MILAN DECREE 



3796 



MILES 



486 feet and a breadth of 287 feet. The tower, 

 from which a beautiful view of the distant Alps 

 and the picturesque environs is obtained, is 356 

 feet high. The exterior is adorned with about 

 6,000 statues in niches, and there are hundreds 

 of turrets and pinnacles. The windows present 

 wonderful stories pictured in stained glass. 

 Some of the great men who have contributed 

 to Milan's greatness are buried in the cathedral, 

 and there in 1805 Napoleon, amid great pomp, 

 was crowned king of Italy. R.D.M. 



Consult Noyes' Story of Milan; Ady's History 

 of Milan. 



MILAN DECREE, dekree', an important 

 document issued by Napoleon Bonaparte in 

 1807 during his struggle for supremacy in 

 Europe. Realizing that his desire to invade 

 England was impracticable, he planned the 

 financial ruin of the country by shutting off 

 its trade with the continent of Europe. Eng- 

 land had already closed all seaports from the 

 Elbe River to the end of the French coast, and 

 in 1806 Napoleon retaliated by issuing the 

 Berlin Decree, blockading the British Isles and 

 making all English ships subject to seizure. 

 This he followed, in 1807, by the Milan Decree, 

 declaring that a ship of any nationality which 

 had touched at British ports would be regarded 

 a hostile vessel and a prize of war, if captured. 

 But English warships still controlled the ocean. 

 English vessel men demanded large sums for 

 running the French blockade, and trade was 

 nearly destroyed. Accordingly the Continent 

 was impoverished, other powers were antago- 

 nized, and Russia, in 1810, diplomatically aban- 

 doned its policy of cooperating with Napoleon. 

 With his fall, in 1814-1815, the Continental 

 System (which see) came to an end. 



MILDEW, mil 1 ' du, a name applied to a va- 

 riety of plant disorders and also to the molds 

 and rusts that collect on food, clothing, furni- 

 ture, etc. There are two classes of plant mil- 

 dew, the powdery and the downy. Powdery 

 mildews, which usually form flourlike blotches 

 of white on the surface of the host, attack 

 flowers, fruits, stems and leaves of various 

 plants by means of tiny sucking organs, stunt- 

 ing the growth of the diseased portion or killing 

 it. This form of mildew can often be checked 

 if the plants are dusted with dry sulphur, or 

 exposed to fumes of boiling sulphur. Downy 

 mildews develop within the plant, appearing 

 on the surface when they shed their summer 

 spores, and producing the familiar downy, 

 whitish appearance. Since this disease develops 

 within the plant it cannot be combated so 



easily as the powdery mildew, and consequent!} 

 causes serious damage to vegetation. Spraying 

 with Bordeaux mixture is, however, a helpfu 

 remedy. The mildews on furniture, clothing 

 walls, etc., represent other species. See RUSTS 

 MOLD; INSECTICIDES AND FUNGICIDES. 



MILE, a unit of distance which originatet 

 with the Romans, and which has been adopted 

 with slightly varying values, by Western coun 

 tries. England's statute mile, used in Grea 

 Britain and the United States and their posses 

 sions, is 320 rods or 5,280 feet long. The squar< 

 mile in these countries contains 640 acres. Thi 

 geographical, or nautical, mile is one-sixtieth o 

 a degree of latitude, or about 6,080 feet. Thi 

 knot, by which the rate of a vessel's motion i 

 measured, is equivalent to one nautical mile 

 Below is a table comparing the miles of othe 

 countries with the English mile: 



English Statute Mile 1.00 



English Geographical Mile 1.15' 



French Kilometer 0.62 



German Geographical Mile 4.61' 



Russian Verst 0.66: 



Austrian Mile 4.71 



Dutch Ure 3.45: 



Norwegian Mile 7.02 



Swedish Mile 6.64 



Danish Mile 4.68 



Swiss Stunde 2.98' 



MILES, NELSON APPLETON (1839- ), ai 

 American soldier who distinguished himself ii 

 many of the most important battles of the Wa 

 of Secession and later as an Indian fighter 01 

 the frontier of what was then the West. Hi 

 was born in West- 

 minster, Mass., 

 and was early in 

 life a clerk in a 

 mercantile house ^ 



in Boston, but at 

 the outbreak of 

 the war in 1861 he 

 entered the serv- 

 ice of the Twenty- 

 second Massachu- 

 setts regiment. In 

 1862 he was pro- 



moted to the rank A NELSON A " M f ILES 



America s most distin 

 of colonel and guished general of the pas 



passed rapidly genen 



through all the grades, being brevetted briga 

 dier-general in 1864. After the war he joine( 

 the regular army and during the next fifteei 

 years was known for his aggressive campaign: 

 against hostile Indians in the West. In 188( 

 he captured the troublesome Geronimo, chie: 



