MAT 
MAX 
plied to the five simple colours, whence all 
the rest are derived or composed. These 
are, the black, white, blue, red, and yellow, 
or root-colour. See 1)y.£;ng. 
Matrice, or matrices, used by the letter- 
founders. See Type. 
MA 1 RICES. See Coining. 
M ATRIX, or Mother Earth, the stone 
in which metallic ores are found enveloped. 
MATROSSES, are soldiers in the train of 
artillery, who are next to the gunners, and 
assist them in loading, firing, and springing 
the great guns.. They carry firelocks, and 
inarch along with the store-waggons both as 
a guard, and to give their assistance in case 
a-waggon should breakdown. 
MATT, in a ship, rope-yarn, junk, &c. 
beaten flat and interwoven ; used in order to 
preserve the yards from galling or rubbing in 
hoisting or lowering them. 
MA PI ER. r l he word matter (materia, 
which some lexicographers have derived from 
mater, a mother) denotes, in its primitive 
sense, that unexplained something from 
which all those things which are objects of 
our senses are formed. 
i he term body is sometimes confounded 
with that of matter ; but they are essentially 
different. Body is of Saxon origin. It is 
explained by the Latin words statura, pectus, 
truneus; and signified the person or form of 
a man, or other creature ■;• whence it is plain 
that it ought to be confined to express a sub- 
stance possessing form or figure. 
Substance, both in its etymology and ap- 
plication, approaches nearer to the meaning 
of the former of these terms. It is well known 
to be compounded from the Latin preposi- 
tion sub (under) and the verb stare (to 
stand). It consequently implies that which 
supports or stands under the different forms 
and appearances which are presented to our 
senses. It is still, however, used in a distinct 
and more limited sense than matter. It is 
generally indeed used with the article, to sig- 
nify a distinct or definite portion of matter ; 
whereas matter in the abstract implies a more 
confused and general idea tef solidity and ex- 
tension, with little or no regard to figure, 
proportion, or quantity. 
That the whole matter of which this uni- 
verse of things is composed, is essentially the 
same, and that the apparent differences 
which subsist in different -bodies depend alto- 
gether on the particular distribution or dispo- 
sition of the component particles, is an opi- 
nion which has been entertained by some 
philosophers of the highest reputation. The 
wonderful apparent transmutations which 
take place in the different processes and ope- 
rations of nature do, it must be confessed, at 
first sight countenance this hypothesis. A 
plant will vegetate, and become a solid sub- 
stance, in the purest water. The generation 
of stones in the earth, the various phenomena 
of petrifactions, and a multitude of other 
facts, contribute greatly, on a lair considera- 
tion, to diminish the absurdity of the alche- 
mists (who seem chiefly to have rested on this 
hypothesis, viz. that all matter was intrinsi- 
cally the same) and their hopes of converting 
the basest materials by the efforts of art into 
the most splendid and valuable of substances. 
Ak. Boyle distilled the same water about 
two hundred times, and at the end of each 
distillation found a fresh deposit of earth. 
Margratf repeated the experiment with still 
MAT 
j greater caution. By means of two glass 
■ globes, which communicated with each other, 
he preserved the water while in the state ol 
vapour from all contact with the air-; and on 
repeated distillation, a quantity of earth ot 
the calcareous kind was deposited at the con- 
clusion of each process. 
The extreme rarity and minuteness of the 
particles into which different substances may 
be resolved, imparts a still greater degree of 
probability to this hypothesis; and in general 
the more any body can be divided, the sim- 
| pier it appears in its component parts. 
We must, however, be cautious of admit- 
ting opinions which are not sanctioned by the 
direct test of experiment; and however plau- 
sible the opinion, the accurate observations 
of modern philosophy have suggested some 
objections to the homogeneity of matter, 
winch,, without further discoveries, it will not 
be easy to silence. 
Whatever phenomena may appear to indi- 
cate a transmutation of bodies, or a change 
of one substance into another, we have the 
utmost reason, by the latest and best experi- 
ments, to believe them merely the effect of 
different combinations. Thus the conversion 
of water and air into a solid substance, such 
as the body of a plant, is merely an apparent 
conversion ; for that solid substance may, by 
an artificial process, be resolved again into 
water and air, without any real change in the 
principles or elementary particles of which 
those fluids are composed; and the forma- 
tion of stones, and the phenomena of petri- 
factions, are accounted for upon much easier 
principles than that of transmutation. On 
the other hand, the utmost efforts of chemis- 
try have never been able to proceed farther 
in the analysis of bodies than to reduce them 
to a few principles, which appear essentially 
different from each other, and which have 
never yet been brought to a more simple 
form. Thus the matter of fire, or light, ap- 
pears totally different from that of all other 
bodies; thus the acid and alkaline principles 
can never be brought to exhibit the same 
properties; nor can even the different species 
of earths be converted into the substance of 
each other. 
If hypothetical reasoning was to be admit- 
ted on this occasion, it would probably ap- 
pear more agreeable tori he analogy of nature, 
to suppose that different substances are form- 
ed from the different combinations of a few 
simple principles in different proportions, 
than that the very opposite qualities of some 
of the rarest and most subtile fluids should 
depend wholly on the different form or modi- 
fication of the extremely minute particles 
which enter into their composition. 
It is proper, however, to observe, that on 
this subject there has hitherto appeared no 
decisive experimental proof on either side. 
1 he imperfection of all human efforts, and 
perhaps of the human faculties themselves, 
has hitherto confined our investigations to 
the properties of a few substances, the sim- 
plest which chemical analysis has been able to 
obtain, and which for that reason are deno- 
minated elements. See Elements. 
MATTUSCHKiEA, a genus of the te- 
trandria monogynia class and order. The 
calyx is four-parted; corolla one-petalled ; 
germ superior, four-cleft. There is one spe- 
cies, a herb of Guiana. 
MAURITIA, the ginkgo, or maiSm-fueir, 
ii7 
a genus of plants belonging to the natural or- 
der of palmax The calyx of the male is mo- 
nophyllous; the corolla monopetalous, with 
six stamina. It is a native of Japan, where it 
is also known by the names of ginan and 
itsio. It rises with a long, erect, thick, and 
branched stem, to the size of a walnut-tree. 
The bark is asb-coloured, the wood brittle or 
smooth, the pith soft and fungous. The leaves 
are large, expanded from a narrow bottom 
into the figure c.f a maiden-hair leaf, unequally 
parted, streaked, without fibres or nerves. 
From the uppermost shoots hang the flowers 
in long calkins that are filled with the ferti- 
lizing power ; and to which succeeds the fruit, 
adhering to a thick fleshy pedicle, which pro- 
ceeds from the bosom of the leaves. This 
fruit is either exactly or nearly round, and of 
the appearance and size of a damask plum. 
The substance surrounding the fruit is ileshy 
juice, white, very harsh, and adheres so firmly 
to the inclosed nut, as not to be separated 
from it except by putrefaction. The nut, 
properly termed gineau, resembles the pista- 
chia nut, especially a Persian species named 
bergjes pistoia; but is almost double in size, 
and of the figure of an apricot-stone. The 
shell is somewhat white, woody, and brittle, 
and incloses a white loose kernel, having the 
sweetness of an almond, along with a degree 
of harshness. These kernels taken after din- 
ner are said to promote digestion, whence 
they make part of the dessert in great enter- 
tainments. 
MAX 1 LLA. See Anatomy. 
MAXIMUM, in mathematics, denotes the 
greatest quantity attainable in any given case.. 
If a quantity conceived to be generated by 
motion, increases, or decreases, till it arrives 
at a certain magnitude or position, and then, 
on the contrary, grows less or greater, and 
it be required to determine the said magni- 
tude or position, the question is called a pro- 
blem de maximis et minimis. 
Thus, let a point m move uniformly in a 
right line, from A towards B, and let another 
point n move after it, with a velocity either 
increasing or decreasing, but so that it mav, 
at a certain position D, become equal to that 
of the former point m, moving uniformly. 
D C 
A— [ 1 B 
n m 
This being premised, let the motion of n 
be first considered as an increasing one; in 
which ■■case the distance of n behind m will 
continually increase, till the two points arri ve 
at the contemporary positions C and 1) ; but 
afterwards it will again decrease; for the mo- 
tion of n till then being slower than at D, it is 
also slower than that of the preceding point 
m (by the hypothesis), but becoming quicker 
afterwards than that of in, the distance m n 
(as lias been already said) will again decrease; • 
and therefore is a maximum, ©r the greatest 
of all, when the celerities of the two points 
are equal to each other. 
But if n arrives at D with a decreasing ce~ ■ 
lerity, then its motion being first swifter, and 
afterwards slower, than that of m, the distance 
m n will first decrease and then increase, and 
therefore is a minimum, or the least of all, in 
the forementioned circumstance. Since then 
the distance m n is a maximum, or a mini- 
mum, when the velocities of in and n are 
equal, or when that distance increases as fast 
through the motion of ?n as it decreases by . 
