Mount Vernon, the home and burial-place of George Washington, is situated in Virginia on the Potomac, 15 miles below Washington. The estate originally included several thousand acres. The house is of wood, two stories high and 96 feet long, and was built by Lawrence Washington, an older brother of George Washington, and named in honor of Admiral Vernon, under whom he had served in the West Indies. Washington improved both the house and the grounds. The library and Washington's bedroom are kept as when in use. He left the estate to a nephew, who sold the house and 200 acres to the Ladies' Mount Vernon Association, a society organized to care for it and keep it as a national possession.
Mouse, a small gnawing animal closely related to the rat. The common house-mouse originally was an inhabitant of Asia. “From there they have accompanied man in his wanderings to all parts of the world, traveling as he has traveled in ox-teams and on the backs of donkeys, by steamship and railway; taking up their quarters wherever he does, first in log-cabins with thatched roofs and finally, in some instances, on the nineteenth floor of a steel-building where generation after generation may live and die in turn without so much as having set foot to the earth.” They breed at all times and seasons, multiply with great rapidity, have to be treated as a pest. In almost all houses of any age mice live, between plaster and wainscoting have their residence, their runways as a rule leading throughout the house. Besides the house-mice there are various kinds of field and meadow mice. The harvest-mouse of Europe is very small, being between two and one half and three inches long. It lives among grasses and in cornfields, where it builds a globular nest about the size of a cricket-ball, in which its young are reared. The American field-mouse differs from the house-mouse in having a blunt nose, short limbs and tail. When abundant they are great pests to farmers. In 1890 the wheat crop in South Australia was almost completely ruined by field-mice. Our country wide the field mouse ranges, feeds on roots, grasses and grain, does much harm in fields of Indian corn, in severe weather harms young fruit trees by stripping their bark close to the ground. For their young a simple burrow is dug, with nest at the bottom. Among their enemies are hawks, owls, crows, foxes, cats and weasels. The American harvest-mouse belongs to the south. The rice-field mouse also is a southern animal; aquatic in its habits, it abounds on the banks of rice-fields and in coast-marshes. Widely distributed in this country, especially common in the west, is the interesting white-footed mouse, deer-mouse, or wood-mouse. It is fawn above, below white or light gray, its black eyes are large and very brilliant, its feet are snow-white. Pure white mice are albinos or sports. Their white offspring, and other “fancy mice”—black and white, yellow, black, brown, mauve and blue — are prized as pets; many become very tame and take readily to training. The following food is recommended for them: raw oatmeal in winter and a little on cool days in summer; bread, bird-seed or cooked potatoes; some salt. The cages should be kept scrupulously clean. Bits of tissue paper or newspaper make suitable nests. See Stone and Cram: American Animals.
Move′ments (in plants). Movement from place to place is possible only to the simpler plants and those living in water or on wet surfaces. To accomplish it, the protoplasm is either extended into one or more slender threads, called cilia, which bend quickly and act somewhat as oars; or into broad, blunt protrusions by means of which the cells creep. (The method of some movements is still unknown.) Movements of larger plants are due to bending. This may be done by unequal growth on different sides or by unequal turgor (which see) on the opposite sides. Motor organs (which see) are regions of the leafstalk specially arranged to permit curvature by the latter method. Movements are usually executed in response to some stimulus, though some seem to be spontaneous. See Irritability, Chemotaxis, Chemotropism, Geotropism, Heliotropism, Hydrotropism, Phototaxis, Rheotropism and Thermotropism.
Mowat (mou′ăt), Sir Oliver, born in Kingston (Ontario), 1820. He studied law with Sir John A. Macdonald and was called to the bar in 1842. A member of the Quebec Union Conference in 1864, he was Vice-Chancellor of Upper Canada from 1864 to 1872; was called on to form a government in 1872 and became Premier and Attorney-General. He was counsel for Ontario before the Privy Council in England in the Ontario-Manitoba boundary case; was admitted high authority as to all questions pertaining to matters of Provincial or Dominion jurisdiction. He remained Premier of Ontario until 1896, when he resigned to take office as Minister of Justice in the Laurier Government. He was appointed to the Senate in 1896. A brilliant lawyer, a tactful leader and one of the most successful of Canadian statesmen, he closed his public career as Lieutenant-Governor of the Province. He died at Toronto in 1903.
Mozambique (mō′zam-bēk′), the northern possessions of Portugal on the eastern coast of Africa. They include Mozambique, Zambezia and Lourenço Marques, and extend from Cape Delgado to Delagoa Bay, 1,300 miles. The area is 293,400 square miles, the population 3,120,000. The Zambezi is the principal river, and forms the southern
