Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/444

406 till 1798, when he was made a prisoner by the English invaders and transported to Jamaica, whence he escaped to New Orleans in 1799. In 1803, when the French took possession again of Louisiana, he was appointed major of the garrison of New Orleans, but after the cession to the United States he resigned his command, preferring to remain in the country. As he had no fortune he became a teacher, and founded in 1807 an academy of languages. He prospered, and was elected to the common council of the city in 1828, and re- elected several times. He wrote •' Histoire de la decouverte, de la conquete, et de la colonisation de Porto Rico " (2 vols.. New Orleans, 1812) ; " Histoire de la domination Espagnoleala Louisiane " (3 vols., 1818) ; and " Materiaux d'une histoire generals des bouccaniers " (4 vols., 1821).

MORIN, Augustin Norbert, Canadian jurist, b. in St. Michel, district of Quebec, 12 July. 1803 ; d. in St. Hyacinthe, 27 July, 1865. He was edu- cated at the Seminary of Quebec, studied law, and was admitted to the bar of Montreal in 1828. He was elected to parliament in 1830, and in 1834 sent by that body to carry a statement relative to the condition of the province to David B. Viger, and to aid him in his representations before the British ministi-y. In October, 1842, Mr. Morin became commissioner of crown lands in the Lafontaine- Baldwin ministry, which portfolio he retained till December, 1843. In 1844 he was elected for the counties of Saguenay and Bellechasse, chose to represent the latter, and was re-elected for the same constituency in 1848. At this date he was made speaker of the house and remained in that post till 1851, when he and Francis Hincks formed the administration that bears their names, Mr. Hincks being premier. He accepted the office of provincial secretary of Lower Canada, and was elected for the county of Terrebonne. From August, 1853, to January, 1855, he was commis- sioner of crown lands, and in the latter year he was appointed judge of the superior court of Lower Canada. In 1859 he was made a commissioner for codifying the laws of Lower Canada.

MORISON, John Hopkins, author, b. in Peterborough. N. H., 25 July, 1808 ; d. in Boston, 26 April, 1896. He was graduated at Harvard in 1831, became a Unitarian clergyman, and had held pastorates in Massachusetts. Harvard gave him the degree of D. D. in 1858. He had been editor of the "Monthly Religious Magazine," and a frequent contributor to current denominational literature, and had published " Life of Jeremiah Smith " (Boston, 1845). and " Disquisition on the Gospelof Matthew " (1860). — His brother, Nathaniel Holmes, educator, b. in Peterborough, N. II.. 14 Dec, 1815: d. in Baltimore, Md., 15 Nov., 1890, was graduated at Harvard in 1839, and became a teacher in a school for ladies. After holding this post for two years, he opened a similar school of his own. which he conducted with success for twenty-five years. In 1867 he accepted the provostship of Peabody institute, Baltimore, the duties of which, although light, are important. The Peabody library now numbers 80,000 volumes, representing every department of literature except current fiction. In 1871 he received the degree of LL. D. from St. John's college, Annapolis, Md., of which he had long been one of the governors and visitors.

MORISON, Robert Brown, physician, b. in Baltimore, Md., 13 March, 1851. He entered Har- vard in 1869, but in 1871 went to Germany, where he studied medicine in Gottingen and in Berlin. He took his degree at the L^niversity of Maryland in 1874, and returned to Europe in 1883 to make a special study of dermatology in Vienna and Prague. In January, 1884, he began the practice of dermatology in Baltimore, being the first physi- cian in that city to take up that specialty exclu- sively. He is a member of the American derma- tological association and was its vice-president in 1886-'7. Dr. Morison has contributed several arti- cles to •' Buck's Reference Handbook of the Medi- cal Sciences " and to various medical journals in this country and in Germany, and he has also made original histological investigations. Since the in- corporation of the Baltimore polyclinic and post- graduate medical school in 1883 he has held there the professorship of dermatologv.

MORLEY, Edward Williams, chemist, b. in Newark, N. J., 29 Jan., 1838. He was graduated at Williams in 1860, and subsequently taught chemistry. In 1869 he was appointed professor of chemistry and geology in Western Reserve (now Adelbert) college, and in 1873 was called to fill a similar chair in Cleveland medical college, both of which places he now (1888) fills. His original work includes a series of measurements of the fineness of striation of all the diatoms on ten of MoUer's dia- tomacean test-plates (1876), followed by a series of measurements prepared for the purpose of showing precision in the micrometric readings of gradua- tions. In 1877-'8 he began the study of the cause of the variation of the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, designing an apparatus for this, with which he made frequent analyses of air. The publication of similar results by foreign scientists led to his devising improved apparatus for gas analysis. His results showed that JoUy's theoi'y of the causes of variation of the amount of oxygen in the air was untenable, and indicated that air at an elevation above the earth's surface is poor in oxygen, and that when such air is brought down by currents, deficiency of oxygen is noted. During 1884 he was engaged with Albert A. Michelson (q. V.) in repeating the experiment of Fizeau on the effect of the motion of a transparent medium on the velocity of light, and more recently they have experimented with a view of testing Fresnel's ex- planation of astronomical aberration. Their most recent work in this direction has been the deter- mining of a practical method of comparing the wave-lengths of sodium light with the meter more accurately than has hitherto been done ; also a method of laying down on a bar of metal a desired number of such wave-lengths with an accuracy greater than that of a micrometric comparison of standards of lengths, so that the sodium wave- length may be made a natural standard of length. At present he is engaged in redetermining the atomic weight of oxygen. In 1877 he received the degree of M. D. from the Cleveland medical college, and in 1878 Ph. D. from the University of Wooster. Prof. Morley has collected a unique chemical library, and has the most complete files of chemical journals in the LTnited States. He is a member of scientific societies, and in 1883 was vice-president of the American association for the advancement of science, for the chemical section.

MORPHY, Paul Charles, chess-player, b. in New Orleans, La., 22 June, 1837; d. there, 10 July, 1884. His grandfather, a native of Madrid, Spain, emigrated to the United States and settled in Charleston, S. C. His father removed to New Orleans at an early age, studied law under Edward Livingston, was twice a member of the legislature, became attorney-general of Louisiana, and afterward judge of the supreme court of that state, dying in 1856. Paul was graduated at St. Joseph's college, Spring Hill, Ala., in 1854, studied law.