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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Flood Plain

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​FLOOD PLAIN, the term in physical geography for a plain formed of sediment dropped by a river. When the slope down which a river runs has become very slight, it is unable to carry the sediment brought from higher regions nearer its source, and consequently the lower portion of the river valley becomes filled with alluvial deposits; and since in times of flood the rush of water in the high regions tears off and carries down a greater quantity of sediment than usual, the river spreads this also over the lower valley where the plain is flooded, because the rush of water is checked, and the stream in consequence drops its extra load. These flood plains are sometimes of great extent. That of the Mississippi below Ohio has a width of from 20 to 80 m., and its whole extent has been estimated at 50,000 sq. m. Flood plains may be the result of planation, with aggradation, that is, they may be due to a graded river working in meanders from side to side, widening its valley by this process and covering the widened valley with sediment. Or the stream by cutting into another stream (piracy), by cutting through a barrier near its head waters, by entering a region of looser or softer rock, and by glacial drainage, may form a flood plain simply by filling up its valley (alluviation only). Any obstruction across a river’s course, such as a band of hard rock, may form a flood plain behind it, and indeed anything which checks a river’s course and causes it to drop its load will tend to form a flood plain; but it is most commonly found near the mouth of a large river, such as the Rhine, the Nile, or the Mississippi, where there are occasional floods and the river usually carries a large amount of sediment. “Levees” are formed, inside which the river usually flows, gradually raising its bed above the surrounding plain. Occasional breaches during floods cause the overloaded stream to spread in a great lake over the surrounding country, where the silt covers the ground in consequence. Sections of the Missouri flood plain made by the United States geological survey show a great variety of material of varying coarseness, the stream bed being scoured at one place, and filled at another by currents and floods of varying swiftness, so that sometimes the deposits are of coarse gravel, sometimes of fine sand, or of fine silt, and it is probable that any section of such an alluvial plain would show deposits of a similar character. The flood plain during its formation is marked by meandering, or anastomosing streams, ox-bow lakes and bayous, ​marshes or stagnant pools, and is occasionally completely covered with water. When the drainage system has ceased to act or is entirely diverted owing to any cause, the flood plain may become a level area of great fertility, similar in appearance to the floor of an old lake. The flood plain differs, however, inasmuch as it is not altogether flat. It has a gentle slope down-stream, and often for a distance from the sides towards the centre.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aristolochia

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​ARISTOLOCHIA (Gr. ἄριστος, best, λοχεία, child-birth, in allusion to its repute in promoting child-birth), a genus of shrubs or herbs of the natural order Aristolochiaceae, often with climbing stems, found chiefly in the tropics. The flower forms a tube inflated at the base. A. Clematitis, birthwort, is a central and southern European species, found sometimes in England apparently wild on ruins and similar places, but not a native. A. Sipho, Dutchman’s pipe, or pipe vine, is a climber, native in the woods of the Atlantic United States, and grown in Europe as a garden plant. The flower is bent like a pipe.
A member of the same order is the asarabacca (Asarum europaeum), a small creeping herb with kidney-shaped leaves and small purplish bell-shaped flowers. It is a native of the woods of Europe and north temperate Asia, and occurs wild in some English counties. It was formerly grown for medicinal purposes, the underground stem having cathartic and emetic properties. An allied species, A. canadense, is the Canadian snake-root, a native of Canada and the Atlantic United States.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Arisugawa

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​ARISUGAWA, the name of one of the royal families of Japan, going back to the seventh son of the mikado Go-Yozei (d. 1638). After the revolution of 1868, when the mikado Mutsu-hito was restored, his uncle, Prince Taruhito Arisugawa (1835–1895), became commander-in-chief, and in 1875 president of the senate. ​After his suppression of the Satsuma rebellion he was made a field-marshal, and he was chief of the staff in the war with China (1894–95). His younger brother, Prince Takehito Arisugawa (b. 1862), was from 1879 to 1882 in the British navy, serving in the Channel Squadron, and studied at the Naval College, Greenwich. In the Chino-Japanese War of 1894–95 he was in command of a cruiser, and subsequently became admiral-superintendent at Yokosuka. Prince Arisugawa represented Japan in England together with Marquis Ito at the Diamond Jubilee (1897), and in 1905 was again received there as the king’s guest.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aristodemus

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​ARISTODEMUS (8th century B.C.), semi-legendary ruler of Messenia in the time of the first Messenian War. Tradition relates that, after some six years’ fighting, the Messenians were forced to retire to the fortified summit of Ithome. The Delphic oracle bade them sacrifice a virgin of the house of Aepytus. Aristodemus offered his own daughter, and when her lover, hoping to save her life, declared that she was no longer a maiden, he slew her with his own hand to prove the assertion false. In the thirteenth year of the war, Euphaes, the Messenian king, died. As he left no children, popular election was resorted to, and Aristodemus was chosen as his successor, though the national soothsayers objected to him as the murderer of his daughter. As a ruler he was mild and conciliatory. He was victorious in the pitched battle fought at the foot of Ithome in the fifth year of his reign, a battle in which the Messenians, reinforced by the entire Arcadian levy and picked contingents from Argos and Sicyon, defeated the combined Spartan and Corinthian forces. Shortly afterwards, however, led by unfavourable omens to despair of final success, he killed himself on his daughter’s tomb. Though little is known of his life and the chronology is uncertain, yet Aristodemus may fairly be regarded as a historical character. His reign is dated 731–724 B.C. by Pausanias, and this may be taken as approximately correct, though Duncker (History of Greece, Eng. trans., ii. p. 69) inclines to place it eight years later.
Pausanias iv. 9-13 is practically our only authority. He followed as his chief source the prose history of Myron of Priene, an untrustworthy writer, probably of the 2nd century B.C.; hence a good deal of his story must be regarded as fanciful, though we cannot distinguish accurately between the true and the fictitious. (M. N. T.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aristonicus

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​ARISTONICUS, of Alexandria, Greek grammarian, lived during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. He taught at Rome and wrote commentaries and grammatical treatises. His chief work was Περὶ Σημείων Όμήρου, in which he gave an account of the “critical marks” inserted by Aristarchus in the margin of his recension of the text of the Iliad and Odyssey. Important fragments are preserved in the scholia of the Venetian Codex A of the Iliad.
Friedländer, Aristonici Περὶ Σημείων Ίλιάδος reliquiae (1853); Carnuth, Aristonici Περὶ Σημείων Όδυσσεἰας reliquiae (1869).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aristophanes (Critic)

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​ARISTOPHANES, of Byzantium, Greek critic and grammarian, was born about 257 B.C. He removed early to Alexandria, where he studied under Zenodotus and Callimachus. At the age of sixty he was appointed chief librarian of the museum. He died about 185–180 B.C. Aristophanes chiefly devoted himself to the poets, especially Homer, who had already been edited by his master Zenodotus. He also edited Hesiod, the chief lyric, tragic and comic poets, arranged Plato’s dialogues in trilogies, and abridged Aristotle’s Nature of Animals. His arguments to the plays of Aristophanes and the tragedians are in great part preserved. His works on Athenian courtesans, masks and proverbs were the results of his study of Attic comedy. He further commented on the Πίνακες of Callimachus, a sort of history of Greek literature. As a lexicographer, Aristophanes compiled collections of foreign and unusual words and expressions, and special lists (words denoting relationship, modes of address). As a grammarian, he founded a scientific school, and in his Analogy systematically explained the various forms. He introduced critical signs—except the obelus; punctuation prosodiacal, and accentual marks were probably already in use. The foundation of the so-called Alexandrian “canon” was also due to his impulse (Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol., ed. 1906, i. 129 f.).
Nauck, Aristophanis Byzantii Grammatici Fragmenta (1848).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aristoxenus

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​ARISTOXENUS, of Tarentum (4th century B.C.), a Greek peripatetic philosopher, and writer on music and rhythm. He was taught first by his father Spintharus, a pupil of Socrates, and later by the Pythagoreans, Lamprus of Erythrae and Xenophilus, from whom he learned the theory of music. Finally he studied under Aristotle at Athens, and was deeply annoyed, it is said, when Theophrastus was appointed head of the school on Aristotle’s death. His writings, said to have numbered four hundred and fifty-three, were in the style of Aristotle, and dealt with philosophy, ethics and music. The empirical tendency of his thought is shown in his theory that the soul is related to the body as harmony to the parts of a musical instrument. We have no evidence as to the method by which he deduced this theory (cf. T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Eng. trans. 1905, vol. iii. p. 43). In music he held that the notes of the scale are to be judged, not as the Pythagoreans held, by mathematical ratio, but by the ear. The only work of his that has come down to us is the three books of the Elements of Harmony (ῥυθμικὰ στοιχεῖα), an incomplete musical treatise. Grenfell and Hunt’s Oxyrhynchus Papyri (vol. i., 1898) contains a five-column fragment of a treatise on metre, probably this treatise of Aristoxenus.
The best edition is by Paul Marquard, with German translation and full commentary, Die harmonischen Fragmente des Aristoxenus (Berlin, 1868). The fragments are also given in C. W. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec., ii. 269 sqq.; and R. Westphal, Melik und Rhythmik d. klass. Hellenenthums (2nd vol. edited by F. Saran, Leipzig, 1893). Eng. trans. by H. S. Macran (Oxford, 1902). See also W. L. Mahne, Diatribe de Aristoxeno (Amsterdam, 1793); B. Brill, Aristoxenus’ rhythmische und metrische Messungen (1871); R. Westphal, Griechische Rhythmik und Harmonik (Leipzig, 1867); L. Laloy, Aristoxène de Tarente et la musique de l’antiquité (Paris, 1904); See Peripatetics, Pythagoras (Music) and art. “Greek Music” in Grove’s Dict. of Music (1904). For the Oxyrhynchus fragment see Classical Review (January 1898), and C. van Jan in Bursian’s Jahresbericht, civ. (1901).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maitland, East and West

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​MAITLAND, EAST and WEST, adjoining municipalities in Northumberland county, New South Wales, Australia, 120 m. by rail N. of Sydney. Pop. (1901), West Maitland, 6798; East Maitland, 3287. These towns are situated in a valley on the Hunter River, which is liable to sudden floods, to guard against which the river is protected by stone embankments at West Maitland, while there are flood-gates at East Maitland. Maitland is the centre of the rich agricultural district of the Hunter Valley, which produces maize, wheat and other cereals, lucerne, tobacco, fruit and wine; excellent coal also is worked in the vicinity. East Maitland is the see of a Roman Catholic bishop, whose cathedral (St John’s), however, is situated in the larger town. Besides this, West Maitland contains several handsome public and commercial buildings.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maitland, Edward

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​MAITLAND, EDWARD (1824–1897), English humanitarian writer, was born at Ipswich on the 27th of October 1824, and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. The son of Charles David Maitland, perpetual curate of St James’s Chapel, Brighton, he was intended for the Church, but his religious views did not permit him to take holy orders. For some years he lived abroad, first in California and then as a commissioner of Crownlands in Australia. After his return to England in 1857 he took up an advanced humanitarian position, and claimed to have acquired a new sense by which he was able to discern the spiritual condition of other people. He was associated with Mrs Anna Kingsford (1846–1888), the lady-doctor and supporter of vegetarianism and anti-vivisectionism, who, besides being one of the pioneers of higher education for women, had become a devotee of mystical theosophy; with her he brought out Keys of the Creeds (1875), The Perfect Way: or the Finding of Christ (1882), and founded the Hermetic Society in 1884. After her death he founded the Esoteric Christian Union in 1891, and wrote her Life and Letters (1896). He died on the 2nd of October 1897.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mairet, Jean de

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​MAIRET, JEAN DE (1604–1686), French dramatist, was born at Besançon, and baptized on the 10th of May 1604. His own statement that he was born in 1610 has been disproved. He went to Paris to study at the Collège des Grassins about 1625, in which year he produced his first piece Chriséide et Arimand, followed in 1626 by Sylvie, a “pastoral tragi-comedy.” In 1634 appeared his masterpiece, Sophonisbe, which marks, in its observance of the rules, the beginning of the “regular” tragedies. Mairet was one of the bitterest assailants of Corneille in the controversy over The Cid. It was perhaps his jealousy of Corneille that made him give up writing for the stage. He was appointed in 1648 official representative of the Franche-Comté in Paris, but in 1653 he was banished by Mazarin. He was subsequently allowed to return, but in 1668 he retired to Besançon, where he died on the 31st of January 1686. His other plays include Silvanire ou la Morte-vive, published in 1631 with an elaborate preface on the observance of the unities, Les Galanteries du duc d’Orsonne (1632), Virginie (1633), Marc-Antoine (1635), and Le Grand et dernier Solyman (1637).
See G. Bizos, Étude sur la vie et les œuvres de Jean de Mairet (1877). Sophonisbe was edited by K. Vollmöller (Heilbronn, 1888), and Silvanire by R. Otto (Bamberg, 1890).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maitland, Frederic William

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​MAITLAND, FREDERIC WILLIAM (1850–1906), English jurist and historian, son of John Gorham Maitland, was born on the 28th of May 1850, and educated at Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, being bracketed at the head of the moral sciences tripos of 1872, and winning a Whewell scholarship for international law. He was called to the bar (Lincoln’s Inn) in 1876, and made himself a thoroughly competent equity lawyer and conveyancer, but finally devoted himself to comparative jurisprudence and especially the history of English law. In 1884 he was appointed reader in English law at Cambridge, and in 1888 became Downing professor of the laws of England. Though handicapped in his later years by delicate health, his intellectual grasp and wide knowledge and research gradually made him famous as a jurist and historian. He edited numerous volumes for the Selden Society, including Select Pleas for the Crown, 1200–1225, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts and The Court Baron; and among his principal works were Gloucester Pleas (1884), Justice and Police (1885), Bracton’s Note-Book (1887), History of English Law (with Sir F. Pollock, 1895; new ed. 1898; see also his article English Law in this encyclopaedia), Domesday Book and Beyond (1897), Township and Borough (1898), Canon Law in England (1898), English Law and the Renaissance (1901), the Life of Leslie Stephen (1906), besides important contributions to the Cambridge Modern History, the English Historical Review, the Law Quarterly Review, Harvard Law Review and other publications. His writings are marked by vigour and vitality of style, as well as by the highest qualities of the historian who recreates the past from the original sources; he had no sympathy with either legal or historical pedantry; and his death at Grand Canary on the 19th of December 1906 deprived English law and letters of one of their most scholarly and most inspiring representatives, notable alike for sweetness of character, acuteness in criticism, and wisdom in counsel.
See P. Vinogradoff’s article on Maitland in the English Historical Review (1907); Sir F. Pollock’s in the Quarterly Review (1907); G. T. Lapsley’s in The Green Bag (Boston, Mass., 1907); A. L. Smith, F. W. Maitland (1908); H. A. L. Fisher, F. W. Maitland (1910).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maiwand

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​MAIWAND, a village of Afghanistan, 50 m. N.W. of Kandahar. It is chiefly notable for the defeat inflicted on a British brigade under General Burrows by Ayub Khan on the 27th of July 1880 during the second Afghan War (see Afghanistan). Ayub Khan, Shere Ali’s younger son, who had been holding Herat during the British operations at Kabul and Kandahar, set out towards Kandahar with a small army in June 1880, and a brigade under General Burrows was detached from Kandahar to oppose him. Burrows advanced to the Helmund, opposite Girishk, to oppose Ayub Khan, but was there deserted by the troops of Shere Ali, the wali of Kandahar, and forced to retreat to Kushk-i-Nakhud, half way to Kandahar. In order to prevent Ayub passing to Ghazni, Burrows advanced to Maiwand on the 27th of July, and attacked Ayub, who had already seized that place. The Afghans, who numbered 25,000, outflanked the British, the artillery expended their ammunition, and the native portion of the Brigade got out of hand and pressed back on the few British infantry. The British were ​completely routed, and had to thank the apathy of the Afghans for escaping total annihilation. Of the 2476 British troops engaged, 934 were killed and 175 wounded or missing. This defeat necessitated Sir Frederick Roberts’ famous march from Kabul to Kandahar.
See Lord Roberts, Forty-one Years in India (1896).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maistre, Xavier de

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​MAISTRE, XAVIER DE (1763–1852), younger brother of Joseph de Maistre, was born at Chambéry in October 1763. He served when young in the Piedmontese army, and wrote his delightful fantasy, Voyage autour de ma chambre (published 1794) when he was under arrest at Turin in consequence of a duel. Xavier shared the politics and the loyalty of his brother, and on the annexation of Savoy to France, he left the service, and took a commission in the Russian army. He served under Suvarov in his victorious Austro-Russian campaign and accompanied the marshal to Russia. He shared the disgrace of his general, and supported himself for some time in St Petersburg by miniature painting. But on his brother’s arrival in St Petersburg he was introduced to the minister of marine. He was appointed to several posts in the capital, but also saw active service, was wounded in the Caucasus, and attained the rank of major-general. He married a Russian lady and established himself in his adopted country, even after the overthrow of Napoleon, and the consequent restoration of the Piedmontese dynasty. For a time, however, he lived at Naples, but he returned to St Petersburg and died there on the 12th of June 1852. He was only once in Paris (in 1839), when Sainte-Beuve, who has left some pleasant reminiscences of him, met him. Besides the Voyage already mentioned, Xavier de Maistre’s works (all of which are of very modest dimensions) are Le Lépreux de la cité d’Aoste (1811), a touching little story of human misfortune; Les Prisonniers du Caucase, a powerful sketch of Russian character, La Jeune Sibérienne, and the Expédition nocturne, a sequel to the Voyage autour de ma chambre (1825). His style is of remarkable ease and purity.
His works, with the exception of some brief chemical tractates, are included in the collections of Charpentier, Garnier, &c. See Sainte-Beuve’s Portraits contemporains, vol. iii.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maitreya

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​MAITREYA, the name of the future Buddha. In one of the works included in the Pali canon, the Dīgha Nikāya, a prophecy is put into the Buddha’s mouth that after the decay of the religion another Buddha, named Metteyya, will arise who will have thousands of followers instead of the hundreds that the historical Buddha had. This is the only mention of the future Buddha in the canon. For some centuries we hear nothing more about him. But when, in the period just before and after the Christian era, some Buddhists began to write in Sanskrit instead of Pali, they composed new works in which Maitreya (the Sanskrit form of Metteyya) is more often mentioned, and details are given as to his birthplace and history. These are entirely devised in imitation of the details of the life of the historical Buddha, and have no independent value. Only the names differ. The document in which the original prophecy occurs was put together at some date during the 1st century after the Buddha’s death (see Nikāya). It is impossible to say whether tradition was, at that time, correct in attributing it to the Buddha. But whoever chose the name (it is a patronymic or family, not a personal name), had no doubt regard to the etymological connexion with the word for “love,” which is Mettā in Pali. This would only be one of those punning allusions so frequent in Indian literature.
Long afterwards, probably in the 6th or 7th century, a reformer in south India, at a time when the incoming flood of ritualism and superstition threatened to overwhelm the simple teaching of the earlier Buddhism, wrote a Pali poem, entitled the Anāgata Vaṃsa. In this he described the golden age of the future when, in the time of Metteyya, kings, ministers and people would vie one with the other in the maintenance of the original simple doctrine, and in the restoration of the good times of old. The other side also claimed the authority of the future Buddha for their innovations. Statues of Maitreya are found in Buddhist temples, of all sects, at the present day; and the belief in his future advent is universal among Buddhists.
Authorities.—Dīgha Nikāya, vol. iii., edited by J. E. Carpenter, (London, 1908); “Anāgata Vaṃsa,” edited by J. Minayeff in Journal of the Pali Text Society (1886); Watters on Yuan Chwang, edited by Rhys Davids and S. W. Bushell (London, 1904–1905). (T. W. R. D.)