body. The general colour is dark umber-brown, almost black on the back and grey below. The tail and naked parts of the feet are black. The musky odour from which it derives its name is due to the secretion of a large gland situated in the inguinal region, and present in both sexes.
The ordinary musk-rat is one of several species of a genus peculiar to America, where it is distributed in suitable localities in the northern part of the continent, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to the barren grounds bordering the Arctic seas, It lives on the shores of lakes and rivers, swimming and diving with facility, feeding on the roots, stems and leaves of water-plants, or on fruits and vegetables which grow near the margin of the streams it inhabits. Musk-rats are most active at night, spending the greater part of the day concealed in their burrows in the bank, which consist of a chamber with numerous passages, all of which open under the surface of the water. For winter quarters they build more elaborate houses of conical or dome-like form, composed of sedges, grasses and similar materials plastered together with mud. As their fur is an important article of commerce, large numbers are annually killed, being either trapped or speared at the mouths of their holes. (See also Rodentia.)
MUSK-SHREW, a name for any species of the genus Crocidura of the family Soricidae (see Insectivora). The term is generally used of the common grey musk-shrew (C. coerulea) of India. Dr Dobson believed this to be a serni-domesticated variety of the brown musk-shrew (C. murina), which he considered the original wild type. The head and body of a full-grown specimen measure about 6 in.; the tail is rather more than half that length; and bluish-grey is the usual colour of the fur, which is paler on the under surface. Dr Blanford states that the story of wine or beer becoming impregnated with a musky taint in consequence of this shrew passing over the bottles, is less credited in India than formerly owing to the discovery that liquors bottled in Europe and exported to India are not liable to be thus tainted.
MUSLIM IBN AL-ḤAJJĀJ, the Imam, the author of one of the two books of Mahommedan tradition called Ṣaḥīḥ, “sound,” was born at Nishapur at some uncertain date after A.D. 815 and died there in 875. Like al-Bukhārī (q.v.), of whom he was a close and faithful friend, he gave himself to the collecting, sifting and arranging of traditions, travelling for the purpose as far as Egypt. It is plain that his sympathies were with the traditionalist school or opposed to that which sought to build up the system of canon law on a speculative basis (see Mahommedan Law). But though he was a student and friend of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (q.v.) he did not go in traditionalism to the length of some, and he defended al-Bukhari when the latter was driven from Nishapur for refusing to admit that the utterance (lafz) of the Koran by man was as uncreated as the Koran itself (see Mahommedan Religion; and Patton’s Ahmad ibn Hanbal, 32 sqq.). His great collection of traditions is second in popularity only to that of al-Bukhari, and is commonly regarded as more accurate and reliable in details, especially names. His object was more to weed out illegitimate accretions than to furnish a traditional basis for a system of law. Therefore, though he arranged his material according to such a system, he did not add guiding rubrics, and he regularly brought together in one place the different parallel versions of the same tradition. His book is thus historically more useful, but legally less suggestive. His biographers give almost no details as to his life, and its early part was probably very obscure. One gives a list of as many as twenty works, but only his Ṣaḥīḥ seems to have reached us.
See further, de Slane’s transl. of Ibn Khallikān, iii. 348 sqq, and of Ibn Khaldun’s Prolégomènes, ii. 470, 47; Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, ii. 245 sqq., 255 sqq.; Brockelmann, Geschichte der arab. Litt., i. 760 seq.; Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, 80, 147 seq.; Dhahabī Tadhkira (edit. of Hyderabad), ii. 165 sqq. (D. B. Ma.)
MUSLIN (through Fr. mousseline from It. mussolino, diminutive of Mussolo, i.e. the town Mosul in Kurdistan) a light cotton cloth said to have been first made at Mosul, a city of Mesopotamia. Muslins have been largely made in various parts of India, whence they were imported to England towards the end of the 17th century. Some of these Indian muslins were very fine and costly. Among the specialties are Arni muslin, made in the Madras presidency, and Dacca muslin, made at Dacca
in Bengal. Muslins of many kinds are now made in Europe and America, and the name is applied to both plain and fancy
cloths, and to printed calicoes of light texture. Swiss muslin
is a light variety, woven in stripes or figures, originally made
in Switzerland. Book muslin is made in Scotland from very
fine yarns. Mulls, jaconets, lenos, and other cloths exported
to the East and elsewhere are sometimes described as muslins.
Muslin is used for dresses, blinds, curtains, &c.
MUSONIUS RUFUS, a Roman philosopher of the 1st century A.D., was born in Etruria about A.D. 20–30. He fell under the ban of Nero owing to his ethical teachings, and was exiled to the island of Gyarus on a trumped-up charge of participation in Piso’s conspiracy. He returned under Galba, and was the friend of Vitellius and Vespasian. It was he who dared to bring an accusation against P. Egnatius Celer (the Stoic philosopher whose evidence had condemned his patron and disciple Soranus) and who endeavoured to preach a doctrine of peace and goodwill among the soldiers of Vespasian when they were advancing upon Rome. So highly was he esteemed in Rome that Vespasian made an exception in his case when all other philosophers were expelled from the city. As to his death, we know only that he was not living in the reign of Trajan. His philosophy, which is in most respects identical With that of his pupil, Epictetus, is marked by its strong practical tendency. Though he did not altogether neglect logic and physics, he maintained that virtue is the only real aim of men. This virtue is not a thing of precept and theory but a practical, living reality. It is identical with philosophy in the true sense of the word, and the truly good man is also the true philosopher.
Suidas attributes numerous works to him, amongst others a number of letters to Apollonius of Tyana. The letters are certainly unauthentic; about the others there is no evidence. His views were collected by Claudius (or Valerius) Pollio, who wrote Ἀπομνημονεύματα Μουσωνίου τοῦ φιλοσόφου, from which Stobaeus obtained his information. See Ritter and Preller §§ 477, 488, 489; Tacitus, Annals, xv. 71 and Histories, iii. 81; and compare articles Stoics and Epictetus.
MUSPRATT, JAMES (1793–1886), British chemical manufacturer, was born in Dublin on the 12th of August 1793. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a wholesale druggist, but his apprenticeship was terminated in 1810 by a quarrel with his master, and in 1812 he went to Spain to take part in the Peninsular War. Lack of influence prevented him from getting a commission in the cavalry, but he followed the British army on foot far into the interior, was laid up with fever at Madrid, and, narrowly escaping capture by the French, succeeded in making his way to Lisbon. There he joined the navy, but after taking part in the blockade of Brest he was led to desert, through the harshness of the discipline on the second of the two ships in which he served. Returning to Dublin about 1814, he began the manufacture of chemical products, such as hydrochloric and acetic acids and turpentine, adding prussiate of potash a few years later. He also had in view the manufacture of alkali from common salt by the Leblanc process, but on the one hand he could not command the capital for the plant, and on the other saw that Dublin was not well situated for the experiment. In 1822 he went to Liverpool, which was at once a good port and within easy reach of salt and coal, and took a lease of an abandoned glass-works on the bank of the canal in Vauxhall Road. At first he confined himself to prussiate of potash, until in 1823, when the tax on salt was reduced from 15s. to 2s. a bushel, his profits enabled him to erect lead-chambers for making the sulphuric acid necessary for the Leblanc process. In 1828 he built works at St Helen’s and in 1830 at Newton; at the latter place he was long harassed by litigation on account of the damage done by the hydrochloric acid emitted from his factory, and finally in 1850 he left it and started new works at Widnes and Flint. In 1834–1835, in conjunction with Charles Tennant, he purchased sulphur mines in Sicily, to provide the raw material for his sulphuric acid; but on the imposition of the Neapolitan
