Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/566

Rh 540 M O B M O C $23,419,266 and 8711,420; the following figures for recent years show a considerable decline on the total : Years ending in June Exports. Imports. 1877 1878 $12,784,171 9,493,306 $648,404 1,148,442 1879 6,219,818 544,628 1880 7,188,740 425,519 1881 6,595,140 671,252 1882 3,258,605 396,573 In cotton, which forms the staple export, the falling off is par ticularly noticeable, 632,308 bales being the average for 1855 to 1859, and 365,945, 392,319, and 265,040 bales the quantities for 1879, 18SO, and 1881, A great deal of what comes to the Mobile market is sent to New Orleans for shipment, partly that it may obtain a higher price as &quot; Orleans&quot; cotton. Lumber shingles, turpentine and rosin, fish and oysters, and coal, are also important items, but do not make in the aggregate so much as half the value of the cotton. Among the local industrial establishments are several spinning-mills, breweries, cooperages, shipbuilding yards, foundries, and sash and door works. The market gardeners of the outskirts produce a large quantity of cabbages, potatoes, water melons, tomatoes, &c., to supply the cities of the western and northern States (value in 1879, 112,520; 1880, $174,483 ; 1881, .9159,706; 1882, $367,194; 1883, estimated $700,000). Though in 1820 it had no more than 2672 inhabitants, Mobile had 31,255 i:i 1880 ; the figures for the intermediate decades being 3194 (1830), 12,672 (1840), 20,515 (1850), 29,258 (1860), and 32,034 (1870). Founded as a fort by Lemoyne d Iberville (do Bienville) in 1702, 7 lobile continued to be the capital of the colony of Louisiana till 1 723, when this rank was transferred to New Orleans. The site .selected by Lemoyne was probably about 20 miles above the pre sent position, which was first occupied after the floods of 1711. By the Treaty of Paris, 1763, Mobile and part of Louisiana were ceded to Britain ; but in 1780 the fort (now Fort Charlotte) was captured by the Spanish general Galvez, and in 1783 it was recog nized as Spanish along with other British possessions on the Gulf of Mexico. General Wilkinson, ex-governor of Louisiana, recovered the town for Louisiana in 1813, and in 1819, though its population did not exceed 2500, it was incorporated as a city. In 1864-65 Mobile and the neighbourhood was the scene of important military and naval engagements. The Confederates had surrounded the city by three lines of defensive works, but the defeat of their fleet by Admiral Farragut, and the capture of Fort Morgan, Spanish Fort, and Fort Blakelly, led to its immediate evacuation. As a municipal corporation, Mobile had got into such financial difficulties by 1879 that its city charter was repealed, and a board of commissioners established for the liquidation of its debt of $2,497,856. MOBIUS, AUGUST FERDINAND (1790-1868), astronomer and mathematician, was born at Sclmlpforta, November 17, 1790. At Leipsic, Gottingen, and Halle he studied for four years, ultimately devoting himself to mathematics and astronomy. In 1815 he settled at Leipsic as privat- docent, and the next year became extraordinary professor of astronomy in connexion with the university. Later he was chosen director of the university observatory, which was erected (1818-21) under his superintendence. In 1844 he was elected ordinary professor of higher mechanics and astronomy, a position which he held till his death, September 26, 1868. His doctor s dissertation, De comjmtandis occultationibus fixarum per planetas (Leipsic, 1815), established his reputation as a theoretical astronomer. Die Hauptsatze der Astronomic (1836), Die Elemente der Mechanik des Himmels (1843), may be noted amongst his other purely astronomical publications. Of more general interest, however, are his labours, in pure mathematics, which appear for the most part in Crelle s Journal from 1828 to 1858. These papers are chiefly geometrical, many of them being developments and appli cations of the methods laid down in his great work, Der Barycentrische Cal-ul (Leipsic, 1827), which, as the name implies, is based upon the properties of the mean point or centre of mass. Any point in a plane (or in space) can be represented as the mean point of three (or four) fixed points by giving to these proper weights or coefficients, an obvious principle which leads in the hands of Mobius to what no doubt is the chief novel feature of the work, a system of homogeneous coordinates. Besides this, how ever, the work abounds in suggestions and fore.shadowings of some of the most striking discoveries in more recent times such, for example, as are contained in Grassmann s Ausdehnungslehre and Hamilton s Quaternions. He must be regarded as one of the leaders in the introduction of the powerful methods of modern geometry that have been developed so extensively of late by Von Standt, Cremona, and others^ MOCHA, a town of Yemen on the coast of the Red Sea, in E. long. 43 20, N. lat. 13 19. The point of the coast where Mocha lies appears to have owed early import ance to its good anchorage, for the Muza of the Periphis (Geog. Gr. Min., i. 273 sqq. a great seat of the Red Sea trade in antiquity, seems to be identical with the modern Muza (Yakut, iv. 680; Niebuhr, Desc. de I Arabic, p. 195), a few miles inland from Mocha. Mocha itself is a modern town, which rose with the coffee trade into short-lived pros perity. The French expedition of 1709 found it a place of some 10,000 inhabitants, and its importance had increased half a century later, when Niebuhr visited it. The chief trade was then with British India. Lord Valencia in 1806 still found the town to present an imposing aspect, with its two castles, minarets, and lofty buildings ; but the popula tion had sunk to 5000. The internal disorders of Arabia and the efforts of Mohammed Ali to make the coffee trade again pass through India accelerated its fall, and the place is now a mere village. MochA never produced coffee, and lies indeed in a quite sterile plain ; the European name of Mocha coffee is derived from the shipment of coffee there. The patron saint, Sheikh Shadali, was, according to legend, the founder of the city and father of the coffee trade. MOCKING-BIRD, or MocK-BiRB (as Charleton, Ray, and Catesby wrote its name), the Mimus polyglottus of modern ornithologists, and the well-known representative of an American group of birds usually placed among the THRUSHES (y.? 1 .), Turdidx, though often regarded as forming a distinct section of that Family, differing by having the tarsus scutellate in front, while the typical Thrushes have it covered by a single horny plate. The Mocking-bird inhabits the greater part of the United States, being in the north only a summer-visitant ; but, though breeding yearly in New England, is not common there, and migrates to the south in winter, passing that season in the Gulf States and Mexico. It appears to be less numerous on the western side of the Alleghanies, though found in suitable localities across the continent to the Pacific coast, but not farther northward than Wisconsin, and it is said to be common in Kansas. Audubon states that the Mocking-birds which are resident all the year round in Louisiana attack their travelled brethren on the retiirn of the latter from the north in autumn. The names of the species, both English and scientific, have been bestowed from its capacity of successfully imitating the cry of many other birds, to say nothing of other sounds, in addition to uttering notes of its own which possess a varied range and liquid fulness of tone that are unequalled, according to its admirers, even by those of the NIGHTINGALE (7.? .). This opinion may perhaps be correct ; but, from the nature of the case, a satisfactory judgment can scarcely be pro nounced, since a comparison of the voice of the two songsters can only be made from memory, and that is of course affected by associations of ideas which would pre clude a fair estimate. To hear either bird at its best it must be at liberty ; and the bringing together of captive examples, unless it could be done with so many of each species as to ensure an honest trial, would be of little avail. Plain in plumage, being greyish-brown above and dull white below, while its quills are dingy black, variegated with white, there is little about the Mocking-bird s appear-