concocter of supremely absurd paradoxes. He died on the 26th of May 1799.
Boswell’s Life of Johnson gives an account of the lexicographer’s visit to Burnett at Monboddo, and is full of references to the natural contemporary view of a man who thought that the human race could be descended from monkeys.
MONCEY, BON ADRIEN JEANNOT DE, Duke of Conegliano (1754–1842), marshal of France, was the son of a lawyer of Besançon, where he was born on the 31st of July 1754. In his boyhood he twice enlisted in the French army, but his father procured his discharge on both occasions. His desire was at last gratified in 1778, when he received a commission. He was a captain when, in 1791, he embraced the principles of the French Revolution. Moncey won great distinction in the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 on the Spanish frontier (see French Revolutionary Wars), rising from the command of a battalion to the command in chief of the Army of the Western Pyrénées in a few months, and his successful operations were largely instrumental in compelling the Spanish government to make peace. After this he was employed in the highest commands until 1799, when the government, suspecting him of Royalist views, dismissed him. But the coup d’état of 18. Brumaire brought him back to the active list, and in Napoleon’s Italian campaign of 1800 he led a corps from Switzerland into Italy, surmounting all the difficulties of bringing horses and guns over the then formidable pass of St Gothard. In 1801 Napoleon made him inspector-general of gendarmerie, and on the assumption of the imperial title created him a marshal of France. In 1805 Moncey received the grand cordon of the legion of honour, and in 1808 the title of duke of Conegliano. In the latter year, the first of the Peninsular War, Moncey was sent to Spain in command of an army corps. He signalized himself by his victorious advance on Valencia, the effect of which was, however, destroyed by the disaster to Dupont at Baylen, and took a leading part in the emperor’s campaign on the Ebro and in the second siege of Saragossa in 1809. He refused. to serve in the invasion of Russia, and therefore had no share in the campaign of the grande armée in 1812 and 1813. When, however, France was invaded (1814) Marshal Moncey reappeared in the field and fought the last battle for Paris on the heights of Montmartre and at the barrier of Clichy. He remained neutral during the Hundred Days, feeling himself bound to Louis XVIII. by his engagements as a peer of France, but after Waterloo he was punished for refusing to take part in the court-martial on Ney by imprisonment and the loss of his marshalate. He was reinstated in 1816, and re-entered the chamber of peers three years later. His last active service was as commander of an army corps in the short war with Spain, 1823. In 1833 he became governor of the Invalides. He died on the 20th of April 1842.
MONCHIQUE, a town of southern Portugal, in the district
of Faro (formerly the province of Algarve); 13 m. S. of Saboia
station on the Lisbon-Faro railway, and 12 m. N. of Villa Nova
on the Atlantic. Pop. (1900), 7345. Monchique is one of the
principal Portuguese health-resorts, finely situated among the
wooded heights of the Serra de Monchique, which rise on the
west to 2963 ft. There are hot sulphur springs, with baths
and a sanatorium 4 m. south. Wheat, millet, rye, beans, oranges,
wine, olive oil and chestnuts are the chief products, and there is
a woollen factory.
MONCTON, a city and port of entry in Westmoreland county,
New Brunswick, Canada, 89 m. by rail N.E. of St John, at the
head of navigation on the Petitcodiac river, the seat of the
workshops and general offices of the Inter-Colonial railway and
the eastern terminus of the new Grand Trunk Pacific railway.
Pop. (1901), 9026. It has large stove factories, engine and boiler
works, and is a flourishing manufacturing town. The workshops
of the railway and great part of the town were swept away by
fire in February 1906, but have been rebuilt on a larger and
more modern scale.
MOND, LUDWIG (1839–1909), British chemist, was born at
Cassel in Germany on the 7th of March 1839. After studying
at Marburg under Hermann Kolbe and at Heidelberg under
Robert Bunsen, he came to England in 1862 and obtained a
position in a chemical works at Widnes, where he elaborated the
practical application of a method he had devised for recovering
the sulphur lost as calcium sulphide in the black ash waste
of the Leblanc alkali process. He became a naturalized
British subject in 1867. In 1873 he entered into partnership
with Sir John Tomlinson Brunner (b. 1842–), whom he had
met when he was at Widnes, and thus founded the great chemical
manufacturing firm of Brunner, Mond & Co. They began to
make alkali by the ammonia-soda process, under licence from
the Belgian chemist, Ernest Solvay, but at first the venture
threatened to prove a failure. Gradually, however, the technical
difficulties were overcome and success assured, largely as a
result of improved methods worked out by Mond for the recovery
of the ammonia. About 1879 he began experiments in the
economical utilization of fuel, and his efforts led him to the
system of making producer-gas, known by his name (see Gas: II.
For Fuel and Power). Later, while attempting to utilize the
gas for the production of electricity by means of a Grove gas
battery, he noticed that the carbon monoxide contained in it
combined with nickel. The resulting compound, nickel carbonyl,
which was described to the Chemical Society in 1890, is
both formed and decomposed within a very moderate range of
temperature, and on this fact he based a successful process for
the extraction of nickel from its ores. A liberal contributor to
the purposes of scientific research, Mond founded in 1896 the
Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory in connexion with the
Royal Institution. On his death, which occurred in London on
the 11th of December 1909, he bequeathed a large part of his
collection of pictures to the nation.
MONDAY (in O.E. Monandaég, the moon’s day, a translation
of the Late Lat. Lunae dies, from which the French lundi
is taken), the second day of the week (see Calendar). The
day has been humorously canonized as St Monday, the festival
of cobblers, who seldom work on Mondays, and were supposed
not to know exactly on which day St Crispin’s (their patron
saint) festival fell, save that it should be a Monday, and thus
celebrated each Monday in the year as a holiday so as to be
certain to honour the day. In some parts of Yorkshire any
holiday is called Cobblers’ Monday. Collop Monday, in the
north of England, is the Monday before Shrove Tuesday, so
called in allusion to the dish of fried eggs and bacon, and slices
of salted, dried meat, called collops, taken on that day preparatory
to the Lenten fast. Plough Monday in England is the
Monday after Twelfth Day, the first Monday after Epiphany,
in allusion to the fact that in medieval times the ploughmen
had their fête-day and went around the villages begging plough-money.
The lord mayor of London holds a Grand Court of
Wardmote at the Guildhall on Plough Monday of each year, to
receive returns from the wards of the election of common
councilmen and to hear petitions against such returns.
MONDOÑEDO, a city of northern Spain, in the province of Lugo, 27 m. N.N.E. of the city of Lugo, on the river Masma. Pop. (1900), 10,590. Mondoñedo occupies a sheltered valley among the northern outliers of the Cantabrian Mountains. The principal buildings are the cathedral, a Corinthian structure of the 17th century, an ex-convent of Franciscan friars of Alcantara, which is used for a theatre and a public school, and the civil hospital. The industries include lace-making, linen-weaving, and leather manufacture.
According to local tradition, the bishopric of Dumium, near Braga, was transferred to San Martin de Mondoñedo (10 m. from Mondoñedo) in the 8th century; it was brought to Mondoñedo itself in the beginning of the 12th century. After having been for nearly a century and a half in the hands of the Moors, Mondoñedo was recaptured by Ordoño I. in 858; and the Christian possession was made permanent by Alphonso III. in 870. It was taken by surprise by the French in 1809.
MONDOVÌ, a town and episcopal see of the province of Cuneo, Piedmont, Italy, 17 m. by rail E. of Cuneo. Pop. (1901), 5379 (town); 18,982 (commune). The lower town is 1283 ft.
