stables, he had that of the retinue of the sovereign, also the charge
of the funds set aside for the religious functions of the court, coronations,
&c. On the death of a sovereign he had the right to all the
horses and their equipment in the royal stables. Distinct from this
officer and independent of him, was the first equerry (“Premier
Écuyer”), who had charge of the horses which the sovereign used
personally (“la petite écurie”), and who attended on him when he
rode out. The office of master of the horse existed down to the reign
of Louis XVI. Under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. the duties
were discharged by the first equerry, but under Napoléon I. and
Napoléon III. the office was revived with much of its old importance.
In Germany the master of the horse (Oberststallmeister) is a high court dignitary; but his office is merely titular, the superintendence of the king’s stables being carried out by the Oberstallmeister, an official corresponding to the crown equerry in England.
MASTER OF THE ROLLS, the third member of the Supreme Court of Judicature in England, the lord chancellor, president of the chancery division, being the first, and the lord chief justice, president of the king’s bench division, being the second. At first he was the principal clerk of the chancery, and as such had charge of the records of the court, especially of the register of original writs and of all patents and grants under the Great Seal. Until the end of the 15th century he was called either the clerk or the keeper of the rolls, and he is still formally designated as the master or keeper of the rolls. The earliest mention of him as master of the rolls is in an act of 1495; and in another act of the same year he is again described as clerk of the rolls, showing that his official designation still remained unsettled. About the same period, however, the chief clerks of the chancery came to be called masters in chancery, and the clerk, master or keeper of the rolls was always the first among them, whichever name they bore. In course of time, from causes which are not very easy to trace, his original functions as keeper of the records passed away from him and he gradually assumed a jurisdiction in the court of chancery second only to that of the lord chancellor himself. In the beginning he only heard causes in conjunction with the other masters in chancery, and his decrees were invalid until they had been approved and signed by the lord chancellor. Sitting in the Rolls chapel or in the court in Rolls yard, he heard causes without assistance, and his decrees held good until they were reversed on petition either to the lord chancellor or afterwards to the lords justices of appeal. Before any judge with the formal title of vice-chancellor was appointed the master of the rolls was often spoken of as vice-chancellor, and in theory acted as such, sitting only when the lord chancellor was not sitting and holding his court in the evening from six o’clock to ten. Only since 1827 has the master of the rolls sat in the morning hours. By the Public Record Office Act 1838 the custody of the records was restored to him, and he is chairman of the State Papers and Historical Manuscripts Commissions. Under the Judicature Act 1875, and the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876, he now always sits with the lords justices in the court of appeal (which usually sits in two divisions of three judges, the master of the rolls presiding over one division), whose decisions can be questioned only in the House of Lords. The master of the rolls was formerly eligible to a seat in the House of Commons—a privilege enjoyed by no other member of the judicial bench;[1] but he was deprived of it by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873, which provides that all judges of the High Court of Justice and the court of appeal shall be incapable of being elected to or sitting in the House of Commons. The master of the rolls is always sworn of the privy council. His salary is £6000 a year.
See Lord Hardwicke, Office of the Master of the Rolls.
MASTIC, or Mastich (Gr. μαστίχη, probably connected with μασᾶσθαι, to chew, since mastic is used in the East as a chewing gum), a resinous exudation obtained from the lentisk, Pistacia lentiscus, an evergreen shrub of the natural order Anacardiaceae. The lentisk or mastic plant is indigenous to the Mediterranean coast region from Syria to Spain, but grows also in Portugal, Morocco and the Canaries. Although experiments have proved that excellent mastic might be obtained in other islands in the archipelago, the production of the substance has been, since the time of Dioscorides, almost exclusively confined to the island of Chios. The mastic districts of that island are for the most part flat and stony, with little hills and few streams. The shrubs are about 6 ft. high. The resin is contained in the bark and not in the wood, and in order to obtain it numerous vertical incisions are made, during June, July and August, in the stem and chief branches. The resin speedily exudes and hardens into roundish or oval tears, which are collected, after about fifteen days, by women and children, in little baskets lined with white paper or cotton wool. The ground around the trees is kept hard and clean, and flat pieces of stone are often laid beneath them to prevent any droppings of resin from becoming contaminated with dirt. The collection is repeated three or four times between June and September, a fine tree being found to yield about 8 or 10 ℔ of mastic during the season. Besides that obtained from the incisions, mastic of very fine quality spontaneously exudes from the small branches. The harvest is affected by showers of rain during the period of collection, and the trees are much injured by frost, which is, however, of rare occurrence in the districts where they grow. Mastic occurs in commerce in the form of roundish tears about the size of peas. They are transparent, with a glassy fracture, of a pale yellow or faint greenish tinge, which darkens slowly by age. During the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries mastic enjoyed a high reputation as a medicine, and formed an ingredient in a large number of medical compounds; but its use in medicine is now obsolete, and it is chiefly employed for making varnish.
Pistacia Khinjuk and P. cabulica, trees growing throughout Sindh, Baluchistan and Cabul, yield a kind of mastic which is met with in the Indian bazaars under the name of Mustagirūmī, i.e. Roman mastic. This when occurring in the European market is known as East Indian or Bombay mastic. In Algeria P. Atlantica yields a solid resin, which is collected and used by the Arabs as a masticatory. Cape mastic is the produce of Euryops multifidus, the resin bush, or harpuis bosch of the Boers—a plant of the composite order growing abundantly in the Clanwilliam district. Dammar resin is sometimes sold under the name of mastic. The West Indian mastic tree is the Bursera gummifera and the Peruvian mastic is Schinus molle; but neither of these furnishes commercial resins. The name mastic tree is also applied to a timber tree, Sider oxylon mastichodendron, nat. ord. Sapotaceae, which grows in the West Indies and on the coast of Florida.
MASTIGOPHORA, a group of Protozoa, moving and ingesting food by long flagella (Gr. μάστιξ, whip), usually few in number, and multiplying by fission, usually longitudinal, in the active condition. They were separated off from the rest of the old “Infusoria” by K. Düsing, and subdivided by O. Bütschli and E. R. Lankester into (1) Flagellata (q.v.), including Haemoflagellata (q.v.), (2) Dinoflagellata (q.v.) and Rhyncho = Cystoflagellata E. Haeckel (q.v.) = Rhynchoflagellata E. R. Lankester. The Mastigophora are frequently termed Flagellata or Flagellates.
MASTODON (Gr. μαστός, breast, ὀδούς, tooth), a name given by Cuvier to the Pliocene and Miocene forerunners of the elephants, on account of the nipple-like prominences on the molar teeth of some of the species (fig. 2), which are of a much simpler type than those of true elephants. Mastodons, like elephants, always have a pair of upper tusks, while the earlier ones likewise have a short pair in the lower jaw, which is prolonged into a snout-like symphysis for their support. These long-chinned mastodons are now regarded as forming a genus by themselves (Tetrabelodon), well-known examples of this group being Tetrabelodon angustidens from the Miocene and T. longirostris (fig. 1 C.) from the Lower Pliocene of the Continent. In the former the upper tusks are bent down so as to cross the tips of the short and chisel-like lower pair. These long-chinned mastodons must have had an extremely elongated muzzle, formed by the upper lip and nose above and the lower lip below, with which they were able to reach the ground, the neck being probably rather longer than in elephants. On the other hand, in the short-chinned mastodons, as represented by the Pleistocene North American Mastodon americanus and the Pliocene European M. turicensis (fig. 1), the chin had shrunk
- ↑ Sir John Romilly, M.P. for Devonport, 1847 to 1852, was the last master of the rolls to sit in Parliament. He was appointed master of the rolls in 1851.
