Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/636

Rh 608 M O I M O L true, very inaccurate ; the correct experimental determinations we owe to Joule. But it must be remembered that these speculations, daring as they were and accurate (on the whole) as they have been found to be, required the continuation which they received from the experimental work of Colding and Joule, or from the Essay of Von Helmholtz, whose basis also is wholly experimental, being the fact that &quot;perpetual motion&quot; is recognized as unattainable. MOiR, DAVID MACBETH (1798-1851), the &quot;Delta&quot; of Blackwood s Magazine, one of its most popular contributors in its early days, was born at Musselburgh 5th January 1798, and was a physician in active practice there from his manhood to his death (6th July 1851). He seems to have been a man of winning manners and noble integrity of character, and the intrinsic value of his poetry has been in consequence somewhat over-estimated by critics of repute who enjoyed his personal acquaintance. He had no inde pendent vein as a writer of serious verse, and his technical qualities as a poet do not bear examination. But his verses were undoubtedly popular with the readers of the magazine at the time. A collection of them was edited by Thomas Aird in 1852. As a kindly humourist &quot;Delta&quot; had a more original turn. His Autobiography of Mansie Wauch, pub lished separately in 1828, is a Scotch classic. And some of his satirical squibs on passing events were written with great freshness and spirit. His Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine (1831) evidence his industry and ver satility of talent. His Sketch of the poetical literature of the past Half Century (1851) is more remarkable for the grace of its rhetorical ornaments than for depth or fresh ness of insight. MOIR, GEORGE (1800-1870), author of the treatises on &quot; Poetry &quot; and &quot; Romance &quot; in the seventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and born at Aberdeen in 1800, was an Edinburgh lawyer of very varied accomplishments. He was appointed professor of rhetoric in 1835, professor of Scots law in 1864 ; he had a considerable success at the Scottish Bar, was successively sheriff of Ross and sheriff of Stirling, and was a frequent contributor to Blackwood s Magazine. Moir honourably maintained the literary tradi tions of Edinburgh law. He was a man of very wide reading, catholic sympathy, and fastidious taste, alive to very various degrees and kinds of excellence in literature, but too critical and hard to please to do justice to his own wealth of ideas. He died in 1870. MOISSAC, chief town of an arrondissement in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, France, is situated on the right bank of the Tarn, and on the railway line from Bor deaux to Cette, 17 miles west-north-west of Montauban. The church of St Peter, belonging to the 15th century, has a doorway of the 12th century, remarkable for its elaborate and beautiful sculpture, representing Scriptural scenes. Connected with the choir of the church is a cloister dating from the beginning of the 12th century, and one of the finest specimens of this kind of building in France ; the pointed arches are supported by small columns with sculptured capitals. The town has a large trade in corn and flour, and the mills afford employment to a considerable number of persons. The population in 1881 was 9202. The town owes its origin to an abbey founded between 630 and 640 by St Amand, the friend of Dagobert. After being devastated by the Saracens, the abbey was restored by Louis of Aquitaine, son of Charlemagne. Subsequently it was made de pendent on Cluny, but in 1618 it was secularized by Pope Paul V., and replaced by a house of Augustinian monks, which was suppressed at the Revolution. The town, which was erected into a. commune in the 13th century, was taken by Richard Cceur de Lion, and by Simon de Montfort. MOKADDASt Shams al-Dfn Abii Abdallah Moham med ibn Ahmad al-Mokaddasi, i.e., of Jerusalem, also called al-Bashsharf, was the author of a famous description of the lands of Islam, which much surpasses the earlier works of the same kind. His paternal grandfather was an architect of eminence, who constructed many public works in Pales tine, and his mother s family was opulent. He was himself a well-educated and talented man, with an exorbitant idea of his own qualities, and some curious affectations, such as that of imitating for each region the dialect of its inhabit ants. His descriptions rest on very extensive travels continued through a long series of years. His first pilgrim age was made at the age of twenty, but his book was not published till A.H. 375 (985-6 A.D.), when he was forty years old. The two MSS. (at Berlin and Constantinople) represent a later recension (A.H. 378). The book became known in Europe through the copy brought from India by Sprenger, and was edited by De Goeje in 1877 as the third part of his Biblioth. Geographorum Aralicorum. MOKANNA (Al-Mokanna &quot;the veiled&quot;) was, as explained above, p. 580, the surname given to Hakim, or Ata, a man of unknown parentage, originally a fuller in Merv, who posed as an incarnation of Deity, and headed a revolt in Khordsan against the caliph Mahdi. Much is related of his magical arts, especially of a moonlike light visible for an enormous distance which he made to rise from a pit near Nakhshab. He died by poison in A.H. 163 (779-80 A.D.). MOKSHAN, a town of Russia, situated in the govern ment of Penza, 27 miles to the north-west of the capital of the province, and 18 miles from the Ranzay railway station. It has 14,500 inhabitants, who are engaged in agriculture, or work in flour-mills, oil-works, tanneries, and potash- works. A few merchants export corn and flour. Mokshan, which was built in 1535 as a fort to protect the country from the raids of the Tatars and Kalmuks, is supposed to occupy the site of the town of Mescheryaks, Murundza, mentioned as early as the 9th century. It has begun rapidly to increase since the railway between Moscow and Penza was made. MOLA, or MOLA DI BARI, a seaport town of Italy, in the province of Bari, 13 miles from Bari on the railway to Brindisi. It is an old-fashioned place with irregular streets, but outside of the walls several new districts have grown up. The foreign, and to some extent also the coasting, trade has considerably declined since 1863, and the com munal population has decreased from 12,574 in 1861 to 12,435 in 1881. Little is known about the early history of Mola ; it was sold by Alphonso I. to Landolfo Maramoldo in 1436, and ten years afterwards to Niccolo Tovaldo. MOLASSES. See SUGAR. MOLAY, JACQUES DE, a native of Burgundy, became grand-master of the order of the Temple in 1298, and was the last who held that dignity. He was burned at the stake in 1314. See TEMPLARS. MOLDAVIA. See ROUMANIA. MOLE (contracted form of mould-warp, i.e., mOuld- caster), a term restricted in England to the common mole (Talpa europ&a], a small, soft-furred, burrowing mammal, with minute eyes, and broad fossorial fore feet, belonging to the order Insectivora and family I aJpidse, but generally applied elsewhere to any underground burrowing animal of the class Mammalia. Thus, in North America we find, representing the same family, the star-nosed moles (Con- dylura), and the shrew moles (Scalops and Scapanus) ; in South Africa, the golden moles of the far-removed family Chrysochloridx ; and in South-East Europe, Asia, and South Africa, the rhizophagous rodent moles of the order Rodentia and families Spalacidx and Muridx (see MAM MALIA, vol. xv. pp. 405, 419, figs. 64 and 96). Talpa europxa, the Common Mole, type of the genus Talpa, 1 is about six inches in length, of which the tail measures somewhat more than an inch ; the body is long 1 Eight species may be recognized, and arranged, according to their dentition, as follows :