mines of the neighbourhood were practically unworked during the whole of the 19th century, but have recently been reopened. The main industries of the place are, however, weaving and dyeing, and it is estimated that there are about 40,000 work-people in the industrial district of which Markirch is the centre. The small river Leber, which intersects the town, was at one time the boundary between the German and French languages, and traces of this separation still exist. The German-speaking inhabitants on the right bank were Protestants, and subject to the counts of Rappoltstein, while the French inhabitants were Roman Catholics, and under the rule of the dukes of Lorraine.
See Mühlenbeck, Documents historiques concernant Ste-Marie aux Mines (Markirch, 1876–1877); Hauser, Das Bergbaugebiet von Markirch (Strass., 1900).
MARKLAND, JEREMIAH (1693–1776), English classical
scholar, was born at Childwall in Lancashire on the 29th (or
18th) of October 1693. He was educated at Christ’s Hospital
and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He died at Milton, near Dorking,
on the 7th of July 1776.
His most important works are Epistola critica (1723), the Sylvae of Statius (1728), notes to the editions of Lysias by Taylor, of Maximus of Tyre by Davies, of Euripides’ Hippolytus by Musgrave, editions of Euripides’ Supplices, Iphigenia in Tauride and in Aulide (ed. T. Gaisford, 1811); and Remarks on the Epistles of Cicero to Brutus (1745).
See J. Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes (1812), iv. 272; also biography by F. A. Wolf, Literarische Analekten, ii. 370 (1818).
MARKO KRALYEVICH, Servian hero, was a son of the
Servian king or prince, Vukashin (d. 1371). Chagrined at not
himself becoming king after his father’s death, he headed a revolt
against the new ruler of the Servians. Later he passed into the
service of the sultan of Turkey, and was killed in battle about
1394. Marko, however, is more celebrated in legend than in
history. He is regarded as the personification of the Servian
race, and stories of strength and wonder have gathered round his
name. He is supposed to have lived for 300 years, to have
ridden a horse 150 years old, and to have used his enormous
physical strength against oppressors, especially against the
Turks. He is a great figure in Servian poetry, and his deeds are
also told in the epic poems of the Rumanians and the Bulgarians.
One tradition relates how he retired from the world owing to the
advent of firearms, which, he held, made strength and valour
of no account in battle. Goethe regards Marko as the counterpart
of Hercules and of the Persian Rustem.
The Servian poems about him were published in 1878; a German translation by Gröber (Marko, der Königssohn) appeared at Vienna in 1883.
MARK SYSTEM, the name given to a social organization which
rests on the common tenure and common cultivation of the land
by small groups of freemen. Both politically and economically
the mark was an independent community, and its earliest
members were doubtless blood relatives. In its origin the word
is the same as mark or march (q.v.), a boundary. First used in
this sense, it was then applied to the land cleared by the settlers
in the forest areas of Germany, and later it was used for the system
which prevailed—to what extent or for how long is uncertain—in
that country. It is generally assumed that the lands of the
mark were divided into three portions, forest, meadow and arable,
and as in the manorial system which was later in vogue elsewhere,
a system of rotation of crops in two, three or even six fields was
adopted, each member of the community having rights of pasture
in the forest and the meadow, and a certain share of the arable.
The mark was a self-governing community. Its affairs were
ordered by the markmen who met together at stated times in
the markmoot. Soon, however, their freedom was encroached
upon, and in the course of a very short time it disappeared
altogether.
The extent and nature of the mark system has been, and still is, a subject of controversy among historians. One school holds that it was almost universal in Germany; that it was, in fact, the typical Teutonic method of holding and cultivating the land. From Germany, it is argued, it was introduced by the Angle and Saxon invaders into England, where it was extensively adopted, being the foundation upon which the prevailing land system in early England was built. An opposing school denies entirely the existence of the mark system, and a French writer, Fustel de Coulanges, refers to it contemptuously as “a figment of the Teutonic imagination.” This view is based largely upon the supposition that common ownership of the land was practically unknown among the early Germans, and was by no means general among the early English. The truth will doubtless be found to lie somewhere between the two extremes. The complete mark system was certainly not prevalent in Anglo-Saxon England, nor did it exist very widely, or for any very long period in Germany, but the system which did prevail in these two countries contained elements which are also found in the mark system.
The chief authority on the mark system is G. L. von Maurer, who has written Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark- Hof- Dorf- und Stadtverfassung und der öffentlichen Gewalt (Munich, 1854; new ed., Vienna, 1896), and Geschichte der Markenverfassung in Deutschland (Erlangen, 1856). See also N. D. Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problèmes de l’histoire (1885); and a translation from the same writer’s works called The Origin of Property in Land, by M. Ashley. This contains an introductory chapter by Professor W. J. Ashley. Other authorities are K. Lamprecht, Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1886); R. Schröder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1902); and W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. (1891).
MARL (from O. Fr. marle, Late Lat. margila, dim. of marga;
cf. Du. and Ger. Mergel), a calcareous clay, or a mixture of
carbonate of lime with argillaceous matter. It is impossible
to give a strict definition of a marl, for the term is applied to a
great variety of rocks and soils with a considerable range of
composition. On the one hand, the marls graduate into clays
by diminution in the amount of lime that they contain, and on
the other hand they pass into argillaceous limestones (see Limestone).
From 25–75% of carbonate of lime may be regarded
as characteristic of the marls. But in popular usage many
substances are called marls which would not be included under
the definition given here. The practice formerly much in
vogue of top-dressing land with marls, and the use of many
different kinds of earth and clay for that purpose, has led to
a very general misapplication of the term; for all sorts of rotted
rock, some being of igneous origin while others are rain-wash,
loams, and various superficial deposits, have been called “marls”
in different parts of Britain, if only it was believed that an
application of them to the surface of the fields would result in
increased fertility.
The typical marls are soft, earthy, and of a white, grey or brownish colour. Many of them disintegrate in water; and they are readily attacked by dilute hydrochloric acid, which dissolves the carbonate of lime rapidly, giving off bubbles of carbon dioxide. The lime of some marls is present in the form of shells, whole or broken; in others it is a fine impalpable powder mixed with the clay. In many marls there is organic matter (plant fragments or humus). Sand is usually not abundant but is rarely absent. Gypsum occurs in some marls, occasionally in large simple crystals with the form of lozenge-shaped plates or in twinned groups resembling an arrow-head; fine examples of these are obtained in the marls of Montmartre near Paris, where celestine (strontium sulphate) occurs also in nodular or concretionary masses. Large crystals of calcite or of dolomite, lumps of iron pyrites or radiate nodules of marcasite, and small crystals of quartz are found in certain marl deposits; and in Westphalia the marls of the Senonian (part of the Cretaceous system) at Hamm yield masses of strontianite up to two feet in length. A very large variety of accessory minerals may be proved to exist in marls by microscopic examination.
The rocks known as shell marls are found in many parts of Britain and other northern countries, and are much valued by farmers as a source of carbonate of lime, though rarely burned to produce quicklime. They are generally obtained by digging pits in marshy spots or meadows, and often occur below considerable thicknesses of peat. Large numbers of shells of fresh-water mollusca are scattered through a matrix of clay; usually retaining their shapes though they are in a friable and semi-decomposed state. The species represented are very few, and from their unbroken state it is obvious that they
