher is usually a more or less capable man of business, while the author is generally--though there are very notable exceptions-quite ignorant of business and apparently incapable of learning the rudiments. It necessarily follows that the author, left to himself, accepts agreements and signs contracts which are much less favourable than they need be to his acquisition of a due share of the profits jointly made by himself and the publisher. What makes his position still worse is the circumstance that each author fights for his own hand, whereas the publishers, although in competition with one another, are also to some extent in combination.

In these circumstances it occurred to Sir Walter Besant and some others that a remedy for this inferiority in position might be found in a combination of authors for mutual help and protection. After a troublesome period of incubation the Society of Authors was established in London in 1883, with Lord Tennyson as its first president, and with a goodly list of 35 vice-presidents. It offered useful assistance to authors ignorant of business in the way of examining contracts, checking publishers' accounts, revising their sometimes too liberal estimates of costs of production, and giving advice as to the publishers to be applied to or avoided in any given case. It has no doubt been of great service in checking the abuses of the publishing trade and in compelling the less scrupulous among the publishers to conform more or less exactly to the practice of the more honourable. On general questions such as that of copyright it serves to focus the opinions of authors, though here it champions their interests against the public rather than against the publishers. But the society has never been an effective combination of authors; and indeed the obstacles, material and moral, to such a combination are so great as to render complete success extremely improbable. Nothing could better illustrate this difficulty than the fact that, concurrently with the Society of Authors, a totally different machinery for the furtherance of the interests of authors came into existence. The "literary agent made his appearance about 1880. He is supposed to be an