MOLINA MOLLUSCA. 



19 



The exertion with which lie played produced con- 

 vulsions, which were followed by a hemorrhage. He 

 died after the lapse of a few hours, Feb. 17, 1673. 

 The academy did honour to itself and Moliere, in 

 1778, by erecting a bust of him, with the verse of 

 Saurin: 



Rien ne manque i sa gloire ; il manquait a la nCtre. 



The archbishop of Paris at first refused him burial ; 

 but the king himself insisted on it, and he was 

 interred in St Joseph. 



Moliere is the true father of the French comedy. 

 His works may be considered as a history of the 

 manners, fashions, and tastes of his times, and as the 

 most faithful picture of human life. Born with an 

 observing 1 mind, skilful in catching the outward marks 

 of the passions and emotions, he took men as they 

 were, and, like a skilful painter, exhibited the most 

 secret recesses of their hearts, and the tone, the 

 action, and the language of their various feelings. 

 " His comedies," says Laharpe, " properly read, 

 may supply experience, because he lias depicted not 

 mere passing follies, but human nature, which does 

 not change. Of all who have ever written, Moliere 

 is the one who has best observed men without seeming 

 to do so. His knowledge of human character seems 

 to have come by intuition. His pieces are as pleasing 

 when read as when performed. Moliere is a writer 

 for those of ripened age and the gray-haired. Their 

 experience corresponds to his observations and their 

 memory to his genius." In his domestic relations, 

 Moliere was not fully happy : he who made merry on 

 the stage with the weaknesses of other men, could not 

 guard against his own weakness. A violent passion in- 

 duced him to marry the daughter of the actress Bejart, 

 and he thereby incurred the ridicule which he had so 

 often cast on husbands of a disproportioned age. He 

 was more happy in the intercourse of his friends; 

 and the marshal Vivonne, the great Conde', and 

 even Louis XIV., admitted him to a footing of inti- 

 macy. As an actor, Moliere was not to be surpassed 

 in high comic parts, such as Arnolphe, Orgon, Har- 

 pagon, &c. In 1773, Bret published an edition of his 

 works at Paris (in 6 vols.), with interesting commen- 

 taries. See Pachereau's Hist, de la Vie et des 

 Ouvrages de Moliere (Paris, 1825.) 



MOLINA, JOAN IGNACIO, a Jesuit, was born in 

 Chile, and, after a long residence in that country, 

 was obliged to leave the Spanish territories, on ac- 

 count of the dissolution and expulsion of his order. 

 Molina retired to Italy, and published, in Italian, his 

 valuable Civil and Natural History of Chile (Bologna, 

 1782 and 1787, 2 vols.) ; which has been translated 

 into Spanish, French, German, and English (Middle- 

 town, Connecticut, 1808). 



MOLINA, MOLINISTS. See Jansenius, and 

 Grace. 



MOLINOS, MICHAEL. See Quietism. 



MOLLA; a spiritual and judicial officer among 

 the Turks, who has civil and criminal jurisdiction 

 over towns or whole districts, and is therefore a 

 superior judge, under whom are the cadis, or inferior 

 judges. Over the mollas are the cadileskers, or 

 supreme judges of the empire, who sit in the divan. 



MOLLE (soft, or sweet) ; a relative term, used by 

 the French, signifying a flat sound, J-hat is, a sound 

 which is half a tone lower than the sound with which 

 it is compared, as B flat, or B molle, is a semitone 

 beneath B natural, or B durum. This term, as its 

 sense intimates, is applied to the flat sounds on 

 account of their supposed softness or sweetness, in 

 comparison with the effect of the natural and sharp 

 tone?. 



MOLLUSCA. We have already given a pretty 

 full account of the rise and progress of the study of 

 molluscous animals, under the article Concbology, 



which we treated as a distinct branch of Natural His- 

 tory. 



Molluscous animals are comprehended in the 

 second great division of the animal kingdom ani- 

 mals without a backbone. They are destitute of an 

 articulated skeleton or vertebral column. The ner- ' 

 vous system is not developed in the form of a spinal 

 cord, but simply into a certain number of medullary 

 masses situated in different points of the body, the 

 principal of which is called the brain, and is placed 

 transversely on the oesophagus, and envelopes it with 

 a nervous collar. The organs of sensation and 

 motion have not the same uniformity in point of 

 number and position as in the vertebrate animals, 

 and a greater aberration is observable in the position 

 of the heart and organs of respiration, as well as in 

 the structure of the latter. Some species are formed 

 for breathing elastic air, and others fresh or salt 

 water. Their organs of locomotion, and others, 

 which are external, are generally symmetrically 

 arranged on the two sides of an axis. 



The mollusca have a double circulation, their 

 pulmonary system invariably describing a distinct 

 circle. The function of breathing is always assisted 

 by, at least, one ventricle, situated between the 

 pulmonary veins and the arteries of the body, and 

 not, as in fishes, between the veins of the body and 

 pulmonary arteries. It is then an aortic ventricle. 

 It is only the cephalopoda* that are provided with 

 a pulmonary ventricle, which is subdivided. The 

 aortic ventricle is likewise divided in some genera, as 

 in the arcaf and lingula.J In some other bivalves, 

 the auricle only is divided. When more than one 

 ventricle exists, they do not consist of a single mass, 

 as in warm-blooded animals, but are remote from 

 each other. 



The blood in molluscous animals is white, or bluish- 

 white, and seems to contain a smaller proportion of 

 fibrin than that of vertebrate animals. Cuvier sup- 

 poses that the veins perform the functions of absor- 

 bent vessels. 



The muscles in this class are attached to their 

 skin by various points, forming, in those places, 

 tissues which possess more or less density. Their 

 motions consist of different contractions, varying in 

 their direction, producing inflections and prolonga- 

 tions, together with relaxations of their several parts, 

 by means of which they creep, swim, and seize upon 

 such objects as the formation of these parts are 

 adapted to. They are, however, incapable of rapid 

 progress, their limbs not being supported by articu- 

 lated and solid levers. 



Most of the mollusca are possessed of great irrita- 

 bility, frequently continuing after they are cut asun- 

 der. Their skin is naked, extremely sensible, and 

 usually covered with a mucous substance, which is 

 secreted from its pores. No organ of smell has yet 

 been detected in them, although they appear to possess 

 that sense. Cuvier thinks it probable that the whole 

 skin may be susceptible of distinguishing odours. 

 All the cephala, brachiopoda, cirripeda, and part of 

 the gasteropoda and pteropoda are destitute of eyes, 

 while the cephalopoda enjoy them in as complicated 

 a degree as the warm-blooded animals. The eyes 

 are situated sometimes at the base, sometimes at the 

 middle, and frequently at the extremity of the tenta- 

 cula. The eye of the Helix Pomatia is represented 

 pi. 60, f. 92, e; it is situated at a little to the one 

 side of the rounded extremity, or papilla, p, of the 

 tentaculum, and is attached to an oval bulb of a 

 black colour. It receives only a slender branch, o, 



See article Conchologv, Class I , Order II., p. 370. 

 t Ib. Class II., Ordir il., p. 379. 

 j Ib. Order I., p. 378. 



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