MONKEY-JACKET. A warm jacket for night-watches, &c.
MONKEY-PUMP. Straws or quills for sucking the liquid from a cask, through a gimlet-hole made for the purpose—a practice as old as the time of Xenophon, who describes this mode of drinking from the prize jars of Armenia.
MONKEY-SPARS. Reduced masts and yards for a vessel devoted to the instruction and exercise of boys.
MONKEY-TAIL. A lever for training a carronade.
MONK-FISH. The Squatina angelus. (See [Devil-fish].)
MONK'S SEAM. That made after sewing the edges of sails together, one over the other, by stitching through the centre of the seam. Also, the fash left at the junction of the moulds when a ball is cast.
MONMOUTH CAP. A flat worsted cap formerly worn by soldiers and sailors. In the old play Eastward Ho, it is said, "Hurl away a dozen of Monmouth caps or so, in sea ceremony to your bon voyage."
MONOXYLON [Gr.] Boats in the Ionian Isles propelled with one oar.
MONSOON [from the Persian monsum, season]. The periodical winds in certain latitudes of India and the Indian Ocean. They continue five or six months from one direction, and then alter their course, and blow (after the tempestuous tumult of their shifting has subsided) during an equal space of time from an opposite point of the compass, with the same uniformity. They are caused by the unequal heating of land and water, and occur in the tropics, where the "trade" would constantly blow if it were not for the presence of land. (See [Winds].) The south-west monsoon is called by the Arabs khumseen, denoting fifty, as they suppose it to precede the overflowing of the Nile by fifty days. (See [Kamsin].)
MONTE PAGNOTE. In former days an eminence out of cannon shot of operations, where spectators were not exposed to danger.