MINT 



3838 



MINUTE 



the supervision of the director of the mint, who 

 is appointed by the President and is responsible 

 to the Secretary of the Treasury. For descrip- 

 tion of an assay office and the location of 

 America's assay offices, see ASSAYING, subhead 

 Assay Office, 



In Other Countries. The coining of the 

 greater part of English money in London dates 

 back to the time of William the Conqueror. 

 The present mint on Tower Hill in London was 

 established between 1810 and 1815. This mint 

 supplies all the coinage for the British Empire 

 except Australia and the East Indies, which are 

 supplied by branch mints at Sydney, Mel- 

 bourne and Perth. A fourth branch is located 

 at Ottawa in Canada, and it produces the sup- 

 ply of Canadian coins and English sovereigns 

 (see CANADA, page 1128). Only one mint is 

 usually found in each of the countries of Eu- 

 rope. Mexico's national mint is in the City of 

 Mexico. Africa has none. South America has 

 four mints, at Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima and 

 Tegucigalpa, but most of the South American 

 coinage is manufactured in Europe by contract. 



For process of coining money, see COINAGE. For 

 different coins now in use, see MONEY. 



MINT, a family of plants which, according 

 to one of the old myths, were named for Men- 

 tha or Mintha, a beautiful rival of Proserpina, 

 whom the latter, in a jealous rage, turned into a 

 plant. This group of herbs, distributed over 

 almost all parts of the world, is characterized 

 by its creeping rootstocks, square stems bear- 

 ing opposite, pleasant-smelling leaves, and 

 spikes of small, bluish or pinkish two-lipped 

 blossoms. Probably the best-known species are 

 peppermint (which see), much used as flavor- 

 ing for candy and medicines, and spearmint, 

 sometimes called garden or mackerel mint, em- 

 ployed as a flavor in cookery and chewing gum. 

 From the lemon-scented leaves of bergamot 

 mint comes a fragrant oil, a common ingredient 

 of perfume, while dried curled mint, widely cul- 

 tivated in Germany, is used medicinally for 

 poultices and warm baths. Other species are 

 mid or brook mint, resembling pennyroyal, and 

 stone, sweet or horse mint. 



MIN'TO, GILBERT JOHN MURRAY KYNYN- 

 MOND ELLIOT, Fourth Earl of (1847-1914), a 

 British soldier and statesman, Governor-Gen- 

 eral of Canada from 1898 to 1904 and Viceroy 

 of India from 1905 to 1910. Lord Minto was 

 educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cam- 

 bridge, and immediately after his graduation in 

 1867 entered the Scots Guards as an ensign. 

 Pie resigned from the army in. 1870. During the 



EARL OF MINTO 



Carlist Insurrection in Spain he accompanied 

 the revolutionists, then served with the Turkish 

 army in 1877 in the Russo-Turkish War, and 

 in the second Afghan War was private secre- 

 tary to Lord Roberts. From 1883 to 1885 he 

 was military sec- 

 retary ,to the 

 Marquis of Lans- 

 downe, then Gov- 

 ernor-General of 

 Canada, and was 

 also chief-of-staff 

 to General Mid- 

 dleton during the 

 Saskatchewan Re- 

 bellion. In 1898 

 he returned to 

 Canada as Gov- 

 ernor - General, 

 succeeding the 

 Earl of Aberdeen. He remained in Canada un- 

 til 1904, and from 1905 to 1910 was Viceroy of 

 India in succession to the Earl of Curzon. It 

 is an interesting coincidence that Lord Minto's 

 great-grandfather, the first earl (1751-1814) was 

 Governor-General of India from 1807 to 1813. 



MINUIT, min'uit, PETER (1580-1641), a co- 

 lonial governor of New Netherland, born at 

 Wesel, Rhenish Prussia, who was noted for his 

 determination, skill and energy. In 1625 he 

 was appointed governor and director-general 

 of New Netherland by the Dutch West India 

 Company, and in 1626 he purchased Manhattan 

 Islands from the Indians for sixty guilders, or 

 about twent3^-four dollars. He later built Fort 

 Amsterdam. In 1631 he was recalled, but soon 

 returned to America and built Fort Christiana, 

 near the present city of Wilmington, Del., un- 

 der the auspices of the Swedish West India 

 Company. 



MINUTE, min'it, a division of space and 

 also of time. The ancient Babylonians used 

 the sexagesimal system of notation; that is, 

 they figured by sixes and sixties instead of tens 

 and hundreds, as in the decimal system, now 

 universally employed. As the Babylonian year 

 had 360 days, the astronomers, in making their 

 computations, divided the circle into 360 parts, 

 each of which is now called a degree. A degree 

 is divided into sixty parts, and each of these 

 parts again divided into sixty smaller parts. 

 When the Romans adopted the Babylonian sys- 

 tem of division they called the parts of a de- 

 gree the partes minutae primae, or first small 

 parts, and the divisions of the first small parts 

 became the partes minutae secundae, or second 



