The colour of the grain varies greatly, being generally white,
yellow, mottled red, or less commonly red. Soft corn (var.
amylacea) has no horny endosperm, and hence the grains shrink
uniformly. It is cultivated only to a limited extent in the
United States, but seems to have been commonly grown by
Fig. 5.—Female Spikelet.
the Indians in many localities in North and South America.
Sweet corn (var. saccharata) is characterized by the translucent
horny appearance of the grains and
their more or less wrinkled condition.
It is pre-eminently a garden vegetable,
the ear being used before the
grain hardens, when it is well filled
but soft and milky. It is often cooked
and served in the cob; when canned
it is cut from the cob. Canned sweet
corn is an important article of domestic
commerce in Canada and the
United States. In starchy sweet corn
(var. amylea-saccharata) the grain has the external appearance of
sweet corn, but examination shows the lower half to be starchy,
the upper horny and translucent. A form of flint corn, with
variegated leaves, is grown for ornament under the name Zea
japonica or Japanese striped corn.
Chemical analysis, like common experience, shows that
Indian corn is a very nutritious article of food, being richer
in albuminoids than any other cereals when ripe (calculated
in the dry weight). It can be grown in the tropics from the
level of the sea to a height equal to that of the Pyrenees and
in the south and middle of Europe, but it cannot be grown
in England with any chance of profit, except perhaps as fodder.
Frost kills the plant in all its stages and all its varieties; and
the crop does not flourish well if the nights are cool, no matter
how favourable the other conditions.
Consequently it is the first crop to
disappear as one ascends into the mountain
regions, and comparatively little
is grown west of the great plains of
North America. In Brittany, where it
Fig. 6.—Grain.
scarcely ripens the grain, it furnishes a strong crop in the autumn
upon sandy soil where clover and lucerne will yield but a poor
produce. It prefers a deep, rich, warm, dry and mellow soil,
and hence the rich bottoms and fertile prairies of the Mississippi
basin constitute the region of its greatest production. It is
extensively grown throughout India, both for the ripe grain
and for use of the unripe cob as a green vegetable. It is the
most common crop throughout South Africa, where it is known
as mealies, being the staple food of the natives. It is also
largely used for fodder and is an important article of export.
As an article of food maize is one of the most extensively used grains in the world. Although rich in nitrogenous matter and fat, it does not make good bread. A mixture of rye and corn meal, however, makes an excellent coarse bread, formerly much used in the Atlantic states, and a similar bread is now the chief coarse bread of Portugal and some parts of Spain. It is either baked into cakes, called tortilla by the Indians of Yucatan, or made into a kind of porridge, as in Ireland. When deprived of the gluten it constitutes oswego, maizena or corn flour. Maize contains more oil than any other cereal, ranging from 3.5 to 9.5% in the commercial grain. This is one of the factors in its value for fattening purposes. In distilling and some other processes this oil is separated and forms an article of commerce. When maize is sown, broadcast or closely planted in drills the ears may not develop at all, but the stalk is richer in sugar and sweeter; and this is the basis of growing “corn-fodder.” The amount of forage that may be produced in this way is enormous; 50,000 to 80,000 ℔ of green fodder are grown per acre, which makes 8000 to 12,000 ℔ as field-cured. Sugar and molasses have from time to time been manufactured from the corn stalks.
See articles on corn and Zea Mays in L. H. Bailey’s Cyclopaedia of American Horticulture (1900–1902); and for cultivation in India, Watt’s Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vi. (1893).
MAJESTY (Fr. majesté; Lat. majestas, grandeur, greatness, from the base mag-, as in magnus, great, major, greater, &c.), dignity, greatness, a term especially used to express the dignity and power of a sovereign. This application is to be traced to the use of majestas in Latin to express the supreme sovereign dignity of the Roman state, the majestas reipublicae or populi Romani, hence majestatem laedere or minuere, was to commit high treason, crimen majestatis. (For the modern law and usage of laesa majestas, lèse majesté, Majestätsbeleidigung, see Treason.) From the republic majestas was transferred to the emperors, and the majestas populi Romani became the majestas imperii, and augustalis majestas is used as a term to express the sovereign person of the emperor. Honorius and Theodosius speak of themselves in the first person as nostra majestas. The term “majesty” was strictly confined in the middle ages to the successors of the Roman emperors in the West, and at the treaty of Cambrai (1529) it is reserved for the emperor Charles V. Later the word is used of kings also, and the distinction is made between imperial majesty (caesareana majestas) and kingly or royal majesty. From the 16th century dates the application of “Most Christian and Catholic Majesty” to the kings of France, of “Catholic Majesty” to the kings of Spain, of “Most Faithful Majesty” to the kings of Portugal, and “Apostolic Majesty” to the kings of Hungary. In England the use is generally assigned to the reign of Henry VIII., but it is found, though not in general usage, earlier; thus the New English Dictionary quotes from an Address of the Kings Clerks to Henry II. in 1171 (Materials for the History of Archbishop Becket, vii. 471, Rolls Series, 1885), where the king is styled vestra majestas, and Selden (Titles of Honour, part i. ch. 7, p. 98, ed. 1672) finds many early uses in letters to Edward I., in charters of creation of peers, &c. The fullest form in English usage is “His Most Gracious Majesty”; another form is “The King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” as in the English Prayer-book. “His Sacred Majesty” was common in the 17th century; and of this form Selden says: “It is true, I think, that in our memory or the memory of our fathers, the use of it first began in England.” “His Majesty,” abbreviated H.M., is now the universal European use in speaking of any reigning king, and “His Imperial Majesty,” H.I.M., of any reigning emperor.
From the particular and very early use of “majesty” for the glory and splendour of God, the term has been used in ecclesiastical art of the representation of God the Father enthroned in glory, sometimes with the other persons of the Trinity, and of the Saviour alone, enthroned with an aureole.
MAJLÁTH, JÁNOS, or John, Count (1786–1855), Hungarian historian and poet, was born at Pest on the 5th of October 1786. First educated at home, he subsequently studied philosophy at Eger (Erlau) and law at Györ (Raab), his father, Count Joseph Majláth, an Austrian minister of state, eventually obtaining for him an appointment in the public service. Majláth devoted himself to historical research and the translation into German of Magyar folk-tales, and of selections from the works of the best of his country’s native poets. Moreover, as an original lyrical writer, and as an editor and adapter of old German poems, Majláth showed considerable talent. During the greater part of his life he resided either at Pest or Vienna, but a few years before his death he removed to Munich, where he fell into a state of destitution and extreme despondency. Seized at last by a terrible infatuation, he and his daughter Henriette, who had long been his constant companion and amanuensis, drowned themselves in the Lake of Starnberg, a few miles south-west of Munich, on the 3rd of January 1855.
Of his historical works the most important are the Geschichte der Magyaren (Vienna, 1828–1831, 5 vols.; 2nd ed., Ratisbon, 1852–1853) and his Geschichte des österreichischen Kaiserstaats (Hamburg, 1834–1850, 5 vols.). Specially noteworthy among his metrical translations from the Hungarian are the Magyarische Gedichte (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1825); and Himfy’s auserlesene Liebeslieder (Pest, 1829; 2nd ed., 1831). A valuable contribution to folk-lore appeared in the Magyarische Sagen, Märchen und Erzählungen (Brünn, 1825; 2nd ed., Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1837, 2 vols.).
