of any other commodity, the effects would have shown themselves more slowly. It is, we believe, due to the fact that the discoveries of gold and silver in California, Australia, and New Zealand have been turned to account by the labour of voluntary colonists, that, prodigious as has been the amount added to the stock of bullion possessed by the civilised world, the rise in prices which is suspected to have ensued from this addition is still a matter of doubt, and if decided affirmatively may be even then assigned to other and co-ordinate causes.

in money of the value of any article in demand. It has been distinguished as twofold: the natural price, i. e. the ratio which the money value of commodities has to the cost of production; and the market price, i. e. the rate at which, consequent on supply and demand, a commodity is exchanged for money, at any particular time. The market price continually oscillates about the natural price; it is occasionally below it, and under certain circumstances may far exceed it. The two will coincide only when the demand rises and falls exactly with the supply, a state of prices which cannot, of The price of a commodity is not based upon course, ever be permanently secured. Further- its rarity, or on its utility, but on the demand more, price is to be distinguished from value. for it, i. e. on the difficulty of satisfying the Value is either relative to the cost of produc- desire of possessing it. Some of the metals tion, or to the demand which is made for the which have been recently discovered are of commodity, but values exchange exactly against excessive rarity, being disseminated in the values. In price, however, two elements have ore from which they are taken in very minute to be considered: not only the value of the quantities, as for instance by two or three article sold, but the cost of producing the ge-grains to the ton. But, except to those who neral measure, money, has to be taken into are curious, they have no value, and no price, account. Hence there may be a rise or fall in and will have none unless some use in the prices, consequent not upon the cost of pro-arts, which shall create a demand commensuduction or the demand of purchasers, but upon rate with the cost of producing them, should the relative value of the precious metals. Thus the value of wheat in relation to the value of wool or any other commodity will remain the same; for if a quarter of wheat costs as much to produce as forty pounds of wool do, the value of the measure and the weight will be identical. There cannot, therefore, be a general rise in values. But prices have risen and fallen according to the dearness or cheapness of the precious metals. For instance, a quarter of wheat was worth, say, 6s. 8d. five hundred years ago, and is worth 50s. now, i. e. there is a rise in price amounting to seven and a half times, partly consequent upon the diminution of the weight of silver in the same denomination of currency, partly because silver is procured at a cheaper rate, i. e. at less labour, at present than at that time.

The history of the great change of prices which took place in the sixteenth century, has not yet been written. It was due partly to a radical change in the currency, partly to the distribution of the precious metals over the Old World consequent upon their discovery in the New. Had these metals been produced and distributed according to the general process by which mines are worked at present, though there can be no doubt that a rise in prices must have eventually taken place owing to the comparative ease with which silver was found, yet the facts would have been different, both in character and degree. After the occupation of Peru by the Spaniards, the mines whence the largest quantity of the new silver was procured were worked by the compulsory labour of the natives; and the silver having been procured at little cost to those who reaped the fruit of this labour, was exchanged cheaply against imported commodities. If, however, the mines had been worked by voluntary labour, the addition would have been more gradual, and the cost of production being fully equal to that

hereafter arise, and thus create a need of them. This was the case with the metal platinum. When it was first discovered, it was exhibited in the form of dust, or of a very slightly coherent powder. As in the existing state of chemical science, it was wholly infusible, it could not be made to possess the ordinary qualities of the useful metals, malleability and ductility. When, however, Dr. Wollaston discovered a means of welding it, and its remarkable properties in this shape became known, it became an article of great commercial value, having been employed to form stills for the concentration of sulphuric acid, a commodity in its concentrated form of such mercantile importance, that its consumption is said to be the measure of the economical progress of a nation. Again, the utility of some objects is of immediate and permanent significance. Human life can be continued but for a few minutes in the absence of air, or when its supply is scanty, or when its quality is depraved. But air, since there is no difficulty in procuring it, has no value and no price. In deep mines, or in diving bells, it has a price, because labour is necessary to supply it; in other words, because it is difficult of attainment.

In consequence of the fact, that difficulty of production, and demand, concur in elevating the price of commodities, certain general rules may be laid down which may be said to denote the laws which govern the rise and fall in the price of commodities, the value of money being supposed to remain unchanged.

1. In commodities of urgent demand, but of such a quantity as cannot be susceptible of immediate increase, the price of a deficient supply will rise far above the ordinary rate, the aggregate quantity available for consumption selling for a far larger sum than the ordinary amount could be sold for. This is the case, for instance, with the amount of food in a city which is closely

besieged, and in that possessed by a nation hemp has led to the extensive use of jute. which imports no supplies from abroad, whenever a dearth or famine arises. In this country, during the existence of the corn laws, the nation put itself voluntarily into a state of siege, and suffered the evils of famine when it had all the means of plenty. At the present time, as trade in corn is free, communication rapid, and the harvest goes on over the world all the year round, the contingency of a dearth in the necessaries of life, as far as bread is concerned, is as remote as the risk of a general deficiency of harvests over the whole world could be.

Deficiencies in the raw material of paper have led to the use, as yet partial, of other tissues than cotton and flax. It has been stated, though on somewhat doubtful authority, that the blockade of the Southern ports of the American Union during the late civil war has been the means by which economical discoveries of great importance have been made in some of the states which composed the extinct Southern confederacy.

those which regulate the cost of other commo- | relation to the natural price, is of the highest dities. It is by means of these laws that the importance and benefit. precious metals are distributed over the world, the demand, namely, for their use in commerce and the arts, and the power of exchange which the possessor of every object in demand holds in the several markets of the world. It may also, and often does mean, the ease or difficulty with which capital may be lent or borrowed; in other words, the fulness with which credit is given or taken, and from this point of view it is influenced by the state of the foreign exchanges, i.e. by the need which there may be of exporting money or increased quantities of goods at lower prices in order to equalise transactions, and by the rate of discount in the advances made by bankers and bill brokers. The origin of this use of the phrase, the price of money, to express what is in effect the price of credit, is to be found in the universal, and indeed necessary practice of estimating all values by money prices. The money is a mere instrument, often being but the basis of a series of transactions representing in their aggregate amount much more than the gold and silver in which they are estimated. For the phenomena which characterise these facts, see DISCOUNT and EXCHANGE

Price at the Mint, or Mint Price.-The value of gold at the Mint is 37. 178. 103d. the ounce, British standard, and any person may bring gold of standard value to the Mint in quantities of not less than 10,000l. in value, and receive in exchange, after the time necessarily spent in manufacturing the same into currency, the same amount, weight for weight, in gold coins, the rate of coinage being 1,869 sovereigns to 40 lbs. troy weight of gold, the gold being fine. The expression, therefore, Mint price of gold, only denotes the value of the currency contained in the troy ounce.

Prices of Foreign Produce. The price of an article procured from a foreign country depends not upon the cost at which it is produced, but on the cost at which it is procured. For instance, the cost of a cask of Spanish wine is determined not by the price of labour, the rate of profit, and the rent of land in Spain, but by the elements which make up the cost of the commodity or commodities against which the wine is exchanged in the country to which it is exported. Were all transactions between countries carried on in money, the rule would still hold good, though to a less extent; for money is produced and imported just as any other commodity is, by exchange for other commodities, and the specie may be procured by one country at cheaper rates than it can be by others. In case, however, that both countries produced gold and silver, and produced them at the same cost, the price of a commodity like that of wine would be equal in the two countries, with the addition in the case of the importing country of the cost of carriage. Such a combination of circumstances can, however, occur but rarely, if indeed it be not wholly hypothetical. Hence it may happen, that, value for value, a commodity can be procured at cheaper rates in an importing country, than it is in the country which produces it, and if the cost of carriage were omitted, continually would be. Hence, also, the price of the precious metals may be lower in countries which do not produce them, than in countries which do.

Frick Post. In Architecture, a post in wooden buildings framed intermediately between two principal ones." The term is generally used to express the intermediate post between two guide ones that are driven into the ground in the case of a wooden fencing.

Pricking Up. In Architecture, the first coating of lime and hair in work of three coats upon lath. It is executed in London with coarse stuff made with road drift or Thames sand; and the surface is scratched over with the trowel to enable the succeeding coats to obtain a better hold of the prickingup coat.

Prickles. In Botany, the hard, sharppointed conical processes found on the epiThe name of the Xanthoxy

Prickly Ash.

The general theory of prices, and the largest information as to prices of commodities, and the causes which have induced, during the history of the last sixty or seventy years, fluctuations in prices, are to be found in the work of the late Mr. Tooke, continued by Mr. Newmarch. Of all the questions discussed in these volumes, those of the prices of corn and the price of mercantile accommodation are the most important. Much, indeed, of the reasoning on both these heads has been controversial. Dissertations on the causes which dermis of plants. induce fluctuations in the price of food have, it is true, been rendered comparatively unim-lon fraxineum. portant by the changes which have happily occurred in consequence of the reform of the tariff and the repeal of the corn laws; but the question whether the price of money, in the technical sense of the rate of discount, has not been made liable to excessive fluctuation, is still an open one. On one point all persons are agreed, that there is nothing which is more desirable for producer, dealer, and consumer, than a generally uniform price, and that anything which reduces the oscillations of the market price to the lowest possible amount in

One of the names of the

Prickly Pear.
Opuntia or Indian Fig.

Priest (A.-Sax. preost; Gr. πрeσBúτeроs, elder). In Christian churches, a minister who presides over the spiritual affairs of a congregation. The word is by many regarded as representing the Greek iepeùs, who, like the Jewish priest, had both a sacrificial and mediatorial character; and this idea is embodied in the Catholic or sacerdotal theory of the Christian priesthood.

Primæ Viæ (Lat. the first ways). In

PRIMAGE

Medicine, a term employed to designate the stomach and bowels.

PRIMER

Systema Nature, which associated man with the monkeys and bats, and corresponded to the Bimana, Quadrumana, and Cheiroptera of Cuvier.

Primage. A certain allowance paid by the shipper or consigner of goods to the master and sailors of a vessel for loading the same. It varies in different places according to their re-two numbers are said to be prime to each other, spective customs.

Prime (Lat. primus, first). In Arithmetic,

or one number is said to be prime to the other, when the two have no common measure except unity. A prime number, frequently termed a prime, is one which is not exactly divisible by any other number except itself and unity. In the theory of numbers, complex primes are also considered. [INTEGER.]

Primary or Primitive. In Geology, rocks underlying the ordinary and recognisable fossiliferous rocks of a district have in the early days of geology been called by these names. The names assume that such rocks were formed before those which contain fossils; an assumption not at all safe, since many rocks distinctly igneous and plutonic are comparatively modern. There is no proof whatever that we have any of the primary or primitive rocks of the earth brought to the surface for our examination. Some are certainly very ancient, but they may have been modified from For properties of prime numbers, see Ferformations yet more ancient. The terms hy-mat's edition of Diophantus; Euler's Algebra, pogene, crystalline, and metamorphic express and Analysis Infinitorum; Legendre, Essai sur simple facts of observation, and are far more la Théorie des Nombres; Barlow's Elementary convenient.

Primary Assemblies. A name applied to those assemblies in which all the citizens have a right to be present and to speak, as distinguished from representative parliaments. Primary assemblies are of necessity practicable only in small states, such as ancient Athens, and seem to require the existence of a dependent class shut out from all political privileges, and perhaps deprived even of personal liberty. On the other hand, they supply to the members a higher political education than that which is available for the generality of citizens in large states governed by representative parliaments. (Freeman's History of Federal Government, vol. i. ch. ii.)

Primary Colours. The principal colours into which a ray of white solar light may be decomposed or separated. Newton supposed them to be seven red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Mayer considered some of these to be secondary colours, and that there are only three primary colours in the solar spectrum; namely, red, yellow, and blue, certain proportions of which constitute white light and all the other colours. (Opera inedita, 1775.) Dr. Young assumes red, green, and violet as the fundamental colours. (Lectures on Nat. Phil. p. 439.)

We are pot yet in possession of any general method for finding primes, although there are many ways of detecting whether an assigned number is or is not prime. [FERMAT'S and WILSON'S THEOREMS.] Vega's Tables give all primes less than 400,000.

Investigations, &c.; and especially the Disquisitiones Arithmetice of Gauss, of which there is a French translation by Delisle. Much useful information on the subject will also be found in Prof. J. S. Smith's Report on the Theory of Numbers in the Proc. of Brit. Assoc. for 1859-65.

In

Prime and Ultimate Ratios. A method of calculation invented by Newton, and employed in the Principia, being an extension and simplification of the ancient method of exhaustions. It may be thus explained: Let there be two variable quantities constantly approaching each other in value, so that their ratio or quotient continually approaches to unity, and at last differs from unity by less than any assignable quantity; the ultimate ratio of these two quantities is said to be a ratio of equality. general, when different variable quantities respectively and simultaneously approach other quantities considered as invariable, so that the differences between the variable and invariable quantities become at the same time less than any assignable quantity, the ultimate ratios of the variables are the ratios of the invariable quantities or limits, to which they continually and simultaneously approach. They are called prime ratios or ultimate ratios, according as the ratios of the variables are considered as receding from, or approaching to, the ratios of the limits. (Principia, book i.)

It is now known that every portion of the spectrum is a primary or pure colour, and cannot be resolved by further refraction; conse- Prime Vertical. In Astronomy, the verquently it is erroneous to assume that some of tical circle of the sphere which intersects the the prismatic colours are produced by the super-meridian at right angles, and passes through position of others, as green by blue and yellow, orange by red and yellow, &c. [CHROMATICS; LIGHT.]

Primate (Lat. primas, primatis). A prelate of superior dignity and authority. In England, the archbishop of York is entitled Primate of England; the archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England.

Primates (Lat.). The name given by Linnæus to the first order of animals in his

the east and west points of the horizon. In dialling, prime vertical dials are those which are projected on the plane of the prime vertical, or a plane parallel to it.

Primer. This word, signifying originally a religious work employed in the Roman Catholic service, is now generally used to denote the first book for children.

PRIMER. In Artillery, a small supplementary tube, used with the forty-pounder and