Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/119

MYRMELEON MYERH 111 five-toed, with sharp nails for climbing and digging; hind feet four-toed, all free; head elongated, and snout acute ; body slender ; tail moderate and bushy. Length 10 in., tail 7 in. additional. The general color of the fore part of the body is reddish, gradually shading into the black of the posterior half, which has seven to nine white transverse bands; fur coarse above and finer underneath, below fulvous Mynuecobius fasciatus. white. They have no pouch, the young, five to eight in number, being protected by the long hairs of the under side of the body. They are gentle, active, and squirrel-like animals, feed- ing on insects, especially ants, which they obtain by their long and extensile tongue, and on sweet vegetable juices ; they are seen gen- erally on trees, in whose hollows they live. The fossil ampMtJierium or tJiylacotherium, of the lower oolite of Stonesfield, England, re- sembled the myrmecobius, as also did the dro- matherium of the trias of North Carolina, and the microlestes of the trias of central Europe. MYRMELEON. See ANT LION. MYRMIDONES, an ancient Achaean race of Phthiotis in Thessaly. According to the le- gendary account, they originally came from ^Egina, where, at the request of ^Eacus, Jupi- ter changed all the ants (//%^/cef) of the island into men, who from their origin received the name of Myrmidones. They subsequently fol- lowed Peleus into Thessaly, and accompanied his son Achilles in the expedition against Troy. Other legends make them the descendants of Myrmidon, a son of Jupiter and Eurymedusa, whom the god deceived in the disguise of an ant. They dp not appear in authentic history. From them is derived the word myrmidons, designating a band of rough soldiers or ruffian- ly marauders devoted to the will of a leader. MYRON, a Greek sculptor, born in Eleuthe- rse, Boeotia, about 480 B. 0. Besides represent- ing the human figure in difficult attitudes, he modelled animals with success. His master- pieces were nearly all in bronze. The most celebrated were his Discobolus, or quoit player, and his "Cow." There are several marble Discoboli still extant, copies of the original. Of his other works, perhaps the most famous were his colossal statues of Jupiter, Minerva, and Hercules at Samos, which were carried off by Mark Antony. Augustus restored Minerva 585 VOL. xii. 8 and Hercules to the Samians, retaining only Jupiter, which he placed in the capitol. MYRRH (Heb. mor a gum resin mentioned in the Old Testament as an article of commerce, and one of the oldest medicinal articles of which we have any record. Though the drug has been well known for many centuries, its. origin was long obscure ; it was once supposed to be produced by an acacia, and 'it has been attributed to other genera. Nees von Esen- beck in 1826 described the myrrh-yielding tree from specimens brought home by Ehrenberg as balsamodendron myrrha, and this was ac- cepted as the plant till 1863, when Berg in studying the specimens found that the one indicated by Ehrenberg as furnishing myrrh was quite different, and he described it as JB. EJirenbergianum, in honor of the collector. The genus fialsamodendron, by some referred to terebinthacece, is now placed in Burseracew, a small family of plants which have aromatic resinous juices, and are nearly related to the orange and rue families. About six species of the genus are recognized, all shrubs or small trees inhabiting Africa, Arabia, and other parts of Asia; the general character of their foli- age and flowers is shown in the illustration. The drug, which is probably the product of more than one species, is a natural exudation, which may be increased by wounding the bark of the tree ; it is at first light yellow and soft, but becomes darker and harder as it dries. Like many other eastern drugs, myrrh is known in commerce by the names of the places whence it is exported rather than those which produce it, and we have Turkey or Smyrna, and East Myrrh (Balsamodendron EhrenbergianmB). Indian or Bombay myrrhs, though they are collected in Arabia and Abyssinia. Myrrh occurs in lumps or tears of variable size, which are whitish upon the exterior from the powder produced by attrition ; it is brittle, reddish yellow or reddish brown, semi-transparent,