  A novel single-particle technique to measure emittance has been developed and
used to characterise seventeen different muon beams for the Muon Ionisation
Cooling Experiment (MICE). The muon beams, whose mean momenta vary from 171 to
281 MeV/c, have emittances of approximately 1.5--2.3 \pi mm-rad horizontally
and 0.6--1.0 \pi mm-rad vertically, a horizontal dispersion of 90--190 mm and
momentum spreads of about 25 MeV/c. There is reasonable agreement between the
measured parameters of the beams and the results of simulations. The beams are
found to meet the requirements of MICE.
