Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/782

764 MONSIEUR MONSTER the apostle Peter. At the time of the Moorish invasion it was hidden in the hill, but was dis- covered in 880, and on a spot indicated, as was asserted, by the image, a chapel was built over it. A convent was founded, which was converted into a Benedictine monastery in 976. The chapel which now contains the image was founded in 1592. The monastery was sup- pressed in 1835, but some of the monks were allowed to remain. Several fortifications were made on this mountain during the peninsular war, as the high road from Manresa across the Llobregat traverses it. There is a multitude of shrines and hermitages. About 60,000 pil- grims and tpurists annually visit the convent, and during the fete of the Virgin in September railway trains and omnibuses run continually from Barcelona. MONSIEUR (Fr. mon, my, and sieur, sir), a French title of gentlemen, parallel in its ori- ginal signification and use to the female title madame. Under the monarchy it was applied without the addition of the name to the king's eldest brother. It is now given to Frenchmen of every rank and condition. During the first revolution, and for brief periods in 1830 and 1848, monsieur was replaced by citoyen, citizen. MONSOON (Arab, mausim, season, corrupted by the Portuguese into mon$ao), an intertropical wind which blows part of the year from one point of the compass, and the remainder of the year in a contrary direction. These winds are more particularly known in the seas adjoining the great Asiatic continent and archipelago, in- cluding Papua and the N. part of Australia, whence they extend to about Ion. 160 E. The causes which produce them are, in theory, the same as those generally supposed to cause the trade winds. When the sun is in N". latitude and comes over a large portion of Arabia, Hin- dostan, Burmah, and Cochin China, and these lands become heated to a much higher tempera- ture than the surrounding equatorial sea and atmosphere, the cooler air flows toward these regions ; and as they have less rotary velocity than the latitudes bordering upon the equator whence the current comes, it acquires a rela- tive N. E. direction in passing to the north, and is called the S. W. monsoon. In the northern hemisphere, when the land is cooled by the sun being in S. latitude, the regular N. E. trade wind prevails throughout these seas, and what is called the N. E. monsoon is in reality the N. E. trade wind. South of the equator the S. E. trade wind continues to blow over all that part of the ocean which has not large tracts of land to the south ; but where this is the case, as in the Java seas, and as far E. as New Ireland, we find the same causes operating again, and a N. W. monsoon taking the place of the regu- lar S. E. trade wind when the sun has south- ern declination. These general laws, with tri- fling exceptions, apply to all monsoons; that is to say, when the S. W. monsoon blows N. of the equator, the wind blows from S. E. in the regions S. of the equator ; and when the N. W. monsoon prevails in S. latitude, the wind blows from N. E. in N. latitude. MONSTER, a term limited by Isidore Geof- froy Saint-Hilaire to the complex and grave congenital anomalies of conformation, disagree- able to the sight, rendering difficult or impos- sible the accomplishment of certain functions, and producing a disposition of organs very dif- ferent from that ordinarily presented by the species, whether animal or vegetable, involving change in the form, structure, volume, posi- tion, and number of parts. This definition ex- cludes simple vices of conformation, such as hare lip, club foot, fissured palate, gigantic and dwarfed stature, albinism, and hermaphrodi- tism. The phenomena of monstrosity were not examined in a philosophical spirit until the early part of the present century, when the sciences of comparative anatomy and em- bryology could be brought to their explana- tion; the principal workers in the field at this period were the elder Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire, Serres, and Meckel. The history of monsters, or teratology, is a science in itself. In the fabulous period of this science, ending about the beginning of the 18th century, mon- sters were regarded as exhibitions of the crea- tive power of God, as proofs of his anger and the signs of some approaching public calamity, or as the work of demons ; and as such, by the old Greek and Roman laws, they were at once put to death ; even as late as the 17th century they were either destroyed or shut up from hu- man sight. In the first half of the 18th century the causes of monstrosity were zealously sought for, and from the time of Haller the science made rapid progress. Many forms of mon- strosity are embryonic conditions rendered permanent beyond the normal period, thus forming a series comparable to the ages of the foetus and to zoological divisions of ani- mals ; others seem to be formed by excess of growth, according to the theories of original excess of productive power or eccentric de- velopment of the vascular system ; double mon- sters, whether partial or complete, are united by homologous surfaces, side to side, back to back, or face to face, each internal organ of one having a corresponding organ in the other ; and the laws regulating monstrosities, whether by excess or defect, are intimately connected with those presiding over normal organizations. It is true, as Goethe says, that "it is in her mon- strosities that nature reveals to us her secrets." Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (Histoire des anomalies, &c., 3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1832-'6) makes the two classes of single and compound monsters, which he divides into orders, tribes, families, and genera on the Linncean zoological plan; in the first class he places all such as have the elements of only a single individual, and in the second those which have the parts, complete or incomplete, of two or more indi- viduals. In the first class he makes three orders : A. Autosites, or such as are capable of sustaining life, sometimes extra-uterine, by