article "Iron" in Napier's supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica was contributed by Mr. Mushet. The articles in Rees Cyclopædia, "Blowing Machine" and "Blast Furnace," were also contributed by him. The two latter articles had a considerable influence in the opposition to the intended tax upon iron proposed by the ministry of 1807; they were in the hands of the committee of the iron trade, and were frequently referred to. In the year 1798 some of the leading French chemists made experiments to prove that steel could be made by contact of the diamond in the crucible with bar-iron. In the animated controversy of the day on this subject, Mr. Mushet's name was brought into notice as a young man of rising talents; about this time he had made the discovery for himself, that steel might be made in the crucible by presenting regulated portions of charcoal to bar-iron; but the experiments he made in consequence of this controversy, which in itself never produced any ulterior result, led to the important discovery of the certain fusibility of malleable iron at a suitable temperature. In matters of scientific detail, in a limited space, it is impossible to do more than to name some of the discoveries which were the results of Mr. Mushet's labours and investigations, to which he devoted a long life. Among these discoveries were the preparation of steel from bar-iron by a direct process combining the iron with carbon; the remarkable and beneficial effects of oxide of manganese upon iron and steel, when added during the processes of manufacture; the use of oxides of iron in the puddling furnace in all their various modes of appliance; the production of pig-iron from the blast furnace suitable for manufacturing into bar-iron without the intervention of the refinery. The application of hot-blast to anthracite coal, may also be named as one of them. To the two first processes it may truly be affirmed, that the far greater part of the prosperity of Sheffield as the emporium of steel-making is due. For the combination of bar-iron with carbon Mr. Mushet in November, 1800, took out a patent. Many years later, Mr. Josiah M. Heath founded upon the second process his celebrated patent for the improvement of cast-steel, which has since raised the production of cast-steel in Sheffield from five thousand to one hundred thousand tons annually. From a process patented by Mr. Mushet in 1835, and subsequently adopted by Messrs. Hill of the Plymouth ironworks. South Wales, Mr. Mushet himself never receiving but a few hundreds of pecuniary benefit, savings to the enormous amount of £20,000 per annum were effected, and upwards of six hundred thousand tons of bar-iron were subsequently manufactured under the patent process at these works. In 1794 Mr. Mushet discovered crystalized titanium in the hearth of a blast furnace at the Clyde iron works, and he sent a specimen of the titanic crystals to Mr. Lowry, the celebrated engraver. Twenty-eight years later Dr. Wollaston, having discovered titanium in some iron slag produced at Merthyr Tydfil, placed the substance he thus discovered among the list of metals, and to him the priority of the discovery has been since assigned; but in reality the discovery of titanium by Mr. Mushet and its discovery by Dr. Wollaston were both original, though the merit of priority rests with Mr. Mushet. The discovery of titanium by Mr. Mushet, and the circumstances under which that discovery was made, suggested to Mr. Mushet's youngest son, Mr. Robert Mushet, sixty years subsequently, the process of alloying titanium with steel, recently perfected, which promises to effect a revolution in the art of steel-making as great as that which took place in the iron trade in consequence of the application of heated air in the manufacture of pig-iron. Mr. Mushet died in June, 1847, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.—M.
MUSI, Agostino, called also Agostino Veneziano, one of the most eminent of the early Italian engravers, flourished between 1509 and 1535. A scholar and assistant of Marcantonio Raimondi, he imitated the manner of his master, and is almost equally neat and refined in execution, but greatly inferior in correctness of drawing and vigour of expression. He is said by Strutt to have been the first to introduce the stipple manner of engraving. On the death of Raphael he left Marcantonio, and engraved on his own account. After the sack of Rome, 1527, he went to Florence; but returned to Rome, and, according to Huber, died there about 1540. Original impressions of Musi's prints are scarce, and highly prized. Among the most famous of them are the large print called the Skeletons, or Burying-place, after Baccio Bandinelli, which is considered his masterpiece; the Academy of Baccio Bandinelli, representing the master surrounded by his scholars; and the Massacre of the Innocents, after the same master, which Vasari speaks of as the largest plate that had been then engraved; the Climbers, from Michelangelo's Cartoon of Pisa; the Israelites Gathering Manna, after Raphael; a Roman Emperor meeting a Warrior; the Evangelists; the Nativity, and Hercules strangling the Serpents, after Giulio Romano; large and characteristic portraits of Pope Paul III.; Barbarossa of Tunis; Francis I. of France, &c. He also copied on copper the Last Supper, and two or three more of Albert Durer's woodcuts.—J. T—e.
MUSONIUS, Caius, surnamed Rufus, stoic philosopher, of the equestrian order, born at Vulsinii in Etruria, flourished in the first century. Exiled by Nero to Gyaros, he was recalled by Vespasian, and was made the single exception when the latter emperor banished the stoics from Rome. Various fragments remain from his pen, and this Musonius is conjectured to be the person of that name whose worth Origen commends in his third book against Celsus.—C. G. R.
MUSPRATT, James Sheridan, Ph.D., M.D., F.R.S.E., M.R.I.A., a distinguished modern chemist, was born March 8, 1821, in Dublin. He was brought in contact with chemical operations at a very early age, as his father removed to England and commenced at Newton, near Warrington, the manufacture of soda upon the principle of Leblanc. The subject of this memoir, after travelling for a short time in France and Germany, commenced his chemical studies in the laboratory of Professor Graham, first at the Andersonian university of Glasgow, and afterwards at London. We next find him, at the early age of seventeen, superintending the chemical department at a printfield in Manchester. He also published a paper on chloride of lime. After some unsuccessful commercial undertakings in the United States, he went in 1843 to Giessen, there to resume his chemical studies under the guidance of Liebig. Here he published his celebrated paper on the sulphites, and took his degree as doctor of philosophy. He also translated Plattner's Treatise on the Blow-pipe into English; discovered, in conjunction with Professor Hofmann, toluidine and nitraniline; and disproved the alleged production of valerianic acid from indigo. He then spent some time in visiting the principal laboratories of Germany, and becoming acquainted with the leading men of science. In 1847 he returned to Giessen, and successfully investigated the sulphocyanides of ethyle and methyle. He also produced papers on the reactions of baryta and strontia before the blow-pipe, and on carmufellic acid, a new substance found in cloves. More recently he has resided in Liverpool, where he has established a very flourishing college of chemistry. Not a few of the pupils of this institution now occupy honourable and responsible situations in various colleges, laboratories, and chemical manufactories at home and abroad, and have by their discoveries done credit to their master. Amongst the important papers which have emanated from this college we cannot forbear to notice Mr. Kynaston's investigation of ball-soda, or black-ash, and his method of separating the alkaline sulphates, sulphites, hyposulphites, and sulphides. In 1854, Dr. Muspratt commenced a work, entitled "Chemistry, theoretical, practical, and analytical, as applied and relating to Arts and Manufactures," which has recently, after immense labour, been brought to a close, and has been very successful. Dr. Muspratt's merit has been fully appreciated. His papers have appeared in all the leading scientific journals. He has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; a member of the Royal Irish Academy; a member of the Société d'Encouragement, and Academie Nationale of France; and an honorary fellow of the New York College of Pharmacy. An American university has also conferred upon him the honorary degree of M.D. In 1848 Dr. Muspratt married the celebrated actress, Miss Susan Cushman, who died in 1859.—J. W. S.
MUSSCHENBROEK, Peter van, an eminent Dutch natural philosopher, was born at Leyden on the 14th March, 1692, and died there on the 19th September, 1761. He studied at the university of his native city, and took the degree of doctor of medicine in 1718. Incited to the study of experimental physics by the friendship and example of S'Gravesande, Musschenbroek cultivated that science with great zeal; and it is to those two men that the honour is ascribed of having first introduced a knowledge of the Newtonian philosophy into Holland. Musschenbroek was appointed professor of natural philosophy and mathematics in 1719 at Duisburg, and in 1723 at Utrecht; in 1732 he became professor of astronomy at Utrecht, which he quitted in 1740 to return to the university of Leyden. His attachment to his native country caused him to refuse many offers of advance-
