Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/363

Rh M I M M I N 345 The vocal mimicry which occurs among certain birds, such as the mocking-bird, starling, parrot, ami bullfinch, must of course be placed in a wholly different category from these biological cases. It is a direct volitional result, and it is mimicry in a literal not in a figurative sense. The faculty seems to be due to the play-instinct alone, and not to subserve any directly useful function. (G. A.) MIMNERMUS, a Greek elegiac poet, born at Smyrna, lived about 600 B.C. His life fell in the troubled time when the old Greek city of Smyrna was struggling to maintain itself against the rising power of the Lydian kings. One of the extant fragments of his poems refers to the struggle and contrasts the present effeminacy of his countrymen with the bravery of those who had once defeated the Lydian king Gyges. The poet mentions in another fragment that he belonged to the stock of the Colophonians who had seized the yEolic Smyrna. But his most important poems were a set of elegies addressed to a flute-player named Nanno; they were collected in two books called after her name. Hermesianax mentions his love for Nanno, and implies that it was unfortunate. Only a few fragments of these poems have been preserved ; and their soft melancholy tone and delicate language give some idea of the poet s character. His ideal is the sweet soft luxurious Ionian life, and he would enjoy it free from sorrow and die as soon as he could no longer enjoy it. Yet there is apparent some of the old stronger strain of character which in early time raised the Ionian cities to greatness, pride in the glories of his race and scorn for those that are unworthy of their fathers renown. His experience of life was evidently sad; he felt that his country was gradually yielding to the enemy it had once defeated, and he knew that his own hopes were disap pointed. The sun himself has endless toils from rising to setting and again from setting to rising. The life of man is as transitory as the leaves of spring, he says, referring to a passage in the popular epic poetry of Ionia (Iliad, vi. 146). He wishes to die in his sixtieth year, a wish to which Solon replied bidding him reconsider and rather long to die when he was eighty years old. Mimnermus was the first to make the elegiac verse, which had pre viously had more of the epic character, the vehicle for love- poetry, and to impart to it the colour of his own mind. He found the elegy devoted to objective themes ; he made it subjective. He set his own poems to the music of the flute, and the poet Hipponax says that he used the melan choly vo/xos KpaoYa?. He bears the epithet AryuacrTaS^s, by which Solon addresses him. It is doubtful whether this epithet is peculiar to himself or whether it marks him as belonging to a musical and poetic family or school ; it is evidently akin to the epithet At yttat MoDcrat. MIMOSA. The Mimosex (so named from their mimicry of animal movements) form one of the three suborders of Leguminosx, and are characterized by their (usually small) regular flowers and valvate corolla. Their 28 genera and 1100 species are arranged by Baillon in four series, of which the acacias (see ACACIA) and the true mimosas are the most important. They are distributed throughout almost all tropical and subtropical regions, the acacias preponderating in Australia and the true mimosas in America. The former are of considerable importance as sources of timber, gum, and tannin, but the latter are of much less economic value, though a few, like the talh (M. ferruginea) of Arabia and Central Africa, are important trees. Most are herbs or undershrubs, but some South- American species are tall woody climbers. They are often prickly. The roots of some Brazilian species are poisonous, and that of M. pudica, L., has irritating properties. M. sensitiva has been used in America in the treatment of fistula, &c., probably as an astringent. The mimosas, however, owe their interest and their extensive culti vation, partly to the beauty of their usually bipinnate foliage, but still more to the remarkable development in some species of the sleep movements manifested to some extent by most of the pinnate Leguminosx, as well as many other (especially seedling) plants. In the so-called &quot; sensitive plants &quot; these movements not only take place under the influence of light and darkness, but can be easily excited by mechanical and other stimuli. When stimu lated, say at the axis of one of the secondary petioles, the leaflets move upwards on each side until they meet, the movement being propagated centripetally. It may then be communicated to the leaflets of the other secondary petioles, which close (the petioles, too, converging), and thence to the main petiole, which sinks rapidly downwards towards the stem, the bending taking place at the pulvinus, or swollen base of the leafstalk. See BOTANY, vol. iv. p. 1115, fig. 117. When shaken in any way, the leaves close and droop simultaneously, but if the agitation be continued, they reopen as if they had become accus tomed to the shocks. The common sensitive plant of hot-houses is M. pudica, L., a native of tropical America but now naturalized in corresponding latitudes of Asia and Africa ; but the hardly distinguishable M. sensitiva and others are also cultivated. The common wild sensitive plants of the United States are two species of the closely allied genus Schrankia. MINDANAO, MINDORO. See PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. MINDEN, the chief town of a district of the same name in Prussia, province of Westphalia, is situated about 22 miles to the west-south-west of Hanover, on the left bank of the Weser, which is spanned there by two bridges. The older parts of the town retain an old-fashioned appearance, with narrow and crooked streets ; the modern suburbs occupy the site of the former fortifications. The most interesting building is the Roman Catholic cathedral, the tower of which, dating from the llth century, illustrates the first step in the growth of the Gothic spire in Germany. The nave was erected at the end of the 13th century, and the choir in 1377-79. Among the other chief edifices are the old church of St Martin ; the town-house, with a Gothic faade ; the extensive court-house ; and the Govern ment offices, constructed, like many of the other buildings, of a peculiar veined brown sandstone found in the district. Minden contains a gymnasium and several hospitals, besides other charitable institutions. Its industries include linen and cotton weaving, dyeing, calico printing, and the manufacture of tobacco, leather, lamps, chicory, and chemi cals. There is also some activity in the building of small craft. In 1881 107 vessels of an aggregate burden of 12,569 tons entered and cleared the river-harbour of Minden. The population in 1880 was 17,869. Minden (Mindun, Mindo), apparently a trading place of some importance in the time of Charlemagne, was made the seat of a bishop by that monarch, and subsequently became a flourishing member of the Hanseatic League. In the l3th century it was surrounded with a wall. Punished by military occupation and a fine for its reception of the Reformation in 1547, Minden underwent similar trials in the Thirty Years War and the wars of the French occupa tion. In 1648 the bishopric was converted into a secular principality under the elector of Brandenburg. From 1807 to 1814 Minden was included in the kingdom of Westphalia, and in the latter year it passed to Prussia. In 1816 the fortifications, which had been razed by Frederick the Great after the Seven Years War, were restored and strengthened, and as a fortress of the second rank it remained the chief military place of Westphalia down to 1872, when the works were finally demolished. At Todtenhausen, 3 miles to the north of Minden, the allied English and German troops under the duke of Brunswick gained a decisive victory over the French in 1759. About 3 miles to the south of Minden is the so-called &quot;Porta Westfalica,&quot; a narrow and picturesque defile by which the Weser quits the mountains and reaches the plain. Minden is not to be confounded with the Hanoverian Miinden, also sometimes written Minden (population 6355), at the confluence (Mundung) of the Werra and Fulda. MINE. See MINING. XVI. 44