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MINOT 250 MINT send yearly seven boys and seven girls to be devoured by the Minotaur. MINOT, a city of North Dakota, the county-seat of Ward co., situated on the Mouse river, 200 miles W. N. W. of Grand Forks, and on the Great North- ern, the Minneapolis, St, Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie railroads. It contains the State Normal School, a public library, court house, and Federal buildings. It is the center of a mining and_ milling region. The mines are of lignite coal. Pop. (1910) 6,188; (1920) 10,476. MINOTAUR (min'-), in Greek mythol- ogy, a monster half man and half bull, said to have been the son of Pasiphae, wife of Minos, King of Crete, by a bull ; hence the term Minotaur. Minos shut him up in the labyrinth of Dsedalus, feeding him with criminals, and after- ward with youths and maidens sent from Athens. Theseus, by the assistance of Ariadne, succeeded in destroying him. MINOT'S LEDGE, or COHASSET B0CE:S, in Massachusetts, a promontory and lighthouse on the S. W. shore of Boston Harbor, about 8 miles S. E. of Boston Light; it exhibits a fixed light 66 feet high. MINSK, chief town of Lithuania, on an affluent of the Beresina, 331 miles E. N. E. of Warsaw; existed in the 11th century; was Lithuanian in the 13th; Polish in the 15th; and was annexed by Russia in 1793 ; pop. about 120,000. The province of Minsk has a generally flat surface, and abounds in marshes, swamps, moors, lakes, and forests; area, 35,293 square miles; pop. about 3,000,000; less than 24 per cent, of the total area is actually cultivated. Self-governing since 1919. MINSTER, the church of an abbey or priory; but often applied, like the Ger- man "Miinster," to cathedral churches without any monastic connection. MINSTREL (Old French menestrel, menestral) , a singer and performer on musical instruments. Minstrels in the Middle Ages were a class of men who lived by the arts of poetry and music. The minstrels or jongleurs only recited or chanted poems, but did not write or invent them; or perhaps accompanied on some instrument the troubadour, who sang his own compositions. It was not an unusual thing for a troubadour to have several minstrels or jongleurs in his service. The minstrels in later times formed a separate guild, uniting for the purposes of mutual protection and sup- port. With the decline of chivalry, the [profession of the minstrel also declined, and eventually sank so low that they are classed among vagabonds and beggars in statutes in the reign of Elizabeth. In the United States a term used to describe a negro stage singer of South- ern negro songs, or a white singer blacked up to sing such songs. MINT, the name given to several herbaceous aromatic plants of the genus Mentha, distributed throughout temper- ate regions; and they abound in resinous dots which contain an essential oil. Spearmint is generally used, mixed with vinegar and sugar, in sauce. Pepper- mint yields the well-known stimulating oil of the same name. Pennyroyal is used for the same purposes. MINT, the place where a country's coinage is made and issued under spe- cial regulations and with public authority. In former times the coinage was made by contact at a fixed price. The present mint on Tower Hill, in London, was erected between the years 1810 and 1815. The English mint supplies the whole of the coinage of the British Empire, ex- cept Australia and the East Indies. In the United States there are mints at Philadelphia, established in 1792; at San Francisco, established in 1853; and at Denver, established in 1862. In the United States the Bureau of the Mint was established as a division of the Treasury Department in 1873. It has charge of the coinage for the gov- ernment and makes assays of precious metals for private owners. The rolling machines are four in number. The roll- ers are adjustable, and the space be- tween them is governed by the operator. About 200 ingots are run through per hour on each pair of rollers. When the rolling is completed the strip is about six feet long. As it is impossible to roll perfectly true, it is necessary to "draw" these strips, after being softened by an- nealing. The drawing benches resemble long tables, with a bench on either side, at one end of which is an iron box se- cured to the table. In this are fastened two perpendicular steel cylinders. These are at the same distance apart that the thickness of the strip is required to be. It is drawn between the cylinders, which reduces the whole to an equal thickness. These strips are now taken to the cut- ting machines, each of which will cut 225 planchets per minute. The press now used consists of a vertical steel punch. From a strip worth $1,100 about $800 of planchets will be cut. These are then removed to the adjust- ing room, where they are adjusted. After