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MOLLTTSCA 272 MOLTKE class hold office only for a month. All must be versed in ecclesiastical and civil law. The British government in India has siffered heavy losses of life and treasure from revolts led by "Mad Mol- lahs," notably in the Sudan in 1901. MOLLUSCA (-lus'ca), in zoology ac- cording to Linnaeus, an order of Vermes, distinct from Testacea, which immedi- ately follows it. Cuvier made the Mol- lusca one of the four great "divisions" or sub-kingdoms of the Animal King- dom, of equal rank with the Vertebrata, the Articulata, and the Radiata. He subdivides it into six classes: Cephalop- oda, Pteropoda, Gasteropoda, Acephala, Brachiopoda, and Cirrhopoda. Except that the last class has now been merged in Crustacea, and placed with the Ar- ticulata or Annulosa, the essential features of Cuvier's arrangement have still been preserved. Dr. Henry Wood- ward defines the Mollusca as animals with a soft body, without segments, naked or covered with a shell of one or two valves composed of carbonate of lime secreted by a fold of the skin — the mantle. They have a brain-mass, and foot and mantle ganglia. Some have an internal hard shell or cartilage. The symmetry of the body is bilateral. Ex- ample, the cuttle-fish, the snail, the oyster, etc. He makes Tunicata and the Molluscoida an "intermediate group," and divides the sub-kingdom into four classes: Cephalopoda, Gasteropoda, Pter- opoda, and Conchifera. Many thousand recent Mollusca are known, distributed throughout every climate and nearly every part of the world. The shells of the Mollusca being all but indestructible, and easy of identifica- tion, afford us a reliable means for as- certaining the relative age of strata. As some, moreover, inhabit fresh waters, others the land, besides the large num- bers which find their home in salt water, they often settle the fresh-water or ma- rine origin of a stratum. The marine ones being distributed also in certain zones of salt water, they frequently af- ford materials for sounding a sea which has passed away ages ago. Next to the Protozoa, the oldest fossils known are Mollusca. See Bivalves. MOLLWITZ (mol'vits), a village of Prussian Silesia. An obelisk (1878) marks the battlefield where Frederick the Great with 20,000 Prussians defeated an equal number of Austrians under Marshal Neipperg, April 10, 1741. MOLLY MAGUIRES, a secret society formed in Ireland, in 1843, to intimidate bailiffs or process-servers distraining for rent, or others impounding the cattle of those who were unable or unwilling to pay rent. An association bearing the same name was fonned in 1877 in the mining districts of Pennsylvania, which for a time terrorized the coal fields. After some of the leaders had been ar- rested, tried, and executed the associa- tion ceased to be. MOLOGA (mo-lo'ga), a town in the Russian province of Jaroslav, near the confluence of the Mologa and Volga, 68 miles W, N. W. of Jaroslav. The river Mologa winds 337 miles S. E. through the provinces of Tver, Novgoittd, and Jaroslav, and is one of the links between the Volga and the Neva. MOLOKAI (mo-lo-ki'), an island of the Hawaiian group, about 40 miles long by from 7 to 9 broad. All lepers of the islands are sent here and kept isolated from the healthy part of the community. Pop. about 1,800. MOLTKE, HELMUTH KABL BERN- HARD, COUNT VON (molt'ke), a Prussian military officer, one of the greatest soldiers of Europe; born in Parchimj Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Oct. 26, 1800. He was the son of a German army COUNT HELMUTH KARL VON MOLTKE officer. At the age of 11 he was sent to the military school at Copenhagen, and, after several years of training, entered the Danish army. But in 1819, led by his German sympathies, he resigned his commission and went to Berlin to continue his studies in the Prussian cap- ital. After 10 years of study and a few more of staff service he went to Turkey