THE FARMER AT HOME. 281 



to their young, and often exhibit great sagacity, but their brain is 

 smaller than that of man, and they are without his risible muscles, and 

 less in size. They throw missiles with great dexterity, and live on 

 vegetables. 



MONSOONS. In the Indian ocean these winds are partly general, 

 and blow all the year round the same way, as in the Ethiopic Ocean ; 

 and partly periodical, that is, half the year blow one Way, and the 

 other half nearly on the opposite points ; and these points and times 

 of shifting differ in different parts of this ocean. These latter are 

 what we call monsoons. The shifting of these monsoons is not all at 

 once ; in some places the time of the change is attended with calms, 

 in others with variable winds, and particularly those of China, at 

 ceasing to be westerly, are very apt to be tempestuous ; and such is 

 their violence, that they seem to be of the nature of the West India 

 hurricanes, and render the navigation of those seas very unsafe. 

 These tempests the seamen call the breaking up of the monsoons. 

 Monsoons take their name from an ancient pilot, who first crossed the 

 Indian sea by means hereof ; but others derive the name from a Por- 

 tuguese word, signifying motion or change of wind and sea. Lucre- 

 tius and Apollonius mention annual winds which arise every year, 

 which seem to be the same with what in the East Indies we now call 

 monsoons. 



MONSTER. A monster is a birth or production of a living being, 

 degenerating from the proper and usual disposition of parts in the 

 species to which it belongs : as, when there are too many members, 

 or too few ; or some of them are extravagantly out of proportion, either 

 on the side of excess or defect. Aristotle defines a monster to be a 

 defect of nature, when, acting towards some end, it cannot attend to 

 it, from some of its principles being corrupted. Monsters do not pro- 

 pagate their kind ; for which reason some rank mules among the 

 number of monsters, as also hermaphrodites. Monster is also used for 

 an animal enormous for bulk ; such as the elephant among terrestrial 

 quadrupeds, and the shark and the whale among sea animals ; for 

 other animals remarkable for fierceness and cruelty ; and for animals 

 of an extraordinary species, arising from the copulation of one animal 

 with another of a different genus. 



MONTH. In Chronology, the twelfth part of a year, otherwise 

 called a calendar month, to distinguish it from the astronomical month, 

 which is either solar or lunar. A solar month, or the time in which 

 the sun passes through a whole sign of the zodiac, is thirty days six- 

 teen hours twenty-nine minutes five seconds ; a lunar month, or the 

 period of one lunation, is twenty-nine days twelve hours forty-four 

 minutes. 



MOON. Our moon is one of the heavenly bodies often ranked 

 among the planets ; but more properly a satellite, or secondary planet. 

 As all the other planets move primarily round the sun, so does the moon 



