of 2019 ft. on the eastern versant of the richly wooded mountains which culminate in the Peristeri (8300 ft.) and sever Lake Prespa from the valley of the Kara-Su or Tzerna. A tributary of this river, the Dragor or Drahor, traverses Monastir through a rocky channel which is rarely filled except after a thaw or heavy rain. The city possesses many mosques, churches and schools, baths and a military hospital. It is the seat of numerous consulates, an American Protestant mission, and a Lazarist mission. The annual value of its trade is about £400,000. Grain, flour, cloth, hides and bones are exported, and a large amount of gold and silver ornaments is manufactured, though this industry tends to decline.
The military advantages of its position at the meeting-place of roads from Salonica, Durazzo, Uskub, and Adrianople led the Turks, about 1820, to make Monastir the headquarters of an army corps. Since then the general and commercial importance of the city has greatly increased, and in 1898 it was made the see of a Bulgarian bishop. The ancient diocese of its Greek archbishop is known as Pelagonia, from the old name of the Kara-Su Plain. Monastir itself has been identified with the ancient Heraclea Lyncestis on the Via Egnatia; its modern name is derived from the monastery of Bukova (“the beeches”) near the southern outskirts of the city.
MONAZITE, a mineral consisting of anhydrous phosphate of the cerium metals (Ce, La, Di)PO4, together with small and variable amounts of thorium (ThO2, 1–10%) and yttrium. It is of considerable commercial importance as a source of thoria for the manufacture of the Welsbach and other mantles for
incandescent gas-lighting: the cerium is used to a limited extent in pharmacy.
The following analyses are of monazite from: (I.) Burke county, North Carolina; (II.) Arendal, Norway; (III.) Emmaville, Gough county, New South Wales.
| I. | II. | III. | |
| Phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5) | 29·28 | 27·55 | 25·09 |
| Cerium oxide (Ce2O3) | 31·38 | 29·20 | 36·64 |
| Lanthanum oxide (La2O3) Didymium oxide (Di2O3) |
30·88 | 26·26 | 30·21 |
| Yttrium oxide (Yt2O3) | — | 3·82 | — |
| Thorium oxide (ThO2) | 6·49 | 9·57 | 1·23 |
| Silica (SiO2) | 1·40 | 1·86 | 3·21 |
| Alumina (Al2O3) | — | — | 3·11 |
| Iron oxide (Fe2O3) | — | 1·13 | — |
| Lime (CaO) | — | 0·69 | — |
| Water (H2O) | 0·20 | 0·52 | — |
| 99·63 | 100·60 | 99·49 | |
| Specific gravity | 5·10 | 5·15 | 5·001 |
Thoria and silica being often present in the molecular ratio 1 : 1, it has been suggested that they exist as thorite (ThSiO4) as a mechanical impurity in the monazite.
Crystals of monazite belong to the monoclinic system, and are
usually flattened parallel to the ortho-pinacoid (a in the figure).
The large (up to 5 in. in length) reddish-brown,
dull and opaque crystals from
Norway and the Urals are simple in form,
whilst the small, translucent, honey-yellow
crystals from the Alps are bounded by
numerous bright faces. Crystals of the
latter habit were described in 1823 from
Dauphiné under the name turnerite, and
owing to their rarity were not until many
years afterwards analysed chemically and proved to be identical
with monazite. Monazite from the Urals was described
by A. Breithaupt in 1829, and named by him from Gr. μονάζειν
to be solitary, because of the rarity of the singly occurring
crystals. The hardness is 512, and the specific gravity 5·1–5·2.
Light which has traversed a crystal or grain of monazite
exhibits a characteristic absorption spectrum, and this affords a
ready means of detecting the mineral.
As minute idiomorphic crystals monazite is of wide distribution in granites and gneisses, being present in very small amounts as an accessory constituent of these rocks. By powdering the rock and washing away the lighter minerals in a stream of water the heavy minerals (zircon, anatase, rutile, magnetite, garnet, monazite, xenotime, &c.) may be collected. This separation has been effected naturally by the weathering and disintegration of the rocks and the accumulation of the heavier minerals in the beds of streams. Under these conditions monazite has been found as rounded water-worn grains in the alluvial gold-washings of the Urals, Finland, Siberia, the United States, Brazil, Colombia, New South Wales, &c., and in tin-gravels in Swaziland, South Africa. Larger crystals of monazite are found embedded in pegmatite veins in the Ilmen Mountains (southern Urals); at Arendal and other places in southern Norway, where it is collected in the feldspar quarries to the extent of about one ton per annum; and in the mica mines at Villeneuve in Quebec, where masses of monazite weighing 20 ℔ have been found. The small crystals of the “turnerite” habit occur implanted, often with anatase and rutile, on the crystallized quartz and albite, which line crevices in the crystalline schists of the French, Swiss and Tirolese Alps; similar crystals with the same associations occur very exceptionally in the clay-slate at Tintagel in Cornwall. Microscopic crystals of monazite (cryptolite, from κρυπτός, concealed) have been observed embedded in the crystallized apatite of Arendal in Norway.
The deposits worked commercially are the monazite-bearing sands of North Carolina and Brazil, and to a smaller extent those of South Carolina. In North Carolina it occurs over a wide area in the streams rising in the South Mountains, an eastern outlier of the Blue Ridge. The rocks of the district are granitic biotite-gneiss and hornblende-gneiss, and are intersected by veins of auriferous quartz. The percentage of monazite in the river-gravels varies from very small amounts up to 1 or 2%. The heavy minerals contained in the gravels are collected in the same manner as in washing for gold (which is often also present); magnetite is separated with a magnet; but other minerals, such as zircon, rutile, garnet, corundum, &c., cannot be separated by mechanical means. The product is a line-grained yellowish sand containing 65–85% of monazite and 3–9% of thoria. In Brazil it occurs in river-gravels and also in the sand on the sea-beaches; an extensive accumulation of very rich monazite sand occurs on the seashore near Alcobaça in Bahia, and this has been shipped as ballast in the natural state.
See H. B. C. Nitze, “Monazite” (16th Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, pt. iv. (1895), pp. 667–693). (L. J. S.)
MONBODDO, JAMES BURNETT, Lord (1714–1799), Scottish judge and anthropologist, was born in 1714 at Monboddo in Kincardineshire. He studied at Aberdeen, and, after passing his law examinations in Edinburgh, he quickly took a leading position at the Scottish bar, being made a Lord of Session in 1767 with the title of Lord Monboddo. Many of his eccentricities, both of conduct and opinion, appear less remarkable to us than they did to his contemporaries; moreover, he seems to have heightened the impression of them by his humorous sallies in their defence. He may have had other reasons than the practice of the ancients for dining late and performing his journeys on horseback instead of in a carriage. He is remembered more particularly for his writings on human origins. In his Antient Metaphysics (1779–1799), Monboddo conceived man as gradually elevating himself from an animal condition, in which his mind is immersed in matter, to a state in which mind acts independently of body. In his equally voluminous work, The Origin and Progress of Language (1773), he brought man under the same species as the orang-outang. He traced the gradual elevation of man to the social state, which he conceived as a natural process determined by “the necessities of human life.” He looked on language (which is not “natural” to man in the sense of being necessary to his self-preservation) as a consequence of his social state. His views about the origin of society and language and the faculties by which man is distinguished from the brutes have many curious points of contact with Darwinism and neo-Kantianism. His idea of studying man as one of the animals, and of collecting facts about savage tribes to throw light on the problems of civilization, bring him into contact with the one, and his intimate knowledge of Greek philosophy with the other. In both respects Monboddo was far in advance of his neighbours. His studied abstinence from fine writing—from “the rhetorical and poetical style fashionable among writers of the present day”—on such subjects as he handled confirmed the idea of his contemporaries that he was only an eccentric
