PETRI, LAURENTIUS, a Swedish Reformer; was a disciple of Luther; became professor of Theology and first Protestant archbishop of Upsala, and superintended the translation of the Bible into Swedish (1499-1573).

PETRIE, FLINDERS, Egyptologist, son of an Australian explorer; after explorations at Stonehenge, surveyed the pyramids and temples of Ghizeh in 1881-82; excavated for the Egyptian Exploration Fund Nankratis, Am, and Defenneh; has achieved many other important works of the kind, and issued a popular work, “Ten Years’ Diggings in Egypt”; b. 1853.

PETRIE, GEORGE, Irish archaeologist, born in Dublin, of Scottish parentage; bred to art; executed Irish landscapes, but is best known for his “Essay on the Round Towers of Ireland,” a work of no small interest (1790-1866).

PETROLEUM, is the common name of a series of rock oils found in large quantities in the United States and Canada, near Rangoon, and in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea.  The oil issues from the rocks, or is drawn from subterranean reservoirs, where its presence is supposed to result from natural distillation of vegetable and animal substances, and after refining, put in the market as benzoline, paraffin, and lubricating oil.  It is extensively used in the industries, and has been applied as fuel to steamships.

PETROLEUSE, was a name given to certain Parisian women of the Commune of 1871, who poured petroleum on the Hotel de Ville and other buildings to burn them.

PETRONIUS, a Roman satirist and accomplished voluptuary at the court of Nero, and the director-in-chief of the imperial pleasures; accused of treason, and dreading death at the hands of the emperor his master, he opened his veins, and by bandaging them bled slowly to death, showing the while the same frivolity as throughout his life; he left behind him a work, extant now only in fragments, but enough to expose the abyss of profligacy in which the Roman world was then sunk at that crisis of its fate; d. 63.

PETTIE, JOHN, painter, born at Edinburgh; his works, chiefly historical, were numerous, and of a high character (1839-1893).

PETTY, SIR WILLIAM, political economist, born in Hampshire; was a man of versatile genius, varied attainments, and untiring energy; was skilled in medicine, in music, in mechanics, and in engineering, as well as economics, to which especially he contributed by his pen (1623-1687).

PETTY JURY, a jury of 12 elected to try a criminal case after a true bill against the accused has been found by a Grand Jury.

PETTY OFFICERS, officers in the navy, consisting of four grades, and corresponding in function and responsibility to non-commissioned officers in the army.

PETTY SESSIONS, name given to sessions of justices of the peace to try small cases without a jury.

PEUTINGER, CONRAD, an Augsburg antiquary, left at his death a 13th-century copy of a 3rd-century map of the Roman military roads, now in the Imperial Library at Vienna, known as the “Tabula Peutingeriana” (1465-1547).