MAPLE-SUGAR
MARBLE
SUGAR-MAPLE
berry's Guide to the Trees and Mathews* Familiar Trees and Their Leaves.
Maple=Sugar is made from the sap of the sugar-maple, which grows in the northern
part of the United States and in Canada. .The trees are Happed in the spring, when there are warm days and frosty nights, which help the flow. A hole is made in the trunk with an auger or ax, in which a spout is stuck through which the sap flows into^ a trough. It is then carried to a receiver and, after straining, to the boiler. It is boiled and refined in the same way as cane-sugar. A single tree yields from two to six pounds in a season. Good vinegar is made from it and maple-syrup, much better than sugar-molasses, which is much used on buckwheat cakes, etc. New England is the great maple-sugar region, but it is also _made in Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Maracaibo (ma'ra-ki'bo), Gulf of, a wide inlet of the Caribbean Sea, joined by a strait with the lake of the same name. The lake forms the floor of a great valley, shut in by high mountains. Its waters are sweet and deep enough for the largest vessels, but the mouth makes it difficult to enter. The gulf and lake were discovered in 1499 by Ojeda, who found here houses built on piles, and so called the region Venezuela, a Spanish diminutive meaning Little Venice.
Marat (ma'raf), Jean Paul, one of the foremost men in the French Revolution, was born at Bou-d ry, in N eu-chatel, Switzerland, May 24, 1744, the son of a physician. He studied medicine and practiced for a time at London. In 1788 he started his fa-mous paper, L'Ami du Peuple (The Friend of the People). Throughout the Revolution he fought for his Own hand, denouncing in turn Necker, Bailly, Lafayette, the king, Dumouriez and the Girondins. His paper made him hated,
JEAN PAUL MARAT
but made him also the darling of the scum of Paris, and placed great power in his hands. His printing-press had to be hidden from the eyes of Lafayette's police; twice he had to flee to London; and once he was forced to hide in the sewers of Paris. There is no doubt that on his head rests in great measure the guilt of the September massacres. When the republic was set up, Marat changed the name of his paper to the Journal of the French Republic. He was now dying of a disease caught in the sewers, and his last energies were spent in a death-struggle with the Girondins. Marat was accused by them before the tribunal, and his acquittal marked their own downfall. He was now so weak that he could only write sitting in his bath, where Charlotte Corday's knife put an end to him, July 13 1793. The beautiful Charlotte, whose lover had been killed by a mob and who said she had stabbed one man to save the lives of one hundred thousand, was guillotined, while Marat was buried with the greatest nonors. See the Histories of the French Revolution by Mignet, Thiers, Michelet, Louis Blanc, Carlyle and Von Sybel.
Marathon (mar'd-thon), a village on the coast, 18 miles northeast of Athens, Greece. Here the Persian hordes of Darius were defeated in 490 B. C. by the Greeks under Miltiades — one of the decisive battles of the world. Th Persians numbered about 110,000. Against them came 10,000 heavy-armed Athenian infantry and a small body of light-armed troops. A re-enforcemen of 1,000 heavy-armed Plataeans encouraged Miltiades to leave his position on the heights and attack the Persians who filled the plain below. The Greeks advanced in three bodies. The two wings carried everything before them, but the center was driven back. The wings now fell on the flanks of the Persian center and drove the whole army to their ships, which were drawn up on the beach. The Persian loss is put at 6,400; that of the Greeks at but 192. Had the Athenians been conquered, all Greece would have become a part of Persia.
Maratti (md-rdt'te), Carlo, an Italian painter, was born near Ancona, Italy, in 1625. He studied at Rome and became a great admirer of Raphael's paintings. A picture of Constantine destroying the idols made him one of the first painters of his time. His masterpiece is the Martyrdom of St. Biago, at Genoa. He died at Rome, Dec. 15, 1713.
Mar'ble. In its popular sense, the term marble is applied to any crystalline rock composed principally of lime carbonate or of lime and magnesia carbonates, if it has a color which makes it desirable for decorative or monumental purposes or for building stone and a texture which renders it susceptible of polish. In origin it gener-
