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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mas'ūdī

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​MASʽŪDĪ (Abū–l Ḥasan ‘Alī ibn Ḥusain ibn ʽAlī ul-Masʽūdī) (d. c. 956), Arabian historian, was born at Bagdad towards the close of the 9th century. Much of his life was spent in travel. After he had been in Persia and Kerman, he visited Istakhr in 915, and went in the following year to Mūltān and Manṣūra, thence to Cambay, Saimur and Ceylon, to Madagascar and back to Oman. He seems about this time to have been as far as China. After a visit to the shores of the Caspian Sea he visited Tiberias in Palestine, examined the Christian church there, and described its relics. In 943 he was in Antioch, studying the ruins, and two years later in Damascus. The last ten years of his life he spent in Syria and Egypt. His great object in life had been to study with his own eyes the peculiarities of every land and to collect whatever was of interest for archaeology, history and manners. Himself a Mo‘tazilite (see Mahommedan Religion: Sects), he was singularly free from bigotry, and took his information, when necessary, from Persians, Jews, Indians, and even the chronicle of a Christian bishop.
His most extensive work was the Kitāb akhbār uz-Zamān or Annals, in 30 volumes with a supplement, the Kitāb ul-Ausaṭ, a chronological sketch of general history. Of these the first part only of the former is extant in MS. in Vienna, while the latter seems to be in the Bodleian Library, also in MS. The substance of the two was united by him in the work by which he is now best known, the Murūj udh-Dhahab wa Ma‘ādin ul-Jawāhir (“Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones”), an historical work which he completed in 947. In 956 he finished a second edition of this and made it double its former size, but no copy of this seems to be extant. The original edition has been published at Bulāq and Cairo, and with French translation by C. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille (9 vols., Paris, 1861–1877). Another work of Masʽūdī, written in the last year of his life, is the Kitāb ut-Tanbīh wal Ishrāf (the “Book of Indication and Revision”), in which he summarizes the work of his life and corrects and completes his former writings. It has been edited by M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1894), and a French translation has been made by Carra de Vaux (Paris, 1896); cf. also the memoir of S. de Sacy published in Meynard’s edition of the Murūj.
An account of Masʽūdī’s works is to be found in de Sacy’s memoir and in Goeje’s preface to his edition of the Tanbīh, and of the works extant in C. Brockelmann’s Gesch. der Arabischen Litteratur, i. 144–145 (Weimar, 1898). C. Field’s Tales of the Caliphs (1909) is based on Masʽūdī.  (G. W. T.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maryborough (Ireland)

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​MARYBOROUGH, a market town and the county town of Queen’s County, Ireland. Pop. (1901), 2957. It lies in the broad lowland east of the Slieve Bloom mountains, on the river Triogue, an affluent of the Barrow, and on the main line of the Great Southern & Western railway, by which it is 51 m. W.S.W. of Dublin. The town was chosen as county town in the reign of Mary (1556), in whose honour both town and county received their names. Its charter was granted in 1570, ​but its present appearance, save a bastion of the ancient castle, is wholly modern. There are flour-mills and a considerable general trade. Maryborough returned two members to the Irish parliament from 1585 until the union in 1800. The singular lofty rock of Dunamase or Dunmall, about 3 m. from the town, bears on its summit extensive ruins of a castle, originally belonging to the kings of Leinster, but probably built in the main by William Bruce (c. 1200) and dismantled in 1650 by Cromwell’s troops.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ptomaine Poisoning

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PTOMAINE POISONING (Gr. πτῶμα, corpse), a phrase now popularized in the sense of a certain class of food-poisoning. The word "ptomaine" was invented by the Italian chemist Selmi for the basic substances produced in putrefaction. They belong to several classes of chemical compounds. (See Medical Jurisprudence.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ptolemaeus

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​ PTOLEMAEUS, of Alexandria, surnamed Chennus, Greek grammarian during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. According to Suïdas, he was the author of an historical drama named Sphinx, of an epic, Anthomeros, in 24 books (both lost) and a Strange History. The last is probably identical with the work of which an abridgment has been preserved in Photius (cod. 190). It contains a medley of all sorts of legends and fables belonging to both the mythological and historical periods. It is probable that Chennus was also the author of a lost treatise on the life and works of Aristotle, ascribed to “Ptolemaeus” in an Arabic list of his works, taken from a Syriac version of the Greek original (A. Baumstark, Aristoteles bei den Syrern vom v.-viii. Jahrh., Leipzig, 1900).
See editions of Photius's abridgment by J. Roulez (1834); and in A. Westermann, Mythographi graeci (1843); R. Hercher, Über die Glaubwürdigkeit der neuen Geschichte des Ptolemaus Chennus (Leipzig, 1856); J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 1906).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Puberty

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PUBERTY (Lat. pubertas, from pubes, puber, mature, adult), that period of life at which the generative organs in both sexes become sexually active (see Reproductive System). In northern countries males enter upon sexual maturity between fourteen and sixteen, sometimes not much before the eighteenth year, females between twelve and fourteen. In tropical climates puberty is much earlier. In English common law the age of puberty is conclusively presumed to be fourteen in the male and twelve in the female. Puberty is of much ethnological interest, as being the occasion among many races for feasts and religious ceremonies. In Rome a feast was given to the family and friends: the hair of boys was cut short, a lock being thrown into the fire in honour of Apollo, and one into water as an offering to Neptune. Girls offered their dolls to Venus, and the bulla—a little locket of gold worn round children's necks, often by boys as well as girls—was taken off and dedicated in the case of the former to Hercules or the household lares, in the case of the latter to Juno. The attainment of puberty is celebrated by savages with ceremonies some of which seem to be directly associated with totemism. The Australian rites of initiation include the raising of those scars on the bodies of clansmen or clanswomen which serve as tribal badges or actually depict the totem. Among many savage peoples lads at puberty undergo a pretence of being killed and brought to life again.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pteron

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​ PTERON (Gr. πτερόν, a wing), an architectural term used by Pliny for the peristyle of the tomb of Mausolus, which was raised on a lofty podium, and so differed from an ordinary peristyle raised only on a stylobate, as in Greek temples, or on a low podium, as in Roman temples.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Public House

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​PUBLIC HOUSE, in its general English acceptation, a house in respect of which a licence has been obtained for the consumption of intoxicating liquors. Public houses are frequently distinguished as "tied" and "free." A tied house is one rented from a person or firm from whom the tenant is compelled to purchase liquors or other commodities to be consumed therein. A free house has no such covenant. The keepers of public houses ("publicans" or "licensed victuallers") are subject, in the conduct of their business, to a number of restrictions laid down by various acts of parliament; while, in order to ply their trade, they require a justices' licence and an excise licence. (See Liquor Laws; Temperance.)
By the Parliamentary Elections Act (1853) a public house must not be used for elections, meetings or committee rooms. By the Payment of Wages in Public Houses Prohibition Act (1883) it is illegal to pay Wages to any Workman in a public house, except such wages as are paid by the resident owner or occupier. By the Sheriffs Act (1887) when a debtor is arrested he must not be taken to a public house without his free consent, nor must he be charged with any sum for liquor or food, except what he freely asks for.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nanteuil, Robert

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​NANTEUIL, ROBERT (1623–1678), French line-engraver, was born about 1623, or, as other authorities state, in 1630, the son of a merchant of Reims. Having received an excellent classical education, he studied engraving under his brother-in-law, Nicholas Regnesson; and, his crayon portraits having attracted attention, he was pensioned by Louis XIV. and appointed designer and engraver of the cabinet to that monarch. It was mainly due to his influence that the king granted the edict of 1660, dated from St Jean de Luz, by which engraving was pronounced free and distinct from the mechanical arts, and its practitioners were declared entitled to the privileges of other artists. He died at Paris in 1678. The plates of Nanteuil, several of them approaching the scale of life, number about three hundred. In his early practice he imitated the technique of his predecessors, working with straight lines, strengthened, but not crossed, in the shadows, in the style of Claude Mellan, and in other prints cross-hatching like Regnesson, or stippling in the manner of Jean Boulanger; but he gradually asserted his full individuality, modelling the faces of his portraits with the utmost precision and completeness, and employing various methods of touch for the draperies and other parts of his plates. Among the finest works of his fully developed period may be named the portraits of Pomponne de Bellièvre, Gilles Ménage, Jean Loret, the duc de la Meilleraye and the duchess de Nemours.
A list of his works will be found in Dumesnil’s Le Peintre-graveur française, vol. iv.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Naoroji, Dadabhai

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​NAOROJI, DADABHAI (1825– ), Indian politician, was born at Nasik on the 4th of September 1825, the son of a Parsi priest. During a long and active life, he played many parts: professor of mathematics at the Elphinstone college (1854); founder of the Rast Goftar newspaper; partner in a Parsi business firm in London (1855); prime minister of Baroda (1874); member of the Bombay legislative council (1885); M.P. for Central Finsbury (1892–1895), being the first Indian to be elected to the House of Commons; three times president of the Indian National Congress. Many of his numerous writings are collected in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nap

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​NAP, the pile on cloth, the surface of short fibres raised by special processes, differing with the various fabrics, and then smoothed and cut. Formerly the word was applied to the roughness on textiles before shearing. “Nap” in this sense appears in many Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Noppe, Dutch nop, Nor. napp; the verbal form is noppen or nappen, to trim, cut short. The word nap also means a short sleep or doze (O. Eng. hnappian). In “napkin,” a square of damask or other linen, used for wiping the hands and lips or for protecting the clothes at meals, the second part is a common English suffix, sometimes of diminutive force, and the first is from “nape,” Low Lat. napa or nappa, a corrupt form of mappa, table-cloth. Nape still survives in “napery,” a name for household linen in general.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nanticoke

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​NANTICOKE, a borough of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the North Branch of the Susquehanna river, opposite West Nanticoke, and 8 m. S.W. of Wilkes-Barre. Pop. (1880), 3884; (1890), 10,044; (1900), 12,116, of whom 5055 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 18,877. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and the ​Central of New Jersey railways, and by an interurban electric line. Nanticoke is situated in the anthracite coal region, is surrounded by mines, and its industries consist chiefly in mining and shipping coal; it also has various manufactures, and in 1905 the factory product was valued at $358,091. Nanticoke was laid out in 1793, and was incorporated as a borough in 1874. The name is that of an Algonquian tribe of Indians, conspicuous for their dark complexion, who originally lived in Maryland, were conquered by the Iroquois in 1678 and subsequently scattered; the main body removed to lands along the eastern branch of the Susquehanna, where some of them became merged with the Iroquois, and others removed to the Ohio and became merged with the Delaware.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Naphtali

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​NAPHTALI, in the Bible, the name of an Israelite tribe, the “son” of Jacob by Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, and the uterine brother of Dan (Gen. xxx. 8). It lay to the south of Dan in the eastern half of upper Galilee (Josh. xix. 32-39), a fertile mountainous district (cf. Gen. xlix. 21; Deut. xxxiii. 23), open to the surrounding influences of Phoenicia and Aram. Apart from its share in the war against Sisera (Judg. iv. seq., see Deborah), little is known of it. It evidently suffered in the bloody conflicts of Damascus with Israel (1 Kings xv. 20), and was depopulated by Tiglath-Pileser IV. (2 Kings xv. 29; Isa. ix. 1). Naphtali and Dan are “brothers,” perhaps partly on geographical grounds, but Dan also had a seat in the south (south-west of Ephraim), and the name of the “mother” Bilhah is apparently connected with Bilhan, an Edomite and also a Benjamite name (Gen. xxxvi. 27; 1 Chron. vii. 10).
For the view connecting Naphtali (perhaps a geographical rather than a tribal term), or rather its Israelite inhabitants, with the south see the full discussion by H. W. Hogg, Ency. Bib. iii. col. 3332 sqq. with references.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Naphtha

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​NAPHTHA, a word originally applied to the more fluid kinds of petroleum, issuing from the ground in the Baku district of Russia and in Persia. It is the νάφθα of Dioscorides, and the naphtha, or bitumen liquidum candidum of Pliny. By the alchemists the word was used principally to distinguish various highly volatile, mobile and inflammable liquids, such as the ethers, sulphuric ether and acetic ether having been known respectively as naphtha sulphurici and naphtha aceti.
The term is now seldom used, either in commerce or in science, without a distinctive prefix, and we thus have the following:
1. Coal-tar Naphtha.—A volatile commercial product obtained by the distillation of coal-tar (see Coal-Tar).
2. Shale Naphtha.—Obtained by distillation from the oil produced by the destructive distillation of bituminous shale (see Paraffin).
3. Petroleum Naphtha.—A name sometimes given (e.g. in the United States) to a portion of the more volatile hydrocarbons distilled from petroleum (see Petroleum).
4. Wood Naphtha.—Methyl alcohol (q.v.).
5. Bone Naphtha.—Known also as bone oil or Dippel’s oil. A volatile product of offensive odour obtained in the carbonization of bones for the manufacture of animal charcoal.
6. Caoutchouc Naphtha.—A volatile product obtained by the destructive distillation of rubber. (B. R.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Morgan, Lewis Henry

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​MORGAN, LEWIS HENRY (1818–1881), American ethnologist, was born near Aurora, New York, on the 21st of November 1818. He graduated in 1840 at Union College, then studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practised his profession with success at Rochester, New York. Soon after leaving college Morgan went among the Iroquois, living as far as he could their life and studying their social organization. In October 1847 he was formally adopted into the Hawk gens of the Seneca tribe, and received the name “Ta-ya-da-wah-kugh.” The fruit of his researches was The League of the Iroquois (1851; new ed. 1904), which, says J. W. Powell, “was the first scientific account of an Indian tribe ever given to the world.” The success of the book encouraged him to further research, resulting in his Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1869). In 1877 he added to his reputation by publishing ​Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization, in which he divided the progress of culture into seven stages— “lower savagery,” “middle savagery,” “upper savagery,” “lower barbarism,” “middle barbarism” and “upper barbarism,” and “civilization.” The book was in four parts, dealing with (1) the growth of intelligence through inventions and discoveries; (2) the growth of the idea of government; (3) the growth of the idea of the family; and (4) the growth of the idea of property. Morgan was a member of the New York assembly in 1861 and of the New York senate in 1868–1869. In 1880 he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died in Rochester, New York, on the 17th of December 1881. In addition to the works above mentioned and many magazine articles, he published The American Beaver and his Works (1868) and Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines (1881).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Morgan, Thomas

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​MORGAN, THOMAS (d. 1743), English deist, of Welsh extraction, became an independent minister, but soon after 1720 lost his position owing to the growing unorthodoxy of his views. He took up medicine and became a freethinker, though he describes himself as a Christian deist. He was an energetic controversialist. Among his works are Philosophical Principles of Medicine (1725); Collection of Tracts (1726), essays dealing with the Trinitarian controversy; The Moral Philosopher (1737), a dialogue between a Christian Jew, Theophanus, and a Christian deist, Philalethes. He died on the 14th of January 1742/3.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Morgen

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​MORGEN, a unit of measurement of land in Holland and the Dutch colonies, and hence still current in South Africa, equivalent to about 2 acres. It is also used in Prussia, Norway and Denmark, where it equals about two-thirds of an acre. The word is usually taken to be the same as the German and Dutch word for “morning,” the area of a “morgen” being equal, to that covered by a morning’s ploughing.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Morganatic Marriage

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​MORGANATIC MARRIAGE, a form of marriage properly peculiar to the German peoples, but also found in the royal families of other European countries. It is one in which the contracting parties are not by birth of equal status or rank (ebenbürtig), and under which the wife, if not ebenbürtig, does not take the rank of her husband, and the children, whether it be the wife or husband that is of lower rank, have no right of succession to the dignities, fiefs or entailed property of the parent of higher rank. This equality by birth was formerly throughout Germany the necessary condition to a complete and perfect marriage, but it is now only applicable to members of reigning houses or of the higher nobility (hoher Adel ), and it is thus of force among the “mediatized” princes of the German Empire. In the constitution of the various states, and in the “house laws” (Hausgesetze) of the reigning families, the rules are laid down as to what constitutes ebenbürtigkeit. Generally it may be said that members of a present or former reigning house, either in Germany or Europe, would be recognized as ebenbürtig, but a former morganatic marriage would be taken as destroying the qualification. In Great Britain the regulations as to the marriages of members of the royal family are contained in the Royal Marriage Act 1772 (see Marriage). The term “morganatic marriage” is applied generally to any marriage of a person of royal blood with one of inferior rank. The origin of the term, in medieval Latin matrimonium ad morganaticam, is usually taken to refer to the Morgengabe, i.e. the morning gift, made by a husband to his wife on marriage. The German name is Ehe zur linken Hand (marriage by the left hand, whence the phrase a “left-handed marriage”), the husband of such marriage ceremonies giving the left instead of the right hand to the bride. Such marriages are recognized as fully binding by the Church, and the children are legitimate, and no other marriage can take place during the lifetime of the contracting parties.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Morgarten

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​MORGARTEN, the name of the pasture slopes that descend westwards to the south end of the lake of Aegeri in the Swiss canton of Zug, about 2 m. by road from the Sattel station on the railway line from Schwyz to Zürich. It was at the foot of these slopes and on the shore of the lake that the small Swiss force defeated the large Austrian army, advancing from Zug on Schwyz, on the 15th of November 1315, and so laid the foundations of Swiss liberty. As the lake has shrunk, the exact site of the battle has been disputed. It seems most probable that it took place near the Haselmatt Chapel, in the territory of Zug, where is the official monument, but some hold that the real site was in Schwyz territory, near the old tower and battle chapel of Schornen, in the gorge between the lake and Sattel.
The original accounts of the battle are collected in part iii. (1884) of ​the Mitteilungen of the Historical Society of Schwyz. See also the careful study in K. Bürkli’s Ein Denkmal am Morgarten wo ist sein Platz? (Zug, 1895).