PFAeFERS, hot springs near a village of the same name in the Swiss canton of St. Gall; have been in use for 800 years.

PFAHLBAUTEN, lake dwellings of prehistoric date in Switzerland.

PFALZ, the German name for the Palatinate.

PFEIFFER, IDA, a celebrated traveller, born in Vienna; being separated from her husband, and having completed the education of her two sons and settled them in life, commenced her career of travel in 1842, in which year she visited Palestine, in 1845 visited Scandinavia, in 1846 essayed a voyage round the world by Cape Horn, in 1851 a second by the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1856 an expedition to Madagascar, returning at the end of each to Vienna and publishing accounts of them (1797-1858).

PFFLEIDERER, OTTO, a philosophical theologian, born in Wuertemberg, professor at Jena, and afterwards at Berlin; has written on religion, the philosophy of it and sundry developments of it, in an able manner, as well as lectured on it in Edinburgh in connection with the Gifford trust, on which occasion he was bold enough to overstep the limits respected by previous lecturers between natural and revealed religion, to the inclusion of the latter within his range; b. 1830.

PFORZHEIM (29), manufacturing town in Baden, in the N. of the Black Forest; manufactures gold and silver ornaments, and has chemical and other factories.

PHAEDRUS, a Latin fabulist, of the age of Augustus, born in Macedonia, and settled in Rome; originally a slave, was manumitted by Augustus; his fables, 97 in number, were written in verse, and are mostly translations from AEsop, the best of them such as keep closely to the original.

PHAETHON (i. e. the shining one, and so called from his father), the son of HELIOS (q. v.); persuaded his father to allow him for one day to drive the chariot of the sun across the heavens, but was too weak to check the horses, so that they rushed off their wonted track and nearly set the world on fire, whereupon Zeus transfixed him with a thunderbolt, metamorphosed his sisters who had yoked the horses for him into poplars and their tears into amber.

PHALANSTERY, a body of people living together on the Communistic principle of Fourier; also the building they occupy.

PHALANX, among the Greeks a body of heavy infantry armed with long spears and short swords, standing in line close behind one another, generally 8 men deep, the Macedonian being as much as 16; its movements were too heavy, and it was dashed in pieces before the legions of Rome to its extinction; it was superseded by the Roman legion.

PHALARIS, a tyrant of Agrigentum, in Sicily, in the 6th century, who is said, among other cruelties, to have roasted the victims of his tyranny in a brazen bull which bears his name; the “Letters of Phalaris,” at one time ascribed to him, have been proved to be spurious.

PHALLUS, a symbol of the generative power of nature, being a representation of the male organ of generation, and associated with rites and ceremonies of nature-worship in the early stages of civilised life, and the worship of which was supposed to have a magic influence in inducing fertility among the flocks and herds, as well as in the soil of the earth.