In the laboratory it is usually prepared by J. B. A. Dumas’ method (Ann., 1840, 33, p. 181), which consists in heating anhydrous sodium acetate with soda lime, CH3CO2Na + NaOH = Na2CO3 + CH4. The product obtained by this method is not pure, containing generally more or less ethylene and hydrogen.
Methane is a colourless gas of specific gravity 0.559 (air = 1). It may be condensed to a colourless liquid at −155° to −160° C. under atmospheric pressure (S. Wroblewsky, Comptes rendus, 1884, 99, p. 136). It boils at -162° C. and freezes at −186° C. Its critical temperature is −99.5° C. (J. Dewar). The gas is almost insoluble in water, but is slightly soluble in alcohol. It decomposes into its constituents when passed through a red-hot tube, small quantities of other hydrocarbons (ethane, ethylene, acetylene, benzene, &c.) being formed at the same time. It burns with a pale flame, and when mixed with air or oxygen forms a highly explosive mixture. W. A. Bone (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1902, 81, p. 535; 1903, 83, p. 1074) has shown that in the oxidation of methane by oxygen at 450-500° C. formaldehyde (or possibly methyl alcohol) is formed as an intermediate product, and is ultimately oxidized to carbon dioxide. Methane is an exceedingly stable gas, being unaffected by the action of chromic acid, nitric acid, or a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids. Chlorine and bromine, however, react with methane, gradually replacing hydrogen and forming chlor- and brom-substitution products.
MARSHMAN, JOSHUA (1768-1837), English Baptist missionary and orientalist, was born on the 20th of April 1768, at Westbury Leigh, in Wiltshire. He followed the occupation of a weaver until 1794, but having meanwhile devoted himself to study he removed to Broadmead, Bristol, to take charge of a small school. In 1799 he was sent by the Baptist Missionary Society to join their mission at Serampur. Here, in addition to his more special duties, he studied Bengali and Sanskrit, and afterwards Chinese. He translated the Bible into various dialects, and, aided by his son, established newspapers and founded Serampur College. He received the degree of D.D. from Brown University, U.S.A., in 1810. He died at Serampur on the 5th of December 1837. His son, John Clark Marshman (1704-1877), was official Bengali translator; he published a Guide to the Civil Law which, before the work of Macaulay, was the civil code of India, and wrote a History of India (1842).
Marshman translated into Chinese the book of Genesis, the Gospels, and the Epistles of Paul to the Romans and the Corinthians; in 1811 he published The Works of Confucius, containing the Original Text, with a Translation, and in 1814 his Clavis Sinica. He was also the author of Elements of Chinese Grammar, with Preliminary Dissertation on the Characters and Colloquial Mediums of the Chinese, and was associated with W. Carey in the preparation of a Sanskrit grammar and of a Bengali-English dictionary.
See J. C. Marshman, Life and Times of Carey, Marshman and Ward (2 vols., 1859).
MARSI, an ancient people of Italy, whose chief centre was Marruvium, on the eastern shore of Lake Fucinus. They are first mentioned as members of a confederacy with the Vestini, Paeligni and Marrucini (Liv. viii. 29, cf. viii. 6, and Polyb. ii. 24, 12). They joined the Samnites in 308 B.C. (Liv. ix. 41), and on their submission became allies of Rome in 304 B.C. (Liv. ix. 45). After a short-lived revolt two years later, for which they were punished by loss of territory (Liv. x. 3), they were readmitted to the Roman alliance and remained faithful down to the social war, their contingent (e.g. Liv. xliv. 46) being always regarded as the flower of the Italian forces (e.g. Hor. Od. ii. 20, 18). In this war, which, owing to the prominence of the Marsian rebels is often known as the Marsic War, they fought bravely against odds under their leader Q. Pompaedius Silo, and, though they were frequently defeated, the result of the war was the enfranchisement of the allies (see [Rome]: History, “The Republic”). The Marsi were a hardy mountain people, famed for their simple habits and indomitable courage. It was said that the Romans had never triumphed over them or without them (Appian). They were also renowned for their magicians, who had strange remedies for various diseases.
The Latin colony of Alba Fucens near the north-west corner of the lake was founded in the adjoining Aequian territory in 303, so that from the beginning of the 3rd century the Marsians were in touch with a Latin-speaking community, to say nothing of the Latin colony of Carsioli (298 B.C.) farther west. The earliest pure Latin inscriptions of the district seem to be C.I.L. ix. 3827 and 3848 from the neighbourhood of Supinum; its character generally is of the Gracchan period, though it might be somewhat earlier.
Mommsen (Unteritalische Dialekten, p. 345) pointed out that in the social war all the coins of Pompaedius Silo have the Latin legend “Italia,” while the other leaders in all but one case used Oscan.