MAMERS 



MAMMALS 



smallest details of house furniture and decoration. 

 The museums of Europe and Cairo are full of their 

 delicate inlaid and engraved brass-work, wood 

 carvings, ivory reliefs, enamelled glass, tiles and 

 stone and tilaster work, mosaic pavements, and 

 silk embroideries. Their court ceremonies were 

 gorgeous with the pomp of heraldry and armour 

 and da/./Hng rol>es ; their luxury at home was 

 itapendotu. Turks as a rule, they had tastes 

 beyond the ken of the Ottoman Turks who dis- 

 possessed them in 1517, and Egypt has not yet 

 recovered from their loss. After the Turkish 

 conquest the government was placed in the hands 

 of an Ottoman pasha assisted by a council ; whilst 

 twenty-four Mameluke bevs were allowed to admin- 

 ister the provinces. The beys retained most of the 

 power, however, and the pasha became a cipher. 

 Their last brilliant achievements were on the 

 -ion of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, 

 when they fought the disastrous battle of the 

 Pyramids near Cairo; but after the retirement of 

 the French and British armies Egypt became a prey 

 to disorder, rival Mamelukes fought and intrigued, 

 and order was not restored until Mohammed Ali 

 established his authority as pasha under the 

 Porte, and by two treacherous massacres, in 1805 

 and 1SI 1, exterminated the Mameluke princes, save 

 a small remnant who took refuge in the Sudan, 

 where their medieval armour was recently seen by 

 the British forces employed against the Mahdi. 



See Weil, Oetchichte tier Khalifen ; Quatremere, 

 Makrizi's Hittoire de* Sultant Mamlottkt ; S. Lane-Poole, 

 Art of tke Saracen* in Kyvpt ; Sir W. JIuir, The Mame- 

 luke or Slave l>y natty (1896). 



lliillKTS, a town in the French dep. of Sarthe, 

 on the Dive, 43 miles NNE.of Le Mans. Pop. 6288. 



Mamiani della Revere. CIH-XT TKRKX/IO, 



born in 1800 at Pesaro, took a prominent part in 

 the futile outbreak at the accession of Gregory 

 X VI., and was compelled to flee to Paris, whence he 

 returned to Koine in IK4.S after the unconditional 

 amnesty of Pius IX.. and actually held office for 

 three mon'li- in the papal ministry. He next with- 

 drew to Tin-in, where he founded, with (iioberti, 

 his him. MI- society for |ii-oiiioting Italian unity. On 

 the Might of Pius |\. from Home to I iai-ta he 

 re-entered the political arena, ami was for a short 

 period foreign minister in the revolutionary cabinet 

 of (iiiletti. On the fall of Koine he retired to 

 iJenoa: in IS.">ii he was returned member of the 

 Sardinian parliament, and in 1860 entered Cavour's 

 ministry as minister of Instruction. He was 

 appointed ambassador to Greece in 1861, to Swit- > 

 zerland in 186.3, and died at Koine. 21st May 1885. I 

 Among bin writings are Del Rinnirvamento ilella \ 

 jtiotofla antiea Italuina (1836), Poeti delf Et& nvdia 

 iHi-J), Del Papalo (1*51). Confeuioni tTun AfetaJUiro 

 (1865), Teorini delta Reluiionr e dello Stato (1868), 

 La. Relvivme del.F Arrnir (187!)), b si'les books on special 

 social and philosophical problems, and treatises on vari- 

 ous subjects. *-e his Life by Oaspari ( 1887 ). 



Mammals < .i/.<///,//.///.<. l,;u. H iii,,nn/i, 'a teat') 

 form what is usually considered the highest class 

 of backboned animals, including numerous orders, of 

 which horse, elephant, and whale, clog, leaver, and 

 bat, anthropoid a|*>, ami man himself are in differ- 

 ent, ways prominent illustrative types. Compared 

 with birds, mammals are most notably character- 

 ise,] by the greater development of their brains, 

 and by the close connection lietween mother and 

 offspring ; but in both these respects there are 

 grades ,,f excellence. Thus, the Monotremes (see 

 < 'l:\inioKilY VIM'S, and EriuDNA) have simple 

 brains ami lay eggs; the Marsupials (f|.v.) have 

 also laggi-d behind in cerebral development and 

 bring forth their young precociously after a short 

 ion ; while in the higher orders there are 

 many steps in the perfecting of brains and wits, 



and in the evolution of the organic connection 

 Iwtween the unborn young and the mother. The 

 habitats are also very varied, for though the great 

 majority are terrestrial burrowers, runners, leapers, 

 ami climbers, a thoroughly aquatic habit is exhib- 

 ited by the cetaceans, the sea-cows, the seals and 

 walruses, and many genera here and there, while 

 the bats have the power of true flight, and many 

 swooping forms, such as the flying opossums, 

 squirrels, and lemurs are more or less aerial (see 

 FI.YIXII ANIMALS). Similarly as regards food 

 there Is great variety, for fruit and insects, fish 

 and herbs, roots and flesh, are all utilised, and the 

 diversity of diet is associated with marked differ- 

 ences in Dentition (q.v.). About 2300 living 

 species have l>een recorded, varying in size from 

 the smallest harvest- mouse, which is scarcely the 

 weight of a halfpenny, to the giant whales, which 

 approach 100 feet in fength. 



General Characters. It will be useful to refer to 

 the article BIRD, where the three highest classes 

 of vertebrates are contrasted ; but a more detailed 

 summary is now necessary. Female mammals 

 always nourish their young for some time after 

 birth with the milk produced by the mammary 

 glands. Except in the oviparous Monotremes, the 

 young are Ixrni viviparoiisly ; and in all mammals 

 above Marsupials the embryo in the womb is 

 organically connected with the mother by means 

 of a Placenta (q.v.). The skin always bears at 

 least some hairs, and these usually cover the 

 whole body, so that most mammals may be justly 

 called furred quadrupeds. In l(ody-temperature, 

 which is some index to the pitch of the life, 

 mammals, though inferior to birds, are emphatically 

 warm-blooded ; and in this connection we may 

 notice that a complete muscular partition (niidriii 

 or diaphragm ) separates the breast from the abdom- 

 inal cavity. The lungs lie freely and are invested 

 by ( pleura! ) sacs ; the heart is four-chambered and 

 gives off a single aortic arch to the left side (to the 

 right in birds); the red blood-corpuscles are non- 

 nucleated when fully formed. The parts of the 

 adult brain show a greater curvature than in lower 

 forms, while the cerebral hemispheres predominate, 

 l>ecome more and more convoluted, and are united 

 by an important bridge called the corpus callosum. 

 Except in Monotremes, the rectal and the urino- 

 genital apertures are separate ; and, with the same 

 exception, the ova are small and poor in yolk, and 

 undergo total segmentation. The skeletal charac- 



| teristics are necessarily more technical, but it is 

 important to notice that the skull moves not on 



| one condyle as in birds and reptiles, but on two as 

 in amphibians ; the lower jaw is a single bone on 



I each side, and articulates not with the quadrate as 

 in Sauropsida but with the squamosal ; a chain of 

 three ear-ossicles (malleus, incus, and stapes, prob- 

 ably equivalent to the articular, quadrate, and 

 columefla or hyo-mandibular of lower forms) con- 

 nects the drum with the internal ear ; the teeth, 

 rarely quite absent, are set in distinct sockets ; the 

 vertebrae of the neck are (with three exceptions) 

 seven in number; the coracoid bone (except in 

 Monotremes ) is a mere process of the scapula ; and 

 so on. As the various systems are dealt with in 

 special articles (see BRAI'X, CIRCULATION, HAIR, 

 SKULL, &c. ), it seems unnecessary to expand the 

 above summary. 



Tin- Hub-classes of Mammnls.-ln 1816 De Blain- 

 ville divided mammals into three sub-classes, which 

 subsequent investigation has firmly established. 

 The two orders of Monotremes (duckmole and 

 Echidna) and of Marsupials (kangaroo, opossum, 

 &c. ) he raised to the rank of sub-classes under 

 the titles Ornithodelphia (lit. ' bird-worn bed ') and 

 Didelphia (lit. 'double- wombed'), in contrast to al! 

 the other mammals, which he termed Monodelphia. 



