Page:EB1911 - Volume 18.djvu/592

 MINUTE (Lat. minutus, small; minuere, to make less), an adjective meaning of very small size, petty or trifling; also extremely precise. In this sense the word is pronounced mī-nūte. As a substantive and pronounced minnit the word (usually in the plural) is applied to a written summary of the transactions of a meeting of a public or other body, or to a memorandum of instructions, &c. A Treasury minute in the United Kingdom is an official memorandum authorizing certain procedure. “To minute” is to draw up such a summary or memorandum. More particularly, “minute” is used of the sixtieth part of any unit); in time, of an hour; and in astronomy, geometry, geography, &c., of a degree in the measurement of a circle. The sexagesimal system of division was originally used by the ancient Babylonian astronomers, was adopted by Ptolemy; and the sixtieth part of a degree, and its further subdivision into sixty parts, was called in Latin pars minutae primae, and pars minutae secundae respectively, hence the English “minute” and “second.”

 MINUTE MEN: in the American War of Independence, militiamen who had undertaken to turn out for service at a minute’s notice. In Massachusetts the minute men were enrolled by an act of the provincial congress of the 23rd of November 1774, and in Boston alone they numbered 16,000 prior to the outbreak of the war. The Americans who fought in the opening action of Lexington were “minute men.”

 MIOCENE, in geology, the system of strata which occurs between the Oligocene and the Pliocene. The term, derived from the Greek , less, and  , recent, was introduced by Sir Charles Lyell, as indicating palaeontological a less percentage of recent species than is found in the Pliocene. Variable lacustrine, estuarine and marine deposits, especially characterized by soft calcareous sandstones and conglomerates (“molasse”) and sandy shell-beds (“faluns”), make up the Miocene system of the Neogene or newer Tertiary in Europe and western Asia, where it attains its fullest development.

MIOT DE MÉLITO, ANDRÉ FRANÇOIS, (1762–1841), French statesman and scholar, was born at Versailles (Seine-et-Oise) on the 9th of February 1762. He was a high official in the war office before the Revolution, and under the Republic he eventually became secretary-general for foreign affairs. That he was not denounced under the Terror was due to the fact that he was indispensable in his department. In 1795 he was sent as French envoy to Florence; then to Rome, and on