MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT(1766-1834), English economist, was born in 1766 at the Rookery, near Guildford, Surrey, a small estate owned by his father, Daniel Malthus, a gentleman of good family and independent fortune, of considerable culture, the friend and correspondent of Rousseau and one of his executors. Young Malthus was never sent to a public school, but received his education from private tutors. In 1784 he was sent to Cambridge, where he was ninth wrangler, and became fellow of his college (Jesus) in 1797. The same year he received orders, and undertook the charge of a small parish in Surrey. In the following year he published the first edition of his great work,An Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers. The work excited a good deal of surprise as well as attention; and with characteristic thoroughness and love of truth the author went abroad to collect materials for the verification and more exhaustive treatment of his views. As Britain was then at war with France, only the northern countries of Europe were quite open to his research at that time; but during the brief Peace of Amiens Malthus continued his investigations in France and Switzerland. The result of these labours appeared in the greatly enlarged and more mature edition of his work published in 1803. In 1805 Malthus married happily, and not long after was appointed professor of modern history and political economy in the East India Company’s College at Haileybury. This post he retained till his death suddenly from heart disease on the 23rd of December 1834. Malthus was one of the most amiable, candid and cultured of men. In all his private relations he was not only without reproach, but distinguished for the beauty of his character. He bore popular abuse and misrepresentation without the slightest murmur or sourness of temper. The aim of his inquiries was to promote the happiness of mankind, which could be better accomplished by pointing out the real possibilities of progress than by indulging in vague dreams of perfectibility apart from the actual facts which condition human life.
Malthus’sEssay on Populationgrew out of some discussions which he had with his father respecting the perfectibility of society. His father shared the theories on that subject of Condorcet and Godwin; and his son combated them on the ground that the realization of a happy society will always be hindered by the miseries consequent on the tendency of population to increase faster than the means of subsistence. His father was struck by the weight and originality of his views, asked him to put them in writing, and then recommended the publication of the manuscript. It was in this way theEssaysaw the light. Thus it will be seen that both historically and philosophically the doctrine of Malthus was a corrective reaction against the superficial optimism diffused by the school of Rousseau. It was the same optimism, with its easy methods of regenerating society and its fatal blindness to the real conditions that circumscribe human life, that was responsible for the wild theories of the French Revolution and many of its consequent excesses.
The project of a formal and detailed treatise on population was an afterthought of Malthus. The essay in which he had studied a hypothetic future led him to examine the effects of the principle he had put forward on the past and present state of society; and he undertook an historical examination of these effects, and sought to draw such inferences in relation to the actual state of things as experience seemed to warrant. In its original form he had spoken of no checks to population but those which came under the head either of vice or of misery. In the 1803 edition he introduced the new element of the preventive check supplied by what he calls “moral restraint,” and is thus enabled to “soften some of the harshest conclusions” at which he had before arrived. The treatise passed through six editions in his lifetime, and in all of them he introduced various additions and corrections. That of 1816 is the last he revised, and supplies the final text from which it has since been reprinted.
Notwithstanding the great development which he gave to his work and the almost unprecedented amount of discussion to which it gave rise, it remains a matter of some difficulty to discover what solid contribution he has made to our knowledge, nor is it easy to ascertain precisely what practical precepts, not already familiar, he founded on his theoretic principles. This twofold vagueness is well brought out in his celebrated correspondence with Nassau Senior, in the course of which it seems to be made apparent that his doctrine is new not so much in its essence as in the phraseology in which it is couched. He himself tells us that when, after the publication of the original essay, the main argument of which he had deduced from David Hume, Robert Wallace, Adam Smith and Richard Price, he began to inquire more closely into the subject, he found that “much more had been done” upon it “than he had been aware of.” It had “been treated in such a manner by some of the French economists, occasionally by Montesquieu, and, among English writers, by Dr Franklin, Sir James Steuart, Arthur Young and Rev. J. Townsend, as to create a natural surprise that it had not excited more of the public attention.” “Much, however,” he thought, “remained yet to be done. The comparison between the increase of population and food had not, perhaps, been stated with sufficient force and precision,” and “few inquiries had been made into the various modes by which the level” between population and the means of subsistence “is effected.” The first desideratum here mentioned—the want, namely, of an accurate statement of the relation between the increase of population and food—Malthus doubtless supposed to have been supplied by the celebrated proposition that “population increases in a geometrical, food in an arithmetical ratio.” This proposition, however, has been conclusively shown to be erroneous, there being no such difference of law between the increase of man and that of the organic beings which form his food. When the formula cited is not used, other somewhat nebulous expressions are sometimes employed, as, for example, that “population has a tendency to increase faster than food,” a sentence in which both are treated as if they were spontaneous growths, and which, on account of the ambiguity of the word “tendency,” is admittedly consistent with the fact asserted by Senior, that food tends to increase faster than population. It must always have been perfectly well known that population will probably (though not necessarily) increase with every augmentation of the supply of subsistence, and may, in some instances, inconveniently press upon, or even for a certain time exceed, the number properly corresponding to that supply. Nor could it ever have been doubted that war, disease, poverty—thelast two often the consequences of vice—are causes which keep population down. In fact, the way in which abundance, increase of numbers, want, increase of deaths, succeed each other in the natural economy, when reason does not intervene, had been fully explained by Joseph Townsend in hisDissertation on the Poor Laws(1786) which was known to Malthus. Again, it is surely plain enough that the apprehension by individuals of the evils of poverty, or a sense of duty to their possible offspring, may retard the increase of population, and has in all civilized communities operated to a certain extent in that way. It is only when such obvious truths are clothed in the technical terminology of “positive” and “preventive checks” that they appear novel and profound; and yet they appear to contain the whole message of Malthus to mankind. The laborious apparatus of historical and statistical facts respecting the several countries of the globe, adduced in the altered form of the essay, though it contains a good deal that is curious and interesting, establishes no general result which was not previously well known.
It would seem, then, that what has been ambitiously called Malthus’s theory of population, instead of being a great discovery as some have represented it, or a poisonous novelty, as others have considered it, is no more than a formal enunciation of obvious, though sometimes neglected, facts. The pretentious language often applied to it by economists is objectionable, as being apt to make us forget that the whole subject with which it deals is as yet very imperfectly understood—the causes which modify the force of the sexual instinct, and those which lead to variations in fecundity, still awaiting a complete investigation.
It is the law of diminishing returns from land, involving as it does—though only hypothetically—the prospect of a continuously increasing difficulty in obtaining the necessary sustenance for all the members of a society, that gives the principal importance to population as an economic factor. It is, in fact, the confluence of the Malthusian ideas with the theories of Ricardo, especially with the corollaries which the latter deduced from the doctrine of rent (though these were not accepted by Malthus), that has led to the introduction of population as an element in the discussion of so many economic questions in modern times.
Malthus had undoubtedly the great merit of having called public attention in a striking and impressive way to a subject which had neither theoretically nor practically been sufficiently considered. But he and his followers appear to have greatly exaggerated both the magnitude and the urgency of the dangers to which they pointed.1In their conceptions a single social imperfection assumed such portentous dimensions that it seemed to overcloud the whole heaven and threaten the world with ruin. This doubtless arose from his having at first omitted altogether from his view of the question the great counteracting agency of moral restraint. Because a force exists, capable, if unchecked, of producing certain results, it does not follow that those results are imminent or even possible in the sphere of experience. A body thrown from the hand would, under the single impulse of projection, move for ever in a straight line; but it would not be reasonable to take special action for the prevention of this result, ignoring the fact that it will be sufficiently counteracted by the other forces which will come into play. And such other forces exist in the case we are considering. If the inherent energy of the principle of population (supposed everywhere the same) is measured by the rate at which numbers increase under the most favourable circumstances, surely the force of less favourable circumstances, acting through prudential or altruistic motives, is measured by the great difference between this maximum rate and those which are observed to prevail in most European countries. Under a rational system of institutions, the adaptation of numbers to the means available for their support is effected by the felt or anticipated pressure of circumstances and the fear of social degradation, within a tolerable degree of approximation to what is desirable. To bring the result nearer to the just standard, a higher measure of popular enlightenment and more serious habits of moral reflection ought indeed to be encouraged. But it is the duty of the individual to his possible offspring, and not any vague notions as to the pressure of the national population on subsistence, that will be adequate to influence conduct.
It can scarcely be doubted that the favour which was at once accorded to the views of Malthus in certain circles was due in part to an impression, very welcome to the higher ranks of society, that they tended to relieve the rich and powerful of responsibility for the condition of the working classes, by showing that the latter had chiefly themselves to blame, and not either the negligence of their superiors or the institutions of the country. The application of his doctrines, too, made by some of his successors had the effect of discouraging all active effort for social improvement. Thus Chalmers “reviewsseriatimand gravely sets aside all the schemes usually proposed for the amelioration of the economic condition of the people” on the ground that an increase of comfort will lead to an increase of numbers, and so the last state of things will be worse than the first.
Malthus has in more modern times derived a certain degree of reflected lustre from the rise and wide acceptance of the Darwinian hypothesis. Its author himself, in tracing its filiation, points to the phrase “struggle for existence” used by Malthus in relation to the social competition. Darwin believed that man advanced to his present high condition through such a struggle, consequent on his rapid multiplication. He regarded, it is true, the agency of this cause for the improvement of the race as largely superseded by moral influences in the more advanced social stages. Yet he considered it, even in these stages, of so much importance towards that end that, notwithstanding the individual suffering arising from the struggle for life, he deprecated any great reduction in the natural, by which he seems to mean the ordinary, rate of increase.
Besides his great work, Malthus wroteObservations on the Effect of the Corn Laws;An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent;Principles of Political Economy; andDefinitions in Political Economy. His views on rent were of real importance.For his life seeMemoirby his friend Dr Otter, bishop of Chichester (prefixed to 2nd ed., 1836, of thePrinciples of Political Economy), andMalthus and his Work, by J. Bonar (London, 1885). Practically every treatise on economics deals with Malthus and his essay, but the following special works may be referred to: Soetbeer,Die Stellung der Sozialisten zur Malthusschen Bevölkerungslehre(Berlin, 1886); G. de Molinari,Malthus, essai sur le principe de population(Paris, 1889); Cossa,Il Principio di popolazione di T. R. Malthus(Milan, 1895); and Ricardo,Letters to Malthus, ed. J. Bonar (1887).
Besides his great work, Malthus wroteObservations on the Effect of the Corn Laws;An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent;Principles of Political Economy; andDefinitions in Political Economy. His views on rent were of real importance.
For his life seeMemoirby his friend Dr Otter, bishop of Chichester (prefixed to 2nd ed., 1836, of thePrinciples of Political Economy), andMalthus and his Work, by J. Bonar (London, 1885). Practically every treatise on economics deals with Malthus and his essay, but the following special works may be referred to: Soetbeer,Die Stellung der Sozialisten zur Malthusschen Bevölkerungslehre(Berlin, 1886); G. de Molinari,Malthus, essai sur le principe de population(Paris, 1889); Cossa,Il Principio di popolazione di T. R. Malthus(Milan, 1895); and Ricardo,Letters to Malthus, ed. J. Bonar (1887).
1Malthus himself said, “It is probable that, having found the bow bent too much one way, I was induced to bend it too much the other in order to make it straight.”
1Malthus himself said, “It is probable that, having found the bow bent too much one way, I was induced to bend it too much the other in order to make it straight.”
MALTON,a market town in the Thirsk and Malton parliamentary division of Yorkshire, England, 21 m. N.E. of York by a branch of the North Eastern railway. The town comprises Old Malton and New Malton in the North Riding, and Norton on the opposite side of the river Derwent, in the East Riding. Pop. of urban district of Malton (1901), 4758; of urban district of Norton 3842. The situation, on the wooded hills rising from the narrow valley, is very picturesque. The church of St Michael is a fine late Norman building with perpendicular tower; the church of St Leonard, of mixed architecture, with square tower and spire, has three Norman arches and a Norman font. The church of St Mary at Old Malton was attached to a Gilbertine priory founded in 1150; it is transitional Norman and Early English, with later insertions. Remains of the priory are scanty, but include a crypt under a modern house. In the neighbourhood of Malton are the slight but beautiful fragments of Kirkham Abbey, an Early English Augustinian foundation of Walter l’Espec (1131); and the fine mansion of Castle Howard, a massive building by Vanbrugh, the seat of the earls of Carlisle, containing a noteworthy collection of pictures. Malton possesses a town-hall, a corn exchange, a museum, and a grammar-school founded in 1547. There are iron and brass foundries, agricultural implement works, corn mills, tanneries and breweries. In the neighbourhood are lime and whinstone quarries.
Traces of a Romano-British village exist on the east side of the town, but there appears to be no history of Malton before the Norman Conquest. The greater part of Malton belonged to the crown in 1086 and was evidently retained until Henry I.gave the castle and its appurtenances to Eustace son of John, whose descendants took the name of Vescy. Eustace meditated the deliverance of Malton Castle to King David of Scotland in 1138, but his plans were altered owing to the battle of the Standard. The “burgh” of Malton is mentioned in 1187, and in 1295 the town returned two members to parliament. It was not represented again, however, until 1640, when an act was passed to restore its ancient privileges. In 1867 the number of members was reduced to one, and in 1885 the town was disfranchised. Until the 17th century the burgesses had all the privileges of a borough by prescriptive right, and were governed by two bailiffs and two under-bailiffs, but these liberties were taken from them in 1684 and have never been revived. From that time a bailiff and two constables were appointed at the court leet of the lord of the manor until a local board was formed in 1854. In the 13th century Agnes de Vescy, then lady of the manor, held a market in Malton by prescription, and Camden writing about 1586 says that the lord of the manor then held two weekly markets, on Tuesday and Saturday, the last being the best cattle market in the county. The markets are now held on Saturdays and alternate Tuesdays, and still belong to the lord of the manor.
MALTZAN, HEINRICH VON,Baron zu Wartenburg und Penzlin(1826-1874), German traveller, was born on the 6th of September 1826 near Dresden. He studied law at Heidelberg, but on account of ill health spent much of his time from 1850 in travel. Succeeding to his father’s property in 1852, he extended the range of his journeys to Morocco and other parts of Barbary, and before his return home in 1854 had also visited Egypt, Palestine and other countries of the Levant. In 1856-1857 he was again in Algeria; in 1858 he reached the city of Morocco; and in 1860 he succeeded in performing the pilgrimage to Mecca, which he afterwards described inMeine Wallfahrt nach Mecca(Leipzig, 1865), but had to flee for his life to Jidda without visiting Medina. He then visited Aden and Bombay, and after some two years of study in Europe again began to wander through the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, repeatedly visiting Algeria. His first book of travel,Drei Jahre im Nordwesten von Afrika(Leipzig), appeared in 1863, and was followed by a variety of works and essays, popular and scientific. Maltzan’s last book,Reise nach Südarabien(Brunswick, 1873), is chiefly valuable as a digest of much information about little-known parts of south Arabia collected from natives during a residence at Aden in 1870-1871. Among his other services to science must be noticed his collection of Punic inscriptions (Reise in Tunis und Tripolis, Leipzig, 1870), and the editing of Adolph von Wrede’s remarkable journey in Hadramut (Reise in Hadramaut, &c., Brunswick, 1870). After long suffering from neuralgia, Maltzan died by his own hand at Pisa on the 23rd of February 1874.
MALUS, ÉTIENNE LOUIS(1775-1812), French physicist, was born at Paris on the 23rd of June 1775. He entered the military engineering school at Mezières; but, being regarded as a suspected person, he was dismissed without receiving a commission, and obliged to enter the army as a private soldier. Being employed upon the fortifications of Dunkirk, he attracted the notice of the director of the works, and was selected as a member of the École polytechnique then to be established under G. Monge. After three years at the École he was admitted into the corps of engineers, and served in the army of the Sambre and Meuse; he was present at the passage of the Rhine in 1797, and at the affairs of Ukratz and Altenkirch. In 1798 he joined the Egyptian expedition and remained in the East till 1801. On his return he held official posts successively at Antwerp, Strassburg and Paris, and devoted himself to optical research. A paper published in 1809 (“Sur une propriété de la lumière réfléchie par les corps diaphanes”) contained the discovery of the polarization of light by reflection, which is specially associated with his name, and in the following year he won a prize from the Institute with his memoir, “Théorie de la double refraction de la lumière dans les substances cristallines.” He died of phthisis in Paris on the 23rd of February 1812.
a, Stamens.b, Bract.
g, Pistil of carpels.
i, Epicalyx, formed from an involucre of bracteoles.
p, Petals.s, Sepals.
1, Anther.
2, Pollen grain of Hollyhock (Althaea rosea) enlarged. The pollen grain bears numerous spines, the dark spots indicate thin places in the extine.
MALVACEAE,in botany, an order of Dicotyledons belonging to the series Columniferae, to which belong also the orders Tiliaceae (containingTilia, the lime-tree), Bombaceae (containingAdansonia, the baobab), Sterculiaceae (containingTheobroma, cocoa, andColo, cola-nut). It contains 39 genera with about 300 species, and occurs in all regions except the coldest, the number of species increasing as we approach the tropics. It is represented in Britain by three genera:Malva, mallow;Althaea, marsh-mallow; andLavatera, tree-mallow. The plants are herbs, as in the British mallows, or, in the warmer parts of the earth, shrubs or trees. The leaves are alternate and often palmately lobed or divided; the stipules generally fall early. The leaves and young shoots often bear stellate hairs and the tissues contain mucilage-sacs. The regular, hermaphrodite, often showy flowers are borne in the leaf-axils, solitary or in fasicles, or form more or less complicated cymose arrangements. An epicalyx (seeMallow, figs. 3, 4), formed by a whorl of three or more bracteoles is generally present just beneath the calyx; sometimes, as inAbutilon, it is absent. The parts of the flowers are typically in fives (fig. 1); the five sepals, which have a valvate aestivation, are succeeded by five often large showy petals which are twisted in the bud; they are free to the base, where they are attached to the staminal tube and fall with it when the flower withers. The very numerous stamens are regarded as arising from the branching of a whorl of five opposite the petals; they are united into a tube at the base, and bear kidney-shaped one-celled anthers which open by a slit across the top (fig. 2). The large spherical pollen-grains are covered with spines. The carpels are one to numerous; when five in number, as inAbutilon, they are opposite the petals, or, as inHibiscus, opposite the sepals. In the British genera and many others they are numerous, forming a whorl round the top of the axis in the centre of the flower, the united styles rising from the centre and bearing a corresponding number of stigmatic branches. InMalopethe numerous carpels are arranged one above the other in vertical rows. One or more anatropous ovules are attached to the inner angle of each carpel; they are generally ascending but sometimes pendulous or horizontal; the position may vary, as inAbutilon, in one and the same carpel.
The flowers are proterandrous; when the flower opens the unripe stigmas are hidden in the staminal tube and the anthers occupy the centre of the flower; as the anthers dehisce the filaments bend backwards and finally the ripe stigmas spread in the centre. Pollination is effected by insects which visit the flower for the honey, which is secreted in pits one between the base of each petal and is protected from rain by hairs on the lower margin of the petals. In small pale-flowered forms, likeMalva rotundifolia, which attract few insects, self-pollination has been observed, the style-arms twisting to bring the stigmatic surfaces into contact with the anthers.
Except inMalvaviscuswhich has a berry, the fruits are dry. InMalva(seeMallow) and allied genera they form one-seeded schizocarps separating from the persistent central column and from each other. InHibiscusandGossypium(cotton-plant,q.v.), the fruit is a capsule splitting loculicidally. Distribution of the seeds is sometimes aided by hooked outgrowths on the wall of the schizocarp, or by a hairy covering on the seed, an extreme case of which is the cotton-plant where the seed is buriedin a mass of long tangled hairs—the cotton. The embryo is generally large with much-folded cotyledons and a small amount of endosperm.
The largest genus,Hibiscus, contains 150 species, which are widely distributed chiefly in the tropics;H. rosasinensisis a well-known greenhouse plant.Abutilon(q.v.) contains 80 species, mainly tropical;Lavatera, with 20 species, is chiefly Mediterranean;Althaeahas about 15 species in temperate and warm regions,A. roseabeing the hollyhock (q.v.);Malvahas about 30 species in the north-temperate zone. Several genera are largely or exclusively American.
The largest genus,Hibiscus, contains 150 species, which are widely distributed chiefly in the tropics;H. rosasinensisis a well-known greenhouse plant.Abutilon(q.v.) contains 80 species, mainly tropical;Lavatera, with 20 species, is chiefly Mediterranean;Althaeahas about 15 species in temperate and warm regions,A. roseabeing the hollyhock (q.v.);Malvahas about 30 species in the north-temperate zone. Several genera are largely or exclusively American.
MALVASIA(Gr.Monemvasia,i.e.the “city of the single approach or entrance”; Ital.Napoli di Malvasia; Turk.MengesheorBeneshe), one of the principal fortresses and commercial centres of the Levant during the middle ages, still represented by a considerable mass of ruins and a town of about 550 inhabitants. It stood on the east coast of the Morea, contiguous to the site of the ancient Epidaurus Limera, of which it took the place. So extensive was its trade in wine that the name of the place became familiar throughout Europe as the distinctive appellation of a special kind—Ital.Malvasia; Span.Malvagia; Fr.Malvoisie; Eng.MalvesieorMalmsey. The wine was not of local growth, but came for the most part from Tenos and others of the Cyclades.
As a fortress Malvasia played an important part in the struggles between Byzantium, Venice and Turkey. The Byzantine emperors considered it one of their most valuable posts in the Morea, and rewarded its inhabitants for their fidelity by unusual privileges. Phrantzes (Lib. IV. cap. xvi.) tells how the emperor Maurice made the city (previously dependent in ecclesiastical matters on Corinth) a metropolis or archbishop’s see, and how Alexius Comnenus, and more especially Andronicus II. (Palaeologus) gave the Monembasiotes freedom from all sorts of exactions throughout the empire. It was captured after a three years’ siege by Guillaume de Villehardouin in 1248, but the citizens retained their liberties and privileges, and the town was restored to the Byzantine emperors in 1262. After many changes, it placed itself under Venice from 1463 to 1540, when it was ceded to the Turks. In 1689 it was the only town of the Morea which held out against Morosini, and Cornaro his successor only succeeded in reducing it by famine. In 1715 it capitulated to the Turks, and on the failure of the insurrection of 1770 the leading families were scattered abroad. As the first fortress which fell into the hands of the Greeks in 1821, it became in the following year the seat of the first national assembly.See Curtius,Peloponnesos, ii. 293 and 328; Castellan,Lettres sur la Morée(1808), for a plan; Valiero,Hist. della guerra di Candia(Venice, 1679), for details as to the fortress; W. Miller inJournal of Hellenic Studies(1907).
As a fortress Malvasia played an important part in the struggles between Byzantium, Venice and Turkey. The Byzantine emperors considered it one of their most valuable posts in the Morea, and rewarded its inhabitants for their fidelity by unusual privileges. Phrantzes (Lib. IV. cap. xvi.) tells how the emperor Maurice made the city (previously dependent in ecclesiastical matters on Corinth) a metropolis or archbishop’s see, and how Alexius Comnenus, and more especially Andronicus II. (Palaeologus) gave the Monembasiotes freedom from all sorts of exactions throughout the empire. It was captured after a three years’ siege by Guillaume de Villehardouin in 1248, but the citizens retained their liberties and privileges, and the town was restored to the Byzantine emperors in 1262. After many changes, it placed itself under Venice from 1463 to 1540, when it was ceded to the Turks. In 1689 it was the only town of the Morea which held out against Morosini, and Cornaro his successor only succeeded in reducing it by famine. In 1715 it capitulated to the Turks, and on the failure of the insurrection of 1770 the leading families were scattered abroad. As the first fortress which fell into the hands of the Greeks in 1821, it became in the following year the seat of the first national assembly.
See Curtius,Peloponnesos, ii. 293 and 328; Castellan,Lettres sur la Morée(1808), for a plan; Valiero,Hist. della guerra di Candia(Venice, 1679), for details as to the fortress; W. Miller inJournal of Hellenic Studies(1907).
MALVERN,an inland watering-place in the Bewdley parliamentary division of Worcestershire, England, 128 m. W.N.W. from London by the Great Western railway, served also by a branch of the Midland railway from Ashchurch on the Bristol-Birmingham line. Pop. of urban district(1901), 16,449. It is beautifully situated on the eastern slopes of the Malvern Hills, which rise abruptly from the flat valley of the Severn to a height of 1395 ft. in the Worcestershire Beacon. The district still bears the name of Malvern Chase, originally a Crown-land and forest, though it was granted to the earldom of Gloucester by Edward I. A ditch along the summit of the hills determined the ancient boundary. Becoming a notorious haunt of criminals, the tract was disafforested by Charles I., with the exception of a portion known as the King’s Chase, part of which is included in the present common-land formed under the Malvern Hills Act of 1884.
Malvern was in early times an important ecclesiastical settlement, but its modern fame rests on its fine situation, pure air, and chalybeate and bituminous springs. The open-air cure for consumptive patients is here extensively practised.
The name Malvern is collectively applied to a line of small towns and villages, extending along the foot of the hills for 5 m. The principal isGreat Malvern, lying beneath the Worcestershire Beacon. It has a joint station of the Great Western and Midland railways. Here was the Benedictine priory which arose in 1083 out of a hermitage endowed by Edward the Confessor. The priory church of SS. Mary and Michael is a fine cruciform Perpendicular building, with an ornate central tower, embodying the original Norman nave, and containing much early glass and carved choir-stalls. The abbey gate and the refectory also remain. There are here several hydropathic establishments, and beautiful pleasure gardens. Malvern College, founded in 1862, is an important English public school. A museum is attached to it. Mineral waters are manufactured. AtMalvern Wells, 2½ m. S., are the principal medicinal springs, also the celebrated Holy Well, the water of which is of perfect purity. There are extensive fishponds and hatcheries; and golf-links. The Great Western railway has a station, and the Midland one at Hanley Road.Little Malvernlies at the foot of the Herefordshire Beacon, which is crowned by a British camp, 1½ m. S. of Malvern Wells. There was a Benedictine priory here, of which traces remain in the church.Malvern Link, 1 m. N.E. of Great Malvern, of which it forms a suburb, has a station on the Great Western railway.West MalvernandNorth Malvern, named from their position relative to Great Malvern, are pleasant residential quarters on the higher slopes of the hills.
MALWA,an historic province of India, which has given its name to one of the political agencies into which Central India is divided. Strictly, the name is confined to the hilly table-land, bounded S. by the Vindhyan range, which drains N. into the river Chambal; but it has been extended to include the Nerbudda valley farther south. Its derivation is from the ancient tribe of Malavas about whom very little is known, except that they founded the Vikrama Samvat, an era dating from 57B.C., which is popularly associated with a mythical king Vikramaditya. The earliest name of the tract seems to have been Avanti, from its capital the modern Ujjain. The position of the Malwa or Moholo mentioned by Hsuan Tsang (7th century) is plausibly assigned to Gujarat. The first records of a local dynasty are those of the Paramaras, a famous Rajput clan, who ruled for about four centuries (800-1200), with their capital at Ujjain and afterwards at Dhar. The Mahommedans invaded Malwa in 1235; and in 1401 Dilawar Khan Ghori founded an independent kingdom, which lasted till 1531. The greatest ruler of this dynasty was Hoshang Shah (1405-1435), who made Mandu (q.v.) his capital and embellished it with magnificent buildings. In 1562 Malwa was annexed to the Mogul empire by Akbar. On the break-up of that empire, Malwa was one of the first provinces to be conquered by the Mahrattas. About 1743 the Mahratta peshwa obtained from Delhi the title of governor, and deputed his authority to three of his generals—Sindhia of Gwalior, Holkar of Indore, and the Ponwar of Dhar who claims descent from the ancient Paramaras. At the end of the 18th century Malwa became a cockpit for fighting between the rival Mahratta powers, and the headquarters of the Pindaris or irregular plunderers. The Pindaris were extirpated by the campaign of Lord Hastings in 1817, and the country was reduced to order by the energetic rule of Sir John Malcolm. Malwa is traditionally the land of plenty, in which sufferers from famine in the neighbouring tracts always take refuge. But in 1899-1900 it was itself visited by a severe drought, which seriously diminished the population, and has since been followed by plague. The most valuable product is opium.
The Malwa agency has an area of 8919 sq. m. with a population (1901) of 1,054,753. It comprises the states of Dewas (senior and junior branch), Jaora, Ratlam, Sitamau and Sailana, together with a large portion of Gwalior, parts of Indore and Tonk, and about 35 petty estates and holdings. The headquarters of the political agent are at Nimach.
Malwa is also the name of a large tract in the Punjab, south of the river Sutlej, which is one of the two chief homes of the Sikhs, the other being known as Manjha. It includes the British districts of Ferozpore and Ludhiana, together with the native states of Patiala, Jind, Nabha and Maler Kotla.
See J. Malcolm,Central India(1823); C. E. Luard,Bibliography of Central India(1908), andThe Paramars of Dhar and Malwa(1908).
See J. Malcolm,Central India(1823); C. E. Luard,Bibliography of Central India(1908), andThe Paramars of Dhar and Malwa(1908).
MAMARONECK,a township of Westchester county, New York, U.S.A., on Long Island Sound, about 20 m. N.E. of New York City and a short distance N.E. of New Rochelle. Pop. (1890), 2385; (1900) 3849; (1905) 5655; (1910)5602. Mamaroneck is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway. The township includes the village of Larchmont (pop. in 1910, 1958), incorporated in 1891, and part of the village of Mamaroneck (pop. in 1910, including the part in Rye township, 5699), incorporated in 1895. Larchmont is the headquarters of the Larchmont Yacht Club. The site of Mamaroneck township was bought in 1660 from the Indians by John Richbell, an Englishman, who obtained an English patent to the tract in 1668. The first settlement was made by relatives of his on the site of Mamaroneck village in 1676, and the township was erected in 1788. On the 28th of August 1776, near Mamaroneck, a force of American militiamen under Capt. John Flood attacked a body of Loyalist recruits under William Lounsbury, killing the latter and taking several prisoners. Soon afterwards Mamaroneck was occupied by the Queen’s Rangers under Colonel Robert Rogers. On the night of the 21st of October an attempt of a force of Americans under Colonel John Haslet to surprise the Rangers failed, and the Americans, after a hand-to-hand fight, withdrew with 36 prisoners. Mamaroneck was the home of John Peter DeLancey (1753-1828), a Loyalist soldier in the War of Independence, and was the birthplace of his son William Heathcote DeLancey (1797-1865), a well-known Protestant Episcopal clergyman, provost of the University of Pennsylvania in 1827-1832 and bishop of western New York from 1839 until his death. James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, married (1811) a daughter of John Peter DeLancey; lived in Mamaroneck for several years, and here wrote his first novel,Precaution, and plannedThe Spy.
MAMELI, GOFFREDO(1827-1849), Italian poet and patriot, was born at Genoa of a noble Sardinian family. He received a sound classical education at the Scolopi College, and later studied law and philosophy at the university of Genoa. When nineteen years old he corresponded with Mazzini, to whom he became whole-heartedly devoted; among other patriotic poems he wrote a hymn to the Bandiera brothers, and in the autumn of 1847 a song called “Fratelli d’Italia,” which as Carducci wrote, “resounded through every district and on every battlefield of the peninsula in 1848 and 1849.” Mameli served in the National Guard at Genoa, and then joined the volunteers in the Lombard campaign of 1848, but after the collapse of the movement in Lombardy he went to Rome, where the republic was proclaimed and whence he sent the famous despatch to Mazzini: “Roma! Repubblica! Venite!” At first he wrote political articles in the newspapers, but when the French army approached the city with hostile intentions he joined the fighting ranks and soon won Garibaldi’s esteem by his bravery. Although wounded in the engagement of the 30th of April, he at once resumed his place in the ranks, but on the 3rd of June he was again wounded much more severely, and died in the Pellegrini hospital on the 6th of July 1849. Besides the poems mentioned above, he wrote hymns to Dante, to the Apostles, “Dio e popolo,” &c. The chief merit of his work lies in the spontaneity and enthusiasm for the Italian cause which rendered it famous, in spite of certain technical imperfections, and he well deserved the epithet of “The Tyrtaeus of the Italian revolution.”
See A. G. Barrili, “G. Mameli nella vita e nell’ arte,” inNuova Antologia(June 1, 1902); the same writer’s edition of theScritti editi ed inediti di G. Mameli(Genoa, 1902); Countess Martinengo Cesaresco,Italian Characters(London, 1901); A. Luzio,Profili Biografici(Milan, 1906); G. Trevelyan,Garibaldi’s Defence of the Roman Republic(London, 1907).
See A. G. Barrili, “G. Mameli nella vita e nell’ arte,” inNuova Antologia(June 1, 1902); the same writer’s edition of theScritti editi ed inediti di G. Mameli(Genoa, 1902); Countess Martinengo Cesaresco,Italian Characters(London, 1901); A. Luzio,Profili Biografici(Milan, 1906); G. Trevelyan,Garibaldi’s Defence of the Roman Republic(London, 1907).
MAMELUKE(anglicized through the French, from the Arabicmamlūk, a slave), the name given to a series of Egyptian sultans, originating (1250) in the usurpation of supreme power by the bodyguard of Turkish slaves first formed in Egypt under the successors of Saladin. SeeEgypt:History(Moslem period).
MAMERTINI,or “children of Mars,” the name taken by a band of Campanian (or Samnite) freebooters who about 289B.C.seized the Greek colony of Messana at the north-east corner of Sicily, after having been hired by Agathocles to defend it (Polyb. 1. 7. 2). The adventure is explained by tradition (e.g.Festus 158, Müller) as the outcome of aver sacrum; the members of the expedition are said to have been the male children born in a particular spring of which the produce had been vowed to Apollo (cf.Samnites), and to have settled first in Sicily near Tauromenium. An inscription survives (R. S. Conway,Italic Dialects, 1) which shows that they took with them the Oscan language as it was spoken in Capua or Nola at that date, and the constitution usual in Italic towns of a free community (touta=) governed by two annual magistrates (meddices). The inscription dedicated some large building (possibly a fortification) to Apollo, which so far confirms the tradition just noticed. Though in the Oscan language, the inscription is written in the Greek alphabet common to south Italy from the 4th centuryB.C.onwards, viz. the Tarentine Ionic, and so are the legends of two coins of much the same date as the inscription (Conway, ib. 4). From 282 onwards (B. V. Head,Historia numorum, 136) the legend itself is Graecized (ΜΑΜΕΡΤΙΝΩΝinstead ofΜΑΑΜΕΡΤΙΝΟΥΜ) which shows how quickly here, as everywhere, “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit.” On the Roman conquest of Sicily the town secured an independence under treaty (Cicero,Verr.3. 6. 13). The inhabitants were still called Mamertines in the time of Strabo (vi. 2. 3).
See further Mommsen,C.I.L.x. sub loc., and the references already given.
See further Mommsen,C.I.L.x. sub loc., and the references already given.
(R. S. C.)
MĀMERTINUS, CLAUDIUS(4th centuryA.D.), one of the Latin panegyrists. After the death of Julian, by whom he was evidently regarded with special favour, he was praefect of Italy (365) under Valens and Valentinian, but was subsequently (368) deprived of his office for embezzlement. He was the author of an extant speech of thanks to Julian for raising him to the consulship, delivered on the 1st of January 362 at Constantinople. Two panegyrical addresses (also extant) to Maximian (emperorA.D.286-305) are attributed to an oldermagisterMamertinus, but it is probable that the corrupt MS. superscription contains the wordmemoriae, and that they are by an unknownmagister memoriae(an official whose duty consisted in communicating imperial rescripts and decisions to the public). The first of these was delivered on the birthday of Rome (April 21, 289), probably at Maximian’s palace at Augusta Trevirorum (Trèves), the second in 290 or 291, on the birthday of the emperor. By some they are attributed to Eumenius (q.v.) who was amagister memoriaeand the author of at least one (if not more) panegyrics.
The three speeches will be found in E. Bāhrens,Panegyrici latini(1874); see also Teuffel-Schwabe,Hist. of Roman Literature(Eng. trans.), § 417. 7.
MAMIANI DELLA ROVERE, TERENZIO,Count(1802-1885), Italian writer and statesman, was born at Pesaro in 1799. Taking part in the outbreaks at Bologna arising out of the accession of Pope Gregory XVI., he was elected deputy for Pesaro to the assembly, and subsequently appointed minister of the interior; but on the collapse of the revolutionary movement he was exiled. He returned to Italy after the amnesty of 1846, and in 1848 he was entrusted with the task of forming a ministry. He remained prime minister, however, only for a few months, his political views being anything but in harmony with those of the pope. He subsequently retired to Genoa where he worked for Italian unity, was elected deputy in 1856, and in 1860 became minister of education under Cavour. In 1863 he was made minister to Greece, and in 1865 to Switzerland, and later senator and councillor of state. Meanwhile, he had founded at Genoa in 1849 the Academy of Philosophy, and in 1855 had been appointed professor of the history of philosophy at Turin; and he published several volumes, not only on philosophical and social subjects, but of poetry, among themRinnovamente della filosofia antica italiana(1836),Teoria della Religione e dello stato(1869),Kant e l’ontologia(1879),Religione dell’ avenire(1880),Di un nuovo diritto europeo(1843, 1857). He died at Rome on the 21st of May, 1885.
SeeIndice delle opere di Terenzio Mamiani(Pesaro, 1887); Gaspare,Vita di Terenzio Mamiani(Ancona, 1887); Barzellotti,Studii e ritratti(Bologna, 1893).
SeeIndice delle opere di Terenzio Mamiani(Pesaro, 1887); Gaspare,Vita di Terenzio Mamiani(Ancona, 1887); Barzellotti,Studii e ritratti(Bologna, 1893).
MAMMALIA(from Lat.mamma, a teat or breast), the name proposed by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus for one of the classes, or primary divisions, of vertebrated animals, the members of which are collectively characterized by the presence in the females of special glands secreting milk for the nourishment of the young. With the exception of the lowest group, such glands always communicate with the exterior by means of the teats, nipples or mammae, from which the class derives its name. The class-name (modified by the French intoMammifères, and replaced in German by the practically equivalent termSäugethiere) has been anglicized into “Mammals” (mammal, in the singular). Of recent years, and more especially in America, it has become a custom to designate the study of mammals by the term “mammalogy.” Etymologically, however, that designation cannot be justified; for it is of hybrid (Latin and Greek) origin, and is equivalent to “mastology,” the science which deals with the mammary gland (Gr.μαστός, woman’s breast), a totally different signification. As regards existing forms of life, the limitations of the class are perfectly well defined and easy of recognition; for although certain groups (not, by the way, whales, which, although excluded in popular estimation from the class, are in all essential respects typical mammals) are exceedingly aberrant, and present structural features connecting them with the lower vertebrate classes, yet they are by common consent retained in the class to which they are obviously most nearly affiliated by their preponderating characteristics. There is thus at the present day a great interval, unbridged by any connecting links, between mammals and the other classes of vertebrates.
Not so, however, when the extinct forms of vertebrate life are taken into consideration, for there is a group of reptiles from the early part of the Secondary, or Mesozoic period, some of whose members must have been so intimately related to mammals that, were the whole group fully known, it would clearly be impossible to draw a distinction between Mammalia on the one hand and Reptilia on the other. Indeed, as it is, we are already partially acquainted with one of these early intermediate creatures (Tritylodon), which forms a kind of zoological shuttlecock, being, so to speak, hit from one group to another, and back again, by the various zoologists by whom its scanty remains have been studied. Considered collectively, mammals, which did not make their appearance on the earth for some time after reptiles had existed, are certainly the highest group of the whole vertebrate sub-kingdom. This expression must not, however, be considered in too restricted a sense. In mammals, as in other classes, there are low as well as high forms; but by any tests that can be applied, especially those based on the state of development of the central nervous system, it will be seen that the average exceeds that of any other class, that many species of this class far excel those of any other in perfection of structure, and that it contains one form which is unquestionably the culminating point amongst organized beings.
Mammals, then, are vertebrated animals, possessing the normal characteristics of the members of that primary division of the animal kingdom. They are separated from fishes and batrachians (Pisces and Batrachians) on the one hand, and agree with reptiles, and birds (Reptilia and Aves) on the other, in the possession during intra-uterine life of the membranous vascular structures respectively known as the amnion and the allantois, and likewise in the absence at this or any other period of external gills. A four-chambered heart, with a complete double circulation, and warm blood (less markedly so in the lowest group than in the rest of the class), distinguish mammals from existing reptiles, although not from birds. From both birds and reptiles the class is distinguished, so far at any rate as existing forms are concerned, by the following features: the absence of a nucleus in the red corpuscles of the blood, which are nearly always circular in outline; the free suspension of the lungs in a thoracic cavity, separated from the abdominal cavity by a muscular partition, or diaphragm, which is the chief agent in inflating the lungs in respiration; the aorta, or main artery, forming but a single arch after leaving the heart, which curves over the left terminal division of the windpipe, or bronchus; the presence of more or fewer hairs on the skin and the absence of feathers; the greater development of the bridge, or commissure, connecting the two halves of the brain, which usually forms a complete corpus callosum, or displays an unusually large size of its anterior portion; the presence of a fully developed larynx at the upper end of the trachea or windpipe, accompanied by the absence of a syrinx, or expansion, near the lower end of the same; the circumstance that each half of the lower jaw (except perhaps at a very early stage of development) consists of a single piece articulating posteriorly with the squamosal element of the skull without the intervention of a separate quadrate bone; the absence of prefrontal bones in the skull; the presence of a pair of lateral knobs, or condyles (in place of a single median one), on the occipital aspect of the skull for articulation with the first vertebra; and, lastly, the very obvious character of the female being provided with milk-glands, by the secretion of which the young (produced, except in the very lowest group, alive and not by means of externally hatched eggs) are nourished for some time after birth.
In the majority of mammals both pairs of limbs are well developed and adapted for walking or running. The fore-limbs may, however, be modified, as in moles, for burrowing, or, as in bats, for flight, or finally, as in whales and dolphins, for swimming, with the assumption in this latter instance of a flipper-like form and the complete disappearance of the hind-limbs. Special adaptations for climbing are exhibited by both pairs of limbs in opossums, and for hanging to boughs in sloths. In no instance are the fore-limbs wanting.
In the great majority of mammals the hind extremity of the axis of the body is prolonged into a tail. Very generally the tail has distinctly the appearance of an appendage, but in some of the lower mammals, such as the thylacine among marsupials, and the aard-vark or ant-bear among the edentates, it is much thickened at the root, and passes insensibly into the body, after the fashion common among reptiles. As regards function, the tail may be a mere pendent appendage, or may be adapted to grasp boughs in climbing, or even to collect food or materials for a nest or sleeping place, as in the spider-monkeys, opossums and rat-kangaroos. Among jumping animals it may serve as a balance, as in the case of jerboas and kangaroos, while in the latter it is also used as a support when resting; among many hoofed mammals it is used as a fly-whisk; and in whales and dolphins, as well as in the AfricanPotamogaleand the North American musquash, it plays an important part in swimming. Its supposed use as a trowel by the beaver is, however, not supported by the actual facts of the case.
As already indicated, the limbs of different mammals are specially modified for various modes of life; and in many cases analogous modifications occur, in greater or less degree, throughout the entire body. Those modifications most noticeable in the case of cursorial types may be briefly mentioned as examples. In this case, as might be expected, the greatest modifications occur in the limbs, but correlated with this is also an elongation of the head and neck in long-legged types. Adaptation for speed is further exhibited in the moulding of the shape of the body so as to present the minimum amount of resistance to the air, as well as in increase in heart and lung capacity to meet the extra expenditure of energy. Finally, in the jumping forms we meet with an increase in the length and weight of the tail, which has to act as a counterpoise. As regards the feet, a reduction in the number of digits from the typical five is a frequent feature, more especially among the hoofed mammals, where the culmination in this respect is attained by the existing members of the horse tribe and certain representatives of the extinct South AmericanProterotheriidae, both of which are monodactyle. Brief reference may also be made to the morphological importance of extraordinary length or shortness in the skulls of mammals—dolichocephalism and brachycephalism; both these features being apparently characteristic of specialized types, the former condition being (as in the horse) often, although not invariably, connected with length of limb and neck, andadaptation to speed, while brachycephalism may be correlated with short limbs and an abbreviated neck. Exceptions to this rule, as exemplified by the cats, are due to special adaptive causes. In point of bodily size mammals present a greater range of variation than is exhibited by any other living terrestrial animals, the extremes in this respect being displayed by the African elephant on the one hand and certain species of shrew-mice (whose head and body scarcely exceed an inch and a half in length) on the other. When the aquatic members of the class are taken into consideration, the maximum dimensions are vastly greater, Sibbald’s rorqual attaining a length of fully 80 ft., and being probably the bulkiest and heaviest animal that has ever existed. Within the limits of individual groups, it may be accepted as a general rule that increase in bulk or stature implies increased specialization; and, further, that the largest representatives of any particular group are also approximately the latest. The latter dictum must not, however, be pushed to an extreme, since the African elephant, which is the largest living land mammal, attaining in exceptional cases a height approaching 12 ft., was largely exceeded in this respect by an extinct Indian species, whose height has been estimated at between 15 and 16 ft.
In regard to sense-organs, ophthalmoscopic observations on the eyes of living mammals (other than man) have revealed the existence of great variation in the arrangement of the blood-vessels, as well as in the colour of the retina; blue and violet seem to be unknown, while red, yellow and green form the predominating shades. In the main, the various types of minute ocular structure correspond very closely to the different groups into which mammals are divided, this correspondence affording important testimony in the favour of the general correctness of the classification. Among the exceptions are the South American squirrel-monkeys, whose eyes approximate in structure to those of the lemurs. Man and monkeys alone possess parallel and convergent vision of the two eyes, while a divergent, and consequently a very widely extended, vision is a prerogative of the lower mammals; squirrels, for instance, and probably also hares and rabbits, being able to see an object approaching them directly from behind without turning their heads.
An osteological question which has been much discussed is the fate of the reptilian quadrate bone in the mammalian skull. In the opinion of F. W. Thyng, who has carefully reviewed all the other theories, the balance of evidence tends to show that the quadrate has been taken up into the inner ear, where it is represented among the auditory ossicles by the incus.
Although the present article does not discuss mammalian osteology in general (for which seeVertebrata), it is interesting to notice in this connexion that the primitive condition of the mammalian tympanum apparently consisted merely of a small and incomplete bony ring, with, at most, an imperfect ventral wall to the tympanic cavity, and that a close approximation to this original condition still persists in the monotremes, especiallyOrnithorhynchus. The tympano-hyal is the characteristic mammalian element in this region; but the entotympanic likewise appears to be peculiar to the class, and to be unrepresented among the lower vertebrates. The tympanum itself has been regarded as representing one of the elements—probably the supra-angular—of the compound reptilian lower jaw. The presence of only seven vertebrae in the neck is a very constant feature among mammals; the exceptions being very few.
Two other points in connexion with mammalian osteology may be noticed. A large number of mammals possess a perforation, or foramen, on the inner side of the lower end of the humerus, and also a projection on the shaft of the femur known as the third trochanter. From its occurrence in so many of the lower vertebrates, the entepicondylar foramen of the humerus, as it is called, is regarded by Dr E. Stromer as a primitive structure, of which the original object was to protect certain nerves and blood-vessels. It is remarkable that it should persist in the spectacled bear of the Andes, although it has disappeared in all other living members of the group. The third trochanter of the femur, on the other hand, can scarcely be regarded as primitive, seeing that it is absent in several of the lower groups of mammals. Neither can its presence be attributed, as Professor A. Gaudry suggests, to the reduction in the number of the toes, as otherwise it should not be found in the rhinoceros. Its general absence in man forbids the idea of its having any connexion with the upright posture.