MICKLE 



MICROPHONE 



179 



years later he was deprived of his chair, having 

 given offence to the government of the day by 

 political utterances in his lectures. For some 

 years he lived a hard and unsettled life in 1848 

 he was in Italy, helping to organise the Polish 

 legion that fought side by side with the Italian 

 republicans at Home until in 1852 Louis Napoleon 

 appointed him a librarian in the Arsenal Library 

 at Paris. He died 28th November 1855 at Con- 

 stantinople, whither the French government had 

 sent him to organise a Polish legion to fight against 

 Hus-ia. His body was taken to France and buried 

 at Moutmorency ; but in 1890 his bones were trans- 

 ported to his native country and laid beside those 

 of Kosciusko in the cathedral of Cracow. Mickie- 

 wicz i- pre-eminently the national poet of the 

 Poles, and next after Pushkin the greatest of all 

 the poets of the Slavs. His collected works were 

 issued at Paris in 1 1 vols. ( 1860-61 ), at Leipzig 

 in 5 volg. (1862-69), and at Lemberg, a popular 

 edition, in 4 vols. ( 1885 et seq. ). See Life by hU 

 scui l.ndislas Mickie\vicz( 1888), Fontille (Mainard) 

 (1862), both in French, and an anonymous one in 

 German ( 1857) ; also the Memoirs of Herzen. 



Mickle, WILLIAM JULIUS, translator of the 

 Lusiad, was born in Langholm manse, Dumfries- 

 shire, in 1734. He was educated at Edinburgh 

 High School, failed in business as a brewer, and 

 next went to London to make a living by writing. 

 In IT'M he published hU would-lie S|>eiisenan poem, 

 The Concubine (in its next edition entitled Syr 

 Murtyn), and so prepared the way for his version 

 rather than translation of the Luxiad of Camoens 

 (1771-75), which he completed during four years' 

 seclusion in a farmhouse. In 1779 he went to 

 Linlion as secretary to Commodore Johnstone, but 

 his last years were spent in London, where he died 

 in 1788. Of his other works none are now of 

 importance. His ballad of Cumuor Hull, which 

 >iiL f L'''-t''il to Scott the romance of Keuilianrth, is 

 poor stuff, but the delightful song, ' There's nae luck 

 about the house,' is long since safely assured of its 

 immortality. An attempt has been made to ascribe 

 this song to the ill-fated Greenock poetess, Jean 

 Adam ( 1710-65), but her claim will not bear serious 

 examination. See Athetueum for January 27, 

 1877. The l>est edition of Mickle's poems is that 

 edited, with a Life, by the Rev. John Sim ( 1806). 



-Mirinars, a tribe of Algonquin Indians, the 

 first with whom the English came in contact ; they 

 remained hostile to the English and their colonies 

 till 1760. They now mim!>er from 3000 to 4000, 

 and are mostly in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, 

 and New Brunswick. There is an Enylisli-Micnuu: 

 Dictionary (Halifax, 1888), compiled by the late 

 Dr S. T. Rand. 



Microbe, MICROCOCCUS. See BACTERIA, GERM. 



Mirrnclinc. See FELSPAR. 



Microcosm and Macrocosm. The belief 

 of the ancients that the world or cosmos was 

 animated, or had a soul (see ANIMA MUNDI), led 

 to the notion that the parts and members of organic 

 beings must have their counterparts in the members 

 of the cosmos. Thus, in a hymn ascribed to 

 Orpheus, the sun and moon are looked upon as the 

 eyes of the animating godhead, the earth and its 

 mountains ax bis body, the ether as his intellect, 

 the sky as his wings. The natural philosophers of 

 the 16th century Paracelsus at their head took 

 up this notion anew in a somewhat modified shape, 

 and considered the world as a human organism on 

 the large scale, and man as a world, or cosmos, in 

 miniature ; hence they called man a microcosm 

 (Gr., 'little world') and the universe itself the 

 macrocotm ( ' great world ' ). With this was associ- 

 ated the lielief that the vital movements of the 

 microcosm exactly corresponded to those of the 



macrocosm, and represented them as it were in 

 copy. From this it was an easy transition to the 

 further assumption, that the movements of the 

 stars exercise an influence on the temperament and 

 fortunes of men (see ASTROLOGY). Heylin gave 

 the title Microcosmits to a work on cosmography 

 in 1621, and Lotze entitled his great work delim- 

 tive of man's position in the universe Mikrokosmus 

 (1856-64). 



Microcosmlc Salt is used in blowpipe an- 

 alysis, and may be prepared by mixing concentrated 

 solutions of phosphate of soda and chloride of am- 

 monium. It has the composition NaNH 4 HPO 4 ,4H 2 O. 



Microlestes, the name given to the earliest 

 known mammalian form a marsupial ; it is dis- 

 covered in the Trias of England and of Wurtemberg. 

 Only the teeth, which are of small size, have been 

 met with. 



Micrometer (Gr. mikrot, 'little;' metron, 

 ' measure ' ) is an instrument used for the measure- 

 ment of minute distances and angles. Its different 

 fyorms, depending on different principles, may be 

 divided into two sections, according as they are 

 applied to physics or astronomy. Of the former 

 section are the Vernier (q.v.) and the Micrometer 

 Screw, the latter instrument l>ein" merely a screw 

 with a very regular thread, and a large round head, 

 which is carefully graduated, generally to sixtieths, 

 and furnished with an index. It is easily seen that 

 if a complete turn of the screw advance its point 

 -fa of an inch, a turn sufficient to pass the index 

 from one graduation to another will only advance 

 it Wsrr f in inch, &c. This is the micrometer 

 used in the construction and graduation of instru- 

 ments. Of those applied to astronomical purposes 

 the most simple is a short tube, across the opening 

 of which are stretched two parallel threads, which 

 are moved to or from each other by screws. These 

 threads are crossed by a third perpendicularly, and 

 the whole apparatus is placed in the focus of a lens. 

 The distance of two stare is found by adjusting the 

 two parallel threads, one to pass through the centre 

 of each star, taking care that the threads are placed 

 perpendicular to the line joining the stars, and 

 finding how many turns and parts of a turn of the 

 screw are required to bring the wires to coincide. 

 The angle of po>it ion of two stars is also obtained 

 by turning round the instrument till the third wire, 

 which is normally horizontal, bisects both stare, and 

 reading off on the circumference the arc passed 

 over. Fraunhofer's suspended annular micrometer 

 consists merely of a steel ring surrounded by a Mat 

 rim of glass, and the position of the star is deduced 

 from the time when it crosses the ring and its path 

 while within it. The Abb6 Kochon substituted 

 for the wire micrometer one made of two prisms of 

 rock-crystal or Iceland spar, capable of double 

 refraction. 



Microphone. This instrument, invented in 

 1878 by Professor Hughes, does for faint sounds 

 what the microscope does for matter too small 

 for sight ; the fall of a bit of tissue-paper or the 

 tread of a fly being rendered audible at many miles' 

 distance. One of the most sensitive sul>stances for 

 microphonic action is willow-charcoal, plunged in 

 a state of white heat into mercury. The theory is 

 that in a homogeneous conductor of electricity the 

 compressions and dilatations of the molecules 

 balance each other, and no variation of current 

 ensues ; while, with a state of fine grained non- 

 homogeneity of the conductor, variations of pres- 

 sure in the conductor produce variations in its 

 conducting power, and thus induce variations in 

 the strength of the electric current traversing it ; 

 and these variations of current, when the current 

 passes through a second similar conductor, induce 

 corresponding variations in its molecular stresses, 



