gave the castle and its appurtenances to Eustace son of John, whose descendants took the name of Vescy. Eustace meditated the deliverance of Malton Castle to King David of Scotland in 1138, but his plans were altered owing to the battle of the Standard. The “burgh” of Malton is mentioned in 1187, and in 1295 the town returned two members to parliament. It was not represented again, however, until 1640, when an act was passed to restore its ancient privileges. In 1867 the number of members was reduced to one, and in 1885 the town was disfranchised. Until the 17th century the burgesses had all the privileges of a borough by prescriptive right, and were governed by two bailiffs and two under-bailiffs, but these liberties were taken from them in 1684 and have never been revived. From that time a bailiff and two constables were appointed at the court leet of the lord of the manor until a local board was formed in 1854. In the 13th century Agnes de Vescy, then lady of the manor, held a market in Malton by prescription, and Camden writing about 1586 says that the lord of the manor then held two weekly markets, on Tuesday and Saturday, the last being the best cattle market in the county. The markets are now held on Saturdays and alternate Tuesdays, and still belong to the lord of the manor.
MALTZAN, HEINRICH VON, Baron zu Wartenburg und Penzlin
(1826–1874), German traveller, was born on the
6th of September 1826 near Dresden. He studied law at Heidelberg,
but on account of ill health spent much of his time from
1850 in travel. Succeeding to his father’s property in 1852,
he extended the range of his journeys to Morocco and other
parts of Barbary, and before his return home in 1854 had also
visited Egypt, Palestine and other countries of the Levant. In
1856–1857 he was again in Algeria; in 1858 he reached the
city of Morocco; and in 1860 he succeeded in performing
the pilgrimage to Mecca, which he afterwards described in
Meine Wallfahrt nach Mecca (Leipzig, 1865), but had to flee
for his life to Jidda without visiting Medina. He then visited
Aden and Bombay, and after some two years of study in Europe
again began to wander through the coasts and islands of the
Mediterranean, repeatedly visiting Algeria. His first book of
travel, Drei Jahre im Nordwesten von Afrika (Leipzig), appeared
in 1863, and was followed by a variety of works and essays,
popular and scientific. Maltzan’s last book, Reise nach Südarabien
(Brunswick, 1873), is chiefly valuable as a digest of much
information about little-known parts of south Arabia collected
from natives during a residence at Aden in 1870–1871. Among
his other services to science must be noticed his collection of
Punic inscriptions (Reise in Tunis und Tripolis, Leipzig, 1870),
and the editing of Adolph von Wrede’s remarkable journey in
Hadramut (Reise in Hadramaut, &c., Brunswick, 1870). After
long suffering from neuralgia, Maltzan died by his own hand at
Pisa on the 23rd of February 1874.
MALUS, ÉTIENNE LOUIS (1775–1812), French physicist, was
born at Paris on the 23rd of June 1775. He entered the military
engineering school at Mezières; but, being regarded as a suspected
person, he was dismissed without receiving a commission, and
obliged to enter the army as a private soldier. Being employed
upon the fortifications of Dunkirk, he attracted the notice of
the director of the works, and was selected as a member of the
École polytechnique then to be established under G. Monge.
After three years at the École he was admitted into the corps
of engineers, and served in the army of the Sambre and Meuse;
he was present at the passage of the Rhine in 1797, and at the
affairs of Ukratz and Altenkirch. In 1798 he joined the Egyptian
expedition and remained in the East till 1801. On his return
he held official posts successively at Antwerp, Strassburg and
Paris, and devoted himself to optical research. A paper published
in 1809 (“Sur une propriété de la lumière réfléchie par les corps
diaphanes”) contained the discovery of the polarization of light
by reflection, which is specially associated with his name, and
in the following year he won a prize from the Institute with his
memoir, “Théorie de la double refraction de la lumière dans
les substances cristallines.” He died of phthisis in Paris on the
23rd of February 1812.
.jpg) |
| Fig. 1.—Floral Diagram of Hollyhock (Althaea rosea). |
a, Stamens. b, Bract. |
.jpg) |
| Fig. 2. |
1, Anther. |
MALVACEAE, in botany, an order of Dicotyledons belonging to the series Columniferae, to which belong also the orders Tiliaceae (containing Tilia, the lime-tree), Bombaceae (containing Adansonia, the baobab), Sterculiaceae (containing Theobroma, cocoa, and Colo, cola-nut). It contains 39 genera with about 300 species, and occurs in all regions except the coldest, the number of species increasing as we approach the tropics. It is represented in Britain by three genera: Malva, mallow; Althaea, marsh-mallow; and Lavatera, tree-mallow. The plants are herbs, as in the British mallows, or, in the warmer parts of the earth, shrubs or trees. The leaves are alternate and often palmately lobed or divided; the stipules generally fall early. The leaves and young shoots often bear stellate hairs and the tissues contain mucilage-sacs. The regular, hermaphrodite, often showy flowers are borne in the leaf-axils, solitary or in fasicles, or form more or less complicated cymose arrangements. An epicalyx (see Mallow, figs. 3, 4), formed by a whorl of three or more bracteoles is generally present just beneath the calyx; sometimes, as in Abutilon, it is absent. The parts of the flowers are typically in fives (fig. 1); the five sepals, which have a valvate aestivation, are succeeded by five often large showy petals which are twisted in the bud; they are free to the base, where they are attached to the staminal tube and fall with it when the flower withers. The very numerous stamens are regarded as arising from the branching of a whorl of five opposite the petals; they are united into a tube at the base, and bear kidney-shaped one-celled anthers which open by a slit across the top (fig. 2). The large spherical pollen-grains are covered with spines. The carpels are one to numerous; when five in number, as in Abutilon, they are opposite the petals, or, as in Hibiscus, opposite the sepals. In the British genera and many others they are numerous, forming a whorl round the top of the axis in the centre of the flower, the united styles rising from the centre and bearing a corresponding number of stigmatic branches. In Malope the numerous carpels are arranged one above the other in vertical rows. One or more anatropous ovules are attached to the inner angle of each carpel; they are generally ascending but sometimes pendulous or horizontal; the position may vary, as in Abutilon, in one and the same carpel.
The flowers are proterandrous; when the flower opens the unripe stigmas are hidden in the staminal tube and the anthers occupy the centre of the flower; as the anthers dehisce the filaments bend backwards and finally the ripe stigmas spread in the centre. Pollination is effected by insects which visit the flower for the honey, which is secreted in pits one between the base of each petal and is protected from rain by hairs on the lower margin of the petals. In small pale-flowered forms, like Malva rotundifolia, which attract few insects, self-pollination has been observed, the style-arms twisting to bring the stigmatic surfaces into contact with the anthers.
Except in Malvaviscus which has a berry, the fruits are dry. In Malva (see Mallow) and allied genera they form one-seeded schizocarps separating from the persistent central column and from each other. In Hibiscus and Gossypium (cotton-plant, q.v.), the fruit is a capsule splitting loculicidally. Distribution of the seeds is sometimes aided by hooked outgrowths on the wall of the schizocarp, or by a hairy covering on the seed, an extreme case of which is the cotton-plant where the seed is buried
