standard grade. The state appropriates over $875,000 each year for instruction in the public schools. This is supplemented by a still larger sum in the various municipalities. The aggregate of these two amounts to more than $2,000,000. There are 213,123 children of school age. The enrollment was 132,592 and the average attendance was 113,960. There are 4,600 schools and 5,000 teachers. The population is increasing slowly by immigration from Canada and Sweden. The census of 1910 gives a population of 742,371. The principal cities are Portland, Lewiston (of which Auburn is practically a part), Bangor, Bath, Augusta, Biddeford and Waterville. See Abbott's History of Maine.
Maine, Henry James Sumner, a celebrated lawyer of England, was born on Aug. 15, 1822, and died at Cannes, France, Feb. 3, 1888. At 25 he was appointed professor of civil law. In 1862 he went to India as law-member of the council in India, an office that had been held by Macaulay. In 1877 he was elected Whewell professor of international law at Cambridge. Maine introduced wise reforms into Indian law, but his work on the origin and growth of legal and social institutions is the work on which his fame mostly rests. His publications include Ancient Law, Village Communities, Early History of Institutions, Popular Government, International Law and Dissertations on Early Law and Custom.
Maintenon (măn-t’-nôn′), Française D'Aubigne, Marquise de, was born in prison at Niort, France, Nov. 27, 1635. She was brought up in the West Indies, but returned to France in 1645. When she found herself at 15 reduced to poverty by the death of her parents, Scarron the poet offered to marry her or to pay her entrance fee to a convent. He was lame and deformed, but she chose to marry him, and for nine years was the center of the intellectual society of his house. At his death his pension was continued to her, and in 1669 she was appointed governess of two of the sons of Louis XIV. At the death of the queen she privately married Louis XIV. Her influence over him was very great, and on the side of morality, and she was a liberal patroness of literature and art. She founded at St. Cyr, near Versailles, a home for poor girls of good family, in memory of her own youth, and retired to it on the death of the king in 1715. She died on April 15, 1719. See Life by Bowles.
Mainz. See Mayence.
Maize. See Corn.
Majolica (mȧ-jŏl′ĭ-kȧ), a decorated kind of enameled pottery made in Italy from the 15th to the 18th century. It is an earthenware, usually of a coarse paste covered with a stanniferous or tin-yielding glaze or enamel. Sometimes it is called Raffaelle ware, from a number of the paintings on it having been copied from the designs of that famous painter. Majolica is generally considered the most beautiful decorated pottery that was ever extensively made, at least during the Christian era. It seems to have been first made on the island of Majorca, of which Majolica is the Italian name.
Majorca (mȧ-jôr′kȧ), the largest of the Balearic Isles; area, 1,310 square miles. In the north are mountains 3,500 to 5,000 feet in height. Olive-groves abound everywhere, and almond, orange, fig and other fruit-trees are common. A London company in 1871 drained 5,000 acres of marsh-lands, which are of extraordinary fertility. Majolica ware is still made here to a small extent. Majorca, with Minorca and Ivica, all lying in the Mediterranean off the coast of Valencia, forms a province of Spain, called Baleáres (or in English the Balearic Isles); total area 1,935 square miles; population 311,649. The chief town is Palma on the southwestern coast (population 63,937). See Balearic Isles.
Malaga (măl′a-gȧ), a seaport in the south of Spain, on the Mediterranean. It has a wonderfully equable and uniform climate, of which dryness and constant sunshine are the characteristics. It is one of the most important seaports of Spain, yet its trade has been declining since 1878. Diseases have ravaged the vines, the orange and the lemon groves. The United States, its great customer for Malaga raisins, now uses California raisins. Population 133,045. The town was founded by the Phœnicians; hence it is very old. A Moorish castle is one of its few noted buildings. Ferdinand and Isabella captured it from the Moors in 1487.
Malakka (mȧ-lăk′ȧ) or the Malay Peninsula is the long strip extending from Indo-China southward toward Sumatra. The peninsula begins at the head of the Gulf of Siam, and includes parts of Siam and Burma, covering 75,000 square miles. There are mountain-ranges, covered with forests, running the entire length of the peninsula, with peaks from 6,000 to 8,000 feet in height. The camphor, ebony, teak, sandalwood, cinnamon, rattan, cocoa and nutmeg are the more valuable trees. Malakka is the largest tin-yielding region in the world, and gold, silver, iron and coal are found, though the mines are not much developed. The crops are rice, sugarcane, cotton, tobacco, yams and cocoanuts. Population 95,657. Malakka is the name also of the British settlement in the southwestern part of the peninsula and of its capital. In 1867 Malakka (with Penang) and the island of Singapore were transferred from the Indian government of Britain to the control of the British secretary of state for the colonies, under the designation of the Straits Settlement, and erected into a crown colony. The seat of government is the town of Singapore. Christmas Island and Cocos Islands have since been attached to the Straits Settlements.
