Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 13.djvu/759

* MOLE. 681 MOLECULES. thieu Mole ( 1584-1 fi.'>;i), prominent at the time of the Fronde (q.v.). He was born ia Paris, January 24, 1781. His father, president of the Parliament of Paris, died by the guillotine in 1794. After spending his early life in exile, he returned to France, and first at- tracted notice by his Essuis de morale et dc politique (1805), in which he vindicated the Government of Xapoleon on the ground of neces- sity. The attention of the Eiiiijeror was then drawn to him; he was appointed to various offices in succession, and raised to the dignity of a count and to a place in the Cabinet (181.3). After Napoleon's return from Elba he refused to sub- scribe to the declaration of the Council of State banishing the Boui-bons forever from France, and declined a seat in the Chamber of Peers. In 1815 Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France, and he voted for the death of ilarshal Xey. In 1817 he was for a short time ilinister of Jlarine. but afterwards acted independently of party, and was one of the principal orators in the Chamber of Peers. In 1830 he became Jlinister of Foreign Afl'airs in Louis Philippe's first Cabinet, but re- mained in office only a short time. From 18.36 to 1839 he was Prime Minister as successor to Tliiers. In 1840 he was chosen a mem- ber of the French Academy. From that time he took little part in political affairs, but after the Revolution of 1848 exerted liimself to rally and unite the party of order in the National Assembly, to which he had l:)een elected. After the coup d'etat he retired to private life. He died November 25, 1855. MOLECH, mo'lek, also called Moloch, Mil- coM, and (Zeph. i. 5) Malcham. A heathen deity referred to in the Old Testament as "the abomination of the Ammonites.' There appears, however, to be some confusion in the passages in whic)i Molech occurs between the national deity of the Ammonites and other gods, notably a Canaanitish sun-deity who also bore the name melek (king), which as a general designation might naturally be applied to various gods. The form Molech is an intentional distortion of melek, introduced by Old Testament writers to avoid the pronunciation of a name which had associations distasteful to them. Most of the passages in which it occurs have reference to liuman sacri- fice as forming an essential part of the cult of this deity, and particularly to eliild sacrifice or the sacrifice of the first-born, euphemistically re- ferred to as 'passing through the fire' (Lev. xviii. 21; II. Kings xxiii. 10). We are told in I. Kings xi. 7 that Solomon erected a sanc- tuaiy to Milcom, the Ammonitish deity, on the Mount of Olives, which .Josiah afterwards defiled fll. Kings xxiii. 13). It does not follow, how- ever, that the sacrifice of children to Molech at Topheth (Gehenna, q.v.). referred to in II. Kings xxiii. 10; .Jer. vii. 31. was identical with the Milcom cult. In II. Kings xvi. 3. child sac- rifice is said to have been borrow'ed from the Canaanites : and .Jeremiah (xix. 5) calls the deity to whom such offerings were made Baal. Hence it would appear that the rite in question has been wrongly connected with the .mmonitish cult, though it is not unlikely that on certain occasions children were sacrificed among the -Anmionites as well as among the Moabites and Phfpnicians. The rite is forbidden in the Deu- teronomic code (Deut. xviii. 10) and in the Code of Holiness (Lev. xviii. 21: xx. 2-6) ; and the testimony of .lereniiah. already quoted, and of Ezekiel (xvi. 20-21; xxiii. 37-39) is sufficient to prove that to a comiiarativel}' late period the barbarous rite survived among the Hebrews, though very possibly it was only a last resort, in time of great distress, to avert disaster or placate an angered divinity (cf. II. Kings iii. 27; see IUesiia). The details of the rites of Molech and circumstances of his worship that are given are inventions of the rabbis. All that we know from the Old Testament is that the ictims were first slaughtcre<I and then burned (Ezek. xvi. 20-21; xxiii. 39; Isa. Ivii. 5). Con- sult Baethgen, Beitriif/e xiir semitischen Relig- ionsyesehichle (Berlin, 1888). MOLE CRICKET. Any one of the crickets of the genus Cirvllotaljia and its close allies, forming a tribe CJiwllotalpides, remarkable for the dilated front legs, which superficially re- semble those of the mole, and which are admir- ably adapted to an underground life The entire existence of the insect is subterranean. It travels in burrows of its own digging, and lays its eggs and rears its young in the same excavation. The adaptation of the front legs to the economy of the insect is ery striking, as the tibi.'c and tarsi are so arranged as to act as shears with which rootlets are severed. Mole crickets are furnislied with a curious auditory apparatus on the front leg below the knee, concealed in a deep fold of the surface. The male makes a sound which has been reduced to a scale by Scudder, and which differs from the songs of the other crickets. Sharp calls it a ""dull, jarring note somewhat like that of the goat-sucI<er." The mole cricket is principally carnivorous in its diet, although it feeds also to some extent upon vegetation, and the principal damage it does is in cutting roots which come in the way of its burrows. It is considered the most destructive insect to agri- culture in Porto Eico. where it is called 'changa.' The female lays from 200 to 400 eggs, and the young are at fir.st gregarious, the mother watch- ing over them and sujiplying them with food until their first molt ; after this they disperse and begin to make Inirrows for themselves. Thesef yoiuig are often devoured by the adult males. Consult: Sharp, "Insects,' in Cambridge SaturaZ History, vol. v. (London. 1895) ; Barrett, The Changa, or the Mole Cricket (Department of Agriculture, Washington, 1S93). See illustra- tion under Cricket. MOL/ECULES— MOLECULAR WEIGHTS (Fr. moleciilr, from Xeo-l,at. muliriilii, diminu- tive of Lat. moles, mass). It is now universally assumed by chemists and physicists that all bodies are made up of very small but finite ma- terial particles, the weight and composition of which determine the various properties of sub- stances. These particles are called molecules. Each of these molecules is formed by a group of elementary atoms, the sum of whose weights equals the weiglit of the molecule. When a sub- stance is divided and subdivided by physical or mechanical means (e.g. by dissolving a small amount in a very large volume of some liquid and dividing the latter into small portions), its molecules become separated fi"om one another without undergoing any change. When the sub- stance is decomposed cliemieally. each molecule breaks up and its unity is destroyed; but atoms