PUERTO BELLO, a small decayed seaport town of the United States of Colombia, on the northern shore of the Isthmus of Panama, and 40 miles north of the town of that name. It is surrounded by mountains, has an excellent harbour, is very unhealthy, and has fallen into decay since the year 1739, when it was stormed by Admiral Vernon, during the war between England and Spain.

PUERTO DE SANTA MARI'A (usually called EL PUERTO, the Port), a seaport of Spain, in the modern province of Cadiz, stands at the mouth of the Guadalete, in a most fertile district, on the Bay of Cadiz, 6 miles north-east of the city of that name, and 9 miles by railway south-west of Xeres. Suspension-bridges cross the Guadalete and the Rio de S. Pedro. The mouth of the Guadalete forms the harbour; but the bar is dan erous and much neglected. P., a pleasant and well-built town, resembling Cadiz in its houses, nd containing only one long and handsome street, while the others are narrow and ill paved, is the port for the shipment of Xeres wines. The wines are lodged in numerous bodegas, or wine-stores, lofty buildings built with thick walls and narrow windows, in order to secure an even temperature inside. From this port about 1,530,000 gallons of Xeres wines are exported to foreign lands, and about 26,000 gallons are transported inland. The bull-fights which take place here in May are among the most famous in the country. Steamers ply three times a day between this town and Cadiz, and P. supplies that city with drinking-water at a cost of £10,000 a year. Pop.

about 18,000.

PUERTO PRINCIPÉ, SANTA MARIA DE, an important inland town, in the east of the island of Cuba, about 325 miles east-south-east of Havana, and 45 miles south-west of its port, Las Nuevitas, with which it is connected by railway. Pop. 30,000. PUERTO RICO, an island in the West Indies, belonging to Spain, is one of the Greater Antilles, and lies west of Hayti or St Domingo, lat. 17° 55'

-18° 30′ N., long. 65° 39'-67° 11' W. It is in size somewhat less than Jamaica, being fully 100 miles from east to west, 40 miles from north to south, and closely resembling a rectangle in shape. Area, 3897 square miles; pop. in 1860, 583,308, of whom 300,430 were pure whites, and 282,878 coloured. Of the latter, 241,142 were free, and the remaining 41,736 were slaves. The island is traversed from east to west by a range of mountains, 1500 feet in average height, though rising in one peak to 3678 feet above the sea From the base of the mountains, rich alluvial tracts extend to the sea, and there are numerous well-wooded and abundantly watered valleys. The climate is warm, but is considered more healthy than that of any other island of the West Indies. The soil is remarkably fertile. The principal crops are sugar, coffee, and tobacco of the finest quality, and cotton remarkable for its length of fibre, Cattle and sheep are tenacity, and whiteness. extensively reared, of a quality superior to any

others in the West Indies. There were in the

island, in 1862, 553 sugar-estates, 335 distilleries, 57 cattle-estates, 54 toba co, and 53 coffee plantations, and 10 tanneries, besides numerous small farms and estancias. The value of the imports for the year 1863 was £1,839,821, of which £775,987 was from Great Britain and her colonies; and the value of the exports was £1,178,729, of which £510,199 was for Great Britain and her colonies. The imports consist of cotton, woollen, linen, silk, provisions, as ale, porter, fruits, wines, &c. and embroidered goods, metals, hardware, and The rum, hides, and cattle. The chief ports are San exports are sugar, tobacco, coffee, cotton, molasses, Juan, commonly called Puerto Rico (pop. stated at 10,000), in the north-east, Ponce in the south-west, and Mayaguez in the west. In 1863, 966 British and foreign vessels, of 196,912 tons, entered and cleared the port of San Juan or Puerto Rico. At the close of the same year, surveys had been com pleted for a railway running along the north coast.

from San Juan to Arecibo, a distance of about 50 miles; while another railway along the south coast was about to be commenced. Owing to the great demand for cotton, consequent upon the American war, the cultivators have turned their attention to rearing that crop; and in 1863, four times the quantity grown in the previous year was produced.

PUFF-ADDER (Clotho arietans), a serpent of the family Viperidae, having a short and broad flat head, with scales so sharply keeled as to end in a kind of spine. It is one of the most venomous and dangerous serpents of South Africa. It attains a length of four or almost five feet, and is thick in proportion to its length, often as thick as a man's arm. Its head is very broad; its tail suddenly tapered; its colour brown, chequered with dark

Puff-adder (Clotho arietans).

brown and white; a reddish band between the eyes; the under parts paler than the upper. Its movements are generally slow, but it turns very quickly if approached from behind. It usually creeps partially immersed in the sand of the South African deserts, its head alone being completely raised above ground. When irritated, it puffs out the upper part of its body, whence its name. The P. is easily killed by the oil, or even by the juice of tobacco. Its poison is used by the Bosjesmans for their arrows.-South Africa produces several other species of Clotho, similar in their habits to the P., and almost equally dangerous.

PUFFBALL (Lycoperdon), a Linnæan genus of Fungi, now divided into many genera, belonging to the section Gasteromycetes, and to the tribe Trichospermi. They mostly grow on the ground, and are roundish, generally without a stem, at first firm and fleshy, but afterwards powdery within; the powder consisting of the spores, among which are many fine filaments, loosely filling the interior of the peridium, or external membrane. The peridium finally bursts at the top, to allow the escape of the spores, which issue from it as very fine dust. Some of the species are common everywhere. Most of them affect rather dry soils, and some are found only in heaths and sandy soils. The most common British species is L. gemmatum, generally from one to two and a half inches in diameter, with a warty and mealy surface. The largest British species, the GIANT P. (L. giganteum), is often many feet in circumference, and filled with a loathsome pulpy mass, when young; but in its mature state, its contents are so dry and spongy that they have often been used for stanching wounds. Their fumes, when burned, have not only the power of stupifying bees, for which they are sometimes used, in order

to the removal of the honey, but have been used as an anaesthetic instead of chloroform. The same properties belong also to other species. Some of them, in a young state, are used in some countries as food, and none of them is known to be poisonous. PUFF-BIRD. See BARBET.

PUFFENDORF, SAMUEL, son of a Lutheran clergyman, was born in 1632 at Chemnitz, in Saxony. He received the early part of his education at Grimma; whence he removed to the university of Leipzig. There he studied theology for several years. In 1656 he went to the university of Jena, where he seems to have devoted himself at first chiefly to mathematics, and subsequently to the study of the Law of Nature, as he, and others who have treated on the same subject, have termed the law which regulates the duties of men to one another, independent of the mutual obligation which is enforced by political government, or by revelation of divine will. After quitting Jena, he was appointed tutor to the son of the Swedish ambassador at Copenhagen. Soon after he had received this appointment, a rupture having taken place between Denmark and Sweden, P. was detained as a prisoner in the Danish capital. The power of his mind here shewed itself in a remarkable manner. Deprived of books and of society, he threw himself vigorously into meditating on what he had formerly read in the treatise of Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, and in the writings of Hobbes on the principles of general law. The result was the production of the Elementa Jurisprudentiæ Universalis -a work which was the foundation of its author's fortune. It was dedicated to the Elector Palatine; and by this prince, P. was appointed to the Professorship of the Law of Nature and Nations at the university of Heidelberg. He now gave his attention to the tissue of absurdities which existed in the constitution of the Germanic Empire. As was to have been expected, the work (De Statu Reipublicae Germanicae, 1667), in which he exposed the defects of the system, raised a storm of controversy. Austria was especially furious. P. had taken care to publish it under a pseudonym-that of Severinus a Mozambano, but still, to avoid the possible consequences, he accepted an invitation from Charles XI. of Sweden, in 1670, to become Professor of the Law of Nations at Lund. During his residence there, he published the work on which his fame now principally rests, De Jure Nature et Gentium. He then removed to Stockholm, where the king of Sweden made him his historiographer, with the dignity of a counsellor of state. In his official character, he published a very uninteresting history of Sweden, from the expedition of Gustavus Adolphus into Germany to the death of Queen Christine. In 1688, the Elector of Brandenburg invited him to Berlin to write the history of his life and reign. P. accepted the invitation, and executed the required work in 19 dreary volumes. His intention was to have returned to Stockholm, but death overtook him at Berlin in 1694. P. lacked the genius to render the subjects on which he wrote generally interesting, but his intellectual power was nevertheless very considerable, and it appears to have throughout been honestly exercised and with di in the Memoirs of the Academy of Stockholm, unflaging industry.-See Jenisch's Vita Pufen

1802.

PUFFIN (Fratercula), a genus of birds of the Auk (q. v.) family, Alcada, having the bill shorter than the head, very much compressed, its height at the base equal to its length, the ridge of the upper mandible as high as the top of the head, both mandibles arched, and transversely grooved. The