MAORMOR, the old equivalent of the earl in Scotland, an official similar to a maor (q.v.), but placed over a province instead of a thanage, an earldom or county instead of a barony, exercising the office of royal deputy or steward over the territory of Nvhich he had at a still earlier period been the independent lord, and probably retaining to himself the third part of the royal revenues and prerogatives. Prior to the introduction of feudalism, Scotland seems in theory to have been subdivided into maormordoms, each made up of the maormor's portion and the king's, in later language, the earldom and the regality, over both of which the maormor exercised his office, though the former was, in a special sense, his own. Practically, however, in certain of these districts the king retained both maormordom and regality in his own hands, and the maors held their thanages directly of the sovereign, without the intervention of a maormor. As the feudal system extended, the maorrnors were converted into earls, who were confined within the limits of their own districts, the earl of Fife alone retaining the privilege of exacting his rights over the whole province.
MAP (Lat. raappa, a towel). A map is a delineation, on a plane, of some portion of the surface of a sphere, celestial or terrestrial, on which the objects intended to be shown are traced, whether stars or towns, mountains, etc. Terrestrial maps are termed geo graphical, when they refer to the land; and hydrographical maps, or charts, when they delineate the shores of the sea. A perfect representation of a country, with all its parts in true proportions and relative positions, may be made on a globe; but, since the sur face of the earth is spherical, it is not possible so to delineate any large portion of it on a plane as to retain these properties. Hence geographers resort to different methods of representation called projections (q.v.), which are of two kinds—either real perspectives from different points of view, or approximative developments. The five principal pro
jections are—the orthographic, the stereographic, the globular, the conical, and the cylindrical, or Mercator's.
In the first of these, the flat surface on which the map is drawn is supposed to pass through the center of the earth, aud according to the distance of the eye, the projection is either of the first, second, or third kind. In the orthographic, the eye is assumed to be at au infinite distance from the center of the earth, so that all rays of light proceed ing from every point in its surface are parallel and perpendicular.
From the nature of this nroiection. it is evident that while the central parts of the liPmisnhPro nlmnet nonnrntplv ronrocontod towards the circumference the countries are crowded together and diminished in size. On this account it isof little use for geographical, though of considerable value for astronomical purposes. In the stereographic, the eye or point of projection is assumed to be placed on the smface of the sphere opposite the one to be delineated. If the globe were transparent, the eye would then see the opposite concave surface. Contrary to the orthographic, this inethocl contracts the center of the map, and enlarges it towards the eireuinference. Owing to the unequal area of the divisions, and the difficulty of finding the true latitude and lon gitude of places, this projection is not much employed. In order to rectify the opposite effects of the two preceding, the globular pro jection, a modification of the two, is generally adopted. If we suppose the eye to be re , movea from tile surface to a custance equal to the sine of 45° of the circumscribing circle, the projection is called globular. In other words, if the diameter of the sphere be 200 parts, it must be produced 70 of these part in order to give the point of projection.
All meridians and parallels in this projection are in reality elliptical curves, but ars they approach so nearly to being circular arcs, they are very rarely shown otherwise.