(1) Carrying the Gospel to all the non-Christian world; (2) the Church in the mission field; (3) education in relation to the Christianization of national life; (4) the missionary message in relation to non-Christian religions; (5) the preparation of missionaries; (6) the home base of missions; (7) missions and governments; (8) co-operation and the promotion of unity. The reports on these subjects in eight volumes, together with a ninth volume giving the proceedings of the conference itself, and a statistical atlas, will for some time be the vade mecum of information on Christian missions, and precludes the need of any attempt at a bibliography here, an attempt which would indeed be doomed to failure. It may not however, be out of place to call attention, in addition to literature already cited, to a few recent books, chiefly manuals, in several of which full lists of missionary books are given.
E. M. Bliss, The Missionary Enterprise (1908); E. Stock, A Short Handbook of Missions (1904); H. H. Montgomery, Foreign Missions (1904); T. Moscrop, The Kingdom Without Frontiers (1910); W. T. Whitley, Missionary Achievement (1908); S. L. Gulick, The Growth of the Kingdom of God (1897); B. Lucas, The Empire of Christ, a study of the missionary enterprise in the light of modern religious thought (1907); R. H. Malden, Foreign Missions, a study of some principles and methods (1910); G. Smith, Short History of Christian Missions (1897); G. Warneck, Outline of a History of Protestant Missions (1901; new German ed., 1910). See also J. S. Dennis, Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions (1902), Christian Missions and Social Progress (3 vols., 1897); G. Warneck, Modern Missions and Culture (1882); E. Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society (3 vols., 1899); J. B. Myers, Centenary Volume of the Baptist Missionary Society (1892); R. Lovett, History of the London Missionary Society (2 vols., 1899); J. Lowe, Medical Missions, Their Place and Power. A somewhat overlooked side of missions, viz. the “attempt to estimate the contribution of great races to the fulness of the Church of God,” is presented in Mankind and the Church, edited by Bishop H. H. Montgomery (1907). The Encyclopaedia of Missions (2nd ed., 1904) edited by Bliss, Dwight and Tupper; The Blue Book of Missions by H. O. Dwight (1907); and the already mentioned Statistical Atlas of Missions (1910) by H. P. Beach, are all of the highest value. For Roman Catholic Missions see Missiones Catholicae cura S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide descriptae (Romae, ex Typographia polyglotta S. C. de Prop. Fid. [official biennial publication]); Louvet, Les Missions Catholiques [au] xixᵉ. Siècle (Lyon, Bureau des Missions Catholiques, 14 Rue de la Charité, 1900); Piolet, Les Missions Catholiques Françaises [au] xixᵉ. Siècle (6 vols., Paris, A. Colin, 5 Rue des Mézières); H. A. Krose, Katholische Missionsstatistik (1908); K. Streit, Katholischen Missionsatlas (1908). (E. St.; H. T. A.; A. J. G.)
MISSISSIPPI, a South Central state of the United States, situated between 35° N. lat. and 31° N. lat., with its S.E. part extending to the Gulf of Mexico, the extreme southern point being in 30° 13′ N. lat. near the mouth of the Pearl River. On the E. the line is mostly regular, its extreme E. point being at 88° 7′ W. long, in the N.E. corner of the state; the W. boundary has its extreme W. point at 91° 41′ W. long, in the S.W. corner of the state. Mississippi is bounded N. by Tennessee, E. by Alabama, S. by the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana, W. by Louisiana, from which it is separated by the Pearl River and by the Mississippi, and by Arkansas, from which also it is separated by the Mississippi. The total area is 46,865 sq. m., of which 503 sq. m. are water surface.
Physical Features.—Mississippi lies for the most part in the Mississippi embayment of the Gulf Coastal Plain. A feature of its surface is a strip of bottom land between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, known as the Yazoo Delta; it extends from north to south about 175 m., and has an average width of more than 60 m., and covers an area of about 7000 sq. m. With the exception of a few flat ridges running from north to south, it is so low that it requires, to protect it from overflows, an unbroken line of levees averaging 15 ft. in height; these were built and are maintained by the state in part from a special tax on the land and in part from the sale of swamp lands of the United States (under an act of 1850). Along the eastern border of this delta, and southward of it, along the Mississippi itself, extends a belt of hills or bluffs (sometimes called “cane-hills”), which is cut by deep ravines and, though very narrow in the north, has in the south an average width of about 10 m. East of the belt are level or gently rolling prairies, and along the Gulf Coast is a low, marshy tract. The highest elevations, from 800 to 1000 ft. above the sea, are on the Pontotoc ridge in Tippah and Union counties; and from this ridge there is an almost imperceptible slope south and west from the Appalachian Mountain system. Along the margins of valleys there are hills rising from 30 to 120 ft., but farther back from the water courses the differences of elevation are much less. The coast-line, about 85 m. long, is bordered by a beach of white sand, and broken by several small and shallow indentations, among which are St Louis, Biloxi, Pascagoula and Point aux Chenes bays; separated from it by the shallow and practically unnavigable Mississippi Sound is a chain of low, long and narrow sand islands, the largest of which are Petit Bois, Horn, Ship and Cat. The principal rivers are: the Mississippi on the western border, and its tributaries, the Yazoo and the Big Black; the Pearl and Pascagoula, which drain much of the southern portion of the state and flow into the Gulf; and the Tombigbee, which drains most of the north-eastern portion. The Pontotoc ridge separates the drainage system of the Mississippi from that of the Tombigbee; extending from the northeastern part of the state southward, this ridge divides in Choctaw county, the eastern branch separating the drainage basin in the Pascagoula from that of the Pearl, and the western branch separating the drainage basin of the Pearl from that of the Big Black and the Mississippi. The Delta is drained chiefly by the Yazoo. A small area in the north-eastern corner of the state is drained northward by the Tennessee and the Hatchie. Each of the larger rivers is fed by smaller streams; their fall is usually gentle and quite uniform. The valleys vary in width from a few hundred yards to several miles. In the east of the state much of the valley of each of the larger streams is several feet above the stream's present high-water mark and forms the “hommock” or “second bottom” lands. Most of the rivers flowing into the Gulf are obstructed by sand-bars and navigable only during high-water from January to April. Oxbow lakes and bayous are common only in the Delta.
Geology.—The older formations are nearly all overlaid by deposits of the Quaternary period, which will be described last. In the extreme north-east are found the oldest rocks in the state—lower Devonian (the New Scotland beds of New York) and, not so old, an extension of the Lower Carboniferous which underlies the Warrior coalfields of Alabama, and which consists of cherts, limestones, sandstones and shales, with a depth of 800 to 900 ft. The strata here show some traces of the upheaval which formed the Appalachian Mountain chain. When this chain formed the Atlantic mountain-border of the continent excepting this north-eastern corner, Mississippi had not emerged from the waters of the ancient Gulf of Mexico. As the shore line of the Gulf slowly receded southward and westward, the sediment at its bottom gradually came to the surface, and constituted the Cretaceous and Tertiary formations. Wherever stratification is observed in these formations in Mississippi, it shows a dip west and south of 20 or 30 ft. to the mile.
The Cretaceous region includes, with the exception of the Lower Carboniferous, all that part of the state eastward of a line cutting the Tennessee boundary in 88° 50′ W. long., and drawn southward and eastward near Ripley, Pontotoc, and Starkville, crossing into Alabama in latitude 32° 45′. There are four formations of Cretaceous strata in Mississippi, defined by lines having the same general direction as the one just described. The oldest, bordering the Lower Carboniferous, is the Tuscaloosa formation of clays and sands arranged as follows: dark clays, thin lignite seams, lignitic clays, sands and chert, and light clays; this formation is 5–15 m. wide and reaches from about 33° 30′ on the Alabama boundary north to the Tennessee boundary. It is about 270 ft. thick. Tuscaloosa clays are used in the manufacture of pottery. Overlying the Tuscaloosa are the Eutaw sands, characterized by sandy laminated clays, and yellow, orange, red and blue sands, containing lignite and fossil resin. The Eutaw formation is a strip about 5 to 12 m. wide with a maximum depth of 300 ft. Westward to Houston and southward to about 32° 48′ on the Alabama boundary and occupying a much larger area than the other Cretaceous formations, is the Selma chalk, called “Rotten Limestone” by Hilgard; it is made up of a material of great uniformity,—a soft chalky rock, white or pale blue, composed chiefly of tenacious clay, and white carbonate of lime in minute crystals. Borings show that the thickness of this group varies from 350 ft. in the north to about 1000 ft. at Starkville. Fossils are abundant, and forty species are recorded. The latest Cretaceous is the Ripley formation, which lies west of the northern part of the last-named, and, about Scooba, in a small strip, the most southerly of the Cretaceous—it is composed of coarse sandstones, hard crystalline white limestones, clays, sands, phosphatic greensands, and dark-coloured, micaceous, glauconitic marls; its greatest thickness is about 280 ft. Its marine fossils are admirably preserved, and one hundred and eight species have been described.
Deposits of the Tertiary period form the basis of more than half the state, extending from the border of the Cretaceous westward nearly to the Yazoo Delta and the Mississippi Bottom, and southward to within a few miles of the Gulf coast. Seven formations (or groups) of the Tertiary strata have been distinguished in Mississippi. The oldest is the Midway limestone and clays in a narrow strip whose western limit is nearly parallel to the western boundary of the Selma chalk; it includes: the Clayton formation, characterized by the hard blue Turritella limestone (so named from the frequent fossil (Turritella mortoni); and Porters Creek (previously called Flatwoods) clay, which is grey, weathering white, and is occasionally overlain by grey fossiliferous sandstone. The Wilcox formation (called Lignitic by Hilgard, and named by Safford the Lagrange group) lies to the west of the last, and its western limit is from about 32° 12′ on the Alabama boundary about due north-west; in its north-westernmost part it is on the western edge of the Tertiary, in this state. Its minimum depth is 850 ft. It is marked by grey clays and sands, lignitic fossiliferous clays, beds of lignite or brown coal, sometimes 8 ft. in thickness, and brownish clays. The siliceous Claiborne
