OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mistletoe

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​MISTLETOE (Viscum album), a species of Viscum, of the botanical family Loranthaceae. The whole genus is parasitical, and contains about twenty species, widely distributed in the warmer parts of the old world; but only the mistletoe proper is a native of Europe. It forms an evergreen bush, about 4 ft. in length, thickly crowded with forking branches and opposite leaves, which are about 2 in. long, obovate-lanceolate in shape and yellowish-green; the dioecious flowers, which are small and nearly of the same colour but yellower, appear in February and March; the white berry when ripe is filled with a viscous semi-transparent pulp (whence bird-lime is derived). The mistletoe is parasitic both on deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs. In England it is most abundant on the apple-tree, but rarely found on the oak. Poplars, willows, lime, mountain-ash, maples, are favourite habitats, and it is also found on many other trees, including cedar of Lebanon and larch. The fruit is eaten by most frugivorous birds, and through their agency, particularly that of the species which is accordingly known as missel-thrush or mistle-thrush, the plant is propagated. The Latin proverb has it that “Turdus malum sibi cacat”; but the sowing is really effected by the bird wiping its beak, to which the seeds adhere, against the bark of the tree on which it has alighted. The viscid pulp soon hardens, affording a protection to the seed; in germination the sucker-root penetrates the bark, and a connexion is established with the vascular tissue of the first plant. The growth of the plant is slow, and its durability proportionately great, its death being determined generally by that of the tree on which it has established itself. The mistletoe so extensively used in England at Christmas is largely derived from the apple orchards of Normandy; a quantity is also sent from the apple orchards of Herefordshire.
Pliny (H. N., xvi. 92–95; xxiv. 6) has a good deal to tell about the viscum, a deadly parasite, though slower in its action than ivy. He distinguishes three “genera.” “On the fir and larch grows what is called stelis in Euboea and hyphear in Arcadia.” Viscum, called dryos hyphear, is most plentiful on the esculent oak, but occurs also on the robur, Prunus sylvestris and terebinth. Hyphear is useful for fattening cattle if they are hardy enough to withstand the purgative effect it produces at first; viscum is medicinally of value as an emollient, and in cases of tumour, ulcers and the like. Pliny is also our authority for the reverence in which the mistletoe when found growing on the robur was held by the Druids. Prepared as a draught, it was used as a cure for sterility and a remedy for poisons. The mistletoe figures also in Scandinavian legend as having furnished the material of the arrow with which Balder (the sun-god) was slain by the blind god Höder. Most probably this story had its origin in a particular theory as to the meaning of the word mistletoe.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Missolonghi

​MISSOLONGHI, or Mesolonghi (Μεσολόγγιον), the chief town of the monarchy of Acarnania and Aetolia, Greece. It is on the N. side of the Gulf of Patras, about 7 m. from the coast; pop., about 8300. The place is notable for the siege which Mavrocordato and Botzaris sustained in 1822 and 1823 against a Turkish army 11,000 strong, and for the more famous defence of 1825–26. Byron died here in 1824, and is commemorated by a cenotaph and a statue.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Missoula

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​MISSOULA, a city and the county-seat of Missoula county, Montana, U.S.A., on the Clark Fork of the Columbia (here called the Missoula river), about 125 m. W.N.W. of Helena. Pop. (1900), 4366 (1020 foreign-born); (1910), 12,869. It is served by the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound railway, and by the Northern Pacific railway, which has shops here and of which Missoula is a division headquarters. There is an electric railway from Missoula to Hamilton, about 48 m. south. The Northern Pacific railway maintains a large hospital here, and St Patrick’s hospital is maintained by sisters of charity. Missoula is about 3200 ft. above sea-level, with Mount Jumbo immediately north, and University Mountain immediately south of the Clark Fork, and the Bitter Root range to the west. The city is situated on the bed of a prehistoric lake. Missoula is the seat of the Sacred Heart academy (for girls), of a Christian Brothers' school (for boys), of the Garden City commercial college, and of the state university (founded in 1893, and opened in 1895), which occupies a campus of 40 acres. On the Bitter Root river, 4 m. distant, is the United States army post; Fort Missoula. Missoula has considerable trade with the surrounding country in farming, fruit-growing, lumbering and mining. The Clark Fork furnishes water power, and at Bonner, 6 m. east, is the Clark dam (28 ft.), which furnishes electric power. Missoula was founded in 1864, and chartered as a city in 1887.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mistake

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​MISTAKE (i.e. take amiss), a misconception or error in thought or action. In law, the word is often used in the sense of ignorance or error, as when it is said that mistake of law affords no excuse for crime. In the law of contract, mistake is of special importance, and may occur either in a matter of law or in a matter of fact. In general, a mistake of law cannot be alleged in avoidance of the consequences of contracts or acts, although there are exceptions in which relief may be given. Mistake of fact, however, may be ground for avoidance, provided the mistake was not due to negligence. (See further Contract.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marsh, George Perkins

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​MARSH, GEORGE PERKINS (1801–1882), American diplomatist and philologist, was born at Woodstock, Vermont, on the 15th of March 1801. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1820, was admitted to the bar in 1825, and practised law at Burlington, Vermont, devoting himself also with ardour to philological studies. In 1835 he was a member of the Supreme Executive Council of Vermont, and from 1843 to 1849 a Whig representative in Congress. In 1849 he was appointed United States minister resident in Turkey, and in 1852–1853 discharged a mission to Greece in connexion with the imprisonment by the authorities of that country of an American missionary, Dr Jonas King (1792–1869). He returned to Vermont in 1854, and in 1857 was a member of the state railway commission. In 1861 he became the first United States minister to the kingdom of Italy, and died in that office at Vallombrosa on the 23rd of July 1882. He was buried in a Protestant cemetery in Rome. Marsh was an able linguist, writing and speaking with ease the Scandinavian and half a dozen other European languages, a remarkable philologist for his day, and a scholar of great breadth, knowing much of military science, engraving and physics, as well as of Icelandic, which was his specialty. He wrote many articles for Johnson’s Universal Cyclopaedia, and contributed many reviews and letters to the Nation. His chief published works are: A Compendious Grammar of the Old Northern or Icelandic Language (1838), compiled and translated from the grammars of Rask; The Camel, his Organization, Habits, and Uses, with Reference to his Introduction into the United States (1856); Lectures on the English Language (1860); The Origin and History of the English Language (1862; revised ed., 1885); and Man and Nature (1865). The last-named work was translated into Italian in 1872, and, largely rewritten, was issued in 1874 under the title The Earth as Modified by Human Action; a revised edition was published in 1885. He also published a work on Mediaeval and Modern Saints and Miracles (1876). His valuable library was presented in 1883 by Frederick Billings to the university of Vermont. His second wife, Caroline (Crane) Marsh (1816–1901), whom he married in 1839, published Wolfe of the Knoll and other Poems (1860), and the Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh (New York, 1888). This last work was left incomplete, the second volume never having been published. She also translated from the German of Johann C. Biernatzki (1795–1840), The Hallig; or the Sheepfold in the Waters (1856).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marsh

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​MARSH (O. F. mersc, for merisc, a place full of “meres” or pools; cf. Ger. Meer, sea, Lat. mare), an area of low-lying watery land. The significance of a marsh area is not so much in the manner of its formation as in the peculiar chemical and physical results that accompany it, and its relation to the ecology of plant and animal life. Chemically it is productive of such gases as arise from decomposing vegetation and are transitory in their effects, and in the production of hydrated iron oxide, which may be seen floating as an iridescent scum at the edge of rusty, marshy pools. This sinks into the soil and forms a powerful iron cement to many sandstones, binding them into a hard local mass, while the surrounding sandstones are loose and friable. A curious morphological inversion follows in a later geological period, the marsh area forming the hard cap of a hill (see Mesa) while the surrounding sandstones are weathered away. Salt marshes are a feature of many low-lying sea-coasts and areas of inland drainage.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marsh, Adam

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​MARSH, ADAM (Adam de Marisco) (d. c. 1258), English Franciscan, scholar and theologian, was born about 1200 in the diocese of Bath, and educated at Oxford under the famous Grosseteste. Before 1226 Adam received the benefice of Wearmouth from his uncle, Richard Marsh, bishop of Durham; but between that year and 1230 he entered the Franciscan order. About 1238 he became the lecturer of the Franciscan house at Oxford, and within a few years was regarded by the English province of that order as an intellectual and spiritual leader. Roger Bacon, his pupil, speaks highly of his attainments in theology and mathematics. His fame, however, rests upon the influence which he exercised over the statesmen of his day. Consulted as a friend by Grosseteste, as a spiritual director by Simon de Montfort, the countess of Leicester and the queen, as an expert lawyer and theologian by the primate, Boniface of Savoy, he did much to guide the policy both of the opposition and of the court party in all matters affecting the interests of the Church. He shrank from office, and never became provincial minister of the English Franciscans, though constantly charged with responsible commissions. Henry III. and Archbishop Boniface unsuccessfully endeavoured to secure for him the see of Ely in 1256. In 1257 Adam’s health was failing, and he appears to have died in the following year. To judge from his correspondence he took no interest in secular politics. He sympathized with Montfort as with a friend of the Church and an unjustly treated man; but on the eve of the baronial revolution he was on friendly terms with the king. Faithful to the traditions of his order, he made it his ambition to be a mediator. He rebuked both parties in the state for their shortcomings, but he did not break with either.
See his correspondence, with J. S. Brewer’s introduction, in Monumenta franciscana, vol. i. (Rolls ser., 1858); the biographical notice in A. G. Little’s Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford, 1892), where all the references are collected. On Marsh’s relations with Grosseteste, see Roberti Grosseteste epistolae, ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls ed., 1861), and F. S. Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste (London, 1809). (H. W. C. D.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marsh, Narcissus

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​MARSH, NARCISSUS (1638–1713), archbishop of Dublin and Armagh, was born at Hannington, Wiltshire, and educated at Oxford. He became a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, in 1658. In 1662 he was ordained, and presented to the living of Swindon, which he resigned in the following year. After acting as chaplain to Seth Ward, bishop of Exeter and Salisbury, and Lord Chancellor Clarendon, he was elected principal of St Alban Hall, Oxford, in 1673. In 1679 he was appointed provost of Trinity College, Dublin, where he did much to encourage the study of the Irish language. He helped to found the Royal Dublin Society, and contributed to it a paper entitled “Introductory Essay to the Doctrine of Sounds” (printed in Philosophical Transactions, No. 156, Oxford, 1684). In 1683 he was consecrated bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, but after the accession of James II. he was compelled by the turbulent soldiery to flee to England (1689), where he became vicar of Gresford, Flint, and canon of St Asaph. Returning to Ireland in 1691 after the battle of the Boyne, he was made archbishop of Cashel, and three years later he became archbishop of Dublin. About this time he founded the Marsh Library in Dublin. He became archbishop of Armagh in 1703. Between 1699 and 1711 he was six times a lord justice of Ireland. He died on the 2nd of November 1713.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marsden, William

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​MARSDEN, WILLIAM (1754–1836), English orientalist, the son of a Dublin merchant, was born at Verval, Co. Wicklow on the 16th of November 1754. He was educated in Dublin, and having obtained an appointment in the civil service of the East India Company arrived at Benkulen, Sumatra, in 1771. There he soon rose to the office of principal secretary to the government, and acquired a knowledge of the Malay language and country. Returning to England in 1779 with a pension, he wrote his History of Sumatra, published in 1783. Marsden was appointed in 1795 second secretary and afterwards first secretary to the admiralty. In 1807 he retired and published in 1812 his Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language, and in 1818 his translation of the Travels of Marco Polo. He was a member of many learned societies, and treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society. In 1834 he presented his collection of oriental coins to the British Museum, and his library of books and Oriental MSS. to King’s College, London. He died on the 6th of October 1836.
Marsden’s other works are: Numismata orientalia (London, 1823–1825); Catalogue of Dictionaries, Vocabularies, Grammars and Alphabets (1796); and several papers on Eastern topics in the Philosophical Transactions and the Archaelogia.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marsh, Herbert

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​MARSH, HERBERT (1757–1839), English divine, was born at Faversham, Kent, on the 10th of December 1757, and was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1782, having been second wrangler and second Smith’s prizeman. For some years he studied at Leipzig, and between 1793 and 1801 published in four volumes a translation of J. D. Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament, with notes of his own, in which he may be said to have introduced German methods of research into English biblical scholarship. His History of the Politics of Great Britain and France (1799) brought him much notice and a pension from William Pitt. In 1807 he was appointed Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge, and lectured to large audiences on biblical criticism, substituting English for the traditional Latin. Both here, and afterwards as bishop of Llandaff (1816) and of Peterborough (1819), he stoutly opposed ​hymn-singing, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, and the Evangelical movement as represented by Charles Simeon and the Bible Society. Among his writings are Lectures on the Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible (1828), A Comparative View of the Churches of England and Rome (1814), and Horae Pelasgicae (1815). He died at Peterborough on the 1st of May 1839.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marsh, Othniel Charles

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​MARSH, OTHNIEL CHARLES (1831–1899), American palaeontologist, was born in Lockport, New York, on the 29th of October 1831. He graduated at Yale College in 1860, and studied geology and mineralogy in the Sheffield scientific school, New Haven, and afterwards palaeontology and anatomy in Berlin, Heidelberg and Breslau. Returning to America in 1866 he was appointed professor of vertebrate palaeontology at Yale College, and there began the researches of the fossil vertebrata of the western states, whereby he established his reputation. He was aided by a private fortune from his uncle, George Peabody, whom he induced to establish the Peabody Museum of Natural History (especially devoted to zoology, geology and mineralogy) in the college. In May 1871 he discovered the first pterodactyl remains found in America, and in subsequent years he brought to light from Wyoming and other regions many new genera and families, and some entirely new orders of extinct vertebrata, which he described in monographs or periodical articles. These included remains of the Cretaceous toothed birds Hesperornis and Ichthyornis, the Cretaceous flying-reptiles (Pteranodon), the swimming reptiles or Mosasauria, and the Cretaceous and Jurassic land reptiles (Dinosauria) among which were the Brontosaurus and Atlantosaurus. The remarkable mammals which he termed Brontotheria (now grouped as Titanotheriidae), and the huge Dinocerata, one being the Uintatherium, were also brought to light by him. Among his later discoveries were remains of early ancestors of horses in America. On becoming vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1875 he gave an address on the “Introduction and Succession of Vertebrate Life in America,” summarizing his conclusions to that date. He repeatedly organized and often accompanied scientific exploring expeditions in the Rocky Mountains, and their results tended in an important degree to support the doctrines of natural selection and evolution. He published many papers on these, and found time—besides that necessarily given to the accumulation and care of the most extensive collection of fossils in the world—to write Odontornithes: A Monograph on the Extinct Toothed Birds of North America (1880); Dinocerata: A Monograph on an Extinct Order of Gigantic Mammals (1884); and The Dinosaurs of North America (1896). His work is full of accurately recorded facts of permanent value. He was long in charge of the division of vertebrate palaeontology in the United States Geological Survey, and received many scientific honours, medals and degrees, American and foreign. He died in New Haven on the 18th of March 1899.
See obituary by Dr Henry Woodward (with portrait) in Geol. Mag. (1899), p. 237.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pinnacle

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​PINNACLE (from Lat. pinnaculum, a little feather, pinna; the Gr. πτερύγιον, diminutive of πτέρυξ, wing, is also used in this sense), an architectural ornament originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations Some writers have stated that there were no pinnacles in the Romanesque styles, but conical caps to circular buttresses, with finial terminations, are not uncommon in France at very early periods Viollet-le-Duc gives examples from St Germer and St Remi, and there is one of similar form at the west front of Rochester Cathedral. In the 12th-century Romanesque two examples have been cited, one from Bredon in Worcestershire, and the other from Cleeve in Gloucestershire. In these the buttresses run up, forming a sort of square turret, and crowned with a pyramidal cap, very much like those of the next period, the Early English. In this and the following styles the pinnacle seems generally to have had its appropriate uses. It was a weight to counteract the thrust of the vaults, particularly where there were flying buttresses, it stopped the tendency to slip of the stone copings of the gables, and counterpoised the thrust of spires, it formed a pier to steady the elegant perforated parapets of later periods, and in France especially served to counterbalance the weight of overhanging corbel tables, huge gargoyles, &c. In the Early English period the small buttresses frequently finished with gablets, and the more important with pinnacles supported with clustered shafts. At this period the pinnacles were often supported on these shafts alone, and were open below, and in larger work in this and the subsequent periods they frequently form niches and contain statues. About the Transition and during the Decorated period, the different faces above the angle shafts often finish with gablets. Those of the last-named period are much richer, and are generally decorated with crockets and finials, and sometimes with ball flowers Very fine groups are found at Beverley Minster and at the rise of the spire of St Mary's, Oxford. Perpendicular pinnacles differ but little from Decorated, except that the crockets and finials are of later character. They are also often set angle-ways, particularly on parapets, and the shafts are panelled. In France pinnacles, like spires, seem to have been in use earlier than in England. There are small pinnacles at the angles of the tower in the abbey of Saintes. At Roullet there are pinnacles in a similar position, each composed of four small shafts, with caps and bases surmounted with small pyramidal spires. In all these examples the towers have semicircular-headed windows.