Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/701

MITYLENE MNEMONICS 683 and various cereals, tuberous plants, and oily and leguminous fruits are produced with little labor. They eat the flesh of dogs, and possess goats and poultry, but have no cattle, and are hence contemptuously called Dyoor or savages. They use the bow and arrow and spears, but not shields. They have been lately subjected to the authorities at Khartoom, and attempts have been made to employ them as "bearers," or attendants on military and trading expe- ditions, but with little success, owing to their general debility. See Schweinfurth's "Heart of Africa" (2 vols., 1874). MITYLENE. See MYTILENE. MIXTECAS, a nation of Indians in Mexico, who emigrated at an early period from the north, under chiefs who were said to have sprung from two trees. They displaced the Chuchones or Ohochos, and occupied most of the present states of Oajaca, Guerrero, and Puebla. They were industrious and progres- sive, and were not governed by one ruler, but by independent chiefs. Some of the bands were reduced by the Aztecs, and paid them tribute in feathers, chalchihuitl, cotton robes, maize, and firewood ; but those of Oajaca re- mained independent. Eemains of their cities, temples, and fortresses show that they pos- sessed considerable civilization. They had sa- cred caves in their mountains, and believed in a heaven called Sosola. They have held their ground in part of the territory, but in Puebla have been displaced by Mexicans, and some bands were forced down into Guatemala. Their language is allied to the Zapoteca, but is more melodious and less difficult. It has several dialects, 11 according to recent authorities, of which the Tepuzculano is the principal. The language has no &, /, >, or r. It has no proper plural, cahite, equivalent to many, being added to the singular; it abounds in personal pro- nouns, and the negative particle varies accord- ing to the tense of the verb. A full diction- ary was compiled by F. Diego Kio ; an Arte or grammar was published at Mexico in 1593 by Fray Antonio de los Reyes ; and several reli- gious treatises were printed in Mixtecan in the 16th and 17th centuries. At present they are peaceable and intelligent Mexican .citizens. Protected by mountain fastnesses, they take little part in revolutions occurring beyond their limits. Their chief cities are Huajuapan, Yan- huistlan, Tlaxiaco, and Tepascoluta. MNEMONICS (Gr. [nrffjuj, memory), the art of rendering artificial aid to the memory by asso- ciating in the mind things difficult to remem- ber with those which are easy of recollection, so that the former may be retained and brought to mind by association with the latter. The art is supposed by some writers to have origi- nated with the Egyptians, but the first person who reduced it to a system was, according to Cicero, the poet Simonides of Cos (about 500 B. C.). Having been called from a banquet just before the roof of the house fell and crushed all the rest of the company, he found on returning that the bodies were so mutilated that no individual could be recognized ; but by remembering the places which they had sev- erally occupied at table he was able to distin- guish them. He was thus led to remark that the order of places may by association suggest the order of things. The principles of the art were introduced at Rome and developed by Metrodorus, and Cicero and Quintilian both ad- vocated the plan of associating thoughts and words with particular places, images, or signs which might be recalled at pleasure. One of the earliest modern works on the subject is the Fcenix (1491) of Petrus Ravennas, professor of canon law in Padua. One of his artifices was to make beautiful maidens the letters of an al- phabet. John Romberch de Krypse, in his Congestorium Artificiosce Memoriae (1533), rec- ommended the division of the walls of a series of rooms into separate spaces, each of which was to be marked with numerical, literal, and symbolical alphabets. The distinct rooms were to be devoted, like the alcoves of a library, to distinct classes of subjects; and the nomen- clature having once been mastered, the sugges- tions of local relation would enable a man to repeat hundreds of words or ideas that had no real connection with one another. The same method is developed further in the " Castel of Memorie " of Guilielmo Grataroli of Bergamo, published in English in 1562. The Ars Memo- ries of Marafortius (1602) grouped all necessa- ry reminiscences around 44 images contained in the palms of the hands. Giambattista della Porta, in his Ars Eeminiscendi (1602), seems to have first employed the mode of writing now common in rebuses. About 1609 Lam- bert Schenkel astonished all classes in France, Germany, and the Netherlands by his mnemonic performances. His system, which was similar to that of Simonides, was obscurely explained in his Gazophylacium Artis Memoriae (1610). He was succeeded at the university of Paris, where he taught for many years, by his pupil Martin Sommer, who became equally celebrated. More elaborate than any preceding scheme was the repository for ideas suggested by John "Wallis in his Mnemoniaca (1618). This repository was to be a series of imaginary theatre-shaped edifices with their interior walls variously di- vided and colored. Every person was to have his repository constantly present before his mind, within which all his ideas were to be arranged according to their qualities, quanti- ties, positions, and colors. The plan only be- came more complicated as improved by Henry Herdson (1651). The Memoria Technica of Richard Grey (1730; new ed., 1851) contains a system which many have found useful in remembering dates and numbers. Letters are substituted for figures and combined into words ; certain consonants are selected for this purpose, the vowels serving only to con- nect them. Grey's letters, which were adopt- ed without reference to any similarity to the figures they stand for, are as follows :