PRINCE OF WALES LAND, a large insular tract in the northern Arctic region opposite Boothia Felix, from which it is separated by Franklin Strait.
PRINCES ISLANDS, the Demonesi or Demonnesi of the ancients, a beautiful cluster in the Sea of Marmora opposite that part of the Asiatic coast which trends south-east from Scutari to the entrance of the Gulf of Ismid (Nicomedia). They are nine in number—Prote (Turkish, Tinaki), Antigone, Khalki or Karki (Chalcitis or “coppermine island” of the ancients), Plate, Oxeia, Pitys, Antirobido (Terebinth or Rabbit Island), Neandro, and Prinkipo. Prinkipo or Principo (with an Italian c), Kyzyl-Ada or Red Island of the Turks, the largest of the group, is a broad green hill of red quartz rising with soft and verdant outlines into two peaks, the higher of which (500 feet) is crowned by the ex-monastery of St George, embosomed amid its oaks. On the height above the town of Prinkipo is the monastery of the Transfiguration and on the coast opposite Antirobido that of St Nicholas. A white-flowered heath (Erica arborea), two species of cistus (Cistus villosus and salvifolius), and lavender give character to the luxuriant vegetation. Khalki contains three convents and an Ottoman naval college; and the whole group, especially Khalki and Plate, form a great summer resort for the Greeks of Constantinople, from which city there is a regular steamer service.
The Princes Islands are intimately associated with Byzantine history. A convent in Prinkipo (now a mass of ruins at the spot called Kamares) was a place of exile for the empresses Irene, Euphrosyne, Zoe, and Anna Dalassena. Antigone was the prison of the patriarch Methodius, and its chapel is said to have been built by Theodora. In Khalki the monastery of the Theotokos (originally of St John), which since 1831 has been a Greek commercial school, was probably founded by John VIII. Palæologus, and was rebuilt about 1680 by the famous Panagiotaki, and again by Alexander Ypsilanti of Moldavia. Close beside it is the tomb of Edward Barton, second English ambassador to the Porte. Hagia Trias (a school of theology since 1844) was rebuilt by the patriarch Metrophanes of bibliographical memory. Antirobido is associated with the exile of Ignatius and Theodosius; and Plate contained subterranean state-prisons hewn out of the rock.
See Gustave Schlumberger, Les Îles des Princes, Paris, 1884; Grisebach, Rumelien und Brussa, 1839.
PRINCETON, a borough and township of the United States, in Mercer county, New Jersey, on the Delaware and Rariton Canal, 3 miles north by rail from Princeton Junction, which is 48 miles south-west of New York and 42 north-east of Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania Railway. Standing on high ground, it commands a fine prospect towards the east and south. The town is the seat of Princeton or New Jersey College, founded in 1746 by members of the presbytery of New York, chartered in the same year, and opened at Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth) in 1747, removed to Newark in the same year and rechartered in 1748, and finally transferred in 1756 to Princeton, where Nassau Hall, so called in honour of William III. of England, had been erected. Nassau Hall has been twice burned down, in 1802 and 1855, but was restored in 1856 in the old style. This building, Reunion Hall (1870), West College (1836), East College (1833), and the halls of the American Whig and Cliosophic literary societies enclose a quadrangle; and eastward, in the line of Nassau Hall or the north front, stand the library buildings (1873), consisting of an octagonal centre with two rings, the Dickinson Hall (1870), and the John C. Green School of Science (1873). Along the western border of the grounds are University Hall (1876), the Halstead observatory (1867), the gymnasium (1869), Witherspoon Hall (1876), and Edwards Hall (1879), while on the east are the Marquand Chapel (1881), Murray Hall (1877), and the residence of the president. Almost all these buildings are the gifts of generous benefactors, the most munificent of whom was Mr John C. Green, by whom and by the trustees of his estate not less than $1,500,000 has been given in buildings and endowments. In 1884 the college, which is steadily growing, had 39 professors and 519 students, and the library contained 77,000 volumes. The endowments amount to $1,392,000. The governor of the State of New Jersey is ex officio president of the board of trustees, who are twenty-five in number besides the president of the college. The trustees appoint the members of the faculty and have entire control over the funds and property of the college. They fill all vacancies in their own body. Besides the Halstead observatory, there is another well-equipped observatory at the School of Science, and the laboratories and museum are well furnished for scientific study. In the cemetery, which lies to the north of the college, are the tombs of Jonathan Edwards, Aaron Burr, &c. Princeton is also the seat of the oldest theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (founded in 1812), with 7 professors, 1 instructor, about 150 students, and an endowment of about a million dollars. The population of the township in 1870 was 3986 and of the borough 2798, and in 1880 respectively 4348 and 3209. (See also Universities.)
At Princeton on 3d January 1777 Washington defeated the British forces; the Continental Congress met in the town (Nassau Hall) from 26th June to 4th November 1783.
PRINGLE, Sir John (1707-1782), a distinguished physician, was the younger son of Sir John Pringle of Stitchel, Roxburghshire, and was born on the 10th of April 1707. He was educated at home under a private tutor, and subsequently at St Andrews, at Edinburgh, and at Leyden, where he took the degree of doctor of physic. At the last-named university he was an intimate friend of Van Swieten and Haller. He at first settled in Edinburgh as a physician, but was soon after appointed assistant and successor to the professor of moral philosophy in the university. In 1742 he became physician to the earl of Stair, then commanding the British army in Flanders, and in 1745 was appointed by the duke of Cumberland physician-general to the forces in the Low Countries. In 1749, having settled in London, he was made physician in ordinary to the duke of Cumberland; and he afterwards received other court appointments as physician, and in 1766 a baronetcy. He read a series of papers to the Royal Society, which are to be found in the Transactions, and which gained for him the Copley gold medal. His first book was Observations on the Nature and Cure of Hospital and Jayl-Fevers (London, 1750). He married in 1752 a daughter of Dr Oliver, a physician in Bath; and in the same year he published his important work, Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Camp and Garrison, which went through many editions and was also translated into French, German, Italian, and Spanish. After having acted for many years as a member of the council of the Royal Society, he was in November 1772 elected president of that body. In this capacity he delivered and published, in connexion with the annual assignments of the Copley medal, six “discourses,” which were afterwards collected into a single volume (1783). In 1776 he published A Discourse on Improvements in preserving the Health of Mariners. After passing his seventieth year he resigned his presidency and removed to Edinburgh in 1780, but returned to London in September 1781, and died in January following. There is a monument to him in Westminster Abbey, executed by Nollekens.
A Life of Pringle by Kippis is prefixed to the volume containing the Six Discourses. The library of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh possesses ten folio volumes of his unedited MSS., including an essay “on air, climate, diet, and exercise.” There are Éloges on Pringle by Vicq d'Azyr and Condorcet.
PRINTING, Typographic. See Typography.
