Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/869

Rh M O R M O R 837 Francisci Carmaniolfe, in the Corner-Duodo collection. The life of Andrea has been written by Luigi Lollin, bishop of Belluno (1623), by Niccolo Crasso (1621), and by Antonio Palazzoli (1620). The most distinguished member of the house of Morosini was Francesco, the captain-general of the republic against the Turks and conqueror of the Morea. He was born in 1618. In 1666 he was in command during an unfortunate campaign in Candia. In 1687 he conquered Patras, and so opened the Morea to the Venetian arms. In the follow ing year he was elected doge. After his return to Venice the republic suffered severely in Candia, and though now an old man Francesco took the field again in 1693, but died the next year at Nauplia, seventy -six years of age. A more detailed account of his exploits will be found in the article VENICE. Authorities. Barbaro, Gcnealogic dclle Famiglie Patrizie Vcncte, MS., clas. vii. cod. dccccxxvii., in the Marcian Library, Venice; Cappellari, Campidoglio Veneto, MS., clas. vii. cod. xvii., in the same library ; Romania, Storia documcntata di Vcnczia- ; Freschot, La Jfobilkl Vencta ; Cicogna, Iscrizione Vencziane. MORPETH, a municipal and parliamentary borough of Northumberland, England, is situated in a fine valley on the Wansbeck, and on the North-Eastern Railway, 50 miles south of Berwick and 16 north of Newcastle. The Wans beck, which is crossed by a stone and two wooden bridges, winds round the town on the west, south, and east, and a small rivulet, the Cottingburn, bounds it on the north. Morpeth is irregularly built, but possesses a number of good shops. The parish church of the Blessed Virgin, a plain building of the 14th century, is situated on Kirk Hill, a short distance from the town. Among the other public buildings are the Edward VI. s grammar school, reopened in 1857 after a Chancery suit lasting 150 years ; the town- hall, erected in 1870 to supersede a building of 1714 by Vanbrugh; and the county-hall and former gaol, in the baronial style, built in 1814. Nothing remains of the old castle except the gateway. Morpeth had at one time one of the largest cattle-markets in England. The industries of the town include tanning, brewing, malting, iron and brass founding, and the manufacture of flannels, agricultural implements, and bricks and tiles. The population of the municipal borough (231 acres) in 1871 was 4517, and in 1881 it was 4556. The population of the parliamentary borough (17,085 acres) in the same years was 30,239 and 33,459. Morpeth (Morepath, i.e., the path over the moor) had attained some size before the Norman Conquest, when it was granted to William de Merlay. From the De Merlays it passed through the Greystocks and Dacres to the Howards, earls of Carlisle. Soon after the Conquest it obtained the privilege of a market, and in 1552 arms were granted to it by Edward VI. It is a borough by prescription, and was incorporated by Charles II. By the Municipal Act of 1835 the government was placed in a mayor and burgesses, but there is a local board of health distinct from the corporation, having control over an area slightly larger than that of the municipal borough. From 1553 the borough sent two members to parliament, but since 1832 only one member has been returned, and in 1868 the area of the borough was incneased. MORPHEUS is a personification, apparently invented by Ovid (Metam.j xi. 635), of the power that calls up shapes before the fancy of a dreamer. The name (from /xopc/&amp;gt;T/) expresses this function ; Ovid translates it artifex simulatorque figurx. Morpheus is naturally represented as the son of Sleep (Somnus). MORPHIA. See OPIUM. MORPHOLOGY rPHE term Morphology (/uo/x^r/, form}, introduced by I Goethe to denote the study of the unity of type in organic form (for which the Linnaean term METAMORPHOSIS (q.v.) had formerly been employed), now usually covers the entire science of organic form, and will be employed in this more comprehensive sense in the present article. 1. Historical Outline. If we disregard such vague likenesses as those expressed in the popular classifications of plants by size into herbs, shrubs, and trees, or of terrestrial animals by habit into beasts and creeping things, the history of morphology commences with Aris totle. Founder of comparative anatomy and taxonomy, he established eight great divisions (to which are ap pended certain minor groups) Viviparous Quadrupeds, Birds, Oviparous Quadrupeds and Apoda, Fishes, Ma- hikia, Malacostraca, Entoma, and Ostracodermata dis tinguishing the first four groups as Enaima (&quot;with blood&quot;) from the remaining four as Anaima (&quot;blood less &quot;). In these two divisions we recognize the Ver- tebrata and Invertebrata of Lamarck, while the eight groups are identical with the Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, the Cephalopods, Crustaceans, other Articulates, and Testaceans of recent zoology. Far, too, from com mitting the mistake often attributed to him of reckoning Bats as Birds, or Cetaceans as Fishes, he discerned the true affinities of both, and erected the latter into a spe cial yevos beside the Viviparous Quadrupeds, far more on account of their absence of limbs than of their aquatic habit. Not only is his method inductive, and, as in modern systems, his groups natural, i.e., founded on the aggregate of known characters, but he foreshadows such generalizations as those of the correlation of organs, and of the progress of development from a general to a special form, long afterwards established by Cuvier and Von Baer respectively. In the correspondence he suggests between the scales of Fishes and the feathers of Birds, or in that hinted at between the fins of Fishes and the limbs of Quadrupeds, the idea of homology too is nascent ; and from the compilation of his disciple Nicolaus of Damascus, who regards leaves as imperfectly-developed fruits, he seems almost to have anticipated the idea of the metamorphosis of plants. In short, we find a knowledge of structural facts and a comparative freedom from the errors induced by physiological resemblance, of which his successors such as Theophrastus and Pliny, generally mere classifiers by habit, show little trace, and which the moderns have but slowly regained. Little indeed can be recorded until the 13th century, when the reappearance of Aristotle s works gave a new impulse to the study of organic nature. Of the works of this period that of Albertus Magnus is far the most important ; but they are all no more than re vivals of Aristotle, marking the reappearance of scientific method and the reawakening of interest in and sympathy with nature. Meanwhile leech and apothecary, alchemist and witch, were accumulating considerable knowledge of plants, which, after the invention of printing, became collected and extended in the descriptive and well-illus trated folios of Gesner and his successors, Fuchs, Lobel, and others, as well as by the establishment of botanic gardens and scientific academies, while, as Sachs expresses it, &quot; in the sharpest contrast to the naive empiricism of the German fathers of botany came their Italian contemporary Caesalpinus, as the thinker of the vegetable world.&quot; Both made systematic efforts, the Germans vaguely seeking for natural affinities in mere similarities of habit, the Italian with no inconsiderable success striving towards an intel lectual basis of classification. Monographs on groups of plants and animals frequently appeared, those of Belon on Birds and Rondelet on Fishes being among the earliest; and in the former of these (1555) we find a comparison of the