Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/134

122 M Y R M Y S mucous membrane, improving the quality of its secretions and diminishing them in quantity when excessive. When taken internally it produces a sensation of warmth extending over the whole abdomen. The appetite is increased and the digestive process much facilitated, especially in cases in which there is weakness and torpidity of the intestinal canal. As an emmenagogue it is found especially useful where pulmonary complications exist. The tincture diluted with water is used as an application to spongy gums and the aphthous sore mouth of children. The Hebrew I6t, erroneously translated myrrh in Genesis xxxvii. 25 ; xliii. 11 (Sept. araKT-f] ; Vulg. stacte), is generally identified with ladanum (vol. xii. p. 718), which has been used as a medicine and perfume from the earliest times, 1 and is still an article of commerce in Turkey. An excellent account of the mode of collecting it is given by Tournefort ( Voyage, i. 79). Bibliography. Forskal, Fl. ^Egypt. Arab., p. 80; Nees, Beschreib. Officin. Pflanzen, p. 357, 1829; Marchaml, Adansonia, vii. p. 258; Pharmacographia, 2d ed., pp. 140-14(5; Bentley and Trimen, Medicinal Plants, p. CO; Pharmaceutical Journal, (1), xii. pp. 226, 227 ; (3), vi. p. 061 ; (3), ix. p. 893 ; (3), x. pp. 80-84 ; xi. pp. 41, 42 ; Cooke, Report on Gum-Resins in the India Museum, 1874, p. 72 ; Hil- debrandt in Sitzungsberichtd. Gesellsch. naturjbrsch. Freunde, Berlin, November 187S, p. 196. (E. M. H.) MYRTLE. The /j-vpros of the Greeks, the myrtus of the Romans, and the Myrtle, Myrtus communis, of botanists, as now found growing wild in many parts of the Mediterranean region, doubtless all belong to one and the same species. It is a low-growing evergreen shrub, with opposite leaves, varying in dimensions, but always small, simple, dark-green, thick in texture, and studded with numerous receptacles for oil. When the leaf is held up to the light it appears as if perforated with pin-holes owing to the translucency of these oil-cysts. The fragrance of the plant depends upon the presence of this oil. Another peculiarity of the myrtle is the existence of a prominent vein running round the leaf within the margin. The flowers are borne on short stalks in the axils of the leaves. The flower-stalk is dilated at its upper end into a globose or ovoid receptacle enclos ing the 2- to 4-partitioned ovary. From its margin proceed the five sepals, and within them the five rounded, spoon- shaped, spreading, white petals. The stamens spring from the receptacle within the petals and are extremely numer ous, each consisting of a slender white filament and a small yellow two-lobed anther. The style surmounting the ovary is slender, terminating in a small button-like stigma. The fruit is a purplish berry, consisting of the receptacle and the ovary blended into one succulent investment enclosing very numerous minute seeds destitute of perisperm. The embryo-plant within the seed is usually curved. In cultivation many varieties are known, dependent on variations in the size and shape of the leaves, the presence of so-called double flowers, &c. The common myrtle is the sole representative in Europe of a large genus which has its headquarters in extra-tropical South America, whilst other members are found in Australia and New Zealand. The genus Myrtus also gives its name to a very large natural order, the general floral structure of which is like that of the myrtle above described, but there are great differences in the nature of the fruit or seed-vessel according as it is dry or capsular, dehiscent, indehiscent, or pulpy. Minor differences exist according to the way in which the stamens are arranged. The aromatic oil to which the myrtle owes its fragrance, and its use in medicine and the arts, is a very general attribute of the order, as may be inferred from the fact that the order includes, amongst other genera, the Eucalyptus, the Pimento,, and the Eugenia (cloves). Brazil nuts, sapucaya nuts, and souari nuts are all produced by trees belonging to this order. M YSIA, in ancient geography, was the name given to a province in the north - west of Asia Minor, which was bounded by Lydia and Phrygia on the S., by Bithynia on the N.E., and by the Propontis and J^gean Sea on the N. and W. But its precise limits are very difficult to assign, the frontier on the side of Phrygia being, as observed by Strabo himself, very vague and fluctuating, while the north-western corner of the province, adjoining the Hellespont, was usually separated from Mysia under the name of the Troad, a district which was sometimes included in the name of Mysia, sometimes not. The river . Esepus, according to Strabo, constituted 1 Celsus, Hierobot. i. 280-286; Herod., iii. 112; Dioscorides, p. 128. the boundary between the two, but on this subject also there was much discrepancy among ancient geographers. The physical geography of Mysia (considered apart from that of the Troad) is characterized by two mountain- chains : that of Olympus in the north, which may be regarded as constituting the boundary between Mysia and Bithynia, and rises to a height of more than 6000 feet ; and that of Temnus in the south, which for some distance separates Mysia from Lydia, and is afterwards prolonged through the former province to the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Adramyttium. The only considerable rivers are the Rhyndacus and its tributary the Macestus in the northern part of the province, both of which have their sources in the high tableland of Phrygia, and, after diverging widely in their course through Mysia, ultimately unite their waters below the Lake of Apollonia at a dis tance of only about 15 miles from the Propontis. The Caicus in the south takes its rise in Mount Temnus, and from thence flows westward to the JEgean Sea, passing within a few miles of the city of Pergamum, and dis charging its waters into the Elaitic Gulf. In the northern portion of the province are two considerable lakes : that of Apollonia, formed by the expansion of the waters of the Rhyndacus, and nearly 50 miles in circumference ; and that of Miletopolis, about 30 miles round, the waters of which are discharged into the Macestus. The most important cities of Mysia were Pergamum in the valley of the Caicus, about 20 miles from the sea, which under the successors of Alexander became the seat of a flourishing Greek monarchy (see PERGAMUM), and Cyzicus on the shores of the Propontis, a Milesian colony, which attained to a high degree of wealth and prosperity. But the whole of the sea-coast from thence round to the Gulf of Adramyttium was studded with a series of Greek towns, extending along the south shore of the Propontis, as well as the Hellespont and the Troad, several of which were places of considerable importance, including Parium, Lampsacus, and Abydos. In like manner the whole sea- coast from the Gulf of Adramyttium to the mouth of the Caicus, and from thence to the Elaitic Gulf, was occupied by Greek colonies, many of them dating from a very early period, and for the most part of ^Eolian origin, from which circumstance the whole of this coast district was known by the name of ^Eolis, as the corresponding district between Lydia and the sea was called Ionia (^Eous). The most considerable of these Greek towns were Assos and Adra myttium, on the gulf that derived its name from the latter city, and farther south, on the Elaitic Gulf, Elsea, Myrina, and Cyme. Ancient writers all agree in describing the Mysians as a distinct people, like their neighbours the Lydians and Phrygians, though they never appear in history as an inde pendent nation. Their ethnological relations, like those of the other tribes of western Asia, are rather obscure; but it appears from Herodotus and Strabo that they were a kindred race with the Lydians and Carians, a fact attested by their common participation in the sacred rites at the great temple of Zeus at Labranda, as well as by the state ment of the historian Xanthus of Lydia (a competent authority upon such a point) that their language was a mixture of Lydian and Phrygian. Strabo was of opinion that they came originally from Thrace, and were a branch of the same people as the Mysians or Maesians who dwelt on the banks of the Danube, a view not inconsistent with the preceding, as he considered the Phrygians and Lydians also as having migrated from Europe into Asia. According to a Carian tradition reported by Herodotus (i. 171) Lydus and Mysus were brothers of Car, an idea which also points to the belief in a common origin of the three nations. The Mysians appear in the list of the Trojan allies in