MAJOR, in the art of war, the name of several officers of different ranks and functions.

Major- General. See General. Major of a Regiment of Foot, the officer next to the lieutenant-colonel. His business is to take care that the regiment be well exercised, to see that it marches in good order, and to rally it in case of its being broken in action.

Major of a Regiment of Horse ought to be a man of understanding, courage, activity, experience, and address. He should be master of arithmetic, and keep a detail of the regiment in every particular; he should be skilled in horsemanship, and ever attentive to his business; he should keep an exact roster of the officers for duty; and he should have a perfect knowledge of all the military evolutions, as he is obliged by his post to instruct others.

Towh-Major is the third officer in order in a garrison, and next to the deputy-governor. He should understand fortification, and take a particular charge of the guards, rounds, patroles, and sentinels.

Brigade-MAJOR is a particular officer appointed for that purpose only in camp. His business is to go every day to head-quarters to receive orders from the adjutant-general; to write exactly what is dictated to him; to give the orders, at the place appointed for that purpose, to the different majors or adjutants of the regiments which compose that brigade, and regulate with them the number of officers and men that each is to furnish for the duty of the army, and to keep an exact roster, that one may not give more than another, and that each march in their tour. In short, the major of brigade is charged with the particular details of his own brigade, in much the same way as the adjutantgeneral is charged with the general detail of the duty of the army. He has to send every morning to the adjutant-general an exact return, by battalion and company, of the men of his brigade missing at the retreat, or a report expressing that none are absent; and he must also mention the officers absent with or without leave. As all orders pass through the hands of the majors of brigade, they have infinite occasions of making known their talentsand exactness.

Major of Artillery is also the next officer to the lieutenant-colonel. In the field he goes daily to receive orders from the brigade-major, and communicates them with the parole to his superiors, and then dictates them to the adjutant. He should be a , good mathematician, and well acquainted with everything belonging to the science of projectiles and the train of artillery.

Major of Engineers should be very well skilled in military architecture, fortification, gunnery, and mining. He should know how to fortify in the field, to attack and defend all sorts of posts, and to conduct the works in a siege.

AİćL-Major is on different occasions appointed to act as major, when he has a pre-eminence above others of the same denomination.

Serjeant∙MAjoR is a non-commissioned officer, subordinate to the adjutant, as the latter is to the major. See Serjeant. Drum∙MAJOR is not only the first drummer in the regiment, but has the same authority over his drummers as the corporal has over his squad. He instructs them in their different beats, and is daily at orders with the serjeants, to know the number of drummers for duty. He marches at their head when they beat in a body; and in the day of battle, or at exercise, he must be very attentive to the orders given him, that he may regulate his beats according to the movements ordered.

Fife-MAJOR is he who plays the best on that instrument, and has the same authority over the lifers as the drummajor has over the drummers.

Major, in Law, a person who is of an age to manage his own affairs. By the civil law a man is not a major till the age of twenty-five years; but in England he is a major at twenty-one.

Major, in Logic, is understood of the first proposition [7:14:48]of a regular syllogism. It is called major because it has a more extensive sense than the minor proposition, as containing the principal term. See Logic. Major and Minor, in Music, are applied to concords which differ from each other by a semi-tone. See Music.

Major tone is the difference between the fifth and fourth, and major semi-tone is the difference between the major fourth and the third.' The major tone surpasses the minor by a comma.

Majoh-Dotho, an Italian term frequently used to signify a steward or master of the household. The title of major-domo was formerly given in the courts of princes to three different kinds of officers; first, to him who took care of what related to the prince’s table; secondly, to the steward of the household; and, thirdly, to the chief minister, or person to whom the prince deputed the administration of his affairs, foreign and domestic.

Major or Mair, John, a scholastic divine and historian, was born at Haddington, in the province of East Lothian, in Scotland. It appears, from some passages in his writings, that he resided both at Oxford and Cambridge. He went to Paris in 1493, and studied in the college of St Barbe under the celebrated Boulac, after which he removed to that of Montacute, where he began to study divinity under Standouk. In the year 1498, he was entered of the college of Navarre. In 1505, he was created doctor in divinity; in 1519, he returned to Scotland, and taught theology during several years in the university of St Andrews. But, becoming disgusted with the quarrels of his countrymen, he went back to Paris, and resumed his lectures in the college of Montacute, where he had several pupils who afterwards became men of great eminence. About the year 1530, he once more returned to Scotland, and was chosen professor of theology at St Andrews, of which he afterwards became provost, and died there in 1547, aged seventy-eight. His logical treatises form one immense folio, and his commentaries on Aristotle’s physics another; whilst his theological works amount to several volumes of the same size. These masses of crude and useless disquisition were the admiration of his contemporaries. A work, less prized in his own age, namely, his book De Gestis Scotorum, first published at Paris by Badius Ascensius, in the year 1521, has alone made him known to posterity. He rejects in it some of the fictions of former historians, and his merit would have been greater if he had rejected more of them. He intermingles the history of England with that of Scotland, and has incurred the censure of some partial writers, for giving an authority to the authors of the former nation, which he refuses to those of his own. Bede, Caxton, and Froissart, were exceedingly useful to him. The style in which he wrote does not deserve commendation. Bishop Spottiswood calls it “Sorbonnic” and “barbarous.”