POONA, or PUNA, India, (1) the capital of a district of the Deccan division, Bombay, at the confluence of the Mula and Muta, tribu taries of the Bima in a plain nearly 2,000 feet above the sea, 119 miles eastward from Bombay by the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. It is well built and has a European aspect. Its main street is wide and lined with buildings ornamented with paintings and carvings; it has numerous pagodas; the Deccan College for classics, mathematics and philosophy; and a college of science, with special training in civil engineering; a training college for teachers of vernacular and Anglo-vernacular schools, a female normal school, a government first-grade high school, besides other schools: legislative council hall, public library, civil hospital, arsenal and barracks. The European canton ments are on the north, where most of the Europeans reside. In the town are the ruins of the palace (burned in 1827) of the Peishwa or head of the Mahratta confederacy, whose capital was Poona. This station is famed for salubrity, and from July to November is the seat of the Bombay government. It is an im
portant military post, and has some manufac tures of silver and gold jewelry, combs, dice and other small articles of ivory, silk and cot ton fabrics and articles of brass, copper, iron and clay. Important works supply Poona with water from the Mula Valley, 10 miles above Poona. Pop. 158,856. (2) The district is bounded on the north by the district of Ah mednagar, west by the Ghats, south by Satara and east by the Nizam's dominions. Area, 5,348 square miles. It is an elevated table-land, watered by the Bima and its tributaries, and abounding in isolated heights, formerly crowned with strong fortresses. The villages are mostly open, but sometimes surrounded by hedges of cactus.
in shipbuilding, a deck raised over the after-part of a spar-deck, some times called the round-house. Ships formerly had several poops, the one above the other.