Lynn on the 28th of June 1889. In 1908 an observatory was established in her honour at Nantucket.
See Phebe Mitchell Kendall, Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (Boston, 1896); In Memoriam (Poughkeepsie, 1889), by her pupil and successor at Vassar, Mary W. Whitney; and a sketch by her brother, Henry Mitchell (1830–1902), himself a well-known hydrographer, in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. xxv. (1889–1890), pp. 331–343.
MITCHELL, SILAS WEIR (1830–), American physician and author, son of a Philadelphia doctor, John Kearsley Mitchell (1798–1858), was born in Philadelphia on the 15th of February 1830. He studied at the university of Pennsylvania in that city, and received the degree of M.D. at Jefferson Medical College in 1850. During the Civil War he had charge of nervous injuries and maladies at Turner’s Lane Hospital, Philadelphia, and at the close of the war became a specialist in nervous diseases. In this field Weir Mitchell’s name became prominently associated with his introduction of the “rest cure,” subsequently taken up by the medical world, for nervous diseases, particularly hysteria; the treatment consisting primarily in isolation, confinement to bed, dieting and massage. In 1863 he wrote a clever short story, combining physiological and psychological problems, entitled “The Case of George Dedlow,” in the Atlantic Monthly. Thenceforward Dr Weir Mitchell, as a writer, divided his attention between professional and literary pursuits. In the former field he produced monographs on rattlesnake poison, on intellectual hygiene, on injuries to the nerves, on neurasthenia, on nervous diseases of women, on the effects of gunshot wounds upon the nervous system, and on the relations between nurse, physician, and patient; while in the latter he wrote juvenile stories, several volumes of respectable verse, and prose fiction of varying merit, which, however, gave him a leading place among the American authors of the close of the 19th century. His historical novels, Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker (1897), The Adventures of François (1898) and The Red City (1909), take high rank in this branch of fiction.
MITCHELL, SIR THOMAS LIVINGSTONE (1792–1855), Australian explorer, was born at Craigend, Stirlingshire, Scotland, on the 16th of June 1792. From 1808 to the end of the Peninsular War he served in Wellington’s army, and was raised to the rank of major. He was appointed to survey the battlefields of the Peninsula, and his map of the Lower Pyrenees is still admired. In 1827 he was appointed deputy surveyor-general, and afterwards surveyor-general of New South Wales. He made four exploring expeditions between 1831 and 1846, and discovered the Peel, the Namoi, the Gwyder and other rivers, traced the course of the Darling and Glenelg, and was the first to penetrate into that portion of the country which he named Australia Felix. His last expedition was mainly devoted to the discovery of a route between Sydney and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and during the journey he explored the Fitzroy Downs, and discovered the Balonne, Victoria, Warrego and other streams. In 1838, while in England, Mitchell published his Three Expeditions into the Interior of East Australia. In 1839 he was knighted and made a D.C.L. of Oxford. During this visit he took with him some of the first specimens of gold and the first diamond found in Australia. In 1848 the narrative of his second expedition was published in London, Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia. In 1851 he was sent to report on the Bathurst goldfields, and in 1853 he again visited England and patented his boomerang propeller for steamers. He died at Darling Point, Sydney, on the 5th of October 1855.
Besides the above works, Mitchell wrote a book on Geographical and Military Surveying (1827), an Australian Geography, and a translation of the Lusiad of Camoens. During his tenure of office as surveyor-general he published an admirable map (still in use) of the settled districts of New South Wales.
MITCHELL, a city and the county-seat of Davison county, South Dakota, U.S.A., about 70 m. W.N.W. of Sioux Falls. Pop. (1905), 5719; (1910), 6515. Mitchell is served by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul and the Chicago, St Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha railways. Among its buildings and institutions are the city hall, the Federal building, a Carnegie library, a hospital, and a sanatorium. Mitchell is the seat of the Dakota Wesleyan University (1885; Methodist Episcopal). At Mitchell is a “corn palace,” which is decorated each autumn with split ears of Indian corn, and is the centre of an annual festival, held in September and October. The city is an important shipping point for grain and livestock, and has a large wholesale trade. There are railway repair shops of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railway, machine shops, and manufactories of bricks and dressed lumber. Mitchell was settled in 1879 and chartered as a city in 1883.
MITCHELSTOWN, a market town of Co. Cork, Ireland, situated between the Kilworth and Galty Mountains, on a branch of the Great Southern & Western railway. Pop. (1901), 2146. Here is the Protestant Kingston College, a home for poor gentlefolk, founded by James, Lord Kingston, in 1760. The seat of the earls of Kingston was built in 1823. It is a massive castellated structure, among the finest of its kind in Ireland. The Mitchelstown limestone caves, exhibiting beautiful stalactite formations, are 6 m. distant in Co. Tipperary (q.v.). On the 9th of September 1887 Mitchelstown was the scene of a riot in connexion with the Irish Nationalist “plan of campaign.” The police were compelled to fire on the rioters, and two men were killed, after which the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder against the police. This verdict was ignored by the government, and subsequently quashed by the Queen’s Bench in Dublin, but additional feeling was roused in respect of the incident owing to a message later sent by Mr Gladstone ending with the words “Remember Mitchelstown.”
MITE, a name applied to an order of small Arachnida, with which this article deals, and to a coin of very slight value. The origin of both would appear to be ultimately the same, viz. a root mei-, implying something exceedingly small. It has been suggested that the name for the animal comes from a secondary root of the root mei-, to cut, whence come such words as Goth. maitan, to cut, and Ger. messer, knife. In this case mite would mean “the biter” or “cutter.” The coin was originally a Flemish copper coin (Dutch mijt) worth one-third or, according to some authorities, a smaller fraction of the Flemish penning, penny. It has become a common expression in English for a coin of the smallest value, from its use to translate Gr. λεπτόν, two of which make a κοδράντης, translated “farthing” (Mark xii. 43).
In zoology, “mite” is the common name for minute members of the class Arachnida (q.v.), which, with the ticks, constitute the order Acari. The word “mite,” however, is merely a popular and convenient term for certain groups of Acari, and does not connote a natural assemblage as contrasted with the ticks (q.v.). Mites are either free-living or parasitic throughout their lives or parasitic at certain periods and free-living at others. They are almost universally distributed, and are found wherever terrestrial vegetation, even of the lowliest kind, occurs. They are spread from the arctic to the antarctic hemisphere, and inhabit alike the land, fresh-water streams and ponds, brackish marshes and the sea. The largest species, which occur in the tropics, reach barely half an inch in length; while the smallest, the most diminutive of the Arthropoda, are invisible to the naked eye.
Mites are divided into a considerable number of families. The Bdellidae (Bdella) are free-living forms with long antenniform palpi. The large tropical forms above mentioned belong to the genus Trombidium of the family Trombidiidae. The members of this genus are covered with velvety plush-like hairs, often of an exquisite crimson colour. The legs are adapted for crawling or running, and the palpi are raptorial. They are non-parasitic in the adult stage; but immature individuals of a British species (T. holosericeum) are parasitic upon various animals (see Harvest Bug). The Tetranychidae are nearly related to the last. A well-known example, Tetranychus telarius, spins webs on the backs of leaves, and is sometimes called the money spider. The fresh-water mites or Hydrachnidae are generally beautifully coloured red or green, and are commonly globular in shape. Their legs are furnished with
