AIONTSEIZRAT, is the name of a mountain of Spain, in the province of Catalonia, celebrated for its hermitage, and as a place of resort for pilgrims. It is said to be about 24 miles in circumference, stretching from W. to E. along the right bank of the river Llobre gat, and is equally remarkable for the composition, form, arrangement and position of its rocks. It con sists of limestone, sand and pebbles, cemented together, and forming a kind of breccia. " The rich earth," says Laborde, " on part of these rocks being dissolved by the action of the rain water, has formed crevices full of trees and aromatic plants. This vegetation is the more extraordinary, as there is no spring on the moun tain ; the st•eamlets sometimes seen there appearing to proceed front reservoirs formed by rains in the crevices of the mountain, and running in the bed of porous stones, which lie across the middle of it." Hence the mountain seems to have been split into masses of the most grotesque shapes, in the form of caves, pillars, and rug ged Fragments, piled upon one another to the height of above 3000 feet above the level of the ocean. The view from the summit of Montserrat is extensive and grand. Corn, vines, and olives, cover the lower parts of the mountain. The situation of the highest peak of Mont serrat is in East Long. 1° 46' 7", and North Lat. 41° 38' 59". See Laborde's View of Spain, vol. i. p. 125.
MONTUCLA, a French mathe matician of considerable note, was born at Lyons, on the 5th of September, 1725. Being early distinguish ed for his love of knowledge, he was placed under the tuition of the Jesuits, from whom he gained the ele ments of an extensive acquaintance with science and classical literature. At the age of sixteen he quitted their seminal y, for the purpose of studying law at Thou louse, and, after the usual course of preparation, ob tained a counsellorship in the Parliament of that city but feeling little inclination for his employment, and meeting with little encouragement in the exercise of it, he renounced the bar in 1753, and removed to Paris, with the view of supporting himself by literary exer tions. Soon after his arrival, being fortunately admitted to the society of d'Alembert and Diderot, their conver sation gave a settled tendency to his pursuits, and he formed the project of that work, by which his name is so well known among men of science. At first, how
ever, his efforts were limited to a lower department. He wrote in the Gazette Francoise ; and translated se veral works, one of which was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's report of the latest cases of inoculation at Constantinople. The utility of the practice at that time (1756,) about to be tried on a prince of the blood, was keenly discussed, and Montucla's translation appeared with advantage as an appendix to M. de la Condamine's memoir upon this question. Two years before,a subject more akin to the bent of his mind had furnished Mon tucla with scope for original investigation : it was the Histoire des Recherches sur la Quadrature du Cercle, received with an applause well calculated to animate the author in his great undertaking, the Histoire des Mathe matiques.
Lord Bacon justly thought, that a rational account of the steps by which the mind had advanced to its ac tual proficiency, in the several departments of philoso phy, might prove a work of great utility and entertain ment. But though mathematical science is perhaps the only branch of human knowledge, which has attained the degree of accuracy and precision requisite for exe cuting such an enterprize, the task of giving any thing like a regular narrative of the order and gradation, ac cording to which the discoveries in that science had fol lowed each other, seems to have been undertaken for the first time by M. de Montmort, the friend, and fel low-labourer of Bernoulli. M. de Montmort, however, did not live to complete his attempt ; the materials which he had accumulated were entirely lost at his death, and Montucla had the undivided honour of sup plying this desideratum. His work, in two volumes 4to, was published in 1758. The extensive acquaintance with the science, and the unwearied spirit of research which it displayed, were rewarded with universal ap plause ; the defective arrangement, and the rather in elegant style, were forgotten in the general merits of the work, or excused, from the difficulty of treating so new and intricate a subject. In its first shape, the His toire des Mathematiques extended only to the conclusion of the 17th century ; but the author's diligence had not abated, and his promise of continuing the narrative to a later petiod was afterwards fulfilled.