4840. Moorhead is served by the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific railways. The city is the seat of one of the state normal schools (1888) and of Concordia College (Norwegian Lutheran; 1891), which in 1907–1908 had 500 students. Moorhead, named in honour of James K. Moorhead (1806–1884), a Republican representative in Congress from Pennsylvania in 1859–1869, was settled in 1871, was incorporated as a village in 1875, and was chartered as a city in 1881.
MOOR-HEN[1] the name by which a bird, often called water-hen
and sometimes gallinule, is most commonly known in
England. An earlier name was moat-hen, which was appropriate
in the days when a moat was the ordinary adjunct of most
considerable houses in the country. It is the Gallinula chloropus
of ornithologists, about the size of a small bantam-hen, but
with the body much compressed (as is usual with members
of the family Rallidae, to which it belongs), its plumage above
is of a deep olive-brown, so dark as to appear black at a short
distance, and beneath iron-grey, relieved by some white stripes
on the flanks, with the lower tail-coverts of pure white—these
last being very conspicuous as the bird swims. A scarlet frontlet,
especially bright in the spring of the year, and a red garter on
the tibia render it very showy. Though often frequenting the
neighbourhood of man, the moor-hen seems unable to overcome
the inherent stealthy habits of the Rallidae, and hastens to
hide itself on the least alarm; but under exceptional circumstances
it may be induced to feed, yet always suspiciously,
with tame ducks and poultry. It appears to take wing with
difficulty, and may be often caught by an active dog; but, in
reality, it is capable of sustained flight, its longer excursions
being chiefly performed by night, when the peculiar call-note
it utters is frequently heard as the bird, itself invisible in the
darkness, passes overhead. The nest is a mass of flags, reeds,
or other aquatic plants, often arranged with much neatness,
almost always near the water’s edge, where a clump of
rushes is generally chosen; but should a mill-dam, sluice-gate,
or boat-house afford a favourable site, advantage will be taken
of it, and not unfrequently the bough of a tree at some height
from the ground will furnish the place for a cradle. The eggs,
from seven to eleven in number, resemble those of the coot
but are smaller, lighter, and brighter in colour, with spots or
blotches of reddish-brown. The common moor-hen is extensively
spread throughout the Old World, being found also at
the Cape of Good Hope, in India and in Japan. In America it
is represented by a very closely allied form, G. galeata, so called
from its rather larger frontal helm, and in Australia by another,
G. tenebrosa, which generally wants the white flank-markings.
Both closely resemble G. chloropus in general habits, as does
also the G. pyrrhorrhoa of Madagascar, which has the lower
tail-coverts buff instead of white. Celebes and Amboyna possess
a smaller cognate species, G. haematopus, with red legs; tropical
Africa has the smallest. of all, G. angulata. One of the most
remarkable varieties is the G. nesiotis of Tristan da Cunha,[2]
which has wholly lost the power of flight.[3] Among other forms
are the common Gallinula (Erythra) phoenicura, and Gallicrex
cristata of India, as well as the South American species classed
in the genus Porphyriops, and the remarkable Australian genus
Tribonyx contains three species[4] which seem to be more terrestrial than aquatic in their haunts and habits.
Allied to all these is the genus Porphyrio, including the bird so named by classical writers, and perhaps a dozen other species often called sultanas and purple water-hens, for they all have a plumage of deep blue—some becoming violet, green, or black in parts, but preserving the white lower tail-coverts, so generally characteristic of the group; and their beauty is enhanced by their scarlet bill and legs. Two, P. alleni of the Ethiopian region and the South American P. parva, are of small size. Of the larger species, P. caeruleus is the “Porphyrio” of the ancients, and inhabits certain localities on both sides of the Mediterranean, while the rest are widely dispersed within the tropics, and even beyond them, as in Australia and New Zealand. But this last country has produced a more exaggerated form, Notornis, which has an interesting and perhaps unique history. First described from a fossil skull by Sir R. Owen[5] and then thought to be extinct, an example was soon after taken alive,[6] the skin of which (with that of another procured like the first by Walter Mantell) may be seen in the British Museum. Other fossil remains were from time to time noted by Sir R. Owen[7]; but it began to be feared that the bird had ceased to exist,[8] until a third example was taken about the year 1879, the skin and most of the bones of which, after undergoing examination in New Zealand by Sir W. Buller and T. J. Parker,[9] found their way to the museum of Dresden, where A. B. Meyer discovered the recent remains to be specifically distinct from the fossil, and while keeping for the latter the name N. mantelli gives the former that of N. hochstetteri. What seems to have been a third species of Notornis formerly inhabited Lord Howe’s Island, but is now extinct. Whether the genus Aptornis, of which Owen described the remains from New Zealand, was most nearly allied to Notornis and Porphyrio cannot here be decided. T. J. Parker considers it a “development by degeneration of an ocydromine type.” (See Ocydrome.) (A. N.)
MOORS (Lat. Mauri; Gr. Μαυροί, dark men), the name
which, as at present used, is loosely applied to any native of
Morocco, but in its stricter sense only to the townsmen of
mixed descent. In this sense it is also used of the Mahommedan
townsmen in the other Barbary states. It has been by
some connected with the Hebrew and Phoenician mahur,
western. Wetzstein derives it from mahir, a corruption of
Amāsir with its plurals Imāzir and Masir, archaic forms of
the Berber native name Amazigh, the free. From Mauri, the
classic name for the north-western African tribes, the north-western
districts of that continent came to be called by the
Romans Mauretania. The term “Moors” has no real ethnological
value. The tribes known to the Romans by that name
were undoubtedly of Berber stock (see Berbers). They first
appear in history at the time of the Jugurthine War (110–106 B.C.),
when Mauretania west of the Mulucha was under the
government of a king called Bocchus, and appears to have
constituted a regular and organized state. It retained its
independence till the time of Augustus, who in 25 B.C. bestowed
the sovereignty of the previously existing kingdom upon
Juba II., king of Numidia, at the same time uniting it with the
western portion of Numidia, from the Mulucha to the Ampsaga,
which received the name of Mauretania Caesariensis, while the
province that had previously constituted the kingdom, or
Mauretania proper, came to be known as Mauretania Tingitana
(see Mauretania). With the rest of North Africa Mauretania
was overrun by the Arabs in the 7th century. The subsequent
conquest of Spain was effected chiefly by Berber tribes, but
the Moslems in the peninsula—known to the Christian nations
as Moors—always had a strong strain of Arab blood and in most
respects became Arabized. The race was also influenced considerably
by intermarriage with the natives of Spain, and when
the Moors were finally expelled from that country they had
become almost entirely distinct from their Berber kinsfolk, to
whom they were known as Andalusians. While the mountainous
parts of Morocco continued to be occupied by pure Berber
people, the Shlûh or Shilluh, the Andalusian Moors flocked to
- ↑ Not to be confounded with “Moor-cock” or “Moor-fowl” names formerly in general use for the red grouse.
- ↑ Proc. Zool. Soc. (1861), p. 260; pl. xxx.
- ↑ A somewhat intermediate form seems to be presented by the moor-hen of the island of St Denis, to the north of Madagascar (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1867, p. 1036).
- ↑ Ann. Nat. History, 3rd series, xx. l23.
- ↑ Proc. Zool. Soc., 1848, p. 7; Trans. iii. 336, pl. lvi.
- ↑ Proc. 1850, pp. 209–214, pl. xxi.; Trans. iv. 69–74, pl. xxv.
- ↑ Thus the leg-bones and what appeared to him the sternum were described and figured (Trans. iv. pp. 12, 17, pls. ii. iv.), and the pelvis and another femur (vii. pp. 369, 373, pls. xlii., xliii.); but the supposed sternum afterwards proved not to be that of Notornis, and Owen (Proc. 1882, p. 689) rectified the error, to which his attention had been drawn, and which he had already suspected (Trans. viii. 120).
- ↑ Notwithstanding the evidence, which presented some incongruities, offered by Mr Mackay (Ibis, 1867, p. 144).
- ↑ Trans. N. Zeal. Inst. xiv. 238–258.
