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MURVIEDRO MUSCAT 65 mons delivered in his church, under the title "Park Street Pulpit," was issued in Boston from the beginning of 1871 till October, 1874, when Mr. Murray resigned his pastorate. Ml RVIEDRO (anc. Saguntum), a town of Spain, in the province and 16 m. N. by E. of the city of Valencia ; pop. about 7,500. It is on the right bank of the Palancia, and was once a seaport, but the recession of the sea has left it 4 m. in- land. It is a straggling town at the foot of a hill, which is crowned by a citadel, and the streets are narrow and crooked. The principal industrial establishments are flour and oil mills and four distilleries. The Goths, the Moors, and the Spaniards have freely used the rich marbles of Saguntum as materials for later structures. In 1867 a wall was built around the ruins of the theatre. The fortress was the key of Valencia, and the French under Suchet captured it in 1811, after a battle on the plain, Oct. 25, where with about 20,000 men they defeated the Spanish Gen. Blake, who attacked them with 25,000. (See SAGUNTUM.) MFSMIS. I. A Greek poet, who flourished at Athens in prehistoric times. He was said by some to have been a native of Thrace and a son of Orpheus ; while others represented him as the son of Eumolpus and Selene, or of An- tiphemus and Helena, and the disciple of Or- pheus. He was regarded as the author of va- rious compositions, especially of such as were connected with the rites of Ceres at Eleusis, over which he was thought to have at one period presided. According to a tradition preserved by Pausanias, the Museum at Piraeus received its name from Musasus having been interred there. A few specimens of his reputed works are extant ; but Pausanias deemed none of the productions ascribed to him genuine except a hymn to Ceres. II. A Greek gram- marian, supposed by most modern critics to have lived at about the beginning of the 6th century A. D. He was the author of the poem on "The Loves of Hero and Leander," dis- covered in the 13th century. The best edi- tions of it are those of Passow (Leipsic, 1810) and Schafer (1825). It was jointly translated into English by Marlowe and Chapman (1606), and there are several other English versions. JIESAUS, Johann Karl August, a German author, born in Jena in 1735, died in Weimar, Oct. 28, 1787. He studied theology, and was a candi- date for a rural parish, but his services were declined on account of his having participated in a dance ; upon which he renounced divinity, and accepted in 1763 an employment at the court of Weimar, as governor of the pages. He exchanged this office in 1770 for that of professor at the gymnasium of Weimar, which he held until his death. He wrote Grandi- son der Zweite, republished in 1781- '2 under the title of Der Deutsche Grandison, directed against Richardson's admirers. He also took the^field against Lavater in his Physiognomische Reisen. His VollcsmarcJien der DeutscJien (5 vols., 1782) gained a still wider popularity. Kotzebue prepared an edition of his remains (Leipsic, 1791), with a biography of the author, whom he calls the good Musaus. Carlyle's "Specimens of German Romance" (London, 1827) contains versions of some of the tales. MUSCARDINE, a name given by the French to a disease which for the last 20 years has proved very destructive to silkworms, and has seriously interfered with the production of silk in France and other parts of Europe. The fact is now well established that the disease is due to a minute fungus, fiotrytis lassiana, which is not confined to the silkworm, but attacks several other caterpillars. The mycelium (see FUNGI) of this fungus lives in and feeds upon the intes- tines and other interior portions of the silk- worm, finally destroying it. After its death the reproductive portion of the fungus may be seen upon the surface of the worm, giving it the appearance of having been dusted with flour ; under a microscope this appears to be a forest of minute branching threads which pro- duce an abundance of spores. Sometimes the silkworm retains sufficient vitality to spin its cocoon, and the fungus does not manifest itself externally until the caterpillar has assumed the state of pupa. It is found that the disease is communicated even if the spores fall upon the skin of the worm ; indeed, the spores are so exceedingly small that they readily escape ob- servation, and when the fungus is once intro- duced into an establishment they may be on the leaves upon which the worm feeds, and be thus taken into its interior, or they may be brought in contact with the worms in various ways. Absolute cleanliness and washing every por- tion of the room with lime water are the means of preventing its spread. Neither muscardine nor any other of the diseases of silkworms has appeared in California. MUSCAT, or Mascat, the chief city of Oman, in Arabia, situated at the head of a small inlet of the Indian ocean, in lat. 23 38' K, Ion. 58 40' E., about 240 m. S. E. of the entrance to the Persian gulf ; pop. within the walls, about 30,000; of the suburbs, 5,000. The cove of Muscat, as the harbor is called, is about three fourths of a mile long and half as broad, open- ing toward the northwest. To the west of this inlet is the larger bay of Muttra, or Ma- tara, capable of affording shelter to shipping when bad weather renders it difficult to enter the cove. The city stands on the S. side of the cove, in a hollow at the foot of cliffs 400 or 500 ft. high, and there is only one pass communicating with the interior. As seen from the sea, these cliffs have no trace of vege- tation. Their summits and flanks are occupied by a chain of forts and towers, reached by difficult and narrow paths. These fortifica- tions, which were built by the Portuguese at the end of the 16th century, are in a ruinous condition, and most of their guns have lost their carriages. The city walls are flanked by four fortified gates. The streets are narrow and dirty, and some of them are almost impas-