Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "G" to "Gaskell, Elizabeth" / Volume 11, Slice 4 Papyras Classics

← Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "G" to "Gaskell, Elizabeth" / Volume 11, Slice 4

Chapter 2

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "G" to "Gaskell, Elizabeth" (part 2)

Everything seemed now to promise a close of unbroken prosperity to Galileo’s career. Maffeo Barberini, his warmest friend and admirer in the Sacred College, was, by the election of the 8th of August 1623, seated on the pontifical throne; and the marked distinction with which he was received on his visit of congratulation to Rome in 1624 encouraged him to hope for the realization of his utmost wishes. He received every mark of private favour. The pope admitted him to six long audiences in the course of two months, wrote an enthusiastic letter to the grand-duke praising the great astronomer, not only for his distinguished learning, but also for his exemplary piety, and granted a pension to his son Vincenzio, which was afterwards transferred to himself, and paid, with some irregularities, to the end of his life. But on the subject of the decree of 1616, the revocation of which Galileo had hoped to obtain through his personal influence, he found him inexorable. Yet there seemed reason to expect that it would at least be interpreted in a liberal spirit, and Galileo’s friends encouraged his imprudent confidence by eagerly retailing to him every papal utterance which it was possible to construe in a favourable sense. To Cardinal Hohenzollern, Urban was reported to have said that the theory of the earth’s motion had not been and could not be condemned as heretical, but only as rash; and in 1630 the brilliant Dominican monk Tommaso Campanella wrote to Galileo that the pope had expressed to him in conversation his disapproval of the prohibitory decree. Thus, in the full anticipation of added renown, and without any misgiving as to ulterior consequences, Galileo set himself, on his return to Florence, to complete his famous but ill-starred work, the Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo. Finished in 1630, it was not until January 1632 that it emerged from the presses of Landini at Florence. The book was originally intended to appear in Rome, but unexpected obstacles interposed. The Lincean Academy collapsed with the death of Prince Federigo Cesi, its founder and president; an outbreak of plague impeded communication between the various Italian cities; and the imprimatur was finally extorted, rather than accorded, under the pressure of private friendship and powerful interest. A tumult of applause from every part of Europe followed its publication; and it would be difficult to find in any language a book in which animation and elegance of style are so happily combined with strength and clearness of scientific exposition. Three interlocutors, named respectively Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio, take part in the four dialogues of which the work is composed. The first-named expounds the views of the author; the second is an eager and intelligent listener; the third represents a well-meaning but obtuse Peripatetic, whom the others treat at times with undisguised contempt. Salviati and Sagredo took their names from two of Galileo’s early friends, the former a learned Florentine, the latter a distinguished Venetian gentleman; Simplicio ostensibly derived his from the Cilician commentator of Aristotle, but the choice was doubtless instigated by a sarcastic regard to the double meaning of the word. There were not wanting those who insinuated that Galileo intended to depict the pope himself in the guise of the simpleton of the party; and the charge, though preposterous in itself, was supported by certain imprudences of expression, which Urban was not permitted to ignore.

It was at once evident that the whole tenor of this remarkable work was in flagrant contradiction with the edict passed sixteen years before its publication, as well as with the author’s personal pledge of conformity to it. The ironical submission with which it opened, and the assumed indetermination with which it closed, were hardly intended to mask the vigorous assertion of Copernican principles which formed its substance. It is a singular circumstance, however, that the argument upon which Galileo mainly relied as furnishing a physical demonstration of the truth of the new theory rested on a misconception. The ebb and flow of the tides were, he asserted, a visible proof of the terrestrial double movement, since they resulted from inequalities in the absolute velocities through space of the various parts of the earth’s surface, due to its rotation. To this notion, which took its rise in a confusion of thought, he attached capital importance, and he treated with scorn Kepler’s suggestion that a certain occult attraction of the moon was in some way concerned in the phenomenon. The theological censures which the book did not fail to incur were not slow in making themselves felt. Towards the end of August the sale was prohibited; on the 1st of October the author was cited to Rome by the Inquisition. He pleaded his age, now close upon seventy years, his infirm health, and the obstacles to travel caused by quarantine regulations; but the pope was sternly indignant at what he held to be his ingratitude and insubordination, and no excuse was admitted. At length, on the 13th of February 1633, he arrived at the residence of Niccolini, the Tuscan ambassador to the pontifical court, and there abode in retirement for two months. From the 12th to the 30th of April he was detained in the palace of the Inquisition, where he occupied the best apartments and was treated with unexampled indulgence. On the 30th he was restored to the hospitality of Niccolini, his warm partisan. The accusation against him was that he had written in contravention of the decree of 1616, and in defiance of the command of the Holy Office communicated to him by Cardinal Bellarmin; and his defence consisted mainly in a disavowal of his opinions, and an appeal to his good intentions. On the 21st of June he was finally examined under menace of torture; but he continued to maintain his assertion that after its condemnation by the Congregation of the Index, he had never held the Copernican theory. Since the publication of the documents relating to this memorable trial, there can no longer be any doubt, not only that the threat of torture was not carried into execution, but that it was never intended that it should be. On the 22nd of June, in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Galileo read his recantation, and received his sentence. He was condemned, as “vehemently suspected of heresy,” to incarceration at the pleasure of the tribunal, and by way of penance was enjoined to recite once a week for three years the seven penitential psalms. This sentence was signed by seven cardinals, but did not receive the customary papal ratification. The legend according to which Galileo, rising from his knees after repeating the formula of abjuration, stamped on the ground, and exclaimed, “Eppur si muove!” is, as may readily be supposed, entirely apocryphal. Its earliest ascertained appearance is in the Abbé Irailh’s Querelles littéraires (vol. iii. p. 49, 1761).

Galileo remained in the custody of the Inquisition from the 21st to the 24th of June, on which day he was relegated to the Villa Medici on the Trinità de’ Monti. Thence, on the 6th of July, he was permitted to depart for Siena, where he spent several months in the house of the archbishop, Ascanio Piccolomini, one of his numerous and trusty friends. It was not until December that his earnest desire of returning to Florence was realized, and the remaining eight years of his life were spent in his villa at Arcetri called “Il Giojello,” in the strict seclusion which was the prescribed condition of his comparative freedom. Domestic afflictions combined with numerous and painful infirmities to embitter his old age. His sister-in-law and her whole family, who came to live with him on his return from Rome, perished shortly afterwards of the plague; and on the 2nd of April 1634 died, to the inexpressible grief of her father, his eldest and best-beloved daughter, a nun in the convent of San Matteo at Arcetri. Galileo was never married; but by a Venetian woman named Marina Gamba he had three children—a son who married and left descendants, and two daughters who took the veil at an early age. His prodigious mental activity continued undiminished to the last. In 1636 he completed his Dialoghi delle nuove scienze, in which he recapitulated the results of his early experiments and mature meditations on the principles of mechanics. This in many respects his most valuable work was printed by the Elzevirs at Leiden in 1638, and excited admiration equally universal and more lasting than that accorded to his astronomical treatises. His last telescopic discovery—that of the moon’s diurnal and monthly librations—was made in 1637, only a few months before his eyes were for ever closed in hopeless blindness. It was in this condition that Milton found him when he visited him at Arcetri in 1638. But the fire of his genius was not even yet extinct. He continued his scientific correspondence with unbroken interest and undiminished logical acumen; he thought out the application of the pendulum to the regulation of clockwork, which Huygens successfully realized fifteen years later; and he was engaged in dictating to his disciples, Viviani and Torricelli, his latest ideas on the theory of impact when he was seized with the slow fever which in two months brought him to the grave. On the 8th of January 1642 he closed his long life of triumph and humiliation, which just spanned the interval between the death of Michelangelo and the birth of Isaac Newton.

The direct services which Galileo rendered to astronomy are virtually summed up in his telescopic discoveries. To the theoretical perfection of the science he contributed little or nothing. He pointed out indeed that the so-called “third motion,” introduced by Copernicus to account for the constant parallelism of the earth’s axis, was a superfluous complication. But he substituted the equally unnecessary hypothesis of a magnetic attraction, and failed to perceive that the phenomenon to be explained was, in relation to absolute space, not a movement but the absence of movement. The circumstance, however, which most seriously detracts from his scientific reputation is his neglect of the discoveries made during his lifetime by the greatest of his contemporaries. Kepler’s first and second laws were published in 1609, and his third ten years later. By these momentous inductions the geometrical theory of the solar system was perfected, and a hitherto unimagined symmetry was perceived to regulate the mutual relations of its members. But by Galileo they were passed over in silence. In his Dialogo dei massimi sistemi, printed not less than thirteen years after the last of the three laws had been given to the world, the epicycles by which Copernicus, adhering to the ancient postulate of uniform circular motion, had endeavoured to reduce to theory the irregularities of the planetary movements, were neither expressly adopted nor expressly rejected; and the conclusion seems inevitable that this grave defection from the cause of progress was due to his perhaps unconscious reluctance to accept discoveries which he had not originated. His name is nevertheless justly associated with that vast extension of the bounds of the visible universe which has rendered modern astronomy the most sublime of sciences, and his telescopic observations are a standing monument to his sagacity and acumen.

With the sure instinct of genius, he seized the characteristic features of the phenomena presented to his attention, and his inferences, except when distorted by polemical exigencies, have been strikingly confirmed by modern investigations. Of his two capital errors, regarding respectively the theory of the tides and the nature of comets, the first was insidiously recommended to him by his passionate desire to find a physical confirmation of the earth’s double motion; the second was adopted for the purpose of rebutting an anti-Copernican argument founded on the planetary analogies of those erratic subjects of the sun. Within two years of their first discovery, he had constructed approximately accurate tables of the revolutions of Jupiter’s satellites, and he proposed their frequent eclipses as a means of determining longitudes, not only on land, but at sea. This method, on which he laid great stress, and for the facilitation of which he invented a binocular glass, and devised some skilful mechanical contrivances, was offered by him in 1616 to the Spanish government, and afterwards to that of Tuscany, but in each case unsuccessfully; and the close of his life was occupied with prolonged but fruitless negotiations on the same subject with the states-general of Holland. The idea, though ingenious, has been found of little practical utility at sea.

A series of careful observations made him acquainted with the principal appearances revealed by modern instruments in the solar spots. He pointed out that they were limited to a certain defined zone on the sun’s surface; he noted the faculae with which they are associated, the penumbra by which they are bordered, their slight proper motions and their rapid changes of form. He inferred from the regularity of their general movements the rotation of the sun on its axis in a period of little less than a month; and he grounded on the varying nature of the paths seemingly traversed by them a plausible, though inconclusive, argument in favour of the earth’s annual revolution. Twice in the year, he observed, they seem to travel across the solar disk in straight lines; at other times, in curves. These appearances he referred with great acuteness to the slight inclination of the sun’s axis of rotation to the plane of the ecliptic. Thus, when the earth finds herself in the plane of the sun’s equator, which occurs at two opposite points of her orbit, the spots, travelling in circles parallel with that plane, necessarily appear to describe right lines; but when the earth is above or below the equatorial level, the paths of the spots open out into curves turned downwards or upwards, according to the direction in which they are seen. But the explanation of this phenomenon is equally consistent with the geocentric as with the heliocentric theory of the solar system. The idea of a universal force of gravitation seems to have hovered on the borders of this great man’s mind, without ever fully entering it. He perceived the analogy between the power which holds the moon in the neighbourhood of the earth, and compels Jupiter’s satellites to circulate round their primary, and the attraction exercised by the earth on bodies at its surface; but he failed to conceive the combination of central force with tangential velocity, and was disposed to connect the revolutions of the planets with the axial rotation of the sun. This notion, it is plain, tended rather towards Descartes’s theory of vortices than towards Newton’s theory of gravitation. More valid instances of the anticipation of modern discoveries may be found in his prevision that a small annual parallax would eventually be found for some of the fixed stars, and that extra-Saturnian planets would at some future time be ascertained to exist, and in his conviction that light travels with a measurable, although, in relation to terrestrial distances, infinite velocity.

The invention of the microscope, attributed to Galileo by his first biographer, Vincenzio Viviani, does not in truth belong to him. Such an instrument was made as early as 1590 by Zacharias Jansen of Middleburg; and although Galileo discovered, in 1610, a means of adapting his telescope to the examination of minute objects, he did not become acquainted with the compound microscope until 1624 when he saw one of Drebbel’s instruments in Rome, and, with characteristic ingenuity, immediately introduced some material improvements into its construction.

The most substantial, if not the most brilliant part of his work consisted undoubtedly in his contributions towards the establishment of mechanics as a science. Some valuable but isolated facts and theorems had been previously discovered and proved, but it was he who first clearly grasped the idea of force as a mechanical agent, and extended to the external world the conception of the invariability of the relation between cause and effect. From the time of Archimedes there had existed a science of equilibrium, but the science of motion began with Galileo. It is not too much to say that the final triumph of the Copernican system was due in larger measure to his labours in this department than to his direct arguments in its favour. The problem of the heavens is essentially a mechanical one; and without the mechanical conceptions of the dependence of motion upon force which Galileo familiarized to men’s minds, that problem might have remained a sealed book even to the intelligence of Newton. The interdependence of motion and force was not indeed formulated into definite laws by Galileo, but his writings on dynamics are everywhere suggestive of those laws, and his solutions of dynamical problems involve their recognition. The extraordinary advances made by him in this branch of knowledge were owing to his happy method of applying mathematical analysis to physical problems. As a pure mathematician he was, it is true, surpassed in profundity by more than one among his pupils and contemporaries; and in the wider imaginative grasp of abstract geometrical principles he cannot be compared with Fermat, Descartes or Pascal, to say nothing of Newton or Leibnitz. Still, even in the region of pure mathematics, his powerful and original mind left notable traces of its working. He studied the properties of the cycloid, and attempted the problem of its quadrature; and in the “infinitesimals,” which he was one of the first to introduce into geometrical demonstrations, was contained the fruitful germ of the differential calculus. But the method which was peculiarly his, and which still forms the open road to discoveries in natural science, consisted in the combination of experiment with calculation—in the transformation of the concrete into the abstract, and the assiduous comparison of results. The first-fruits of the new system of investigation was his determination of the laws of falling bodies. Conceiving that the simplest principle is the most likely to be true, he assumed as a postulate that bodies falling freely towards the earth descend with a uniformly accelerated motion, and deduced thence that the velocities acquired are in the direct, and the spaces traversed in the duplicate ratio of the times, counted from the beginning of motion; finally, he proved, by observing the times of descent of bodies falling down inclined planes, that the postulated law was the true law. Even here, he was obliged to take for granted that the velocities acquired in descending from the same height along planes of every inclination are equal; and it was not until shortly before his death that he found the mathematical demonstration of this not very obvious principle.

The first law of motion—that which expresses the principle of inertia—is virtually contained in the idea of uniformly accelerated velocity. The recognition of the second—that of the independence of different motions—must be added to form the true theory of projectiles. This was due to Galileo. Up to his time it was universally held in the schools that the motion of a body should cease with the impulse communicated to it, but for the “reaction of the medium” helping it forward. Galileo showed, on the contrary, that the nature of motion once impressed is to continue indefinitely in a uniform direction, and that the effect of the medium is a retarding, not an impelling one. Another commonly received axiom was that no body could be affected by more than one movement at one time, and it was thus supposed that a cannon ball, or other projectile, moves forward in a right line until its first impulse is exhausted, when it falls vertically to the ground. In the fourth of Galileo’s dialogues on mechanics, he demonstrated that the path described by a projectile, being the result of the combination of a uniform transverse motion with a uniformly accelerated vertical motion, must, apart from the resistance of the air, be a parabola. The establishment of the principle of the composition of motions formed a conclusive answer to the most formidable of the arguments used against the rotation of the earth, and we find it accordingly triumphantly brought forward by Galileo in the second of his dialogues on the systems of the world. It was urged by anti-Copernicans that a body flung upward or cast downward would, if the earth were in motion, be left behind by the rapid translation of the point from which it started; Galileo proved on the contrary that the reception of a fresh impulse in no way interfered with the movement already impressed, and that the rotation of the earth was insensible, because shared equally by all bodies at its surface. His theory of the inclined plane, combined with his satisfactory definition of “momentum,” led him towards the third law of motion. We find Newton’s theorem, that “action and reaction are equal and opposite,” stated with approximate precision in his treatise Della scienza meccanica, which contains the substance of lectures delivered during his professorship at Padua; and the same principle is involved in the axiom enunciated in the third of his mechanical dialogues, that “the propensity of a body to fall is equal to the least resistance which suffices to support it.” The problems of percussion, however, received no definitive solution until after his death.

His services were as conspicuous in the statical as in the kinetical division of mechanics. He gave the first satisfactory demonstration of equilibrium on an inclined plane, reducing it to the level by a sound and ingenious train of reasoning; while, by establishing the theory of “virtual velocities,” he laid down the fundamental principle which, in the opinion of Lagrange, contains the general expression of the laws of equilibrium. He studied with attention the still obscure subject of molecular cohesion, and little has been added to what he ascertained on the question of transverse strains and the strength of beams, first brought by him within the scope of mechanical theory. In his Discorso intorno alle cose che stanno su l’acqua, published in 1612, he used the principle of virtual velocities to demonstrate the more important theorems of hydrostatics, deducing from it the equilibrium of fluid in a siphon, and proved against the Aristotelians that the floating of solid bodies in a liquid depends not upon their form, but upon their specific gravities relative to such liquid.

In order to form an adequate estimate of the stride made by Galileo in natural philosophy, it would be necessary to enumerate the confused and erroneous opinions prevailing on all such subjects in his time. His best eulogium, it has been truly said, consists in the fallacies which he exposed. The scholastic distinctions between corruptible and incorruptible substances, between absolute gravity and absolute levity, between natural and violent motions, if they did not wholly disappear from scientific phraseology, ceased thenceforward to hold the place of honour in the controversies of the learned. Discarding these obscure and misleading notions, Galileo taught that gravity and levity are relative terms, and that all bodies are heavy, even those which, like the air, are invisible; that motion is the result of force, instantaneous or continuous; that weight is a continuous force, attracting towards the centre of the earth; that, in a vacuum, all bodies would fall with equal velocities; that the “inertia of matter” implies the continuance of motion, as well as the permanence of rest; and that the substance of the heavenly bodies is equally “corruptible” with that of the earth. These simple elementary ideas were eminently capable of development and investigation, and were not only true but the prelude to further truth; while those they superseded defied inquiry by their vagueness and obscurity. Galileo was a man born in due time. He was superior to his contemporaries, but not isolated amongst them. He represented and intensified a growing tendency of the age in which he lived. It was beginning to be suspected that from Aristotle an appeal lay to nature, and some were found who no longer treated the ipse dixit of the Stagirite as the final authority in matters of science. A vigorous but ineffectual warfare had already been waged against the blind traditions of the schools by Ramus and Telesius, by Patricius and Campanella, and the revolution which Galileo completed had been prepared by his predecessors. Nevertheless, the task which he so effectually accomplished demanded the highest and rarest quality of genius. He struck out for himself the happy middle path between the a priori and the empirical systems, and exemplified with brilliant success the method by which experimental science has wrested from nature so many of her secrets. His mind was eminently practical. He concerned himself above all with what fell within the range of exact inquiry, and left to others the larger but less fruitful speculations which can never be brought to the direct test of experiment. Thus, while far-reaching but hasty generalizations have had their day and been forgotten, his work has proved permanent, because he made sure of its foundations. His keen intuition of truth, his vigour and yet sobriety of argument, his fertility of illustration and acuteness of sarcasm, made him irresistible to his antagonists; and the evanescent triumphs of scornful controversy have given place to the sedate applause of a long-lived posterity.

The first complete edition of Galileo’s writings was published at Florence (1842-1856), in 16 8vo vols., under the supervision of Signor Eugenio Albèri. Besides the works already enumerated, it contained the Sermones de motu gravium composed at Pisa between 1589 and 1591; his letters to his friends, with many of their replies, as well as several of the essays of his scientific opponents; his laudatory comments on the Orlando Furioso, and depreciatory notes on the Gerusalemme Liberata, some stanzas and sonnets of no great merit, together with the sketch of a comedy; finally, a reprint of Viviani’s Life, with valuable notes and corrections. The original documents from the archives of the Inquisition, relating to the events of 1616 and 1633, recovered from Paris in 1846 by the efforts of Count Rossi, and now in the Vatican Library, were to a limited extent made public by Monsignor Marino-Marini in 1850, and more unreservedly by M. Henri de l’Épinois, in an essay entitled Galilée, son procès, sa condemnation, published in 1867 in the Revue des questions historiques. He was followed by M. Karl von Gebler, who, in an able and exhaustive but somewhat prejudiced work, Galileo Galilei und die römische Curie (Stuttgart, 1876), sought to impeach the authenticity of a document of prime importance in the trial of 1633. He was victoriously answered by Signor Domenico Berti, in Il Processo originale di Galileo Galilei (Rome, 1876), and by M. de l’Épinois, with Les pièces du procès de Galilée (Rome, Paris, 1877). The touching letters of Galileo’s eldest daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, to her father were printed in 1864 by Professor Carlo Arduini, in a publication entitled La Primogenita di Galileo Galilei.

The issue of a “national edition” of the Works of Galileo, in 20 large volumes, was begun at Florence in 1890. It includes a mass of previously inedited correspondence and other documents, collected by the indefatigable director, Professor Antonio Favaro, among whose numerous publications on Galilean subjects may be mentioned: Galileo e lo studio di Padova (2 vols., 1883); Scampoli Galileani (12 series, 1886-1897); Nuovi Studii Galileani (1891); Galileo Galilei e Suor Maria Celeste (1891). See also Th. Henri Martin’s Galilée, les droits de la science et la méthode des sciences physiques (1868); Private Life of Galileo (by Mrs Olney, 1870); J.J. Fahie’s Galileo; his Life and Work (1903); Galilée et Marius, by J.A.C. Oudemans and J. Bosscha (1903). The relations of Galileo to the Church are temperately and ably discussed by F.R. Wegg-Prosser in Galileo and his Judges (1889), and in two articles published in the American Catholic Quarterly for April and July 1901.

(A. M. C.)


The word telescope, from τῆλε, far, σκοπεῖν, to view, was invented by Demiscianus, an eminent Greek scholar, at the request of Prince Cesi, president of the Lyncean Academy. It was used by Galileo as early as 1612, but was not introduced into England until much later. In 1655 the word telescope was inserted and explained in Bagwell’s Mysteries of Astronomy, trunk or cylinder being the terms until then ordinarily employed.

Leonardo da Vinci, more than a hundred years earlier, had come to the same conclusion.

The passage is sufficiently remarkable to deserve quotation in the original:—“Le parti della Terra hanno tal propensione al centro di essa, che quando ella cangiasse luogo, le dette parti, benchè lontane dal globo nel tempo delle mutazioni di esso, lo seguirebbero per tutto; esempio di ciò sia il seguito perpetuo delle Medicee, ancorchè separate continuamente da Giove. L’istesso si deve dire della Luna, obbligata a seguir la Terra.”—Dialogo dei massimi sistemi, Giornata terza, p. 351 of Albèri’s edition.


GALION, a city of Crawford County, Ohio, U.S.A., about 75 m. S.W. of Cleveland. Pop. (1890) 6326; (1900) 7282 (703 foreign-born); (1910) 7214. It is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Erie railways, and by an interurban electric railway. The city is about 1165 ft. above sea level, and has extensive railway shops (of the Erie railway) and manufactories of brick and tile machinery, carriages and wagons, and grain and seed cleaners. The municipality owns and operates its electric-lighting plant. Galion was laid out as a town in 1831, was incorporated as a borough in 1840, and was chartered as a city in 1878.


GALL, FRANZ JOSEPH (1758-1828), anatomist, physiologist, and founder of phrenology (q.v.), was born at Tiefenbrunn near Pforzheim, Baden, on the 9th of March 1758. After completing the usual literary course at Baden and Bruchsal, he began the study of medicine under J. Hermann (1738-1800) at Strassburg, whence, attracted by the names of Gerhard van Swieten (1700-1772) and Maximilian Stoll (1742-1788), he removed to Vienna in 1781. Having received his diploma, he began to practise as a physician there in 1785; but his energies were mainly devoted to the scientific investigation of problems which had occupied his attention from boyhood. At a comparatively early period he formed the generalization that in the human subject at least a powerful memory is invariably associated with prominent eyes; and further observation enabled him, as he thought, also to define the external characteristics indicative of special talents for painting, music and the mechanical arts. Following out these researches, he gradually reached the strong conviction, not only that the talents and dispositions of men are dependent upon the functions of the brain, but also that they may be inferred with perfect exactitude and precision from the external appearances of the skull. Gall’s first appearance as an author was made in 1791, when he published the first two chapters of a (never completed) work entitled Philosophisch-medicinische Untersuchungen über Natur u. Kunst im kranken u. gesunden Zustande des Menschen. The first public notice of his inquiries in cranioscopy, however, was in the form of a letter addressed to a friend, which appeared in C.M. Wieland’s Deutscher Mercur in 1798; but two years previously he had begun to give private courses of phrenological lectures in Vienna, where his doctrines soon attracted general attention, and met with increasing success until, in 1802, they were interdicted by the government as being dangerous to religion. This step on the part of the authorities had the effect of greatly stimulating public curiosity and increasing Gall’s celebrity.

In March 1805 he finally left Vienna in company with his friend and associate J.C. Spurzheim, and made a tour through Germany, in the course of which he lectured in Berlin, Dresden, Magdeburg and several of the university towns. His expositions, which he knew how to make popular and attractive, were much resorted to by the public, and excited considerable controversy in the scientific world. He had almost reached the zenith of his fame when, in 1807, he repaired to Paris and established himself there as a medical practitioner, at the same time continuing his activity as a lecturer and writer. In 1808 appeared his Introduction au cours de physiologie du cerveau, which was followed in 1809 by the Recherches sur le système nerveux en général, et sur celui du cerveau en particulier (originally laid before the Institute of France in March 1808), and in 1810 by the first instalment of the Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux en général, et du cerveau en particulier, avec des observations sur la possibilité de reconnaître plusieurs dispositions intellectuelles et morales de l’homme et des animaux par la configuration de leurs têtes. The Recherches and the first two volumes of the Anatomie bear the conjoint names of Gall and Spurzheim. The latter work was completed in 1819, and appeared in a second edition of six volumes in 1822-1825. In 1811 he replied to a charge of Spinozism or atheism, which had been strongly urged against him, by a treatise entitled Des dispositions innées de l’âme et de l’esprit, which he afterwards incorporated with his greater work. In 1819 he became a naturalized French subject, but his efforts two years afterwards to obtain admission to the Academy of Sciences, although supported by E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, were unsuccessful. In 1823 he visited London with the intention of giving a series of phrenological lectures, but his reception was not what he had anticipated, and he speedily abandoned his plans. He continued to lecture and practise in Paris until the beginning of 1828, when he was disabled by an apoplectic seizure. His death took place at Montrouge near Paris, on the 22nd of August 1828.


GALL (a word common to many Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch gal, and Ger. Galle; the Indo-European root appears in Gr. χολή and Lat. fel; possibly connected with “yellow,” with reference to the colour of bile), the secretion of the liver known as “bile,” the term being also used of the pear-shaped diverticulum of the bile-duct, which forms a reservoir for the bile, more generally known as the “gall-bladder” (see Liver). From the extreme bitterness of the secretion, “gall,” like the Lat. fel, is used for anything extremely bitter, whether actually or metaphorically. From the idea that the gall-bladder was the dominating organ of a bitter, sharp temperament, “gall” was formerly used in English for such a spirit, and also for one very ready to resent injuries. It thus survives in American slang, with the meaning “impudence” or “assurance.”

“Gall,” meaning a sore or painful swelling, especially on a horse, may be the same word, derived from an early use of the word as meaning “poison.” On the other hand, in Romanic languages, the Fr. galle, Sp. agalla, a wind-gall or puffy distension of the synovial bursa on the fetlock joint of a horse, is derived from the Lat. galla, oak-apple, from which comes the English “gall,” meaning an excrescence on trees caused by certain insects. (See Galls.)


GALLABAT, or Galabat, called by the Abyssinians Matemma (Metemma), a town of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, in 13° N. 36° 12′ E. It is built, at the foot of a steep slope, on the left bank of a tributary of the Atbara called the Khor Abnaheir, which forms here the Sudan-Abyssinian frontier. Gallabat lies 90 m. W. by N. of Gondar, the capital of Amhara, and being on the main route from Sennar to Abyssinia, is a trade centre of some importance. Pop. about 3000. The majority of the buildings are grass tukls. Slaves, beeswax, coffee, cotton and hides were formerly the chief articles of commerce. The slave market was closed about 1874. Being on the frontier line, the possession of the town was for long a matter of dispute between the Sudanese, and later the Egyptians, on the one hand and the Abyssinians on the other. About 1870 the Egyptians garrisoned the town, which in 1886 was attacked by the dervishes and sacked. From Gallabat a dervish raiding party penetrated to Gondar, which they looted. In revenge an Abyssinian army under King John attacked the dervishes close to Gallabat in March 1889. The dervishes suffered very severely, but King John being killed by a stray bullet, the Abyssinians retired (see Egypt: Military Operations, 1885-1896). In December 1898 an Anglo-Egyptian force entered Gallabat. The Abyssinians then held the fort, but as the result of frontier arrangement the town was definitely included in the Sudan, though Abyssinia takes half the customs revenue. Since 1899 the trade of the place has revived, coffee and live stock being the most important items.

The town and district form a small ethnographical island, having been peopled in the 18th century by a colony of Takruri from Darfur, who, finding the spot a convenient resting-place for their fellow-pilgrims on their way to Mecca and back, obtained permission from the negus of Abyssinia to make a permanent settlement. They are an industrious agricultural race, and cultivate cotton with considerable success. They also collect honey in large quantities. The Takruri possess jagged throwing knives, which are said to have been brought from their original home in the Upper Congo regions.


GALLAIT, LOUIS (1810-1887), Belgian painter, was born at Tournay, in Hainaut, Belgium, on the 9th of May 1810. He first studied in his native town under Hennequin. In 1832 his first picture, “Tribute to Caesar,” won a prize at the exhibition at Ghent. He then went to Antwerp to prosecute his studies under Mathieu Ignace Van Brée, and in the following year exhibited at the Brussels Salon “Christ Healing the Blind.” This picture was purchased by subscription and placed in the cathedral at Tournay. Gallait next went to Paris, whence he sent to the Belgian Salons “Job on the Dunghill,” “Montaigne Visiting Tasso in Prison”; and, in 1841, “The Abdication of Charles V.,” in the Brussels Gallery. This was hailed as a triumph, and gained for the painter a European reputation. Official invitations then caused him to settle at Brussels, where he died on the 20th of November 1887. Among his greater works may be named: “The Last Honours paid to Counts Egmont and Horn by the Corporations of the Town of Brussels,” now at Tournay; “The Death of Egmont,” in the Berlin gallery; the “Coronation of Baudouin, Emperor of Constantinople,” painted for Versailles; “The Temptation of St Anthony,” in the palace at Brussels; “The Siege of Antioch,” “Art and Liberty,” a “Portrait of M.B. Dumortier” and “The Plague at Tournay,” all in the Brussels gallery. “A Gipsy Woman and her Children” was painted in 1852. “M. Gallait has all the gifts that may be acquired by work, taste, judgment and determination,” wrote Théophile Gautier; his art is that of a man of tact, a skilled painter, happy in his dramatic treatment but superficial. No doubt, this Walloon artist, following the example of the Flemings of the Renaissance and the treatment of Belgian classical painters and the French Romantic school, sincerely aimed at truth; unfortunately, misled by contemporary taste, he could not conceive of it excepting as dressed in sentimentality. As an artist employed by the State he exercised considerable influence, and for a long period he was the leader of public taste in Brussels.

See Teichlin, Louis Gallait und die Malerei in Deutschland (1853); J. Dujardin, L’Art flamand (1899); C. Lemonnier, Histoire des beaux-arts en Belgique (1881).


GALLAND, ANTOINE (1646-1715), French Orientalist and archaeologist, the first European translator of the Arabian Nights, was born on the 4th of April 1646 at Rollot, in the department of Somme. The completion of his school education at Noyon was followed by a brief apprenticeship to a trade, from which, however, he soon escaped, to pursue his linguistic studies at Paris. After having been employed for some time in making a catalogue of the Oriental manuscripts at the Sorbonne, he was, in 1670, attached to the French embassy at Constantinople; and in 1673 he travelled in Syria and the Levant, where he copied a great number of inscriptions, and sketched, and in some cases removed historical monuments. After a brief visit to France, where his collection of ancient coins attracted some attention, Galland returned to the Levant in 1676; and in 1679 he undertook a third voyage, being commissioned by the French East India Company to collect for the cabinet of Colbert; on the expiration of this commission he was instructed by the government to continue his researches, and had the title of “antiquary to the king” conferred upon him. During his prolonged residences abroad he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages and literatures, which, on his final return to France, enabled him to render valuable assistance to Thevenot, the keeper of the royal library, and to Barthélemy d’Herbelot. After their deaths he lived for some time at Caen under the roof of Nicolas Foucault (1643-1721), the intendant of Caen, himself no mean archaeologist; and there he began the publication (12 vols., 1704-1717) of Les mille et une nuits, which excited immense interest during the time of its appearance, and is still the standard French translation. It had no pretensions to verbal accuracy, and the coarseness of the language was modified to suit European taste, but the narrative was adequately rendered. In 1701 Galland had been admitted into the Academy of Inscriptions, and in 1709 he was appointed to the chair of Arabic in the Collège de France. He continued to discharge the duties of this post until his death, which took place on the 17th of February 1715.

Besides a number of archaeological works, especially in the department of numismatics, he published a compilation from the Arabic, Persian and Turkish, entitled Paroles remarquables, bons mots et maximes des orientaux (1694), and a translation from an Arabic manuscript, De l’origine et du progrès du café (1699). The former of these works appeared in an English translation in 1795. His Contes et fables indiennes de Bidpaï et de Lokman was published (1724) after his death. Among his numerous unpublished manuscripts are a translation of the Koran and a Histoire générale des empereurs turcs. His Journal was published by M. Charles Schefer in 1881.


GALLARATE, a town of Lombardy, Italy, in the province of Milan, from which it is 25 m. N.W. by rail. Pop. (1901) 12,002. The town is of medieval origin. It is remarkable mainly for its textile factories. It is the junction of railways to Varese, Laveno and Arona (for the Simplon). Six miles to the W. are the electric works of Vizzola, the largest in Europe, where 23,000 h.p. are derived from the river Ticino.


GALLARS [in Lat. Gallasius], NICOLAS DES (c. 1520-c. 1580), Calvinistic divine, first appears as author of a Defensio of William Farel, published at Geneva in 1545, followed (1545-1549) by translations into French of three tracts by Calvin. In 1551 he was admitted burgess of Geneva, and in 1553 made pastor of a country church in the neighbourhood. In 1557 he was sent to minister to the Protestants at Paris; his conductor, Nicolas du Rousseau, having prohibited books in his possession, was executed at Dijon; des Gallars, having nothing suspicious about him, continued his journey. On the revival of the Strangers’ church in London (1560), he, being then minister at Geneva, came to London to organize the French branch; and in 1561 he published La Forme de police ecclésiastique instituée à Londres en l’Église des François. In the same year he assisted Beza at the colloquy of Poissy. He became minister to the Protestants at Orleans in 1564; presided at the synod of Paris in 1565; was driven out of Orleans with other Protestants in 1568; and in 1571 was chaplain to Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre. Calvin held him in high esteem, employing him as amanuensis, and as editor as well as translator of several of his exegetical and polemical works. He himself wrote a commentary on Exodus (1560); edited an annotated French Bible (1562) and New Testament (1562); and published tracts against Arians (1565-1566). His main work was his edition of Irenaeus (1570) with prefatory letter to Grindal, then bishop of London, and giving, for the first time, some fragments of the Greek text. His collaboration with Beza in the Histoire des Églises Réformées du royaume de France (1580) is doubted by Bayle.

See Bayle, Dictionnaire hist. et crit.; Jean Senebier, Hist. littéraire de Genève (1786); Nouvelle Biog. gén. (1857).

(A. Go.*)


GALLAS, MATTHIAS, Count of Campo, Duke of Lucera (1584-1647), Austrian soldier, first saw service in Flanders, and in Savoy with the Spaniards, and subsequently joined the forces of the Catholic League as captain. On the general outbreak of hostilities in Germany, Gallas, as colonel of an infantry regiment, distinguished himself, especially at the battle of Stadtlohn (1623). In 1630 he was serving as General-Feldwachtmeister under Collalto in Italy, and was mainly instrumental in the capture of Mantua. Made count of the Empire for this service, he returned to Germany for the campaign against Gustavus Adolphus. In command of a corps of Wallenstein’s army, he covered Bohemia against the Swedes in 1631-1632, and served at the Alte Veste near Nuremberg, and at Lützen. Further good service against Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar commended General Gallas to the notice of the emperor, who made him lieutenant-general in his own army. He was one of the chief conspirators against Wallenstein, and after the tragedy of Eger was appointed to the command of the army which Wallenstein had formed and led. At the great battle of Nördlingen (23rd of August 1634) in which the army of Sweden was almost annihilated, Gallas commanded the victorious Imperialists. His next command was in Lorraine, but even the Moselle valley had suffered so much from the ravages of war that his army perished of want. Still more was this the case in northern Germany, where Gallas commanded against the Swedish general Banér in 1637 and 1638. At first driving the Swedes before him, in the end he made a complete failure of the campaign, lost his command, and was subject to much ridicule. It was, however, rather the indiscipline of his men (the baneful legacy of Wallenstein’s methods) than his own faults which brought about his disastrous retreat across North Germany, and at a moment of crisis he was recalled to endeavour to stop Torstenson’s victorious advance, only to be shut up in Magdeburg, whence he escaped with the barest remnant of his forces. Once more relieved of his command, he was again recalled to make head against the Swedes in 1645 (after their victory at Jankow). Before long, old and warworn, he resigned his command, and died in 1647 at Vienna. His army had earned for itself the reputation of being the most cruel and rapacious force even in the Thirty Years’ War, and his Merode Brüder have survived in the word marauder. Like many other generals of that period, he had acquired much wealth and great territorial possessions (the latter mostly his share of Wallenstein’s estates). He was the founder of the Austrian family of Clam-Gallas, which furnished many distinguished soldiers to the Imperial army.


GALLAS, or more correctly Galla, a powerful Hamitic people of eastern Africa, scattered over the wide region which extends for about 1000 m. from the central parts of Abyssinia to the neighbourhood of the river Sabaki in British East Africa. The name “Galla” or “Gala” appears to be an Abyssinian nickname, unknown to the people, who call themselves Ilm’ Orma, “sons of men” or “sons of Orma,” an eponymous hero. In Shoa (Abyssinia) the word is connected with the river Gála in Guragie, on the banks of which a great battle is said to have been fought between the Galla and the Abyssinians. Arnaud d’Abbadie says that the Abyssinian Moslems recount that, when summoned by the Prophet’s messenger to adopt Islam, the chief of the Galla said “No,”—in Arabic kāl (or gāl) la,—and the Prophet on hearing this said, “Then let their very name imply their denial of the Faith.” Of all Hamitic peoples the Galla are the most numerous. Dr J. Ludwig Krapf estimated them (c. 1860) at from six to eight millions; later authorities put them at not much over three millions. Individual tribes are said to be able to bring 20,000 to 30,000 horsemen into the field.

Hardly anything is definitely known as to the origin and early home of the race, but it appears to have occupied the southern part of its present territory since the 16th century. According to Hiob Ludolf and James Bruce, the Galla invaders first crossed the Abyssinian frontiers in the year 1537. The Galla of Gojam (a district along the northern side of the river Abai) tell how their savage forefathers came from the south-east from a country on the other side of a bahr (lake or river), and the Yejju and Raia Galla also point towards the east and commemorate the passage of a bahr. Among the southern Galla tradition appears to be mainly concerned with the expulsion of the race from the country now occupied by the Somali. Their original home was possibly in the district east of Victoria Nyanza, for the tribes near Mount Kenya are stated to go on periodical pilgrimages to the mountain, making offerings to it as if to their mother. A theory has been advanced that the great exodus which it seems certain took place among the peoples throughout eastern Africa during the 15th century was caused by some great eruption of Kenya and other volcanoes of equatorial Africa. As a geographical term Galla-land is now used mainly to denote the south-central regions of the Abyssinian empire, the country in which the Galla are numerically strongest. There is no sharp dividing line between the territory occupied respectively by the Galla and by the Somali.

In any case the Galla must be regarded as members of that vast eastern Hamitic family which includes their neighbours, the Somali, the Afars (Danakil) and the Abyssinians. As in all the eastern Hamites, there is a perceptible strain of Negro blood in the Galla, who are, however, described by Sir Frederick Lugard as “a wonderfully handsome race, with high foreheads, brown skins, and soft wavy hair quite different from the wool of the Bantus.” As a rule their features are quite European. Their colour is dark brown, but many of the northern Galla are of a coffee and milk tint. The finest men are to be found among the Limmu and Gudru on the river Abai.

The Galla are for the most part still in the nomadic and pastoral stage, though in Abyssinia they have some agricultural settlements. Their dwellings, circles of rough stones roofed with grasses, are generally built under trees. Their wealth consists chiefly in cattle and horses. Among the southern tribes it is said that about seven or eight head of cattle are kept for every man, woman and child; and among the northern tribes, as neither man nor woman ever thinks of going any distance on foot, the number of horses is very large. The ordinary food consists of flesh, blood, milk, butter and honey, the last being considered of so much importance by the southern Galla that a rude system of bee-keeping is in vogue, and the husband who fails to furnish his wife with a sufficient supply of honey may be excluded from all conjugal rights. In the south monogamy is the rule, but in the north the number of a man’s wives is limited only by his wishes and his wealth. Marriage-forms are numerous, that of bride-capture being common. Each tribe has its own chief, who enjoys the strange privilege of being the only merchant for his people, but in all public concerns must take the advice of the fathers of families assembled in council. The greater proportion of the tribes are still pagan, worshipping a supreme god Waka, and the subordinate god and goddess Oglieh and Atetieh, whose favour is secured by sacrifices of oxen and sheep. With a strange liberality of sentiment, they say that at a certain time of the year Waka leaves them and goes to attend to the wants of their enemies the Somali, whom also he has created. Some tribes, and notably the Wollo Galla, have been converted to Mahommedanism and are very bigoted adherents of the Prophet. In the north, where the Galla are under Abyssinian rule, a kind of superficial Christianization has taken place, to the extent at least that the people are familiar with the names of Maremma or Mary, Balawold or Jesus, Girgis or St George, &c.; but to all practical intents paganism is still in force. The serpent is a special object of worship, the northern Galla believing that he is the author of the human race. There is a belief in were-wolves (buda), and the northern Galla have sorcerers who terrorize the people. Though cruel in war, all Galla respect their pledged word. They are armed with a lance, a two-edged knife, and a shield of buffalo or rhinoceros hide. A considerable number find employment in the Abyssinian armies.

Among the more important tribes in the south (the name in each instance being compounded with Galla) are the Ramatta, the Kukatta, the Baōle, the Aurova, the Wadjole, the Ilani, the Arrar and the Kanigo Galla; the Borani, a very powerful tribe, may be considered to mark the division between north and south; and in the north we find the Amoro, the Jarso, the Toolama, the Wollo, the Ambassil, the Aijjo, and the Azobo Galla.

See C.T. Beke, “On the Origin of the Gallas,” in Trans. of Brit. Assoc. (1847); J. Ludwig Krapf, Travels in Eastern Africa (1860); and Vocabulary of the Galla Language (London, 1842); Arnaud d’Abbadie, Douze Ans dans la Haute-Éthiopie (1868); Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nord-Ost-Afrikas; Die geistige Kultur der Dan’akil, Galla u. Somâl (Berlin, 1896); P.M. de Salviac, Les Galla (Paris, 1901).


GALLATIN, ALBERT (1761-1849), American statesman, was born in Geneva (Switzerland) on the 29th of January 1761. The Gallatins were both an old and a noble family. They are first heard of in Savoy in the year 1258, and more than two centuries later they went to Geneva (1510), united with Calvin in his opposition to Rome, and associated their fortunes with those of the little Swiss city. Here they remained, and with one or two other great families governed Geneva, and sent forth many representatives to seek their fortune and win distinction in the service of foreign princes, both as soldiers and ministers. On the eve of the French Revolution the Gallatins were still in Geneva, occupying the same position which they had held for two hundred years. Albert Gallatin’s father died in 1765, his mother five years later, and his only sister in 1777. Although left an orphan at nine, he was by no means lonely or unprotected. His grandparents, a large circle of near relatives and Mlle Catherine Pictet (d. 1795), an intimate friend of his mother, cared for him during his boyhood. He was thoroughly educated at the schools of Geneva, and graduated with honour from the college or academy there in 1779. His grandmother then wished him to enter the army of the landgrave of Hesse, but he declined to serve “a tyrant,” and a year later slipped away from Geneva and embarked for the United States. A competent fortune, good prospects, social position, and a strong family connexion were all thrown aside in order to tempt fate in the New World. His relatives very properly opposed his course, but they nevertheless did all in their power to smooth his way, and continued to treat him kindly. In after life he himself admitted the justice of their opinions. The temper of the times, a vague discontent with the established order of things, and some political enthusiasm imbibed from the writings of Rousseau, are the best reasons which can now be assigned for Gallatin’s desertion of home and friends.

In July 1780 Gallatin and his friend Henri Serre (d. 1784) landed in Massachusetts. They brought with them youth, hope and courage, as well as a little money, and at once entered into business. The times, however, were unfavourable. The great convulsion of the Revolution was drawing to a close, and everything was in an unsettled condition. The young Genevans failed in business, passed a severe winter in the wilds of Maine, and returned to Boston penniless. Gallatin tried to earn a living by teaching French in Harvard College, apparently not without success, but the cold and rigid civilization of New England repelled him, and he made his way to the South. In the backwoods of Pennsylvania and Virginia there seemed to be better chances for a young adventurer. Gallatin engaged in land speculations, and tried to lay the foundation of his fortune in a frontier farm. In 1789 he married Sophie Allègre, and every prospect seemed to be brightening. But clouds soon gathered again. After only a few months of wedlock his wife died, and Gallatin was once more alone. The solitary and desolate frontier life became now more dreary than ever; he flung himself into politics, the only outside resource open to him, and his long, and eventful public career began.

The constitution of 1787 was then before the public, and Gallatin, with his dislike of strong government still upon him, threw himself into opposition and became one of the founders of the Anti-Federalist, or, as it was afterwards called, the Republican party. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1789-1790, and of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1790, 1791, and 1792, and rose with surprising rapidity, despite his foreign birth and his inability to speak English with correctness or fluency. He was helped of course by his sound education; but the true cause of his success lay in his strong sense, untiring industry, courage, clear-sightedness and great intellectual force. In 1793 he was chosen United States senator from Pennsylvania by the votes of both political parties. No higher tribute was ever paid to character and ability than that conveyed by this election. But the staunch Federalists of the senate, who had begun to draw the party lines rather sharply, found the presence of the young Genevan highly distasteful. They disliked his French origin, and suspected him to be a man of levelling principles. His seat was contested on account of a technical flaw in regard to the duration of his citizenship, and in February 1794, almost three months after the beginning of the session, the senate annulled the election and sent him back to Pennsylvania with all the glory of political martyrdom.

The leading part which Gallatin had taken in the “Whisky Insurrection” in Western Pennsylvania had, without doubt, been an efficient cause in his rejection by the senate. He intended fully to restrain within legal bounds the opposition which the excise on domestic spirits had provoked, but he made the serious mistake of not allowing sufficiently for the character of the backwoods population. When legal resistance developed into insurrection, Gallatin did his best to retrieve his error and prevent open war. At Redstone Old Fort (Brownsville) on the 29th of August 1794, before the “Committee of Sixty” who were appointed to represent the disaffected people, he opposed with vigorous eloquence the use of force against the government, and refused to be intimidated by an excited band of riflemen who happened to be in the vicinity and represented the radical element. He effectively checked the excitement, and when a month later an overwhelming Federal force began moving upon the western counties, the insurrection collapsed without bloodshed. Of all the men who took part in the opposition to the excise, Gallatin alone came out with credit. He was at once elected to the national house of representatives, and took his seat in December 1795. There, by sheer force of ability and industry, he wrested from all competitors the leadership of the Republicans, and became the most dangerous opponent whom the Federalists had ever encountered in congress. Inflamed with a hatred of France just then rising to the dignity of a party principle, they found in Gallatin an enemy who was both by origin and opinion peculiarly obnoxious to them. They attacked him unsparingly, but in vain. His perfect command of temper, his moderation of speech and action, in a bitterly personal age, never failed, and were his most effective weapons; but he made his power felt in other ways. His clear mind and industrious habits drew him to questions of finance. He became the financier of his party, preached unceasingly his cardinal doctrines of simplicity and economy, and was an effective critic of the measures of government. Cool and temperate, Gallatin, when following his own theories, was usually in the right, although accused by his followers of trimming. Thus, in regard to the Jay treaty, he defended the constitutional right of the house to consider the treaty, but he did not urge rejection in this specific case. On the other hand, when following a purely party policy he generally erred. He resisted the navy, the mainspring of Washington’s foreign policy; he opposed commercial treaties and diplomatic intercourse in a similar fashion. On these points he was grievously wrong, and on all he changed his views after a good deal of bitter experience.

The greatest period of Gallatin’s career in congress was in 1798, after the publication of the famous X.Y.Z. despatches. The insults of Talleyrand, and his shameless attempts to extort bribes from the American commissioners, roused the deep anger of the people against France. The Federalists swept all before them, and the members of the opposition either retired from Philadelphia or went over to the government. Alone and single-handed, Gallatin carried on the fight in congress. The Federalists bore down on him unmercifully, and even attempted (1798) a constitutional amendment in regard to citizenship, partly, it appears, in order to drive him from office. Still he held on, making a national struggle in the national legislature, and relying very little upon the rights of States so eagerly grasped by Jefferson and Madison. But even then the tide was turning. The strong measures of the Federalists shocked the country; the leaders of the dominant party quarrelled fiercely among themselves; and the Republicans carried the elections of 1800. In the exciting contest for the presidency in the house of representatives between Jefferson and Burr, it was Gallatin who led the Republicans.

When, after this contest, Jefferson became president (1801), there were two men whose commanding abilities marked them for the first places in the cabinet. James Madison became secretary of state, and Albert Gallatin secretary of the treasury. Wise, prudent and conservative, Gallatin made few changes in Hamilton’s arrangements, and for twelve years administered the national finances with the greatest skill. He and Jefferson were both imbued with the idea that government could be carried on upon a priori principles resting on the assumed perfectness of human nature, and the chief burden of carrying out this theory fell upon Gallatin. His guiding principles were still simplicity of administration and speedy extinction of all debt, and everything bent to these objects. Fighting or bribing the Barbary pirates was a mere question of expense. It was cheaper to seize Louisiana than to await the settlement of doubtful points. Commercial warfare was to be avoided because of the cost. All wars were bad, but if they could not be evaded it was less extravagant to be ready than to rush to arms unprepared. Amid many difficulties, and thwarted even by Jefferson himself in the matter of the navy, Gallatin pushed on; and after six years the public debt was decreased (in spite of the Louisiana purchase) by $14,260,000, a large surplus was on hand, a comprehensive and beneficent scheme of internal improvements was ready for execution, and the promised land seemed in sight. Then came the stress of war in Europe, a wretched neutrality at home, fierce outbreaks of human passions, and the fair structure of government by a priori theories based on the goodness of unoppressed humanity came to the ground. Gallatin was thrown helplessly back upon the rejected Federalist doctrine of government according to circumstances. He uttered no vain regrets, but the position was a trying one. The sworn foe of strong government, he was compelled, in pursuance of Jefferson’s policy, to put into execution the Embargo and other radical and stringent measures. He did his best, but all was in vain. Commercial warfare failed, the Embargo was repealed, and Jefferson, having entangled foreign relations and brought the country to the verge of civil war, retired to private life, leaving to his successor Madison, and to Gallatin, the task of extricating the nation from its difficulties. From 1809 the new administration, drifting steadily towards war, struggled on from one abortive and exasperating negotiation to another. It was a period of sore trial to Gallatin. The peace policy had failed, and nothing else replaced it. He had lost his hold upon Pennsylvania and his support in the house, while a cabal in the senate, bitterly and personally hostile to the treasury, crippled the administration and reduced every government measure to mere inanity. At last, however, in June 1812, congress on Madison’s recommendation declared war against England.

Gallatin never wasted time in futile complaints. His cherished schemes were shattered. War and extravagant expenditure had come, and he believed both to be fatal to the prosperity and progress of America. He therefore put the finances in the best order he could, and set himself to mitigate the evil effects of the war by obtaining an early peace. With this end in view he grasped eagerly at the proffered mediation of Russia, and without resigning the treasury sailed for Europe in May 1813.

Russian mediation proved barren, but Gallatin persevered, catching at every opportunity for negotiation. In the midst of his labours came the news that the senate had refused to confirm his appointment as peace commissioner. He still toiled on unofficially until, the objection of the senate having been met by the appointment of a new secretary of the treasury, his second nomination was approved, and he was able to proceed with direct negotiations. The English and American commissioners finally met at Ghent, and in the tedious and irritating discussions which ensued Gallatin took the leading part. His great difficulty lay in managing his colleagues, who were, especially Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, able men of strong wills and jarring tempers. He succeeded in preserving harmony, and thus established his own reputation as an able diplomatist. Peace was his reward; on the 24th of December 1814 the treaty was signed; and after visiting Geneva for the first time since his boyhood, and assisting in negotiating a commercial convention (1815) with England by which all discriminating duties were abolished, Gallatin in July 1815 returned to America.

While still in Europe he had been asked by Madison to become minister to France; this appointment he accepted in January 1816, and adhered to his acceptance in spite of his being asked in April 1816 to serve once more as secretary of the treasury. He remained in France for the next seven years. He passed his time in thoroughly congenial society, seeing everybody of note or merit in Europe. He did not neglect the duties of his official position, but strove assiduously and with his wonted patience to settle the commercial relations of his adopted country with the nations of Europe, and in 1818 assisted Richard Rush, then United States minister in London, in negotiating a commercial convention with Great Britain to take the place of that negotiated in 1815.

In June 1823 he returned to the United States, where he found himself plunged at once into the bitter struggle then in progress for the presidency. His favourite candidate was his personal friend William H. Crawford, whom he regarded as the true heir and representative of the old Jeffersonian principles. With these feelings he consented in May 1824 to stand for the vice-presidency on the Crawford ticket. But Gallatin had come home to new scenes and new actors, and he did not fully appreciate the situation. The contest was bitter, personal, factious and full of intrigue. Martin Van Buren, then in the Crawford interest, came to the conclusion that the candidate for the second place, by his foreign origin, weakened the ticket, and in October Gallatin retired from the contest. The election, undecided by the popular vote, was thrown into the house, and resulted in the choice of John Quincy Adams, who in 1826 drew Gallatin from his retirement and sent him as minister to England to conduct another complicated and arduous negotiation. Gallatin worked at his new task with his usual industry, tact and patience, but the results were meagre, although an open breach on the delicate question of the north-east boundary of the United States was avoided by referring it to the arbitration of the king of the Netherlands. In November 1827 he once more returned to the United States and bade farewell to public life.

Taking up his residence in New York, he was in 1832-1839 president of the National Bank (afterwards the Gallatin Bank) of New York, but his duties were light, and he devoted himself chiefly to the congenial pursuits of science and literature. In both fields he displayed much talent, and by writing his Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America (1836), and by founding the American Ethnological Society of New York in 1842, he earned the title of “Father of American Ethnology.” He continued, of course, to interest himself in public affairs, although no longer an active participant, and in all financial questions, especially in regard to the bank charter, the resumption of specie payments, and the panic of 1837, he exerted a powerful influence. The rise of the slavery question touched him nearly. Gallatin had always been a consistent opponent of slavery; he felt keenly, therefore, the attempts of the South to extend the slave power and confirm its existence, and the remnant of his strength was devoted in his last days to writing and distributing two able pamphlets against the war with Mexico. Almost his last public act was a speech, on the 24th of April 1844, in New York City, against the annexation of Texas; and in his eighty-fourth year he confronted a howling New York mob with the same cool, unflinching courage which he had displayed half a century before when he faced the armed frontiersmen of Redstone Old Fort. During the winter of 1848-1849 his health failed, and on the 12th of August 1849, at the home of his daughter in Astoria, Long Island, he passed peacefully away.

Gallatin was twice married. His second wife, whom he married in November 1793, was Miss Hannah Nicholson, of New York, the daughter of Com. James Nicholson (1737-1804), an American naval officer, commander-in-chief of the navy from 1777 until August 1781, when with his ship the “Virginia,” he was taken by the British “Iris” and “General Monk.” By her he had three children, two sons and a daughter, who all survived him. In personal appearance he was above middle height, with strongly-marked features, indicating great strength of intellect and character. He was reserved and very reticent, cold in manner and not sympathetic. There was, too, a certain Calvinistic austerity about him. But he was much beloved by his family. He was never a popular man, nor did he ever have a strong personal following or many attached friends. He stood, with Jefferson and Madison, at the head of his party, and won his place by force of character, courage, application and intellectual power. His eminent and manifold services to his adopted country, his great abilities and upright character, assure him a high position in the history of the United States.

The Writings of Albert Gallatin, edited by Henry Adams, were published at Philadelphia, in three volumes, in 1879. With these volumes was published an excellent biography, The Life of Albert Gallatin, also by Henry Adams; another good biography is John Austin Stevens’s Albert Gallatin (Boston, 1884) in the “American Statesmen” series.

(H. C. L.)


GALLAUDET, THOMAS HOPKINS (1787-1851), American educator of the deaf and dumb, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of French Huguenot ancestry, on the 10th of December 1787. He graduated at Yale in 1805, where he was a tutor from 1808 to 1810. Subsequently he studied theology at Andover, and was licensed to preach in 1814, but having determined to abandon the ministry and devote his life to the education of deaf mutes, he visited Europe in 1815-1816, and studied the methods of the abbé Sicard in Paris, and of Thomas Braidwood (1715-1806) and his successor Joseph Watson (1765-1829) in Great Britain. Returning to the United States in 1816, he established at Hartford, Connecticut, with the aid of Laurent Clerc (1785-1869), a deaf mute assistant of the abbé Sicard, a school for deaf mutes, in support of which Congress, largely through the influence of Henry Clay, made a land grant, and which Gallaudet presided over with great success until ill-health compelled him to retire in 1830. It was the first institution of the sort in the United States, and served as a model for institutions which were subsequently established. He died at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 5th of September 1851.

There are three accounts of his life, one by Henry Barnard, Life, Character and Services of the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet (Hartford, 1852); another by Herman Humphrey (Hartford, 1858), and a third (and the best one) by his son Edward Miner Gallaudet (1888).

His son, Thomas Gallaudet (1822-1902), after graduating at Trinity College in 1842, entered the Protestant Episcopal ministry, settled in New York City, and there in 1852 organized St Anne’s Episcopal church, where he conducted services for deaf mutes. In 1872 he organized and became general manager of the Church mission to deaf mutes, and in 1885 founded the Gallaudet home for deaf mutes, particularly the aged, at Wappingers Falls, near Poughkeepsie, New York.

Another son, Edward Miner Gallaudet (b. 1837), was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 3rd of February 1837, and graduated at Trinity College in 1856. After teaching for a year in the institution for deaf mutes founded by his father at Hartford, he removed with his mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet (1798-1877), to Washington, D.C., where at the request of Amos Kendall (1789-1869), its founder, he organized and took charge of the Columbia Institution for the deaf and dumb, which received support from the government, and of which he became president. This institution was the first to furnish actual collegiate education for deaf mutes (in 1864 it acquired the right to grant degrees), and was successful from the start. The Gallaudet College (founded in 1864 as the National Deaf Mute College and renamed in 1893 in honour of Thomas H. Gallaudet) and the Kendall School are separate departments of this institution, under independent faculties (each headed by Gallaudet), but under the management of one board of directors.


GALLE, or Point de Galle, a town and port of Ceylon on the south-west coast. It was made a municipality in 1865, and divided into the five districts of the Fort, Callowelle, Galopiadde, Hirimbure and Cumbalwalla. The fort, which is more than a mile in circumference, overlooks the whole harbour, but is commanded by a range of hills. Within its enclosure are not only several government buildings, but an old church erected by the Dutch East India Company, a mosque, a Wesleyan chapel, a hospital, and a considerable number of houses occupied by Europeans. The old Dutch building known as the queen’s house, or governor’s residence, which dated from 1687, was in such a dilapidated state that it was sold by the governor, Sir William Gregory, in 1873. Elsewhere there are few buildings of individual note, but the general style of domestic architecture is pleasant and comfortable, though not pretentious. One of the most delightful features of the place is the profusion of trees, even within the town, and along the edge of the shore—suriyas, palms, coco-nut trees and bread-fruit trees. The ramparts towards the sea furnish fine promenades. In the harbour deep water is found close to the shore, and the outer roads are spacious; but the south-west monsoon renders entrance difficult, and not unfrequently drives vessels from their moorings.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and the construction of a breakwater at Colombo, leading to the transfer of the mail and most of the commercial steamers to the capital of the island, seriously diminished the prosperity of Galle. Although a few steamers still call to coal and take in some cargo, yet the loss of the Peninsular and Oriental and other steamer agencies reduced the port to a subordinate position; nor has the extension of the railway from Colombo, and beyond Galle to Matara, very much improved matters. The tea-planting industry has, however, spread to the neighbourhood, and a great deal is done in digging plumbago and in growing grass for the distillation of citronella oil. The export trade is chiefly represented by coco-nut oil, plumbago, coir yarn, fibre, rope and tea. In the import trade cotton goods are the chief item. Both the export and import trade for the district, however, now chiefly passes through Colombo. Pop. (1901) 37,165.

Galle is mentioned by none of the Greek or Latin geographers, unless the identification with Ptolemy’s Avium Promontorium or Cape of Birds be a correct one. It is hardly noticed in the native chronicles before 1267, and Ibn Batuta, in the middle of the 14th century, distinctly states that Kali—that is, Galle—was a small town. It was not till the period of Portuguese occupation that it rose to importance. When the Dutch succeeded the Portuguese they strengthened the fortifications, which had been vigorously defended against their admiral, Kosten; and under their rule the place had the rank of a commandancy. In the marriage treaty of the infanta of Portugal with Charles II. of England it was agreed that if the Portuguese recovered Ceylon they were to hand over Galle to the English; but as the Portuguese did not recover Ceylon the town was left to fall into English hands at the conquest of the island from the Dutch in 1796. The name Galle is derived from the Sinhalese galla, equivalent to “rock”; but the Portuguese and Dutch settlers, being better fighters than philologists, connected it with the Latin gallus, a cock, and the image of a cock was carved as a symbol of the town in the front of the old government house.


GALLENGA, ANTONIO CARLO NAPOLEONE (1810-1895), Italian author and patriot, born at Parma on the 4th of November 1810, was the eldest son of a Piedmontese of good family, who served for ten years in the French army under Masséna and Napoleon. He had finished his education at the university of Parma, when the French Revolution of 1830 caused a ferment in Italy. He sympathized with the movement, and within a few months was successively a conspirator, a state prisoner, a combatant and a fugitive. For the next five years he lived a wandering life in France, Spain and Africa. In August 1836 he embarked for New York, and three years later he proceeded to England, where he supported himself as a translator and teacher of languages. His first book, Italy; General Views of its History and Literature, which appeared in 1841, was well received, but was not successful financially. On the outbreak of the Italian revolution in 1848 he at once put himself in communication with the insurgents. He filled the post of Chargé d’Affaires for Piedmont at Frankfort in 1848-1849, and for the next few years he travelled incessantly between Italy and England, working for the liberation of his country. In 1854, through Cavour’s influence, he was elected a deputy to the Italian parliament. He retained his seat until 1864, passing the summer in England and fulfilling his parliamentary duties at Turin in the winter. On the outbreak of the Austro-French War of 1859 he proceeded to Lombardy as war correspondent of The Times. The campaign was so brief that the fighting was over before he arrived, but his connexion with The Times endured for twenty years. He was a forcible and picturesque writer, with a command of English remarkable for an Italian. He materially helped to establish that friendly feeling towards Italy which became traditional in England. In 1859 Gallenga purchased the Falls, at Llandogo on the Wye, as a residence, and thither he retired in 1885. He died at this house on the 17th of December 1895. He was twice married. Among his chief works are an Historical Memoir of Frà Dolcino and his Times (1853); a History of Piedmont (3 vols., 1855; Italian translation, 1856); Country Life in Piedmont (1858); The Invasion of Denmark (2 vols., 1864); The Pearl of the Antilles [travels in Cuba] (1873); Italy Revisited (2 vols., 1875); Two Years of the Eastern Question (2 vols., 1877); The Pope [Pius IX.] and the King [Victor Emmanuel] (2 vols., 1879); South America (1880); A Summer Tour in Russia (1882); Iberian Reminiscences (2 vols., 1883); Episodes of my Second Life (1884); Italy, Present and Future (2 vols., 1887). Gallenga’s earlier publications appeared under the pseudonym of Luigi Mariotti.


GALLERY (through Ital. galleria, from Med. Lat. galeria, of which the origin is unknown), a covered passage or space outside a main wall, sometimes used as a verandah if on the ground floor, and as a balcony if on an upper floor and supported by columns, piers or corbels; similarly the upper seats in a theatre or a church, on either side as in many 17th-century churches, or across the west end under the organ. The word is also used of an internal passage primarily provided to place various rooms in communication with one another; but if of narrow width this is usually called a corridor or passage. When of sufficient width the gallery is utilized to exhibit pictures and other art treasures. In the 16th century the picture gallery formed the largest room or hall in English mansions, with wainscoted walls and a richly decorated plaster ceiling; the principal examples are those of Audley End, Essex (226 ft. by 34 ft.); Hardwick, Derbyshire (166 ft. by 22 ft.); Hatfield, Hertfordshire (163 ft. by 19 ft. 6 in.); Aston Hall, near Birmingham (136 ft. by 18 ft.); Haddon Hall, Derbyshire (116 ft. by 17 ft.); and Montacute in Somersetshire (189 ft. by 22 ft.). Hence the application of the term to art museums (the National Gallery, &c.) and also to smaller rooms with top-light in which temporary exhibitions are held.


Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. “Galeria,” suggests an origin from galera, a galley, on the analogy of “nave,” from navis, the galley being a long and narrow ship; but, he adds, alii alia opinantur.


GALLEY (derived through the O. Fr. galee, galie, from the Med. Lat. galea, Ital. galea, Port. galé, of uncertain origin; from the Med. Lat. variant form galera are derived the Mod. Fr. galère, Span. and Ital. galera), a long single or half decked vessel of war, with low free-board, propelled primarily by oars or sweeps; but also having masts for sails. The word is used generally of the ancient war vessels of Greece and Rome of various types, whose chief propelling power was the oar or sweep, but its more specific application is to the medieval war vessel which survived in the navies of the Mediterranean sea-powers after the general adoption of the larger many-decked ship of war, propelled solely by sail-power. Lepanto (1571) was the last great naval battle in which the galley played the principal part. The “galleass” or “galliass” (Med. Lat. galeasea, Ital. galeazza, an augmented form of galea) was a larger and heavier form of galley; it usually carried three masts and had at bow and stern a castellated structure. The “galliot” (O. Fr. galiot, Span. and Port. galeota, Ital. galeotta, a diminutive of galea) was a small light type of galley. The “galleon” (formerly in English “galloon,” Fr. galion, derived from the Med. Lat. galio, galionis, a derivative of galea) was a sailing ship of war and trade, shorter than the galley and standing high out of the water with several decks, chiefly used by the Spaniards during the 16th century in the carrying of treasure from America. The number of oars or sweeps varied, the larger galley having twenty-five on each side; the galleass as many as thirty-two, each being worked by several men. This labour was from the earliest times often performed by slaves or prisoners of war. It became the custom among the Mediterranean powers to sentence condemned criminals to row in the war galleys of the state. Traces of this in France can be found as early as 1532, but the first legislative enactment is in the Ordonnance d’Orléans of 1561. In 1564 Charles IX. forbade the sentencing of prisoners to the galleys for less than ten years. The galley-slaves were branded with the letters Gal. At the end of the reign of Louis XIV. the use of the galley for war purposes had practically ceased, but the corps of the galleys was not incorporated with the navy till 1748. The headquarters of the galleys and of the convict rowers (galériens) was at Marseilles. The majority of these latter were brought to Toulon, the others were sent to Rochefort and Brest, where they were used for work in the arsenal. At Toulon the convicts remained (in chains) on the galleys, which were moored as hulks in the harbour. Shore prisons were, however, provided for them, known as bagnes, baths, a name given to such penal establishments first by the Italians (bagno), and said to have been derived from the prison at Constantinople situated close by or attached to the great baths there. The name galérien was still given to all convicts, though the galleys had been abandoned, and it was not till the French Revolution that the hated name with all it signified was changed to forçat. In Spain galera is still used for a criminal condemned to penal servitude.

A vivid account of the life of galley-slaves in France is given in Jean Marteilhes’s Memoirs of a Protestant, translated by Oliver Goldsmith (new edition, 1895), which describes the experiences of one of the Huguenots who suffered after the revocation of the edict of Nantes.


GALLIA CISALPINA (Lat. Cis, on this side, i.e. of the Alps), in ancient geography, that portion of northern Italy north of Liguria and Umbria and south of the Alps, which was inhabited by various Celtic and other peoples, of whom the Celts were in continual hostility to Rome. In early times it was bounded on the S. by Liguria and the Aesis, in Caesar’s time by Liguria and the Rubicon. After the Second Punic War (203 B.C.) these tribes were severely punished by the Roman generals for the assistance they had rendered to Hannibal. Sulla divided the district into two parts; the region between the Aesis and the Rubicon was made directly subject to the government at Rome, while the northern portion was put under a distinct authority, probably similar to the usual transmarine commands (see Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, Eng. trans., bk. iv. c. 10).

For the early Celtic and other peoples and the later history of the district see Italy (ancient), and Rome: History, Ancient.


GALLIC ACID, trioxybenzoic acid (HO)3(3.4.5.)C6H2CO2H·H2O, the acidum gallicum of pharmacy, a substance discovered by K. W. Scheele; it occurs in the leaves of the bearberry, in pomegranate root-bark, in tea, in gall-nuts to the extent of about 3%, and in other vegetable productions. It may be prepared by keeping moist and exposed to the air for from four to six weeks, at a temperature of 20° to 25° C., a paste of powdered gall-nuts and water, and removing from time to time the mould which forms on its surface; the paste is then boiled with water, the hot solution filtered, allowed to cool, the separated gallic acid drained, and purified by dissolving in boiling water, recrystallization at about 27° C., and washing of the crystals with ice-cold water. The production of the acid appears to be due to the presence in the galls of a ferment. Gallic acid is most readily obtained by boiling the tannin procured from oak-galls by means of alcohol and ether with weak solution of acids. It may also be produced by heating an aqueous solution of di-iodosalicylic acid with excess of alkaline carbonate, by acting on dibromosalicylic acid with moist silver oxide, and by other methods. It crystallizes in white or pale fawn-coloured acicular prisms or silky needles, and is soluble in alcohol and ether, and in 100 parts of cold and 3 of boiling water; it is without odour and has an astringent and an acid taste and reaction. It melts at about 200° C., and at 210º to 215° it is resolved into carbon dioxide and pyrogallol, C6H3(OH)3. With ferric salts its solution gives a deep blue colour, and with ferrous salts, after exposure to the air, an insoluble, blue-black, ferroso-ferric gallate. Bases of the alkali metals give with it four series of salts; these are stable except in alkaline solutions, in which they absorb oxygen and turn brown. Solution of calcium bicarbonate becomes with gallic acid, on exposure to the air, of a dark blue colour. Unlike tannic acid, gallic acid does not precipitate albumen or salts of the alkaloids, or, except when mixed with gum, gelatin. Salts of gold and silver are reduced by it, slowly in cold, instantaneously in warm solutions, hence its employment in photography. With phosphorus oxychloride at 120° C. gallic acid yields tannic acid, and with concentrated sulphuric acid at 100°, rufigallic acid, C14H8O8, an anthracene derivative. Oxidizing agents, such as arsenic acid, convert it into ellagic acid, C14H8O9 + H2O, probably a fluorene derivative, a substance which occurs in gall-nuts, in the external membrane of the episperm of the walnut, and probably in many plants, and composes the “bezoar stones” found in the intestines of Persian wild goats. Medicinally, gallic acid has been, and is still, largely used as an astringent, styptic and haemostatic. Gallic acid, however, does not coagulate albumen and therefore possesses no local astringent action. So far is it from being an haemostatic that, if perfused through living blood-vessels, it actually dilates them. Its rapid neutralization in the intestine renders it equally devoid of any remote actions.


GALLICANISM, the collective name for various theories maintaining that the church and king of France had ecclesiastical rights of their own, independent and exclusive of the jurisdiction of the pope. Gallicanism had two distinct sides, a constitutional and a dogmatic, though both were generally held together, the second serving as the logical basis of the first. And neither is intelligible, except in relation to the rival theory of Ultramontanism (q.v.). Dogmatic Gallicanism was concerned with the question of ecclesiastical government. It maintained that the church’s infallible authority was committed to pope and bishops jointly. The pope decided in the first instance, but his judgments must be tacitly or expressly confirmed by the bishops before they had the force of law. This ancient theory survived much longer in France than in other Catholic countries. Hence the name of Gallican is loosely given to all its modern upholders, whether of French nationality or not. Constitutional Gallicanism dealt with the relation of church and state in France. It began in the 13th century, as a protest against the theocratic pretensions of the medieval popes. They claimed that they, as vicars of Christ, had the right to interfere in the temporal concerns of princes, and even to depose sovereigns of whom they disapproved. Gallicanism answered that kings held their power directly of God; hence their temporal concerns lay altogether outside the jurisdiction of the pope. During the troubles of the Reformation era, when the papal deposing power threatened to become a reality, the Gallican theory became of great importance. It was elaborated, and connected with dogmatic Gallicanism, by the famous theologian, Edmond Richer (1559-1631), and finally incorporated by Bossuet in a solemn Declaration of the French Clergy, made in 1682. This document lays down: (1) that the temporal sovereignty of kings is independent of the pope; (2) that a general council is above the pope; (3) that the ancient liberties of the Gallican Church are sacred; (4) that the infallible teaching authority of the church belongs to pope and bishops jointly. This declaration led to a violent quarrel with Rome, and was officially withdrawn in 1693, though its doctrines continued to be largely held. They were asserted in an extreme form in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), which almost severed connexion between France and the papacy. In 1802 Napoleon contented himself by embodying Bossuet’s declaration textually in a statute. Long before his time, however, the issue had been narrowed down to determining exactly how far the pope should be allowed to interfere in French ecclesiastical affairs. Down to the repeal of the Concordat in 1905 all French governments continued to uphold two of the ancient “Gallican Liberties.” The secular courts took cognizance of ecclesiastical affairs whenever the law of the land was alleged to have been broken; and papal bulls were not allowed to be published without the leave of the state. (See also Febronianism.)

(St. C.)


GALLIENI, JOSEPH SIMON (1849- ), French soldier and colonial administrator, was born at Saint-Béat, in the department of Haute-Garonne, on the 24th of April 1849. He left the military academy of Saint-Cyr in July 1870 as a second lieutenant in the Marines, becoming lieutenant in 1873 and captain in 1878. He saw service in the Franco-German War, and between 1877 and 1881 took an important part in the explorations and military expeditions by which the French dominion was extended in the basin of the upper Niger. He rendered a particularly valuable service by obtaining, in March 1881, a treaty from Ahmadu, almany of Segu, giving the French exclusive rights of commerce on the upper Niger. For this he received the gold medal of the Société de Géographie. From 1883 to 1886 Gallieni was stationed in Martinique. On the 24th of June 1886 he attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and on the 20th of December was nominated governor of Upper Senegal. He obtained several successes against Ahmadu in 1887, and compelled Samory to agree to a treaty by which he abandoned the left bank of the Niger (see Senegal: History). In connexion with his service in West Africa, Gallieni published two works—Mission d’exploration du Haut-Niger, 1879-1881 (Paris, 1885), and Deux Campagnes au Sudan français (Paris, 1891)—which, besides possessing great narrative interest, give information of considerable value in regard to the resources and topography of the country. In 1888 Gallieni was made an officer of the Legion of Honour. In 1891 he attained the rank of colonel, and from 1893 to 1895 he served in Tongking, commanding the second military division of the territory. In 1899 he published his experiences in Trois Colonnes au Tonkin. In 1896 Madagascar was made a French colony, and Gallieni was appointed resident-general (a title changed in 1897 to governor-general) and commander-in-chief. Under the weak administration of his predecessor a widespread revolt had broken out against the French. By a vigorous military system Gallieni succeeded in completing the subjugation of the island. He also turned his attention to the destruction of the political supremacy of the Hovas and the restoration of the autonomy of the other tribes. The execution of the queen’s uncle, Ratsimamanga, and of Rainandrianampandry, the minister of the interior, in October 1896, and the exile of Queen Ranavalo III. herself in 1897, on the charge of fomenting rebellion, broke up the Hova hegemony, and made an end of Hova intrigues against French rule. The task of government was one of considerable difficulty. The application of the French customs and other like measures, disastrous to British and American trade, were matters for which Gallieni was not wholly responsible. His policy was directed to the development of the economic resources of the island and was conciliatory towards the non-French European population. He also secured for the Protestants religious liberty. In 1899 he published a Rapport d’ensemble sur la situation générale de Madagascar. In 1905, when he resigned the governorship, Madagascar enjoyed peace and a considerable measure of prosperity. In 1906 General Gallieni was appointed to command the XIV. army corps and military government of Lyons. He reviewed the results of his Madagascar administration in a book entitled Neuf Ans à Madagascar (Paris, 1908).


GALLIENUS, PUBLIUS LICINIUS EGNATIUS, Roman emperor from A.D. 260 to 268, son of the emperor Valerian, was born about 218. From 253 to 260 he reigned conjointly with his father, during which time he gave proof of military ability and bravery. But when his father was taken prisoner by Shapur I. of Persia, in 260, Gallienus made no effort to obtain his release, or to withstand the incursions of the invaders who threatened the empire from all sides. He occupied part of his time in dabbling in literature, science and various trifling arts, but gave himself up chiefly to excess and debauchery. He deprived the senators of their military and provincial commands, which were transferred to equites. During his reign the empire was ravaged by a fearful pestilence; and the chief cities of Greece were sacked by the Goths, who descended on the Greek coast with a fleet of five hundred. His generals rebelled against him in almost every province of the empire, and this period of Roman history came to be called the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. Nevertheless, these usurpers probably saved the empire at the time, by maintaining order and repelling the attacks of the barbarians. Gallienus was killed at Mediolanum by his own soldiers while besieging Aureolus, who was proclaimed emperor by the Illyrian legions. His sons Valerianus and Saloninus predeceased him.

Life by Trebellius Pollio in Script. Hist. Aug.; on coins see articles in Numism. Zeit. (1908) and Riv. ital. d. num. (1908).


GALLIFFET, GASTON ALEXANDRE AUGUSTE, Marquis de, Prince de Martignes (1830-1909), French general, was born in Paris on the 23rd of January 1830. He entered the army in 1848, was commissioned as sub-lieutenant in 1853, and served with distinction at the siege of Sevastopol in 1855, in the Italian campaign of 1859, and in Algeria in 1860, after which for a time he served on the personal staff of the emperor Napoleon III. He displayed great gallantry as a captain at the siege and storm of Puebla, in Mexico, in 1863, when he was severely wounded. When he returned to France to recover from his wounds he was entrusted with the task of presenting the captured standards and colours to the emperor, and was promoted chef d’escadrons. He went again to Algeria in 1864, took part in expeditions against the Arabs, returned to Mexico as lieutenant-colonel, and, after winning further distinction, became in 1867 colonel of the 3rd Chasseurs d’Afrique. In the Franco-German War of 1870-71 he commanded this regiment in the army of the Rhine, until promoted to be general of brigade on the 30th of August. At the battle of Sedan he led the brigade of Chasseurs d’Afrique in the heroic charge of General Margueritte’s cavalry division, which extorted the admiration of the old king of Prussia. Made prisoner of war at the capitulation, he returned to France during the siege of Paris by the French army of Versailles, and commanded a brigade against the Communists. In the suppression of the Commune he did his duty rigorously and inflexibly, and on that ground earned a reputation for severity, which, throughout his later career, and in all his efforts to improve the French army, made him the object of unceasing attacks in the press and the chamber of deputies. In 1872 he took command of the Batna subdivision of Algeria, and commanded an expedition against El Golea, surmounting great difficulties in a rapid march across the desert, and inflicting severe chastisement on the revolted tribes. On the general reorganization of the army he commanded the 31st infantry brigade. Promoted general of division in 1875, he successively commanded the 15th infantry division at Dijon, the IX. army corps at Tours, and in 1882 the XII. army corps at Limoges. In 1885 he became a member of the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre. He conducted the cavalry manœuvres in successive years, and attained a European reputation on all cavalry questions, and, indeed, as an army commander. Decorated with the grand cross of the Legion of Honour in 1887, he received the military medal for his able conduct of the autumn manœuvres in 1891, and after again commanding at the manœuvres of 1894 he retired from the active list. Afterwards he took an important part in French politics, as war minister (22nd of June 1899 to 29th of May 1900) in M. Waldeck-Rousseau’s cabinet, and distinguished himself by the firmness with which he dealt with cases of unrest in the army, but he then retired into private life, and died on the 8th of July 1909.


GALLIO, JUNIUS ANNAEUS (originally Lucius Annaeus Novatus), son of the rhetorician L. Annaeus Seneca and the elder brother of L. Annaeus Seneca the philosopher, was born at Corduba (Cordova) about the beginning of the Christian era. At Rome he was adopted by L. Junius Gallio, a rhetorician of some repute, from whom he took the name of Junius Gallio. His brother Seneca, who dedicated to him the treatises De Ira and De Vita Beata, speaks of the charm of his disposition, also alluded to by the poet Statius (Silvae, ii. 7, 32). It is probable that he was banished to Corsica with his brother, and that both returned together to Rome when Agrippina selected Seneca to be tutor to Nero. Towards the close of the reign of Claudius, Gallio was proconsul of the newly constituted senatorial province of Achaea, but seems to have been compelled by ill-health to resign the post within a few years. During his tenure of office (in 53) he dismissed the charge brought by the Jews against the apostle Paul (Acts xviii.). His behaviour on this occasion (“But Gallio cared for none of these things”) shows the impartial attitude of the Roman officials towards Christianity in its early days. He survived his brother Seneca, but was subsequently put to death by order of Nero (in 65) or committed suicide.

Tacitus, Annals, xv. 73; Dio Cassius lx. 35, lxii. 25; Sir W.M. Ramsay, St Paul the Traveller, pp. 257-261; art. in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible (H. Cowan). An interesting reconstruction is given by Anatole France in Sur la pierre blanche.


GALLIPOLI (anc. Callipolis), a seaport town and episcopal see of Apulia, Italy, in the province of Lecce, 31 m. S. by W. of it by rail, 46 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) town, 10,399; commune, 13,459. It is situated on a rocky island in the Gulf of Taranto, but is united to the mainland by a bridge, protected by a castle constructed by Charles I. of Anjou. The other fortifications have been removed. The handsome cathedral dates from 1629. The town was once famous for its exports of olive-oil, which was stored, until it clarified, in cisterns cut in the rock. This still continues, but to a less extent; the export of wine, however, is increasing, and fruit is also exported.

The ancient Callipolis was obviously of Greek origin, as its name (“beautiful city”) shows. It is hardly mentioned in ancient times. Pliny tells us that in his time it was known as Anxa. It lay a little off the road from Tarentum to Hydruntum, but was reached by a branch from Aletium (the site is marked by the modern church of S. Maria della Lizza), among the ruins of which many Messapian inscriptions, but no Latin ones, have been found.

(T. As.)


GALLIPOLI (Turk. Gelibolu, anc. Καλλίπολις), a seaport and city of European Turkey, in the vilayet of Adrianople; at the north-western extremity of the Dardanelles, on a narrow peninsula 132 m. W.S.W. of Constantinople, and 90 m. S. of Adrianople, in 40° 24′ N. and 26° 40′ 30″ E. Pop. (1905) about 25,000. Nearly opposite is Lapsaki on the Asiatic side of the channel, which is here about 2 m. wide. Gallipoli has an unattractive appearance; its streets are narrow and dirty, and many of its houses are built of wood, although there are a few better structures, occupied by the foreign residents and the richer class of Turkish citizens. The only noteworthy buildings are the large, crowded and well-furnished bazaars with leaden domes. There are several mosques, none of them remarkable, and many interesting Roman and Byzantine remains, especially a magazine of the emperor Justinian (483-565), a square castle and tower attributed to Bayezid I. (1389-1403), and some tumuli on the south, popularly called the tombs of the Thracian kings. The lighthouse, built on a cliff, has a fine appearance as seen from the Dardanelles. Gallipoli is the seat of a Greek bishop. It has two good harbours, and is the principal station for the Turkish fleet. From its position as the key of the Dardanelles, it was occupied by the allied French and British armies in 1854. Then the isthmus a few miles north of the town, between it and Bulair, was fortified with strong earthworks by English and French engineers, mainly on the lines of the old works constructed in 1357. These fortifications were renewed and enlarged in January 1878, on the Russians threatening to take possession of Constantinople. The peninsula thus isolated by the fortified positions has the Gulf of Saros on the N.W., and extends some 50 m. S.W. The guns of Gallipoli command the Dardanelles just before the strait joins the Sea of Marmora. The town itself is not very strongly fortified, the principal fortifications being farther down the Dardanelles, where the passage is narrower.

The district (sanjak) of Gallipoli is exceedingly fertile and well adapted for agriculture. It has about 100,000 inhabitants, and comprises four kazas (cantons), namely, (1) Maitos, noted for its excellent cotton; (2) Keshan, lying inland north of Gallipoli, noted for its cattle-market, and producing grain, linseed and canary seed; (3) Myriofyto; and (4) Sharkeui or Shar-Koi (Peristeri) on the coast of the Sea of Marmora. Copper ore and petroleum are worked at Sharkeui, and the neighbourhood formerly produced wine that was highly esteemed and largely exported to France for blending. Heavy taxation, however, amounting to 55% of the value of the wine, broke the spirit of the viticulturists, most of whom uprooted their vines and replanted their lands with mulberry trees, making sericulture their occupation.

There are no important industrial establishments in Gallipoli itself, except steam flour-mills and a sardine factory. The line of railway between Adrianople and the Aegean Sea has been prejudicial to the transit trade of Gallipoli, and several attempts have been made to obtain concessions for the construction of a railway that would connect this port with the Turkish railway system. Steamers to and from Constantinople call regularly. In 1904 the total value of the exports was £80,000. Wheat and maize are exported to the Aegean islands and to Turkish ports on the mainland; barley, oats and linseed to Great Britain; canary seed chiefly to Australia; beans to France and Spain. Semolina and bran are manufactured in the district. Live stock, principally sheep, pass through Gallipoli in transit to Constantinople and Smyrna. Cheese, sardines, goats’ skins and sheepskins are also exported. The imports include woollen and cotton fabrics from Italy, Germany, France and Great Britain, and hardware from Germany and Austria. These goods are imported through Constantinople. Cordage is chiefly obtained from Servia. Other imports are fuel, iron and groceries.

The Macedonian city of Callipolis was founded in the 5th century B.C. At an early date it became a Christian bishopric, and in the middle ages developed into a great commercial city, with a population estimated at 100,000. It was fortified by the East Roman emperors owing to its commanding strategic position and its valuable trade with Greece and Italy. In 1190 the armies of the Third Crusade, under the emperor Frederick I. (Barbarossa), embarked here for Asia Minor. After the capture of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204, Gallipoli passed into the power of Venice. In 1294 the Genoese defeated a Venetian force in the neighbourhood. A body of Catalans, under Roger Florus, established themselves here in 1306, and after the death of their leader massacred almost all the citizens; they were vainly besieged by the allied troops of Venice and the Empire, and withdrew in 1307, after dismantling the fortifications. About the middle of the 14th century the Turks invaded Europe, and Gallipoli was the first city to fall into their power. The Venetians under Pietro Loredano defeated the Turks here in 1416.


GALLIPOLIS, a city and the county-seat of Gallia county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, about 125 m. E. by S. of Cincinnati. Pop. (1890) 4498; (1900) 5432 (852 negroes); (1910) 5560. It is served by the Kanawha & Michigan (Ohio Central Lines) and the Hocking Valley railways, and (at Gallipolis Ferry, West Virginia, across the Ohio) by the Baltimore & Ohio railway. The city is built on a level site several feet above the river’s high-water mark. It has a United States marine hospital and a state hospital for epileptics. Among the city’s manufactures are lumber, furniture, iron, stoves, flour and brooms. The municipality owns and operates its water-works. Gallipolis was settled in 1790 by colonists from France, who had received worthless deeds to lands in Ohio from the Scioto Land Company, founded by Col. William Duer (1747-1799) and others in 1787 and officially organized in 1789 as the Compagnie du Scioto in Paris by Joel Barlow, the agent of Duer and his associates abroad, William Playfair, an Englishman, and six Frenchmen. This company had arranged with the Ohio Company in 1787 for the use of about 4,000,000 acres, N. of the Ohio and E. of the Scioto, on which the Ohio Company had secured an option only. The dishonesty of those who conducted the sales in France, the unbusinesslike methods of Barlow, and the failure of Duer and his associates to meet their contract with the Ohio Company, caused the collapse of the Scioto Company early in 1790, and two subsequent attempts to revive it failed. Meanwhile about 150,000 acres had been sold to prospective settlers in France, and in October 1790 the French immigrants, who had been detained for two months at Alexandria, Virginia, arrived on the site of Gallipolis, where rude huts had been built for them. This land, however, fell within the limits of the tract bought outright by the Ohio Company, which sold it to the Scioto Company, and to which it reverted on the failure of the Scioto Company to pay. In 1794 William Bradford, attorney-general of the United States, decided that all rights in the 4,000,000 acres, on which the Ohio Company had secured an option for the Scioto Company, were legally vested in the Ohio Company. In 1795 the Ohio Company sold to the French settlers for $1.25 an acre the land they occupied and adjacent improved lots, and the United States government granted to them 24,000 acres in the southern part of what is now Scioto County in 1795; little of this land (still known as the “French Grant”), however, was ever occupied by them. Gallipolis was incorporated as a village in 1842, and was first chartered as a city in 1865.

See Theodore T. Belote, The Scioto Speculation and the French Settlement at Gallipolis (Cincinnati, 1907), series 2, vol. iii. No. 3 of the University Studies of the University of Cincinnati.


GALLITZIN, DEMETRIUS AUGUSTINE (1770-1840), American Roman Catholic priest, called “The Apostle of the Alleghanies,” was born at the Hague on the 22nd of December 1770. His name is a form of Golitsuin (q.v.), the Russian family from which he came. His father, Dimitri Alexeievich Gallitzin (1735-1803), Russian ambassador to Holland, was an intimate friend of Voltaire and a follower of Diderot; so, too, for many years was his mother, Countess Adelheid Amalie von Schmettau (1748-1806), until a severe illness in 1786 led her back to the Roman Catholic church, in which she had been reared. At the age of seventeen he too became a member of that church. His father had planned for him a diplomatic or military career, and in 1792 he was aide-de-camp to the commander of the Austrian troops in Brabant; but, after the assassination of the king of Sweden, he, like all other foreigners, was dismissed from the service. He then set out to complete his education by travel, and on the 28th of October 1792 arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, where he finally decided to enter the priesthood. He was ordained priest in March 1795, being the first Roman Catholic priest ordained in America, and then worked in the mission at Port Tobacco, Maryland, whence he was soon transferred to the Conewago district. His impulsive objection to some of Bishop Carroll’s instructions was sharply rebuked, and he was recalled to Baltimore. But in 1796 he removed to Taneytown, Maryland, and in both Maryland and Pennsylvania worked with such misdirected zeal and autocratic manners that he was again reproved by his bishop in 1798. In the Alleghanies, in 1799, he planned a settlement in what is now Cambria county, Pennsylvania, and bought up much land which he gave or sold at low prices to Catholic immigrants, spending $150,000 or more in the purchase of some 20,000 acres in a spot singularly ill suited for such an enterprise. In 1808, after his father’s death, he was disinherited by the emperor Alexander I. of Russia “by reason of your Catholic faith and your ecclesiastical profession”; and although his sister Anne repeatedly promised him his half of the valuable estate and sent him money from time to time, after her death her brother received little or nothing from the estate. The priest, who after his father’s death had in 1809 discarded the name of Augustine Smith, under which he had been naturalized, and had taken his real name, was soon deeply in debt. No small part was a loan from Charles Carroll, and when Gallitzin was suggested for the see of Philadelphia in 1814, Bishop Carroll gave as an objection Gallitzin’s “great load of debt rashly, though for excellent and charitable purposes, contracted.” In 1815 Gallitzin was suggested for the bishopric of Bardstown, Kentucky, and in 1827 for the proposed see of Pittsburg, and he refused the bishopric of Cincinnati. He died at Loretto, the settlement he had founded in Cambria county, on the 6th of May 1840. Among his parishioners Gallitzin was a great power for good. His part in building up the Roman Catholic Church in western Pennsylvania cannot be estimated; but it is said that at his death there were 10,000 members of his church in the district where forty years before he had found a scant dozen. One of the villages he founded bears his name. Among his controversial pamphlets are: A Defence of Catholic Principles (1816), Letter to a Protestant Friend on the Holy Scriptures (1820), Appeal to the Protestant Public (1834), and Six Letters of Advice (1834), in reply to attacks on the Catholic Church by a Presbyterian synod.

See Sarah M. Brownson, Life of D.A. Gallitzin, Prince and Priest (New York, 1873); a brief summary of his life by A.A. Lambing in American Catholic Records (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, October 1886, pp. 58-68); and a good bibliography by Thomas C. Middleton in The Gallitzin Memorandum Book, in American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Records, vol. 4, pp. 32 sqq.


GALLIUM (symbol Ga; atomic weight 69.9), one of the metallic chemical elements. It was discovered in 1875 through its spectrum, in a specimen of zinc blende by Lecoq de Boisbaudran (Comptes rendus, 1875, 81, p. 493, and following years). The chief chemical and physical properties of gallium had been predicted many years before by D. Mendeléeff (c. 1869) from a consideration of the properties of aluminium, indium and zinc (see Element). The metal is obtained from zinc blende (which only contains it in very small quantity) by dissolving the mineral in an acid, and precipitating the gallium by metallic zinc. The precipitate is dissolved in hydrochloric acid and foreign metals are removed by sulphuretted hydrogen; the residual liquid being then fractionally precipitated by sodium carbonate, which throws out the gallium before the zinc. This precipitate is converted into gallium sulphate and finally into a pure specimen of the oxide, from which the metal is obtained by the electrolysis of an alkaline solution. Gallium crystallizes in greyish-white octahedra which melt at 30.15° C. to a silvery-white liquid. It is very hard and but slightly malleable and flexible, although in thin plates it may be bent several times without breaking. The specific gravity of the solid form is 5.956 (24.5° C.), of the liquid 6.069, whilst the specific heats of the two varieties are, for the solid form 0.079 (12-23° C.) and for the liquid 0.082 (106-119°) [M. Berthelot, Comptes rendus, 1878, 86, p. 786]. It is not appreciably volatilized at a red heat. Chlorine acts on it readily in the cold, bromine not so easily, and iodine only when the mixture is heated. The atomic weight of gallium has been determined by Lecoq de Boisbaudran by ignition of gallium ammonium alum, and also by L. Meyer and K. Seubert.

Gallium oxide Ga2O3 is obtained when the nitrate is heated, or by solution of the metal in nitric acid and ignition of the nitrate. It forms a white friable mass which after ignition is insoluble in acids. On heating to redness in a stream of hydrogen it forms a bluish mass which is probably a lower oxide of composition GaO. Gallium forms colourless salts, which in neutral dilute aqueous solutions are converted on heating into basic salts. The gallium salts are precipitated by alkaline carbonates and by barium carbonate, but not by sulphuretted hydrogen unless in acetic acid solution. Potassium ferrocyanide gives a precipitate even in very dilute solution. In neutral solutions, zinc gives a precipitate of gallium oxide. By heating gallium in a regulated stream of chlorine the dichloride GaCl2 is obtained as a crystalline mass, which melts at 164° C. and readily decomposes on exposure to moist air. The trichloride GaCl3 is similarly formed when the metal is heated in a rapid stream of chlorine, and may be purified by distillation in an atmosphere of nitrogen. It forms very deliquescent long white needles melting at 75.5° C. and boiling at 215-220° C. The bromide, iodide and sulphate are known, as is also gallium ammonium alum. Gallium is best detected by means of its spark spectrum, which gives two violet lines of wave length 4171 and 4031.


GALLON, an English measure of capacity, usually of liquids, but also used as a dry measure for corn. A gallon contains four quarts. The word was adapted from an O. Norm. Fr. galon, Central Fr. jalon, and was Latinized as galo and galona. It appears to be connected with the modern French jale, a bowl, but the ultimate origin is unknown; it has been referred without much plausibility to Gr. γαυλός, a milk pail. The British imperial gallon of four quarts contains 277.274 cub. in. The old English wine gallon of 231 cub. in. capacity is the standard gallon of the United States.


GALLOWAY, JOSEPH (1731-1803), American lawyer and politician, one of the most prominent of the Loyalists, was born in West River, Anne Arundel county, Maryland, in 1731. He early removed to Philadelphia, where he acquired a high standing as a lawyer. From 1756 until 1774 (except in 1764) he was one of the most influential members of the Pennsylvania Assembly, over which he presided in 1766-1773. During this period, with his friend Benjamin Franklin, he led the opposition to the Proprietary government, and in 1764 and 1765 attempted to secure a royal charter for the province. With the approach of the crisis in the relations between Great Britain and the American colonies he adopted a conservative course, and, while recognizing the justice of many of the colonial complaints, discouraged radical action and advocated a compromise. As a member of the First Continental Congress, he introduced (28th September 1774) a “Plan of a Proposed Union between Great Britain and the Colonies,” and it is for this chiefly that he is remembered. It provided for a president-general appointed by the crown, who should have supreme executive authority over all the colonies, and for a grand council, elected triennially by the several provincial assemblies, and to have such “rights, liberties and privileges as are held and exercised by and in the House of Commons of Great Britain”; the president-general and grand council were to be “an inferior distinct branch of the British legislature, united and incorporated with it.” The assent of the grand council and of the British parliament was to be “requisite to the validity of all ... general acts or statutes,” except that “in time of War, all bills for granting aid to the crown, prepared by the grand council and approved by the president-general, shall be valid and passed into a law, without the assent of the British parliament.” The individual colonies, however, were to retain control over their strictly internal affairs. The measure was debated at length, was advocated by such influential members as John Jay and James Duane of New York and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, and was eventually defeated only by the vote of six colonies to five. Galloway declined a second election to Congress in 1775, joined the British army at New Brunswick, New Jersey (December 1776), advised the British to attack Philadelphia by the Delaware, and during the British occupation of Philadelphia (1777-1778) was superintendent of the port, of prohibited articles, and of police of the city. In October 1778 he went to England, where he remained until his death at Watford, Hertfordshire, on the 29th of August 1803. After he left America his life was attainted, and his property, valued at £40,000, was confiscated by the Pennsylvania Assembly, a loss for which he received a partial recompense in the form of a small parliamentary pension. He was one of the clearest thinkers and ablest political writers among the American Loyalists, and, according to Prof. Tyler, “shared with Thomas Hutchinson the supreme place among American statesmen opposed to the Revolution.”

Among his pamphlets are A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain and the Colonies (1775); Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (1780); Cool Thoughts on the Consequences to Great Britain of American Independence (1780); and The Claim of the American Loyalists Reviewed and Maintained upon Incontrovertible Principles of Law and Justice (1788).

See Thomas Balch (Ed.), The Examination of Joseph Galloway by a Committee of the House of Commons (Philadelphia, 1855); Ernest H. Baldwin, Joseph Galloway, the Loyalist Politician (New Haven, 1903); and M.C. Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution (2 vols., New York, 1897).


GALLOWAY, THOMAS (1796-1851), Scottish mathematician, was born at Symington, Lanarkshire, on the 26th of February 1796. In 1812 he entered the university of Edinburgh, where he distinguished himself specially in mathematics. In 1823 he was appointed one of the teachers of mathematics at the military college of Sandhurst, and in 1833 he was appointed actuary to the Amicable Life Assurance Office, the oldest institution of that kind in London; in which situation he remained till his death on the 1st of November 1851. Galloway was a voluminous, though, for the most part, an anonymous writer. His most interesting paper is “On the Proper Motion of the Solar System,” and was published in the Phil. Trans., 1847. He contributed largely to the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and also wrote several scientific papers for the Edinburgh Review and various scientific journals. His Encyclopaedia article, “Probability,” was published separately.

See Transactions of the Royal Astronomical Society (1852).


GALLOWAY, a district in the south-west of Scotland, comprising the counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigtown. It was the Novantia of the Romans, and till the end of the 12th century included Carrick, now the southern division of Ayrshire. Though the designation has not been adopted civilly, its use historically and locally has been long established. Thus the Bruces were lords of Galloway, and the title of earl of Galloway (created 1623) is now held by a branch of the Stewarts. Galloway also gives its name to a famous indigenous breed of black hornless cattle. See Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire.


GALLOWS (a common Teutonic word—cf. Goth. galga, O. H. Ger. galgo, Mod. Ger. Galgen, A.S. galzan, &c.—of uncertain origin), the apparatus for executing the sentence of death by hanging. It usually consists of two upright posts and a cross-beam, but sometimes of a single upright with a beam projecting from the top. The Roman gallows was the cross, and in the older translations of the Bible “gallows” was used for the cross on which Christ suffered (so galga in Ulfilas’s Gothic Testament). Another form of gallows in the middle ages was that of which the famous example at Montfaucon near Paris was the type. This was a square structure formed of columns of masonry connected in each tier with cross-pieces of wood, and with pits beneath, into which the bodies fell after disarticulation by exposure to the weather.

According to actual usage the condemned man stands on a platform or drop (introduced in England in 1760), the rope hangs from the cross-beam, and the noose at its end is placed round his neck. He is hanged by the falling of the drop, the knot in the noose being so adjusted that the spinal cord is broken by the fall and death instantaneous. In old times the process was far less merciful; sometimes the condemned man stood in a cart, which was drawn away from under him; sometimes he had to mount a ladder, from which he was thrust by the hangman. Until 1832 malefactors in England were sometimes hanged by being drawn up from the platform by a heavy weight at the other end of the rope. Death in these cases was by strangulation. At the present time executions in the United Kingdom are private, the gallows being erected in a chamber or enclosed space set apart for the purpose inside the gaol.

The word “gibbet,” the Fr. gibet, gallows, which appears in the first instance to have meant a crooked stick, was originally used in English synonymously with gallows, as it sometimes still is. Its later and more special application, however, was to the upright posts with a projecting arm on which the bodies of criminals were suspended after their execution. These gibbets were erected in conspicuous spots, on the tops of hills (Gallows Hill is still a common name) or near frequented roads. The bodies, smeared with pitch to prevent too rapid decomposition, hung in chains as a warning to evildoers. From the gruesome custom comes the common use of the word “to gibbet” for any holding up to public infamy or contempt.


The word “gallows” is the plural of a word (galwe, galowe, gallow) which, according to the New English Dictionary, was occasionally used as late as the 17th century, though from the 13th century onwards the plural form was more usual. Caxton speaks both of “a gallows,” and, in the older form, of “a pair of gallows,” this referring probably to the two upright posts. From the 16th century onwards “gallows” has been consistently treated as a singular form, a new plural, “gallowses,” having come into use. “The latter, though not strictly obsolete, is now seldom used; the formation is felt to be somewhat uncouth, so that the use of the word in the plural in commonly evaded” (New Eng. Dict. s.v. “Gallows”).

In Med. Lat. “gallows” was translated by furia and patibulum, both words applied in classical Latin to a fork-shaped instrument of punishment fastened on the neck of slaves and criminals. Furia, in feudal law, was the right granted to tenants having major jurisdiction to erect a gallows within the limits of their fief.

Cf. Wace, Roman de Rou, iii. 8349:

“Et il a le gibet saisi

Qui a son destre braz pendi.”


GALLS. In animals galls occur mostly on or under the skin of living mammals and birds, and are produced by Acaridea, and by dipterous insects of the genus Oestrus. Signor Moriggia has described and figured a horny excrescence, nearly 8 in. in length, from the back of the human hand, which was caused by Acarus domesticus. What are commonly known as galls are vegetable excrescences, and, according to the definition of Lacaze-Duthiers, comprise “all abnormal vegetable productions developed on plants by the action of animals, more particularly by insects, whatever may be their form, bulk or situation.” For the larvae of their makers the galls provide shelter and sustenance. The exciting cause of the hypertrophy, in the case of the typical galls, appears to be a minute quantity of some irritating fluid, or virus, secreted by the female insect, and deposited with her egg in the puncture made by her ovipositor in the cortical or foliaceous parts of plants. This virus causes the rapid enlargement and subdivision of the cells affected by it, so as to form the tissues of the gall. Oval or larval irritation also, without doubt, plays an important part in the formation of many galls. Though, as Lacaze-Duthiers remarks, a certain relation is necessary between the “stimulus” and the “supporter of the stimulus,” as evidenced by the limitation in the majority of cases of each species of gall-insect to some one vegetable structure, still it must be the quality of the irritant of the tissues, rather than the specific peculiarities or the part of the plant affected, that principally determines the nature of the gall. Thus the characteristics of the currant-gall of Spathegaster baccarum, L., which occurs alike on the leaves and on the flower-stalks of the oak, are obviously due to the act of oviposition, and not to the functions of the parts producing it; the bright red galls of the saw-fly Nematus gallicola are found on four different species of willow, Salix fragilis, S. alba, S. caprea and S. cinerea; and the galls of a Cynipid, Biorhiza aptera, usually developed on the rootlets of the oak, have been procured also from the deodar. Often the gall bears no visible resemblance to the structures out of which it is developed; commonly, however, outside the larval chamber, or gall proper, and giving to the gall its distinctive form, are to be detected certain more or less modified special organs of the plant. The gall of Cecidomyia strobilina, formed from willow-buds, is mainly a rosette of leaves the stalks of which have had their growth arrested. The small, smooth, seed-shaped gall of the American Cynips seminator, Harris, according to W.F. Bassett, is the petiole, and its terminal tuft of woolly hairs the enormously developed pubescence of the young oak-leaf. The moss-like covering of the “bedeguars” of the wild rose, the galls of a Cynipid, Rhodites rosae, represents leaves which have been developed with scarcely any parenchyma between their fibro-vascular bundles; and the “artichoke-galls” or “oak-strobile,” produced by Aphilothrix gemmae, L., which insect arrests the development of the acorn, consists of a cupule to which more or less modified leaf-scales are attached, with a peduncular, oviform, inner gall. E. Newman held the view that many oak-galls are pseudobalani or false acorns: “to produce an acorn has been the intention of the oak, but the gall-fly has frustrated the attempt.” Their formation from buds which normally would have yielded leaves and shoots is explained by Parfitt as the outcome of an effort at fructification induced by oviposition, such as has been found to result in several plants from injury by insect-agency or otherwise. Galls vary remarkably in size and shape according to the species of their makers. The polythalamous gall of Aphilothrix radicis, found on the roots of old oak-trees, may attain the size of a man’s fist; the galls of another Cynipid, Andricus occultus, Tschek, which occurs on the male flowers of Quercus sessiliflora, is 2 millimetres, or barely a line, in length. Many galls are brightly coloured, as, for instance, the oak-leaf hairy galls of Spathegaster tricolor, which are of a crimson hue, more or less diffused according to exposure to light. The variety of forms of galls is very great. Some are like urns or cups, others lenticular. The “knoppern” galls of Cynips polycera, Gir., are cones having the broad, slightly convex upper surface surrounded with a toothed ridge. Of the Ceylonese galls, “some are as symmetrical as a composite flower when in bud, others smooth and spherical like a berry; some protected by long spines, others clothed with yellow wool formed of long cellular hairs, others with regularly tufted hairs.” The characters of galls are constant, and as a rule exceedingly diagnostic, even when, as in the case of ten different gall-gnats of an American willow, Salix humilis, it is difficult or impossible to tell the full-grown insects that produce them from one another. In degree of complexity of internal structure galls differ considerably. Some are monothalamous, and contain but one larva of the gall-maker, whilst others are many-celled and numerously inhabited. The largest class are the unilocular, or simple, external galls, divided by Lacaze-Duthiers into those with and those without a superficial protective layer or rind, and composed of hard, or spongy, or cellular tissue. In a common gall-nut that authority distinguished seven constituent portions: an epidermis; a subdermic cellular tissue; a spongy and a hard layer, composing the parenchyma proper; vessels which, without forming a complete investment, underlie the parenchyma; a hard protective layer; and lastly, within that, an alimentary central mass inhabited by the growing larva.

Galls are formed by insects of several orders. Among the Hymenoptera are the gall-wasps (Cynips and its allies), which infect the various species of oak. They are small insects, having straight antennae, and a compressed, usually very short abdomen with the second or second and third segments greatly developed, and the rest imbricated, and concealing the partially coiled ovipositor. The transformations from the larval state are completed within the gall, out of which the imago, or perfect insect, tunnels its way,—usually in autumn, though sometimes, as has been observed of some individuals of Cynips Kollari, after hibernation.

Among the commoner of the galls of the Cynipidae are the “oak-apple” or “oak-sponge” of Andricus terminalis, Fab.; the “currant” or “berry galls” of Spathegaster baccarum, L., above mentioned; and the “oak-spangles” of Neuroterus lenticularis, Oliv., generally reputed to be fungoid growths, until the discovery of their true nature by Frederick Smith, and the succulent “cherry-galls” of Dryophanta scutellaris, Oliv. The “marble” or “Devonshire woody galls” of oak-buds, which often destroy the leading shoots of young trees, are produced by Cynips Kollari, already alluded to. They were first introduced into Devonshire about the year 1847, had become common near Birmingham by 1866, and two or three years later were observed in several parts of Scotland. They contain about 17% of tannin. On account of their regular form they have been used, threaded on wire, for making ornamental baskets. The large purplish Mecca or Bussorah galls, produced on a species of oak by Cynips insana, Westw., have been regarded by many writers as the Dead Sea fruit, mad-apples (mala insana), or apples of Sodom (poma sodomitica), alluded to by Josephus and others, which, however, are stated by E. Robinson (Bibl. Researches in Palestine, vol. i. pp. 522-524, 3rd ed., 1867) to be the singular fruit called by the Arabs ’Ösher, produced by the Asclepias gigantea or procera of botanists. What in California are known as “flea seeds” are oak-galls made by a species of Cynips; in August they become detached from the leaves that bear them, and are caused to jump by the spasmodic movements of the grub within the thin-walled gall-cavity.

Common gall-nuts, nut-galls, or oak-galls, the Aleppo, Turkey, or Levant galls of commerce (Ger. Galläpfel, levantische Gallen; Fr. noix de Galle), are produced on Quercus infectoria, a variety of Q. Lusitanica, Webb, by Cynips (Diplolepis, Latr.) tinctoria, L., or C. gallae tinctoriae Oliv. Aleppo galls (gallae halepenses) are brittle, hard, spherical bodies, 2⁄5-4⁄5 in. in diameter, ridged and warty on the upper half, and light brown to dark greyish-yellow within. What are termed “blue,” “black,” or “green” galls contain the insect; the inferior “white” galls, which are lighter coloured, and not so compact, heavy or astringent, are gathered after its escape (see fig. 1.). Less valued are the galls of Tripoli (Taraplus or Tarabulus, whence the name “Tarablous galls”). The most esteemed Syrian galls, according to Pereira, are those of Mosul on the Tigris. Other varieties of nut-galls, besides the above-mentioned, are employed in Europe for various purposes. Commercial gall-nuts have yielded on analysis from 26 (H. Davy) to 77 (Buchner) % of tannin (see Vinen, loc. cit.), with gallic and ellagic acids, ligneous fibre, water, and minute quantities of proteids, chlorophyll, resin, free sugar and, in the cells around the inner shelly chamber, calcium oxalate. Oak-galls are mentioned by Theophrastus, Dioscorides (i. 146), and other ancient writers, including Pliny (Nat. Hist. xvi. 9, 10, xxiv. 5), according to whom they may be produced “in a single night.” Their insect origin appears to have been entirely unsuspected until within comparatively recent times, though Pliny, indeed, makes the observation that a kind of gnat is produced in certain excrescences on oak leaves. Bacon describes oak-apples as “an exudation of plants joined with putrefaction.” Pomet thought that gall-nuts were the fruit of the oak, and a similar opinion obtains among the modern Chinese, who apply to them the term Mu-shih-tsze, or “fruits for the foodless.” Hippocrates administered gall-nuts for their astringent properties, and Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxiv. 5) recommends them as a remedy in affections of the gums and uvula, ulcerations of the mouth and some dozen more complaints. In British pharmacy gall-nuts are used in the preparation of the two astringent ointments unguentum gallae and unguentum gallae cum opio, and of the tinctura gallae, and also as a source of tannin and of gallic acid (q.v.). They have from very early times been resorted to as a means of staining the hair of a dark colour, and they are the base of the tattooing dye of the Somali women.

The gall-making Hymenoptera include, besides the Cynipidae proper, certain species of the genus Eurytoma (Isosoma, Walsh) and family Chalcididae, e.g. E. hordei, the “joint-worm” of the United States, which produces galls on the stalks of wheat; also various members of the family Tenthredinidae, or saw-flies. The larvae of the latter usually vacate their galls, to spin their cocoons in the earth, or, as in the case of Athalia abdominalis, Klg., of the clematis, may emerge from their shelter to feed for some days on the leaves of the gall-bearing plant.

The dipterous gall-formers include the gall-midges, or gall-gnats (Cecidomyidae), minute slender-bodied insects, with bodies usually covered with long hairs, and the wings folded over the back. Some of them build cocoons within their galls, others descend to the ground or become pupae. The true willow-galls are the work either of these or of saw-flies. Their galls are to be met with on a great variety of plants of widely distinct genera, e.g. the ash, maple, horn-beam, oak, grape-vine, alder, gooseberry, blackberry, pine, juniper, thistle, fennel, meadowsweet, common cabbage and cereals. In the northern United States, in May, “legions of these delicate minute flies fill the air at twilight, hovering over wheat-fields and shrubbery. A strong north-west wind, at such times, is of incalculable value to the farmer.” Other gall-making dipterous flies are members of the family Trypetidae, which disfigure the seed-heads of plants, and of the family Mycetophilidae, such as the species Sciara tilicola, Löw, the cause of the oblong or rounded green and red galls of the young shoots and leaves of the lime.

Galls are formed also by hemipterous and homopterous insects of the families Tingidae, Psyllidae, Coccidae and Aphidae. Coccus pinicorticis causes the growth of patches of white flocculent and downy matter on the smooth bark of young trees of the white pine in America. The galls of examples of the last family are common objects on lime-leaves, and on the petioles of the poplar. An American Aphid of the genus Pemphigus produces black, ragged, leathery and cut-shaped excrescences on the young branches of the hickory.

The Chinese galls of commerce (Woo-pei-tsze) are stated to be produced by Aphis Chinensis, Bell, on Rhus semialata, Murr. (R. Bucki-amela, Roxb.), an Anacardiaceous tree indigenous to N. India, China and Japan. They are hollow, brittle, irregularly pyriform, tuberculated or branched vesicles, with thin walls, covered externally with a grey down, and internally with a white chalk-like matter, and insect-remains (see fig. 2). The escape of the insect takes place on the spontaneous bursting of the walls of the vesicle, probably when, after viviparous (thelytokous) reproduction for several generations, male winged insects are developed. The galls are gathered before the frosts set in, and are exposed to steam to kill the insects.

Chinese galls examined by Viedt yielded 72% of tannin, and less mucilage than Aleppo galls. Several other varieties of galls are produced by Aphides on species of Pistacia.

M.J. Lichtenstein has established the fact that from the egg of the Aphis of Pistachio galls, Anopleura lentisci, is hatched an apterous insect (the gall-founder), which gives birth to young Aphides (emigrants), and that these, having acquired wings, fly to the roots of certain grasses (Bromus sterilis and Hordeum vulgare), and by budding underground give rise to several generations of apterous insects, whence finally comes a winged brood (the pupifera). These last issuing from the ground fly to the Pistachio, and on it deposit their pupae. From the pupae, again, are developed sexual individuals, the females of which lay fecundated eggs productive of gall-founders, thus recommencing the biological cycle (see Compt. rend., Nov. 18, 1878, p. 782, quoted in Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 1879, p. 174).

Of other insects which have been recognized as gall-makers there are, among the Coleoptera, certain Curculionids (gall-weevils), and species of the exotic Sagridae and Lamiadae and an American beetle, Saperda inornata (Cerambycidae), which forms the pseudo-galls of Salix longifolia and Populus angulata, or cottonwood. Among the Lepidoptera are gall-forming species belonging to the Tineidae, Aegeriidae, Tortricidae and Pterophoridae. The larva of a New Zealand moth, Morova subfasciata, Walk. (Cacoëcia gallicolens), of the family Drepanulidae, causes the stem of a creeping plant, on the pith of which it apparently subsists, to swell up into a fusiform gall.

Mite-galls, or acarocecidia, are abnormal growths of the leaves of plants, produced by microscopic Acaridea of the genus Phytoptus (gall-mites), and consist of little tufts of hairs, or of thickened portions of the leaves, usually most hypertrophied on the upper surface, so that the lower is drawn up into the interior, producing a bursiform cavity. Mite-galls occur on the sycamore, pear, plum, ash, alder, vine, mulberry and many other plants; and formerly, e.g. the gall known as Erineum quercinum, on the leaves of Quercus Cerris, were taken for cryptogamic structures. The lime-leaf “nail-galls” of Phytoptus tiliae closely resemble the “trumpet-galls” formed on American vines by a species of Cecidomyia. Certain minute Nematoid worms, as Anguillula scandens, which infests the ears of wheat, also give rise to galls.

Besides the larva of the gall-maker, or the householder, galls usually contain inquilines or lodgers, the larvae of what are termed guest-flies or cuckoo-flies. Thus the galls of Cynips and its allies are inhabited by members of other cynipideous genera, as Synergus, Amblynotus and Synophrus; and the pine-cone-like gall of Salix strobiloides, as Walsh has shown, is made by a large species of Cecidomyia, which inhabits the heart of the mass, the numerous smaller cecidomyidous larvae in its outer part being mere inquilines. In many instances the lodgers are not of the same order of insects as the gall-makers. Some saw-flies, for example, are inquilinous in the galls of gall-gnats and some gall-gnats in the galls of saw-flies. Again, galls may afford harbour to insects which are not essentially gall-feeders, as in the case of the Curculio beetle Conotrachelius nenuphar, Hbst., of which one brood eats the fleshy part of the plum and peach, and another lives in the “black knot” of the plum-tree, regarded by Walsh as probably a true cecidomyidous gall. The same authority (loc. cit. p. 550) mentions a willow-gall which provides no less than sixteen insects with food and protection; these are preyed upon by about eight others, so that altogether some twenty-four insects, representing eight orders, are dependent for their existence on what to the common observer appears to be nothing but “an unmeaning mass of leaves.” Among the numerous insects parasitic on the inhabitants of galls are hymenopterous flies of the family Proctotrypidae, and of the family Chalcididae, e.g. Callimome regius, the larva of which preys on the larvae of both Cynips glutinosa and its lodger Synergus facialis. The oak-apple often contains the larvae of Braconidae and Ichneumonidae, which Von Schlechtendal (loc. sup. cit. p. 33) considers to be parasites not on the owner of the gall, Andricus terminalis, but on inquilinous Tortricidae. Birds are to be included among the enemies of gall-insects. Oak-galls, for example, are broken open by the titmouse in order to obtain the grub within, and the “button-galls” of Neuroterus numismatis, Oliv., are eaten by pheasants.

A great variety of deformations and growths produced by insects and mites as well as by fungi have been described. They are in some cases very slight, and in others form remarkably large and definite structures. The whole are now included under the term Cecidia; a prefix gives the name of the organism to which the attacks are due, e.g. Phytoptocecidia are the galls formed by Phytoptid mites. Simple galls are those that arise when only one member of a plant is involved; compound galls are the result of attacks on buds. Amongst the most remarkable galls recently discovered we may mention those found on Eucalyptus, Casuarina and other trees and plants in Australia. They are remarkable for their variety, and are due to small scale-insects of the peculiar sub-family Brachyscelinae. As regards the mode of production of galls, the most important distinction is between galls that result from the introduction of an egg, or other matter, into the interior of the plant, and those that are due to an agent acting externally, the gall in the latter case frequently growing in such a manner as ultimately to enclose its producers. The form and nature of the gall are the result of the powers of growth possessed by the plant. It has long been known, and is now generally recognized, that a gall can only be produced when the tissue of a plant is interfered with during, or prior to, the actual development of the tissue. Little more than this is known. The power that gall-producers possess of influencing by direct interference the growth of the cells of the plant that affords them the means of subsistence is an art that appears to be widely spread among animals, but is at the same time one of which we have little knowledge. The views of Adler as to the alternation of generations of numerous gall-flies have been fully confirmed, it having been ascertained by direct observation that the galls and the insects produced from them in one generation are entirely different from the next generation; and it has also been rendered certain that frequently one of the alternate generations is parthenogenetic, no males being produced. It is supposed that these remarkable phenomena have gradually been evoked by difference in the nutrition of the alternating generations. When two different generations are produced in one year on the same kind of tree it is clear the properties of the sap and tissues of the tree must be diverse so that the two generations are adapted to different conditions. In some cases the alternating generations are produced on different species of trees, and even on different parts of the two species.

On galls and their makers and inhabitants see further—J.T.C. Ratzeburg, Die Forst-Insecten, Teil iii. pp. 53 seq. (Berlin, 1844); T.W. Harris, Insects injurious to Vegetation (Boston, U.S., 2nd ed., 1852); C.L. Koch, Die Pflanzenläuse Aphiden (Nuremberg, 1854); T. Hartig, Die Familien der Blattwespen und Holzwespen (Berlin, 1860); Walsh, “On the Insects, Coleopterous, Hymenopterous and Dipterous, inhabiting the Galls of certain species of Willow,” Proc. Ent. Soc. Philadelphia, iii. (1863-1864), pp. 543-644, and vi. (1866-1867), pp. 223-288; T.A. Marshall, “On some British Cynipidae,” Ent. Month. Mag. iv. pp. 6-8, &c.; H.W. Kidd and Albert Müller, “A List of Gall-bearing British Plants,” ib. v. pp. 118 and 216; G.L. Mayr, Die mitteleuropäischen Eichengallen in Wort und Bild (Vienna, 1870-1871), and the translation of that work, with notes, in the Entomologist, vols. vii. seq.; also, by the same author, “Die Einmiethler der mitteleuropäischen Eichengallen,” Verhandl. d. zoolog.-bot. Ges. in Wien, xxii. pp. 669-726; and “Die europäischen Torymiden,” ib. xxiv. pp. 53-142 (abstracted in Cistula entomologica, i., London, 1869-1876); F. Löw, “Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Gallmücken,” ib. pp. 143-162, and 321-328; J.E. von Bergenstamm and P. Löw, “Synopsis Cecidomyidarum,” ib. xxvi. pp. 1-104; Perris, Ann. Soc. Entom. de France, 4th ser. vol. x. pp. 176-185; R. Osten-Sacken, “On the North American Cecidomyidae,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. vi. (1867), p. 173; E.L. Taschenberg, Entomologie für Gärtner und Gartenfreunde (Leipzig, 1871); J.W.H. Traill, “Scottish Galls,” Scottish Naturalist, i. (1871), pp. 123, &c.; Albert Müller, “British Gall Insects,” The Entomologist’s Annual for 1872, pp. 1-22; B. Altum, Forstzoologie, iii. “Insecten,” pp. 250 seq. (Berlin, 1874); J.H. Kaltenbach, Die Pflanzenfeinde aus der Classe der Insecten (Stuttgart, 1874); A. d’Arbois de Jubainville and J. Vesque, Les Maladies des plantes cultivées, pp. 98-105 (Paris, 1878).

(F. H. B.)


Quoted in Zoological Record, iv. (1867), p. 192.

P. Cameron, Scottish Naturalist, ii. pp. 11-15.

Entomologist, vii. p. 47.

See in Proc. Entom. Soc. of London for the Year 1873, p. xvi.

See A. Müller, Gardener’s Chronicle (1871), pp. 1162 and 1518; and E.A. Fitch, Entomologist, xi. p. 129.

Entomologist, vi. pp. 275-278, 339-340.

Verhandl. d. zoolog.-bot. Ges. in Wien, xxi. p. 799.

Darwin, Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication, ii. p. 282.

“Recherches pour servir à l’histoire des galles,” Ann. des sci. nat. xix. pp. 293 sqq.

According to Dr Adler, alternation of generations takes place between N. lenticularis and Spathegaster baccarum (see E.A. Ormerod, Entomologist, xi. p. 34).

See Westwood, Introd. to the Mod. Classif. of Insects, ii. (1840) p. 130.

For figures and descriptions of insect and gall, see Entomologist, iv. p. 17, vii. p. 241, ix. p. 53, xi. p. 131.

Scottish Naturalist, i. (1871) p. 116, &c.

Vinen, Journ. de pharm. et de chim. xxx. (1856) p. 290; “English Ink-Galls,” Pharm. Journ. 2nd ser. iv. p. 520.

See Pereira, Materia Medica, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 347; Pharm. Journ. 1st ser. vol. viii. pp. 422-424.

See R.H. Stretch and C.D. Gibbes, Proc. California Acad. of Sciences, iv. pp. 265 and 266.

A Complete History of Drugs (translation), p. 169 (London, 1748).

F. Porter Smith, Contrib. towards the Mat. Medica ... of China, p. 100 (1871).

R.F. Burton, First Footsteps in E. Africa, p. 178 (1856).

A.S. Packard, jun., Guide to the Study of Insects, p. 205 (Salem, 1870).

On the Cecidomyids of Quercus Cerris, see Fitch, Entomologist, xi. p. 14.

See, on Cecidomyia oenephila, Von Haimhoffen, Verhandl. d. zoolog.-bot. Ges. in Wien, xxv. pp. 801-810.

See Entomologist’s Month. Mag. iv. (1868) p. 233; and for figure and description, Entomologist, xi. p. 13.

A.S. Packard, jun., Our Common Insects, p. 203 (Salem, U.S. 1873). On the Hessian fly, Cecidomyia destructor, Say, the May brood of which produces swellings immediately above the joints of barley attacked by it, see Asa Fitch, The Hessian Fly (Albany, 1847), reprinted from Trans. New York State Agric. Soc. vol. vi.

J. Winnertz, Beitrag zu einer Monographie der Sciarinen, p. 164 (Vienna, 1867).

Asa Fitch, First and Second Rep. on the Noxious ... Insects of the State of New York, p. 167 (Albany, 1856).

See E. Doubleday, Pharm. Journ. 1st ser, vol. vii. p. 310: and Pereira, ib. vol. iii. p. 377.

Dingler’s Polyt. Journ. ccxvi. p. 453.

For figure and description see Zoology of the “Erebus” and “Terror,” ii. pp. 46, 47 (1844-1875).

On the mite-galls and their makers, see F. Löw, “Beiträge zur Naturgesch. der Gallmilben (Phytoptus, Duj.),” Verhandl. d. zoolog.-bot. Ges. in Wien, xxiv. (1874), pp. 2-16, with plate; and “Über Milbengallen (Acarocecidien) der Wiener-Gegend,” ib. pp. 495-508; Andrew Murray, Economic Entomology, Aptera, pp. 331-374 (1876); and F.A.W. Thomas, Ältere und neue Beobachtungen über Phytopto-Cecidien (Halle, 1877).


GALLUPPI, PASQUALE (1770-1846), Italian philosopher, was born on the 2nd of April 1770 at Tropea, in Calabria. He was of good family, and after studying at the university of Naples he entered the public service, and was for many years employed in the office of the administration of finances. At the age of sixty, having become widely known by his writings on philosophy, he was called to the chair of logic and metaphysics in the university of Naples, which he held till his death in November 1846. His most important works are: Lettere filosofiche (1827), in which he traces his philosophical development; Elementi di filosofia (1832); Saggio filosofico sulla critica della conoscenza (1819-1832); Sull’ analisi e sulla sintesi (1807); Lezioni di logica e di metafisica (1832-1836); Filosofia della volontà (1832-1842, incomplete); Storia della filosofia (i., 1842); Considerazioni filosofiche sull’ idealismo trascendentale (1841), a memoir on the system of Fichte.

On his philosophical views see L. Ferri, Essai sur l’histoire de la philosophie en Italie au XIXe siècle, i. (1869); V. Botta in Ueberweg’s Hist. of Philosophy, ii. app. 2; G. Barzellotti, “Philosophy in Italy,” in Mind, iii. (1878); V. Lastrucci, Pasquale Galluppi. Studio critico (Florence, 1890).


GALLUS, CORNELIUS (c. 70-26 B.C.), Roman poet, orator and politician, was born of humble parents at Forum Julii (Fréjus) in Gaul. At an early age he removed to Rome, where he was taught by the same master as Virgil and Varius Rufus. Virgil, who dedicated one of his eclogues (x.) to him, was in great measure indebted to the influence of Gallus for the restoration of his estate. In political life Gallus espoused the cause of Octavianus, and as a reward for his services was made praefect of Egypt (Suetonius, Augustus, 66). His conduct in this position afterwards brought him into disgrace with the emperor, and having been deprived of his estates and sentenced to banishment, he put an end to his life (Dio Cassius liii. 23). Gallus enjoyed a high reputation among his contemporaries as a man of intellect, and Ovid (Tristia, iv. 10) considered him the first of the elegiac poets of Rome. He wrote four books of elegies chiefly on his mistress Lycoris (a poetical name for Cytheris, a notorious actress), in which he took for his model Euphorion of Chalcis (q.v.); he also translated some of this author’s works into Latin. Nothing by him has survived; the fragments of the four poems attributed to him (first published by Aldus Manutius in 1590 and printed in A. Riese’s Anthologia Latina, 1869) are generally regarded as a forgery.

See C. Völker, De C. Galli vita et scriptis (1840-1844); A. Nicolas, De la vie et des ouvrages de C. Gallus (1851), an exhaustive monograph. An inscription found at Philae (published 1896) records the Egyptian exploits; see M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, and Plessis, Poésie latine (1909).


GALLUS, GAIUS AELIUS, praefect of Egypt 26-24 B.C. By order of Augustus he undertook an expedition to Arabia Felix, with disastrous results. The troops suffered greatly from disease, heat, want of water and the obstinate resistance of the inhabitants. The treachery of a foreign guide also added to his difficulties. After six months Gallus was obliged to return to Alexandria, having lost the greater part of his force. He was a friend of the geographer Strabo, who gives an account of the expedition (xvi. pp. 780-782; see also Dio Cassius liii. 29; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi. 32; C. Merivale, Hist. of the Romans under the Empire, ch. 34; H. Krüger, Der Feldzug des A. G. nach dem glücklichen Arabien, 1862). He has been identified with the Aelius Gallus frequently quoted by Galen, whose remedies are stated to have been used with success in an Arabian expedition.


GALLUS, GAIUS CESTIUS, governor of Syria during the reign of Nero. When the Jews in Jerusalem, stirred to revolt by the outrages of the Roman procurators, had seized the fortress of Masada and treacherously murdered the garrison of the palace of Herod, Gallus set out from Antioch to restore order. On the 17th of November A.D. 66 he arrived before Jerusalem. Having gained possession of the northern suburb, he attacked the temple mount; but, after five days’ fighting, just when (according to Josephus) success was within his grasp, he unaccountably withdrew his forces. During his retreat he was closely pursued by the Jews and surrounded in a ravine, and only succeeded in making good his escape to Antioch by sacrificing the greater part of his army and a large amount of war material. Soon after his return Gallus died (before the spring of 67), and was succeeded in the governorship by Licinius Mucianus, the prosecution of the war being entrusted to Vespasian.

See Tacitus, Hist. v. 10, 13; Suetonius, Vespasian, 4; Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 14-20; E. Schürer, Hist. of the Jewish People, div. i. vol. ii. p. 212 (Eng. tr., 1890).


GALLUS, GAIUS SULPICIUS, Roman general, statesman and orator. Under Lucius Aemilius Paulus, his intimate friend, he commanded the 2nd legion in the campaign against Perseus, king of Macedonia, and gained great reputation for having predicted an eclipse of the moon on the night before the battle of Pydna (168 B.C.). On his return from Macedonia he was elected consul (166), and in the same year reduced the Ligurians to submission. In 164 he was sent as ambassador to Greece and Asia, where he held a meeting at Sardis to investigate the charges brought against Eumenes of Pergamum by the representatives of various cities of Asia Minor. Gallus was a man of great learning, an excellent Greek scholar, and in his later years devoted himself to the study of astronomy, on which subject he is quoted as an authority by Pliny.

See Livy xliv. 37, Epit. 46; Polybius xxxi. 9, 10; Cicero, Brutus, 20, De officiis, i. 6, De senectute, 14; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 9.


GALOIS, EVARISTE (1811-1832), French mathematician, was born on the 25th of October 1811, and killed in a duel on the 31st of May 1832. An obituary notice by his friend Auguste Chevalier appeared in the Revue encyclopédique (1832); and his collected works are published, Journal de Liouville (1846), pp. 381-444, about fifty of these pages being occupied by researches on the resolubility of algebraic equations by radicals. This branch of algebra he notably enriched, and to him is also due the notion of a group of substitutions (see Equation: Theory of Equations; also Groups, Theory of).

His collected works, with an introduction by C.F. Picard, were published in 1897 at Paris.


GALSTON, a police burgh and manufacturing town of Ayrshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 4876. It is situated on the Irvine, 5 m. E. by S. of Kilmarnock, with a station on the Glasgow & South-Western railway. The manufactures include blankets, lace, muslin, hosiery and paper-millboard, and coal is worked in the vicinity. About 1 m. to the north, amid the “bonnie woods and braes,” is Loudoun Castle, a seat of the earl of Loudoun.


GALT, SIR ALEXANDER TILLOCH (1817-1893), Canadian statesman, was the youngest son of John Galt the author. Born in London on the 6th of September 1817, he emigrated to Canada in 1835, and settled in Sherbrooke, in the province of Quebec, where he entered the service of the British American Land Company, of which he rose to be chief commissioner. Later he was one of the contractors for extending the Grand Trunk railway westward from Toronto. He entered public life in 1849 as Liberal member for the county of Sherbrooke, but opposed the chief measure of his party, the Rebellion Losses Bill, and in the same year signed a manifesto in favour of union with the United States, believing that in no other way could Protestant and Anglo-Saxon ascendancy over the Roman Catholic French majority in his native province be maintained. In the same year he retired from parliament but re-entered it in 1853, and was till 1872 the chief representative of the English-speaking Protestants of Quebec province. On the fall of the Brown-Dorion administration in 1858 he was called on to form a ministry, but declined the task, and became finance minister under Sir John Macdonald and Sir George Cartier on condition that the federation of the British North American provinces should become a part of their programme. From 1858 to 1862 and 1864 to 1867 he was finance minister, and did much to reduce the somewhat chaotic finances of Canada into order. To him are due the introduction of the decimal system of currency and the adoption of a system of protection to Canadian manufactures. To his diplomacy was due the coalition in 1864 between Macdonald, Brown and Cartier, which carried the federation of the British North American provinces, and throughout the three years of negotiation which followed his was one of the chief influences. He became finance minister in the first Dominion ministry, but suddenly and mysteriously resigned on the 4th of November 1867. After his retirement he gave to the administration of Sir John Macdonald a support which grew more and more fitful, and advocated independence as the final destiny of Canada. In 1871 he was again offered the ministry of finance on condition of abandoning these views, but declined. In 1877 he was the Canadian nominee on the Anglo-American fisheries commission at Halifax, and rendered brilliant service. In 1880 he was appointed Canadian high commissioner to Great Britain, but retired in 1883 in favour of Sir Charles Tupper. During this period he advocated imperial federation. He was Canadian delegate at the Paris Monetary Conference of 1881, and to the International Exhibition of Fisheries in 1883. From this date till his death on the 19th of September 1893 he lived in retirement. No Canadian statesman has had sounder or more abundant ideas, but a certain intellectual fickleness made him always a somewhat untrustworthy colleague in political life.

(W. L. G.)


GALT, JOHN (1779-1839), Scottish novelist, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, on the 2nd of May 1779. He received his early education at Irvine and Greenock, and read largely from one of the public libraries while serving as a clerk in a mercantile office. In 1804 he went to settle in London, where he published anonymously a poem on the Battle of Largs. After unsuccessful attempts to succeed in business Galt entered at Lincoln’s Inn, but was never called to the bar. He obtained a commission from a British firm to go abroad to find out whether the Berlin and Milan decrees could be evaded. He met Byron and Sir John Hobhouse at Gibraltar, travelled with Byron to Malta, and met him again at Athens. He was afterwards employed by the Glasgow merchant Kirkman Finlay on similar business at Gibraltar, and in 1814 visited France and Holland. His early works are the Life and Administration of Wolsey, Voyages and Travels, Letters from the Levant, the Life of Benjamin West, Historical Pictures and The Wandering Jew; and he induced Colburn to publish a periodical containing dramatic pieces rejected by London managers. These were afterwards edited by Galt as the New British Theatre, which included some plays of his own. He first showed his real power as a writer of fiction in The Ayrshire Legatees, which appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1820. This was followed in 1821 by his masterpiece—The Annals of the Parish; and, at short intervals, Sir Andrew Wylie, The Entail, The Steam-Boat and The Provost were published. These humorous studies of Scottish character are all in his happiest manner. His next works were Ringan Gilhaize (1823), a story of the Covenanters; The Spaewife (1823), which relates to the times of James I. of Scotland; Rothelan (1824), a novel founded on the reign of Edward III.; The Omen (1825), which was favourably criticized by Sir Walter Scott; and The Last of the Lairds, another picture of Scottish life.

In 1826 he went to America as secretary to the Canada Land Company. He carried out extensive schemes of colonization, and opened up a road through what was then forest country between Lakes Huron and Erie. In 1827 he founded Guelph in upper Canada, passing on his way the township of Galt on the Grand river, named after him by the Hon. William Dixon. But all this work proved financially unprofitable to Galt. In 1829 he returned to England commercially a ruined man, and devoted himself with great ardour to literary pursuits, of which the first fruit was Lawrie Todd—one of his best novels. Then came Southennan, a tale of Scottish life in the times of Queen Mary. In 1830 he was appointed editor of the Courier newspaper—a post he soon relinquished. His untiring industry was seen in the publication, in rapid succession, of a Life of Byron, Lives of the Players, Bogle Corbet, Stanley Buxton, The Member, The Radical, Eben Erskine, The Stolen Child, his Autobiography, and a collection of tales entitled Stories of the Study. In 1834 appeared his Literary Life and Miscellanies, dedicated by permission to William IV., who sent the author a present of £200. As soon as this work was published Galt retired to Greenock, where he continued his literary labours till his death on the 11th of April 1839.

Galt, like almost all voluminous writers, was exceedingly unequal. His masterpieces are The Ayrshire Legatees, The Annals of the Parish, Sir Andrew Wylie, The Entail, The Provost and Lawrie Todd. The Ayrshire Legatees gives, in the form of a number of exceedingly diverting letters, the adventures of the Rev. Dr Pringle and his family in London. The letters are made the excuse for endless tea-parties and meetings of kirk-session in the rural parish of Garnock. The Annals of the Parish are told by the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, Galt’s finest character. This work (which, be it remembered, existed in MS. before Waverley was published) is a splendid picture of the old-fashioned Scottish pastor and the life of a country parish; and, in rich humour, genuine pathos and truth to nature it is unsurpassed even by Scott. It is a fine specimen of the homely graces of the Scottish dialect, and preserves much vigorous Doric phraseology fast passing out of use even in country districts. In this novel Mr Galt used, for the first time, the term “Utilitarian,” which afterwards became so intimately associated with the doctrines of John Stuart Mill and Bentham (see Annals of the Parish, chap. xxxv., and a note by Mill in Utilitarianism, chap. ii.). In Sir Andrew Wylie the hero entered London as a poor lad, but achieved remarkable success by his shrewd business qualities. The character is somewhat exaggerated, but excessively amusing. The Entail was read thrice by Byron and Scott, and is the best of Galt’s longer novels. Leddy Grippy is a wonderful creation, and was considered by Byron equal to any female character in literature since Shakespeare’s time. The Provost, in which Provost Pawkie tells his own story, portrays inimitably the jobbery, bickerings and self-seeking of municipal dignitaries in a quaint Scottish burgh. In Lawrie Todd Galt, by giving us the Scot in America, accomplished a feat which Sir Walter never attempted. This novel exhibits more variety of style and a greater love of nature than his other books. The life of a settler is depicted with unerring pencil, and with an enthusiasm and imaginative power much more poetical than any of the author’s professed poems.

The best of Galt’s novels were reprinted in Blackwood’s Standard Novels, to volume i. of which his friend Dr Moir prefixed a memoir.


GALT, a town in Waterloo county, Ontario, Canada, 23 m. N.N.W. of Hamilton, on the Grand river and on the Grand Trunk and Canadian Pacific railways. Pop. (1881) 5187; (1901) 7866. It is named after John Galt, the author. It has excellent water privileges which furnish power for flour-mills and for manufactures of edge tools, castings, machinery, paper and other industries.


GALTON, SIR FRANCIS (1822- ), English anthropologist, son of S.T. Galton, of Duddeston, Warwickshire, was born on the 16th of February 1822. His grandfather was the poet-naturalist Erasmus Darwin, and Charles Darwin was his cousin. After attending King Edward VI.’s grammar school, Birmingham, he studied at Birmingham hospital, and afterwards at King’s College, London, with the intention of making medicine his profession; but after taking his degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1843 he changed his mind. The years 1845-1846 he spent in travelling in the Sudan, and in 1850 he made an exploration, with Dr John Anderson, of Damaraland and the Ovampo country in south-west Africa, starting from Walfisch Bay. These tracts had practically never been traversed before, and on the appearance of the published account of his journey and experiences under the title of Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa (1853) Galton was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His Art of Travel; or, Shifts and Contrivances in Wild Countries was first published in 1855. In 1860 he visited the north of Spain, and published the fruits of his observations of the country and the people in the first of a series of volumes, which he edited, entitled Vacation Tourists. He then turned to meteorology, the result of his investigations appearing in Meteorographica, published in 1863. This work was the first serious attempt to chart the weather on an extensive scale, and in it also the author first established the existence and theory of anti-cyclones. Galton was a member of the meteorological committee (1868), and of the Meteorological Council which succeeded it, for over thirty years. But his name is most closely associated with studies in anthropology and especially in heredity. In 1869 appeared his Hereditary Genius, its Laws and Consequences, a work which excited much interest in scientific and medical circles. This was followed by English Men of Science, their Nature and Nurture, published in 1874; Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, issued in 1883; Life-History Album (1884); Record of Family Faculties (1884) (tabular forms and directions for entering data, with a preface); and Natural Inheritance (1889). The idea that systematic efforts should be made to improve the breed of mankind by checking the birth-rate of the unfit and furthering the productivity of the fit was first put forward by him In 1865; he mooted it again in 1884, using the term “eugenics” for the first time in Human Faculty, and in 1904 he endowed a research fellowship in the university of London for the promotion of knowledge of that subject, which was defined as “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.” Galton was the author of memoirs on various anthropometric subjects; he originated the process of composite portraiture, and paid much attention to finger-prints and their employment for the identification of criminals, his publications on this subject including Finger Prints (1892), Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints (1893) and Finger Print Directories (1895). From the Royal Society, of which he was elected a fellow in 1860, he received a royal medal in 1886 and the Darwin medal in 1902, and honorary degrees were bestowed on him by Oxford (1894) and Cambridge (1895). In 1908 he published Memories of My Life, and in 1909 he received a knighthood.


GALUPPI, BALDASSARE (1706-1785), Italian musical composer, was born on the 18th of October 1706 on the island of Burano near Venice, from which he was often known by the nickname of Buranello. His father, a barber, and violinist at the local theatre, was his first teacher. His first opera, composed at the age of sixteen, being hissed off the stage, he determined to study seriously, and entered the Conservatorio degli Incurabili at Venice, as a pupil of Antonio Lotti. After successfully producing two operas in collaboration with a fellow-pupil, G.B. Pescetti, in 1728 and 1729, he entered upon a busy career as a composer of operas for Venetian theatres, writing sometimes as many as five in a year. He visited London in 1741, and arranged a pasticcio, Alexander in Persia, for the Haymarket. Burney considered his influence on English music to have been very powerful. In 1740 he became vice-maestro di cappella at St Mark’s and maestro in 1762. In 1749 he began writing comic operas to libretti by Goldoni, which enjoyed an enormous popularity. He was invited to Russia by Catherine II. in 1766, where his operas made a favourable impression, and his influence was also felt in Russian church music. He returned to Venice in 1768, where he had held the post of director of the Conservatorio degli Incurabili since 1762. He died on the 3rd of January 1785.

Galuppi’s best works are his comic operas, of which Il Filosofo di Campagna (1754), known in England as The Guardian Trick’d (Dublin, 1762) was the most popular. His melody is attractive rather than original, but his workmanship in harmony and orchestration is generally superior to that of his contemporaries. He seems to have been the first to extend the concerted finales of Leo and Logroscino into a chain of several separate movements, working up to a climax, but in this respect he is much inferior to Sarti and Mozart.

Browning’s poem, “A Toccata of Galuppi,” does not refer to any known composition, but more probably to an imaginary extemporization on the harpsichord, such as was of frequent occurrence in the musical gatherings of Galuppi’s day.

See also Alfred Wotquerme, Baldassare Galuppi, étude bibliographique sur ses œuvres dramatiques (Brussels, 1902). Many of his autograph scores are in the library of the Brussels conservatoire.

(E. J. D.)


GALVANI, LUIGI (1737-1798), Italian physiologist, after whom galvanism received its name, was born at Bologna on the 9th of September 1737. It was his wish in early life to enter the church, but by his parents he was educated for a medical career. At the university of Bologna, in which city he practised, he was in 1762 appointed public lecturer in anatomy, and soon gained repute as a skilled though not eloquent teacher, and, chiefly from his researches on the organs of hearing and genito-urinary tract of birds, as a comparative anatomist. His celebrated theory of animal electricity he enunciated in a treatise, “De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius,” published in the 7th volume of the memoirs of the Institute of Sciences at Bologna in 1791, and separately at Modena in the following year, and elsewhere subsequently. The statement has frequently been repeated that, in 1786, Galvani had noticed that the leg of a skinned frog, on being accidentally touched by a scalpel which had lain near an electrical machine, was thrown into violent convulsions; and that it was thus that his attention was first directed to the relations of animal functions to electricity. From documents in the possession of the Institute of Bologna, however, it appears that twenty years previous to the publication of his Commentary Galvani was already engaged in investigations as to the action of electricity upon the muscles of frogs. The observation that the suspension of certain of these animals on an iron railing by copper hooks caused twitching in the muscles of their legs led him to the invention of his metallic arc, the first experiment with which is described in the third part of the Commentary, with the date September 20, 1786. The arc he constructed of two different metals, which, placed in contact the one with a frog’s nerve and the other with a muscle, caused contraction of the latter. In Galvani’s view the motions of the muscle were the result of the union, by means of the metallic arc, of its exterior or negative electrical charge with positive electricity which proceeded along the nerve from its inner substance. Volta, on the other hand, attributed them solely to the effect of electricity having its source in the junction of the two dissimilar metals of the arc, and regarded the nerve and muscle simply as conductors. On Galvani’s refusal, from religious scruples, to take the oath of allegiance to the Cisalpine republic in 1797, he was removed from his professorship. Deprived thus of the means of livelihood, he retired to the house of his brother Giacomo, where he soon fell into a feverish decline. The republican government, in consideration of his great scientific fame, eventually, but too late, determined to reinstate him in his chair, and he died at Bologna on the 4th of December 1798.

A quarto edition of his works was published at Bologna in 1841-1842, by the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of that city, under the title Opere edite ed inedite del professore Luigi Galvani.


GALVANIZED IRON, sheet iron having its surface covered with a thin coating of zinc. In spite of the name, galvanic action has often no part in the production of galvanized iron, which is prepared by dipping the iron, properly cleaned and pickled in acid, in a bath of molten zinc. The hotter the zinc the thinner the coating, but as a high temperature of the bath is attended with certain objections, it is a common practice to use a moderate temperature and clear off the excess of zinc by passing the plates between rollers. In Norwood and Rogers’s process a thin coating of tin is applied to the iron before it is dipped in the zinc, by putting the plates between layers of granulated tin in a wooden tank containing a dilute solution of stannous chloride, when tin is deposited on them by galvanic action. In “cold galvanizing” the zinc is deposited electrolytically from a bath, preferably kept neutral or slightly acid, containing a 10% solution of crystallized zinc sulphate, ZnSO4·7H2O. The resulting surface is usually duller and less lustrous than that obtained by the use of molten zinc. Another method of forming a coating of zinc, known as “sherardizing,” was invented by Sherard Cowper-Coles, who found that metals embedded in zinc dust (a product obtained in zinc manufacture and consisting of metallic zinc mixed with a certain amount of zinc oxide) and heated to temperatures well below the melting point of zinc, become coated with a layer of that metal. In carrying out the process the articles are placed in an air-tight vessel with the zinc dust, which must be dry, and subjected to a heat of 250-330°C., the time for which the heating is continued depending on the thickness of the deposit required and varying from one-half to several hours. If an air-tight receptacle is not available, a small percentage of powdered carbon is added to the zinc-dust, to prevent increase in the amount of oxide, which, if present in excess, tends to make the deposit dull.

Galvanized iron by its zinc surface is protected from corrosion by the weather, though the protection is not very efficient in the presence of acid or sulphurous fumes, and accordingly it is extensively employed for roofing, especially in the form of corrugated sheets. The iron wire used for wire-netting, telegraphic purposes, &c., is commonly galvanized, as also are bolts, nuts, chains and other fittings on ships.


GALVANOMETER, an instrument for detecting or measuring electric currents. The term is generally applied to instruments which indicate electric current in scale divisions or arbitrary units, as opposed to instruments called amperemeters (q.v.), which show directly on a dial the value of the current in amperes. Galvanometers may be divided into direct current and alternating current instruments, according as they are intended to measure one or other of these two classes of currents (see Electrokinetics).

Direct Current Galvanometers.—The principle on which one type of direct current galvanometer, called a movable needle galvanometer, depends for its action is that a small magnet when suspended in the centre of a coil of wire tends to set its magnetic axis in the direction of the magnetic field of the coil at that point due to the current passing through it. In the other type, or movable coil galvanometer, the coil is suspended and the magnet fixed; hence the coil tends to set itself with its axis parallel to the lines of force of the magnet. The movable system must be constrained in some way to take up and retain a definite position when no current is passing by means which are called the “control.”

In its simple and original form the movable needle galvanometer consisted of a horizontal magnetic needle suspended within a coil of insulated wire by silk fibres or pivoted on a point like a compass needle. The direction of such a needle is controlled by the direction of the terrestrial magnetic force within the coil. If the needle is so placed that its axis is parallel to the plane of the coil, then when an electric current passes through the coil it is deflected and places itself at an angle to the axis of the coil determined by the strength of the current and of the controlling field. In the early forms of movable needle galvanometer the needle was either a comparatively large magnet several inches in length, or else a smaller magnet was employed carrying a long pointer which moved over a scale of degrees so as to indicate the deflexion. A method of measuring the deflexion by means of a mirror scale and telescope was introduced by K.F. Gauss and W. Weber. The magnet had a mirror attached to it, and a telescope having cross wires in the focus was used to observe the scale divisions of a fixed scale seen reflected in the mirror. Lord Kelvin (Professor W. Thomson) made the important improvement of reducing the size of the needle and attaching it to the back of a very small mirror, the two being suspended by a single fibre of cocoon silk. The mirror was made of silvered microscopic glass about ¼ in. in diameter, and the magnetic needle or needles consisted of short fragments of watchspring cemented to its back. A ray of light being thrown on the mirror from a lamp the deflexions of the needle were observed by watching the movements of a spot of light reflected from it upon a fixed scale. This form of mirror galvanometer was first devised in connexion with submarine cable signalling, but soon became an indispensable instrument in the physical laboratory.

In course of time both the original form of single needle galvanometer and mirror galvanometer were improved by introducing the astatic principle and weakening the external controlling magnetic field. If two magnetic needles of equal size and moment are attached rigidly to one stem parallel to each other but with poles placed in opposite directions an astatic system results; that is, if the needles are so suspended as to be free to move in a horizontal plane, and if they are made exactly equal in magnetic strength, the system will have no directive power. If one needle is slightly weaker than the other, the suspended system will set itself with some axis parallel to the lines of force of a field in which it is placed. In a form of astatic needle galvanometer devised by Professor A. Broca of Paris, the pair of magnetized needles are suspended vertically and parallel to each other with poles in opposite directions. The upper poles are included in one coil and the lower poles within another coil, so connected that the current circulates in the right direction in each coil to displace the pairs of poles in the same direction. By this mode of arrangement a greater magnetic moment can be secured, together with more perfect astaticity and freedom from disturbance by external fields. The earth’s magnetic field can be weakened by means of a controlling magnet arranged to create in the space in the interior of the galvanometer coils an extremely feeble controlling magnetic field. In instruments having a coil for each needle and designed so that the current in both coils passes so as to turn both needles in the same direction, the controlling magnet is so adjusted that the normal position of the needles is with the magnetic axis parallel to the plane of the coil. An astatic magnetic system used in conjunction with a mirror galvanometer gives a highly sensitive form of instrument (fig. 1); it is, however, easily disturbed by stray magnetic fields caused by neighbouring magnets or currents through conductors, and therefore is not suitable for use in many places.

This fact led to the introduction of the movable coil galvanometer which was first devised by Lord Kelvin as a telegraphic signalling instrument but subsequently modified by A. d’Arsonval and others into a laboratory galvanometer (fig. 2). In this instrument a permanent magnet, generally of the horseshoe shape, is employed to create a strong magnetic field, in which a light movable coil is suspended. The suspension is bifilar, consisting of two fine wires which are connected to the ends of the coil and serve to lead the current in and out. If such a coil is placed with its plane parallel to the lines of force of the permanent magnet, then when a current is passing through it it displaces itself in the field, so as to set with its axis more nearly parallel to the lines of force of the field. The movable coil may carry a pointer or a mirror; in the latter form it is well represented by several much used laboratory instruments. The movable coil galvanometer has the great advantage that it is not easily disturbed by the magnetic fields caused by neighbouring magnets or electric currents, and thus is especially useful in the electrical workshop and factory.

Fig. 1.—Kelvin Astatic Mirror Galvanometer. Elliott square pattern.

In the practical construction of the suspended needle fixed coil galvanometer great care must be taken with the insulation of the wire of the coil. This wire is generally silk-covered, wound on a frame, the whole being thoroughly saturated with paraffin wax. In some cases two wires are wound on in parallel, constituting a “differential galvanometer.” When properly adjusted this instrument can be used for the exact comparison of electric currents by a null method, because if an electric current is passed through one wire and creates certain deflexions of the needle, the current which annuls this deflexion when passed through the other wire must be equal to the first current. In the construction of a movable coil galvanometer, it is usual to intensify the magnetic field by inserting a fixed soft iron core in the interior of the movable coil. If the current to be measured is too large to be passed entirely through the galvanometer, a portion is allowed to flow through a circuit connecting the two terminals of the instrument. This circuit is called a shunt and is generally arranged so as to take 0.9, 0.99, or 0.999 of the total current, leaving 0.1, 0.01 or 0.001 to flow through the galvanometer. W.E. Ayrton and T. Mather have designed a universal shunt box or resistance which can be applied to any galvanometer and by which a known fraction of any current can be sent through the galvanometer when we know its resistance (see Jour. Inst. Elec. Eng. Lond., 1894, 23, p. 314). A galvanometer can be calibrated, or the meaning of its deflexion determined, by passing through it an electric current of known value and observing the deflexion of the needle or coil. The known current can be provided in the following manner:—a single secondary cell of any kind can have its electromotive force measured by the potentiometer (q.v.), and compared with that of a standard voltaic cell. If the secondary cell is connected with the galvanometer through a known high resistance R, and if the galvanometer is shunted, that is, has its terminals connected by another resistance S, then if the resistance of the galvanometer itself is denoted by G, the whole resistance of the shunted galvanometer and high resistance has a value represented by R + GS/(G + S), and therefore the current through the galvanometer produced by an electromotive force E of the cell is represented by

SE .

R(G + S) + GS

Suppose this current produces a deflexion of the needle or coil or spot of light equal to X scale divisions, we can then alter the value of the resistances R and S, and so determine the relation between the deflexion and the current. By the sensitiveness of the galvanometer is meant the deflexion produced by a known electromotive force put upon its terminals or a known current sent through it. It is usual to specify the sensitiveness of a mirror galvanometer by requiring a certain deflexion, measured in millimetres, of a spot of light thrown on the scale placed at one metre from the mirror, when an electromotive force of one-millionth of a volt (microvolt) is applied to the terminals of the galvanometer; it may be otherwise expressed by stating the deflexion produced under the same conditions when a current of one microampere is passed through the coil. In modern mirror galvanometers a deflexion of 1 mm. of the spot of light upon a scale at 1 metre distance can be produced by a current as small as one hundred millionth (10−8) or even one ten thousand millionth (10−10) of an ampere. It is easy to produce considerable sensitiveness in the galvanometer, but for practical purposes it must always be controlled by the condition that the zero remains fixed, that is to say, the galvanometer needle or coil must come back to exactly the same position when no current is passing through the instrument. Other important qualifications of a galvanometer are its time-period and its dead-beatness. For certain purposes the needle or coil should return as quickly as possible to the zero position and with either no, or very few, oscillations. If the latter condition is fulfilled the galvanometer is said to be “dead-beat.” On the other hand, for some purposes the galvanometer is required with the opposite quality, that is to say, there must be as little retardation as possible to the needle or coil when set in motion under an impulsive blow. Such a galvanometer is called “ballistic.” The quality of a galvanometer in this respect is best estimated by taking the logarithmic decrement of the oscillations when the movable system is set swinging. This last term is defined as the logarithm of the ratio of one swing to the next succeeding swing, and a galvanometer of which the logarithmic decrement is large, is said to be highly damped. For many purposes, such as for resistance measurement, it is desirable to have a galvanometer which is highly damped; this result can be obtained by affixing to the needles either light pieces of mica, when it is a movable needle galvanometer, or by winding the coil on a silver frame when it is a movable coil galvanometer. On the other hand, for the comparison of capacities of condensers and for other purposes, a galvanometer is required which is as little damped as possible, and for this purpose the coil must have the smallest possible frictional resistance to its motion through the air. In this case the moment of inertia of the movable system must be decreased or the control strengthened.

The Einthoven string galvanometer is another form of sensitive instrument for the measurement of small direct currents. It consists of a fine wire or silvered quartz fibre stretched in a strong magnetic field. When a current passes through the wire it is displaced across the field and the displacement is observed with a microscope.

Fig. 3.—Helmholtz Tangent Galvanometer.

For the measurement of large currents a “tangent galvanometer” is employed (fig. 3). Two fixed circular coils are placed apart at a distance equal to the radius of either coil, so that a current passing through them creates in the central region between them a nearly uniform magnetic field. At the centre of the coils is suspended a small magnetic needle the length of which should not be greater than 1⁄10 the radius of either coil. The normal position of the needle is at right angles to the line joining the centre of the coils. If a current is passed through the coils, the needle will be deflected, and the tangent of the angle of its deflexion will be nearly proportional to the current passing through the coil, provided that the controlling field is uniform in strength and direction, and that the length of the magnetic needle is so short that the space in which it rotates is a practically uniform magnetic field.

Alternating Current Galvanometers.—For the detection of small alternating currents a magnetic needle or movable coil galvanometer is of no utility. We can, however, construct an instrument suitable for the purpose by suspending within a coil of insulated wire a small needle of soft iron placed with its axis at an angle of 45° to the axis of the coil. When an alternating current passes through the coil the soft iron needle tends to set itself in the direction of the axis of the coil, and if it is suspended by a quartz fibre or metallic wire so as to afford a control, it can become a metrical instrument. Another arrangement, devised by J.A. Fleming in 1887, consists of a silver or copper disk suspended within a coil, the plane of the disk being held at 45° to that of the coil. When an alternating current is passed through the coil, induced currents are set up in the disk and the mutual action causes the disk to endeavour to set itself so that these currents are a minimum. This metal disk galvanometer has been made sufficiently sensitive to detect the feeble oscillatory electric currents set up in the receiving wire of a wireless telegraph apparatus. The Duddell thermal ammeter is another very sensitive form of alternating current galvanometer. In it the current to be detected or measured is passed through a high resistance wire or strip of metal leaf mounted on glass, over which is suspended a closed loop of bismuth and antimony, forming a thermoelectric couple. This loop is suspended by a quartz fibre in a strong magnetic field, and one junction of the couple is held just over the resistance wire and as near it as possible without touching. When an alternating current passes through the resistance it creates heat which in turn acts on the thermo-junction and generates a continuous current in the loop, thus deflecting it in the magnetic field. The sensitiveness of such a thermal ammeter can be made sufficiently great to detect a current of a few microamperes.

References.—J.A. Fleming, A Handbook for the Electrical Laboratory and Testing Room, vol. i. (London, 1901); W.E. Ayrton, T. Mather and W.E. Sumpner, “On Galvanometers,” Proc. Phys. Soc. London (1890), 10, 393; H.R. Kempe, A Handbook of Electrical Testing (London, 1906); A. Gray, Absolute Measurements in Electricity and Magnetism, vol. ii. part ii. (London, 1893). Useful information is also contained in the catalogues of all the principal electrical instrument makers—Messrs. Elliott Bros., Nalder, The Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, Pitkin, Hartmann and Braun, Queen and others.

(J. A. F.)


GALVESTON, a city and port of entry and the county-seat of Galveston county, Texas, U.S.A., on the Gulf of Mexico, near the N.E. extremity of Galveston Island and at the entrance to Galveston Bay. It is about 48 m. S.E. of Houston and 310 m. W. of New Orleans. Pop. (1890) 29,084; (1900) 37,789, (6339 were foreign-born and 8291 negroes); (1910) 36,981; land area (1906) 7.8 sq. m. It is served by the Galveston, Houston & Henderson, the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fé, the Trinity & Brazos Valley, the International & Great Northern, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways, and by numerous steamship lines to Gulf ports in the United States and Mexico, and to Cuba, South America, Europe and the Atlantic ports of the United States. Galveston Island is a low, sandy strip of land about 28 m. long and 1½ to 3½ m. wide, lying from 2 to 3 m. off the mainland. The city, which extends across the island from Gulf to Bay, faces and has its harbour on the latter. The island was connected with the mainland before the 1900 storm by a road bridge and several railway bridges, which, a short distance W. of the city, crossed the narrow strip of water separating the West Bay from Galveston Bay proper; the bridge least harmed (a single-track railway bridge) was repaired immediately and was for a time the city’s only connexion with the mainland, but in 1908 bonds were issued for building a concrete causeway, accommodating four railway tracks, one interurban car track, and a roadway for vehicles and pedestrians. An enormous sea-wall (completed in 1904 at a cost of $2,091,000) was constructed on the eastern and Gulf sides of the city, about 5 m. long, 17 ft. above mean low tide (1.5 ft. above the high-water mark of the storm of 1900 and 7.5 ft. above the previous high-water mark, that of September 1875), 16 ft. wide at the base and 5 ft. at the top, weighing 20 tons to the lineal foot, and with a granite rip-rap apron extending out 27 ft. on the Gulf side. The entire grade of the city was raised from 1 to 15 ft. above the old level. Between the sea-wall and the sea there is a splendid beach, the entire length of which is nearly 30 m. Among the principal buildings are the city hall, the court-house, the masonic temple, the Federal custom-house and post-office, the Y.M.C.A. building and the public library. The United States government maintains a marine hospital, a live-saving station, an immigrant landing station, and the state and the Federal government separate quarantine stations. In addition to the Ball public high school, Galveston is the seat of St Mary’s University (1854), the Sacred Heart and Ursuline academies, and the Cathedral school, all under Roman Catholic control.

The government of the municipality was long vested in a council of ward aldermen, controlled by a “machine,” which was proved corrupt in 1894 by an investigation undertaken at the personal expense of the mayor; it gave place in 1895 to a city council of aldermen at large, which by 1901 had proved its inefficiency especially in the crisis following the storm of the preceding year. Government then seemed a business question and was practically undertaken by the city’s commercial experts, the Deepwater commission, whose previous aim had been harbour improvement, and who now drew up a charter providing for government by a board of five appointed by the governor of the state. A compromise measure making three members appointees of the governor and two elected by the voters of the city was in force for a time but was declared unconstitutional. A third charter was adopted providing for five commissioners, chosen by the people, dividing among themselves the posts of mayor-president and commissioners of finance and revenue, of water-works and sewerage, of streets and public property, and of police and fire protection, each commissioner being held individually responsible for the management of his department. These are business departments carefully systematized by their heads. The legislative power is vested in the commission as a whole, over whose meetings the mayor-president presides; he has a vote like every other commissioner, and has no veto power. The success of this commission government has been remarkable: in 1901-1908 the city, without issuing bonds except for grade raising, paid off a large debt, raised the salaries of city employees, paid its running expenses in cash, planned and began public improvements and sanitary reforms, and did much for the abolition of gambling and the regulation of other vice. The Galveston Plan and similar schemes of government have been adopted in many other American cities.

Galveston’s manufactories, the products of which in 1900 were valued at $5,016,360, a decrease of 12.4% from 1890 (value of products under “factory system,” $3,675,323 in 1900; $2,996,654 in 1905, a decrease of 18.5%), include cotton-seed oil refineries, flour and feed mills, lumber mills, wooden-ware factories, breweries, cement works, creosoting works, ship-yards and ice factories. There are extensive cotton warehouses, coal and grain elevators, and large wholesale supply depots. The Gulf Fisheries Company has its fleet’s headquarters and large packing-houses at Galveston. It is as a commercial port that Galveston is chiefly important. In 1907 it was the second port in the United States in the value of its exports (domestic and foreign, $196,627,382, or 10.22% of the total), being surpassed only by New York City; and was the first of the Gulf ports (having 45.43% of the total value), New Orleans being second with $164,998,540. Galveston’s imports in 1907 were valued at $7,669,458. Galveston is the greatest cotton-exporting port in the Union, its exports of cotton in 1907 being valued at $163,564,445. Other exports of great value are cotton seed products (oil and cake, $10,188,594 in 1907), Indian corn ($3,457,279 in 1907), wheat ($9,443,901 in 1906), lumber and flour. The electric lighting and water-supply systems are owned and operated by the municipality.

The harbour of Galveston seems to have been named about 1782 by Spanish explorers in honour either of José de Galvez, Marquis of Sonora, or his nephew Bernardo, governor of Louisiana; and in the early days of the 19th century was the principal rendezvous of a powerful band of buccaneers and pirates, of whom, for many years, the notorious Jean Lafitte was chief. After much difficulty these were finally dispersed about 1820 by the United States authorities, and in 1837 the first settlement from the United States was made on the site of the present city. The town was incorporated by the legislature of the Republic of Texas in 1839. On the 8th of October 1862 the city was taken by a Federal naval force under Commander William B. Renshaw (1816-1863). After a sharp engagement a Confederate force under General John B. Magruder (1810-1871) retook the city on the 1st of January 1863, one of the Federal ships, the “Harriet Lane,” falling into Confederate hands, and another, the “Westfield,” being blown up with Commander Renshaw on board. Thereafter Galveston remained in Confederate hands, although rigidly blockaded by the Federal navy, until the close of the war. On the 8th of September 1900 the city was seriously damaged by a West Indian hurricane, which, blowing steadily for eighteen hours, reached a velocity of 135 m. an hour. The waters of the Gulf were piled up in enormous waves that swept across a large part of the city, destroying or badly damaging more than 8000 buildings, entailing a loss of about 5000 lives, and a property loss estimated at about $17,000,000. Liberal contributions came from all over the country, and the state partially remitted the city’s taxes for 17 years. The city was rapidly rebuilt on a more substantial plan.


GALWAY, a county in the west of Ireland, in the province of Connaught, bounded N. by Mayo and Roscommon; E. by Roscommon, King’s County and Tipperary; S. by Clare and Galway Bay; and W. by the Atlantic Ocean. The area is 1,519,699 acres or about 2375 sq. m., the county being second in size to Cork among the Irish counties.

The county is naturally divided by Lough Corrib into two great divisions. The eastern, which comprehends all the county except the four western baronies, rests on a limestone base, and is, generally speaking, a level champaign country, but contains large quantities of wet bog. Its southern portion is partly a continuation of the Golden Vale of Limerick, celebrated for its fertility, and partly occupied by the Slievebaughty Mountains. The northern portion of the division contains rich pasture and tillage ground, beautifully diversified with hill and dale. Some of the intermediate country is comparatively uncultivated, but forms excellent pasturage for sheep. The western division of the county has a substratum of granite, and is barren, rugged and mountainous. It is divided into the three districts of Connemara, Jar-Connaught and Joyce’s Country; the name of Connemara is, however, often applied to the whole district. Its highest mountains are the grand and picturesque group of Bunnabeola, or the Twelve Bens or Pins, which occupy a space of about 25 sq. m., the highest elevation being 2695 ft. Much of this district is a gently sloping plain, from 100 to 300 ft. above sea-level. Joyce’s Country, farther north, is an elevated tract, with flat-topped hills 1300 to 2000 ft. high, and deep narrow valleys lying between them.

Galway possesses the advantage of a very extended line of sea-coast, indented by numerous harbours, which, however, are rarely used except by a few coasting and fishing vessels. At the boundary with the county Mayo in the north is Killary Harbour which separates the two counties. The first bay on the western coast capable of accommodating large ships is Ballynakill, sheltered by Freaghillaun or Heath Island. Next in succession is Cleggan Bay. Off these inlets lie the islands of Inishbofin and Inishark, with others. Streamstown is a narrow inlet, within which are the inhabited islands of Omey, Inishturk and Turbot. Ardbear harbour is divided into two inlets, the northern terminating at the town of Clifden, with excellent anchorage; the southern inlet has also good anchorage within the bar, and has a good salmon fishery. Mannin Bay, though large, is much exposed and little frequented by shipping. From Slyne Head the coast turns eastward to Roundstone Bay, which has its entrance protected by the islands of Inishnee and Inishlacken. Next in order is Bertraghboy Bay, studded with islets and rocks, but deep and sheltered. Kilkieran Bay, the largest on this coast, has a most productive kelp shore of nearly 100 m.; its mouth is but 3 m. broad. Between Gorumna Island and the mainland is Greatman’s Bay and close to it Costello Bay, the most eastern of those in Connemara. The whole of the coast from Greatman’s Bay eastward is comprehended in the Bay of Galway, the entrance of which is protected by the three limestone islands of Aran, Inishmore (or Aranmore), Inishmann and Inisheer.

The rivers are few, and, except the Shannon, of small size. The Suck, which forms the eastern boundary of the county, rises in Roscommon, and passing by Ballinasloe, unites with the Shannon at Shannonbridge. The Shannon forms the south-eastern boundary of the county, and passing Shannon Harbour, Banagher, Meelick and Portumna, swells into the great expanse of water called Lough Derg, which skirts the county as far as the village of Mount Shannon. The Claregalway flows southward through the centre of the county, and enters Lough Corrib some 4 m. above the town of Galway. The Ballynahinch, considered one of the best salmon-fishing rivers in Connaught, rises in the Twelve Pins, passes through Ballynahinch Lake, and after a short but rapid course falls into Bertraghboy Bay. Lakes are numerous. Lough Corrib extends from Galway town northwards over 30,000 acres, with a shore of 50 m. in extent. The lake is studded with many islands, some of them thickly inhabited. The district west of Lough Corrib contains a vast number of lakes, about twenty-five of them more than a mile in length. Lough Rea, by the town of the same name, is more remarkable for scenic beauty than for extent. Besides these perennial lakes, there are several low tracts, called turloughs, which are covered with water during a great part of the year. Loughs Mask and Corrib are connected by a salmon ladder, and contain large trout. Galway, with the Screab Waters, draining into Camus Bay, a branch of Kilkieran Bay, with Recess and the Ballynahinch waters, are the best fishing centres. On account of its scenic beauty, both coastal and inland, together with its facilities for sport, county Galway is frequented by summer visitors. Though for long the remoter parts were difficult of access, as in the case of Donegal, Mayo, Clare and the western counties generally, the Galway and Clifden railway assisted private enterprise to open up the country. The western mountains, broken by deep landlocked and island-sheltered bays, as well as by the innumerable small loughs of the Connemara districts, afford scenes varying from gentle slopes occasionally well wooded along the water’s edge to wild, bare moorlands among the heights, while the summits are usually bold and rocky cones. Several small fishing villages have acquired the dignity of watering-places from the erection of hotels, which have also been planted in previously untenanted situations of high scenic attractions; among these may be mentioned Leenane at the head of Killary harbour, Renvyle House at its entrance, Letterfrack on Ballynakill Bay, Streamstown and Clifden, and Cashel on Bertraghboy Bay. Inland are Recess, near Lough Derryclare, and Ballynahinch, on the lough of that name, both on the railway, at the foot of the Twelve Pins.

Geology.—The east of this county lies in the Carboniferous Limestone plain, with domes of Old Red Sandstone rising near Dunmore and Mount Bellew. As Galway town is neared, the grey rock appears freely on the surface, and Lough Corrib spreads itself over almost level land. Its west branches, however, run up into “Dalradian” hills, which rise abruptly on the threshold of Connemara. A broad mass of ice-worn gneiss and granite lies between Lough Corrib and Galway Bay, cut off so sharply at the sea as to suggest the presence of an east-and-west line of fracture. The Twelve Bens owe their supremacy to the quartzites, which are here well bedded and associated with limestone and mica-schist. Silurian conglomerates and sandstones, with andesitic lavas, overlie the Dalradians, with marked unconformity, south of Leenane and round Lough Nafooey. The surfaces of the hard rocks admirably record the action of ice throughout the county. There is black Carboniferous marble at Menlough near Galway; and the well-known “Connemara Marble” is a banded serpentinous crystalline limestone in the Dalradians at Recess, Ballynahinch and Streamstown. Compact red granite is worked at Shantallow, and the region west of Galway contains many handsome porphyritic red varieties.

Climate and Industries.—The climate is mild and healthy but variable, and violent winds from the west are not uncommon. Frost or snow seldom remains long on the western coast, and cattle of every description continue unhoused during the winter. The eastern part of the county produces the best wheat. Oats are frequently sown after potatoes in moorish soils less adapted for wheat. The flat shores of the bays afford large supplies of seaweed for manure. Limestone, gravel and marl are to be had in most other parts. When a sufficient quantity of manure for potatoes cannot be had, the usual practice is to pare and burn the surface. In many places on the seashore fine early potatoes are raised in deep sea-sand manured with seaweed, and the crop is succeeded by barley. Those parts of the eastern district less fitted for grain are employed in pasturage. Heathy sheep-walks occupy a very large tract between Monivea and Galway. An extensive range from Athenry, stretching to Galway Bay at Kinvarra, is also chiefly occupied by sheep. Over half the total acreage of the county is pasture-land, and cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry are extensively reared. The proportion of tillage to pasturage is roughly as one to four; and owing to the nature of the country fully one-third of the total area is quite barren.

Manufactures are not carried on beyond the demand caused by the domestic consumption of the people. Coarse friezes, flannels and blankets are made in all parts and sold largely in Galway and Loughrea. Connemara has been long celebrated for its hand-knit woollen stockings. Coarse linen, of a narrow breadth, called bandle linen, is also made for home consumption. There is a linen-weaving factory at Oughterard. The manufacture of kelp, formerly a great source of profit on the western shores, is still carried on to some extent. Feathers and sea-fowls’ eggs are brought in great quantities from the islands of Aran, the produce of the puffins and other sea-fowl that frequent the cliffs. Fishing affords occupation to many of the inhabitants, the industry having as its centres the ports of Galway and Clifden.

The Midland Great Western main line enters the county at Ballinasloe, and runs by Athenry to Galway, with an extension to Oughterard (Lough Corrib) and Clifden. The Great Southern & Western line from Sligo to Limerick traverses the county from N. to S., by way of Tuam, Athenry and Gort.

Population and Administration.—The population of county Galway (211,227 in 1891; 192,549 in 1901) decreased by more than half in the last seventy years of the 19th century, and the decrease continues, as emigration is heavy. About 97% of the population are Roman Catholics, and a somewhat less percentage are rural. The Erse tongue is maintained by many in this remote county. The chief towns are Galway (pop. 13,426), Tuam (3012), Ballinasloe (4904) and Loughrea (2815), with the smaller towns of Portumna, Gort, Clifden, Athenry, Headford, Oughterard and Eyrecourt. The county is divided into four parliamentary divisions (returning one member each); north, south, east and Connemara, while the town of Galway returns one member. There are eighteen baronies. Assizes are held at Galway, quarter-sessions at Galway, Ballinasloe, Clifden, Gort, Loughrea, Oughterard, Portumna and Tuam. The county comprises parts of the Protestant dioceses of Tuam and of Killaloe; and of the Roman Catholic dioceses of Elphin, Galway, Clonfert and Killaloe.

History.—The history of county Galway is exceedingly obscure, and nearly every one of its striking physical features carries its legend with it. For centuries local septs struggled together for mastery undeterred by outside influence. The wreck of part of the Spanish Armada on this coast in 1588 left survivors whose influence is still to be traced. The formation of Galway into a county was effected about 1579 by Sir Henry Sydney, lord deputy of Ireland. In the county at Aughrim (q.v.) the decisive battle of the English Revolution was fought in 1691. Among the antiquities are several round towers. The only perfect one is at Kilmacduagh, a very fine example 112 ft. high, leaning considerably out of the perpendicular. Raths or encampments are numerous and several cromlechs are to be seen in good preservation. The ruins of monastic buildings are also numerous. That of Knockmoy, about 6 m. from Tuam, said to have been founded in 1180 by Cathal O’Connor, was adorned with rude fresco paintings, still discernible, which were considered valuable as being the best authentic representations existing of ancient Irish costumes. Ancient castles and square towers of the Anglo-Norman settlers are frequently met with; some have been kept in repair, but the greater number are in ruins. The castle of Tuam, built in 1161 by Roderick O’Connor, king of Ireland, at the period of the English invasion, is said to have been the first building of this description of stone and mortar in Ireland. The remains of a round castle, a form of building very uncommon in the military architecture of the country, are to be seen between Gort and Kilmacduagh. The extraordinary cyclopean and monastic ruins on the Aran Islands (q.v.) must be mentioned; and the town of Galway, Athenry, and the neighbourhood of Ballinasloe all show interesting remains. The small church of Clonfert, in the south of the county, with a fine Romanesque doorway, is a cathedral, the diocese of which was united with Kilfenora, Kilmacduagh and Killaloe in 1833.


GALWAY, a seaport, parliamentary borough and the county town of county Galway, Ireland, on the north shore of Galway Bay, and on the main line of the Midland Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 13,426. Some of the streets are very narrow, and contain curious specimens of old buildings, chiefly in antique Spanish style, being square, with a central court, and a gateway opening into the street. The most noteworthy of these is the pile known as Lynch’s Castle. This residence takes its name from the family of whom James Lynch Fitzstephen, mayor of Galway in 1493, was a member; whose severity as a magistrate is exemplified in the story that he executed his own son, and thus gave origin (according to one of several theories) to the familiar term of Lynch law. The principal streets are broad and contain good shops. St Nicholas church is a fine cruciform building founded in 1320, and containing monuments, and a bell, one of a peal, which appears to have been brought from Cavron in France, but how this happened is not known. The church was made collegiate in 1484, and Edward VI. created the Royal College of Galway in connexion with it; but the old college buildings no longer serve this purpose, and the church ceased to be collegiate in 1840. There are remains of a Franciscan friary founded in 1296. St Augustine’s church (Roman Catholic) is modern (1859). The town is the seat of a Roman Catholic diocese. There are grammar, model and industrial schools, the first with exhibitions to Trinity College, Dublin; but the principal educational establishment is University College, a quadrangular building in Tudor Gothic style, of grey limestone. It was founded as Queen’s College, with other colleges of the same name at Belfast and Cork, under an act of 1845, and its name was changed when it was granted a new charter pursuant to the Irish Universities Act 1908. The harbour comprises an extensive line of quays, and is connected for inland navigation with Lough Corrib. The shipping trade is considerable, but as a trans-Atlantic port Galway was exploited unsuccessfully. The fisheries, both sea and salmon, are important. The chief exports are wool, agricultural produce and black marble, which is polished in local mills. Other industrial establishments include corn-mills, iron-foundries, distilleries, and brush and bag factories. The borough, which returned two members to parliament until 1885, now returns one.

Galway is divided into the old and new towns, while a suburb known as the Claddagh is inhabited by fishermen. This is a curious collection of small cottages, where communal government by a locally elected mayor long prevailed, together with peculiar laws and customs, strictly exclusive inter-marriage, and a high moral and religious standard. Specimens of the distinctive Claddagh ring, for example, were worn and treasured as venerated heirlooms. These customs, with the distinctive dress of the women, died out but slowly, and even to-day their vestiges remain.

The environs of Galway are pleasant, with several handsome residences. The most interesting point in the vicinity is Roscam, with its round tower, ruined church and other remains. Salthill, with golf links, is a waterside residential suburb.

Little is known of the history of Galway until after the arrival of the English, at which time it was under the protection of O’Flaherty, who possessed the adjoining district to the west. On the extinction of the native dynasty of the O’Connors, the town fell into the hands of the De Burgos, the head of a branch of which, under the name of M’William Eighter, long governed it by magistrates of his own appointment. After it had been secured by walls, which began to be built about 1270 and are still in part traceable, it became the residence of a number of enterprising settlers, through whom it attained a position of much commercial celebrity. Of these settlers the principal families, fourteen in number, were known as the tribes of Galway. They were of Norman, Saxon or Welsh descent, and became so exclusive in their relationships that dispensations were frequently requisite for the canonical legality of marriages among them. The town rapidly increased from this period in wealth and commercial rank, far surpassing in this respect the rival city of Limerick. Richard II. granted it a charter of incorporation with liberal privileges, which was confirmed by his successor. It had the right of coinage by act of parliament, but there is no evidence to show that it exercised the privilege. Another charter, granted in 1545, extended the jurisdiction of the port to the islands of Aran, permitted the exportation of all kinds of goods except linens and woollens, and confirmed all the former privileges. Large numbers of Cromwell’s soldiers are said to have settled in the town; and there are many traces of Spanish blood among the population. Its municipal privileges were extended by a charter from James I., whereby the town, and a district of two miles round in every direction, were formed into a distinct county, with exclusive jurisdiction and a right of choosing its own magistrates. During the civil wars of 1641 the town took part with the Irish, and was surrendered to the Parliamentary forces under Sir Charles Coote; after which the ancient inhabitants were mostly driven out, and their property was given to adventurers and soldiers, chiefly from England. On the accession of James II. the old inhabitants entertained sanguine hopes of recovering their former rights. But the successes of King William soon put an end to their expectations; and the town, after undergoing another siege, again capitulated to the force brought against it by General Ginkell.


GAMA, VASCO DA (c. 1460-1524), Portuguese navigator and discoverer of the sea-route to India, was born at Sines, a small seaport in the province of Alemtejo. Of da Gama’s early history little is known. His descent, according to the Nobiliario of Antonio de Lima, was derived from a noble family which is mentioned in the year 1166; but the line cannot be traced without interruption farther back than the year 1280, to one Alvaro da Gama, from whom was descended Estevão da Gama, civil governor of Sines, whose third son Vasco was born probably about the year 1460. In that year died Prince Henry the Navigator, to whose intelligence and foresight must be traced back all the fame that Portugal gained on the seas in the 15th and 16th centuries. Explorers sent out at his instigation discovered the Azores and unknown regions on the African coast, whence continually came reports of a great monarch, “who lived east of Benin, 350 leagues in the interior, and who held both temporal and spiritual dominion over all the neighbouring kings,” a story which tallied so remarkably with the accounts of “Prester John” which had been brought to the Peninsula by Abyssinian priests, that John II. of Portugal steadfastly resolved that both by sea and by land the attempt should be made to reach the country of this potentate. For this purpose Pedro de Covilham and Affonso de Payva were despatched eastward by land; while Bartholomeu Diaz (q.v.), in command of two vessels, was sent westward by sea (see Abyssinia, 14). That there was in truth an ocean highway to the East was proved by Diaz, who returned in December 1488 with the report that when sailing southward he was carried far to the east by a succession of fierce storms, past—as he discovered only on his return voyage—what he ascertained to be the southern extremity of the African continent. The condition of John’s health and concerns of state, however, prevented the fitting out of the intended expedition; and it was not till nine years later, when Emanuel I. had succeeded to the throne, that the preparations for this great voyage were completed—hastened, doubtless, by Columbus’s discovery of America in the meanwhile.

For the supreme command of this expedition the king selected Vasco da Gama, who had in his youth fought in the wars against Castile, and in his riper years gained distinction as an intrepid mariner. The fleet, consisting of four vessels specially built for this mission, sailed down the Tagus on the 9th of July 1497, after prayers and confession made by the officers and crews in a small chapel on the site where now stands the church of S. Maria de Belem (see Lisbon), afterwards built to commemorate the event. Four months later the flotilla cast anchor in St Helena Bay, South Africa, rounded the Cape in safety, and in the beginning of the next year reached Malindi, on the east coast of Africa. Thence, steering eastward, under the direction of a pilot obtained from Indian merchants met with at this port, da Gama arrived at Calicut, on the Malabar coast, on the 20th May 1498, and set up, according to the custom of his country, a marble pillar as a mark of conquest and a proof of his discovery of India. His reception by the zamorin, or Hindu ruler of Calicut, would have in all probability been favourable enough, had it not been for the jealousy of the Mahommedan traders who, fearing for their gains, so incited the Hindus against the new-comers that da Gama was unable to establish a Portuguese factory. Having seen enough of India to assure him of its great resources, he returned to Portugal in September 1499. The king received him with every mark of distinction, granted him the use of the prefix Dom, thus elevating him to the rank of an untitled noble, and conferred on him pensions and other property. In prosecution of da Gama’s discoveries another fleet of thirteen ships was immediately sent out to India under Pedro Alvares Cabral, who, in sailing too far westward, by accident discovered Brazil, and on reaching his destination established a factory at Calicut. The natives, again instigated by the Mahommedan merchants, rose up in arms and murdered all whom Cabral had left behind. To avenge this outrage a powerful armament of ten ships was fitted out at Lisbon, the command of which was at first given to Cabral, but was afterwards transferred to da Gama, who received the title admiral of India (January 1502). A few weeks later the fleet sailed, and on reaching Calicut da Gama immediately bombarded the town, treating its inhabitants with a savagery too horrible to describe. From Calicut he proceeded in November to Cochin, “doing all the harm he could on the way to all that he found at sea,” and having made favourable trading terms with it and with other towns on the coast, he returned to Lisbon in September 1503, with richly laden ships. He and his captains were welcomed with great rejoicings and he received additional privileges and revenues.

Soon after his return da Gama retired to his residence in Evora, possibly from pique at not obtaining so high rewards as he expected, but more probably in order to enjoy the wealth and position which he had acquired; for he was now one of the richest men in the kingdom. He had married, probably in 1500, a lady of good family, named Catherina de Ataide, by whom he had six sons. According to Correa, he continued to advise King Emanuel I. on matters connected with India and maritime policy up to 1505, and there are extant twelve documents dated 1507-1522 which prove that he continued to enjoy the royal favour. The most important of these is a grant dated December 1519 by which Vasco da Gama was created count of Vidigueira, with the extraordinary privileges of civil and criminal jurisdiction and ecclesiastical patronage. During this time the Portuguese conquests increased in the East, and were presided over by successive viceroys. The fifth of these was so unfortunate that da Gama was recalled from his seclusion by Emanuel’s successor, John III., and nominated viceroy of India, an honour which in April 1524 he left Lisbon to assume. Arriving at Goa during September of the same year, he immediately set himself to correct with vigour the many abuses which had crept in under the rule of his predecessors. He was not destined, however, to prosecute far the reforms he had inaugurated, for, on the Christmas-eve following his arrival, he died at Cochin after a short illness, and was buried in the Franciscan monastery there. In 1538 his body was conveyed to Portugal and entombed in the town of Vidigueira. In 1880 what were supposed on insufficient evidence to have been his remains were transferred to the church of Santa Maria de Belem. His voyage had the immediate result of enriching Portugal, and raising her to one of the foremost places among the nations of Europe, and eventually the far greater one of bringing to pass the colonization of the East by opening its commerce to the Western world.

Bibliography.—Vasco da Gama’s First Voyage, by Dr E. Ravenstein (London, Hakluyt Society, 1898), is a translation with notes, &c., of the anonymous Roteiro (Journal or Itinerary), written by one of Vasco da Gama’s subordinates who sailed on board the “S. Raphael,” which was commanded by the admiral’s brother Paulo da Gama. This is the most important of the original authorities; five accounts of the voyage in letters contemporary with it are appended to the Hakluyt Society’s translation. See also J. de Barros, Decadas da India (Lisbon, 1778-1788, written c. 1540); F.L. de Castanheda, Historia do descobrimento da India (Coimbra, 1551, largely based on the Roteiro); The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama and his Viceroyalty, by Gaspar Correa (Hakluyt Society, 1869), chiefly valuable for the events of 1524; The Lusiads of Camoens, the central incident in which is Vasco da Gama’s first voyage; Calcoen (i.e. Calicut), a Dutch Narrative of the Second Voyage of Vasco da Gama, written by some unknown seaman of the expedition, printed at Antwerp about 1504, reprinted in facsimile, with introduction and translation, by J. Ph. Berjeau (London, 1874); Thomé Lopes, narrative (1502) in vol. i. of Ramusio.


GAMALIEL (גמליאל). This name, which in Old Testament times figures only as that of a prince of the tribe of Manasseh (vide Num. i. 10, &c.), was hereditary among the descendants of Hillel. Six persons bearing the name are known.

1. Gamaliel I., a grandson of Hillel, and like him designated Ha-Zāqēn (the Elder), by which is apparently indicated that he was numbered among the Sanhedrin, the high council of Jerusalem. According to the tradition of the schools of Palestine Gamaliel succeeded his grandfather and his father (of the latter nothing is known but his name, Simeon) as Nasi, or president of the Sanhedrin. Even if this tradition does not correspond with historic fact, it is at any rate certain that Gamaliel took a leading position in the Sanhedrin, and enjoyed the highest repute as an authority on the subject of knowledge of the Law and in the interpretation of the Scriptures. He was the first to whose name was prefixed the title Rabban (Master, Teacher). It is related in the Acts of the Apostles (v. 34 et seq.) that his voice was uplifted in the Sanhedrin in favour of the disciples of Jesus who were threatened with death, and on this occasion he is designated as a Pharisee and as being “had in reputation among all the people” (νομοδιδάσκαλος τίμιος παντὶ τῷ λαῷ). In the Mishna (Giṭṭin iv. 1-3) he is spoken of as the author of certain legal ordinances affecting the welfare of the community (the expression in the original is “tiqqun ha-‘ōlām,” i.e. improvement of the world) and regulating certain questions as to conjugal rights. In the tradition was also preserved the text of the epistles regarding the insertion of the intercalary month, which he sent to the inhabitants of Galilee and the Darom (i.e. southern Palestine) and to the Jews of the Dispersion (Sanhedrin 11b and elsewhere). He figures in two anecdotes as the religious adviser of the king and queen, i.e. Agrippa I. and his wife Cypris (Pesahim 88 b). His function as a teacher is proved by the fact that the Apostle Paul boasts of having sat at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts. xxii. 3). Of his teaching, beyond the saying preserved in Aboth i. 16, which enjoins the duty of study and of scrupulousness in the observance of religious ordinances, only a very remarkable characterization of the different natures of the scholars remains (Aboth di R. Nathan, ch. xl.). His renown in later days is summed up in the words (Mishna, end of Soṭah): “When Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died, regard for the Torah (the study of the Law) ceased, and purity and piety died.” As Gamaliel I. is the only Jewish scribe whose name is mentioned in the New Testament he became a subject of Christian legend, and a monk of the 12th century (Hermann the Premonstratensian) relates how he met Jews in Worms studying Gamaliel’s commentary on the Old Testament, thereby most probably meaning the Talmud.

2. Gamaliel II., the son of Simon ben Gamaliel, one of Jerusalem’s foremost men in the war against the Romans (vide Josephus, Bellum Jud. iv. 3, 9, Vita 38), and grandson of Gamaliel I. To distinguish him from the latter he is also called Gamaliel of Jabneh. In Jabneh (Jamnia), where during the siege of Jerusalem the scribes of the school of Hillel had taken refuge by permission of Vespasian, a new centre of Judaism arose under the leadership of the aged Johanan ben Zakkai, a school whose members inherited the authority of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. Gamaliel II. became Johanan ben Zakkai’s successor, and rendered immense service in the strengthening and reintegration of Judaism, which had been deprived of its former basis by the destruction of the Temple and by the entire loss of its political autonomy. He put an end to the division which had arisen between the spiritual leaders of Palestinian Judaism by the separation of the scribes into the two schools called respectively after Hillel and Shammai, and took care to enforce his own authority as the president of the chief legal assembly of Judaism with energy and often with severity. He did this, as he himself said, not for his own honour nor for that of his family, but in order that disunion should not prevail in Israel. Gamaliel’s position was recognized by the Roman government also. Towards the end of Domitian’s reign (c. A.D. 95) he went to Rome in company with the most prominent members of the school of Jabneh, in order to avert a danger threatening the Jews from the action of the terrible emperor. Many interesting particulars have been given regarding the journey of these learned men to Rome and their sojourn there. The impression made by the capital of the world upon Gamaliel and his companions was an overpowering one, and they wept when they thought of Jerusalem in ruins. In Rome, as at home, Gamaliel often had occasion to defend Judaism in polemical discussions with pagans, and also with professed Christians. In an anecdote regarding a suit which Gamaliel was prosecuting before a Christian judge, a converted Jew, he appeals to the Gospel and to the words of Jesus in Matt. v. 17 (Shabbath 116 a, b). Gamaliel devoted special attention to the regulation of the rite of prayer, which after the cessation of sacrificial worship had become all-important. He gave the principal prayer, consisting of eighteen benedictions, its final revision, and declared it every Israelite’s duty to recite it three times daily. He was on friendly terms with many who were not Jews, and was so warmly devoted to his slave Tabi that when the latter died he mourned for him as for a beloved member of his own family. He loved discussing the sense of single portions of the Bible with other scholars, and made many fine expositions of the text. With the words of Deut. xiii. 18 he associated the lesson: “So long as thou thyself art merciful, God will also be merciful to thee.” Gamaliel died before the insurrections under Trajan had brought fresh unrest into Palestine. At his funeral obsequies the celebrated proselyte Aquila (Akylas Onkelos), reviving an ancient custom, burned costly materials to the value of seventy minae. Gamaliel himself had given directions that his body was to be wrapped in the simplest possible shroud. By this he wished to check the extravagance which had become associated with arrangements for the disposal of the dead, and his end was attained; for his example became the rule, and it also became the custom to commemorate him in the words of consolation addressed to the mourners (Kethub. 8 b). Gamaliel’s son, Simon, long after his father’s death, and after the persecutions under Hadrian, inherited his office, which thenceforward his descendants handed on from father to son.

3. Gamaliel III., son of Jehuda I. the redactor of the Mishna, and his successor as Nasi (patriarch). The redaction of the Mishna was completed under him, and some of his sayings are incorporated therein (Aboth ii. 2-4). One of these runs as follows: “Beware of those in power, for they permit men to approach them only for their own uses; they behave as friends when it is for their advantage, but they do not stand by a man when he is in need.” Evidently this was directed against the self-seeking of the Roman government. Gamaliel III. lived during the first half of the 3rd century.

4. Gamaliel IV., grandson of the above, patriarch in the latter half of the 3rd century: about him very little is known.

5. Gamaliel V., son and successor of the patriarch Hillel II.: beyond his name nothing is known of him. He lived in the latter half of the 4th century. He is the patriarch Gamaliel whom Jerome mentions in his letter to Pamachius, written in 393.

6. Gamaliel VI., grandson of the above, the last of the patriarchs, died in 425. With him expired the office, which had already been robbed of its privileges by a decree of the emperors Honorius and Theodosius II. (dated the 17th of October 415). Gamaliel VI. was also a physician, and a celebrated remedy of his is mentioned by his contemporary Marcellus (De Medicamentis, liber 21).

(W. Ba.)


GAMBETTA, LÉON (1838-1882), French statesman, was born at Cahors on the 2nd of April 1838. His father, a Genoese, who had established himself as a grocer and had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie, is said to have been his son’s prototype in vigour and fluency of speech. In his sixteenth year young Gambetta lost by an accident the sight of his left eye, which eventually had to be removed. Notwithstanding this privation, he highly distinguished himself at the public school of Cahors, and in 1857 proceeded to Paris to study law. His southern vehemence gave him great influence among the students of the Quartier Latin, and he was soon known as an inveterate enemy of the imperial government. He was called to the bar in 1859, but, although contributing to a Liberal review, edited by Challemel Lacour, did not make much way until, on the 17th of November 1868, he was selected to defend the journalist Delescluze, prosecuted for having promoted the erection of a monument to the representative Baudin, who was killed in resisting the coup d’état of 1851. Gambetta seized his opportunity and assailed both the coup d’état and the government with an eloquence of invective which made him immediately famous.

In May 1869 he was returned to the Assembly, both by the first circumscription of Paris and by Marseilles, defeating Hippolyte Carnot for the former constituency and Thiers and Lesseps for the latter. He elected to sit for Marseilles, and lost no opportunity of attacking the Empire in the Assembly. He was at first opposed to the war with Germany, but when satisfied that it had been forced upon France he did not, like some of his colleagues, refuse to vote supplies, but took the patriotic line of supporting the flag. When the news of the disaster at Sedan reached Paris, Gambetta called for strong measures. He himself proclaimed the fall of the emperor at the corps législatif, and the establishment of a republic at the hôtel de ville. He was one of the first members of the new government of national defence, becoming minister of the interior. He advised his colleagues to leave Paris and conduct the government from some provincial city. This advice was rejected from dread of another revolution in Paris, and a delegation to organize resistance in the provinces was despatched to Tours, but when this was seen to be inefficient Gambetta himself (7th October) quitted Paris in a balloon, and upon arriving at Tours took the supreme direction of affairs as minister of the interior and of war. Aided by M. de Freycinet, then a young officer of engineers, as his assistant secretary of war, he displayed prodigies of energy and intelligence. He speedily organized an army, which might possibly have effected the relief of Paris if Metz had held out, but the surrender of Bazaine brought the army of the crown prince into the field, and success was impossible. After the defeats of the French near Orleans early in December the seat of government had to be transferred to Bordeaux, and when Paris surrendered at the end of January, Gambetta, though resisting and protesting, was compelled to submit to the capitulation concluded with Prince Bismarck. He immediately resigned his office. Elected by nine departments to the National Assembly meeting at Bordeaux (on the 1st of March 1871) he chose to sit for Strassburg, which by the terms of the treaty about to be submitted to the Assembly for ratification was to be ceded to Prussia, and when the treaty was adopted he resigned in protest and retired to Spain.

He returned to France in June, was elected by three departments in July, and commenced an agitation for the definitive establishment of the Republic. On the 5th of November 1871 he established a journal, La République française, which soon became the most influential in France. His orations at public meetings were more effective than those delivered in the Assembly, especially that made at Bordeaux on his return, and that at Grenoble on the 26th of November 1872, in which he spoke of political power having passed to les nouvelles couches sociales. When Thiers, however, fell from power in May 1873, and a Royalist was placed at the head of the government in the person of Marshal MacMahon, Gambetta gave proof of his statesmanship by unceasingly urging his friends to a moderate course, and by his tact and parliamentary dexterity, no less than by his eloquence, he was mainly instrumental in the voting of the constitution in February 1875. This policy he continued during the early days of the now consolidated Republic, and gave it the appropriate name of “opportunism.” It was not until the 4th of May 1877, when the peril from reactionary intrigues was notorious, and the clerical party had begun a campaign for the restoration of the temporal power of the pope, that he delivered his famous speech denouncing “clericalism” as “the enemy.” On the 16th of May Marshal MacMahon, in order to support the clerical reactionaries, perpetrated his parliamentary coup d’état, and on the 15th of August Gambetta, in a speech at Lille, gave him the alternative se soumettre ou se démettre. He then undertook a political campaign to rouse the republican party throughout France, which culminated in a speech at Romans (September 18, 1878) formulating its programme. MacMahon, equally unwilling to resign or to provoke civil war, had no choice but to dismiss his advisers and form a moderate republican ministry under the premiership of Dufaure.

When the resignation of the Dufaure cabinet brought about the abdication of Marshal MacMahon, Gambetta declined to become a candidate for the presidency, but gave his support to Grévy; nor did he attempt to form a ministry, but accepted the office of president of the chamber of deputies (January 1879). This position, which he filled with much ability, did not prevent his occasionally descending from the presidential chair to make speeches, one of which, advocating an amnesty to the communards, was especially memorable. Although he really directed the policy of the various ministries, he evidently thought that the time was not ripe for asserting openly his own claims to direct the policy of the Republic, and seemed inclined to observe a neutral attitude as far as possible; but events hurried him on, and early in 1881 he placed himself at the head of a movement for restoring scrutin de liste, or the system by which deputies are returned by the entire department which they represent, so that each elector votes for several representatives at once, in place of scrutin d’arrondissement, the system of small constituencies, giving one member to each district and one vote to each elector. A bill to re-establish scrutin de liste was passed by the Assembly on 19th May 1881, but rejected by the Senate on the 19th of June.

But this personal rebuff could not alter the fact that in the country his was the name which was on the lips of the voters at the election. His supporters were in a large majority, and on the reassembling of the chamber, the Ferry cabinet quickly resigned. Gambetta was unwillingly entrusted by Grévy on the 14th of November 1881 with the formation of a ministry—known as Le Grand Ministère. He now experienced the Nemesis of his over-cautious system of abstinence from office for fear of compromising his popularity. Every one suspected him of aiming at a dictatorship; attacks, not the less formidable for their injustice, were directed against him from all sides, and his cabinet fell on the 26th of January 1882, after an existence of only sixty-six days. Had he remained in office his declarations leave no doubt that he would have cultivated the British alliance and cooperated with Great Britain in Egypt; and when the Freycinet administration, which succeeded, shrank from that enterprise only to see it undertaken with signal success by England alone, Gambetta’s foresight was quickly justified. His fortunes were presenting a most interesting problem when, on the 31st of December 1882, at his house in Ville d’Avray, near Sèvres, he died by a shot from a revolver which accidentally went off. Then all France awoke to a sense of her obligation to him, and his public funeral on the 6th of January 1883 evoked one of the most overwhelming displays of national sentiment ever witnessed on a similar occasion.

Gambetta rendered France three inestimable services: by preserving her self-respect through the gallantry of the resistance he organized during the German War, by his tact in persuading extreme partisans to accept a moderate Republic, and by his energy in overcoming the usurpation attempted by the advisers of Marshal MacMahon. His death, at the early age of forty-four, cut short a career which had given promise of still greater things, for he had real statesmanship in his conceptions of the future of his country, and he had an eloquence which would have been potent in the education of his supporters. The romance of his life was his connexion with Léonie Léon (d. 1906), the full details of which were not known to the public till her death. This lady, with whom Gambetta fell in love in 1871, was the daughter of a French artillery officer. She became his mistress, and the liaison lasted till he died. Gambetta himself constantly urged her to marry him during this period, but she always refused, fearing to compromise his career; she remained, however, his confidante and intimate adviser in all his political plans. It is understood that at last she had just consented to become his wife, and the date of the marriage had been fixed, when the accident which caused his death occurred in her presence. Contradictory accounts have indeed been given as to this fatal episode, but that it was accidental, and not suicide, is certain. On Gambetta the influence of Léonie was absorbing, both as lover and as politician, and the correspondence which has been published shows how much he depended upon her. But in various matters of detail the serious student of political history must be cautious in accepting her later recollections, some of which have been embodied in the writings of M. Francis Laur, such as that an actual interview took place in 1878 between Gambetta and Bismarck. That Gambetta after 1875 felt strongly that the relations between France and Germany might be improved, and that he made it his object, by travelling incognito, to become better acquainted with Germany and the adjoining states, may be accepted, but M. Laur appears to have exaggerated the extent to which any actual negotiations took place. On the other hand, the increased knowledge of Gambetta’s attitude towards European politics which later information has supplied confirms the view that in him France lost prematurely a master mind, whom she could ill spare. In April 1905 a monument by Dalou to his memory at Bordeaux was unveiled by President Loubet.

Gambetta’s Discours et plaidoyers politiques were published by J. Reinach in 11 vols. (Paris, 1881-1886); his Dépêches, circulaires, décrets ... in 2 vols. (Paris, 1886-1891). Many biographies have appeared. The principal are J. Reinach, Léon Gambetta (1884), Gambetta orateur (1884) and Le Ministère Gambetta, histoire et doctrine (1884); Neucastel, Gambetta, sa vie, et ses idées politiques (1885); J. Hanlon, Gambetta (London, 1881); Dr Laborde, Léon Gambetta biographie psychologique (1898); P.B. Gheusi, Gambetta, Life and Letters (Eng. trans. by V.M. Montagu, 1910). See also G. Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine (1903, &c.). F. Laur’s Le Cœur de Gambetta (1907, Eng. trans., 1908) contains the correspondence with Léonie Léon; see also his articles on “Gambetta and Bismarck” in The Times of August 17 and 19, 1907, with the correspondence arising from them.

(H. Ch.)


GAMBIA, an important river of West Africa, and the only river of Africa navigable by ocean-going boats at all seasons for over 200 m. from its mouth. It rises in about 11° 25′ N. and 12° 15′ W., within 150 m. of the sea on the north-eastern escarpment of the Futa Jallon highlands, the massif where also rise the head-streams of the Senegal and some of the Niger tributaries, besides the Rio Grande and many other rivers flowing direct to the Gulf of Guinea. The Gambia, especially in its lower course, is very serpentine, and although the distance from the source to the mouth of the river is little more than 300 m. in a direct line, the total length of the stream is about 1000 m. It flows first N.N.E., receiving many left-hand tributaries, but about 12° 35′ N. takes a sharp bend N.W. and maintains this direction until it leaves the fertile and hilly region of Bondu. The descent to the lower district is marked by the Barraconda rapids, formed by a ledge of rock stretching across the river. Between 30 and 50 m. above the falls the Gambia is joined by two considerable affluents, the Nieriko from the north and the Kuluntu or Grey river from the south. From the Barraconda rapids to the Atlantic the Gambia has a course of about 350 m. Throughout this distance the waters are tidal, and the river is navigable all the year round by boats drawing 6 ft. of water. At Yarbatenda, a few miles below Barraconda, the river has a breadth, even at the dry season, of over 300 ft., with a depth of 13 to 20 ft. From the falls to McCarthy’s Island, a distance of 200 m., the river valley, which here presents a park-like appearance, is enclosed by low rocky hills of volcanic character. For 50 m. below the island, where the stream is about 800 yds. wide, the banks of the river are steep and thickly wooded. They then become low and are fringed with mangrove swamps. From Devil’s Point, a sharp promontory on the north bank—up to which place the water is salt—the river widens considerably and enters the Atlantic, in about 13½° N. and 16½° W., by a broad estuary. Near the mouth of the river on the south side is St Mary’s Island (3½ m. long by 1½ broad), and opposite on the north bank is Barra Point, the river being here contracted to 2½ m. Eighteen miles lower down the distance from shore to shore is 27 m. There is a sand-bar at the entrance to the river, but at the lowest state of the tide there are 26 ft. of water over the bar. The Gambia is in flood from November to June, when the Barraconda rapids are navigable by small boats. Above the rapids the stream is navigable for 160 m. Politically the Gambia is divided between Great Britain and France—Britain possessing both banks of the river up to, but not including, Yarbatenda.

The Gambia was one of the rivers passed by Hanno the Carthaginian in his famous voyage along the west coast of Africa. It was known to Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers, and was at one time supposed to be a mouth of the Nile, and, later (18th century), a branch of the Niger. It was possibly visited by Genoese navigators in 1291, and was certainly discovered by the Portuguese c. 1446, but was first explored for any distance from its mouth (1455) by the Venetian Alvise Cadamosto (q.v.), who published an account of his travels at Vicenza in 1507 (La Prima Navigazione per l’Oceano alle terre de’ Negri della Bassa Ethiopia). Afterwards the Gambia became a starting-place for explorers of the interior, among them Mungo Park, who began both his journeys (1795 and 1805) from this river. It was not until 1818 that the sources of the Gambia were reached, the discovery being made by a Frenchman, Gaspard Mollien, who had travelled by way of the Senegal and Bondu. The middle course of the river was explored in 1851 by R.G. MacDonnell, then governor of the Gambia colony, and in 1881 Dr V.S. Gouldsbury also navigated its middle course. No native craft of any kind was seen above Barraconda. The more correct name of the river is Gambra, and it is so called in old books of travel.

See Mungo Park’s Travels (London, 1799); G. Mollien, Travels ... to the Sources of the Senegal and Gambia ..., edited by T.E. Bowdich (London, 1820); the account of Dr Gouldsbury’s journey in the Blue Book C 3065 (1881); also under the country heading below.


GAMBIA, the most northerly of the British West African dependencies. It consists of a stretch of land on both sides of the lower Gambia. The colony, with the protectorate dependent upon it, has an area of about 4000 sq. m. and a population officially estimated (1907) at 163,000. The colony proper (including St Mary’s Island, British Kommbo, the Ceded Mile, McCarthy’s Island and other islets) has an area of about 69 sq. m. The protectorate consists of a strip of land extending ten kilometres (about 6 m.) on each side of the river to a distance of about 200 m. in a direct line from the sea. The land outside these limits is French. Within the protectorate are various petty kingdoms, such as Barra, to the north of the Gambia, and Kommbo, to the south. The breadth of the colony near the coast is somewhat greater than it is higher up. The greatest breadth is 39 m.

Physical Features, Fauna and Flora.—The colony, as its name implies, derives its character and value from the river Gambia (q.v.), which is navigable throughout and beyond the limits of the colony, while large ocean-going ships can always cross the bar at its mouth and enter the port of Bathurst. Away from the swamps by the river banks, the country is largely “bush.” The region above McCarthy’s Island is hilly. Much of the land is cleared for cultivation. The fauna includes lions, leopards, several kinds of deer, monkeys, bush-cow and wild boar. Hippopotami are found in the upper part of the river, and crocodiles abound in the creeks. The birds most common are bush-fowl, bustards, guinea-fowl, quail, pigeon and sand-grouse. Bees are very numerous in parts of the country. The flora resembles that of West Africa generally, the mangrove being common. Mahogany and rosewood (Pterocarpus erinaceus) trees are found, though not in large numbers, and the rubber-vine and oil-palm are also comparatively scarce. There are many varieties of fern. The cassava (manioca) and indigo plants are indigenous.

Climate.—The climate during the dry season (November-June) is the best on the British West African coast, and the Gambia is then considered fairly healthy. Measures for the extermination of the malarial mosquito are carried on with good effect. The mean temperature at Bathurst is 77° F., the shade minimum being 56° and the solar maximum 165°. Upriver the variation in temperature is even greater than at Bathurst, from 50° in the morning to 100°-104° at 3 P.M. being common at McCarthy’s Isle. The average rainfall is about 50 in. a year, but save for showers in May and June there is rarely any rain except between July and October. The first instance of rain in December in twenty-six years was recorded in 1906. The dry east wind known as the harmattan blows intermittently from December to March.

Inhabitants.—The inhabitants, who are both thrifty and industrious, are almost entirely of Negro or Negroid race, the chief tribes represented being the Mandingo (q.v.), the Jolof and the Jola. Numbers of Fula (q.v.) are also settled in the country. Fully four-fifths of the natives are Mahommedans. The few European residents are officials, traders or missionaries.

Towns and Trade.—Bathurst, pop. about 8000, the chief town of the colony, in 13° 24′ N., 16° 36′ W., is built on St Mary’s Island, which lies at the mouth of the river near its south bank and is connected with the mainland by a bridge across Oyster Creek. It was founded in 1816 and is named after the 3rd earl Bathurst, secretary of state for the colonies from 1812 to 1827. Bathurst is a fairly well-built town, the chief material employed being red sandstone. It lies about 12 to 14 ft. above the level of the river. The principal buildings face the sea, and include Government House, barracks, a well-appointed hospital, founded by Sir R.G. MacDonnell (administrator, 1847-1852), and various churches. The market-place is shaded by a fine avenue of bombax and other wide-spreading trees. There are no other towns of any size in the Gambia. A trading station called Georgetown is situated on McCarthy’s Island, so named after Sir Charles McCarthy, the governor of Sierra Leone, who in 1824 was captured and beheaded by the Ashanti at the battle of Essamako. Albreda, a small port on the north bank of the river, of some historic interest (see below), is in the Barra district.

Products.—Ground-nuts (Arachis hypogaea), rubber, beeswax, palm kernels, rice, cotton, and millet are the chief productions. Millet and rice are the staple food of the people. The curing of hides, the catching and drying of fish, boat-building, and especially the weaving of cotton into cloths called “pagns,” afford employment to a considerable number of persons. Formerly the principal exports, besides slaves, were gold-dust, wax and hides, the gold being obtained from the Futa Jallon district farther inland. Between 1830 and 1840 from 1500 to 2000 oz. of gold were exported annually, but shipments ceased soon afterwards, though small quantities of gold-dust can still be obtained from native goldsmiths. The export of hides received a severe check in 1892-1893 through the death of nearly all the cattle, but after an interval of seven or eight years the industry gradually revived. The value of hides exported increased from £520 in 1902 to £9615 in 1907. The collection of rubber was started about 1880, but the trade has not assumed large proportions. In 1907 the value of the rubber exported was £4602. The export of wax, valued at £37,000 in 1843, had dwindled in 1907 to £2325. The cultivation of the ground-nut, first exported in 1830, assumed importance by 1837, and by 1850 had become the chief industry of the colony. In 1907 the value of the nuts was £256,685, over 11⁄12 of the total exports (exclusive of specie). Nearly the whole male population is engaged in the industry for eight months of the year. Planted in June, after the early rains, the crop is reaped in October or November and exported to Europe (4⁄5 to Marseilles) for the extraction of its oil, which is usually sold as olive oil. A feature of the industry is the appearance at the beginning of the planting season of thousands of men from a distance, “strange farmers,” as they are called, who are housed and fed and given farms to cultivate. In return they have to give half the produce to the landlords. As soon as he has sold his nuts, the “strange farmer” goes off, often not returning for years.

Apart from the cultivation of the ground-nut, the agricultural resources of the country are undeveloped. Large herds of cattle are kept by the Fula, and in cattle rich natives usually invest their wealth. Land can be hired for 2d. an acre per annum for twenty-one years. All land lying vacant or unused, or to which the occupier is unable to produce any title, is vested in the crown. A botanical station was opened in 1894, and the cultivation of American and Egyptian cotton was taken in hand in 1902. The experiment proved discouraging. Great difficulty was experienced in getting farmers to grow cotton for export, as unless carried on on highly scientific lines its cultivation is not so profitable as that of the ground-nut. The principal imports, of which over 2⁄3 come from Great Britain or British colonies, are cotton goods, kola-nuts (from Sierra Leone), tobacco, rice, sugar and spirits. In the ten years 1898 to 1907 the average annual value of the exports was £301,000, of the imports £316,000. There are no mines in the colony, nor any apparent mineral wealth, except ridges of ironstone in the regions above McCarthy’s Island. Bathurst is in telegraphic communication with Europe and the rest of Africa. There are no railways in the colony, but it is traversed by well-made roads of a uniform width of 18 ft. The Liverpool mail steamers call at the port every fortnight. A government steamer runs regularly from Bathurst to McCarthy’s Island, and a smaller boat plies on the upper river. The shipping trade is chiefly British; French and German tonnage coming next.

Surrounded on all sides, save seawards, by French territory, the colony largely depends, economically, upon France, to which country most of the exports go. A considerable entrepôt trade is also done with the neighbouring French colonies. The extent of French influence is indicated by the fact that the five-franc piece, locally known as a dollar, is largely circulated throughout the protectorate, and is accepted as legal tender, although the currency in the colony proper is the English coinage.

Administration, Revenue, &c.—The Gambia is administered by a governor, assisted by an executive and a legislative council. On the last-named body nominated unofficial members have seats. The colony is self-supporting and has no public debt. The revenue, which in 1906 for the first time exceeded £60,000, is mainly derived from customs. A company of the West African Frontier Force is maintained. Travelling commissioners visit the five districts into which, for administrative purposes, the protectorate is divided, and in which the native form of government prevails. From the native law-courts appeal can be made to the supreme court at Bathurst. There is also at Bathurst a Mahommedan court, established in 1906, for the trial of cases involving the civil status of Moslems.

Primary schools are maintained by the various religious denominations, and receive grants from government. The Wesleyans have also a secondary and a technical school. There is a privately supported school for Mahommedans at Bathurst. The Anglicans, Wesleyans and Roman Catholics have numerous converts.

History.—Of the early history of the Gambia district there is scant mention. At what period the stone circles and pillars (apparently of a “Druidical” character), whose ruins are found at several places along the upper Gambia, were erected is not known. Those at Lamin Koto, on the right bank of the river opposite McCarthy’s Island, are still in good preservation, and are an object of veneration to the Mahommedans (see Geog. Journ. vol. xii., 1898). The country appears to have formed part, successively, of the states of Ghana, Melle and Songhoi. The relations, political and commercial, of the natives were all with the north and east; consequently no large town was founded on the banks of the river, nor any trade carried on (before the coming of the white man) by vessels sailing the ocean. About the 11th century the district came under Mahommedan influence.

The Portuguese visited the Gambia in the 15th century, and in the beginning of the 16th century were trading in the lower river. Embassies were sent from the Portuguese stations inland to Melle to open up trade with the interior, but about the middle of the century this trade—apparently mostly in gold and slaves—declined. At the end of the century the river was known as the resort of banished men and fugitives from Portugal and Spain. It was on the initiative of Portuguese living in England that Queen Elizabeth, in 1588, granted a patent to “certain merchants of Exeter and others of the west parts and of London for a trade to the river of Senega and Gambra in Guinea.” This company was granted a monopoly of trade for ten years. Its operations led to no permanent settlement in the Gambia. In 1618 James I. granted a charter to another company named “The Company of Adventurers of London trading into Africa,” and formed at the instigation of Sir Robert Rich, afterwards earl of Warwick, for trade with the Gambia and the Gold Coast. This company sought to open up trade with Timbuktu, then believed to be a great mart for gold, which reached the lower Gambia in considerable quantities. With this object George Thompson (a merchant who had traded with Barbary) was sent out in the “Catherine,” and ascended the Gambia in his ship to Kassan, a Portuguese trading town, thence continuing his journey in small boats. In his absence the “Catherine” was seized and the crew murdered by Portuguese and half-castes, and Thompson himself was later on murdered by natives. Two years afterwards Richard Jobson, another agent of the Company of Adventurers, advanced beyond the falls of Barraconda; and he was followed, about forty years later, by Vermuyden, a Dutch merchant, who on his return to Europe asserted that he had reached a country full of gold.

The Company of Adventurers had built a fort near the mouth of the Gambia. This was superseded in 1664 by a fort built by Captain (afterwards Admiral Sir Robert) Holmes on a small island 20 m. from the mouth of the river and named Fort James, in honour of the duke of York (James II.). This fort was built expressly to defend the British trade against the Dutch, and from that time the British remained in permanent occupation of one or more ports on the river. In 1723 Captain Bartholomew Stibbs was sent out by the Royal African Company, which had succeeded the earlier companies, to verify Vermuyden’s reports of gold. He proceeded 60 m. above the falls, but the land of gold was not found. The French now became rivals for the trade of the Gambia, but the treaty of Versailles in 1783 assigned the trade in the river to Britain, reserving, however, Albreda for French trade, while it assigned the Senegal to France, with the reservation of the right of the British to trade at Portendic for gum. This arrangement remained in force till 1857, when an exchange of possessions was effected and the lower Gambia became a purely British river. In the period between the signing of the treaty of Versailles and 1885 the small territories which form the colony proper were acquired by purchase or cession from native kings. St Mary’s Isle was acquired in 1806; McCarthy’s Isle was bought in 1823; the Ceded Mile was granted by the king of Barra in 1826; and British Kommbo between 1840 and 1855. During this period the colony had gone through an economic crisis by the abolition of the slave trade (1807), which had been since 1662 its chief financial support. The beginning of a return to prosperity came in 1816 when some British traders, obliged to leave Senegal on the restoration of that country to France after the Napoleonic wars, founded a settlement on St Mary’s Isle. From that year the existing colony, as distinct from trading on the river, dates. The Gambia witnessed many administrative changes. When the slave trade was abolished, the settlement was placed under the jurisdiction of the governor of Sierra Leone, and was formally annexed to Sierra Leone on the dissolution of the Royal African Company (1822). It so remained until 1843, when the Gambia was made an independent colony, its first governor being Henry Frowd Seagram. Afterwards (1866) the Gambia became a portion of the officially styled “West African Settlements.” In 1883 it was again made a separate government, administered as a crown colony. Between the years last mentioned—1866-1888—the colony had suffered from the retrograde policy adopted by parliament in respect to the West African Settlements (vide Report of the Select Committee of 1865).

In 1870 negotiations were opened between France and Great Britain on the basis of a mutual exchange of territories in West Africa. Suspended owing to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War the negotiations were resumed in 1876. “Definite proposals were at that time formulated by which the Gambia was to be exchanged for all posts by France between the Rio Pongas (Pongo river, French Guinea) and the Gabun. This would have been a comprehensive and intelligible arrangement, but so strong a feeling in opposition to any cession of British territory was manifested in parliament, and by various mercantile bodies, that the government of the day was unable to press the scheme.” Nothing was done, however, to secure for the Gambia a suitable hinterland, and in 1877 the 4th earl of Carnarvon (then colonial secretary) warned British traders that they proceeded beyond McCarthy’s Isle at their own risk. Meantime the French from Senegal pushed their frontier close to the British settlements, so that when the boundaries were settled by the agreement of the 10th of August 1889 with France, Great Britain was able to secure only a ten-kilometre strip on either side of the river. This document fixed the frontier of the British protectorate inland at a radius of 10 m. from the centre of the town of Yarbatenda; which town is situated at the limit of navigability of the Gambia from the sea. By Art. 5 of the Anglo-French convention of the 8th of April 1904, Yarbatenda was ceded to France, with the object of giving that country a port on the river accessible to sea-going merchantmen.

Since 1871 the colony had been self-supporting, but on the acquirement of the protectorate it was decided, in order to balance increasing expenditure, to impose a “hut tax” on the natives. This was done in 1895. The tax, which averages 4s. per annum for a family, met with no opposition.

In 1892 a slave-raiding chief, named Fodi Kabba, had to be forcibly expelled from British territory. In 1894 another slave-raider, Fodi Silah, gave much trouble to the protectorate. An expedition under Captain E.H. (afterwards admiral) Gamble succeeded in routing him, and Fodi Silah took refuge in French territory, where he died. During the expedition Captain Gamble was led into an ambush, and in this engagement lost 15 killed and 47 wounded. In 1900 trouble again arose through the agency of Fodi Kabba, who had fixed his residence at Medina, in French territory. Two travelling commissioners (Mr F.C. Sitwell and Mr Silva) were murdered in June of that year, at a place called Suankandi, and a punitive expedition was sent out under Colonel H.E. Brake. Suankandi was captured and, the French co-operating, Medina was also captured, Fodi Kabba being killed on the 23rd of March 1901.

The people of the protectorate are in general peaceful and contented, and slave trading is a thing of the past. Provision was moreover made by an ordinance of 1906 for the extinction of slavery itself throughout the protectorate, it being enacted that henceforth all children born of slaves were free from birth, and that all slaves became free on the death of their master.

See the Annual Reports on the colony published by the colonial office, London, which give the latest official information; C.P. Lucas’s Historical Geography of the British Colonies, vol. iii., West Africa (2nd ed., Oxford, 1900) (this book contains valuable bibliographical notes); and The Gambia Colony and Protectorate, an official handbook (with map and considerable historical information), by F.B. Archer, treasurer of the colony (London, 1906). Early accounts of the country will be found in vol. ii. of Thomas Astley’s New General Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1745-1747). See also Major W. Gray and Surgeon Dochard, Travels in Western Africa in 1818-1821, from the River Gambia ... to the River Niger (London, 1829). The flora has been the subject of a special study, A. Rançon, La Flore utile du bassin de la Gambie (Bordeaux, 1895). Most of the books mentioned under Gold Coast also deal with the Gambia.


Extract from a despatch of Lord Salisbury to the British ambassador to France, dated 30th of March 1892.


GAMBIER, JAMES GAMBIER, Baron (1756-1833), English admiral, was born on the 13th of October 1756 at the Bahamas, of which his father, John Gambier, was at that time lieutenant-governor. He entered the navy in 1767 as a midshipman on board the “Yarmouth,” under the command of his uncle; and, his family interest obtaining for him rapid promotion, he was raised in 1778 to the rank cf post-captain, and appointed to the “Raleigh,” a fine 32-gun frigate. At the peace of 1783 he was placed on half-pay; but, on the outbreak of the war of the French Revolution, he was appointed to the command of the 74-gun ship “Defence,” under Lord Howe; and in her he had an honourable share in the battle on the 1st of June 1794. In recognition of his services on this occasion, Captain Gambier received the gold medal, and was made a colonel of marines; the following year he was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral, and appointed one of the lords of the admiralty. In this office he continued for six years, till, in February 1801, he, a vice-admiral of 1799, hoisted his flag on board the “Neptune,” of 98 guns, as third in command of the Channel Fleet under Admiral Cornwallis, where, however, he remained for but a year, when he was appointed governor of Newfoundland and commander-in-chief of the ships on that station. In May 1804 he returned to the admiralty, and with a short intermission in 1806, continued there during the naval administration of Lord Melville, of his uncle, Lord Barham, and of Lord Mulgrave. In November 1805 he was raised to the rank of admiral; and in the summer of 1807, whilst still a lord of the admiralty, he was appointed to the command of the fleet ordered to the Baltic, which, in concert with the army under Lord Cathcart, reduced Copenhagen, and enforced the surrender of the Danish navy, consisting of nineteen ships of the line, besides frigates, sloops, gunboats, and naval stores. This service was considered by the government as worthy of special acknowledgment; the naval and military commanders, officers, seamen and soldiers received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, and Admiral Gambier was rewarded with a peerage.

In the spring of the following year he gave up his seat at the admiralty on being appointed to the command of the Channel Fleet; and in that capacity he witnessed the partial, and prevented the total, destruction of the French fleet in Basque Roads, on the 12th of April 1809. It is in connexion with this event, which might have been as memorable in the history of the British navy as it is in the life of Lord Dundonald (see Dundonald), that Lord Gambier’s name is now best known. A court-martial, assembled by order of a friendly admiralty, and presided over by a warm partisan, “most honourably acquitted” him on the charge “that, on the 12th of April, the enemy’s ships being then on fire, and the signal having been made that they could be destroyed, he did, for a considerable time, neglect or delay taking effectual measures for destroying them”; but this decision was in reality nothing more than a party statement of the fact that a commander-in-chief, a supporter of the government, is not to be condemned or broken for not being a person of brilliant genius or dauntless resolution. No one now doubts that the French fleet should have been reduced to ashes, and might have been, had Lord Gambier had the talents, the energy, or the experience of many of his juniors. He continued to hold the command of the Channel Fleet for the full period of three years, at the end of which time—in 1811—he was superseded. In 1814 he acted in a civil capacity as chief commissioner for negotiating a treaty of peace with the United States; for his exertions in which business he was honoured with the Grand Cross of the Bath. In 1830 he was raised to the high rank of admiral of the fleet, and he died on the 19th of April 1833.

Lord Gambier was a man of earnest, almost morbid, religious principle, and of undoubted courage; but the administration of the admiralty has seldom given rise to such flagrant scandals as during the time when he was a member of it; and through the whole war the self-esteem of the navy suffered no such wound as during Lord Gambier’s command in the Bay of Biscay.

The so-called Memorials, Personal and Historical, of Admiral Lord Gambier, by Lady Chatterton (1861), has no historical value. The life of Lord Gambier is to be read in Marshall’s Royal Naval Biography, in Ralfe’s Naval Biography, in Lord Dundonald’s Autobiography of a Seaman, in the Minutes of the Courts-Martial and in the general history of the period.


GAMBIER, a village of College township, Knox county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Kokosing river, 5 m. E. of Mount Vernon. Pop. (1900) 751; (1910) 537. It is served by the Cleveland, Akron & Columbus railway. The village is finely situated, and is the seat of Kenyon College and its theological seminary, Bexley Hall (Protestant Episcopal), and of Harcourt Place boarding school for girls (1889), also Protestant Episcopal. The college was incorporated in 1824 as the “Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio”; but in 1891 “Kenyon College,” the name by which the institution has always been known, became the official title. Its first exercises were held at Worthington, Ohio, in the home of Philander Chase (1775-1852), first Protestant Episcopal bishop in the North-west Territory, by whose efforts the funds for its endowment had been raised in England in 1823-1824, the chief donors being Lords Kenyon and Gambier. The first permanent building, “Old Kenyon” (still standing, and used as a dormitory), was erected on Gambier Hill in 1827 in the midst of a forest. In 1907-1908 the theological seminary had 18 students and the collegiate department 119.

Some account of the founding of the college may be found in Bishop Chase’s Reminiscences; an Autobiography, comprising a History of the Principal Events in the Author’s Life to 1847 (2 vols., New York, 1848).


GAMBOGE (from Camboja, a name of the district whence it is obtained), a gum-resin procured from Garcinia Hanburii, a dioecious tree with leathery, laurel-like leaves, small yellow flowers, and usually square-shaped and four-seeded fruit, a member of the natural order Guttiferae, and indigenous to Cambodia and parts of Siam and of the south of Cochin China, formerly comprised in Cambojan territory. The juice, which when hardened constitutes gamboge, is contained in the bark of the tree, chiefly in numerous ducts in its middle layer, and from this it is procured by making incisions, bamboo joints being placed to receive it as it exudes. Gamboge occurs in commerce in cylindrical pieces, known as pipe or roll gamboge, and also, usually of inferior quality, in cakes or amorphous masses. It is of a dirty orange externally; is hard and brittle, breaks with a conchoidal and reddish-yellow, glistening fracture, and affords a brilliant yellow powder; is odourless, and has a taste at first slight, but subsequently acrid; forms with water an emulsion; and consists of from 20 to 25% of gum soluble in water, and from 70 to 75% of a resin. Its commonest adulterants are rice-flour and pulverized bark.

Gamboge (Cambogia) is a drastic hydragogue cathartic, causing much griping and irritation of the intestine. A small quantity is absorbed, adding a yellow ingredient to the urine and acting as a mild diuretic. Its irritant action on the skin may cause the formation of pustules. It is less active only than croton oil and elaterium, and may be given in doses of half to two grains, combined with some sedative such as hyoscyamus, in apoplexy and in extreme cases of dropsy. Gamboge is used as a pigment, and as a colouring matter for varnishes. It appears to have been first brought into Europe by merchants from the East at the close of the 16th century.


GAMBRINUS, a mythical Flemish king who is credited with the first brewing of beer. His name is usually derived from that of Jan Primus, i.e. Jan (John) I., the victorious duke of Brabant, from 1261 to 1294, who was president of the Brussels gild of brewers; his portrait with a foaming glass of ale in his hand had the place of honour in the gild-hall, and this led in time, it is suggested, to the myth of the beer-king who is usually represented outside a barrel with a tankard in his hand.


GAME, a word which in its primary and widest significance means any amusement or sport, often combined in the early examples with “glee,” “play,” “joy” or “solace.” It is a common Teutonic word, in O. Eng. gamen, in O.H.G. gaman, but only appears in modern usage outside English in Dan. gammen and Swed. gamman. The ulterior derivation is obscure, but philologists have identified it with the Goth. gaman, companion or companionship; if this be so, it is compounded of the prefix ga-, with, and the root seen in “man.” Apart from its primary and general meaning the word has two specific applications, first to a contest played as a recreation or as an exhibition of skill, in accordance with rules and regulations; and, secondly, to those wild animals which are the objects of the chase, and their flesh as used for food, distinguished as such from meat, fish and poultry, and from the flesh of deer, to which the name “venison” is given. For “game,” from the legal aspect, and the laws relating to its pursuit and capture see Game Laws. The athletic contests of the ancient Greeks (ἀγῶνες) and the public shows (ludi) of the arena and amphitheatre of the ancient Romans are treated below (Games, Classical); the various forms of modern games, indoor and outdoor, whether of skill, strength or chance, are dealt with under their specific titles. A special use (“gaming” or “gambling”) restricts the term to the playing of games for money, or to betting and wagering on the results of events, as in horse-racing, &c. (see Gaming and Wagering). “Gamble,” “gambler” and “gambling” appear very late in English. The earliest quotations in the New English Dictionary for the three words are dated 1775, 1747 and 1784 respectively. They were first regarded as cant or slang words, and implied a reproach, either as referring to cheats or sharpers, or to those who played recklessly for extravagant stakes. The form of the words is obscure, but is supposed to represent a local variation gammle of the M.E. gamenian. From this word must, of course, be distinguished “gambol,” to sport, frisk, which, as the older forms (gambald, gambaud) show, is from the Fr. gambade, leap, jump, of a horse, It. gambado, gamba, leg (Mod. Fr. jambe).


GAME LAWS. This title in English law is applied to the statutes which regulate the right to pursue and take or kill certain kinds of wild animals (see above). The existence of these statutes is due to the rules of the common law as to the nature of property, and the interest of the Norman sovereigns and of feudal superiors in the pleasures of sport or the chase. The substantial basis of the law of property is physical possession of things and the power to deal with them as we see fit. By the common law wild animals are regarded as res nullius, and as not being the subject of private property until reduced into possession by being killed or captured. A bird in the hand is owned: a bird in the bush is not. Even bees do not become property until hived. “Though a swarm lights in my tree,” says Bracton, “I have no more property therein than I have in the birds which make their nests thereon.” If reclaimed or confined they become property. If they escape, the rights of the owner continue only while he is in pursuit of the fugitive, i.e. no other person can in the meantime establish a right of property against him by capturing the animal. A swarm of bees “which fly out of my hive are mine so long as I can keep them in sight and have power to pursue them.” But the right of recapture does not entitle the owner to follow his animals on to the lands of another, and the only case in which any right to follow wild animals on to the lands of others is now expressly recognized is when deer or hares are hunted with hounds or greyhounds. This recognition merely excepts such pursuit from the law as to criminal game trespass, and fox-hunters and those who course hares or hunt stags are civilly liable for trespass if they pass over land without the consent of the occupier (Paul v. Summerhayes, 1878, 4 Q.B.D. 9).

It is a maxim of the common law that things in which no one can claim any property belong to the crown by its prerogative: this rule has been applied to wild animals, and in particular to deer and what is now called “game.” The crown rights may pass to a subject by grant or equivalent prescription. In the course of time the exclusive right to take game, &c., on lands came to be regarded as incidental to the ownership or occupation of the lands. This is described as the right to game ratione soli. In certain districts of England which are crown forests or chases or legal parks, or subject to rights of free warren, the right to take deer and game is not in the owner or occupier of the soil, but is in the crown by prerogative, or ratione privilegii in the grantee of the rights of chase, park or free warren, which are anterior to and superior to those of the owner or occupier of the lands over which the privilege has been granted. In all cases where these special rights do not exist, the right to take or kill wild animals is treated as a profit incidental to the ownership or occupation of the land on which they are found, and there is no public right to take them on private land or even on a highway; nor is there any method known to the law by which the public at large or an undefined body of persons can lawfully acquire the right to take wild animals in alieno solo.