PAROS (7), one of the Cyclades, lying between Naxos and Siphanto, exports wine, figs, and wool; in a quarry near the summit of Mount St. Elias the famous Parian marble is still cut; the capital is Paroekia (2).

PARR, CATHERINE, sixth wife of Henry VIII., daughter of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal, was a woman of learning and great discretion, acquired great power over the king, persuaded him to consent to the succession of his daughters, and surviving him, married her former suitor Sir Thomas Seymour, and died from the effects of childbirth the year after (1512-1548).

PARR, SAMUEL, a famous classical scholar, born at Harrow; became head-master of first Colchester and then Norwich Grammar-School and a prebend of St. Paul’s; he had an extraordinary memory and was a great talker; he was a good Latinist, but nothing he has left justifies the high repute in which he was held by his contemporaries (1747-1825).

PARR, THOMAS, called OLD PARR, a man notable for his long life, being said to have lived 152 years and 9 months, from 1483 to 1635.

PARRAMATTA (12), next to Sydney, from which it is 14 m.  W., the oldest town in New South Wales; manufactures colonial tweeds and Parramatta cloths, and is in the centre of orange groves and fruit gardens.

PARRHASIUS, a gifted painter of ancient Greece, born at Ephesus; came to Athens and became the rival of Zeuxis; he was the contemporary of Socrates and a man of an arrogant temper; his works were characterised by the pains bestowed on them.

PARRY, SIR WILLIAM EDWARD, celebrated Arctic explorer, born at Bath; visited the Arctic Seas under Ross in 1818, conducted a second expedition himself in 1819-20, a third in 1821-23, a fourth in 1824-26 with unequal success, and a fifth in 1827 in quest of the North Pole via Spitzbergen, in which he was baffled by an adverse current; received sundry honours for his achievements; died governor of Greenwich Hospital, and left several accounts of his voyages (1790-1855).

PARSEES (i. e. inhabitants of Pars or Persia), a name given to the disciples of Zoroaster or their descendants in Persia and India, and sometimes called Guebres; in India they number some 90,000, are to be found chiefly in the Bombay Presidency, form a wealthy community, and are engaged mostly in commerce; in religion they incline to deism, and pay homage to the sun as the symbol of the deity; they neither bury their dead nor burn them, but expose them apart in the open air, where they are left till the flesh is eaten away and only the bones remain, to be removed afterwards for consignment to a subterranean cavern.

PARSIFAL, the hero of the legend of the HOLY GRAIL (q. v.), and identified with GALAHAD (q. v.) in the Arthurian legend.

PARSON ADAMS, a simple-minded 18th-century clergyman in Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews.”