485 



MARASMUS. 



MARGARAMIDE. 



480 



coloured liquid, obtained by boiling the cellular matter of the inner 

 bark, is used iu America for black-dyeing. Potash ia made extensively 

 in the same region from the ashes of the burnt roots ; and sugar is 

 largely prepared from the sap, especially of the variety known as tin 

 sugar maple. 



MARASMUS (emaciation) is a term often used by the older medica 

 writers to designate those cases in which no particular cause for the 

 atrophy of the body was discovered. It is now very rarely employed 

 since the condition which was thus named is known to be the result o: 

 various local diseases, by which the complete nutrition of the body 

 is prevented, or by which a quantity of its material is constantly 

 abstracted ; as disease of the meseuteric glands, pulmonary consump- 

 tion, diabetes, &c. 



MARCH, the third month of the year according to modern com 

 putation, containing thirty-one days. The Roman year originally 

 began with March, and was in fact so considered in England before 

 the alteration of the style in 1752, the legal year commencing 

 on the 25th of March. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called it most 

 commonly Ulyd monat/i, loud or stormy month ; and sometimes ffraed 

 or JOiitd muiuil/i, which some interpret Uheda's, others Rliede or Kethe, 

 the rugged or rough month. The name of the month is said to be 

 derived from that of Mars, the god of war. 



Before 1564 the computation of the French year began from Easter, 

 co that occasionally the same year might comprehend two mouths oi 

 March, Man arant, and Mart apr&i. If Easter occurred in March 

 itself, the month began in one year and ended iu another. The change 

 of computation from Easter to the first of January, in that country, 

 was directed by an edict of Charles IX. 



There is an old proverb, mentioned by various writers, which 

 represents March as borrowing certain days from April. These are 

 called, by the rustics in many parts both of England and Scotland, the 

 Jimrouxd Dayt. They are particularly noticed in the poem called 

 ' The Complaynt of Scotland :' 



" March raid to Aperill, 

 I eee three hogs upon a hill ; 

 But lend your three first days to me, 

 And I'll be bound to gar them die. 

 The first It shall be wind and weet, 

 The next it shall be gnaw and gleet, 

 The third it shall be sic a freeze, 

 Sail gar the birds stick to the trees. 

 But when the borrowed days were gane, 

 The three silly hogs came hirplln name." 



Dr. Jamieion, in hi ' Etymological Dictionary,' says, ' These days 

 being generally stormy, our forefathers have endeavoured to account 

 for this circumstance by pretending that March borrowed them from 

 April, that he might extend his power so much longer. .... Those," 

 he adds, "who arc much addicted to superstition, will neither borrow 

 nor lend on any of these days. If any one would propose to borrow 

 of them, they would consider it as an evidence that the person wished 

 to employ the article borrowed for the purposes of witchcraft against 

 the lenders." 



Ray, in his Collection, has a different proverb relating to this month, 

 namely, that " A bushel of March dust is worth a king's ransom ;" 

 thereby expressing the importance of dry or dusty weather at this 

 particular season of the year, in an agricultural point of view. 



MARCH, in music, is, properly speaking, an air in duple time, 

 played by martial instruments that is, by inflatile and pulsatile 

 Instruments to mark the steps of the infantry, as well as to amuse 

 and cheer troops of all kinds. It however has long since gained 

 admission wherever music is heard, and consequently is written for 

 every kin*) of musical instrument. Hence some of the most striking 

 compositions by the greatest masters ; as, for instance, the marches in 

 Handel's oratorios ; the religious marches (' Marches religieuses ') in 

 Oluck's ' Alceste ' and Mozart's ' Zauberflote ;' the two funeral marches 

 (^.M-ircie funebri') of Beethoven; the 'Wedding March ' of Mendels- 

 lohn, Ac. 



The true March is always written in common time, or in what is 

 called a compound of that measure, and begins on a broken part of the 

 bar, with an odd crotchet or a quaver. It is slow for grand or parade 

 occasions, quick for ordinary marching. We are told by Rousseau, that 

 Marshal Saxe used the march also for the purpose of accelerating or 

 retarding the pace of his troops in battle. In his days there was more 

 form, more ceremony used ; something like etiquette was kept up in 

 fighting : we doubt \vhether the movements of the battalions in the 

 fields of Austerlitz and Waterloo were performed to musical move- 

 ments, or even to the simple beat of drums. 



MARCHES, THE. The mark, Anglo-Saxon meanc, is a word 

 common to almost all the languages of Teutonic origin. It was the 

 fir.it general division of landed property, and denoted in a specific and 

 peculiar sense those important marts by which the boundaries of wide 

 domains were indicated, within which individual or private possessions 

 were contained, the mark being held in common, and in this sense it is 

 found in Anglo-Saxon writings. Hence the word the marchei, that is, 

 the country lying near and about the marks which indicated the limits 

 of two kingdoms, dukedoms, or other extensive jurisdictions. 



In Germany, the nark gave one of the titlen of honour, the 

 inarkynif (rnanjrave), or lord of the marches. (Douniges, ' Deutsches 



Staatrecht.') Our own marquess is of the same origin, though it doea 

 not appear that the few persons who in early times (there was no 

 English marquess before the reign of Richard II.) bore this title had 

 any particular connection with the marches. 



Great part of England being bounded by the sea, there could be but 

 little march-land. But on the side toward Wales, and in the north 

 where England abuts upon Scotland, there was march-land ; and when 

 we speak of the marches, the land near the borders of the two coun- 

 tries is what is meant. 



Harold was lord of the marches against the Welsh, but after they 

 were conquered by Edward I., we hear little in history of the marches 

 of Wales. But the term continued in use long afterwards ; and the 

 family of Mortimer, whose chief residence was at Wigmore Castle iu 

 Herefordshire, had the chief management of the affairs of the Welsh 

 marches, and bore the title of Earl of March. Edward IV., their 

 lineal descendant and heir-general, was called Earl of March while his 

 father was the Duke of York. The title is yet preserved in the family 

 of the Duke of Richmond. 



But Scotland remaining a distinct sovereignty for several centurkvi 

 after the subjugation of Wales, the marches towards that country are 

 frequently mentioned in history. The maintenance of authority in 

 those regions was an object of great importance ; and for this purpose 

 the marches towards Scotland were divided into two portions, the 

 western and the middle marches, each of which had courts peculiar to 

 itself, and a kind of president or governor, who was called the warden. 



MARCHESVAN, }1pn~!Q. commonly called Chesvan by the Jews, 

 is the second month of the Jewish year, and it coincides with our 

 October or November, according to the variations of length required to 

 make each month commence with the appearance of the new moon. 

 In the present yerr (I860) it begins on the 17th of October. The 

 origin of the name uncertain ; the Jews naturally look for it in the 

 Hebrew root, tZ?nn. to " boil up," or pour forth." Benfey quotes 

 Hyde, who proposes with more probability the Persian k/iezdii, the 

 autumn. We find the name Markazana on the monument of Darius at 

 Behistun, but the season in which this month occurred is at present 

 unknown. The word is not found in the Bible, but it was known to 

 Josephus, who writes it Maptrovav, or Mapffoudini, Antiq. 1. i. c. 3, 3. 

 The Syrian mouths named Tisrin, which occupy the same period of 

 the year, will account for the names of &opa/ and 0i<ripic in the 

 calendars of Heliopolis (Balbek). This month has either twenty-nine 

 or thirty days, a variation which is applicable to the following month 

 Chisleu also. In ordinary years Marchesvan has twenty-nine days and 

 Cuisleu thirty; when an additional day is required the two, months 

 have tliirty days each ; when it is necessary to have a short year both 

 months have twenty-nine days. This variation is required for the 

 purpose of applying a rule by which the month of Nisau could not 

 begin on either Monday, Wednesday, or Friday; nor Tisri on Sunday, 

 Wednesday, or Friday. No fasts or festivals of general observance 

 occur in this month, though some mention is made of a fast on the 

 6th, in commemoration of the blinding of Zedekiah by order of Nebu- 

 chadnezzar (2 Kings, xxv. 7) ; and persons who have committed any 

 excess on the Feast of Tabernacles in the preceding month may feel 

 bound to a fast in Marchesvan. 



MARCIONITES, a religious sect of the 2nd and 3rd centuries of 

 our sera, so called from their teacher Marcion, a native of Sinope and 

 a priest, who adopted the old Oriental belief, in which he had been 

 preceded by Cerdo at Rome, of two independent, eternal, co-existing 

 principles, one evil and the other good, introducing also a third inter- 

 mediate being neither perfectly good nor perfectly evil, the creator 

 of the inferior world and the legislator of the Jewish people. He 

 endeavoured to apply this doctrine to Christianity, asserting that our 

 souls are emanations of this third principle. The Jews were subject 

 to this beiug, while all those nations who worshipped a variety of 

 deities were subject to the evil principle. But the good principle, in 

 order to dissipate these delusions, sent Jesus Christ, a pure emanation 

 of itself, giving him a corporeal appearance and semblance of bodily 

 form, in order to remind men of their intellectual nature, and that 

 ;hey cannot expect to find happiness until they are reunited to the 

 jrinciple of good from which they are derived. Marciou and his 

 disciples condemned all pleasures which are not spiritual ; they taught 

 ihat it was necessary to combat every impulse that attaches xis to the 

 visible world; they condemned marriage, and some of them even 

 regretted the necessity of eating of the fruits of the earth, which they 

 )elieved to have been created by the evil principle. The Marciouites 

 spread far in the East, and especially in Persia. The chief opponent 

 of Marcion was Tertullianus, who wrote a book to refute his doctrines. 

 (Tertullianus, Adveru Marcionem ; Mosheim's Ecdesiailical H'utturij, 

 cent, ii., part ii. ; Neander, Church lliitwy, vol. ii. ; Beausobre, Hut. de 

 Manick. 1. iv., ch. 6, &c.) 



MARGARAMIDE. When ammoniacal soap, prepared either from 

 mimal fat or olive oil, is treated with boiling water, the soap diffuses 

 hrough it without being dissolved ; on cooling the greater part solidi- 

 ies on the surface, and this, if dissolved in boiling alcohol, deposits on 



ling a substance which, when purified, has the following properties : 

 t is white, crystalline, perfectly neutral, insoluble in water, very 

 soluble iu alcohol and ether, especially when hot. It melts at about 

 40 Fahr., and it burns with a sooty flame. 



