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 position it is isolated from the interior of the continent. The mountains rise behind it in a rugged wall, across which no road exists. It is only from Matrah, a northern suburb shut off by an intervening spur which reaches to the sea, that land communication with the rest of Arabia can be maintained. Both Muscat and Matrah are defended from incursions on the landward side by a wall with towers at intervals. Muscat rose to importance with the Portuguese occupation of the Persian Gulf, and is noted for the extent of Portuguese ruins about it. Two lofty forts, of which the most easterly is called Jalāli and the western Merāni, occupy the summits of hills on either side the cove overlooking the town; and beyond them on the seaward side are two smaller defensive works called Sirat. All these are ruinous. A low sandy isthmus connects the rock and fortress of Jalāli with the mainland, and upon this isthmus stands the British residency. The sultan’s palace is a three-storeyed building near the centre of the town, a relic of Portuguese occupation, called by the Arabs El Jereza, a corruption of Igrezia (church). This term is probably derived from the chapel once attached to the buildings which formed the Portuguese governor’s residence and factory. The bazaar is insignificant, and its most considerable trade appears to be in a sweetmeat prepared from the gluten of maize. Large quantities of dates are also exported.

History.—The early history of Muscat is the history of Portuguese ascendancy in the Persian Gulf. When Albuquerque first burnt the place after destroying Karyāt in 1508, Kalhat was the chief port of the coast and Muscat was comparatively unimportant. Kalhat was subsequently sacked and burnt, the great Arab mosque being destroyed, before Albuquerque returned to his ships, “giving many thanks to our Lord.” From that date, through 114 years of Portuguese ascendancy, Muscat was held as a naval station and factory during a period of local revolts, Arab incursions, and Turkish invasion by sea; but it was not till 1622, when the Portuguese lost Hormuz, that Muscat became the headquarters of their fleet and the most important place held by them on the Arabian coast. In 1650 the Portuguese were finally expelled from Oman. Muscat had been reduced previously by the humiliating terms imposed upon the garrison by the imam of Oman after a siege in 1648. For five years the Persians occupied Oman, but they disappeared in 1741. Under the great ruler of Oman, Said ibn Sultan (1804–1856), the fortunes of Muscat attained their zenith; but on his death, when his kingdom was divided and the African possessions were parted from western Arabia, Muscat declined. In 1883–1884, when Turki was sultan, the town was unsuccessfully besieged by the Indabayin and Rehbayin tribes, led by Abdul Aziz, the brother of Turki. In 1885 Colonel Miles, resident at Muscat, made a tour through Oman, following the footsteps of Wellsted in 1835, and confirmed that traveller’s report of the fertility and wealth of the province. In 1898 the French acquired the right to use Muscat as a coaling station.

 MUSCATINE, a city and the county-seat of Muscatine county, Iowa, U.S.A., on the Mississippi river (here crossed by a wagon bridge), at the apex of the “great bend,” in the south-east part of the state. Pop. (1890), 11,454; (1900), 14,073, of whom 2352 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 16,178. It is served by the Chicago Milwaukee & Saint Paul, the Chicago Rock Island & Pacific, and the Muscatine North & South railways. It is built on high rocky bluffs, and is the centre of a pearl-button industry introduced in 1891 by J. F. Boepple, a German, the buttons being made from the shells of the fresh-water mussel found in the neighbourhood; and there are other manufactures. Coal is mined in the vicinity, and near the city are large market-gardens, the water-melons growing on Muscatine Island (below the city) and sweet potatoes being their most important products. The municipality owns and operates the Waterworks. Muscatine began as a trading-post in 1833. It

was laid out in 1836, incorporated as a town under the name of Bloomington in 1839, and first chartered as a city, under its present name, in 1851.  MUSCHELKALK, in geology, the middle member of the German Trias. It consists of a series of calcareous, marly and dolomitic beds which lie conformably between the Bunter and Keuper formations. The name Muschelkalk (Fr., calcaire coquillier; conchylien, formation of D’Orbigny) indicates a characteristic feature in this series, viz. the frequent occurrence of lenticular banks composed of fossil shells, remarkable in the midst of a singularly barren group. In its typical form the Muschelkalk is practically restricted to the German region and its immediate neighbourhood; it is found in Thuringia, Harz, Franconia, Hesse, Swabia, and the Saar and Alsace districts. Northward it extends into Silesia, Poland and Heligoland. Representatives are found in the Alps, west and south of the Vosges, in Moravia, near Toulon and Montpellier, in Spain and Sardinia; in Rumania, Bosnia, Dalmatia, and beyond this into Asia in the Himalayas, China, Australia, California, and in North Africa (Constantine). From the nature of the deposits, as well as from the impoverished fauna, the Muschelkalk of the type area was probably laid down within a land-locked sea which, in the earlier portion of its existence, had only imperfect communications with the more open waters of the period. The more remote representatives of the formation were of course deposited in diverse conditions, and are only to be correlated through the presence of some of the Muschelkalk fossils.

In the “German” area the Muschelkalk is from 250–350 ft. thick; it is readily divisible into three groups, of which the upper and lower are pale thin-bedded limestones with greenish-grey marls, the middle group being, mainly composed of gypsiferous and saliniferous marls with dolomite. The Lower Muschelkalk consists, from below upwards, of the following rocks, the ochreous Wellen Dolomit, lower Wellen Kalk, upper Wellen Kalk (so called on account of the wavy character of the bedding) with beds of “Schaumkalk” (a porous cellular limestone), and Oolite and the Orbicularis beds (with Myophoria orbicularis). In the Saar and Alsace districts and north Eifel, these beds take on a sandy aspect, the “Muschelsandstein.” The Middle Muschelkalk or Anhydrite group, as already indicated, consists mainly of marls and dolomites with beds of anhydrite, gypsum and salt. The salt beds are worked at Hall, Friedrichshall, Heilbronn, Stettin and Erfurt. It is from this division that many of the mineral springs of Thuringia and south Germany obtain their saline contents. The cellular nature of much of the dolomite has given rise to the term “Zellendolomit.” The Upper Muschelkalk (Hauptmuschelkalk, Friedrichshallkalk of von Alberti) consists of regular beds of shelly limestone alternating with beds of marl. The lower portion or “Trochitenkalk” is often composed entirely of the fragmentary stems of Encrinus liliiformis; higher up come the “Nodosus” beds with Ceratites compressus, C. nodosus, and C. semipartitus in ascending order. In Swabia and Franconia the highest beds are platy dolomites with Tringonodus Sandergensis and the crustacean Bairdia. Stylolites are common in all the Muschelkalk limestones. The Alpine Muschelkalk differs in many respects from that of the type area, and shows a closer relationship with the Triassic Mediterranean sea; the more important local phases will be found tabulated in the article .

 MUSCLE AND NERVE (Physiology). Among the properties of living material there is one, widely though not universally present in it, which forms the pre-eminent characteristic of