← Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "G" to "Gaskell, Elizabeth" / Volume 11, Slice 4
Chapter 3
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "G" to "Gaskell, Elizabeth" (part 3)
In the nature of things the right to take wild animals is valuable as to deer and the animals usually described as game, and not as to those which are merely noxious as vermin, or simply valueless, as small birds. Upon the rules of the common law there has been grafted much legislation which up till the end of the 18th century was framed for the preservation of deer and game for the recreation and amusement of persons of fortune, and to prevent persons of inferior rank from squandering in the pursuit of game time which their station in life required to be more profitably employed. These enactments included the rigorous code known as the Laws of the Forest (see Forest Laws), as well as what are usually called the Game Laws.
In England the older statutes relating to game were all repealed early in the 19th century. From the time of Richard II. (1389) to 1831, no person might kill game unless qualified by estate or social standing, a qualification raised from a 40s. freehold in 1389 to an interest of £100 a year in freehold or £150 in long leaseholds (1673). In 1831 this qualification by estate was abolished as to England. But in Scotland the right to hunt is theoretically reserved to persons who have in heritage that unknown quantity a “plough-gate of land” (Scots Act 1621, c. 31); and in Ireland qualifications by estate are made necessary for killing game and keeping sporting dogs (Irish Act 1698, 8 Will. III. c. 8). In England the game laws proper consist of the Night Poaching Acts of 1828 and 1844, the Game Act of 1831, the Poaching Prevention Act 1862, and the Ground Game Acts of 1880 and 1906. From the fact that the right of landowners over wild animals on their land does not amount to ownership it follows that they cannot prosecute any one for stealing live wild animals: and that apart from the game laws the only remedy against poachers is by civil action for trespass. As between trespasser and landowner the law is peculiar (Blades v. Higgs, 1865, 11 H.L.C. 621). If A starts and kills a hare on B’s land the dead hare belongs to B (ratione soli) and not to A, though he has taken the hare by his own efforts (per industriam). But if A hunts the hare from B’s land on to C’s land and there kills it, the dead hare belongs to A and not to B or C. It is not B’s because it was not taken on his land, and it is not C’s because it was not started on his land. In other words the right of each owner is limited to animals both started and killed on his own land, and in the case of conflicting claims to the animal taken (made ratione soli) the captor can make title (per industriam) against both landowners. If he is a trespasser he is liable to civil or criminal proceedings by both landowners, but the game is his unless forfeited under a statute. Another peculiar result of the law is that where trespassers (e.g. poachers) kill and carry off game or rabbits as part of one continuous transaction they are not guilty of theft, but only of game trespass (R. v. Townley, 1871, L.R. 1 C.C.R. 315), but it is theft for a trespasser to pick up and carry off a pheasant killed by the owner of the land on his own land or even a pheasant killed by an independent gang of poachers. The young of wild animals belong (propter impotentiam) to the owner of the land until they are able to fly or run away. This right does not extend to the eggs of wild birds. But the owner can reduce the eggs into possession by taking them up and setting them under hens or in enclosures. And if this is done persons who take them are thieves and not merely poachers. A game farm, like a decoy for wild water-fowl, is treated as a trade or business; but a game preserve in which full-grown animals fly or run wild is subject to the ordinary incidents of the law as to animals ferae naturae.
The classification of wild animals for purposes of sport in England is as follows:—
1. Beasts of forest are hart and hind (red deer), boar, wolf and all beasts of venery.
2. Beasts of chase and park are buck and doe (fallow deer), fox, marten and roe, or all beasts of venery and hunting.
3. Beasts of (free) warren are roe, hare, rabbit, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, quail, rail and heron.
4. Game, as defined by the Night Poaching Act of 1828 and the Game Act of 1831, is pheasant, partridge, black game, red grouse, bustard and hare. In France game (gibier) includes everything eatable that runs or flies.
5. Wild fowl not in any of the previous lists which are nevertheless prized for sport, e.g. duck, snipe, plovers, &c.
6. Wild birds not falling within class 4 are more or less protected against destruction by the Wild Birds Protection Acts, which were, however, passed with quite other objects than the game laws.
As regards class 1 no subject without special authority of the crown may kill within a forest or its purlieus or on adjacent highways, rivers or enclosures. The right to the animals in a forest does not depend on ownership of the land but on the royal prerogative as to the animals, i.e. it exists not ratione soli but ratione privilegii: and this right is not in any way altered by the Game Act 1831. A chase is a forest in the hands of a subject and a legal park (which is an enclosed chase) is created by crown grant or by prescription founded on a lost grant. The rights of the grantee are in substance the same as those of the crown in a forest, and do not depend on ownership of the soil. In the case of a free warren the grantee usually but not necessarily owns some or all of the soil over which the right of warren runs. The right of free warren depends on crown grant or prescription founded on lost grant, and involves a right of property over beasts and fowl of warren on all lands within the franchise. As will appear from the list above, some game birds are not fowl of warren, e.g. black game and red grouse (Duke of Devonshire v. Lodge, 1827, 7 B. & C. 39). Free warren is quite different from ordinary warrens, in which hares or rabbits are bred by the owner of the soil for sport or profit. Ground game in such warrens is protected under the Larceny Act 1861, s. 17, as well as by the game laws. In manors, of which none have been created since 1290, the lord by his franchise had the sporting rights over the manor, but at the present time this right is restricted to the commons and wastes of the manor, the freehold whereof is in him, and does not extend to enclosed freeholds nor as a general rule to enclosed copyholds, unless at the time of enclosure the sporting rights were reserved to him by the Enclosure Act or award (Sowerby v. Smith, 1873, L.R. 8 C.P. 514). In other words his rights exist ratione soli and not ratione privilegii. The Game Act 1831 gives lords of manors and privileged persons certain rights as to appointing gamekeepers with special powers to protect game within the district over which their rights extend (ss. 13, 14, 15, 16). The game laws in no way cut down the special privileges as to forest, park, chase or free warren (1831, s. 9), and confirm the sporting right of lords of manors on the wastes of the manor (1831, s. 10). As to all lands not affected by these rights, the right to kill or take game on the land is presumably in the occupier. On letting land the owner may, subject to the qualifications hereinafter stated, reserve to himself the right to kill or take “game” or rabbits or other wild animals concurrently with or in exclusion of the tenant. Where the exclusive right is in the landlord the tenant is not only liable to forfeiture or damages for breaches of covenants in the lease, but is also liable to penalties on summary conviction if without the lessor’s authority he pursues, kills or takes any “game” upon the land or gives permission to others to do so (1831, s. 12). In effect he is made criminally liable for game trespass on lands in his own occupation, so far as relates to game, but is not so liable if he takes rabbits, snipe, woodcock, quails or rails.
The net effect of the common law and the game laws is to give the occupier of lands and the owner of sporting rights over them the following remedies against persons who infringe their right to kill or take wild animals on the land. A stranger who enters on the land of another to take any wild animals is liable to the occupier for trespass on the land and for the animals started and killed on the land by the trespasser. He is also criminally liable for game trespass if he has entered on the land to search for or in pursuit of “game” or woodcock, snipe, quail, landrails or rabbits. If the trespass is in the daytime (whether on lands of the subject or in royal forests, &c.), the penalty on conviction may not exceed 40s., unless five or more persons go together, in which case the maximum penalty is £5. If a single offender refuses his name or address or gives a false address to the occupier or to the owner of the sporting rights or his representatives, or refuses to leave the land, he may be arrested by them, and is liable to a penalty not exceeding £5, and if five or more concerned together in game trespass have a gun with them and use violence, intimidation or menace, to prevent the approach of persons entitled to take their names or order them off the land, they incur a further penalty up to £5.
If the trespass is in search or pursuit of game or rabbits in the nighttime, the maximum penalty on a first conviction is imprisonment with hard labour for not over three months; on a second, imprisonment, &c., for not over six months, and the offender may be put under sureties not to offend again for a year after a first conviction or for two years after a second conviction. For a first or second offence the conviction is summary, subject to appeal to quarter sessions, but for a third offence the offender is tried on indictment and is liable to penal servitude (3-7 years) or imprisonment with hard labour (2 years). The offenders may be arrested by the owner or occupier of the land or their servants, and if the offenders assault or offer violence by firearms or offensive weapons they are liable to be indicted and on conviction punished to the same extent as in the last offence. In 1844 the above penalties were extended to persons found by night on highways in search or pursuit of game. If three or more trespass together on land by night to take or destroy game or rabbits, and any of them is armed with firearms, bludgeon or other offensive weapon, they are liable to be indicted and on conviction sentenced to penal servitude (3-14 years) or imprisonment with hard labour (2 years). By “day” time is meant from the beginning of the first hour before sunrise to the end of the first hour after sunset, and by “night” from the end of the first hour after sunset to the beginning of the first hour before sunrise (act of 1828, s. 12; act of 1831, s. 34). The time is reckoned by local and not by Greenwich time.
The penalties for night poaching are severe, but encounters between the owners of sporting rights and armed gangs of poachers have often been attended by homicide. It is to be observed that it is illegal and severely punishable to set traps or loaded spring guns for poachers (Offences against the Person Act 1861, s. 31), whereby any grievous bodily harm is intended or may be caused even to a trespasser, so that the incursions of poachers can be prevented only by personal attendance on the scene of their activities; and it is to be observed also that the provisions of the Game Laws above stated are, so far as concerns private land, left to be enforced by private enterprise without the interference of the police, with the result that in some districts there are scenes of private nocturnal war. Even in the Night Poaching Act 1844, which applies to highways, the arrest of offenders is made by owners, occupiers or their gamekeepers. The police were not given any direct authority as to poachers until the Poaching Prevention Act 1862, under which a constable is empowered “on any highway, street or public place, to search any person whom he may have good cause to suspect of coming from any land where he shall have been unlawfully in search or pursuit of ‘game,’ or any persons aiding or abetting such person, and having in his possession any game unlawfully obtained, or any gun, part of gun, or nets or engines used for the killing or taking game; and also to stop and search any cart or other conveyance in or upon which such constable or peace officer shall have good cause to suspect that any such game, or any such article or thing, is being carried by such person.” If any such thing be found the constable is to detain it, and apply for a summons against the offender, summoning him to appear before a petty sessional court, on conviction before which he may be fined not more than £5, and forfeits the game, guns, &c., found in his possession. In this act “game” includes woodcock, snipe and rabbits, and the eggs of game birds other than bustards; and the act applies to poaching either by night or by day. In all cases of summary conviction for poaching an appeal lies to quarter sessions. In all cases of poaching the game, &c., taken may be forfeited by the court which tries the poacher.
Close Time.—On certain days, and within periods known as “close time,” it is illegal to kill deer or game. The present close times are as follows:—
England. Ireland. Scotland.
Hare None April 21 to Aug. 11* None
Red deer (male) None Jan. 1 to June 9 None
Fallow deer None Sept. 29 to June 10 None
Roe deer None None None
Pheasant Feb. 1 to Sept. 30 Feb.1 to Sept. 30 (1845) Feb. 1 to Sept. 30
Partridge Feb. 1 to Aug. 31 Feb. 1 to Aug. 31 (1899) Feb. 1 to Aug. 31
Black game Dec. 10 to Aug. 20** Dec. 10 to Aug. 20 Dec. 10 to Aug. 20
Red grouse Dec. 10 to Aug. 12 Dec. 10 to Aug. 12 Dec. 10 to Aug. 12
Ptarmigan None Dec. 10 to Aug. 20 Dec. 10 to Aug. 12
Bustard (wild turkey) March 1 to Sept. 1 Jan. 10 to Sept. 1 None
* Unless varied by order of lord-lieutenant.
** Except in Devon, Somerset and New Forest, where to Sept. 1.
In England and Ireland the winged game above named and hares may not be killed on Sundays or Christmas Day. It is illegal to sell or expose for sale hares or leverets in March, April, May, June and July. It is illegal throughout the United Kingdom to buy or sell winged game birds after ten days from the beginning of the close season as fixed by the English law (1831, s. 4; 1860, s. 13). This prohibition applies to the sale of live game, British or foreign, and to the sale of British dead game. It is illegal to lay poison for game or rabbits except in rabbit holes, and it is illegal to kill game by firearms at night. Wild birds not within the list above given but of interest for sport are protected by close times fixed under the Wild Birds Protection Acts, which may vary in each county of each kingdom.
Licences.—Besides the restrictions on the right to take or kill game which arise out of the law as to ownership or occupation of the lands on which it is found, there are further restrictions imposed by the laws of excise. From the time of Richard II. (1389) until 1831 the right of persons other than gamekeepers properly deputed by the lord of a manor to take game was made to depend on the social rank of the person, or on the amount of his interest in land, which ranged from a 40s. freehold (in 1389) to £100 a year (1671). These restrictions were abolished in 1831, and the right to kill game was made conditional on the possession of a game certificate, now called a game licence in Great Britain (act of 1831, ss. 6, 23). By s. 4 of the Game Licences Act 1860 “any person, before he shall in Great Britain take, kill or pursue, or aid or assist in any manner in the taking, killing or pursuing, by any means whatever, or use any dog, gun, net or other engine for the purpose of taking, killing or pursuing any game, or any woodcock, snipe, quail, landrail, or any coney, or any deer, shall take out a proper licence to kill game under this act”—subject to a penalty of £20. There are certain exceptions and exemptions as to royal personages, royal gamekeepers, and with reference to taking woodcock or snipe by nets or springes, by coursing or hunting hares or deer, or killing deer, rabbits or hares (Hares Acts 1848, Game Licences Act 1860) in certain enclosed lands by the owners or occupiers. A licence is not required for beaters and assistants who go out with holders of a game licence. The licence is granted by the Inland Revenue Department. The issue is regulated by the Game Licences Act 1860 as amended by the Customs and Inland Revenue Act 1883. The licences now in use are of four kinds:—
Those taken out after 31st July—
To expire on the next 31st July £3 0 0
To expire on the next 31st October 2 0 0
Those taken out after 1st November—
To expire on the next 31st July 2 0 0
Those taken out for any continuous period of fourteen days specified in the licence 1 0 0
In the case of gamekeepers in Great Britain for whom the employer pays the duty on male servants, the annual licence fee is £2, but the licence extends only to lands on which the employer has a right to kill game. A licence granted to a person in his own right and not as gamekeeper or servant is effective throughout the United Kingdom. The game licence does not authorize trespass on the lands of others in search of game nor the shooting of game, &c., at night, and is forfeited on a conviction of game trespass (1831, s. 30; 1860, s. 11). Persons who have game licences need not have a gun licence, but the possession of a gun licence does not qualify the holder to kill game or even rabbits.
The sale of game when killed is also subject to statutory regulation. Gamekeepers may not sell game except under the authority of their employer (1831, ss. 17, 25). Persons who hold a full game licence may sell game, but only to persons who hold a licence to deal in game. These licences are annual (expiring on the 1st of July), and are granted in London by justices of the peace, and in the rest of England by the council of the borough or urban or rural district in which the dealer seeks to carry on business (1831, s. 18; 1893, c. 73, s. 27), and a notice of the existence of the licence must be posted on the licensed premises. A licence must be taken out for each shop. The following persons are disqualified for holding the licence: innkeepers, persons holding licences to sell intoxicants, owners, guards or drivers of mail-carts, stagecoaches or public conveyances, carriers and higglers (1831, s. 18). This enactment interferes with the grant of game licences to large stores which also have licences to sell beer. The licensed dealer may buy British game only from persons who are lawfully entitled to sell game. Conviction of an offence under the Game Act 1831 avoids the licence (s. 22). The local licence must also be supplemented by an excise licence for which a fee of £2 is charged. Licensed dealers in game are prohibited from selling game killed in the United Kingdom from the tenth day after the beginning of close time to the end of that period. The provisions above stated under the act of 1831 applied only to England, but were in 1860 extended to the rest of the United Kingdom, and were in 1893 applied to dealers in game imported from abroad. The main effect of the system of licences is to prevent the disposal of game by poachers rather than to benefit the revenue.
Deer.—Deer are not included within the definition of game in any of the English game laws. Deer-stealing was very seriously punished by the old law, and under an act of 9 George I. c. 22, known as the Waltham Black Act, passed because of the depredations of disguised deer-stealers in Epping Forest, it was under certain circumstances made a capital offence. At present offences with reference to deer are included in the Larceny Act 1861. It is a felony to hunt or kill deer in enclosures in forests, chases or purlieus, or in enclosed land where deer is usually kept, or after a previous conviction to hunt or kill deer in the open parts of a forest, &c., and certain minor provisions are made as to arrest by foresters, forfeiture of venison unlawfully possessed and for unlawfully setting traps for deer. These enactments do not prevent a man from killing on his own land deer which have strayed there (Threlkeld v. Smith, 1901, 2 K.B. 531). In Scotland the unlawful killing of deer is punished as theft.
Eggs.—The owner or occupier of land has no property in the eggs of wild birds found on his lands unless he takes them up. But under s. 24 of the Game Act 1831 a penalty of 5s. per egg is incurred by persons who unlawfully (i.e. without being, or having licence from, the person entitled to kill the game) and wilfully take from the nest or destroy in the nest the eggs of any game bird, or of a swan, wild duck, teal or widgeon. Similar provisions exist in Ireland under an act of 1698, and by the Poaching Prevention Act 1862 (United Kingdom) power is given to constables to search persons suspected of poaching and to take from them the eggs of pheasants, partridges, grouse or black game. And the Wild Birds Protection Acts deal with the eggs of all wild birds except game and swans.
Damage to Crops by Game.—Where an occupier of lands has not the right to kill game or rabbits he runs the risk of suffering damage by the depredations of the protected animals, which he may not kill without incurring a liability to summary conviction or for breach of the conditions on which he holds the land. At common law the owner of land who has reserved to himself the sporting rights, and his sporting tenants, must use the reserved rights reasonably. They are liable for any damage wilfully or unnecessarily done to the crops, &c., of the occupier, such as trampling down standing crops or breaking hedges or fences. They are not directly liable to the occupier for damage done to the crops by game bred on the land or frequenting it in the ordinary course of nature; but are not entitled to turn down game or rabbits on the land. And if game or rabbits are for the purposes of sport imported or artificially raised on land, the person who breeds or brings them there is liable for the damage done to the crops of adjoining owners or occupiers (Farrer v. Nelson, 1885, 15 Q.B.D. 258; Birkbeck v. Paget, 31 Beav. 403; Hilton v. Green, 1862, 2 F. & F. 821).
Recent legislation has greatly increased the rights of the occupiers of land as against the owners of sporting rights over it. As regards hares and rabbits the occupier’s rights are regulated by the Ground Game Act 1880 (which is expressed to be made “in the interests of good husbandry and for the better security of capital and labour invested in the cultivation of the soil”). By that act the occupier of land as incident to and inseparable from his occupation has the right to kill and take hares and rabbits on the land. The right is indefeasible and cannot be divested by contract with the owner or landlord or even by letting the occupier’s sporting rights to another. But where apart from the act the right to kill game on the land is vested in a person other than the occupier, such person has a right concurrent with the statutory right of the occupier to take hares and rabbits on the land. The act does not extend to common lands nor to lands over which rights of grazing or pasturage for not more than nine months in the year exist. Consequently over such lands exclusive rights of killing ground game still continue, and the law appears not to apply in cases where a special right of killing or taking ground game vested before the 7th of September 1880 in any person (other than the landlord) by statute, charter or franchise (s. 5). The mode of exercise of the occupier’s right is subject to certain limitations. The ground game is only to be taken by him or by persons whom he has duly authorized in writing, who must be members of his family or his servants or bona fide employed by him for reward to take ground game. The written authority must be produced on demand to persons having concurrent rights to take and kill the ground game (s. 1 (1) (c)). Firearms may not be used by night, nor may poison be used, nor may spring traps be set except in rabbit holes (s. 6); nor may ground game be killed on days or seasons or by methods prohibited by statute in 1880 (s. 10).
In the case of moorland and unenclosed lands (which are not arable and do not consist of small detached portions of less than 25 acres) the occupier may between the 1st of September and the 31st of March kill and take ground game; but between the 1st of September and the 10th of December firearms may not be used (1880, s. 1 (3); 1906, s. 2). In the case of such lands the occupiers and the owners of the sporting rights may between the 1st of September and the 10th of December make and enforce for their joint benefit agreements for taking the ground game. The Agricultural Holdings Act 1906 (operating from 1909) deals, inter alia, with damage to crops by deer and winged game, but does not apply to damage by hares or rabbits. The tenant of agricultural land is entitled to compensation for damage to his crops exceeding 1s. per acre over the area affected if caused by game, “the right to kill or take which is vested neither in him nor in any one claiming under him other than the landlord and which the tenant has not permission in writing to kill” (s. 2). The right of the tenant is indefeasible and cannot be contracted away. Disputes as to amount are to be settled by arbitration; but claims to be effectual must be made as to growing crops before reaping, raising or feeding off, and as to cut crops before carrying. In the case of contracts of tenancy created before the 1st of January 1909, allowances are to be made if by their terms compensation for damage by game is stipulated for, or an allowance of an agreed amount for damage by game was expressly made in fixing the rent. The compensation is payable by the landlord subject to his right to be indemnified in cases where the sporting rights are not vested in him.
Sporting Rights.—Sporting rights (i.e. rights of fowling or of shooting, or of taking or killing game or rabbits, or of fishing), when severed from the occupation of land, are subject to income or property tax, and to assessment for the purpose of local rates (Rating Act 1874); and in valuing land whether for rates or taxes the value of the sporting rights is now an important and often the chief item of value in beneficial occupation of the land. Where the sporting rights are the landlord’s, the rate thereon is paid in the first instance by the tenant and deducted from his rent. Where the sporting right is reserved and let, the rating authority may rate either the landlord or the sporting tenant as occupier of the right. The Ground Game Acts have not affected the liability to assessment of concurrent rights of killing hares and rabbits reserved by a landlord, or of a concurrent right granted by the occupier (Ryde (2nd ed.), 385-387). The ownership of sporting rights severed from the ownership or occupation of the land over which they are exercisable is not an interest in land giving the electoral franchise or a claim for compensation if the land is taken under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts.
Scotland.—By the law of Scotland all men have right and privilege of game on their own estates as a real right incident thereto, which does not pass by an agricultural lease except by express words, or in the case of ground game by the act of 1880. The landlord is liable to the tenant for damage done to the surface of the lands in exercise of his right to the game and also for extraordinary damage by over-preserving or over-stocking. Under an act of 1877 he was liable for excessive damage done by rabbits or game reserved to or retained under a lease granted after the 1st of January 1878, or reserved by presumption of common law; this act from 1909 onwards is superseded by the provisions of the Agricultural Holdings Act 1906. Night poaching is punished by the same act as in England, and day poaching by an act of 1832 and the act of 1882. Until 1887 poaching by night under arms was a capital offence. The definition of game in Scotland for purposes of night poaching is the same as in England. The provisions of the act of 1832 as to game trespass by day apply also to deer, roe, rabbits, woodcock, snipe, rails and wild duck; but in other respects closely resemble those of the English act of 1831.
Offences against the game laws are not triable by justices of the peace, but only in the sheriff court. The close time for game birds in Scotland is the same as in England, so far as dealing in them is concerned, but differs slightly as to killing. Black game may not be killed between the 10th of December and the 25th of August, nor ptarmigan between the 10th of December and the 20th of August. There is no close time for red, fallow or roe deer, or rabbits. By an old Scots act of 1621 (omitted from the recent wholesale repeal of such acts) no one may lawfully kill game in Scotland who does not own a plough-gate of land except on the land of a person so qualified.
Ireland.—The common law as to game is the same for Ireland as for England. The game laws of Ireland are contained partly in acts passed prior to the union (1698, 1707, 1787 and 1797), partly in acts limited to Ireland, and as to the rest in acts common to the whole United Kingdom.
Under the act of 1698 no one may kill game in Ireland who has not a freehold worth £40 a year or £1000 net personality, and elaborate provisions are made by that and later acts against the keeping of sporting dogs by persons not qualified by estate to kill game. British officers and soldiers in Ireland appear to have been much addicted to poaching, and their activities were restrained by enactments of 1698 and 1707.
Night poaching in Ireland is dealt with by an act of 1826. Trespass on lands in pursuit of game to which the landlord or lessor has by reservation exclusive right is summarily punishable under an act of 1864, which includes in the definition of game, woodcock, snipe, quails, landrails, wild duck, widgeon and teal. Under the Land Act 1881 the landlord of a statutory holding may at the commencement of the term subject to the Ground Game Acts retain and exercise the exclusive right of taking “game” as above defined.
A game licence is not required for taking or killing rabbits. But in other respects the law as to game licences, dog licences and licences to deal in game is the same as in Great Britain.
British Possessions Abroad.—The English game laws have not been carried to any colony as part of the personal law of the colonists, nor have they been extended to them by imperial or colonial legislation. But the legislatures of many colonies have passed acts to preserve or protect native or imported wild animals, and in some of these statutes the protected animals are described as game. These statutes are free from feudal prepossessions as to sporting rights, and are framed rather on the lines of the Wild Birds Protection Acts than on the English game laws, but in some possessions, e.g. Quebec, sporting leases by the crown are recognized. The acts since 1895 are indicated in the annual summary of colonial legislation furnished in the Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation.
See also Oke’s Game Laws, 4th ed., by Willis Bund (1897); Warry, Game Laws of England (1897); Marchant and Watkins, Wild Birds Protection Act (1897).
(W. F. C.)
GAMES, CLASSICAL. 1. Public Games.—The public games of Greece (ἀγῶνες) and Rome (Ludi) consisted in athletic contests and spectacles of various kinds, generally connected with and forming part of a religious observance. Probably no institution exercised a greater influence in moulding the national character, and producing that unique type of physical and intellectual beauty which we see reflected in Greek art and literature, than the public contests of Greece (see Athlete; Athletic Sports). For them each youth was trained in the gymnasium, they were the central mart whither poet, artist and merchant each brought his wares, and the common ground of union for every member of the Hellenic race. It is to Greece, then, that we must look for the earliest form and the fullest development of ancient games. The shows of the Roman circus and amphitheatre were at best a shadow, and in the later days of the empire a travesty, of the Olympia and Pythia, and require only a cursory notice.
The earliest games of which we have any record are those at the funeral of Patroclus, which form the subject of the twenty-third Iliad. They are noteworthy as showing that Greek games were in their origin clearly connected with religion; either, as here, a part of the funeral rites, or else instituted in honour of a god, or as a thank-offering for a victory gained or a calamity averted, or in expiation of some crime. Each of the great contests was held near some shrine or sacred place and is associated with some deity or mythical hero. It was not before the 4th century that this honour was paid to a living man (see Plutarch, Lysander, 18). The games of the Iliad and those of the Odyssey at the court of Alcinous are also of interest as showing at what an early date the distinctive forms of Greek athletics—boxing, wrestling, putting the weight, the foot and the chariot race—were determined.
The Olympian games were the earliest, and to the last they remained the most celebrated of the four national festivals. Olympia was a naturally enclosed spot in the rich plain of Elis, bounded on the N. by the rocky heights of Cronion, and on the S. and W. by the Alpheus and its tributary the Cladeus. There was the grove of Altis, in which were ranged the statues of the victorious athletes, and the temple of Olympian Zeus with the chryselephantine statue of the god, the masterpiece of Pheidias. There Heracles (so ran the legend which Pindar has introduced in one of his finest odes), when he had conquered Elis and slain its king Augeas, consecrated a temenos and instituted games in honour of his victory. A later legend, which probably embodies historical fact, tells how, when Greece was torn by dissensions and ravaged by pestilence, Iphitus inquired of the oracle for help, and was bidden restore the games which had fallen into desuetude; and there was in the time of Pausanias, suspended in the temple of Hera at Olympia, a bronze disk whereon were inscribed, with the regulations of the games, the names of Iphitus and Lycurgus. From this we may safely infer that the games were a primitive observance of the Eleians and Pisans, and first acquired their celebrity from the powerful concurrence of Sparta. The sacred armistice, or cessation of all hostilities, during the month in which the games were held, is also credited to Iphitus.
In 776 B.C. the Eleians engraved the name of their countryman Coroebus as victor in the foot race, and thenceforward we have an almost unbroken list of the victors in each succeeding Olympiad or fourth recurrent year. For the next fifty years no names occur but those of Eleians or their next neighbours. After 720 B.C. we find Corinthians and Megareans, and later still Athenians and extra-Peloponnesians. Thus what at first was nothing more than a village feast became a bond of union for all the branches of the Doric race, and grew in time to be the high festival to which every Greek gathered, from the mountain fastnesses of Thessaly to the remotest colonies of Cyrene and Marseilles. It survived even the extinction of Greek liberty, and had nearly completed twelve centuries when it was abolished by the decree of the Christian emperor Theodosius, in the tenth year of his reign. The last Olympian victor was a Romanized Armenian named Varastad.
Let us attempt to call up the scene which Olympia in its palmy days must have presented as the great festival approached. Heralds had proclaimed throughout Greece the “truce of God.” So religiously was this observed that the Spartans chose to risk the liberties of Greece, when the Persians were at the gates of Pylae, rather than march during the holy days. Those white tents which stand out against the sombre grey of the olive groves belong to the Hellanodicae, or ten judges of the games, chosen one for each tribe of the Eleians. They have been here already ten months, receiving instruction in their duties. All, too, or most of the athletes must have arrived, for they have been undergoing the indispensable training in the gymnasium of the Altis. But along the “holy road” from the town of Elis there are crowding a motley throng. Conspicuous in the long train of pleasure-seekers are the θεωροί or sacred deputies, clad in their robes of office, and bearing with them in their carriages of state offerings to the shrine of the god. Nor is there any lack of distinguished visitors. It may be Alcibiades, who, they say, has entered no less than seven chariots; or Gorgias, who has written a famous ἐπίδειξις for the occasion; or the sophist Hippias, who boasts that all he bears about him, from the sandals on his feet to the dithyrambs he carries in his hand, are his own manufacture; or Aetion, who will exhibit his picture of the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana—the picture which gained him no less a prize than the daughter of the Hellanodices Praxonides; or, in an earlier age, the poet-laureate of the Olympians, Pindar himself. One feature of the medieval tournament and the modern racecourse is wanting. Women might indeed compete and win prizes as the owners of teams, but all except the priestesses of Demeter were forbidden, matrons on pain of death, to enter the enclosure.
At daybreak the athletes presented themselves in the Bouleuterium, where the presidents were sitting, and proved by witnesses that they were of pure Hellenic descent, and had no stain, religious or civil, on their character. Laying their hands on the bleeding victim, they swore that they had duly qualified themselves by ten months’ continuous training in the gymnasium, and that they would use no fraud or guile in the sacred contests. Thence they proceeded to the stadium, where they stripped to the skin and anointed themselves. A herald proclaimed, “Let the runners put their feet to the line,” and called on the spectators to challenge any disqualified by blood or character. If no objection was made, they were started by the note of the trumpet, running in heats of four, ranged in the places assigned them by lot. The presidents seated near the goal adjudged the victory. The foot-race was only one of twenty-four Olympian contests which Pausanias enumerates, though we must not suppose that these were all exhibited at any one festival. Till the 77th Olympiad all was concluded in one day, but afterwards the feast was extended to five.
The order of the games is for the most part a matter of conjecture, but, roughly speaking, the historical order of their institution was followed. We will now describe in this order the most important.
(1) The Foot-race.—For the first 13 Olympiads the δρόμος, or single lap of the stadium, which was 200 yds. long, was the only contest. The δίαυλος, in which the course was traversed twice, was added in the 14th Olympiad, and in the 15th the δόλιχος, or long race, of 7, 12 or, according to the highest computation, 24 laps, about 22⁄3 m. in length. We are told that the Spartan Ladas, after winning this race, dropped down dead at the goal. There was also, for a short time, a race in heavy armour, which Plato highly commends as a preparation for active service. (2) Wrestling was introduced in the 18th Olympiad. The importance attached to this exercise is shown by the very word palaestra, and Plutarch calls it the most artistic and cunning of athletic games. The practice differed little from that of modern times, save that the wrestler’s limbs were anointed with oil and sprinkled with sand. The third throw, which decided the victory, passed into a proverb, and struggling on the ground, such as we see in the famous statue at Florence, was not allowed, at least at the Olympia. (3) In the same year was introduced the πένταθλον (pentathlon), a combination of the five games enumerated in the well-known pentameter ascribed to Simonides:—
ἄλμα, ποδωκείην, δίσκον, ἄκοντα, πάλην.
Only the first of these calls for any comment. The only leap practised seems to have been the long jump. The leapers increased their momentum by means of ἁλτῆρες or dumb-bells, which they swung in the act of leaping and dropped as they “took off.” The take-off may have been slightly raised, and some commentators with very little warrant have stated that spring-boards were used. The record jump with which Phayllus of Croton is credited, 55 ft., is incredible with or without a spring-board. It is disputed whether a victory in all five contests, or in three at least, was required to win the πένταθλον. (4) The rules for boxing were not unlike those of the modern ring (see Pugilism), and the chief difference was in the use of the caestus. This in Greek times consisted of leather thongs bound round the boxer’s fists and wrists; and the weighting with lead or iron or metal studs, which made the caestus more like a “knuckle-duster” than a boxing-glove, was a later Roman development. The death of an antagonist, unless proved to be accidental, not only disqualified for a prize but was severely punished. The use of ear-guards and the comic allusions to broken ears, not noses, suggest that the Greek boxer did not hit out straight from the shoulder, but fought windmill fashion, like the modern rustic. In the pancratium, a combination of wrestling and boxing, the use of the caestus, and even of the clenched fist, was disallowed. (5) The chariot-race had its origin in the 23rd Olympiad. Of the hippodrome, or racecourse, no traces remain, but from the description of Pausanias we may infer that the dimensions were approximately 1600 ft. by 400. Down the centre there ran a bank of earth, and at each end of this bank was a turning-post round which the chariots had to pass. “To shun the goal with rapid wheels” required both nerve and skill, and the charioteer played a more important part in the race than even the modern jockey. Pausanias tells us that horses would shy as they passed the fatal spots. The places of the chariots were determined by lot, and there were elaborate arrangements for giving all a fair start. The number of chariots that might appear on the course at once is uncertain. Pindar (Pyth. v. 46) praises Arcesilaus of Cyrene for having brought off his chariot uninjured in a contest where no fewer than forty took part. The large outlay involved excluded all but rich competitors, and even kings and tyrants eagerly contested the palm. Thus in the list of victors we find the names of Cylon, the would-be tyrant of Athens, Pausanias the Spartan king, Archelaus of Macedon, Gelon and Hiero of Syracuse, and Theron of Agrigentum. Chariot-races with mules, with mares, with two horses in place of four, were successively introduced, but none of these present any special interest. Races on horseback date from the 33rd Olympiad. As the course was the same, success must have depended on skill as much as on swiftness. Lastly, there were athletic contests of the same description for boys, and a competition of heralds and trumpeters, introduced in the 93rd Olympiad.
The prizes were at first, as in the Homeric times, of some intrinsic value, but after the 6th Olympiad the only prize for each contest was a garland of wild olive, which was cut with a golden sickle from the kallistephanos, the sacred tree brought by Hercules “from the dark fountains of Ister in the land of the Hyperboreans, to be a shelter common to all men and a crown of noble deeds” (Pindar, Ol. iii. 18). Greek writers from Herodotus to Plutarch dwell with complacency on the magnanimity of a people who cared for nothing but honour and were content to struggle for a corruptible crown. But though the Greek games present in this respect a favourable contrast to the greed and gambling of the modern racecourse, yet to represent men like Milon and Damoxenus as actuated by pure love of glory is a pleasing fiction of the moralists. The successful athlete received in addition to the immediate honours very substantial rewards. A herald proclaimed his name, his parentage and his country; the Hellanodicae took from a table of ivory and gold the olive crown and placed it on his head, and in his hand a branch of palm; as he marched in the sacred revel to the temple of Zeus, his friends and admirers showered in his path flowers and costly gifts, singing the old song of Archilochus, τήνελλα καλλίνικε, and his name was canonized in the Greek calendar. Fresh honours and rewards awaited him on his return home. If he was an Athenian he received, according to the law of Solon, 500 drachmae, and free rations for life in the Prytaneum; if a Spartan, he had as his prerogative the post of honour in battle. Poets like Pindar, Simonides and Euripides sung his praises, and sculptors like Pheidias and Praxiteles were engaged by the state to carve his statue. We even read of a breach in the town walls being made to admit him, as if the common road were not good enough for such a hero; and there are well-attested instances of altars being built and sacrifices offered to a successful athlete. No wonder then that an Olympian prize was regarded as the crown of human happiness. Cicero, with a Roman’s contempt for Greek frivolity, observes with a sneer that an Olympian victor receives more honours than a triumphant general at Rome, and tells the story of the Rhodian Diagoras, who, having himself won the prize at Olympia, and seen his two sons crowned on the same day, was addressed by a Laconian in these words:—“Die, Diagoras, for thou hast nothing short of divinity to desire.” Alcibiades, when setting forth his services to the state, puts first his victory at Olympia, and the prestige he had won for Athens by his magnificent display. But perhaps the most remarkable evidence of the exaggerated value which the Greeks attached to athletic prowess is a casual expression which Thucydides employs when describing the enthusiastic reception of Brasidas at Scione. The state, he says, voted him a crown of gold, and the multitude flocked round him and decked him with garlands, as though he were an athlete.
The Pythian games originated in a local festival held at Delphi, anciently called Pytho, in honour of the Pythian Apollo, and were limited to musical competitions. The date at which they became a Panhellenic ἀγών (so Demosthenes calls them) cannot be determined, but the Pythiads as a chronological era date from 527 B.C., by which time music had been added to all the Panhellenic contests. Now, too, these were held at the end of every fourth year; previously there had been an interval of eight years. The Amphictyones presided and the prize was a chaplet of laurel.
The Nemean games were biennial and date from 516 B.C. They were by origin an Argive festival in honour of Nemean Zeus, but in historical times were open to all Greece and provided the established round of contests, except that no mention is made of a chariot-race. A wreath of wild celery was the prize.
The Isthmian games, held on the Isthmus of Corinth in the first and third year of each Olympiad, date, according to Eusebius, from 523 B.C. They are variously reported to have been founded by Poseidon or Sisyphus in honour of Melicertes, or by Theseus to celebrate his victory over the robbers Sinis and Sciron. Their early importance is attested by the law of Solon which bestowed a reward of 100 drachmae on every Athenian who gained a victory. The festival was managed by the Corinthians; and after the city was destroyed by Mummius (146 B.C.) the presidency passed to the Sicyonians until Julius Caesar rebuilt Corinth (46 B.C.). They probably continued to exist till Christianity became the religion of the Roman empire. The Athenians were closely connected with the festival, and had the privilege of proedria, the foremost seat at the games, while the Eleans were absolutely excluded from participation. The games included gymnastic, equestrian and musical contests, differing little from those of the other great festivals, and the prize was a crown made at one time of parsley (more probably wild celery), at a later period of pine. The importance of the Isthmian games in later times is shown by the fact that Flamininus chose the occasion for proclaiming the liberation of Greece, 196 B.C. That at a later anniversary (A.D. 67) Nero repeated the proclamation of Flamininus, and coupled with it the announcement of his own infamous victory at Olympia, shows alike the hollowness of the first gift and the degradation which had befallen the Greek games, the last faint relic of Greek nationality.
The Ludi Publici of the Romans included feasts and theatrical exhibitions as well as the public games with which alone we are concerned. As in Greece, they were intimately connected with religion. At the beginning of each civil year it was the duty of the consuls to vow to the gods games for the safety of the commonwealth, and the expenses were defrayed by the treasury. Thus, at no cost to themselves, the Roman public were enabled to indulge at the same time their religious feelings and their love of amusement. Their taste for games naturally grew till it became a passion, and under the empire games were looked upon by the mob as one of the two necessaries of life. The aediles who succeeded to this duty of the consuls were expected to supplement the state allowance from their private purse. Political adventurers were not slow to discover so ready a road to popularity, and what at first had been exclusively a state charge devolved upon men of wealth and ambition. A victory over some barbarian horde or the death of a relation served as the pretext for a magnificent display. But the worst extravagance of private citizens was eclipsed by the reckless prodigality of the Caesars, who squandered the revenues of whole provinces in catering for the mob of idle sightseers on whose favour their throne depended. But though public games played as important a part in Roman as in Greek history, and must be studied by the Roman historian as an integral factor in social and political life, yet, regarded solely as exhibitions, they are comparatively devoid of interest, and we sympathize with Pliny, who asks his friend how any man of sense can go day after day to view the same dreary round of fights and races.
It is easy to explain the different feelings which the games of Greece and of Rome excite. The Greeks at their best were actors, the Romans from first to last were spectators. It is true that even in Greek games the professional element played a large and ever-increasing part. As early as the 6th century B.C. Xenophanes complains that the wrestler’s strength is preferred to the wisdom of the philosopher, and Euripides, in a well-known fragment, holds up to scorn the brawny swaggering athlete. But what in Greece was a perversion and acknowledged to be such, the Romans not only practised but held up as their ideal. No Greek, however high in birth, was ashamed to compete in person for the Olympic crown. The Roman, though little inferior in gymnastic exercises, kept strictly to the privacy of the palaestra; and for a patrician to appear in public as a charioteer is stigmatized by the satirist as a mark of shameless effrontery.
Roman games are generally classified as fixed, extraordinary and votive; but they may be more conveniently grouped according to the place where they were held, viz. the circus or the amphitheatre.
For the Roman world the circus was at once a political club, a fashionable lounge, a rendezvous of gallantry, a betting ring, and a playground for the million. Juvenal, speaking loosely, says that in his day it held the whole of Rome; but there is no reason to doubt the precise statement of P. Victor, that in the Circus Maximus there were seats for 350,000 spectators.
Of the various Ludi Circenses it may be enough here to give a short account of the most important, the Ludi Magni or Maximi.
Initiated according to legend by Tarquinius Priscus, the Ludi Magni were originally a votive feast to Capitoline Jupiter, promised by the general when he took the field, and performed on his return from the annual campaign. They thus presented the appearance of a military spectacle, or rather a review of the whole burgess force, which marched in solemn procession from the capitol to the forum and thence to the circus, which lay between the Palatine and Aventine. First came the sons of patricians mounted on horseback, next the rest of the burghers ranged according to their military classes, after them the athletes, naked save for the girdle round their loins, then the company of dancers with the harp and flute players, next the priestly colleges bearing censers and other sacred instruments, and lastly the simulacra of the gods, carried aloft on their shoulders or drawn in cars. The games themselves were fourfold:—(1) the chariot race; (2) the ludus Troiae; (3) the military review; and (4) gymnastic contests. Of these only the first two call for any comment. (1) The chariot employed in the circus was the two-wheeled war car, at first drawn by two, afterwards by four, and more rarely by three horses. Originally only two chariots started for the prize, but under Caligula we read of as many as twenty-four heats run in the day, each of four chariots. The distance traversed was fourteen times the length of the circus or nearly 5 m. The charioteers were apparently from the first professionals, though the stigma under which the gladiator lay never attached to their calling. Indeed a successful driver may compare in popularity and fortune with a modern jockey. The drivers were divided into companies distinguished by the colours of their tunics, whence arose the faction of the circus which assumed such importance under the later emperors. In republican times there were two factions, the white and the red; two more, the green and the blue, were added under the empire, and for a short time in Domitian’s reign there were also the gold and the purple. Even in Juvenal’s day party spirit ran so high that a defeat of the green was looked upon as a second Cannae. After the seat of empire had been transferred to Constantinople these factions of the circus were made the basis of political cabals, and frequently resulted in sanguinary tumults, such as the famous Nika revolt (A.D. 532), in which 30,000 citizens lost their lives. (2) The Ludus Troiae was a sham-fight on horseback in which the actors were patrician youths. A spirited description of it will be found in the 5th Aeneid. (See also Circus.)
The two exhibitions we shall next notice, though occasionally given in the circus, belong more properly to the amphitheatre. Venatio was the baiting of wild animals who were pitted either with one another or with men—captives, criminals or trained hunters called bestiarii. The first certain instance on record of this amusement is in 186 B.C., when M. Fulvius exhibited lions and tigers in the arena. The taste for these brutalizing spectacles grew apace, and the most distant provinces were ransacked by generals and proconsuls to supply the arena with rare animals—giraffes, tigers and crocodiles. Sulla provided for a single show 100 lions, and Pompey 600 lions, besides elephants, which were matched with Gaetulian hunters. Julius Caesar enjoys the doubtful honour of inventing the bull-fight. At the inauguration of the Colosseum 5000 wild and 4000 tame beasts were killed, and to commemorate Trajan’s Dacian victories there was a butchery of 11,000 beasts. The naumachia was a sea-fight, either in the arena, which was flooded for the occasion by a system of pipes and sluices, or on an artificial lake. The rival fleets were manned by prisoners of war or criminals, who often fought till one side was exterminated. In the sea-fight on Lake Fucinus, arranged by the emperor Claudius, 100 ships and 19,000 men were engaged.
But the special exhibition of the amphitheatre was the munus gladiatorium, which dates from the funeral games of Marcus and Decimus Brutus, given in honour of their father, 264 B.C. It was probably borrowed from Etruria, and a refinement on the common savage custom of slaughtering slaves or captives on the grave of a warrior or chieftain. Nothing so clearly brings before us the vein of coarseness and inhumanity which runs through the otherwise noble character of the Roman, as his passion for gladiatorial shows. We can fancy how Pericles, or even Alcibiades, would have loathed a spectacle that Augustus tolerated and Trajan patronized. Only after the conquest of Greece we hear of their introduction into Athens, and they were then admitted rather out of compliment to the conquerors than from any love of the sport. In spite of numerous prohibitions from Constantine downwards, they continued to flourish even as late as St Augustine. To a Christian martyr, if we may credit the story told by Theodoret and Cassiodorus, belongs the honour of their final abolition. In the year 404 Telemachus, a monk who had travelled from the East on this sacred mission, rushed into the arena and endeavoured to separate the combatants. He was instantly despatched by the praetor’s orders; but Honorius, on hearing the report, issued an edict abolishing the games, which were never afterwards revived. (See Gladiators.)
Of the other Roman games the briefest description must suffice. The Ludi Apollinares were established in 212 B.C., and were annual after 211 B.C.; mainly theatrical performances. The Megalenses were in honour of the great goddess, Cybele: instituted 204 B.C., and from 191 B.C. celebrated annually. A procession of Galli, or priests of Cybele, was a leading feature. Under the empire the festival assumed a more orgiastic character. Four of Terence’s plays were produced at these games. The Ludi Saeculares were celebrated at the beginning or end of each saeculum, a period variously interpreted by the Romans themselves as 100 or 110 years. The celebration by Augustus in 17 B.C. is famous by reason of the Ode composed by Horace for the occasion. They were solemnized by the emperor Philip A.D. 248 to commemorate the millennium of the city.
2. Private Games.—These may be classified as outdoor and indoor games. There is naturally all the world over a much closer resemblance between the pursuits and amusements of children than of adults. Homer’s children built castles in the sand, and Greek and Roman children alike had their dolls, their hoops, their skipping-ropes, their hobby-horses, their kites, their knuckle-bones and played at hopscotch, the tug-of-war, pitch and toss, blind-man’s buff, hide and seek, and kiss in the ring or at closely analogous games. Games of ball were popular in Greece from the days of Nausicaa, and at Rome there were five distinct kinds of ball and more ways of playing with them. For particulars the dictionary of antiquities must be consulted. It is strange that we can find in classical literature no analogy to cricket, tennis, golf or polo, and though the follis resembled our football, it was played with the hand and arm, not with the leg. Cock-fighting was popular both at Athens and Rome, and quails were kept and put to various tests to prove their pluck.
Under indoor games we may distinguish games of chance and games of skill, though in some of them the two elements are combined. Tesserae, shaped and marked with pips like modern dice, were evolved from the tali, knuckle-bones with only four flat sides. The old Roman threw a hazard and called a main, just as did Charles Fox, and the vice of gambling was lashed by Juvenal no less vigorously than by Pope. The Latin name for a dice-box has survived in the fritillary butterfly and flower.
The primitive game of guessing the number of fingers simultaneously held up by the player and his opponent is still popular in Italy where it is known as “morra.” The proverbial phrase for an honest man was quicum in tenebris mices, one you would trust to play at morra in the dark.
Athena found the suitors of Penelope seated on cowhides and playing at πεσσοί, some kind of draughts. The invention of the game was ascribed to Palamedes. In its earliest form it was played on a board with five lines and with five pieces. Later we find eleven lines, and a further development was the division of the board into squares, as in the game of πόλεις (cities). In the Roman latrunculi (soldiers), the men were distinguished as common soldiers and “rovers,” the equivalent of crowned pieces.
Duodecim scripta, as the name implies, was played on a board with twelve double lines and approximated very closely to our backgammon. There were fifteen pieces on each side, and the moves were determined by a throw of the dice; “blots” might be taken, and the object of the player was to clear off all his own men. Lastly must be mentioned the Cottabus (q.v.), a game peculiar to the Greeks, and with them the usual accompaniment of a wine party. In its simplest form each guest threw what was left in his cup into a metal basin, and the success of the throw, determined partly by the sound of the wine in falling, was reckoned a divination of love. For the various elaborations of the game (in Sicily we read of Cottabus houses), Athenaeus and Pollux must be consulted.
Bibliography.—Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, articles “Agon,” “Athleta,” “Circus,” “Ludi,” “Olympia,” “Spiele”; Curtius and Adler, Olympia (5 vols., 1890, &c.); Hachtmann, Olympia und seine Festspiele; Blümner, Home Life of the Ancient Greeks; J.P. Mahaffy, Old Greek Education; P. Gardner and F.B. Jevons, Manual of Greek Antiquities; E.N. Gardiner, Greek Athletic Sports (1910); Becker-Marquardt, Handbuch der römischen Altertümer (5 vols.).
(F. S.)
GAMING AND WAGERING. It is somewhat difficult exactly to define or adequately to distinguish these terms of allied meaning. The word “game” (q.v.) is applicable to most pastimes and many sports, irrespective of their lawful or unlawful character. “Gaming” is now always associated with the staking of money or money’s worth on the result of a game of pure chance, or mixed skill and chance; and “gambling” has the same meaning, with a suggestion that the stakes are excessive or the practice otherwise reprehensible, while “wager” and “wagering” are applied to money hazarded on any contingency in which the person wagering has no interest at risk other than the amount at stake. “Betting” is usually restricted to wagers on events connected with sports or games, and “lottery” applies to speculation to obtain prizes by lot or chance.
At English common law no games were unlawful and no penalties were incurred by gambling, nor by keeping gaming-houses, unless by reason of disorder they became a public nuisance. From very early times, however, the English statute law has attempted to exercise control over the sports, pastimes and amusements of the lieges. Several points of view have been taken: (1) their competition with military exercises and training; (2) their attraction to workmen and servants, as drawing them from work to play; (3) their interference with the observance of Sunday; (4) their combination with betting or gambling as causing impoverishment and dishonesty in children, servants and other unwary persons; (5) the use of fraud or deceit in connexion with them. The legislation has assumed several forms: (1) declaring certain games unlawful either absolutely or if accompanied by staking or betting money or money’s worth on the event of the game; (2) declaring the keeping of establishments for betting, gaming or lotteries illegal, or prohibiting the use of streets or public places for such purposes; (3) prohibiting the enforcement in courts of justice of gambling contracts.
The earliest English legislation against games was passed in the interests of archery and other manly sports which were believed to render the lieges more fit for service in war. A statute of Richard II. (1388) directed servants and labourers to have bows and arrows and to use them on Sundays and holidays, and to cease from playing football, quoits, dice, putting the stone, kails and other such importune games. A more drastic statute was passed in 1409 (11 Hen. IV. c. 4) and penalties were imposed in 1477 (17 Edw. IV. c. 3) on persons allowing unlawful games to be played on their premises. These acts were superseded in 1541 (33 Hen. VIII. c. 9) by a statute passed on the petition of the bowyers, fletchers (fléchiers), stringers and arrowhead makers of the realm. This act (still partly in force) is entitled an “act for maintenance of archery and debarring of unlawful games”; and it recites that, since the last statutes (of 3 & 6 Hen. VIII.) “divers and many subtil inventative and crafty persons have found and daily find many and sundry new and crafty games and plays, as logating in the fields, slide-thrift, otherwise called shove-groat, as well within the city of London as elsewhere in many other and divers parts of this realm, keeping houses, plays and alleys for the maintenance thereof, by reason whereof archery is sore decayed, and daily is like to be more minished, and divers bowyers and fletchers, for lack of work, gone and inhabit themselves in Scotland and other places out of this realm, there working and teaching their science, to the puissance of the same, to the great comfort of strangers and detriment of this realm.” Accordingly penalties are imposed on all persons keeping houses for unlawful games, and all persons resorting thereto (s. 8). The games specified are dicing, table (backgammon) or carding, or any game prohibited by any statute theretofore made or any unlawful new game then or thereafter invented or to be invented. It is further provided that “no manner of artificer or craftsman of any handicraft or occupation, husbandman, apprentice, labourer, servant at husbandry, journeyman or servant of artificer, mariners, fishermen, watermen, or any serving man, shall play at the tables, tennis, dice, cards, bowls, clash, coyting, logating or any other unlawful game out of Christmas under the pain of xxs. to be forfeit for every time; and in Christmas to play at any of the said games in their masters’ houses or in their masters’ presence; and also that no manner of person shall at any time play at any bowl or bowls in open places out of his garden or orchard” (s. 11). The social evils of gambling (impoverishment, crime, neglect of divine service) are incidentally alluded to in the preamble, but only in connexion with the main purpose of the statute—the maintenance of archery. No distinction is made between games of skill and games of chance, and no reference is made to playing for money or money’s worth. The Book of Sports of James I. (1617), republished by Charles I. (1633), was aimed at encouraging certain sports on Sundays and holidays; but with the growth of Puritanism the royal efforts failed. The Sunday Observance Act 1625 prohibits the meeting of people out of their own parishes on the Lord’s Day for any sports or pastimes whatsoever. It has been attempted to enforce this act against Sunday football. The act goes on to prohibit any bear-baiting, bull-baiting, interludes, common plays or other unlawful exercises or plays on Sunday by parishioners within their own parishes. According to Blackstone (iv. Comm. c. 13) the principal ground of complaint leading to legislation in the 18th century was “gambling in high life.” He collects the statutes made with this view, but only those still in force need have been mentioned.
The first act directed against gambling as distinct from playing games was that of 1665 (16 Car. II. c. 7) “against deceitful, disorderly and excessive gaming” which deals with games both of skill and chance at which people cheat, or play otherwise than with ready money, or lose more than £100 on credit. In 1698 (13 Will. III. c. 23) legislation was passed against lotteries, therein described as “mischievous and unlawful games.” This act was amended in 1710 (9 Anne c. 6), and in the same year was passed a statute which is the beginning of the modern legislation against gambling (9 Anne c. 19). It includes within its scope money won by “gaming or playing” at cards, &c., and money won by “betting” on the sides or hands of those who game at any of the forbidden games. But it refers to tennis and bowls as well as to games with cards and dice.
The following list of lawful games, sports and exercises is given in Oliphant on Horses, &c. (6th ed.): horse-races, steeplechases, trotting matches, coursing matches, foot-races, boat-races, regattas, rowing matches, golf, wrestling matches, cricket, tennis, fives, rackets, bowls, skittles, quoits, curling, putting the stone, football, and presumably every bona-fide variety, e.g. croquet, knurr and spell, hockey or any similar games. Cock-fighting is said to have been unlawful at common law, and that and other modes of setting animals to fight are offences against the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Acts. The following are also lawful games: whist and other lawful games at cards, backgammon, bagatelle, billiards, chess, draughts and dominoes. But to allow persons to play for money at these games or at skittles or “skittle pool” or “puff and dart” on licensed premises is gaming within the Licensing Act 1872. The earlier acts declared unlawful the following games of skill: football, quoits, putting the stone, kails, tennis, bowls, clash or kails, or cloyshcayls, logating, half bowl, slide-thrift or shove-groat and backgammon. Backgammon and other games in 1739 played with backgammon tables were treated as lawful in that year. Horse-racing, long under restriction, being mentioned in the act of 1665 and many 18th-century acts, was fully legalized in 1840 (3 & 4 Vict. c. 35). The act of 1541, so far as it declared any game of mere skill unlawful, was repealed by the Gaming Act 1845. Billiards is legal in private houses or clubs and in public places duly licensed. The following games have been declared by the statutes or the judges to be unlawful, whether played in public or in private, unless played in a royal palace where the sovereign is residing: ace of hearts, pharaoh (faro), basset and hazard (1738), passage, and every game then invented or to be invented with dice or with any other instrument, engine or device in the nature of dice having one or more figures or numbers thereon (1739), roulet or roly-poly (1744), and all lotteries (except Art Union lotteries), rouge et noir, baccarat-banque (1884), chemin de fer (1895), and all games at cards which are not games of mere skill. The definition of unlawful game does not include whist played for a prize not subscribed to by the players, but it does include playing cards for money in licensed premises; even in the private room of the licensee or with private friends during closing hours.
The first attack on lotteries was in 1698, against lotteries “by dice, lots, cards, balls or any other numbers or figures or in any other way whatsoever.” An act of 1721 prohibited lotteries which under the name of sales distributed prizes in money, advowsons, land, jewels, &c., by lots, tickets, numbers or figures. Acts of 1722, 1733 and 1823 prohibited any sale of tickets, receipts, chances or numbers in foreign lotteries. The games of cards already referred to as unlawful were in 1738 declared to be “games or lotteries by cards or dice,” and in 1802 the definition of lottery was extended to include “little-goes and any game or lottery not authorized by parliament, drawn by dice, lots, cards, balls, or by numbers or figures or by any other way, contrivance or device whatsoever.” This wide definition reaches raffles and sweepstakes on races. The advertisement of foreign or illegal lotteries is forbidden by acts of 1836 and 1844. In 1846 art unions were exempted from the scope of the Lottery Acts. Attempts have been made to suppress the sale in England of foreign lottery tickets, but the task is difficult, as the post-office distributes the advertisements, although, under the Revenue Act 1898, the Customs treat as prohibited goods advertisements or notices as to foreign lotteries. More success has been obtained in putting down various devices by newspapers and shopkeepers to attract customers by instituting “missing word competitions” and “racing coupon competitions”; by automatic machines which give speculative chances in addition to the article obtained for the coin inserted; by distribution of prizes by lot or chance to customers; by holding sweepstakes at public-houses, by putting coins in sweetmeats to tempt street urchins by cupidity to indigestion; or by gratuitous distribution of medals giving a chance of a prize from a newspaper. An absolutely gratuitous distribution of chances seems not to be within the acts, but a commercial distribution is, even if individuals who benefit do not pay for their chance.
As already stated, the keeping of a gaming-house was at common law punishable only if a public nuisance were created. The act of 1541 imposes penalties on persons maintaining houses for unlawful games. Originally licences could be obtained for such houses, but these were abolished in 1555 (2 & 3 Phil. and Mar.). In 1698 lotteries were declared public nuisances, and in 1802 the same measure was meted out to lotteries known as little-goes. Special penalties are provided for those who set up lotteries or any unlawful game with cards or dice, &c. (1738, 1739, 1744). In 1751 inhabitants of a parish were enabled to insist on the prosecution of gaming-houses. The act of 1802 imposed severe penalties on persons publicly or privately keeping places for any lottery. This statute hits at the deliberate or habitual use of a place for the prohibited purpose, and does not touch isolated or incidental uses on a single occasion, e.g. at a bazaar or show; but under an act of 1823 the sale of lottery tickets is in itself an offence. The Gaming Act 1845 facilitates the search of suspected gaming-houses and the proof that they are such. It provides that, to prove any house to be a common gaming-house, it “shall be sufficient to show that it is kept or used for playing therein at any unlawful game, and that a bank is kept there by one or more of the players exclusively of the others, or that the chances of any game played therein are not alike favourable to all the players, including among the players the banker or other person by whom the game is managed, or against whom the other players stake, play or bet.” Gambling, it will be noticed, is still in this definition connected with some kind of game. The act also provides that proof that the gaming was for money shall not be required, and that the presence of cards, dice and other instruments of gaming shall be prima-facie evidence that the house was used as a common gaming-house. The most recent statute dealing with gaming-houses is of 1854, which provides summary remedies against the keeper and makes further provisions to facilitate conviction. It may be added that the Gaming Act 1845 makes winning money by cheating at any game or wager punishable in the same way as obtaining money by false pretences. At the present time proceedings for keeping gaming-houses in the sense in which that word is commonly understood are comparatively rare, and are usually against foreigners. The statutes hit both public and private gaming-houses (see the Park Club case, Jenks v. Turpin, 1884, 13 Q.B.D. 505, the leading case on unlawful games). The proprietor and the person who keeps the bank at an unlawful game are both within the statute: the players are not, but the act of Henry VIII. is so far alive that they can be put under recognizance not to frequent gaming-houses. Under the Licensing Act 1872 penalties are incurred by licensed victuallers who suffer any gaming or unlawful game to be played on their premises. A single instance of playing an unlawful game for money in a private house is not within the statutes (R. v. Davies, 1897, 2 Q.B. 199).
In England, so far as the general public is concerned, gaming at cards is to a large extent superseded by betting on sports and pastimes, or speculation by means of lotteries or like devices. The legislation against betting eo nomine began in 1853. In the Betting Act 1853 it is described as a kind of gaming of late sprung up to the injury and demoralization of improvident persons by the opening of places called betting houses and offices, and the receiving of money in advance by the owners or occupiers or their agents on promises to pay money on events or horse races and like contingencies. This act strikes at ready money betting as distinguished from betting on credit (“on the nod”). It was avowedly framed to hit houses open to all and sundry as distinguished from private betting clubs such as Tattersall’s. The act seeks to punish persons who keep a house, office, room or other place for the purpose (inter alia) of any person betting with persons “resorting thereto” or of receiving deposits in consideration of bets on contingencies relating to horse-races or other races, fights, games, sports or exercises. The act especially excepts persons who receive or hold prizes or stakes to be paid to the winner of a race or lawful sport, game or exercise, or to the owner of a horse engaged in a race (s. 6). Besides the penalties incurred by keeping such places, the keeper is liable to repay to depositors the sums deposited (s. 5).
By the Licensing Act 1872 penalties are incurred by licensed persons who allow their houses to be used in contravention of the Betting Act 1853. There has been a great deal of litigation as to the meaning and scope of this enactment, and a keen contest between the police and the Anti-gambling League (which has been very active in the matter) and the betting confraternity, in which much ingenuity has been shown by the votaries of sport in devising means for evading the terms of the enactment. The consequent crop of legal decisions shows a considerable divergence of judicial opinion. The House of Lords has held that the Tattersall’s enclosure or betting ring on a racecourse is not a “place” within the statute; and members of a bona-fide club who bet with each other in the club are not subject to the penalties of the act. But the word “place” has been held to include a public-house bar, an archway, a small plot of waste ground, and a bookmaker’s stand, and even a bookmaker’s big umbrella, and it is difficult to extract from the judges any clear indication of the nature of the “places” to which the act applies. The act is construed as applying only to ready-money betting, i.e. when the stake is deposited with the bookmaker, and only to places used for betting with persons physically resorting thereto; so that bets by letter, telegram or telephone do not fall within its penalties. The arm of the law has been found long enough to punish as thieves “welshers,” who receive and make off with deposits on bets which they never mean to pay if they lose. The act of 1853 makes it an offence to publish advertisements showing that a house is kept for betting. It was supplemented in 1874 by an act imposing penalties on persons advertising as to betting. But this has been read as applying to bets falling within the act of 1853, and it does not prohibit the publication of betting news or sporting tips in newspapers. A few newspapers do not publish these aids to ruin, and in some public libraries the betting news is obliterated, as it attracts crowds of undesirable readers. The act of 1853 has been to a great extent effectual against betting houses, and has driven some of them to Holland and other places. But it has been deemed expedient to legislate against betting in the streets, which has been found too attractive to the British workman.
By the Metropolitan Streets Acts 1867 any three or more persons assembled together in any part of any street in the city of London or county of London for the purpose of betting and deemed to be obstructing the street, may be arrested without warrant by a constable and fined a sum not exceeding £5. The Vagrancy Act 1873 (36 & 37 Vict. c. 38) provides that “Every person playing or betting by way of wagering or gaming on any street, road, highway or other open and public place, or in any open place to which the public have, or are permitted to have, access, at or with any table or instrument of gaming, or any coin, card, token or other article used as an instrument or means of gaming, at any game or pretended game of chance, shall be deemed a rogue and vagabond.” This act amended a prior act of 1868, passed to repress the practice of playing pitch and toss in the streets, which had become a public nuisance in the colliery districts. The powers of making by-laws for the peace, order and good government of their districts, possessed by municipal boroughs—and since 1888 by county councils—and extended in 1899 to the new London boroughs, have in certain cases been exercised by making by-laws forbidding any person to “frequent or use any street or other public place, on behalf either of himself or any other person, for the purpose of bookmaking, or betting, or wagering, or agreeing to bet or wager with any person, or paying, or receiving or settling bets.” This and similar by-laws have been held valid, but were found inadequate, and by the Street Betting Act 1906 (6 Edw. VII. c. 43), passed by the efforts of the late Lord Davey, it is made an offence for any person to frequent or loiter in a street or public place on behalf of himself or of any other person for the purpose of bookmaking or betting or wagering or agreeing to bet or wager or paying or receiving or settling bets. The punishment for a first offence is fine up to £10, for a second fine up to £20, and the punishment is still higher in the case of a third or subsequent offence, or where the accused while committing the offence has any betting transaction with a person under the age of sixteen. The act does not apply to ground used for a course for horse-racing or adjacent thereto on days on which races take place; but the expression public place includes a public park, garden or sea-beach, and any unenclosed ground to which the public for the time have unrestricted access, and enclosed places other than public parks or gardens to which the public have a restricted right of access with or without payment, if the owners or persons controlling the place exhibit conspicuously a notice prohibiting betting therein. A constable may arrest without warrant persons offending and seize all books, papers, cards and other articles relating to betting found in their possession, and these articles may be forfeited on conviction. Besides the above provision against betting with infants the Betting and Loans (Infants) Act 1892, passed at the instance of the late Lord Herschell, makes it a misdemeanour to send, with a view to profit, to any one known by the sender to be an infant, a document inviting him to enter into a betting or wagering transaction. The act is intended to protect lads at school and college from temptation by bookmakers.
We must now turn from the public law with respect to gaming to the treatment of bets and wagers from the point of view of their obligation on the individuals who lose them. A wager may be defined as “a promise to give money or money’s worth upon the determination or ascertainment of an uncertain event” (Anson, Law of Contract, 11th ed., p. 206). The event may be uncertain because it has not happened or because its happening is not ascertained; but to make the bargain a wager the determination of the event must be the sole condition of the bargain. According to the view taken in England of the common law, bets or wagers were legally enforceable, subject to certain rules dictated by considerations of public policy, e.g. that they did not lead to immorality or breach of the peace, or expose a third person to ridicule. The courts were constantly called upon to enforce wagers and constantly exercised their ingenuity to discover excuses for refusing. A writer on the law of contracts discovers here the origin of that principle of “public policy” which plays so important a part in English law. Wagering contracts were rejected because the contingencies on which they depended tended to create interests hostile to the common weal. A bet on the life of the emperor Napoleon was declared void because it gave one of the parties an interest in keeping the king’s enemy alive, and also because it gave the other an interest in compassing his death by unlawful means. A bet as to the amount of the hop-duty was held to be against public policy, because it tended to expose the condition of the king’s revenue to all the world. A bet between two hackney coachmen, as to which of them should be selected by a gentleman for a particular journey, was void because it tended to expose the customer to their importunities. When no such subtlety could be invented, the law, however reluctantly, was compelled to enforce the fulfilment of a wager. Actions on wagers were not favoured by the judges; and though a judge could not refuse to try such an action, he could, and often did, postpone it until after the decision of more important cases.
Parliament gradually intervened to confine the common law within narrower limits, both in commercial and non-commercial wagers, and both by general and temporary enactments. An example of the latter was 7 Anne c. 16 (1710), avoiding all wagers and securities relating to the then war with France. The earliest general enactment was 16 Car. II. c. 7 (1665), prohibiting the recovery of a sum exceeding £100 lost in games or pastimes, or in betting on the sides or hands of the players, and avoiding securities for money so lost. 9 Anne c. 19 avoided securities for such wagers for any amount, even in the hands of bona-fide holders for value without notice, and enabled the loser of £10 or upwards to sue for and recover the money he had lost within three months of the loss. Contracts of insurance by way of gaming and wagering were declared void, in the case of marine risks in 1746, and in the case of other risks in 1774. It was not until 1845 that a general rule was made excluding wagers from the courts. Section 18 of the Gaming Act 1845 (passed after a parliamentary inquiry in 1844 as to gaming) enacted “that all contracts or agreements, whether by parole or in writing, by way of gaming or wagering shall be null and void, and that no suit shall be brought or maintained in any court of law or equity for recovering any sum of money or valuable thing alleged to be won upon any wager, or which shall have been deposited in the hands of any person to abide the event on which any wager shall have been made; provided always that this enactment shall not be deemed to apply to any subscription or contribution, or agreement to subscribe or contribute, for or towards any plate, prize or sum of money to be awarded to the winner or winners of any lawful game, sport, pastime or exercise.”
The construction put on this enactment enabled turf commission agents to recover from their principals bets made and paid for them. But the Gaming Act 1892 rendered null and void any promise, express or implied, to repay to any person any sum of money paid by him under, or in respect of, any contract or agreement rendered null and void by the Gaming Act 1845, or to pay any sum of money by way of commission, fee, reward, or otherwise in respect of any such contract or agreement, or of any services in relation thereto or in connexion therewith, and provided that no action should be brought or maintained to recover any such sum. By the combined effect of these two enactments the recovery by the winner from the loser or stakeholder of bets or of stakes on games falling within s. 18 of the Gaming Act 1845 is absolutely barred; but persons who have deposited money to abide the event of a wager are not debarred from crying off and recovering their stake before the event is decided, or even after the decision of the event and before the stake is paid over to the winner; and a man who pays a bet for a friend, or a turf commission agent or other agent who pays a bet for a principal, has now no legal means of recovering the money, unless some actual deceit was used to induce him to pay in ignorance that it was a bet. But a person who has received a bet on account of another can still, it would seem, be compelled to pay it over, and the business of a betting man is treated as so far lawful that income-tax is charged on its profits, and actions between parties in such a business for the taking of partnership accounts have been entertained.
The effect of these enactments on speculative dealings in shares or other commodities calls for special consideration. It seems to be correct to define a wagering contract as one in which two persons, having opposite opinions touching the issue of an event (past or future), of which they are uncertain, mutually agree that on the determination of the event one shall win, and the other shall pay over a sum of money, or other stake, neither party having any other interest in the event than the sum or stake to be won or lost. This definition does not strike at contracts in “futures,” under which the contractors are bound to give or take delivery at a date fixed of commodities not in existence at the date of the contract. Nor are such contracts rendered void because they are entered into for purposes of speculation; in fact, their legality is expressly recognized by the Sale of Goods Act 1893. Contracts of insurance are void if made by way of gaming or wagering on events in which the assured has no interest present or prospective whether the matter be life or fire risks (1774) or maritime risks (Marine Insurance Act 1906). An act known as Sir John Barnard’s Act (7 Geo. II. c. 8, entitled “An act to prevent the infamous practice of stock jobbing”) prohibited contracts for liberty to accept or refuse any public stocks or securities and wagers relating to public stocks, but this act was repealed in 1860, and contracts to buy or sell stocks and shares are not now void because entered into by way of speculation and not for purposes of investment. The only limitation on such contracts is that contained in Leeman’s Act (30 & 31 Vict. c. 29) as to contracts for the sale of shares in joint-stock banking companies. But a transaction in any commodity, though in form commercial, falls within the Gaming Acts if in substance the transaction is a mere wager on the price of the commodity at a date fixed by the contract. It does not matter whether the dealing is in stocks or in cotton, nor whether it is entered into on the Stock Exchange, or on any produce exchange, or elsewhere; nor is it conclusive in favour of the validity of the bargain that it purports to bind the parties to take or deliver the article dealt in. The courts are entitled to examine into the true nature of the transaction; and where the substantial intention of the parties is merely to gamble in differences, to make what is called “a time bargain,” the fact that it is carried out by a series of contracts, regular and valid in form, will not be sufficient to exclude the application of the Gaming Acts.
In very many cases transactions with “outside stockbrokers” or “bucket shops” have been held to be mere wagers, although the contracts purported to give “put” or “call” options to demand delivery or acceptance of the stocks dealt with; and the cover deposited by the “client” has been treated as a mere security for performance of the bargain, and recoverable if sued for in time, i.e. before it is used for the purpose for which it is deposited. There was not up to 1909 any authoritative decision as to the application of the Gaming Act 1892 to transactions on the London Stock Exchange through a stockbroker who is a member of “the House”; but the same principle appears to be applicable where the facts of the particular deal clearly indicate that the intention was to make a mere time bargain, or to pay or receive differences only. The form, however, of all bargains on the Stock Exchange is calculated and intended to preclude people from setting up a gaming act defence: as each contract entitles the holder to call for delivery or acceptance of the stock named therein. In the event of the bankruptcy of a person involved in speculations, the bankruptcy officials exclude from proof against the estate all claims founded on any dealing in the nature of a wager; and on the same principle the bankrupt’s trustee cannot recover sums won by the bankrupt by gaming transactions, but unexhausted “cover” on uncompleted transactions may be recovered back.
Besides the enactments which prevent the recovery of bets or wagers by action there has also been a good deal of legislation dealing with securities given in respect of “gambling debts.” The earliest (1665) dealt with persons playing at games otherwise than for ready money and losing £100 or more on credit, and not only prohibited the winner from recovering the overplus but subjected him to penalties for winning it. An act of 1710 (9 Anne c. 19) declared utterly void all notes, bills, bonds, judgments, mortgages or other securities where the consideration is for money or valuable security won by gaming at cards, stocks or other games, or by betting on the sides or hands of the gamesters, or for reimbursing money knowingly advanced for such gaming or betting. This act draws a distinction between gaming and other bets or wagers. Under this act the securities were void even in the hands of innocent transferees. In 1841 the law was altered, declaring such securities not void but made upon an “illegal” consideration. The effect of the change is to enable an innocent transferee for value, of a bill, note or cheque, to recover on a security worthless in the hands of the original taker (see s. 30 of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882), but to put on him the burden of proving that he is a bona fide holder for value. In the case of a negotiable security given for a wager not within the acts of 1710 or 1841 (e.g. a bet on a contested election), but within the act of 1845, a third person holding it would be presumed to be a holder for value and on the person prima facie liable under the security falls the burden of proving that no consideration was given for it. It has been decided after considerable divergence of judicial opinion that an action will not lie in England in favour of the drawee against the drawer of a cheque drawn at Algiers on an English bank, partly for losses at baccarat, and partly for money borrowed to continue playing the game. The ground of decision was in substance that the Gaming Acts of 1845 and 1892 as the lex fori prohibit the English courts from enforcing gaming debts wherever incurred (Moulis v. Owen, 1907, 1 K.B. 746).
Scotland.—A Scots act of 1621 c. 14 (said still to be in force) forbids playing at cards or dice in any common house of hostelry, and directs that sums over 100 marks won on any one day at carding or dicing or at wagers on horse races should be at once sent to the treasurer of the kirk session. The Lottery Acts, except that of 1698, apply to Scotland; and the Betting House Act 1853 was extended to Scotland in 1874. The Street Betting Act 1906 extends to Scotland, and gaming houses can be suppressed under the Burgh Police Act 1892, and street betting, lotteries or gaming under that of 1903.
The Scots courts refuse to try actions on wagers, as being sponsiones ludicrae, unbecoming the dignity of the courts. 9 Anne c. 19 and 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 41 extend to Scotland, but the weight of judicial opinion is that the Gaming Act 1845 does not.
Ireland.—The British Acts against lotteries were extended to Ireland in 1780, and the general law as to gaming is the same in both countries.
British Possessions.—Certain of the earlier imperial acts are in force in British possessions, e.g. the act of 9 Anne c. 19, which is in force in Ontario subject to amendments made in 1902. In the Straits Settlements, Jamaica and British Guiana there are ordinances directed against gambling and lotteries, and particularly against forms of gambling introduced by the Chinese. Under these ordinances the money paid for a lottery ticket is recoverable by law. In the Transvaal betting houses were suppressed by proclamation (No. 33) soon after the annexation. An invention known in France as the pari mutuel, and in Australia as the totalizator, is allowed to be used on race-courses in most of the states (but not in New South Wales). In Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia the state levies a duty on the takings of the machine. In Tasmania the balance of the money retained by the stewards of the course less the tax must be applied solely for improving the course or promoting horse-racing. In Victoria under an act of 1901 the promoters of sports may by advertisement duly posted make betting on the ground illegal.
Egypt.—By law No. 10 of 1905 all lotteries are prohibited with certain exceptions, and it is made illegal to hawk the tickets or offer them for sale or to bring illegal lotteries in any way to the notice of the public. The authorized lotteries are those for charitable purposes, e.g. those of the benevolent societies of the various foreign communities.
United States.—In the United States many of the states make gaming a penal offence when the bet is upon an election, or a horse race, or a game of hazard. Betting contracts and securities given upon a bet are often made void, and this may destroy a gaming note in the hands of an innocent purchaser for value. The subject lies outside of the province of the federal government. By the legislation of some states the loser may recover his money if he sue within a limited time, as he might have done in England under 9 Anne c. 19.
Authorities.—Brandt on Games (1872); Oliphant, Law of Horses, &c. (6th ed. by Lloyd, 1908); Schwabe on the Stock Exchange (1905); Melsheimer on the Stock Exchange (4th ed., 1905); Coldridge and Hawksford, The Law of Gambling (1895); Stutfield, Betting (3rd ed., 1901).
(W. F. C.)
Leake on Contracts (4th ed.), p. 529.
Pollock, Contracts (7th ed.), p. 313.
Burge v. Ashby, 1900, 1 Q.B. 744.
GAMUT (from the Greek letter gamma, used as a musical symbol, and ut, the first syllable of the medieval hymn Sanctus Johannes), a term in music used to mean generally the whole compass or range of notes possessed by an instrument or voice. Historically, however, the sense has developed from its stricter musical meaning of a scale (the recognized musical scale of any period), originating in the medieval “great scale,” of which the invention has usually been ascribed to Guido of Arezzo (q.v.) in the 11th century. The whole question is somewhat obscure, but, in the evolution of musical notation out of the classical alphabetical system, the invention of the medieval gamut is more properly assigned to Hucbald (d. 930). In his system of scales the semitone was always between the 2nd and 3rd of a tetrachord, as G, A, ♭ B, C, so the ♮ B and ♯ F of the second octave were in false relation to the ♭ B and ♮F of the first two tetrachords. To this scale of four notes, G, A, ♭ B, C, were subsequently added a note below and a note above, which made the hexachord with the semitone between the 3rd and 4th both up and down, as F, G, A, ♭ B, C, D. It was at a much later date that the 7th, our leading note, was admitted into a key, and for this the first two letters of the last line of the above-named hymn, “Sanctus Johannes,” would have been used, save for the notion that as the note Mi was at a semitone below Fa, the same vowel should be heard at a semitone below the upper Ut, and the syllable Si was substituted for Sa. Long afterwards the syllable Ut was replaced by Do in Italy, but it is still retained in France; and in these two countries, with whatever others employ their nomenclature, the original Ut and the substituted Do stand for the sound defined by the letter C in English and German terminology. The literal musical alphabet thus accords with the syllabic:
A B C D E F G
La, Si, Ut or Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol.
In Germany a remnant of Greek use survives. A was originally followed in the scale by the semitone above, as the classical Mesē was followed by Paramesē, and this note, namely ♭ B, is still called B in German, English ♮ B (French and Italian Si) being represented by the letter H. The gamut which, whenever instituted, did not pass out of use until the 19th century, regarded the hexachord and not the octachord, employed both letters and syllables, made the former invariable while changing the latter according to key relationship, and acknowledged only the three keys of G, C and F; it took its name from having the Greek letter gamma with Ut for its lowest keynote, though the Latin letters with the corresponding syllables were applied to all the other notes.
GANDAK, a river of northern India. It rises in the Nepal-Himalayas, flows south-west until it reaches British territory, where it forms the boundary between the United Provinces and Bengal for a considerable portion of its course, and falls into the Ganges opposite Patna. It is a snow-fed stream, and the surrounding country in the plains, lying at a lower level than its banks, is endangered by its floods. The river is accordingly enclosed by protective embankments.
The Little Gandak rises in the Nepal hills, enters Gorakhpur district about 8 m. west of the Gandak, and joins the Gogra just within the Saran district of Bengal.
The Burhi (or old) Gandak also rises in the Nepal hills, and follows a course roughly parallel to and east of that of the Gandak, of which it represents an old channel, passing Muzaffarpur, and joining the Ganges nearly opposite to Moughjr. Its principal tributary is the Baghmati, which rises in the hills N. of Kathmandu, flows in a southerly direction through Tirhut, and joins the Burhi Gandak close to Rusera.
GANDAMAK, a village of Afghanistan, 35 m. from Jalalabad on the road to Kabul. On the retreat from Kabul of General Elphinstone’s army in 1842, a hill near Gandamak was the scene of the massacre of the last survivors of the force, twenty officers and forty-five British soldiers. It is also notable for the treaty of Gandamak, which was signed here in 1879 with Yakub Khan. (See Afghanistan.)
GANDERSHEIM, a town of Germany in the duchy of Brunswick, in the deep valley of the Gande, 48 m. S.W. of Brunswick, on the railway Böissum-Holzminden. Pop. (1905) 2847. It has two Protestant churches of which the convent church (Stiftskirche) contains the tombs of famous abbesses, a palace (now used as law courts) and the famous abbey (now occupied by provincial government offices). There are manufactures of linen, cigars, beet-root sugar and beer.
The abbey of Gandersheim was founded by Duke Ludolf of Saxony, who removed here in 856 the nuns who had been shortly before established at Brunshausen. His own daughter Hathumoda was the first abbess, who was succeeded on her death by her sister Gerberga. Under Gerberga’s government Louis III. granted a privilege, by which the office of abbess was to continue in the ducal family of Saxony as long as any member was found competent and willing to accept the same. Otto III. gave the abbey a market, a right of toll and a mint; and after the bishop of Hildesheim and the archbishop of Mainz had long contested with each other about its supervision, Pope Innocent III. declared it altogether independent of both. The abbey was ultimately recognized as holding directly of the Empire, and the abbess had a vote in the imperial diet. The conventual estates were of great extent, and among the feudatories who could be summoned to the court of the abbess were the elector of Hanover and the king of Prussia. Protestantism was introduced in 1568, and Magdalena, the last Roman Catholic abbess, died in 1589; but Protestant abbesses were appointed to the foundation, and continued to enjoy their imperial privileges till 1803, when Gandersheim was incorporated with Brunswick. The last abbess, Augusta Dorothea of Brunswick, was a princess of the ducal house, and kept her rank till her death. The memory of Gandersheim will long be preserved by its literary memorials. Hroswitha, the famous Latin poet, was a member of the sisterhood in the 9th century; and the rhyming chronicle of Eberhard of Gandersheim ranks as in all probability the earliest historical work composed in low German.
The Chronicle, which contains an account of the first period of the monastery, is edited by L. Wieland in the Monumenta Germ. historica (1877), and has been the object of a special study by Paul Hasse (Göttingen, 1872). See also “Agii vita Hathumodae abbatissae Gandershemensis primae,” in J.G. von Eckhart’s Veterum monumentorum quaternio (Leipzig, 1720); and Hase, Mittelalterliche Baudenkmäler Niedersachsens (1870).
GANDHARVA, in Hindu mythology, the term used to denote (1) in the Rig-Veda usually a minor deity; (2) in later writings a class of divine beings. As a unity Gandharva has no special attributes but many duties, and is in close relation with the great gods. Thus he is director of the sun’s horses; he is guardian of soma, the sacred liquor, and therefore is regarded as the heavenly physician, soma being a panacea. He is servant of Agni the god of light and of Varuna the divine judge. He is omnipresent: in the heavens, in the air and in the waters. He is the keeper of heaven’s secrets and acts as messenger between gods and men. He is gorgeously clothed and carries shining weapons. For wife he has the spirit of the clouds and waters, Apsaras, and by her became father of the first mortals, Yama and Yami. He is the tutelary deity of women and presides over marriage ceremonies. In their collective capacity the Gandharva share the duties allotted to the single deity. They live in the house of Indra and with their wives, the Apsaras, beguile the time by singing, acting and dancing. Sometimes they are represented as numbering twelve, sometimes twenty-seven, or they are innumerable. In Hindu law a Gandharva marriage is one contracted by mutual consent and without formality.
GANDÍA, a seaport of eastern Spain, in the province of Valencia; on the Gandía-Alcóy and Alcira-Denia railways. Pop. (1900) 10,026. Gandía is on the left bank of the river Alcóy or Sérpis, which waters one of the richest and most populous plains of Valencia and enters the Mediterranean Sea at the small harbour of Gandía (El Grao), 3 m. N.E. The chief ancient buildings of Gandía are the Gothic church, the college, founded by San Francisco de Borgia, director-general of the order of Jesus (1510-1572), and the palace of the dukes of Gandía—a title held in the 15th and 16th centuries by members of the princely house of Borgia or Borja. A Jesuit convent, the theatre, schools and the palace of the dukes of Osuna, are modern. Besides its manufactures of leather, silk, velvet and ribbons, Gandía has a thriving export trade in fruit, and imports coal, guano, timber and flour. In 1904, 400 vessels, of 200,000 tons, entered the harbour.
GANDO, a sultanate of British West Africa, included in the protectorate of Nigeria, situated on the left bank of the Niger above Borgu. The sultanate was established, c. 1819, on the death of Othman Dan Fodio, the founder of the Fula empire, and its area and importance varied considerably during the 19th century, several of the Fula emirates being regarded as tributaries, while Gando itself was more or less dependent on Sokoto. Gando in the middle of the century included both banks of the Niger at least as far N.W. as Say. The districts outside the British protectorate now belong to France. Since 1884 Gando has been in treaty relations with the British, and in 1903 the part assigned to the British sphere by agreement with France came definitely under the control of the administration in Nigeria. Gando now forms the sub-province of the double province of Sokoto. The emir was appointed under British authority after the conquest of Sokoto in 1903. Since that date the province has been organized for administration on the same system as the rest of the protectorate of Northern Nigeria. Provincial and native courts of justice have been established, roads have been opened, the slave trade has been abolished, and the country assessed under the new scheme for taxation. British garrisons are stationed at Jegga and Ambrusa. The chief town is Gando, situated on the Sokoto, the first considerable affluent of the Niger from the east, about 60 m. S.W. of the town of Sokoto.
GANESA, or Ganesh, in Hindu mythology, the god of wisdom and prudence, always represented with an elephant’s head possibly to indicate his sagacity. He is the son of Siva and Parvati. He is among the most popular of Indian deities, and almost every act, religious or social, in a Hindu’s life begins with an invocation to him, as do most books. He typifies not the wisdom of knowledge but that worldly wisdom which results in financial success, and thus he is particularly the god of the Hindu shopkeeper. In his divine aspect Ganesa is ruler over the hosts of heaven, the spirits which come and go to do Indra’s will.
GANGES (Ganga), a great river of northern India, formed by the drainage of the southern ranges of the Himalayas. This mighty stream, which in its lower course supplies the river system of Bengal, rises in the Garhwal state, and falls into the Bay of Bengal after a course of 1500 m. It issues, under the name of the Bhagirathi, from an ice cave at the foot of a Himalayan snow-bed near Gangotri, 10,300 ft. above the level of the sea.
During its passage through the southern spurs of the Himalayas it receives the Jahnavi from the north-west, and subsequently the Alaknanda, after which the united stream takes the name of the Ganges. Deo Prayag, their point of junction, is a celebrated place of pilgrimage, as is also Gangotri, the source of the parent stream. At Sukhi it pierces through the Himalayas, and turns south-west to Hardwar, also a place of great sanctity. It proceeds by a tortuous course through the districts of Dehra Dun, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Bulandshahr and Farukhabad, in which last district it receives the Ramganga. Thus far the Ganges has been little more than a series of broad shoals, long deep pools and rapids, except, of course, during the melting of the snows and throughout the rainy season. At Allahabad, however, it receives the Jumna, a mighty sister stream, which takes its rise also in the Himalayas to the west of the sources of the Ganges. The combined river winds eastwards by south-east through the United Provinces, receiving the Gumti and the Gogra. The point of junction with both the Gumti and the Gogra has more or less pretension to sanctity. But the tongue of land at Allahabad, where the Jumna and the Ganges join, is the true Prayag, the place of pilgrimage, to which hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus repair to wash away their sins in the sacred river. It is here that the great festival called the Magh mela is held.
Shortly after passing the holy city of Benares the Ganges enters Behar, and after receiving an important tributary, the Sone from the south, passes Patna, and obtains another accession to its volume from the Gandak, which rises in Nepal. Farther to the east it receives the Kusi, and then, skirting the Rajmahal hills, turns sharply to the southward, passing near the site of the ruined city of Gaur. By this time it has approached to within 240 m., as the crow flies, from the sea. About 20 m. farther on it begins to branch out over the level country, and this spot marks the commencement of the delta, 220 m. in a straight line, or 300 by the windings of the river, from the Bay of Bengal. The main channel takes the name of the Padma or Padda, and proceeds in a south-easterly direction, past Pabna to Goalanda, above which it is joined by the Jamuna or main stream of the Brahmaputra. The vast confluence of waters rushes towards the sea, receiving further additions from the hill country on the east, and forming a broad estuary known under the name of the Meghna, which enters the Bay of Bengal near Noakhali. This estuary, however, is only the largest and most easterly of a great number of mouths or channels. The most westerly is the Hugli, which receives the waters of a number of distributary channels that start from the parent Ganges above Murshidabad. Between the Hugli on the west and the Meghna on the east lies the delta. The upper angle of it consists of rich and fertile districts, such as Murshidabad, Nadia, Jessore and the 24 Parganas. But towards its southern base, resting on the sea, the country sinks into a series of great swamps, intercepted by a network of innumerable channels. This wild waste is known as the Sundarbans, from the sundari tree, which grows in abundance in the seaboard tracts.
The most important channel of the Ganges for commerce is the Hugli, on which stands Calcutta, about 90 m. from the mouth. Beyond this city the navigation is conducted by native craft,—the modern facilities for traffic by rail and the increasing shoals in the river having put an end to the previous steamer communication, which plied until about 1860 as high up as Allahabad. Below Calcutta important boat routes through the delta connect the Hugli with the eastern branches of the river, for both native craft and steamers.
The Ganges is essentially a river of great cities: Calcutta, Monghyr, Patna, Benares and Allahabad all lie on its course below its junction with the Jumna; and the ancient capitals, Agra and Delhi, are on the Jumna, higher up. The catchment basin of the Ganges is bounded on the N. by a length of about 700 m. of the Himalayan range, on the S. by the Vindhya mountains, and on the E. by the ranges which separate Bengal from Burma. The vast river basin thus enclosed embraces 432,480 sq. m. According to the latest calculations, the length of the main stream of the Ganges is 1540 m., or with its longest affluent, 1680; breadth at true entrance into the sea, 20 m.; breadth of channel in dry season, 1¼ to 2¼ m.; depth in dry season, 30 ft.; flood discharge, 1,800,000 cub. ft. per second; ordinary discharge, 207,000 cub. ft.; longest duration of flood, about 40 days. The average fall from Allahabad to Benares is 6 in. per mile; from Benares to Calcutta, between 4 and 5 in.; from Calcutta to the sea, 1 to 2 in. Great changes take place from time to time in the river-bed, which alter the face of the country. Extensive islands are thrown up, and attach themselves to the mainland, while the river deserts its old bed and seeks a new channel, it may be many miles off. Such changes are so rapid and on so vast a scale, and the corroding power of the current on the bank so irresistible, that in Lower Bengal it is considered perilous to build any structure of a large or permanent character on its margin. Many decayed or ruined cities attest the changes in the river-bed in ancient times; and within our own times the main channel which formerly passed Rajmahal has turned away from it, and left the town high and dry, 7 m. from the bank.
The Ganges is crossed by six railway bridges on its course as far as Benares; and another, at Sara in Eastern Bengal, has been sanctioned.
The Upper Ganges Canal and the Lower Ganges Canal are the two principal systems of perennial irrigation in the United Provinces. The Ganges canal was opened by Lord Dalhousie in 1854, and irrigates 978,000 acres. The Lower Ganges canal, an extension of the original canal, has been in operation since 1878 and irrigates 830,000 acres. The two canals, together with the eastern Jumna, command the greater portion of the Doab lying between the Ganges and the Jumna, above Allahabad. Navigation in either is insignificant.
(T. H. H.*)
GANGOTRI, a celebrated place of Hindu pilgrimage, among the Himalaya Mountains. It is situated in the native state of Garhwal in the United Provinces, on the Bhagirathi, the chief head-stream of the Ganges, which is here not above 15 or 20 yds. broad, with a moderate current, and not in general above 3 ft. deep. The course of the river runs N. by E.; and on the bank near Gangotri there is a small temple about 20 ft. high, in which are images representing Ganga, Bhagirathi and other figures of mythology. It dates from the early part of the 18th century. The bed of the river adjoining the temple is divided off by the Brahmans into three basins, where the pilgrims bathe. One of these portions is dedicated to Brahma, another to Vishnu and the third to Siva. The pilgrimage to Gangotri is considered efficacious in washing away the sins of the devotee, and ensuring him eternal happiness in the world to come. The water taken from this sacred spot is exported by pilgrims to India and sold at a high price. The elevation of the temple above the sea is 10,319 ft.
GANGPUR, a tributary state of Orissa, Bengal, included until 1905 among the Chota Nagpur States. It is bounded N. by Ranchi district, E. by the Singhbhum district, S. by Sambalpur and Bamra, and W. by Raigarh in the Central Provinces. The country is for the most part an undulating plain, broken by detached ranges of hills, one of which, the Mahavira range, possesses a very remarkable appearance, springing abruptly from the plain in an irregular wall of tilted and disrupted rock, with two flanking peaks. The rivers are the Ib and the Brahmani, formed here by the union of the Sankh and the South Koel, both navigable by canoes. The Ib was formerly famous on account of diamonds found in its bed, and its sands are still washed for gold. One of the largest coalfields in India extends into the state, and iron ore is also found. Jungle products—lac, silk cocoons, catechu and resin, which are exported; wild animals—bisons, buffaloes, tigers, leopards, hyenas, wolves, jackals, wild dogs and many sorts of deer. Area, 2492 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 238,896; estimated revenue, £16,000.
GANGRENE (from Gr. γάγγραινα, an eating sore, from γραίνειν, to gnaw), a synonym in medicine for mortification (q.v.), or a local death in the animal body due to interruption of the circulation by various causes.
GANILH, CHARLES (1758-1836), French economist and politician, was born at Allanche in Cantal on the 6th of January 1758. He was educated for the profession of law and practised as avocat. During the troubled period which culminated in the taking of the Bastille on the 14th of July 1789, he came prominently forward in public affairs, and was one of the seven members of the permanent Committee of Public Safety which sat at the hôtel de ville. He was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, and was only released by the counter-revolution of the 9th Thermidor. During the first consulate he was called to the tribunate, but was excluded in 1802. In 1815 he was elected deputy for Cantal, and finally left the Chamber on its dissolution in 1823. He died in 1836. Ganilh is best known as the most vigorous defender of the mercantile school in opposition to the views of Adam Smith and the English economists.
His works, though interesting from the clearness and precision with which these peculiar opinions are presented, do not now possess much value for the student of political economy. He wrote Essai politique sur le revenue des peuples de l’antiquité, du moyen âge, &c. (1808); Des systèmes d’économie politique (1809); Théorie d’économie politique (1815); Dictionnaire analytique de l’économie politique (1826).
GANJAM, a district of British India, in the extreme north-east of the Madras Presidency. It has an area of 8372 sq. m. Much of the district is exceedingly mountainous and rocky, but is interspersed with open valleys and fertile plains. Pleasant groves of trees in the plains give to the scenery a greener appearance than is usually met with in the districts to the south. The mountainous tract known as the Maliyas, or chain of the Eastern Ghats, has an average height of about 2000 ft.—its principal peaks being Singharaj (4976 ft.), Mahendragiri (4923) and Devagiri (4535). The hilly region forms the agency of Ganjam, with an area of 3483 sq. m. and a population (in 1901) of 321,114, mostly wild backward tribes, incapable of being governed under ordinary conditions and therefore ruled by an agent of the governor with special powers. The chief rivers are the Rushikulya, the Vamsadhara and the Languliya. The sea and river fisheries afford a livelihood to a considerable section of the population. The hilly region abounds in forests consisting principally of sal, with satin-wood, ebony and sandal-wood in smaller quantities.
Ganjam formed part of the ancient kingdom of Kalinga. Its early history is involved in obscurity, and it was not till after the Gajapati dynasty ascended the throne of Orissa that this tract became even nominally a part of their dominions. Owing to the nature of the country the rising Mahommedan power was long kept at bay; and it was not till nearly a century after the first invasion of Orissa that a Mahommedan governor was sent to govern the Chicacole Circars, which included the present district of Ganjam. In 1753 Chicacole, with the Northern Circars, were made over to the French by Salabat Jang for the maintenance of his French auxiliaries. In 1759 Masulipatam was taken by an English force sent from Bengal, and the French were compelled to abandon Ganjam and their other factories in the north. In 1765 the Northern Circars (including Ganjam) were granted to the English by imperial firman, and in August 1768 an English factory was founded at Ganjam, protected by a fort. The present district of Ganjam was constituted in 1802. In the earlier years of British rule considerable difficulty was experienced in the administration of the district; and on more than one occasion the refractory large landholders had to be coerced by means of regular troops. In 1816 Ganjam was overrun by the Pindaris; and in 1836 occurred the Gumsur campaign, when the British first came into contact with the aboriginal Kondhs, the suppression of whose practice of human sacrifice was successfully accomplished. A petty rising of a section of the Kondhs occurred in 1865, which was, however, suppressed without the aid of regular troops.
In 1901 the pop. of the district was 2,010,256, showing an increase of 20% in the decade. There are two systems of government irrigation: (1) the Rushikulya project, and (2) the Ganjam minor rivers system. The principal crops are rice, other food grains, pulse, oil seeds and a little sugar-cane and cotton. Salt is evaporated, as a government monopoly, along the coast. Sugar is refined, according to German methods, at Aska, where rum also is produced. A considerable trade is conducted at the ports of Gopalpur and Calingapatam, which are only open roadsteads. The district is traversed throughout by the East Coast railway (Bengal-Nagpur system), which was opened from Calcutta to Madras in 1900. There are colleges at Berhampore and Parlakimedi. The headquarters station is Berhampore; the town of Ganjam occupied this position till 1815, when it was found unhealthy, and its importance has since declined.
GANNAL, JEAN NICOLAS (1791-1852), French chemist, was born at Sarre-Louis on the 28th of July 1791. In 1808 he entered the medical department of the French army, and witnessed the retreat from Moscow in 1812. After the downfall of the empire he worked at the École Polytechnique in Paris and subsequently at the Faculty of Sciences as assistant to L.J. Thénard. His contributions to technical chemistry included a method of refining borax, the introduction of elastic rollers formed of gelatin and sugar for use in printing, and processes for manufacturing glue and gelatin, lint, white lead, &c. The Institute awarded him a Montyon prize in 1827 for his advocacy of chlorine as a remedy in pulmonary phthisis, and again in 1835 for his discovery of the efficacy of solutions of aluminium acetate and chloride for preserving anatomical preparations. In the latter part of his life he turned his attention to embalmment, his method depending on the injection of solutions of aluminium salts into the arteries. He died at Paris in January 1852. His son Felix, born in 1829, also devoted himself to the question of the disposal of the dead, among his publications being Mort réelle et mort apparente (1868), Inhumation et crémation (1876), and Les Cimetières (1885), a work on the history and law of burial, of which only one volume appeared.
GANNET (O.E. ganot) or Solan Goose, the Pelecanus bassanus of Linnaeus and the Sula bassana of modern ornithologists, a large sea-fowl long known as a numerous visitor, for the purpose of breeding, to the Bass Rock at the entrance of the Firth of Forth, and to certain other islands off the coast of Britain, of which four are in Scottish waters—namely, Ailsa Craig, at the mouth of the Firth of Clyde; the group known collectively as St Kilda; Suleskerry, some 40 m. north-east of the Butt of Lewis; and the Stack and Skerry, about the same distance westward of Stromness. It appears also to have two stations off the coast of Ireland, the Skellig Islands and the Stags of Broadhaven, and it resorts besides to Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel—its only English breeding-place. Farther to the northward its settlements are Myggenaes, the most westerly of the Faeroes, and various small islands off the coast of Iceland, of which the Vestmannaeyjar, the Reykjanes Fuglaskér and Grimsey are the chief. On the western side of the Atlantic it appears to have but five stations, one in the Bay of Fundy, and four rocks in the Gulf of St Lawrence. On all these seventeen places the bird arrives about the end of March or in April and departs in autumn when its young are ready to fly; but even during the breeding-season many of the adults may be seen on their fishing excursions at a vast distance from their home, while at other times of the year their range is greater still, for they not only frequent the North Sea and the English Channel, but stray to the Baltic, and, in winter, extend their flight to the Madeiras, while the members of the species of American birth traverse the ocean from the shores of Greenland to the Gulf of Mexico.
Apparently as bulky as a goose, and with longer wings and tail, the gannet weighs considerably less. The plumage of the adult is white, tinged on the head and neck with buff, while the outer edge and principal quills of the wings are black, and some bare spaces round the eyes and on the throat reveal a dark blue skin. The first plumage of the young is of a deep brown above, but paler beneath, and each feather is tipped with a triangular white spot. The nest is a shallow depression, either on the ground itself or on a pile of turf, grass and seaweed—which last is often conveyed from a great distance. The single egg it contains has a white shell of the same chalky character as a cormorant’s. The young are hatched blind and naked, but the slate-coloured skin with which their body is covered is soon clothed with white down, replaced in due time by true feathers of the dark colour already mentioned. The mature plumage is believed not to be attained for some three years. Towards the end of summer the majority of gannets, both old and young, leave the neighbourhood of their breeding-place, and, betaking themselves to the open sea, follow the shoals of herrings and other fishes (the presence of which they are most useful in indicating to fishermen) to a great distance from land. Their prey is almost invariably captured by plunging upon it from a height, and a company of gannets fishing presents a curious and interesting spectacle. Flying in a line, each bird, when it comes over the shoal, closes its wings and dashes perpendicularly into the waves, whence it emerges after a few seconds, and, shaking the water from its feathers, mounts in a wide curve, and orderly takes its place in the rear of the string, to repeat its headlong plunge so soon as it again finds itself above its prey.
Structurally the gannet presents many points worthy of note, such as its closed nostrils, its aborted tongue, and its toes all connected by a web—characters which it possesses in common with most of the other members of the group of birds (Steganopodes) to which it belongs. But more remarkable still is the system of subcutaneous air-cells, some of large size, pervading almost the whole surface of the body, communicating with the lungs, and capable of being inflated or emptied at the will of the bird. This peculiarity has attracted the attention of several writers—Montagu, Sir R. Owen (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1831, p. 90), and Macgillivray.
In the southern hemisphere the gannet is represented by two nearly allied but somewhat smaller forms—one, Sula capensis, inhabiting the coast of South Africa, and the other, S. serrator, the Australian seas. Both much resemble the northern bird, but the former seems to have a permanently black tail, and the latter a tail the four middle feathers of which are blackish-brown with white shafts.
Apparently inseparable from the gannets generically are the smaller birds well known to sailors as boobies, from the extraordinary stupidity they commonly display. They differ, however, in having no median stripe of bare skin down the front of the throat; they almost invariably breed upon trees and are inhabitants of warmer climates. One of them, S. cyanops, when adult has much of the aspect of a gannet, but S. piscator is readily distinguishable by its red legs, and S. leucogaster by its upper plumage and neck of deep brown. These three are widely distributed within the tropics, and are in some places exceedingly abundant. The fourth, S. variegata, which seems to preserve throughout its life the spotted suit characteristic of the immature S. bassana, has a much more limited range, being as yet only known from the coast of Peru, where it is one of the birds which contribute to the formation of guano.
(A. N.)
The phrase ganotes bæð (gannet’s bath), a periphrasis for the sea, occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in reference to events which took place A.D. 975, as pointed out by Prof. Cunningham, whose learned treatise on this bird (Ibis, 1866, p. 1) nearly exhausts all that can be said of its history and habits. A few pages further on (p. 13) this writer remarks:—“The name gannet is intimately connected with our modern English gander, both words being modifications of the ancient British ‘gan’ or ‘gans,’ which is the same word as the modern German ‘Gans,’ which in its turn corresponds with the old High German ‘Kans,’ the Greek χήν, the Latin anser, and the Sanskrit ‘hansa,’ all of which possess the same signification, viz. a goose. The origin of the names solan or soland, sulan, sula and haf-sula, which are evidently all closely related, is not so obvious. Martin [Voy. St Kilda] informs us that ‘some imagine that the word solan comes from the Irish souler, corrupted and adapted to the Scottish language, qui oculis irretortis e longinquo respiciat praedam.’ The earlier writers in general derive the word from the Latin solea, in consequence of the bird’s supposed habit of hatching its egg with its foot; and in a note intercalated into Ray’s description of the solan goose in the edition of his Itineraries published by the Ray Society, and edited by Dr Lankester, we are told, though no authority for the statement is given, that ‘the gannet, Sula alba, should be written solent goose, i.e. a channel goose.’” Hereon an editorial note remarks that this last statement appears to have been a suggestion of Yarrell’s, and that it seems at least as possible that the “Solent” took its name from the bird.
The large number of gannets, and the vast quantity of fish they take, has been frequently animadverted upon, but the computations on this last point are perhaps fallacious. It seems to be certain that in former days fishes, and herrings in particular, were at least as plentiful as now, if not more so, notwithstanding that gannets were more numerous. Those frequenting the Bass were reckoned by Macgillivray at 20,000 in 1831, while in 1869 they were computed at 12,000, showing a decrease of two-fifths in 38 years. On Ailsa in 1869 there were supposed to be as many as on the Bass, but their number was estimated at 10,000 in 1877 (Report on the Herring Fisheries of Scotland, 1878, pp. xxv. and 171),—being a diminution of one-sixth in eight years, or nearly twice as great as on the Bass.
GANODONTA (so named from the presence of bands of enamel on the teeth), a group of specialized North American Lower and Middle Eocene mammals of uncertain affinity. The group includes Hemiganus, Psittacotherium and Conoryctes from the Puerco, Calamodon and Hemiganus from the Wasatch, and Stylinodon from the Bridger Eocene. With the exception of Conoryctes, in which it is longer, the skull is short and suggests affinity to the sloths, as does what little is known of the limb-bones. The dentition, too, is of a type which might well be considered ancestral to that of the Edentata. For instance, the molars when first developed have tritubercular summits, but these soon become worn away, leaving tall columnar crowns, with a subcircular surface of dentine exposed at the summit of each. Moreover, while the earlier types have a comparatively full series of teeth, all of which are rooted and invested with enamel, in the later forms the incisors are lost, the cheek-teeth never develop roots but grow continuously throughout life. These and other features induced Dr J.L. Wortman to regard the Ganodonta as an ancestral suborder of Edentata; but this view is not accepted by Prof. W.B. Scott. Teeth provisionally assigned to Calamodon have been obtained from the Lower Tertiary deposits of Switzerland.
See J.L. Wortman, “The Ganodonta and their Relationship to the Edentata,” Bull. Amer. Mus. vol. ix. p. 59 (1897); W.B. Scott, “Mammalia of the Santa Cruz Beds, Edentata,” Rep. Princeton Exped. to Patagonia, vol. v. (1903-1904).
(R. L.*)
GANS, EDUARD (1797-1839), German jurist, was born at Berlin on the 22nd of March 1797, of prosperous Jewish parents. He studied law first at Berlin, then at Göttingen, and finally at Heidelberg, where he attended Hegel’s lectures, and became thoroughly imbued with the principles of the Hegelian philosophy. In 1820, after taking his doctor’s degree, he returned to Berlin as lecturer on law. In 1825 he turned Christian, and the following year was appointed extraordinary, and in 1828 ordinary, professor in the Berlin faculty of law. At this period the historical school of jurisprudence was coming to the front, and Gans, predisposed owing to his Hegelian tendencies to treat law historically, applied the method to one special branch—the right of succession. His great work, Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwicklung (1824, 1825, 1829 and 1835), is of permanent value, not only for its extensive survey of facts, but for the admirable manner in which the general theory of the slow evolution of legal principles is presented. In 1830, and again in 1835, Gans visited Paris, and formed an intimate acquaintance with the leaders of literary culture and criticism there. The liberality of his views, especially on political matters, drew upon Gans the displeasure of the Prussian government, and his course of lectures on the history of the last fifty years (published as Vorlesungen über d. Geschichte d. letzten fünfzig Jahre, Leipzig, 1833-1834) was prohibited. He died at Berlin on the 5th of May 1839. In addition to the works above mentioned, there may be noted the treatise on the fundamental laws of property (Über die Grundlage des Besitzes, Berlin, 1829), a portion of a systematic work on the Roman civil law (System des römischen Civil-Rechts, 1827), and a collection of his miscellaneous writings (Vermischte Schriften, 1832). Gans edited the Philosophie der Geschichte in Hegel’s Werke, and contributed an admirable preface.
See Revue des deux mondes (Dec. 1839).
GÄNSBACHER, JOHANN BAPTIST (1778-1844), Austrian musical composer, was born in 1778 at Sterzing in Tirol. His father, a schoolmaster and teacher of music, undertook his son’s early education, which the boy continued under various masters till 1802, when he became the pupil of the celebrated Abbé G.J. Vogler. To his connexion with this artist and with his fellow-pupils, more perhaps than to his own merits, Gänsbacher’s permanent place in the history of music is due; for it was during his second stay with Vogler, then (1810) living at Darmstadt, that he became acquainted with Weber and Meyerbeer, and the close friendship which sprang up among the three young musicians, and was dissolved by death only, has become celebrated in the history of their art. But Gänsbacher was himself by no means without merit. He creditably filled the responsible and difficult post of director of the music at St Stephen’s cathedral, Vienna, from 1823 till his death (July 13, 1844); and his compositions show high gifts and accomplishment. They consist chiefly of church music, 17 masses, besides litanies, motets, offertories, &c., being amongst the number. He also wrote several sonatas, a symphony, and one or two minor compositions of a dramatic kind.
GANTÉ, a cloth made from cotton or tow warp and jute weft. It is largely used for bags for sugar and similar material, and has the appearance of a fine hessian cloth.
GANYMEDE, in Greek mythology, son of Tros, king of Dardania, and Callirrhoë. He was the most beautiful of mortals, and was carried off by the gods (in the later story by Zeus himself, or by Zeus in the form of an eagle) to Olympus to serve as cup-bearer (Apollodorus iii. 12; Virgil, Aeneid, v. 254; Ovid, Metam. x. 255). By way of compensation, Zeus presented his father with a team of immortal horses (or a golden vine). Ganymede was afterwards regarded as the genius of the fountains of the Nile, the life-giving and fertilizing river, and identified by astronomers with the Aquarius of the zodiac. Thus the divinity that distributed drink to the gods in heaven became the genius who presided over the due supply of water on earth. When pederasty became common in Greece, an attempt was made to justify it and invest it with dignity by referring to the rape of the beautiful boy by Zeus; in Crete, where the love of boys was reduced to a system, Minos, the primitive ruler and law-giver, was said to have been the ravisher of Ganymede. Thus the name which once denoted the good genius who bestowed the precious gift of water upon man was adopted to this use in vulgar Latin under the form Catamitus. Ganymede being carried off by the eagle was the subject of a bronze group by the Athenian sculptor Leochares, imitated in a marble statuette in the Vatican. E. Veckenstedt (Ganymedes, Libau, 1881) endeavours to prove that Ganymede is the genius of intoxicating drink (μέθυ, mead, for which he postulates a form μῆδος), whose original home was Phrygia.
See article by P. Weizsäcker in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie. In the article Greek Art, fig. 53 (Pl. I.) gives an illustration of Ganymede borne aloft by an eagle.
GAO, Gao-Gao, or Garo, a town of French West Africa, in the Upper Senegal and Niger colony, on the left bank of the Niger, 400 m. by river below Timbuktu. Pop. about 5000. The present town dates from the French occupation in 1900; of the ancient city there are scanty ruins, the chief being a truncated pyramid, the remains of the tomb (16th century) of Mahommed Askia, the Songhoi conqueror, and those of the great mosque. According to tradition a city stood on this spot in very ancient times and its inhabitants are said to have had intercourse with the Egyptians. It is known, however, that the city of which the French settlement is the successor was founded by the Songhoi, probably in the 7th or 8th century, and became the capital of their empire. Garo (Ga-rho) appears to have been the correct name of the Songhoi city, though it was also known as Gogo and Kuku (Kaougha). In the 12th century Idrisi describes Kuku as a populous unwalled town devoted to commerce and industry; it is possible, however, that Idrisi is referring not to Gao but to another town somewhat to the south—at that period the middle course of the Niger had many prosperous towns along its banks. In the 14th century Gao was conquered by the king of Melle, and its great mosque was built (c. 1325) by the Melle sovereign Kunkur Musa on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca. In the 15th century the Songhoi regained power and Gao attained its greatest prosperity in the reign of Askia. It did not enjoy the commercial importance of Jenné nor the intellectual supremacy of Timbuktu, but was the political centre of the western Sudan for a long period. On the break up of the Songhoi power the city declined in importance. It became subject in 1590 to the Ruma of Timbuktu, from whom it was wrested in 1770 by the Tuareg, the last named surrendering possession to the French. The first European to reach Gao was Mungo Park (1805); he was followed in 1851 by Heinrich Barth, and in 1896 by the French naval lieutenant Hourst. Gao is now the headquarters of a military district. A caravan route leads from it to Kano and Bornu. From Gao upwards the Niger is navigable for over 1000 m.
See Timbuktu. For the Gao region of the Niger see an article by F. Dubois in L’Afrique française (January 1909).
There was another city called Kaoka or Gaoga east of Lake Chad in the country now known as Bagirmi. It was the seat of the Bulala dynasty, an offshoot of the royal family of Kanem, whose rule in the 15th century extended from the Shari to Darfur. The existence of the state was first mentioned by Leo Africanus. To the Bornuese it was known as Bulala or Kuka Bulala, a name which persists as that of a district in French Congo (see Bornu). The similarity of the name Gaoga to that of the Songhoi capital has given rise to much confusion.
GAOL, or Jail, a prison (q.v.). The two forms of the word are due to the parallel dual forms in Old Central and Norman French respectively, jaiole or jaole, and gaiole or gayolle. The common origin is the med. Lat. gabiola, a diminutive formed from cavea, a hollow, a den, from which the English “cave” is derived. The form “gaol” still commonly survives in English, and is in official usage, e.g. “gaol-delivery,” but the common pronunciation of both words, “jail,” shows the real surviving word.
GAON (Heb. for “Excellency,” plural Geonim), the title given to the heads of the two Jewish academies in Babylonia, Sura and Pumbeditha. Though the name is far older, it is chiefly applied to Rabbis who lived between the close of the Talmud and the transference of the centre of Judaism from Asia to Europe—i.e. from the end of the 6th to the middle of the 11th century A.D. The Geonim were required to do homage to the Exilarchs (see Exilarch) but were otherwise independent. They exercised wide authority and were appealed to in settlement of the social and religious affairs of the diaspora. To them must be assigned the arrangement of the main lines of the present Synagogue liturgy. Their chief literary activity took the form of Answers to Questions—a form which was extensively used in later centuries. The most noted of the Geonim, who will be found treated under their respective names, were Aḥai, Amram, Ṣemach, Saadiah, Sherira and Hai. Hai Gaon died in 1038, closing the period of the Geonim after an activity of four and a half centuries.
A full list of the Geonim is given in tabular form in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, vol. v. p. 571.
(I. A.)
GAP, the capital of the French department of the Hautes Alpes. Pop. (1906) town, 6888; commune, 10,823. It is built at a height of 2418 ft. on the right bank of the Luye (an affluent of the Durance), in an agreeable position, and is dominated afar by snowy peaks on the N.E. The little city has the look of a Provençal town, being white. The 17th-century cathedral church has been entirely reconstructed (1866-1905). In the prefecture is the tomb of the constable de Lesdiguières (1543-1626), dating from about 1613, and due to a Lorraine sculptor, Jacob Richier. The same building contains various scientific and archaeological collections, as well as the very rich archives, which include many MSS. from the monastery of Durbon, &c. There are a few small manufactories of purely local importance. Gap is connected by railway with Briançon (51½ m.) and with Grenoble (85½ m.), while from the railway junction of Veynes (16½ m. W. of Gap) it is 122 m. by rail to Marseilles. The episcopal see of Gap, now in the ecclesiastical province of Aix en Provence, is first certainly mentioned in the 6th century, and in 1791 was enlarged by the annexation of that of Embrun (then suppressed).
Gap is the Vapincum of the Romans, and was founded by Augustus about 14 B.C. It long formed part of Provence, but in 1232 most of the region passed by marriage to the dauphins of Viennois. The town itself, however, remained under the rule of the bishops until 1512, when it was annexed to the crown of France. The bishops continued to bear the title of count of Gap until the Revolution. The town was sacked by the Huguenots in 1567 and 1577, and by the duke of Savoy in 1692. It was the birthplace of the reformer Guillaume Farel (1489-1565), who first preached his doctrines there about 1561-1562, but then took refuge in Switzerland.
See J. Roman, Histoire de la ville de Gap (Gap, 1892).
(W. A. B. C.)
GAPAN, a town of the province of Nueva Ecija, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 3 m. E. of San Isidro, the capital. Pop. (1903) 11,278. It is situated in a rich rice-growing region, and extensive forests in its vicinity contain fine hardwoods. Its climate is comparatively cool and healthy. The principal native dialects spoken are Tagalog and Pampangan. Gapan is the oldest town of the province.
GARARISH (Kararish), a semi-nomadic tribe of Semitic origin, dwelling along the right bank of the Nile from Wādi Halfa to Merawi. Many members of the tribe are agriculturists, others act as guides or transport drivers. They declare themselves kinsfolk of the Ababda, but they are more Arab than Beja.
GARASHANIN, ILIYA (1812-1874), Servian statesman, was the son of a Servian peasant, who made money by exporting cattle and pigs to Austria and by his intelligence and wealth attained to a certain influence in the country. He wanted to give his son as good an education as possible, and therefore sent him to Hungary to learn first in a Greek and then in a German school. Highly gifted, and having passed through a regular although somewhat short school training, the young Iliya very quickly came to the front. In 1836 Prince Milosh appointed him a colonel and commander of the then just organized regular army of Servia. In 1842 he was called to the position of assistant to the home minister, and from that time until his retirement from public life in 1867 he was repeatedly minister of home affairs, distinguishing himself by the energy and justice of his administration. But he rendered far greater services to his country as minister for foreign affairs. He was the first Servian statesman who had a political programme, and who worked to replace the Russian protectorate over Servia by the joint protectorate of all the great powers of Europe. As minister for foreign affairs in 1853 he was decidedly opposed to Servia joining Russia in war against Turkey and the western powers. His anti-Russian views resulted in Prince Menshikov, while on his mission in Constantinople, 1853, peremptorily demanding from the prince of Servia (Alexander Karageorgevich) his dismissal. But although dismissed, his personal influence in the country secured the neutrality of Servia during the Crimean War. He enjoyed esteem in France, and it was due to him that France proposed to the peace conference of Paris (1856) that the old constitution, granted to Servia by Turkey as suzerain and Russia as protector in 1839, should be replaced by a more modern and liberal constitution, framed by a European international commission. But the agreement of the powers was not secured. Garashanin induced Prince Alexander Karageorgevich to convoke a national assembly, which had not been called to meet for ten years. The assembly was convoked for St Andrew’s Day 1858, but its first act was to dethrone Prince Alexander and to recall the old Prince Milosh Obrenovich. When after the death of his father Milosh (in 1860) Prince Michael ascended the throne, he entrusted the premiership and foreign affairs to Iliya Garashanin. The result of their policy was that Servia was given a new, although somewhat conservative, constitution, and that she obtained, without war, the evacuation of all the fortresses garrisoned by the Turkish troops on the Servian territory, including the fortress of Belgrade (1867). Garashanin was preparing a general rising of the Balkan nations against the Turkish rule, and had entered into confidential arrangements with the Rumanians, Bosnians, Albanians, Bulgarians and Greeks, and more especially with Montenegro. But the execution of his plans was frustrated by his sudden resignation (at the end of 1867), and more especially by the assassination of Prince Michael a few months later (the 10th of June 1868). Although he was a Conservative in politics, and as such often in conflict with the leader of the Liberal movement, Yovan Ristich, he certainly was one of the ablest statesmen whom Servia had in the 19th century.
(C. Mi.)
GARAT, DOMINIQUE JOSEPH (1740-1833), French writer and politician, was born at Bayonne on the 8th of September 1749. After receiving a good education under the direction of a relation who was a curé, and having been an advocate at Bordeaux, he came to Paris, where he obtained introductions to the most distinguished writers of the time, and became a contributor to the Encyclopédie méthodique and the Mercure de France. He gained considerable reputation by an éloge on Michel de L’Hôpital in 1778, and was afterwards three times crowned by the Academy for éloges on Suger, Montausier and Fontenelle. In 1785 he was named professor of history at the Lycée, where his lectures enjoyed an equal popularity with those of G.F. Laharpe on literature. Being chosen a deputy to the states-general in 1789, he rendered important service to the popular cause by his narrative of the proceedings of the Assembly contributed to the Journal de Paris. Possessing strongly optimist views, a mild and irresolute character, and indefinite and changeable convictions, he played a somewhat undignified part in the great political events of the time, and became a pliant tool in carrying out the designs of others. Danton had him named minister of justice in 1792, and in this capacity had entrusted to him what he called the commission affreuse of communicating to Louis XVI. his sentence of death. In 1793 he became minister of the interior. In this capacity he proved himself quite inefficient. Though himself uncorrupt, he winked at the most scandalous corruption in his subordinates, and in spite of the admirably organized detective service, which kept him accurately informed of every movement in the capital, he entirely failed to maintain order, which might easily have been done by a moderate display of firmness. At last, disgusted with the excesses which he had been unable to control, he resigned (August 15, 1793). On the 2nd of October he was arrested for Girondist sympathies but soon released, and he escaped further molestation owing to the friendship of Barras and, more especially, of Robespierre, whose literary amour-propre he had been careful to flatter. On the 9th Thermidor, however, he took sides against Robespierre, and on the 12th of September 1794 he was named by the Convention as a member of the executive committee of public instruction. In 1798 he was appointed ambassador to Naples, and in the following year he became a member, then president, of the Council of the Ancients. Alter the revolution of the 18th Brumaire he was chosen a senator by Napoleon and created a count. During the Hundred Days he was a member of the chamber of representatives. In 1803 he was chosen a member of the Institute of France, but after the restoration of Louis XVIII. his name was, in 1816, deleted from the list of members. After the revolution of 1830 he was named a member of the new Academy of Moral and Political Science. He died at Ustaritz near Bayonne, April 25, 1833. His writings are characterized by elegance, grace and variety of style, and by the highest kind of rhetorical eloquence; but his grasp of his subject is superficial, and as his criticisms have no root in fixed and philosophical principles they are not unfrequently whimsical and inconsistent. He must not be confounded with his elder brother Dominique (1735-1799), who was also a deputy to the states-general.
The works of Garat include, besides those already mentioned, Considérations sur la Révolution Française (Paris, 1792); Mémoires sur la Révolution, ou exposé de ma conduite (1795); Mémoires sur la vie de M. Suard, sur ses écrits, et sur le XVIIIe siècle (1820); éloges on Joubert, Kléber and Desaix; several notices of distinguished persons; and a large number of articles in periodicals. Valuable materials for the history of Garat’s tenure of the ministry, notably the police reports of Dutard, are given in W.A. Schmidt’s Tableaux de la Révolution Française (3 vols., Leipzig, 1867-1870).
GARAT, PIERRE-JEAN (1764-1823), French singer, nephew of Dominique Joseph Garat, was born in Bordeaux on the 25th of April 1764. Gifted with a voice of exceptional timbre and compass he devoted himself, from an early age, to the cultivation of his musical talents. On account of his manifesting a distaste for the legal profession, for which his father wished him to study, he was deprived of his allowance, but through the patronage of a friend he obtained the office of secretary to Comte d’Artois, and was afterwards engaged to give musical lessons to the queen of France. At the beginning of the Revolution he accompanied Rode to England, where the two musicians appeared together in concerts. He returned to Paris in 1794. After the Revolution he became a professional singer, and on account of a song which he had composed in reference to the misfortunes of the royal family he was thrown into prison. On regaining his liberty he went to Hamburg, where he at once achieved extraordinary success; and by his subsequent appearances in Paris, and his visits to Italy, Spain, Germany and Russia, he made for himself a reputation as a singer unequalled by any other of his own time. He was a keen partisan of Gluck in opposition to Handel. On the institution of the Conservatoire de Musique he became its professor of singing. He also composed a number of songs, many of which have considerable merit. He died on the 1st of March 1823 in Paris.
GARAY, JÁNOS (1812-1853), Hungarian poet and author, was born on the 10th of October 1812, at Szegszárd, in the county of Tolna. From 1823 to 1828 he studied at Fünfkirchen, and subsequently, in 1829, at the university of Pest. In 1834 he brought out an heroic poem, in hexameters, under the title Csatár. After this he issued in quick succession various historical dramas, among which the most successful were Arbócz, Országh Ilona and Báthori Erzsébet,—the first two published at Pest in 1837 and the last in 1840. Garay was an energetic journalist, and in 1838 he removed to Pressburg, where he edited the political journal Hirnök (Herald). He returned to Pest in 1839, when he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1842 he was admitted into the Kisfaludy Society, of which he became second secretary. Garay enriched Hungarian literature with numerous lyrical poems, ballads and tales. The first collection of his poems was published at Pest in 1843; and his prose tales appeared in 1845, under the title of Tollrajzok (Sketches with the Pen). His historical ballads and legends, styled Arpádok (Pest, 1847, 2nd ed. 1848), showed him to be a master in the art of ballad-writing. Some of his lyrical poems also are excellent, as, for example, Balatoni Kagylók (Shells from the Balaton Lake) (Pest, 1848). His legend Bosnyák Zsófia (Pest, 1847), and his poetical romance Frangepán Kristófné (Christopher Frangepan’s Wife) (Pest, 1846), gained the prize of the Kisfaludy Society. His last and most famous work was an historical poem in twelve cantos, with the title Szent László (Saint Ladislaus) (Eger, 1852, 2nd ed., Pest, 1853, 3rd ed. 1863). Garay was professor of Hungarian language and literature to the university of Pest in 1848-1849. After about four years’ illness he died on the 5th of November 1853, in great want. A collective edition of his poems was published at Pest the year after his death by F. Ney (2nd ed. 1860), and several of his poems were translated by Kertbeny.
See Garay János Összes költeményei (2nd ed., Pest, 1860); and Dichtungen von Johann Garay (2nd ed., Vienna, 1856).
GARBLE (a word derived from the Arab. gharbala, to sift, and related to ghirbal, a sieve; the Arabic words are of foreign origin, probably from the Lat. cribrum, a sieve), originally a medieval commercial term in the Mediterranean ports, meaning to sort out, or to sift merchandize, such as corn, spices, &c., in order to separate what was good from the refuse or waste; hence to select the best of anything for retention. Similarly a “garbler” was an official who was appointed to sort out, or test the work of those who had already sorted, the spices or drugs offered for sale in the London markets. In this original sense the word is now obsolete, but by inversion, or rather perversion, “garble” now means to sort out or select, chiefly from books or other literary works, or from public speeches, some portion which twists, mutilates, or renders ineffective the meaning of the author or speaker.
GARÇÃO, PEDRO ANTONIO JOAQUIM CORRÊA (1724-1772), Portuguese lyric poet, was the son of Philippe Corrêa da Serra, a fidalgo of the royal house who held an important post in the foreign office; his mother was of French descent. The poet’s health was frail, and after going through a Jesuit school in Lisbon and learning English, French and Italian at home, he proceeded in 1742 to the university of Coimbra with a view to a legal career. He took his degree in 1748, and two years later was created a knight of the Order of Christ. In 1751 his marriage with D. Maria Salema brought him a rich dower which enabled him to live in ease and cultivate letters; but in later years a law-suit reduced him to poverty. From 1760 to 1762 he edited the Lisbon Gazette. In 1756, in conjunction with Cruz e Silva and others, Garção founded the Arcadia Lusitana to reform the prevailing bad taste in literature, identified with Seicentismo, which delighted in conceits, windy words and rhetorical phrases. The Arcadia fulfilled its mission to some extent, but it lacked creative power, became dogmatic, and ultimately died of inanition. Garção was the chief contributor to its proceedings, bearing the name of “Corydon Erimantheo,” and his orations and dissertations, with many of his lyrics, were pronounced and read at its meetings. He lived much in the society of the English residents in Lisbon, and he is supposed to have conceived a passion for an English married lady which completely absorbed him and contributed to his ruin. In the midst of his literary activity and growing fame, he was arrested on the night of the 9th of April 1771, and committed to prison by Pombal, whose displeasure he had incurred by his independence of character. The immediate cause of his incarceration would appear to have been his connexion with a love intrigue between a young friend of his and the daughter of a Colonel Elsden, but he was never brought to trial, and the matter must remain in doubt. After much solicitation, his wife obtained from the king an order for her husband’s release on the 10th of November 1772, but it came too late. Broken by infirmities and the hardships of prison life, Garção expired that very day in the Limoeiro, at the age of forty-seven.
Taking Horace as his model, and aided by sound judgment, scholarship and wide reading, Garção set out to raise and purify the standard of poetical taste, and his verses are characterized by a classical simplicity of form and expression. His sonnets ad sodales show a charming personality; his vigorous and elegant odes and epistles are sententious in tone and reveal an inspired poet and a man chastened by suffering. His two comedies in hendecasyllables, the Theatro Novo (played in January 1766) and the Assemblêa, are excellent satires on the social life of the capital; and in the Cantata de Dido, included in the latter piece, the spirit of Greek art is allied to perfection of form, making this composition perhaps the gem of Portuguese 18th century poetry.
Garção wrote little and spent much time on the labor limae. His works were published posthumously in 1778, and the most complete and accessible edition is that of J.A. de Azevedo Castro (Rome, 1888). An English version of the Cantata de Dido appeared in the Academy (January 19th, 1895). See Innocencio da Silva, Diccionario bibliographico Portuguez, vol. vi. pp. 386-393, and vol. xvii. pp. 182-184; also Dr Theophilo Braga, A Arcadia Lusitana (Oporto, 1899).
(E. Pr.)
GARCIA (DEL POPOLO VICENTO), MANOEL (1775-1832), Spanish singer and composer, was born in Seville on the 22nd of January 1775. He became a chorister at the cathedral of Seville, and studied music under the best masters of that city. At seventeen he made his début on the stage at Cadiz, in an operetta, in which were included songs of his own composition. Soon afterwards he appeared at Madrid in the twofold capacity of singer and composer. His reputation being established, he proceeded to Paris, where he appeared for the first time, in 1808, in Paer’s opera Griselda. Here also he was received with great applause, his style of singing being especially appreciated. This he further improved by careful study of the Italian method in Italy itself, where he continued his successes. His opera Il Califo di Bagdad was favourably received at Naples in 1812, but his chief successes were again due to his perfection as a vocalist. His opera La Morte di Tasso was produced in 1821 in Paris, where it was followed in 1823 by his Il Fazzoletto. In 1824 he went to London, and thence proceeded to America (1825) with a company of artistes, amongst whom were his son Manoel and his daughter Maria, better known under her subsequent name of Malibran. In New York was produced his opera La Figlia dell’ aria in 1827. He extended his artistic tour as far as Mexico, and was on the point of returning to Europe in order to retire from public life when he was robbed of his well-earned wealth by brigands on his way to Vera Cruz. Settled again in Paris in 1829, he soon retired from the stage, and devoted himself exclusively to teaching. He died in Paris on the 2nd of June 1832. His method of teaching was famous, and some of the most celebrated singers of the early part of the century were amongst his pupils. He also wrote an excellent book on the art of singing called Metodo di canto, of which the essence was subsequently incorporated by his son Manoel in his admirable Traité complet de l’art du chant (1847). His operas have not survived their day. He wrote nearly forty in all, but with the exception of those quoted, and El Poeta calculista, produced when he was thirty, none are remarkable. Besides the children already mentioned, his daughter Paulina, Madame Viardot (1821-1910), worthily continued the tradition for the best singing with which his name had become associated.
His son, Manoel Garcia (1805-1906), who celebrated his hundredth birthday in London on the 17th of March 1905, was born at Madrid, and after his father’s death devoted himself to teaching. He was a professor at the Paris Conservatoire from 1830 to 1848, from that time to 1895 was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He became famous for his invention of the laryngoscope about 1850, apart from his position as the greatest representative of the old “bel canto” style of singing.
GARCÍA DE LA HUERTA, VICENTE ANTONIO (1734-1787), Spanish dramatist, was born at Zafra on the 9th of March 1734, and was educated at Salamanca. At Madrid he soon attracted attention by his literary arrogance and handsome person; and at an early age became chief of the National Library, a post from which he was dismissed owing to the intrigues of his numerous enemies. The publication of his unsatisfactory collection of Spanish plays entitled Theatro Hespanol (1785-1786) exposed him to severe censures, which appear to have affected his reason. He died at Madrid on the 12th of March 1787, without carrying into effect his avowed intention of reviving the national drama. His Agamemnón vengado derives from Sophocles, his Jaire is translated from Voltaire, and even his once famous Raquel, though Spanish in subject, is classic in form.
GARCÍA DE PAREDES, DIEGO (1466-1534), Spanish soldier and duellist, was a native of Trujillo in Estremadura, Spain. He never commanded an army or rose to the position of a general, but he was a notable figure in the wars of the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, when personal prowess had still a considerable share in deciding the result of actions. His native town and its district, which lie between Talavera and Madrid, produced many of the most noted conquistadores of America, including the Pizarro family. Diego himself served in his youth in the war of Granada. His strength, daring and activity fitted him to shine in operations largely composed of night marches, escalades, surprises and hand-to-hand combats. The main scene of his achievements was in Italy, and he betook himself to it—on his own showing—not in search of glory, but because he had killed a relation of his own, Ruy Sanchez de Vargas, in a street fight arising out of a quarrel about a horse. He fled to Rome, then under the rule of the Borgias. Diego was a distant relation to the cardinal of Santa Cruz (Carvajal), a favourite with Pope Alexander VI., who was in conflict with the barons of the Romagna and took Diego into his service. He remained a soldier of the pope till he killed a man in a personal quarrel and found it necessary to pass over to the enemy. Now he became acquainted with the Colonnas, who appreciated his services. The wars between Ferdinand V. of Aragon (the Catholic king) and Louis XII. gave him a more creditable opening. The Spanish general Gonsalvo de Córdoba, who knew his value, employed him and trusted him; and he took part in all the wars of Italy on the frontier of Navarre, and once against the Turks on the Danube, till 1530. His countrymen made him the hero of many Münchausen-like stories of personal prowess. It was said that he held a bridge single-handed against 200 Frenchmen, that he stopped the wheel of a water-mill, and so forth. In the “Brief Summary” of his life and deeds attributed to him, and printed at the end of the Chronicle of the Great Captain, published in 1584 at Alcalá de Henares, he lays no claim to having done more than was open to a very athletic man. He was killed at Bologna in 1534 by a fall while engaged in a jumping-match with some of the younger officers of the army. His body was carried to his native town Trujillo, and buried in the church of Santa Maria Mayor in 1545.
GARCÍA GUTIÉRREZ, ANTONIO (1812-1884), Spanish dramatist, was born at Chiclana (Cadiz) on the 5th of July 1812, and studied medicine in his native town. In 1832 he removed to Madrid, and earned a scanty living by translating plays of Scribe and the elder Dumas; despairing of success, he was on the point of enlisting when he suddenly sprang into fame as the author of El Trovador, which was played for the first time on the 1st of March 1836. García Gutiérrez never surpassed this first effort, which placed him among the leaders of the romantic movement in Spain, and which became known all over Europe through Verdi’s music. His next great success was Simón Bocanegra (1843), but, as his plays were not lucrative, he emigrated to Spanish America, working as a journalist in Cuba and Mexico till 1850, when he returned to Spain. The best works of his later period are a zarzuela entitled El Grumete (1853), La Venganza catalana (1864) and Juan Lorenzo (1865). He became head of the archaeological museum at Madrid, and died there on the 6th of August 1884. His Poesías (1840) and another volume of lyrics, entitled Luz y tinieblas (1842), are unimportant; but the brilliant versification of his plays, and his power of analysing feminine emotions, give him a foremost place among the Spanish dramatists of the 19th century.
GARD, a department in the south of France, consisting of part of the old province of Languedoc. Pop. (1906) 421,166. Area 2270 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the departments of Lozère and Ardèche, E. by the Rhone, which separates it from Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône, S. by the Mediterranean, S.W. by Hérault and W. by Aveyron. Gard is divided into three sharply-defined regions. Its north-western districts are occupied by the range of the Cévennes, which on the frontier of Lozère attain a height of 5120 ft. The whole of this region is celebrated for its fruitful valleys, its gorges, its beautiful streams, its pastures, and the chestnut, mulberry and other fruit trees with which the mountains are often clothed to their summits. The Garrigues, a dry, hilly region of limestone, which lends itself to the cultivation of cereals, the vine and olive, stretches from the foot of the Cévennes over the centre of the department, covering about half its area. The southern portion, which extends to the sea, and was probably at one time covered by it, is a low plain with numerous lakes and marshes. Though unhealthy, it is prosperous, and comprises the best arable land and vineyards in Gard.
Besides the Rhone, which bounds the department on the E., and the Ardèche, the lower course of which forms part of its boundary on the N., the principal rivers are the Cèze, Gard, Vidourle and Hérault. The most northern of these is the Cèze, which rises in the Cévennes, and after a course of about 50 m. in an E.S.E. direction falls into the Rhone above Roquemaure. The Gard, or Gardon, from which the department takes its name, is also an affluent of the Rhone, and, rising in the Cévennes from several sources, traverses the centre of the department, having a length of about 60 m. In the upper part of its course it flows through a succession of deep mountain gorges, and from the melting of the snows on the Cévennes is subject to inundations, which often cause great damage. Its waters not infrequently rise 18 or 20 ft. in a few hours, and its bed is sometimes increased in width to nearly a mile. Near Remoulins it is crossed by a celebrated Roman aqueduct—the Pont du Gard (see Aqueduct). The Vidourle flows in a S.S.E. direction from its source near Le Vigan, and after a course of about 50 m. falls into the sea. Below Sommières it forms the western boundary of the department. The Hérault has its source and part of its course in the west of Gard. The Canal de Beaucaire extends from the Rhone at Beaucaire to Aigues-Mortes, which communicates with the Mediterranean at Grau-du-Roi by means of the Grand-Roubine canal.
The climate is warm in the south-east, colder in the north-west; it is rather changeable, and rain-storms are common. The cold and violent north-west wind known as the mistral is its worst drawback. Les Fumades (near Allègre) and Euzet have mineral springs. The chief grain crops are wheat and oats. Rye, barley and potatoes are also grown. Gard is famed for its cattle, its breed of small horses, and its sheep, the wool of which is of a very fine quality. In the rearing of silk-worms it ranks first among French departments. The principal fruit trees are the olive, mulberry and chestnut. The vine is extensively cultivated and yields excellent red and white wines. The department is rich in minerals, and the mines of coal, iron, lignite, asphalt, zinc, lead and copper, which are for the most part situated in the neighbourhoods of Alais and La Grand’-Combe, constitute one of the chief sources of its wealth. Great quantities of salt are obtained from the salt marshes along the coast. The quarries of building and other stone employ a considerable number of workmen. The fisheries are productive. The manufactures are extensive, and include those of silk, of which Alais is the chief centre, cotton and woollen fabrics, hosiery, ironware, hats (Anduze), liquorice, gloves, paper, leather, earthenware and glass. There are also breweries and distilleries, and important metallurgical works, the chief of which are those of Bessèges. The exports of Gard include coal, lignite, coke, asphalt, building-stone, iron, steel, silk, hosiery, wine, olives, grapes and truffles.
The department is served by the Paris-Lyon railway. It is divided into the arrondissements of Nîmes, Alais, Uzès and Le Vigan, with 40 cantons and 351 communes. The chief town is Nîmes, which is the seat of a bishopric of the province of Avignon and of a court of appeal. Gard belongs to the 15th military region, which has its headquarters at Marseilles, and to the académie (educational division) of Montpellier. Nîmes, Alais, Uzès, Aigues-Mortes, Beaucaire, Saint-Gilles, Bessèges, La Grand’-Combe and Villeneuve-lès-Avignon are the principal places. Opposite the manufacturing town of Pont-St-Esprit the Rhone is crossed by a fine medieval bridge more than 1000 yds. long built by the Pontiff brethren. Le Vigan, an ancient town with several old houses, carries on silk-spinning.
GARDA, LAKE OF (the Lacus Benacus of the Romans), the most easterly and the most extensive of the great Lombard lakes, being only surpassed in the Alpine region by those of Geneva and Constance. Save the extreme northern extremity (Riva, which was secured from Venice by Tirol in 1517), the whole lake is Italian, being divided between the provinces of Verona and Brescia. Its broad basin orographically represents the southern portion of the valley of the Adige, though that river now flows through a narrow trench which is separated from the lake by the long narrow ridge of the Monte Baldo (7277 ft.). Nowadays the lake is fed by the Sarca, that flows in at its north end from the glaciers of the Adamello, while at the southern extremity of the lake the Mincio flows out, on its way to join the Po. The area of the lake is about 143 sq. m., its length is 32¼ m., its greatest breadth is about 10 m., the height of its surface above sea-level is 216 ft. and the greatest depth yet measured is 1916 ft. Its upper or northern end is narrow, but between Garda (E.) and Salò (W.) the lake expands gradually into a nearly circular basin, which at the southern extremity is divided into two parts by the long low promontory of Sermione, that projects from the southern shore between Peschiera and Desenzano. Owing to this conformation the lake is much exposed to sudden and violent winds, which Virgil alludes to in his well-known line (Georg. ii. line 160): fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino. The most dangerous of these winds is the Borea or Suer, that sweeps down from the north as through a funnel. In the southern portion of the lake the Vinessa, an E.S.E. wind, is most dreaded. The Ora is a regular wind coming from the east which, on reaching the lake, blows from S. to N. The steep grey limestone crags of Monte Baldo, on the eastern side of the lake, contrast strongly with the rich vegetation on the western and southern shores. The portion of the western shore that extends from Gargnano to Salò is the most sheltered and warmest part of the region, so that not merely does it resemble one continuous garden (producing lemons, figs, mulberries, olives, &c.), but is frequented in winter, and has been given the name of the Riviera Benacense. The lovely promontory of Sermione, at the southern end of the lake, has also an extremely luxuriant vegetation, while it contains many remains of buildings of Roman and later date, having been the Sirmio of Catullus, who resided here and celebrated its beauties in many of his poems. In 1827 a boat with paddles set in motion by horses was put on the lake, but the first steamer dates only from 1844. At the south end of the lake, E. and W. respectively of the promontory of Sermione, are the towns of Peschiera (14¼ m. by rail from Verona on the east) and of Desenzano (17½ m. by rail from Brescia on the west), which are 8¾ m. distant from each other. On the west shore of the lake are Salò, Toscolano, Gargnano and Limone, while the rugged east shore can boast only of Bardolino and Garda. At the northern tip of the lake, and in Tirol, is Riva, the most considerable town on the lake, and 15½ m. by rail from the Mori station on the main Brenner line.
(W. A. B. C.)
GARDANE, CLAUDE MATTHIEU, Count (1766-1818), French general and diplomatist, was born on the 30th of January 1766. He entered the army and rose rapidly during the revolutionary wars, becoming captain in 1793. In May 1799 he distinguished himself by saving a division of the French army which was about to be crushed by the Russians at the battle of Bassignana, and was named at once brigadier-general by Moreau. He incurred Napoleon’s displeasure for an omission of duty shortly before the battle of Marengo (June 14th, 1800), but in 1805 was appointed to be aide-de-camp of the emperor. His chief distinction, however, was to be won in the diplomatic sphere. In the spring of 1807, when Russia and Prussia were at war with France, and the emperor Alexander I. of Russia was also engaged in hostilities with Persia, the court of Teheran sent a mission to the French emperor, then at the castle of Finkenstein in the east of Prussia, with a view to the conclusion of a Franco-Persian alliance. This was signed on the 4th of May 1807, at that castle; and Napoleon designed Gardane as special envoy for the cementing of that alliance. The secret instructions which he drew up for Gardane, and signed on the 30th of May, are of interest as showing the strong oriental trend of the emperor’s policy. France was to guarantee the integrity of Persia, to recognize that Georgia (then being invaded by the Russians) belonged to the shah, and was to make all possible efforts for restoring that territory to him. She was also to furnish to the shah arms, officers and workmen, in the number and to the amount demanded by him. Napoleon on his side required Persia to declare war against Great Britain, to expel all Britons from her territory, and to come to an understanding with the Afghans with a view to a joint Franco-Perso-Afghan invasion of India. Gardane, whose family was well known in the Levant, had a long and dangerous journey overland, but was cordially received at Teheran in December 1807. The conclusion of the Franco-Russian treaty at Tilsit in July 1807 rendered the mission abortive. Persia longed only for help against Russia and had no desire, when all hope of that was past, to attack India. The shah, however, promised to expel Britons and to grant to France a commercial treaty. For a time French influence completely replaced that of England at Teheran, and the mission of Sir John Malcolm to that court was not allowed to proceed. Finally, however, Gardane saw that nothing much was to be hoped for in the changed situation of European affairs, and abruptly left the country (April 1809). This conduct was not wholly approved by Napoleon, but he named him count and in 1810 attached him to Masséna’s army in Portugal. There, during the disastrous retreat from Santarem to Almeida, he suffered a check which brought him into disfavour. The rest of his career calls for no notice. He died in 1818. The report which he sent to Champagny (dated April 23rd, 1809) on the state of Persia and the prospects of a successful invasion of India is of great interest. He admitted the difficulties of this enterprise, but thought that a force of picked French troops, aided by Persians and Afghans, might under favourable conditions penetrate into India by way of Kandahar, or through Sind, especially if the British were distracted by maritime attacks from Mauritius.
See Count Alfred de Gardane, Mission du général Gardane en Perse (Paris, 1865); and P.A.L. de Driault, La Politique orientale de Napoléon: Sébastiani et Gardane (Paris, 1904).
(J. Hl. R.)
GARDELEGEN, a town of Germany, in Prussian Saxony, on the right bank of the Milde, 20 m. W. from Stendal, on the main line of railway Berlin-Hanover. Pop. (1905) 8193. It has a Roman Catholic and three Evangelical churches, a hospital, founded in 1285, and a high-grade school. There are considerable manufactures, notably agricultural machinery and buttons, and its beer has a great repute. Gardelegen was founded in the 10th century, and was for a long time the seat of a line of counts. It suffered considerably in the Thirty Years’ War, and in 1775 was burned by the French. On the neighbouring heath Margrave Louis I. of Brandenburg gained, in 1343, a victory over Otto the Mild of Brunswick.
GARDEN (from O. Fr. gardin, mod. Fr. jardin; this, like our words “garth,” a paddock attached to a building, and “yard,” comes from a Teutonic word for an enclosure which appears in Gothic as gards and O.H. Ger. gart, cf. Dutch gaarde and Ger. garten), the ground enclosed and cultivated for the growth of fruit, flowers or vegetables (see Horticulture). The word is also used for grounds laid out ornamentally, used as places of public entertainment. Such were the famous Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens in London; it is similarly used in zoological gardens, and as a name in towns for squares, terraces or streets. From the fact that Epicurus (q.v.) taught in the gardens at Athens, the disciples of his school of philosophy were known as οἱ ἀπὸ τῶν κήπων (so Diog. Laërtius x. 10); and Cicero (De finibus v. 1. 3, and elsewhere) speaks of the Horti Epicuri. Thus as the “Academy” refers to the Platonic and the “Porch” (στοά) to the Stoic school, so the “Garden” is the name given to the Epicurean school of philosophy. Apollodorus was known as κηποτύραννος, the tyrant of the garden.
GARDENIA, in botany, a genus of the natural order Rubiaceae, containing about sixty species of evergreen trees and shrubs, natives of the warmer parts of the old world. Several are grown in stoves or greenhouses for their handsome, sweet-scented white flowers. The flowers are developed singly at the end of a branch or in the leaf-axils, and are funnel- or salver-shaped with a long tube. The double forms of Gardenia florida (a native of China) and G. radicans (a native of Japan) are amongst the most beautiful and highly perfumed of any in cultivation. Gardenias are grown chiefly for cut flowers, and are readily propagated by cuttings. They require plenty of heat and moisture in the growing season, and must be kept free from insects such as the mealy bug, green fly, red spider and scale-insect.
GARDINER, JAMES (1688-1745), Scottish soldier, was born at Carriden in Linlithgowshire, on the 11th of January 1688. At the age of fourteen he entered a Scottish regiment in the Dutch service, and was afterwards present at the battle of Ramillies, where he was wounded. He subsequently served in different cavalry regiments, and in 1730 was advanced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and in 1743 to that of colonel. He fell at the battle of Prestonpans, the 21st of September 1745. The circumstances of his death are described in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley. In his early years he was distinguished for his recklessness and profligacy, but in 1719 a supernatural vision, as he regarded it, led to his conversion, and from that time he lived a life of great devoutness and of thorough consistency with his Christian profession. Dr Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk, author of an autobiography, says that he was “very ostentatious” about his conversion—speaks of him as weak, and plainly thinks there was a great deal of delusion in Col. Gardiner’s account of his sins.
His life was written by Dr Philip Doddridge and has been often reprinted.
GARDINER, SAMUEL RAWSON (1829-1902), English historian, son of Rawson Boddam Gardiner, was born near Alresford, Hants, on the 4th of March 1829. He was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained a first class in literae humaniores. He was subsequently elected to fellowships at All Souls (1884) and Merton (1892). For some years he was professor of modern history at King’s College, London, and devoted his life to historical work. He is the historian of the Puritan revolution, and has written its history in a series of volumes, originally published under different titles, beginning with the accession of James I.; the seventeenth (the third volume of the History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate) appeared in 1901. This was completed in two volumes by C.H. Firth as The Last Years of the Protectorate (1909). The series is History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642 (10 vols.); History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649 (4 vols.); and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660. His treatment is exhaustive and philosophical, taking in, along with political and constitutional history, the changes in religion, thought and sentiment during his period, their causes and their tendencies. Of the original authorities on which his work is founded many of great value exist only in manuscript, and his researches in public and private collections of manuscripts at home, and in the archives of Simancas, Venice, Rome, Brussels and Paris, were indefatigable and fruitful. His accuracy is universally acknowledged. He was perhaps drawn to the Puritan period by the fact of his descent from Cromwell and Ireton, but he has certainly written of it with no other purpose than to set forth the truth. In his judgments of men and their actions he is unbiassed, and his appreciations of character exhibit a remarkable fineness of perception and a broad sympathy. Among many proofs of these qualities it will be enough to refer to what he says of the characters of James I., Bacon, Laud, Strafford and Cromwell. On constitutional matters he writes with an insight to be attained only by the study of political philosophy, discussing in a masterly fashion the dreams of idealists and the schemes of government proposed by statesmen. Throughout his work he gives a prominent place to everything which illustrates human progress in moral and religious, as well as political conceptions, and specially to the rise and development of the idea of religious toleration, finding his authorities not only in the words and actions of men of mark, but in the writings of more or less obscure pamphleteers, whose essays indicate currents in the tide of public opinion. His record of the relations between England and other states proves his thorough knowledge of contemporary European history, and is rendered specially valuable by his researches among manuscript sources which have enabled him to expound for the first time some intricate pieces of diplomacy.
Gardiner’s work is long and minute; the fifty-seven years which it covers are a period of exceptional importance in many directions, and the actions and characters of the principal persons in it demand careful analysis. He is perhaps apt to attach an exaggerated importance to some of the authorities which he was the first to bring to light, to see a general tendency in what may only be the expression of an individual eccentricity, to rely too much on ambassadors’ reports which may have been written for some special end, to enter too fully into the details of diplomatic correspondence. In any case the length of his work is not the result of verbiage or repetitions. His style is clear, absolutely unadorned, and somewhat lacking in force; he appeals constantly to the intellect rather than to the emotions, and is seldom picturesque, though in describing a few famous scenes, such as the execution of Charles I., he writes with pathos and dignity. The minuteness of his narrative detracts from its interest; though his arrangement is generally good, here and there the reader finds the thread of a subject broken by the intrusion of incidents not immediately connected with it, and does not pick it up again without an effort. And Gardiner has the defects of his supreme qualities, of his fairness and critical ability as a judge of character; his work lacks enthusiasm, and leaves the reader cold and unmoved. Yet, apart from its sterling excellence, it is not without beauties, for it is marked by loftiness of thought, a love of purity and truth, and refinement in taste and feeling. He wrote other books, mostly on the same period, but his great history is that by which his name will live. It is a worthy result of a life of unremitting labour, a splendid monument of historical scholarship. His position as an historian was formally acknowledged: in 1862 he was given a civil list pension of £150 per annum, “in recognition of his valuable contributions to the history of England”; he was honorary D.C.L. of Oxford, LL.D. of Edinburgh, and Ph.D. of Göttingen, and honorary student of Christ Church, Oxford; and in 1894 he declined the appointment of regius professor of modern history at Oxford, lest its duties should interfere with the accomplishment of his history. He died on the 24th of February 1902.
Among the more noteworthy of Gardiner’s separate works are: Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage (2 vols., London, 1869); Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660 (1st ed., Oxford, 1889; 2nd ed., Oxford, 1899); Oliver Cromwell (London, 1901); What Gunpowder Plot was (London, 1897); Outline of English History (1st ed., London, 1887; 2nd ed., London, 1896); and Student’s History of England (2 vols., 1st ed., London, 1890-1891; 2nd ed., London, 1891-1892). He edited collections of papers for the Camden Society, and from 1891 was editor of the English Historical Review.
(W. Hu.)
GARDINER, STEPHEN (c. 1493-1555), English bishop and lord chancellor, was a native of Bury St Edmunds. The date of his birth as commonly given, 1483, seems to be about ten years too early, and surmises which have passed current that he was some one’s illegitimate child are of no authority. His father is now known to have been John Gardiner, a substantial cloth merchant of the town where he was born (see his will, printed in Proceedings of the Suffolk Archaeological Institute, i. 329), who took care to give him a good education. In 1511 he, being then a lad, met Erasmus at Paris (Nichols’s Epistles of Erasmus, ii. 12, 13). But he had probably already been to Cambridge, where he studied at Trinity Hall and greatly distinguished himself in the classics, especially in Greek. He afterwards devoted himself to the canon and civil law, in which subjects he attained so great a proficiency that no one could dispute his pre-eminence. He received the degree of doctor of civil law in 1520, and of canon law in the following year.
Ere long his abilities attracted the notice of Cardinal Wolsey, who made him his secretary, and in this capacity he is said to have been with him at More Park in Hertfordshire, when the conclusion of the celebrated treaty of the More brought Henry VIII. and the French ambassadors thither. It is stated, and with great probability, that this was the occasion on which he was first introduced to the king’s notice, but he does not appear to have been actively engaged in Henry’s service till three years later. In that of Wolsey he undoubtedly acquired a very intimate knowledge of foreign politics, and in 1527 he and Sir Thomas More were named commissioners on the part of England in arranging a treaty with the French ambassadors for the support of an army in Italy against the emperor. That year he accompanied Wolsey on his important diplomatic mission to France, the splendour and magnificence of which are so graphically described by Cavendish. Among the imposing train who went with the cardinal—including, as it did, several noblemen and privy councillors—Gardiner alone seems to have been acquainted with the real heart of the matter which made this embassy a thing of such peculiar moment. Henry was then particularly anxious to cement his alliance with Francis I., and gain his co-operation as far as possible in the object on which he had secretly set his heart—a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. In the course of his progress through France he received orders from Henry to send back his secretary Gardiner, or, as he was called at court, Master Stevens, for fresh instructions; to which he was obliged to reply that he positively could not spare him as he was the only instrument he had in advancing the king’s “secret matter.” Next year Gardiner, still in the service of Wolsey, was sent by him to Italy along with Edward Fox, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, to promote the same business with the pope. His despatches on this occasion are still extant, and whatever we may think of the cause on which he was engaged, they certainly give a wonderful impression of the zeal and ability with which he discharged his functions. Here his perfect familiarity with the canon law gave him a great advantage. He was instructed to procure from the pope a decretal commission, laying down principles of law by which Wolsey and Campeggio might hear and determine the cause without appeal. The demand, though supported by plausible pretexts, was not only unusual but clearly inadmissible. Clement VII. was then at Orvieto, and had just recently escaped from captivity at St Angelo at the hands of the imperialists. But fear of offending the emperor could not have induced him to refuse a really legitimate request from a king like Henry. He naturally referred the question to the cardinals about him; with whom Gardiner held long arguments, enforced, it would seem, by not a little browbeating of the College. What was to be thought, he said, of a spiritual guide, who either could not or would not show the wanderer his way? The king and lords of England would be driven to think that God had taken away from the Holy See the key of knowledge, and that pontifical laws which were not clear to the pope himself might as well be committed to the flames.
This ingenious pleading, however, did not serve, and he was obliged to be content with a general commission for Campeggio and Wolsey to try the cause in England. This, as Wolsey saw, was quite inadequate for the purpose in view; and he again instructed Gardiner, while thanking the pope for the commission actually granted, to press him once more by very urgent pleas, to send the desired decretal on, even if the latter was only to be shown to the king and himself and then destroyed. Otherwise, he wrote, he would lose his credit with the king, who might even be tempted to throw off his allegiance to Rome altogether. At last the pope—to his own bitter regret afterwards—gave what was desired on the express conditions named, that Campeggio was to show it to the king and Wolsey and no one else, and then destroy it, the two legates holding their court under the general commission. After obtaining this Gardiner returned home; but early in the following year, 1529, when proceedings were delayed on information of the brief in Spain, he was sent once more to Rome. This time, however, his efforts were unavailing. The pope would make no further concessions, and would not even promise not to revoke the cause to Rome, as he did very shortly after.
Gardiner’s services, however, were fully appreciated. He was appointed the king’s secretary. He had been already some years archdeacon of Taunton, and the archdeaconry of Norfolk was added to it in March 1529, which two years later he resigned for that of Leicester. In 1530 he was sent to Cambridge to procure the decision of the university as to the unlawfulness of marriage with a deceased brother’s wife, in accordance with the new plan devised for settling the question without the pope’s intervention. In this he succeeded, though not without a good deal of artifice, more creditable to his ingenuity than to his virtue. In November 1531 the king rewarded him for his services with the bishopric of Winchester, vacant by Wolsey’s death. The promotion was unexpected, and was accompanied by expressions from the king which made it still more honourable, as showing that if he had been in some things too subservient, it was from no abject, self-seeking policy of his own. Gardiner had, in fact, ere this remonstrated boldly with his sovereign on some points, and Henry now reminded him of the fact. “I have often squared with you, Gardiner,” he said familiarly, “but I love you never the worse, as the bishopric I give will convince you.” In 1532, nevertheless, he excited some displeasure in the king by the part he took in the preparation of the famous “Answer of the Ordinaries” to the complaints brought against them in the House of Commons. On this subject he wrote a very manly letter to the king in his own defence.
His next important action was not so creditable; for he was, not exactly, as is often said, one of Cranmer’s assessors, but, according to Cranmer’s own expression, “assistant” to him as counsel for the king, when the archbishop, in the absence of Queen Catherine, pronounced her marriage with Henry null and void on the 23rd of May 1533. Immediately afterwards he was sent over to Marseilles, where an interview between the pope and Francis I. took place in September, of which event Henry stood in great suspicion, as Francis was ostensibly his most cordial ally, and had hitherto maintained the justice of his cause in the matter of the divorce. It was at this interview that Bonner intimated the appeal of Henry VIII. to a general council in case the pope should venture to proceed to sentence against him. This appeal, and also one on behalf of Cranmer presented with it, were of Gardiner’s drawing up. In 1535 he and other bishops were called upon to vindicate the king’s new title of “Supreme Head of the Church of England.” The result was his celebrated treatise De vera obedientia, the ablest, certainly, of all the vindications of royal supremacy. In the same year he had an unpleasant dispute with Cranmer about the visitation of his diocese. He was also employed to answer the pope’s brief threatening to deprive Henry of his kingdom.
During the next few years he was engaged in various embassies in France and Germany. He was indeed so much abroad that he had little influence upon the king’s councils. But in 1539 he took part in the enactment of the severe statute of the Six Articles, which led to the resignation of Bishops Latimer and Shaxton and the persecution of the Protestant party. In 1540, on the death of Cromwell, earl of Essex, he was elected chancellor of the university of Cambridge. A few years later he attempted, in concert with others, to fasten a charge of heresy upon Archbishop Cranmer in connexion with the Act of the Six Articles; and but for the personal intervention of the king he would probably have succeeded. He was, in fact, though he had supported the royal supremacy, a thorough opponent of the Reformation in a doctrinal point of view, and it was suspected that he even repented his advocacy of the royal supremacy. He certainly had not approved of Henry’s general treatment of the church, especially during the ascendancy of Cromwell, and he was frequently visited with storms of royal indignation, which he schooled himself to bear with patience. In 1544 a relation of his own, named German Gardiner, whom he employed as his secretary, was put to death for treason in reference to the king’s supremacy, and his enemies insinuated to the king that he himself was of his secretary’s way of thinking. But in truth the king had need of him quite as much as he had of Cranmer; for it was Gardiner, who even under royal supremacy, was anxious to prove that England had not fallen away from the faith, while Cranmer’s authority as primate was necessary to upholding that supremacy. Thus Gardiner and the archbishop maintained opposite sides of the king’s church policy; and though Gardiner was encouraged by the king to put up articles against the archbishop himself for heresy, the archbishop could always rely on the king’s protection in the end. Heresy was gaining ground in high places, especially after the king’s marriage with Catherine Parr; and there seems to be some truth in the story that the queen herself was nearly committed for it at one time, when Gardiner, with the king’s approbation, censured some of her expressions in conversation. In fact, just after her marriage, four men of the Court were condemned at Windsor and three of them were burned. The fourth, who was the musician Marbeck, was pardoned by Gardiner’s procurement.
Great as Gardiner’s influence had been with Henry VIII., his name was omitted at the last in the king’s will, though Henry was believed to have intended making him one of his executors. Under Edward VI. he was completely opposed to the policy of the dominant party both in ecclesiastical and in civil matters. The religious changes he objected to both on principle and on the ground of their being moved during the king’s minority, and he resisted Cranmer’s project of a general visitation. His remonstrances, however, were met by his own committal to the Fleet, and the visitation of his diocese was held during his imprisonment. Though soon afterwards released, it was not long before he was called before the council, and, refusing to give them satisfaction on some points, was thrown into the Tower, where he continued during the whole remainder of the reign, a period slightly over five years. During this time he in vain demanded his liberty, and to be called before parliament as a peer of the realm. His bishopric was taken from him and given to Dr Poynet, a chaplain of Cranmer’s who had not long before been made bishop of Rochester. At the accession of Queen Mary, the duke of Norfolk and other state prisoners of high rank were in the Tower along with him; but the queen, on her first entry into London, set them all at liberty. Gardiner was restored to his bishopric and appointed lord chancellor, and he set the crown on the queen’s head at her coronation. He also opened her first parliament and for some time was her leading councillor.
He was now called upon, in advanced life, to undo not a little of the work in which he had been instrumental in his earlier years—to vindicate the legitimacy of the queen’s birth and the lawfulness of her mother’s marriage, to restore the old religion, and to recant what he himself had written touching the royal supremacy. It is said that he wrote a formal Palinodia or retractation of his book De vera obedientia, but it does not seem to be now extant; and the reference is probably to his sermon on Advent Sunday 1554, after Cardinal Pole had absolved the kingdom from schism. As chancellor he had the onerous task of negotiating the queen’s marriage treaty with Philip, to which he shared the general repugnance, though he could not oppose her will. In executing it, however, he took care to make the terms as advantageous for England as possible, with express provision that the Spaniards should in nowise be allowed to interfere in the government of the country. After the coming of Cardinal Pole, and the reconciliation of the realm to the see of Rome, he still remained in high favour. How far he was responsible for the persecutions which afterwards arose is a debated question. He no doubt approved of the act, which passed the House of Lords while he presided there as chancellor, for the revival of the heresy laws. Neither is there any doubt that he sat in judgment on Bishop Hooper, and on several other preachers whom he condemned, not exactly to the flames, but to be degraded from the priesthood. The natural consequence of this, indeed, was that when they declined, even as laymen, to be reconciled to the Church, they were handed over to the secular power to be burned. Gardiner, however, undoubtedly did his best to persuade them to save themselves by a course which he conscientiously followed himself; nor does it appear that, when placed on a commission along with a number of other bishops to administer a severe law, he could very well have acted otherwise than he did. In his own diocese no victim of the persecution is known to have suffered till after his death; and, much as he was already maligned by opponents, there are strong evidences that his natural disposition was humane and generous. In May 1553 he went over to Calais as one of the English commissioners to promote peace with France; but their efforts were ineffectual. In October 1555 he again opened parliament as lord chancellor, but towards the end of the month he fell ill and grew rapidly worse till the 12th of November, when he died over sixty years of age.
Perhaps no celebrated character of that age has been the subject of so much ill-merited abuse at the hands of popular historians. That his virtue was not equal to every trial must be admitted, but that he was anything like the morose and narrow-minded bigot he is commonly represented there is nothing whatever to show. He has been called ambitious, turbulent, crafty, abject, vindictive, bloodthirsty and a good many other things besides, not quite in keeping with each other; in addition to which it is roundly asserted by Bishop Burnet that he was despised alike by Henry and by Mary, both of whom made use of him as a tool. How such a mean and abject character submitted to remain five years in prison rather than change his principles is not very clearly explained; and as to his being despised, we have seen already that neither Henry nor Mary considered him by any means despicable. The truth is, there is not a single divine or statesman of that day whose course throughout was so thoroughly consistent. He was no friend to the Reformation, it is true, but he was at least a conscientious opponent. In doctrine he adhered to the old faith from first to last, while as a question of church policy, the only matter for consideration with him was whether the new laws and ordinances were constitutionally justifiable.
His merits as a theologian it is unnecessary to discuss; it is as a statesman and a lawyer that he stands conspicuous. But his learning even in divinity was far from commonplace. The part that he was allowed to take in the drawing up of doctrinal formularies in Henry VIII.’s time is not clear; but at a later date he was the author of various tracts in defence of the Real Presence against Cranmer, some of which, being written in prison, were published abroad under a feigned name. Controversial writings also passed between him and Bucer, with whom he had several interviews in Germany, when he was there as Henry VIII.’s ambassador.
He was a friend of learning in every form, and took great interest especially in promoting the study of Greek at Cambridge. He was, however, opposed to the new method of pronouncing the language introduced by Sir John Cheke, and wrote letters to him and Sir Thomas Smith upon the subject, in which, according to Ascham, his opponents showed themselves the better critics, but he the superior genius. In his own household he loved to take in young university men of promise; and many whom he thus encouraged became distinguished in after life as bishops, ambassadors and secretaries of state. His house, indeed, was spoken of by Leland as the seat of eloquence and the special abode of the muses.
He lies buried in his own cathedral at Winchester, where his effigy is still to be seen.
(J. Ga.)
GARDINER, a city of Kennebec county, Maine, U.S.A., at the confluence of Cobbosseecontee river with the Kennebec, 6 m. below Augusta. Pop. (1890) 5491; (1900) 5501 (537 foreign-born); (1910) 5311. It is served by the Maine Central railway. The site of the city is only a few feet above sea-level, and the Kennebec is navigable for large vessels to this point; the water of the Cobbosseecontee, falling about 130 ft. in a mile, furnishes the city with good power for its manufactures (chiefly paper, machine-shop products, and shoes). The city exports considerable quantities of lumber and ice. Gardiner was founded in 1760 by Dr Sylvester Gardiner (1707-1786), and for a time the settlement was called Gardinerston; in 1779, when it was incorporated as a town, the founder being then a Tory, it was renamed Pittston. But in 1803, when that part of Pittston which lay on the W. bank of the Kennebec was incorporated as a separate town and new life was given to it by the grandson of the founder, the present name was adopted. Gardiner was chartered as a city in 1849. The town of Pittston, on the E. bank of the Kennebec, had a population of 1177 in 1900.
GARDNER, PERCY (1846- ), English classical archaeologist, was born in London, and was educated at the City of London school and Christ’s College, Cambridge (fellow, 1872). He was Disney professor of archaeology at Cambridge from 1880 to 1887, and was then appointed professor of classical archaeology at Oxford, where he had a stimulating influence on the study of ancient, and particularly Greek, art. He also became prominent as an historical critic on Biblical subjects. Among his works are: Types of Greek Coins (1883); A Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias (with F. Imhoof-Blumer, 1887); New Chapters in Greek History (1892), an account of excavations in Greece and Asia Minor; Manual of Greek Antiquities (with F.B. Jevons, 2nd ed. 1898); Grammar of Greek Art (1905); Exploratio Evangelica (1899), on the origin of Christian belief; A Historic View of the New Testament (1901); Growth of Christianity (1907).
His brother, Ernest Arthur Gardner (1862- ), educated at the City of London school and Caius College, Cambridge (fellow, 1885), is also well known as an archaeologist. From 1887 to 1895 he was director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, and later became professor of archaeology at University College, London. His publications include: Introduction to Greek Epigraphy (1887); Ancient Athens (1902); Handbook of Greek Sculpture (1905); Six Greek Sculptors (1910). He was elected first Public Orator of London University in 1910.
GARDNER, a township of Worcester county, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Pop. (1890) 8424; (1900) 10,813, of whom 3449 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 14,699. The township is traversed by the Boston & Maine railway. It has an area of 21.4 sq. m. of hill country, well watered with streams and ponds, and includes the villages of Gardner (15 m. by rail W. of Fitchburg), South Gardner and West Gardner. In the township are the state colony for the insane, the Henry Heywood memorial hospital, and the Levi Heywood memorial library (opened in 1886), a memorial to Levi Heywood (1800-1882), a prominent local manufacturer of chairs, who invented various kinds of chair-making machinery. By far the principal industry of the township (dating from 1805) is the manufacture of chairs, the township having in 1905 the largest chair factory in the world; among the other manufactures are toys, baby-carriages, silver-ware and oil stoves. In 1905 the total factory product of the township was valued at $5,019,019, the furniture product alone amounting to $4,267,064, or 85.2% of the total. Gardner, formed from parts of Ashburnham, Templeton, Westminster and Winchenden, was incorporated in 1785, and was named in honour of Col. Thomas Gardner (1724-1775), a patriot leader of Massachusetts, who was mortally wounded in the battle of Bunker Hill.
See W.D. Herrick, History of the Town of Gardner (Gardner, 1878), covering the years 1785-1878.
GARE-FOWL (Icelandic, Geirfugl; Gaelic, Gearbhul), the anglicized form of the Hebridean name of a large sea-bird now considered extinct, formerly a visitor to certain remote Scottish islands, the Great Auk of most English book-writers, and the Alca impennis of Linnaeus. In size it was hardly less than a tame goose, and in appearance it much resembled its smaller and surviving relative the razor-bill (Alca torda); but the glossy black of its head was varied by a large patch of white occupying nearly all the space between the eye and the bill, in place of the razor-bill’s thin white line, while the bill itself bore eight or more deep transverse grooves instead of the smaller number and the ivory-like mark possessed by the species last named. Otherwise the coloration was similar in both, and there is satisfactory evidence that the gare-fowl’s winter-plumage differed from that of the breeding-season just as is ordinarily the case in other members of the family Alcidae to which it belongs. The most striking characteristic of the gare-fowl, however, was the comparatively abortive condition of its wings, the distal portions of which, though the bird was just about twice the linear dimensions of the razor-bill, were almost exactly of the same size as in that species—proving, if more direct evidence were wanting, its inability to fly.
The most prevalent misconception concerning the gare-fowl is one which has been repeated so often, and in books of such generally good repute and wide dispersal, that a successful refutation seems almost hopeless. This is the notion that it was a bird possessing a very high northern range, and consequently to be looked for by Arctic explorers. How this error arose would take too long to tell, but the fact remains indisputable that, setting aside general assertions resting on no evidence worthy of attention, there is but a single record deserving any credit at all of a single example of the species having been observed within the Arctic Circle, and this, according to Prof. Reinhardt, who had the best means of ascertaining the truth, is open to grave doubt. It is clear that the older ornithologists let their imagination get the better of their knowledge or their judgment, and their statements have been blindly repeated by most of their successors. Another error which, if not so widely spread, is at least as serious, since Sir R. Owen unhappily gave it countenance, is that this bird “has not been specially hunted down like the dodo and dinornis, but by degrees has become more scarce.” If any reliance can be placed upon the testimony of former observers, the first part of this statement is absolutely untrue. Of the dodo all we know is that it flourished in Mauritius, its only abode, at the time the island was discovered, and that some 200 years later it had ceased to exist—the mode of its extinction being open to conjecture, and a strong suspicion existing that though indirectly due to man’s acts it was accomplished by his thoughtless agents (Phil. Trans., 1869, p. 354). The extinction of the Dinornis lies beyond the range of recorded history. Supposing it even to have taken place at the very latest period as yet suggested—and there is much to be urged in favour of such a supposition—little but oral tradition remains to tell us how its extirpation was effected. That it existed after New Zealand was inhabited by man is indeed certain, and there is nothing extraordinary in the proved fact that the early settlers (of whatever race they were) killed and ate moas. But evidence that the whole population of those birds was done to death by man, however likely it may seem, is wholly wanting. The contrary is the case with the gare-fowl. In Iceland there is the testimony of a score of witnesses, taken down from their lips by one of the most careful naturalists who ever lived, John Wolley, that the latest survivors of the species were caught and killed by expeditions expressly organized with the view of supplying the demands of caterers to the various museums of Europe. In like manner the fact is incontestable that its breeding-stations in the western part of the Atlantic were for three centuries regularly visited and devastated with the combined objects of furnishing food or bait to the fishermen from very early days, and its final extinction, according to Sir Richard Bonnycastle (Newfoundland in 1842, i. p. 232), was owing to “the ruthless trade in its eggs and skin.” There is no doubt that one of the chief stations of this species in Icelandic waters disappeared through volcanic action, and that the destruction of the old Geirfuglaskér drove some at least of the birds which frequented it to a rock nearer the mainland, where they were exposed to danger from which they had in their former abode been comparatively free; yet on this rock (Eldey = fire-island) they were “specially hunted down” whenever opportunity offered, until the stock there was wholly extirpated in 1844.
A third misapprehension is that entertained by John Gould in his Birds of Great Britain, where he says that “formerly this bird was plentiful in all the northern parts of the British Islands, particularly the Orkneys and the Hebrides. At the commencement of the 19th century, however, its fate appears to have been sealed; for though it doubtless existed, and probably bred, up to the year 1830, its numbers annually diminished until they became so few that the species could not hold its own.” Now of the Orkneys, we know that George Low, who died in 1795, says in his posthumously-published Fauna Orcadensis that he could not find it was ever seen there; and on Bullock’s visit in 1812 he was told, says Montagu (Orn. Dict. App.), that one male only had made its appearance for a long time. This bird he saw and unsuccessfully hunted, but it was killed soon after his departure, while its mate had been killed just before his arrival, and none have been seen there since. As to the Hebrides, St Kilda is the only locality recorded for it, and the last example known to have been obtained there, or in its neighbourhood, was that given to Fleming (Edinb. Phil. Journ. x. p. 96) in 1821 or 1822, having been some time before captured by Mr Maclellan of Glass. That the gare-fowl was not plentiful in either group of islands is sufficiently obvious, as also is the impossibility of its continuing to breed “up to the year 1830.”
But mistakes like these are not confined to British authors. As on the death of an ancient hero myths gathered round his memory as quickly as clouds round the setting sun, so have stories, probable as well as impossible, accumulated over the true history of this species, and it behoves the conscientious naturalist to exercise more than common caution in sifting the truth from the large mass of error. Americans have asserted that the specimen which belonged to Audubon (now at Vassar College) was obtained by him on the banks of Newfoundland, though there is Macgillivray’s distinct statement (Brit. Birds, v. p. 359) that Audubon procured it in London. The account given by Degland (Orn. Europ. ii. p. 529) in 1849, and repeated in the last edition of his work by M. Gerbe, of its extinction in Orkney, is so manifestly absurd that it deserves to be quoted in full: “Il se trouvait en assez grand nombre il y a une quinzaine d’années aux Orcades; mais le ministre presbytérien dans le Mainland, en offrant une forte prime aux personnes qui lui apportaient cet oiseau, a été cause de sa destruction sur ces îles.” The same author claims the species as a visitor to the shores of France on the testimony of Hardy (Annuaire normand, 1841, p. 298), which he grievously misquotes both in his own work and in another place (Naumannia, 1855, p. 423), thereby misleading an anonymous English writer (Nat. Hist. Rev., 1865, p. 475) and numerous German readers.
John Milne in 1875 visited Funk Island, one of the former resorts of the gare-fowl, or “penguin,” as it was there called, in the Newfoundland seas, a place where bones had before been obtained by Stuvitz, and natural mummies so lately as 1863 and 1864. Landing on this rock at the risk of his life, he brought off a rich cargo of its remains, belonging to no fewer than fifty birds, some of them in size exceeding any that had before been known. His collection was subsequently dispersed, most of the specimens finding their way into various public museums.
A literature by no means inconsiderable has grown up respecting the gare-fowl. Neglecting works of general bearing, few of which are without many inaccuracies, the following treatises may be especially mentioned:—J.J.S. Steenstrup, “Et Bidrag til Geirfuglens Naturhistorie og saerligt til Kundskaben om dens tidligere Udbredningskreds,” Naturh. Foren. Vidensk. Meddelelser (Copenhagen, 1855), p. 33; E. Charlton, “On the Great Auk,” Trans. Tyneside Nat. Field Club, iv. p. 111; “Abstract of Mr J. Wolley’s Researches in Iceland respecting the Gare-fowl,” Ibis (1861), p. 374; W. Preyer, “Über Plautus impennis,” Journ. für Orn. (1862), pp. 110, 337; K.E. von Baer, “Über das Aussterben der Tierarten in physiologischer und nicht physiologischer Hinsicht,” Bull. de l’Acad. Imp. de St-Pétersb. vi. p. 513; R. Owen, “Description of the Skeleton of the Great Auk,” Trans. Zool. Soc. v. p. 317; “The Gare-fowl and its Historians,” Nat. Hist. Rev. v. p. 467; J.H. Gurney, jun., “On the Great Auk,” Zoologist (2nd ser.), pp. 1442, 1639; H. Reeks, “Great Auk in Newfoundland,” &c., op. cit. p. 1854; V. Fatio, “Sur l’Alca impennis,” Bull. Soc. Orn. Suisse, ii. pp. 1, 80, 147; “On existing Remains of the Gare-fowl,” Ibis (1870), p. 256; J. Milne, “Relics of the Great Auk,” Field (27th of March, 3rd and 10th of April 1875). Lastly, reference cannot be omitted to the happy exercise of poetic fancy with which Charles Kingsley was enabled to introduce the chief facts of the gare-fowl’s extinction (derived from one of the above-named papers) into his charming Water Babies.
(A. N.)
The name first appears, and in this form, in the Account of Hirta (St Kilda) and Rona, &c., by the lord register, Sir George M‘Kenzie, of Tarbat, printed by Pinkerton in his Collection of Voyages and Travels (iii. p. 730), and then in Sibbald’s Scotia illustrata (1684). Martin soon after, in his Voyage to St Kilda, spelt it “Gairfowl.” Sir R. Owen adopted the form “garfowl,” without, as would seem, any precedent authority.
The specimen is in the Museum of Copenhagen; the doubt lies as to the locality where it was obtained, whether at Disco, which is within, or at the Fiskernäs, which is without, the Arctic Circle.
GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM (1831-1881), twentieth president of the United States, was born on the 19th of November 1831 in a log cabin in the little frontier town of Orange, Cuyahoga county, Ohio. His early years were spent in the performance of such labour as fell to the lot of every farmer’s son in the new states, and in the acquisition of such education as could be had in the district schools held for a few weeks each winter. But life on a farm was not to his liking, and at sixteen he left home and set off to make a living in some other way. A book of stories of adventure on the sea, which he read over and over again when a boy, had filled him with a longing for a seafaring life. He decided, therefore, to become a sailor, and, in 1848, tramping across the country to Cleveland, Ohio, he sought employment from the captain of a lake schooner. But the captain drove him from the deck, and, wandering on in search of work, he fell in with a canal boatman who engaged him. During some months young Garfield served as bowsman, deck-hand and driver of a canal boat. An attack of the ague sent him home, and on recovery, having resolved to attend a high school and fit himself to become a teacher, he passed the next four years in a hard struggle with poverty and in an earnest effort to secure an education, studying for a short time in the Geauga Seminary at Chester, Ohio. He worked as a teacher, a carpenter and a farmer; studied for a time at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute at Hiram, Ohio, which afterward became Hiram College, and finally entered Williams College. On graduation, in 1856, Garfield became professor of ancient languages and literature in the Eclectic Institute at Hiram, and within a year had risen to the presidency of the institution.
Soon afterwards he entered political life. In the early days of the Republican party, when the shameful scenes of the Kansas struggle were exciting the whole country, and during the campaigns of 1857 and 1858, he became known as an effective speaker and ardent anti-slavery man. His reward for his services was election in 1859 to the Ohio Senate as the member from Portage and Summit counties. When the “cotton states” seceded, Garfield appeared as a warm supporter of vigorous measures. He was one of the six Ohio senators who voted against the proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution (Feb. 28th, 1861) forbidding any constitutional amendment which should give Congress the power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any state; he upheld the right of the government to coerce seceded states; defended the “Million War Bill” appropriating a million dollars for the state’s military expenses; and when the call came for 75,000 troops, he moved that Ohio furnish 20,000 soldiers and three millions of dollars as her share. He had just been admitted to the bar, but on the outbreak of war he at once offered his services to the governor, and became lieutenant-colonel and then colonel of the 42nd Ohio Volunteers, recruited largely from among his former students. He served in Kentucky, was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general of volunteers early in 1862; took part in the second day’s fighting at the battle of Shiloh, served as chief of staff under Rosecrans in the Army of the Cumberland in 1863, fought at Chickamauga, and was made a major-general of volunteers for gallantry in that battle. In 1862 he was elected a member of Congress from the Ashtabula district of Ohio, and, resigning his military commission, took his seat in the House of Representatives in December 1863. In Congress he joined the radical wing of the Republican party, advocated the confiscation of Confederate property, approved and defended the Wade-Davis manifesto denouncing the tameness of Lincoln, and was soon recognized as a hard worker and ready speaker. Capacity for work brought him places on important committees—he was chairman successively of the committee on military affairs, the committee on banking and currency, and the committee on appropriations,—and his ability as a speaker enabled him to achieve distinction on the floor of the House and to rise to leadership. Between 1863 and 1873 Garfield delivered speeches of importance on “The Constitutional Amendment to abolish Slavery,” “The Freedman’s Bureau,” “The Reconstruction of the Rebel States,” “The Public Debt and Specie Payments,” “Reconstruction,” “The Currency,” “Taxation of United States Bonds,” “Enforcing the 14th Amendment,” “National Aid to Education,” and “the Right to Originate Revenue Bills.” The year 1874 was one of disaster to the Republican party. The greenback issue, the troubles growing out of reconstruction in the South, the Crédit Mobilier and the “Salary Grab,” disgusted thousands of independent voters and sent a wave of Democracy over the country. Garfield himself was accused of corruption in connexion with the Crédit Mobilier scandal, but the charge was never proved. A Republican convention in his district demanded his resignation, and re-election seemed impossible; but he defended himself in two pamphlets, “Increase of Salaries” and “Review of the Transactions of the Crédit Mobilier Company,” made a village-to-village canvass, and was victorious. In 1876 Garfield for the eighth time was chosen to represent his district; and afterwards as one of the two representatives of the Republicans in the House, he was a member of the Electoral Commission which decided the dispute regarding the presidential election of 1876. When, in 1877, James G. Blaine was made a senator from Maine, the leadership of the House of Representatives passed to Garfield, and he became the Republican candidate for speaker. But the Democrats had a majority in the House, and he was defeated. Hayes, the new president, having chosen John Sherman to be his secretary of the treasury, an effort was made to send Garfield to the United States Senate in Sherman’s place. But the president needed his services in the House, and he was not elected to the Senate until 1880.
The time had now come (1880) when the Republican party must nominate a candidate for the presidency. General Grant had served two terms (1869-1877), and the unwritten law of custom condemned his being given another. But the “bosses” of the Republican party in three great States—New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois—were determined that he should be renominated. These men and their followers were known as the “stalwarts.” Opposed to them were two other factions, one supporting James G. Blaine, of Maine, and the other John Sherman, of Ohio. When the convention met and the balloting began, the contest along these factional lines started in earnest. For eight-and-twenty ballots no change of any consequence was noticeable. Though votes were often cast for ten names, there were but two real candidates before the convention, Grant and Blaine. That the partisans of neither would yield in favour of the other was certain. That the choice therefore rested with the supporters of the minor candidates was manifest, and with the cry “Anything to beat Grant!” an effort was made to find some man on whom the opposition could unite. Such a man was Garfield. His long term of service in the House, his leadership of his party on its floor, his candidacy for the speakership, and his recent election to the United States Senate, marked him out as the available man. Between the casting of the first and the thirty-third ballot, Garfield, who was the leader of Sherman’s adherents in the convention, had sometimes received one or two votes and at other times none. On the thirty-fourth he received seventeen, on the next fifty, and on the next almost the entire vote hitherto cast for Blaine and Sherman, and was declared nominated. During the campaign Garfield was subject to violent personal abuse; the fact that he was alleged to have received $329 from the Crédit Mobilier as a dividend on stock led his opponents to raise the campaign cry of “329,” and this number was placarded in the streets of the cities and printed in flaring type in partisan newspapers. The forged “Morey letter,” in which he was made to appear as opposed to the exclusion of the Chinese, was widely circulated and injured his candidacy in the West. That the charges against Garfield were not generally credited, however, is shown by the fact that he received 214 electoral votes to his opponent’s 155. He was inaugurated on the 4th of March 1881.
Unfortunately, the new president was unequal to the task of composing the differences in his party. For his secretary of state he chose James G. Blaine, the bitterest political enemy of Senator Roscoe Conkling (q.v.), the leader of the New York “stalwarts.” Without consulting the New York senators, Garfield appointed William H. Robertson, another political enemy of Conkling’s, to the desirable post of Collector of the Port of New York, and thereby destroyed all prospects of party harmony. On the 2nd of July, while on his way to attend the commencement exercises at Williams College, the new president was shot in a Washington railway station by a disappointed office-seeker named Charles J. Guiteau, whose mind had no doubt been somewhat influenced by the abuse lavished upon the president by his party opponents; and on the 19th of September 1881, he died at Elberon, New Jersey, whither he had been removed on the 6th. He was buried in Cleveland, Ohio, where in 1890 a monument was erected by popular subscription to his memory.
In 1858 Garfield had married Miss Lucretia Rudolph, by whom he had seven children. His son, Harry Augustus Garfield (b. 1863) graduated at Williams College in 1885, practised law in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1888-1903, was professor of politics at Princeton University in 1903-1908, and in 1908 became president of Williams College. Another son, James Rudolph Garfield (b. 1865), also graduated at Williams College in 1885 and practised law in Cleveland; he was a Republican member of the Ohio Senate in 1896-1899, was commissioner of corporations, Department of Commerce and Labour, in 1903-1907, attracting wide attention by his reports on certain large industrial organizations, and was secretary of the interior (1907-1909) in the cabinet of President Roosevelt.
President Garfield’s writings, edited by Burke A. Hinsdale, were published at Boston, in two volumes, in 1882.
(J. B. McM.)
GAR-FISH, the name given to a genus of fishes (Belone) found in nearly all the temperate and tropical seas, and readily recognized by their long, slender, compressed and silvery body, and by their jaws being produced into a long, pointed, bony and sharply-toothed beak. About fifty species are known from different parts of the globe, some attaining to a length of 4 or 5 ft. One species is common on the British coasts, and is well known by the names of “long-nose,” “green-bone,” &c. The last name is given to those fishes on account of the peculiar green colour of their bones, which deters many people from eating them, although their flesh is well flavoured and perfectly wholesome. The skipper (Scomberesox) and half-beak (Hemirhamphus), in which the lower jaw only is prolonged, are fishes nearly akin to the gar-pikes.
GARGANEY (North-Italian, Garganello), or Summer-Teal, the Anas querquedula and A. circia of Linnaeus (who made, as did Willughby and Ray, two species out of one), and the type of Stephens’s genus Querquedula. This bird is one of the smallest of the Anatidae, and has gained its common English name from being almost exclusively a summer-visitant to England where nowadays it only regularly resorts to breed in some of the East-Norfolk Broads, though possibly at one time it was found at the same season throughout the great Fen-district. Slightly larger than the common teal (A. crecca), the male is readily distinguished therefrom by its peculiarly-coloured head, the sides of which are nutmeg-brown, closely freckled with short whitish streaks, while a conspicuous white curved line descends backwards from the eyes. The upper wing-coverts are bluish grey, the scapulars black with a white shaft-stripe, and the wing-spot (speculum) greyish green bordered above and below by white. The female closely resembles the hen teal, but possesses no wing-spot. In Ireland or Scotland the garganey is very rare, and though it is recorded from Iceland, more satisfactory evidence of its occurrence there is needed. It has not a high northern range, and its appearance in Norway and Sweden is casual. Though it breeds in many parts of Europe, in none can it be said to be common; but it ranges far to the eastward in Asia—even to Formosa, according to Swinhoe—and yearly visits India in winter in enormous numbers. Those that breed in Norfolk arrive somewhat late in spring and make their nests in the vast reed-beds which border the Broads—a situation rarely or never chosen by the teal. The labyrinth or bony enlargement of the trachea in the male garganey differs in form from that described in any other drake, being more oval and placed nearly in the median line of the windpipe, instead of on one side, as is usually the case.
The word was introduced by Willughby from Gesner (Orn., lib. iii. p. 127), but, though generally adopted by authors, seems never to have become other than a book-name in English, the bird being invariably known in the parts of this island where it is indigenous as “summer-teal.”
GARGANO, MONTE (anc. Garganus Mons), a massive mountainous peninsula projecting E. from the N. coast of Apulia, Italy, and belonging geologically to the opposite Dalmatian coast; it was indeed separated from the rest of Italy by an arm of the sea as late as the Tertiary period. The highest point (Monte Calvo) is 3465 ft. above sea-level. The oak forests for which it was renowned in Roman times have entirely disappeared.
GARGOYLE, or Gurgoyle (from the Fr. gargouille, originally the throat or gullet, cf. Lat. gurgulio, gula, and similar words derived from root gar, to swallow, the word representing the gurgling sound of water; Ital. doccia di grande; Ger. Ausguss), in architecture, the carved termination to a spout which conveys away the water from the gutters. Gargoyles are mostly grotesque figures. The term is applied more especially to medieval work, but throughout all ages some means of throwing the water off the roofs, when not conveyed in gutters, has been adopted, and in Egypt there are gargoyles to eject the water used in the washing of the sacred vessels which would seem to have been done on the flat roofs of the temples. In Greek temples the water from the roof passed through the mouths of lions whose heads were carved or modelled in the marble or terra-cotta cymatium of the cornice. At Pompeii large numbers of terra-cotta gargoyles have been found which were modelled in the shape of various animals.
GARHWAL, or Gurwal. 1. A district of British India, in the Kumaon division of the United Provinces. It has an area of 5629 sq. m., and consists almost entirely of rugged mountain ranges running in all directions, and separated by narrow valleys which in some cases become deep gorges or ravines. The only level portion of the district is a narrow strip of waterless forest between the southern slopes of the hills and the fertile plains of Rohilkhand. The highest mountains are in the north, the principal peaks being Nanda Devi (25,661 ft.), Kamet (25,413), Trisul (23,382), Badrinath (23,210), Dunagiri (23,181) and Kedarnath (22,853). The Alaknanda, one of the main sources of the Ganges, receives with its affluents the whole drainage of the district. At Devaprayag the Alaknanda joins the Bhagirathi, and thenceforward the united streams bear the name of the Ganges. Cultivation is principally confined to the immediate vicinity of the rivers, which are employed for purposes of irrigation. Garhwal originally consisted of 52 petty chieftainships, each chief with his own independent fortress (garh). Nearly 500 years ago, one of these chiefs, Ajai Pál, reduced all the minor principalities under his own sway, and founded the Garhwal kingdom. He and his ancestors ruled over Garhwal and the adjacent state of Tehri, in an uninterrupted line till 1803, when the Gurkhas invaded Kumaon and Garhwal, driving the Garhwal chief into the plains. For twelve years the Gurkhas ruled the country with a rod of iron, until a series of encroachments by them on British territory led to the war with Nepal in 1814. At the termination of the campaign, Garhwal and Kumaon were converted into British districts, while the Tehri principality was restored to a son of the former chief. Since annexation, Garhwal has rapidly advanced in material prosperity. Pop. (1901) 429,900. Two battalions of the Indian army (the 39th Garhwal Rifles) are recruited in the district, which also contains the military cantonment of Lansdowne. Grain and coarse cloth are exported, and salt, borax, live-stock and wool are imported, the trade with Tibet being considerable. The administrative headquarters are at the village of Pauri, but Srinagar is the largest place. This is an important mart, as is also Kotdwara, the terminus of a branch of the Oudh and Rohilkhand railway from Najibabad.
2. A native state, also known as Tehri, after its capital; area 4180 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 268,885. It adjoins the district mentioned above, and its topographical features are similar. It contains the sources of both the Ganges and the Jumna, which are visited by thousands of Hindu pilgrims. The gross revenue is about £28,000, of which nearly half is derived from forests. No tribute is paid to the British government.
GARIBALDI, GIUSEPPE (1807-1882), Italian patriot, was born at Nice on the 4th of July 1807. As a youth he fled from home to escape a clerical education, but afterwards joined his father in the coasting trade. After joining the “Giovine Italia” he entered the Sardinian navy, and, with a number of companions on board the frigate “Euridice,” plotted to seize the vessel and occupy the arsenal of Genoa at the moment when Mazzini’s Savoy expedition should enter Piedmont. The plot being discovered, Garibaldi fled, but was condemned to death by default on the 3rd of June 1834. Escaping to South America in 1836, he was given letters of marque by the state of Rio Grande do Sul, which had revolted against Brazil. After a series of victorious engagements he was taken prisoner and subjected to severe torture, which dislocated his limbs. Regaining liberty, he renewed the war against Brazil, and took Porto Allegro. During the campaign he met his wife, Anita, who became his inseparable companion and mother of three children, Anita, Ricciotti and Menotti. Passing into the service of Uruguay, he was sent to Corrientes with a small flotilla to oppose Rosas’s forces, but was overtaken by Admiral Brown, against whose fleet he fought for three days. When his ammunition was exhausted he burned his ships and escaped. Returning to Montevideo, he formed the Italian Legion, with which he won the battles of Cerro and Sant’ Antonio in the spring of 1846, and assured the freedom of Uruguay. Refusing all honours and recompense, he prepared to return to Italy upon receiving news of the incipient revolutionary movement. In October 1847 he wrote to Pius IX., offering his services to the Church, whose cause he for a moment believed to be that of national liberty.
Landing at Nice on the 24th of June 1848, he placed his sword at the disposal of Charles Albert, and, after various difficulties with the Piedmontese war office, formed a volunteer army 3000 strong, but shortly after taking the field was obliged, by the defeat of Custozza, to flee to Switzerland. Proceeding thence to Rome, he was entrusted by the Roman republic with the defence of San Pancrazio against the French, where he gained the victory of the 30th of April 1849, remaining all day in the saddle, although wounded in the side at the beginning of the fight. From the 3rd of May until the 30th of May he was continuously engaged against the Bourbon troops at Palestrina, Velletri and elsewhere, dispersing an army of 20,000 men with 3000 volunteers. After the fall of Rome he left the city at the head of 4000 volunteers, with the idea of joining the defenders of Venice, and started on that wonderful retreat through central Italy pursued by the armies of France, Austria, Spain and Naples. By his consummate generalship and the matchless endurance of his men the pursuers were evaded and San Marino reached, though with a sadly diminished force. Garibaldi and a few followers, including his devoted wife Anita, after vainly attempting to reach Venice, where the tricolor still floated, took refuge in the pine forests of Ravenna; the Austrians were seeking him in all directions, and most of his legionaries were captured and shot. Anita died near Comacchio, and he himself fled across the peninsula, being assisted by all classes of the people, to Tuscany, whence he escaped to Piedmont and ultimately to America. At New York, in order to earn a living, he became first a chandler, and afterwards a trading skipper, returning to Italy in 1854 with a small fortune, and purchasing the island of Caprera, on which he built the house thenceforth his home. On the outbreak of war in 1859 he was placed in command of the Alpine infantry, defeating the Austrians at Casale on the 8th of May, crossing the Ticino on the 23rd of May, and, after a series of victorious fights, liberating Alpine territory as far as the frontier of Tirol. When about to enter Austrian territory proper his advance was, however, checked by the armistice of Villafranca.
Returning to Como to wed the countess Raimondi, by whom he had been aided during the campaign, he was apprised, immediately after the wedding, of certain circumstances which caused him at once to abandon that lady and to start for central Italy. Forbidden to invade the Romagna, he returned indignantly to Caprera, where with Crispi and Bertani he planned the invasion of Sicily. Assured by Sir James Hudson of the sympathy of England, he began active preparations for the expedition to Marsala. At the last moment he hesitated, but Crispi succeeded in persuading him to sail from Genoa on the 5th of May 1860 with two vessels carrying a volunteer corps of 1070 strong. Calling at Talamone to embark arms and money, he reached Marsala on the 11th of May, and landed under the protection of the British vessels “Intrepid” and “Argus.” On the 12th of May the dictatorship of Garibaldi was proclaimed at Salemi, on the 15th of May the Neapolitan troops were routed at Calatafimi, on the 25th of May Palermo was taken, and on the 6th of June 20,000 Neapolitan regulars, supported by nine frigates and protected by two forts, were compelled to capitulate. Once established at Palermo, Garibaldi organized an army to liberate Naples and march upon Rome, a plan opposed by the emissaries of Cavour, who desired the immediate annexation of Sicily to the Italian kingdom. Expelling Lafarina and driving out Depretis, who represented Cavour, Garibaldi routed the Neapolitans at Milazzo on the 20th of July. Messina fell on the 20th of July, but Garibaldi, instead of crossing to Calabria, secretly departed for Aranci Bay in Sardinia, where Bertani was fitting out an expedition against the papal states. Cavour, however, obliged the expedition to sail for Palermo. Returning to Messina, Garibaldi found a letter from Victor Emmanuel II. dissuading him from invading the kingdom of Naples. Garibaldi replied asking “permission to disobey.” Next day he crossed the Strait, won the battle of Reggio on the 21st of August, accepted the capitulation of 9000 Neapolitan troops at San Giovanni and of 11,000 more at Soveria. The march upon Naples became a triumphal progress, which the wiles of Francesco II. were powerless to arrest. On the 7th of September Garibaldi entered Naples, while Francesco fled to Gaeta. On the 1st of October he routed the remnant of the Bourbon army 40,000 strong on the Volturno. Meanwhile the Italian troops had occupied the Marches, Umbria and the Abruzzi, a battalion of Bersaglieri reaching the Volturno in time to take part in the battle. Their presence put an end to the plan for the invasion of the papal states, and Garibaldi unwillingly issued a decree for the plébiscite which was to sanction the incorporation of the Two Sicilies in the Italian realm. On the 7th of November Garibaldi accompanied Victor Emmanuel during his solemn entry into Naples, and on the morrow returned to Caprera, after disbanding his volunteers and recommending their enrolment in the regular army.
Indignation at the cession of Nice to France and at the neglect of his followers by the Italian government induced him to return to political life. Elected deputy in 1861, his anger against Cavour found violent expression. Bixio attempted to reconcile them, but the publication by Cialdini of a letter against Garibaldi provoked a hostility which, but for the intervention of the king, would have led to a duel between Cialdini and Garibaldi. Returning to Caprera, Garibaldi awaited events. Cavour’s successor, Ricasoli, enrolled the Garibaldians in the regular army; Rattazzi, who succeeded Ricasoli, urged Garibaldi to undertake an expedition in aid of the Hungarians, but Garibaldi, finding his followers ill-disposed towards the idea, decided to turn his arms against Rome. On the 29th of June 1862 he landed at Palermo and gathered an army under the banner “Roma o morte.” Rattazzi, frightened at the prospect of an attack upon Rome, proclaimed a state of siege in Sicily, sent the fleet to Messina, and instructed Cialdini to oppose Garibaldi. Circumventing the Italian troops, Garibaldi entered Catania, crossed to Melito with 3000 men on the 25th of August, but was taken prisoner and wounded by Cialdini’s forces at Aspromonte on the 27th of August. Liberated by an amnesty, Garibaldi returned once more to Caprera amidst general sympathy.
In the spring of 1864 he went to London, where he was accorded an enthusiastic reception and given the freedom of the city. From England he returned again to Caprera. On the outbreak of war in 1866 he assumed command of a volunteer army and, after the defeat of the Italian troops at Custozza, took the offensive in order to cover Brescia. On the 3rd of July he defeated the Austrians at Monte Saello, on the 7th at Lodrone, on the 10th at Darso, on the 16th at Condino, on the 19th at Ampola, on the 21st at Bezzecca, but, when on the point of attacking Trent, he was ordered by General Lamarmora to retire. His famous reply “Obbedisco” (“I obey”) has often been cited as a classical example of military obedience to a command destructive of a successful leader’s hopes, but documents now published (cf. Corriere della sera, 9th of August 1906) prove beyond doubt that Garibaldi had for some days known that the order to evacuate the Trentino would shortly reach him. The order arrived on the 9th of August, whereas Crispi had been sent as early as the 16th of July to warn Garibaldi that, owing to Prussian opposition, Austria would not cede the Trentino to Italy, and that the evacuation was inevitable. Hence Garibaldi’s laconic reply. From the Trentino he returned to Caprera to mature his designs against Rome, which had been evacuated by the French in pursuance of the Franco-Italian convention of the 15th of September 1864. Gathering volunteers in the autumn of 1867, he prepared to enter papal territory, but was arrested at Sinalunga by the Italian government and conducted to Caprera. Eluding the surveillance of the Italian cruisers, he returned to Florence, and, with the complicity of the second Rattazzi cabinet, entered Roman territory at Passo Corese on the 23rd of October. Two days later he took Monterotondo, but on the 2nd of November his forces were dispersed at Mentana by French and papal troops. Recrossing the Italian frontier, he was arrested at Figline and taken back to Caprera, where he eked out his slender resources by writing several romances. In 1870 he formed a fresh volunteer corps and went to the aid of France, defeating the German troops at Chatillon, Autun and Dijon. Elected a member of the Versailles assembly, he resigned his mandate in anger at French insults, and withdrew to Caprera until, in 1874, he was elected deputy for Rome. Popular enthusiasm induced the Conservative Minghetti cabinet to propose that a sum of £40,000 with an annual pension of £2000 be conferred upon him as a recompense for his services, but the proposal, though adopted by parliament (27th May 1875), was indignantly refused by Garibaldi. Upon the advent of the Left to power, however, he accepted both gift and pension, and worked energetically upon the scheme for the Tiber embankment to prevent the flooding of Rome. At the same time he succeeded in obtaining the annulment of his marriage with the countess Raimondi (with whom he had never lived) and contracted another marriage with the mother of his children, Clelia and Manlio. In 1880 he went to Milan for the inauguration of the Mentana monument, and in 1882 visited Naples and Palermo, but was prevented by illness from being present at the 600th anniversary of the Sicilian Vespers. On the 2nd of June 1882 his death at Caprera plunged Italy into mourning.
See Garibaldi, Epistolario, ed. E.E. Ximenes (2 vols., Milan, 1885), and Memorie autografiche (11th ed., Florence, 1902; Eng. translation by A. Werner, with supplement by J.W. Mario in vol. iii. of 1888 ed.); Giuseppe Guerzoni, Garibaldi (2 vols., Florence, 1882); Jessie White Mario, Garibaldi e i suoi tempi (Milan, 1884); G.M. Trevelyan, Garibaldi’s Defence of the Roman Republic (London, 1907), which contains an excellent sketch of Garibaldi’s early career, of the events leading up to the proclamation of the Roman Republic, and a picturesque, detailed and authoritative account of the defence of Rome and of Garibaldi’s flight, with a very full bibliography; also Trevelyan’s Garibaldi and the Thousand (1909).
(H. W. S.)
GARIN LE LOHERAIN, French epic hero. The 12th century chanson de geste of Garin le Loherain is one of the fiercest and most sanguinary narratives left by the trouvères. This local cycle of Lorraine, which is completed by Hervis de Metz, Girbers de Metz, Anséis, fils de Girbert and Yon, is obviously based on history, and the failure absolutely to identify the events recorded does not deprive the poems of their value as a picture of the savage feudal wars of the 11th and 12th centuries. The episodes are evolved naturally and the usual devices adopted by the trouvères to reconcile their inconsistencies are absent. Nevertheless no satisfactory historical explanation of the story has yet been offered. It has been suggested by a recent critic (F. Settegast, Quellenstudien zur gallo-romanischen Epik, 1904) that these poems resume historical traditions going back to the Vandal irruption of 408 and the battle fought by the Romans and the West Goths against the Huns in 451. The cycle relates three wars against hosts of heathen invaders. In the first of these Charles Martel and his faithful vassal Hervis of Metz fight by an extraordinary anachronism against the Vandals, who have destroyed Reims and besieged other cities. They are defeated in a great battle near Troyes. In the second Hervis is besieged in Metz by the “Hongres.” He sends first for help to Pippin, who defers his assistance by the advice of the traitor Hardré. Hervis then transfers his allegiance to Anséis of Cologne, by whose help the invaders are repulsed, though Hervis himself is slain. In the third Thierry, king of Moriane sends to Pippin for help against four Saracen kings. He is delivered by a Frankish host, but falls in the battle. Hervis of Metz was the son of a citizen to whom the duke of Lorraine had married his daughter Aelis, and his sons Garin and Begue are the heroes of the chanson which gives its name to the cycle. The dying king Thierry had desired that his daughter Blanchefleur should marry Garin, but when Garin prefers his suit at the court of Pippin, Fromont of Bordeaux puts himself forward as his rival and Hardré, Fromont’s father, is slain by Garin. The rest of the poem is taken up with the war that ensues between the Lorrainers and the men of Bordeaux. They finally submit their differences to the king, only to begin their disputes once more. Blanchefleur becomes the wife of Pippin, while Garin remains her faithful servant. One of the most famous passages of the poem is the assassination of Begue by a nephew of Fromont, and Garin, after laying waste his enemy’s territory, is himself slain. The remaining songs continue the feud between the two families. According to Paulin Paris, the family of Bordeaux represents the early dukes of Aquitaine, the last of whom, Waifar (745-768) was dispossessed and slain by Pippin the Short, king of the Franks; but the trouvères had in mind no doubt the wars which marked the end of the Carolingian dynasty.
See Li Romans de Garin le Loherain, ed. P. Paris (Paris, 1833); Hist. litt. de la France, vol. xxii. (1852); J.M. Ludlow, Popular Epics of the Middle Ages (London and Cambridge, 1865); F. Lot, Études d’histoire du moyen âge (Paris, 1896); F. Settegast, Quellenstudien zur gallo-romanischen Epik (Leipzig, 1904). A complete edition of the cycle was undertaken by E. Stengel, the first volume of which, Hervis de Mes (Gesellschaft für roman. Lit., Dresden), appeared in 1903.
i.e. Maurienne, now a district and diocese (St Jean de Maurienne) of Savoy.
GARLAND, JOHN (fl. 1202-1252), Latin grammarian, known as Johannes Garlandius, or, more commonly, Johannes de Garlandia, was born in England, though most of his life was spent in France. John Bale in his Catalogus, and John Pits, following Bale, placed him among the writers of the 11th century. The main facts of his life, however, are stated in a long poem De triumphis ecclesiae contained in Cotton MS. Claudius A x in the British Museum, and edited by Thomas Wright for the Roxburghe Club in 1856. Garland narrates the history of his time from the point of view of the victories gained by the church over heretics at home and infidels abroad. He studied at Oxford under a certain John of London, whom it is difficult to distinguish from others of the same name; but he must have been in Paris in or before 1202, for he mentions as one of his teachers Alain de Lisle, who died in that year or the next. Garland was one of the professors chosen in 1229 for the new university of Toulouse, and remained in the south during the Albigensian crusade, of which he gives a detailed account in books iv.-vi. In 1232 or 1233 the hatred of the people made further residence in Toulouse unsafe for the professors of the university, who had been installed by the Catholic party. Garland was one of the first to fly, and the rest of his life was spent in Paris, where he finished his poem in 1252. Garland’s grammatical works were much used in England, and were often printed by Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde. He was also a voluminous Latin poet. Works on mathematics and music have also been assigned to him, but the ascription may have arisen from confusion of his works with those of Gerlandus, a canon of Besançon in the 12th century. The treatise on alchemy, Compendium alchimiae, often printed under his name, was by a 14th-century writer named Martin Ortolan, or Lortholain.
The best known of his poems beside the “De Triumphis Ecclesiae” is “Epithalamium beatae Mariae Virginis,” contained in the same MS. Among his other works are his “Dictionarius,” a Latin vocabulary, printed by T. Wright in the Library of National Antiquities (vol. i., 1857); Compendium totius grammatices ..., printed at Deventer, 1489; two metrical treatises, entitled Synonyma and Equivoca, frequently printed at the close of the 15th century.
For further bibliographical information see the British Museum catalogue; J.A. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae aetatis ..., vol. iii. (1754); G. Brunet, Manuel du libraire, &c. See also Histoire litt. de la France, vols. viii., xxi., xxiii. and xxx.; the prefaces to the editions by T. Wright mentioned above; P. Meyer, La Chanson de la croisade contre les Albigeois, vol. ii. pp. xxi-xxiii. (Paris, 1875); Dr A. Scheler, Lexicographie latine du XIIe et du XIIIe siècles (Leipzig, 1867); the article by C.L. Kingsford in the Dict. Nat. Biog., giving a list also of the works on alchemy, mathematics and music, rightly or wrongly ascribed to him; J.E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. i. (1906) 549.
(E. G.)
GARLIC (O. Eng. gárleác, i.e. “spear-leek”; Gr. σκόροδον; Lat. allium; Ital. aglio; Fr. ail; Ger. Knoblauch), Allium sativum, a bulbous perennial plant of the natural order Liliaceae, indigenous apparently to south-west Siberia. It has long, narrow, flat, obscurely keeled leaves, a deciduous spathe, and a globose umbel of whitish flowers, among which are small bulbils. The bulb, which is the only part eaten, has membranous scales, in the axils of which are 10 or 12 cloves, or smaller bulbs. From these new bulbs can be procured by planting out in February or March. The bulbs are best preserved hung in a dry place. If of fair size, twenty of them weigh about 1 ℔. To prevent the plant from running to leaf, Pliny (Nat. Hist. xix. 34) advises to bend the stalk downward and cover with earth; seeding, he observes, may be prevented by twisting the stalk.
Garlic is cultivated in the same manner as the shallot (q.v.). It is stated to have been grown in England before the year 1548. The percentage composition of the bulbs is given by E. Solly (Trans. Hort. Soc. Lond., new ser., iii. p. 60) as water 84.09, organic matter 13.38, and inorganic matter 1.53—that of the leaves being water 87.14, organic matter 11.27 and inorganic matter 1.59. The bulb has a strong and characteristic odour and an acrid taste, and yields an offensively smelling oil, essence of garlic, identical with allyl sulphide (C3H5)2S (see Hofmann and Cahours, Journ. Chem. Soc. x. p. 320). This, when garlic has been eaten, is evolved by the excretory organs, the activity of which it promotes. From the earliest times garlic has been used as an article of diet. It formed part of the food of the Israelites in Egypt (Numb. xi. 5) and of the labourers employed by Cheops in the construction of his pyramid, and is still grown in Egypt, where, however, the Syrian is the kind most esteemed (see Rawlinson’s Herodotus, ii. 125). It was largely consumed by the ancient Greek and Roman soldiers, sailors and rural classes (cf. Virg. Ecl. ii. 11), and, as Pliny tells us (N.H. xix. 32), by the African peasantry. Galen eulogizes it as the rustic’s theriac (see F. Adams’s Paulus Aegineta, p. 99), and Alexander Neckam, a writer of the 12th century (see Wright’s edition of his works, p. 473, 1863), recommends it as a palliative of the heat of the sun in field labour. “The people in places where the simoon is frequent,” says Mountstuart Elphinstone (An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, p. 140, 1815), “eat garlic, and rub their lips and noses with it, when they go out in the heat of the summer, to prevent their suffering by the simoon.” “O dura messorum ilia,” exclaims Horace (Epod. iii.), as he records his detestation of the popular esculent, to smell of which was accounted a sign of vulgarity (cf. Shakespeare, Coriol. iv. 6, and Meas. for Meas. iii. 2). In England garlic is seldom used except as a seasoning, but in the southern countries of Europe it is a common ingredient in dishes, and is largely consumed by the agricultural population. Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads, as a supper for Hecate (Theophrastus, Characters, Δεισιδαιμονίας); and according to Pliny garlic and onions were invocated as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium in lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic in aversion as food. Garlic possesses stimulant and stomachic properties, and was of old, as still sometimes now, employed as a medicinal remedy. Pliny (N.H. xx. 23) gives an exceedingly long list of complaints in which it was considered beneficial. Dr T. Sydenham valued it as an application in confluent smallpox, and, says Cullen (Mat. Med. ii. p. 174, 1789), found some dropsies cured by it alone. In the United States the bulb is given in doses of ½-2 drachms in cases of bronchiectasis and phthisis pulmonalis. Garlic may also be prescribed as an extract consisting of the inspissated juice, in doses of 5-10 grains, and as the syrupus allii aceticus, in doses of 1-4 drachms. This last preparation has recently been much extolled in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis or phthisis.
The wild “crow garlic” and “field garlic” of Britain are the species Allium vineale and A. oleraceum respectively.
GARNET, or Garnett, HENRY (1555-1606), English Jesuit, son of Brian Garnett, a schoolmaster at Nottingham, was educated at Winchester and afterwards studied law in London. Having become a Roman Catholic, he went to Italy, joined the Society of Jesus in 1575, and acquired under Bellarmine and others a reputation for varied learning. In 1586 he joined the mission in England, becoming superior of the province on the imprisonment of William Weston in the following year. In the dispute between the Jesuits and the secular clergy known as the “Wisbech Stirs” (1595-1596) he zealously supported Weston in his resistance to any compromise with the civil government. His antagonism to the secular clergy was also shown later, when in 1603 he, with other Jesuits, was the means of betraying to the government the “Bye Plot,” contrived by William Watson, a secular priest. In 1598 he was professed of the four vows.
Garnet supervised the Jesuit mission for eighteen years with conspicuous success. His life was one of concealment and disguises; a price was put on his head; but he was fearless and indefatigable in carrying on his propaganda and in ministering to the scattered Catholics, even in their prisons. The result was that he gained many converts, while the number of Jesuits in England increased during his tenure of office from three to forty. It is, however, in connexion with the Gunpowder Plot that he is best remembered. His part in this, for which he suffered death, needs discussion in greater detail.
In 1602 Garnet received briefs from Pope Clement VIII. directing that no person unfavourable to the Catholic religion should be allowed to succeed to the throne. About the same time he was consulted by Catesby, Tresham and Winter, all afterwards involved in the Gunpowder Plot, on the subject of the mission to be sent to Spain to induce Philip III. to invade England. According to his own statement he disapproved, but he gave Winter a recommendation to Father Creswell, an influential person at Madrid. Moreover, in May 1605 he gave introductions to Guy Fawkes when he went to Flanders, and to Sir Edmund Baynham when he went to Rome (see Gunpowder Plot). The preparations for the plot had now been actively going forward since the beginning of 1604, and on the 9th of June 1605 Garnet was asked by Catesby whether it was lawful to enter upon any undertaking which should involve the destruction of the innocent together with the guilty, to which Garnet answered in the affirmative, giving as an illustration the fate of persons besieged in a town in time of war. Afterwards, feeling alarmed, according to his own accounts, he admonished Catesby against intending the death of “not only innocents but friends and necessary persons for a commonwealth,” and showed him a letter from the pope forbidding rebellion. According to Sir Everard Digby, however, Garnet, when asked the meaning of the brief, replied “that they were not (meaning the priests) to undertake or procure stirs, but yet they would not hinder any, neither was it the pope’s mind they should, that should be undertaken for Catholic good.... This answer, with Mr Catesby’s proceedings with him and me, gave me absolute belief that the matter in general was approved, though every particular was not known.” Both men were endeavouring to exculpate themselves, and therefore both statements are subject to suspicion. A few days later, according to Garnet, the Jesuit, Oswald Tesemond, known as Greenway, informed him of the whole plot “by way of confession,” when, as he declares, he expressed horror at the design and urged Greenway to do his utmost to prevent its execution. Subsequently, after his trial, Garnet said he “could not certainly affirm” that Greenway intended to relate the matter to him in confession.
Garnet’s conduct in now keeping the plot a secret has been a matter of considerable controversy not only between Roman Catholics and Protestants, but amongst Roman Catholic writers themselves. Father Martin del Rio, a Jesuit, writing in 1600, discusses the exact case of the revelation of a plot in confession. Almost all the learned doctors, he says, declare that the confessor may reveal it, but he adds, “the contrary opinion is the safer and better doctrine, and more consistent with religion and with the reverence due to the holy rite of confession.” According to Bellarmine, Garnet’s zealous friend and defender, “If the person confessing be concealed, it is lawful for a priest to break the seal of confession in order to avert a great calamity”; but he justifies Garnet’s silence by insisting that it was not lawful to disclose a treasonable secret to a heretical king. According to Garnet’s own opinion a priest cognizant of treason against the state “is bound to find all lawful means to discover it salvo sigillo confessionis.” In this connexion it is worth pointing out that Garnet had not thought it his duty to disclose the treasonable intrigue with the king of Spain in 1602, though there was no pretence in this case that he was restricted by the seal of confession, and his inactivity now tells greatly in his disfavour; for, allowing even that he was bound by confessional secrecy from taking action on Greenway’s information, he had still Catesby’s earlier revelations to act upon. He appears to have taken no steps whatever to prevent the crime, beyond writing to Rome in vague terms that “he feared some particular desperate courses,” which aroused no suspicions in that quarter. At the same time he wrote to Father Parsons on the 4th of September that “as far as he could now see the minds of the Catholics were quieted.”
His movements immediately prior to the attempt were certainly suspicious. In September, shortly before the expected meeting of parliament on the 3rd of October, Garnet organized a pilgrimage to St Winifred’s Well in Flintshire, which started from Gothurst (now Gayhurst), Sir Everard Digby’s house in Buckinghamshire, included Rokewood, and stopped at the houses of John Grant and Robert Winter, three others of the conspirators. During the pilgrimage Garnet asked for the prayers of the company “for some good success for the Catholic cause at the beginning of parliament.” After his return he went on the 29th of October to Coughton in Warwickshire, near which place it had been settled the conspirators were to assemble after the explosion. On the 6th of November, Bates, Catesby’s servant and one of the conspirators, brought him a letter with the news of the failure of the plot and desiring advice. On the 30th Garnet addressed a letter to the government in which he protested his innocence with the most solemn oaths, “as one who hopeth for everlasting salvation.”
It was not till the 4th of December, however, that Garnet and Greenway were, by the confession of Bates, implicated in the plot; and on the same day Garnet removed from Coughton to Hindlip Hall, near Worcester, a house furnished with cleverly-contrived hiding-places for the use of the proscribed priests. Here he remained some time in concealment in company with another priest, Oldcorne alias Hall, but at last on the 30th of January 1606, unable to bear the close confinement any longer, they surrendered and were taken up to London, being well treated during the journey by Salisbury’s express orders. He was examined by the council on the 13th of February and frequently questioned during the following days, but refused to incriminate himself, and a threat to inflict torture had no effect upon his resolution. Subsequently Garnet and Oldcorne having been placed in adjoining rooms and enabled to communicate with one another, their conversations were overheard on several separate occasions and considerable information obtained. Garnet at first denied all speech with Oldcorne, but subsequently on the 8th of March confessed his connexion with the plot. He was tried at the Guildhall on the 28th.
Garnet was clearly guilty of misprision of treason, i.e. of having concealed his knowledge of the crime, an offence which exposed him to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of his property; for the law of England took no account of religious scruples or professional etiquette when they permit the execution of a preventable crime. Strangely enough, however, the government passed over the incriminating conversation with Greenway, and relied entirely on the strong circumstantial evidence to support the charge of high treason against the prisoner. The trial was not conducted in a manner which would be permitted in more modern days. The rules of evidence which now govern the procedure in criminal cases did not then exist, and Garnet’s trial, like many others, was influenced by the political situation, the case against him being supported by general political accusations against the Jesuits as a body, and with evidence of their complicity in former plots against the government. The prisoner himself deeply prejudiced his cause by his numerous false statements, and still more by his adherence to the doctrine of equivocation. Garnet, it is true, claimed to limit the justification of equivocation to cases “of necessary defence from injustice and wrong or of the obtaining some good of great importance when there is no danger of harm to others,” and he could justify his conduct in lying to the council by their own conduct towards him, which included treacherous eavesdropping and fraud, and also threats of torture. Moreover, the attempt of the counsel for the crown to force the prisoner to incriminate himself was opposed to the whole spirit and tradition of the law of England. He was declared guilty, and it is probable, in spite of the irregularity and unjudicial character of his trial, that substantial justice was done by his conviction. His execution took place on the 3rd of May 1606, Garnet acknowledging himself justly condemned for his concealment of the plot, but maintaining to the last that he had never approved it. The king, who had shown him favour throughout and who had forbidden his being tortured, directed that he should be hanged till he was quite dead and that the usual frightful cruelties should be omitted.
Soon after his death the story of the miracle of “Garnet’s Straw” was circulated all over Europe, according to which a blood-stained straw from the scene of execution which came into the hands of one John Wilkinson, a young and fervent Roman Catholic, who was present, developed Garnet’s likeness. In consequence of the credence which the story obtained, Archbishop Bancroft was commissioned by the privy council to discover and punish the impostors. Garnet’s name was included in the list of the 353 Roman Catholic martyrs sent to Rome from England in 1880, and in the 2nd appendix of the Menology of England and Wales compiled by order of the cardinal archbishop and the bishops of the province of Westminster by R. Stanton in 1887, where he is styled “a martyr whose cause is deferred for future investigation.” The passage in Macbeth (Act II. Scene iii.) on equivocators no doubt refers especially to Garnet. His aliases were Farmer, Marchant, Whalley, Darcey Meaze, Phillips, Humphreys, Roberts, Fulgeham, Allen. Garnet was the author of a letter on the Martyrdom of Godfrey Maurice, alias John Jones, in Diego Yepres’s Historia particular de la persecucion de Inglaterra (1599); a Treatise of Schism, a MS. treatise in reply to A Protestant Dialogue between a Gentleman and a Physician; a translation of the Stemma Christi with supplements (1622); a treatise on the Rosary; a Treatise of Christian Renovation or Birth (1616).
Authorities.—Of the great number of works embodying the controversy on the question of Garnet’s guilt the following may be mentioned, in order of date: A True and Perfect Relation of the whole Proceedings against ... Garnet a Jesuit and his Confederates (1606, repr. 1679), the official account, but incomplete and inaccurate; Apologia pro Henrico Garneto (1610), by the Jesuit L’Heureux, under the pseudonym Eudaemon-Joannes, and Dr Robert Abbot’s reply, Antilogia versus Apologiam Eudaemon-Joannes, in which the whole subject is well treated; Henry More, Hist. Provinciae Anglicanae Societatis (1660); D. Jardine, Gunpowder Plot (1857); J. Morris, S.J., Condition of the Catholics under James I. (1872), containing Father Gerard’s narrative; J.H. Pollen, Father Henry Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot (1888); S.R. Gardiner, What Gunpowder Plot was (1897), in reply to John Gerard, S.J., What was the Gunpowder Plot? (1897); J. Gerard, Contributions towards a Life of Father Henry Garnet (1898). See also State Trials II., and Cal. of State Papers Dom., (1603-1610). The original documents are preserved in the Gunpowder Plot Book at the Record Office.
GARNET, a name applied to a group of closely-related minerals, many of which are used as gem-stones. The name probably comes from the Lat. granaticus, a stone so named from its resemblance to the pulp of the pomegranate in colour, or to its seeds in shape; or possibly from granum, “cochineal,” in allusion to the colour of the stone. The garnet was included, with other red stones, by Theophrastus, under the name of ἄνθραξ, while the common garnet seems to have been his ἀνθράκιον. Pliny groups several stones, including garnet, under the term carbunculus. The modern carbuncle is a deep red garnet (almandine) cut en cabochon, or with a smooth convex surface, frequently hollowed out at the back, in consequence of the depth of colour, and sometimes enlivened with a foil (see Almandine). The Hebrew word nophek, translated ἄνθραξ in the Septuagint, seems to have been the garnet or carbuncle, whilst bareketh (σμάραγδος of the Septuagint), though also rendered “carbuncle,” was probably either beryl or, in the opinion of Professor Flinders Petrie, rock-crystal. Garnets were used as beads in ancient Egypt. Though not extensively employed by the Greeks as a material for engraved gems, it was much used for this purpose by the Romans of the Empire. Flat polished slabs of garnet are found inlaid in mosaic work in Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian jewelry, the material used being almandine, or “precious garnet.”
Garnets vary considerably in chemical composition, but the variation is limited within a certain range. All are orthosilicates, conformable to the general formula R″3R″′2(SiO4)3, where R″ = Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, and R″′ = Al, Fe, Cr. Although there are many kinds of garnet they may be reduced to the following six types, which may occur intermixed isomorphously:—
1. Calcium-aluminium garnet (Grossularite), Ca3Al2Si3O12.
2. Calcium-ferric garnet (Andradite), Ca3Fe2Si3O12.
3. Calcium-chromium garnet (Uvarovite), Ca3Cr2Si3O12.
4. Magnesium-aluminium garnet (Pyrope), Mg3Al2Si3O12.
5. Ferrous-aluminium garnet (Almandine), Fe3Al2Si3O12.
6. Manganous-aluminium garnet (Spessartine), Mn3Al2Si3O12.
These are frequently called respectively:—(1) Lime-alumina garnet; (2) lime-iron garnet; (3) lime-chrome garnet; (4) magnesia-alumina garnet; (5) iron-alumina garnet; (6) manganese-alumina garnet.
The types are usually modified by isomorphous replacement of some of their elements.
All garnets crystallize in the cubic system, usually in rhombic dodecahedra or in icositetrahedra, or in a combination of the two forms (see fig.). Octahedra and cubes are rare, but the six-faced octahedron occurs in some of the combinations. Cleavage obtains parallel to the dodecahedron, but is imperfect. The hardness varies according to composition from 6.5 to 7.5, and the specific gravity in like manner has a wide range, varying from 3.4 in the calcium-aluminium garnets to 4.3 in the ferrous-aluminium species. Sir Arthur H. Church found that many garnets when fused yielded a product of lower density than the original mineral. The colour is typically red, but may be brown, yellow, green or even black, while some garnets are colourless. Being cubic the garnets are normally singly refracting, but anomalies frequently occur, leading some authorities to doubt whether the mineral is really cubic. The refractive power of garnet is high, so that in microscopic sections, viewed by transmitted light, the mineral stands out in relief.
Garnets are very widely distributed, occurring in crystalline schists, gneiss, granite, metamorphic limestone, serpentine, and occasionally in volcanic rocks. With omphacite and smaragdite, garnet forms the peculiar rock called eclogite. The garnets used for industrial purposes are usually found loose in detrital deposits, weathered from the parent rock, though in some important workings the rock is quarried. The garnets employed as gem-stones are described under their respective headings (see Almandine, Cinnamon Stone, Demantoid and Pyrope). Most of the minerals noticed in this article are of scientific rather than commercial interest.
Grossularite or “gooseberry-stone,” is typically a brownish-green garnet from Siberia, known also as wiluite (a name applied also to vesuvianite, q.v.), from the river Wilui where it occurs. It is related to hessonite, or cinnamon-stone. A Mexican variety occurs in rose-pink dodecahedra. Romanzovite is a brown garnet, of grossularia-type, from Finland, taking its name from Count Romanzov. Andradite was named by J.D. Dana after B.J. d’Andrada e Silva, who described, in 1800, one of its varieties allochroite, a Norwegian garnet, so named from its variable colour. This species includes most of the common garnet occurring in granular and compact masses, sometimes forming garnet rock. To andradite may be referred melanite, a black garnet well known from the volcanic tuffs near Rome, used occasionally in the 18th century for mourning jewelry. Another black garnet, in small crystals from the Pyrenees, is called pyreneite. Under andradite may also be placed topazolite, a honey-yellow garnet, rather like topaz, from Piedmont; colophonite, a brown resin-like garnet, with which certain kinds of idocrase have been confused; aplome, a green garnet from Saxony and Siberia; and jelletite, a green Swiss garnet named after the Rev. J.H. Jellet. Here also may be placed the green Siberian mineral termed demantoid (q.v.), sometimes improperly called olivine by jewellers. Uvarovite, named after a Russian minister, Count S.S. Uvarov, is a rare green garnet from Siberia and Canada, but though of fine colour is never found in crystals large enough for gem-stones. Spessartite, or spessartine, named after Spessart, a German locality, is a fine aurora-red garnet, cut for jewelry when sufficiently clear, and rather resembling cinnamon-stone. It is found in Ceylon, and notably in the mica-mines in Amelia county, Virginia, United States. A beautiful rose-red garnet, forming a fine gem-stone, occurs in gravels in Macon county, N.C., and has been described by W.E. Hidden and Dr J.H. Pratt under the name of rhodolite. It seems related to both almandine and pyrope, and shows the absorption-spectrum of almandine. The Bohemian garnets largely used in jewelry belong to the species pyrope (q.v.).
Garnets are not only cut as gems, but are used for the bearings of pivots in watches, and are in much request for abrasive purposes. Garnet paper is largely used, especially in America, in place of sandpaper for smoothing woodwork and for scouring leather in the boot-trade. As an abrasive agent it is worked at several localities in the United States, especially in New York State, along the borders of the Adirondacks, where it occurs in limestone and in gneiss. Much of the garnet used as an abrasive is coarse almandine. Common garnet, where abundant, has sometimes been used as a fluxing agent in metallurgical operations. Garnet has been formed artificially, and is known as a furnace-product.
It may be noted that the name of white garnet has been given to the mineral leucite, which occurs, like garnet, crystallized in icositetrahedra.
(F. W. R.*)
GARNETT, RICHARD (1835-1906), English librarian and author, son of the learned philologist Rev. Richard Garnett (1789-1850), priest-vicar of Lichfield cathedral and afterwards keeper of printed books at the British Museum, who came of a Yorkshire family, was born at Lichfield on the 27th of February 1835. His father was really the pioneer of modern philological research in England; his articles in the Quarterly Review (1835, 1836) on English lexicography and dialects, and on the Celtic question, and his essays in the Transactions of the Philological Society (reprinted 1859), were invaluable to the later study of the English language. The son, who thus owed much to his parentage, was educated at home and at a private school, and in 1851, just after his father’s death, entered the British Museum as an assistant in the library. In 1875 he rose to be superintendent of the reading-room, and from 1890 to 1899, when he retired, he was keeper of the printed books. In 1883 he was given the degree of LL.D. at Edinburgh, an honour repeated by other universities, and in 1895 he was made a C.B.
His long connexion with the British Museum library, and the value of his services there, made him a well-known figure in the literary world, and he published much original work in both prose and verse. His chief publications in book-form were: in verse, Primula (1858), Io in Egypt (1859), Idylls and Epigrams (1869, republished in 1892 as A Chaplet from the Greek Anthology), The Queen and other Poems (1902), Collected Poems (1893); in prose, biographies of Carlyle (1887), Emerson (1887), Milton (1890), Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1898); a volume of remarkably original and fanciful tales, The Twilight of the Gods (1888); a tragedy, Iphigenia in Delphi (1890); A Short History of Italian Literature (1898); Essays in Librarianship and Bibliophily (1899); Essays of an Ex-librarian (1901). He was an extensive contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Dictionary of National Biography, editor of the International Library of Famous Literature, and co-editor, with E. Gosse, of the elaborate English Literature: an illustrated Record. So multifarious was his output, however, in contributions to reviews, &c., and as translator or editor, that this list represents only a small part of his published work. He was a member of numerous learned literary societies, British and foreign. His facility as an expositor, and his gift for lucid and acute generalization, together with his eminence as a bibliophile, gave his work an authority which was universally recognized, though it sometimes suffered from his relying too much on his memory and his power of generalizing—remarkable as both usually were—in cases requiring greater precision of statement in matters of detail. But as an interpreter, whether of biography or belles lettres, who brought an unusually wide range of book-learning, in its best sense, interestingly and comprehensibly before a large public, and at the same time acceptably to the canons of careful scholarship, Dr Garnett’s writing was always characterized by clearness, common sense and sympathetic appreciation. His official career at the British Museum marked an epoch in the management of the library, in the history of which his place is second only to that of Panizzi. Besides introducing the “sliding press” in 1887 he was responsible for reviving the publication of the general catalogue, the printing of which, interrupted in 1841, was resumed under him in 1880, and gradually completed. The antipodes of a Dryasdust, his human interest in books made him an ideal librarian, and his courtesy and helpfulness were outstanding features in a personality of singular charm. The whole bookish world looked on him as a friend. Among his “hobbies” was a study of astrology, to which, without associating his name with it in public, he devoted prolonged inquiry. Under the pseudonym of “A.G. Trent” he published in 1880 an article (in the University Magazine) on “The Soul and the Stars”—quoted in Wilde and Dodson’s Natal Astrology. He satisfied himself that there was more truth in the old astrology than modern criticism supposed, and he had intended to publish a further monograph on the subject, but the intention was frustrated by the ill-health which led up to his death on the 13th of April 1906. He married (1863) an Irish wife, Olivia Narney Singleton (d. 1903), and had a family of six children; his son Edward (b. 1868) being a well-known literary man, whose wife translated Turgeneff’s works into English.
(H. Ch.)
GARNIER, CLÉMENT JOSEPH (1813-1881), French economist, was born at Beuil (Alpes maritimes) on the 3rd of October 1813. Coming to Paris he studied at the École de Commerce, of which he eventually became secretary and finally a professor. In 1842 he founded with Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin (1801-1864) the Société d’Économie politique, becoming its secretary, a post which he held till his death; and in 1846 he organized the Association pour la Liberté des Échanges. He also helped to establish and edited for many years the Journal des économistes and the Annuaire de l’économie politique. Of the school of laissez faire, he was engaged during his whole life in the advancement of the science of political economy, and in the improvement of French commercial education. In 1873 he became a member of the Institute, and in 1876 a senator for the department in which he was born. He died at Paris on the 25th of September 1881. Of his writings, the following are the more important: Traité d’économie politique (1845), Richard Cobden et la Ligue (1846), Traité des finances (1862), and Principes du population (1857).