MARGARINE, the name, first given by Chevreul, to an artificial substitute for butter, made from beef and other animal fats, and sometimes mixed with real butter. The name of “butterine” has also been used. Artificial butter, or “margarine-mouries,” was for some years manufactured in Paris according to a method made public by the eminent chemist Mège-Mouries. Having surmised that the formation of butter contained in milk was due to the absorption of fat contained in the animal tissues, he was led to experiment on the splitting up of animal fat. The process he ultimately adopted consisted in heating finely minced beef suet with water, carbonate of potash, and fresh sheep’s stomach cut up into small fragments. The mixture he raised to a temperature of 45° C. (113° F.). The influence of the pepsine of the sheep’s stomach with the heat separated the fat from the cellular tissue; he removed the fatty matter, and submitted it when cool to powerful hydraulic pressure, separating it into stearin and oleomargarin, which last alone he used for butter-making. Of this fat about the proportions of 10 ℔ with 4 pints of milk, and 3 pints of water were placed in a churn, to which a small quantity of anatto was added for colouring, and the whole churned together. The compound so obtained when well washed was in general appearance, taste and consistency like ordinary butter, and when well freed from water it was found to keep a longer time. Margarine is a perfectly wholesome butter-substitute, and is now largely used, but the ease with which it may be passed off as real butter has led to much discussion and legislative action. (See [Adulteration].)
MARGARITA, an island in the Caribbean Sea belonging to Venezuela, about 12 m. N. of the peninsula of Araya, and constituting, under the constitution of 1904,—with Tortuga, Cubagua and Coche—a political division called the Eastern Federal District. The island is about 40 m. long from east to west, has an area of 400 sq. m., and consists of two mountainous extremities, nearly separated by the Laguna Grande on the south, but connected by a low, narrow isthmus. The highest elevation on the island is the peak of Macanao, 4484 ft., in the western part, the highest point in the eastern part being the peak of Copei, 4170 ft. The higher valleys of the interior are highly fertile and are well adapted to grazing and stock-raising. The principal industries are fishing and the making of salt. The pearl fisheries, which were so productive in the 16th and 17th centuries, are no longer important. A domestic industry of the women is that of making coarse straw hats, which are sold on the mainland. The products of Margarita, however, are insufficient to support its population, and large numbers periodically emigrate to the mainland, preventing the increase in population which its healthful climate favours. The population was estimated in 1904 at 40,000, composed in great part of half-caste Guayqueri Indians. The capital is Asunción (pop. about 3000), on the east side of the island, and its principal port is Pompatar on the south coast. The two small ports of Puebla de la Mar (Porlamar) and Puebla del Norte are merely open roadsteads.
The island of Margarita (from Span. Margarita, pearl) was discovered by Columbus in 1498, and was bestowed in 1524 upon Marceto Villalobos by Charles V. In 1561 the freebooter Lope de Aguirre ravaged the island, and in 1662 the town of Pompatar was destroyed by the Dutch. For a long time Margarita was attached to Cumana, but in the eighteenth century it was made administratively independent. Its traders and sailors rendered invaluable assistance to the revolutionists in the war of independence, and the Spanish general, Morillo, was driven from its shores in 1817; in recognition of this it was made a separate state and was renamed Nueva Esparta (New Sparta). In 1904-1909 it was a part of the Federal District with Asunción as its capital. The first Spanish settlement in South America was Nueva Cadiz, founded in 1515 on the barren island of Cubagua; but the place was abandoned when pearl-fishing and slave-trading ceased to be profitable.
MARGATE, a municipal borough and seaside resort in the Isle of Thanet parliamentary division of Kent, England, 74 m. E. by S. of London by the South Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1891), 18,662; (1901), 23,118. It lies on the north coast of Thanet, and is practically contiguous with Westgate on the west and with Broadstairs on the south-east, owing to the modern extension of these popular watering-places. An electric tramway connects Margate with Broadstairs and Ramsgate, and during the season it is served by numerous pleasure steamers from London. An esplanade faces the sea along nearly the entire front of the town, and is lined with hotels, shops and dwelling-houses. A jetty exceeding a quarter of a mile in length permits the approach of vessels at all tides. It was built in 1854 and subsequently enlarged, but a pier was constructed by John Rennie in 1815, and is now chiefly used by fishermen and colliers. The church of St John the Baptist, founded in 1050, contains some portions of Norman architecture, the remainder being Decorated and Perpendicular. It is rich in ancient brasses and monuments, including a brass to Sir John Daundelyon (1443), whose family occupied a manor in the neighbourhood as early as the 13th century. The manor house of Daundelyon, or Dent de Lion, with its gateway of the early part of the 15th century, remains between Margate and Westgate. Charitable institutions include a deaf and dumb asylum (1875-1886), the Metropolitan infirmary for children (1841), and the royal sea-bathing infirmary, established in 1791 and enlarged through the munificence of Sir Erasmus Wilson in 1882. Dane Park (33 acres) was opened in 1898.
Margate (Meregate, Mergate), formerly a small fishing village, was an ancient and senior non-corporate member of Dover. In 1347 it contributed 15 ships of small tonnage at the time of the siege of Calais. Throughout the 14th century references are made to Margate in crown regulations regarding fisheries and shipping. A pier existed before 1500, but by the reign of Henry VIII. it was in a decayed condition. The amount of corn shipped was evidently small, the droits being insufficient to keep the pier in repair. Under Elizabeth Margate was still an obscure fishing village employing about 20 small vessels (“hoys”) in the coasting and river trades, chiefly in the conveyance of grain, on which in 1791 it chiefly subsisted. The droits increased, but were not properly collected until 1724. In 1777 the pier was rebuilt. It was about this time that Margate first began to be known as a bathing-place owing to its fine stretch of firm sand. In 1835 Margate was still a liberty of Dover and no right of citizenship could be acquired. In 1857 it was incorporated. In 1777 a weekly market was granted on Wednesday and Saturday. It is now held daily, but principally on those two days.
MARGGRAF, ANDREAS SIGISMUND (1709-1782), German chemist, was born at Berlin on the 3rd of March 1709. After studying chemistry at Berlin and Strassburg, medicine at Halle, and mineralogy and metallurgy at Freiberg, he returned to his native city in 1735 as assistant to his father, Henning Christian Marggraf, chief apothecary at the court. Three years later he was elected to the Berlin Academy of Sciences, which in 1754 put him in charge of its chemical laboratory and in 1760 appointed him director of its physics class. He died in Berlin on the 7th of August 1782. His name is especially associated with the discovery of sugar in beetroot. In 1747 he published an account of experiments undertaken with the definite view of obtaining true sugar from indigenous plants, and found that for this purpose the first place is taken by beetroot and carrot, that in those plants sugar like that of cane exists ready formed, and that it may be extracted by boiling the dried roots in alcohol, from which it is deposited on cooling. This investigation is also memorable because he detected the minute sugar-crystals in the roots by the help of the microscope, which was thus introduced as an adjunct to chemical inquiry. In another research dealing with the nature of alum he showed that one of the constituents of that substance, alumina, is contained in common clay, and further that the salt cannot be prepared by the action of sulphuric acid on alumina alone, the addition of an alkali being necessary. He explained and simplified the process of obtaining phosphorus from urine, and made some admirable observations on phosphoric acid; but though he noted the increase in weight that attends the conversion of phosphorus into phosphoric acid he was content to remain an adherent of the phlogistic doctrine. For his time he was a skilful chemical analyst; he knew how to distinguish potash and soda by the different colorations they produce in flame, and how to test for iron with prussiate of potash: he was aware that sulphate of potash, gypsum and heavy spar, in spite of their different appearances, all contain sulphuric acid; and he recognized that there are different varieties of urinary calculi. In metallurgy he devised improved methods for the manufacture of zinc and the purification of silver, tin and other metals.
His papers, mostly written in French, were presented to the Berlin Academy, and with the exception of a few of the latest were collected in two volumes of Chymische Schriften in 1761-1767.