← Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gordon, Lord George" to "Grasses" / Volume 12, Slice 3
Chapter 4
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gordon, Lord George" to "Grasses" (part 4)
In the field granite usually occurs in great masses, covering wide areas. These are generally elliptical or nearly circular and may be 20 m. in diameter or more. In the same district separate areas or “bosses” of granite may be found, all having much in common in their mineralogical and structural features, and such groups have probably all proceeded from the same focus or deep-seated source. Towards their margins these granite outcrops often show modifications by which they pass into diorite or syenite, &c.; they may also be finer grained (like porphyries) or rich in tourmaline, or intersected by many veins of pegmatite. From the main granite dikes or veins often run out into the surrounding rocks, thus proving that the granite is intrusive and has forced its way upwards by splitting apart the strata among which it lies. Further evidence of this is afforded by the alteration which the granite has produced through a zone which varies from a few yards to a mile or more in breadth around it. In the vicinity of intrusive granites slates become converted into hornfelses containing biotite, chiastolite or andalusite, sillimanite and a variety of other minerals; limestones recrystallize as marbles, and all rocks, according to their composition, are more or less profoundly modified in such a way as to prove that they have been raised to a high temperature by proximity to the molten intrusive mass. Where exposed in cliffs and other natural sections many granites have a rudely columnar appearance. Others weather into large cuboidal blocks which may produce structures resembling cyclopean masonry. The tors of the west of England are of this nature. These differences depend on the disposition of the joint cracks which traverse the rock and are opened up by the action of frost and weathering.
The majority of granites are so coarse in grain that their principal component minerals may be identified in the hand specimens by the unaided eye. The felspar is pearly, white or pink, with smooth cleaved surfaces; the quartz is usually transparent, glassy with rough irregular fractures; the micas appear as shining black or white flakes. Very coarse granites are called pegmatite or giant granite, while very fine granites are known as microgranites (though the latter term has also been applied to certain porphyries). Many granites show pearly scales of white mica; others contain dark green or black hornblende in small prisms. Reddish grains of sphene or of garnet are occasionally visible. In the tourmaline granites prisms of black schorl occur either singly or in stellate groups. The parallel banded structures of many granites, which may be original or due to crushing, connect these rocks with the granite gneisses or orthogneisses.
Under the microscope the felspar is mainly orthoclase with perthite or microcline, while a small amount of plagioclase (ranging from oligoclase to albite) is practically never absent. These minerals are often clouded by a deposit of fine mica and kaolin, due to weathering. The quartz is transparent, irregular in form, destitute of cleavage, and is filled with very small cavities which contain a fluid, a mobile bubble and sometimes a minute crystal. The micas, brown and white, are often in parallel growth. The hornblende of granites is usually pale green in section, the augite and enstatite nearly colourless. Tourmaline may be brown, yellow or blue, and often the same crystal shows zones of different colours. Apatite, zircon and iron oxides, in small crystals, are always present. Among the less common accessories may be mentioned pinkish garnets; andalusite in small pleochroic crystals; colourless grains of topaz; six-sided compound crystals of cordierite, which weather to dark green pinite; blue-black hornblende (riebeckite), beryl, tinstone, orthite and pyrites.
The sequence of crystallization in the granites is of a normal type, and may be ascertained by observing the perfection with which the different minerals have crystallized and the order in which they enclose one another. Zircon, apatite and iron oxides are the first; their crystals are small, very perfect and nearly free from enclosures; they are followed by hornblende and biotite; if muscovite is present it succeeds the brown mica. Of the felspars the plagioclase separates first and forms well-shaped crystals of which the central parts may be more basic than the outer zones. Last come orthoclase, quartz, microcline and micropegmatite, which fill up the irregular spaces left between the earlier minerals. Exceptions to this sequence are unusual; sometimes the first of the felspars have preceded the hornblende or biotite which may envelop them in ophitic manner. An earlier generation of felspar, and occasionally also of quartz, may be represented by large and perfect crystals of these minerals giving the rock a porphyritic character.
Many granites have suffered modification by the action of vapours emitted during cooling. Hydrofluoric and boric emanations exert a profound influence on granitic rocks; their felspar is resolved into aggregates of kaolin, muscovite and quartz; tourmaline appears, largely replacing the brown mica; topaz also is not uncommon. In this way the rotten granite or china stone, used in pottery, originates; and over considerable areas kaolin replaces the felspar and forms valuable sources of china clay. Veins of quartz, tourmaline and chlorite may traverse the granite, containing tinstone often in workable quantities. These veins are the principal sources of tin in Cornwall, but the same changes may appear in the body of the granite without being restricted to veins, and tinstone occurs also as an original constituent of some granite pegmatites.
Granites may also be modified by crushing. Their crystals tend to lose their original forms and to break into mosaics of interlocking grains. The latter structure is very well seen in the quartz, which is a brittle mineral under stress. White mica develops in the felspars. The larger crystals are converted into lenticular or elliptical “augen,” which may be shattered throughout or may have a peripheral seam of small detached granules surrounding a still undisintegrated core. Streaks of “granulitic” or pulverized material wind irregularly through the rock, giving it a roughly foliated character.
The interesting structural variation of granite in which there are spheroidal masses surrounded by a granitic matrix is known as “orbicular granite.” The spheroids range from a fraction of an inch to a foot in diameter, and may have a felspar crystal at the centre. Around this there may be several zones, alternately lighter and darker in colour, consisting of the essential minerals of the rock in different proportions. Radiate arrangement is sometimes visible in the crystals of the whole or part of the spheroid. Spheroidal granites of this sort are found in Sweden, Finland, Ireland, &c. In other cases the spheroids are simply dark rounded lumps of biotite, in fine scales. These are probably due to the adhesion of the biotite crystals to one another as they separated from the rock magma at an early stage in its crystallization. The Rapakiwi granites of Finland have many round or ovoidal felspar crystals scattered through a granitic matrix. These larger felspars have no crystalline outlines and consist of orthoclase or microcline surrounded by borders of white oligoclase. Often they enclose dark crystals of biotite and hornblende, arranged zonally. Many of these granites contain tourmaline, fluorite and monazite. In most granite masses, especially near their contacts with the surrounding rocks, it is common to find enclosures of altered sedimentary or igneous materials which are more or less dissolved and permeated by the granitic magma.
The chemical composition of a few granites from different parts of the world is given below:—
SiO2. Al2O3. Fe2O3. FeO. MgO. CaO. Na2O. K2O.
I. 74.69 16.21 .. 1.16 0.48 0.28 1.18 3.64
II. 71.33 11.18 3.96 1.45 0.88 2.10 3.51 3.49
III. 72.93 13.87 1.94 0.79 0.51 0.74 3.68 3.74
IV. 76.12 12.18 1.21 0.72 1.12 1.54 2.55 3.21
V. 73.90 13.65 0.28 0.42 0.14 0.23 2.53 7.99
VI. 68.87 16.62 0.43 2.72 1.60 0.71 1.80 6.48
I. Carn Brea, Cornwall (Phillips); II. Mazaruni, Brit. Guiana (Harrison); III. Rödö, near Alnö, Vesternorrland, Sweden (Holmquist); IV. Abruzzen, a group of hills in the Riesengebirge (Milch); V. Pikes Peak, Colorado (Matthews); VI. Wilson’s Creek, near Omeo, Victoria (Howitt).
Only the most important components are shown in the table, but all granites contain also small amounts of zirconia, titanium oxide, phosphoric acid, sulphur, oxides of barium, strontium, manganese and water. These are in all cases less than 1%, and usually much less than this, except the water, which may be 2 or 3% in weathered rocks. From the chemical composition it may be computed that granites contain, on an average, 35 to 55% of quartz, 20 to 30% of orthoclase, 20 to 30% of plagioclase felspar (including the albite of microperthite) and 5 to 10% of ferromagnesian silicates and minor accessories such as apatite, zircon, sphene and iron oxides. The aplites, pegmatites, graphic granites and muscovite granites are usually richest in silica, while with increase of biotite and hornblende, augite and enstatite the analyses show the presence of more magnesia, iron and lime.
In the weathering of granite the quartz suffers little change; the felspar passes into dull cloudy, soft aggregates of kaolin, muscovite and secondary quartz, while chlorite, quartz and calcite replace the biotite, hornblende and augite. The rock often assumes a rusty brown colour from the liberation of the oxides of iron, and the decomposed mass is friable and can easily be dug with a spade; where the granite has been cut by joint planes not too close together weathering proceeds from their surfaces and large rounded blocks may be left embedded in rotted materials. The amount of water in the rock increases and part of the alkalis is carried away in solution; they form valuable sources of mineral food to plants. The chemical changes are shown by the following analyses:
H2O. SiO2. TiO2. Al2O3. FeO. Fe2O3. CaO. MgO. Na2O. K2O. P2O5.
I. 1.22 69.33 n.d. 14.33 3.60 .. 3.21 2.44 2.70 2.67 0.10
II. 3.27 66.82 n.d. 15.62 1.69 1.88 3.13 2.76 2.58 2.44 n.d.
III. 4.70 65.69 0.31 15.23 .. 4.39 2.63 2.64 2.12 2.00 0.06
Analyses of I., fresh grey granite; II. brown moderately firm granite; III. residual sand, produced by the weathering of the same mass (anal. G. P. Merrill).
The differences are surprisingly small and are principally an increase in the water and a diminution in the amount of alkalis and lime together with the oxidation of the ferrous oxide.
(J. S. F.)
GRAN SASSO D’ITALIA (“Great Rock of Italy”), a mountain of the Abruzzi, Italy, the culminating point of the Apennines, 9560 ft. in height. In formation it resembles the limestone Alps of Tirol and there are on its elevated plateaus a number of doline or funnel-shaped depressions into which the melted snow and the rain sink. The summit is covered with snow for the greater part of the year. Seen from the Adriatic, Monte Corno, as it is sometimes called, from its resemblance to a horn, affords a magnificent spectacle; the Alpine region beneath its summit is still the home of the wild boar, and here and there are dense woods of beech and pine. The group has numerous other lofty peaks, of which the chief are the Pizzo d’Intermesole (8680 ft.), the Corno Piccolo (8650 ft.), the Pizzo Cefalone (8307 ft.) and the Monte della Portella (7835 ft.). The most convenient starting-point for the ascent is Assergi, 10 m. N.E. of Aquila, at the S. foot of the Gran Sasso. The Italian Alpine Club has erected a hut S.W. of the principal summit, and has published a special guidebook (E. Abbate, Guida al Gran Sasso d’ Italia, Rome, 1888). The view from the summit extends to the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west and the mountains of Dalmatia on the east in clear weather. The ascent was first made in 1794 by Orazio Delfico from the Teramo side. In Assergi is the interesting church of Sta. Maria Assunta, dating from 1150, with later alterations (see Gavini, in L’ Arte, 1901, 316, 391).
GRANT, SIR ALEXANDER, 8th Bart. (1826-1884), British scholar and educationalist, was born in New York on the 13th of September 1826. After a childhood spent in the West Indies, he was educated at Harrow and Oxford. He entered Oxford as scholar of Balliol, and subsequently held a fellowship at Oriel from 1849 to 1860. He made a special study of the Aristotelian philosophy, and in 1857 published an edition of the Ethics (4th ed. 1885) which became a standard text-book at Oxford. In 1855 he was one of the examiners for the Indian Civil Service, and in 1856 a public examiner in classics at Oxford. In the latter year he succeeded to the baronetcy. In 1859 he went to Madras with Sir Charles Trevelyan, and was appointed inspector of schools; the next year he removed to Bombay, to fill the post of Professor of History and Political Economy in the Elphinstone College. Of this he became Principal in 1862; and, a year later, vice-chancellor of Bombay University, a post he held from 1863 to 1865 and again from 1865 to 1868. In 1865 he took upon himself also the duties of Director of Public Instruction for Bombay Presidency. In 1868 he was appointed a member of the Legislative Council. In the same year, upon the death of Sir David Brewster, he was appointed Principal of Edinburgh University, which had conferred an honorary LL.D. degree upon him in 1865. From that time till his death (which occurred in Edinburgh on the 30th of November 1884) his energies were entirely devoted to the well-being of the University. The institution of the medical school in the University was almost solely due to his initiative; and the Tercentenary Festival, celebrated in 1884, was the result of his wisely directed enthusiasm. In that year he published The Story of the University of Edinburgh during its First Three Hundred Years. He was created Hon. D.C.L. of Oxford in 1880, and an honorary fellow of Oriel College in 1882.
GRANT, ANNE (1755-1838), Scottish writer, generally known as Mrs Grant of Laggan, was born in Glasgow, on the 21st of February 1755. Her childhood was spent in America, her father, Duncan MacVicar, being an army officer on service there. In 1768 the family returned to Scotland, and in 1779 Anne married James Grant, an army chaplain, who was also minister of the parish of Laggan, near Fort Augustus, Inverness, where her father was barrack-master. On her husband’s death in 1801 she was left with a large family and a small income. In 1802 she published by subscription a volume of Original Poems, with some Translations from the Gaelic, which was favourably received. In 1806 her Letters from the Mountains, with their spirited description of Highland scenery and legends, awakened much interest. Her other works are Memoirs of an American Lady, with Sketches of Manners and Scenery in America as they existed previous to the Revolution (1808), containing reminiscences of her childhood; Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland (1811); and Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen, a Poem (1814). In 1810 she went to live in Edinburgh. For the last twelve years of her life she received a pension from government. She died on the 7th of November 1838.
See Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs Grant of Laggan, edited by her son J. P. Grant (3 vols., 1844).
GRANT, CHARLES (1746-1823), British politician, was born at Aldourie, Inverness-shire, on the 16th of April 1746, the day on which his father, Alexander Grant, was killed whilst fighting for the Jacobites at Culloden. When a young man Charles went to India, where he became secretary, and later a member of the board of trade. He returned to Scotland in 1790, and in 1802 was elected to parliament as member for the county of Inverness. In the House of Commons his chief interests were in Indian affairs, and he was especially vigorous in his hostility to the policy of the Marquess Wellesley. In 1805 he was chosen chairman of the directors of the East India Company and he retired from parliament in 1818. A friend of William Wilberforce, Grant was a prominent member of the evangelical party in the Church of England; he was a generous supporter of the church’s missionary undertakings. He was largely responsible for the establishment of the East India college, which was afterwards erected at Haileybury. He died in London on the 31st of October 1823. His eldest son, Charles, was created a peer in 1835 as Baron Glenelg.
See Henry Morris, Life of Charles Grant (1904).
GRANT, SIR FRANCIS (1803-1878), English portrait-painter, fourth son of Francis Grant of Kilgraston, Perthshire, was born at Edinburgh in 1803. He was educated for the bar, but at the age of twenty-four he began at Edinburgh systematically to study the practice of art. On completing a course of instruction he removed to London, and as early as 1843 exhibited at the Royal Academy. At the beginning of his career he utilized his sporting experiences by painting groups of huntsmen, horses and hounds, such as the “Meet of H.M. Staghounds” and the “Melton Hunt”; but his position in society gradually made him a fashionable portrait-painter. In drapery he had the taste of a connoisseur, and rendered the minutest details of costume with felicitous accuracy. In female portraiture he achieved considerable success, although rather in depicting the high-born graces and external characteristics than the true personality. Among his portraits of this class may be mentioned Lady Glenlyon, the marchioness of Waterford, Lady Rodney and Mrs Beauclerk. In his portraits of generals and sportsmen he proved himself more equal to his subjects than in those of statesmen and men of letters. He painted many of the principal celebrities of the time, including Scott, Macaulay, Lockhart, Disraeli, Hardinge, Gough, Derby, Palmerston and Russell, his brother Sir J. Hope Grant and his friend Sir Edwin Landseer. From the first his career was rapidly prosperous. In 1842 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1851 an Academician; and in 1866 he was chosen to succeed Sir C. Eastlake in the post of president, for which his chief recommendations were his social distinction, tact, urbanity and friendly and liberal consideration of his brother artists. Shortly after his election as president he was knighted, and in 1870 the degree of D.C.L. was conferred upon him by the university of Oxford. He died on the 5th of October 1878.
GRANT, GEORGE MONRO (1835-1902), principal of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, was born in Nova Scotia in 1835. He was educated at Glasgow university, where he had a brilliant academic career; and having entered the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, he returned to Canada and obtained a pastoral charge in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which he held from 1863 to 1877. He quickly gained a high reputation as a preacher and as an eloquent speaker on political subjects. When Canada was confederated in 1867 Nova Scotia was the province most strongly opposed to federal union. Grant threw the whole weight of his great influence in favour of confederation, and his oratory played an important part in securing the success of the movement. When the consolidation of the Dominion by means of railway construction was under discussion in 1872, Grant travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific with the engineers who surveyed the route of the Canadian Pacific railway, and his book Ocean to Ocean (1873) was one of the first things that opened the eyes of Canadians to the value of the immense heritage they enjoyed. He never lost an opportunity, whether in the pulpit or on the platform, of pressing on his hearers that the greatest future for Canada lay in unity with the rest of the British Empire; and his broad statesman-like judgment made him an authority which politicians of all parties were glad to consult. In 1877 Grant was appointed principal of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, which through his exertions and influence expanded from a small denominational college into a large and influential educational centre; and he attracted to it an exceptionally able body of professors whose influence in speculation and research was widely felt during the quarter of a century that he remained at its head. In 1888 he visited Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the effect of this experience being to strengthen still further the Imperialism which was the guiding principle of his political opinions. On the outbreak of the South African War in 1899 Grant was at first disposed to be hostile to the policy of Lord Salisbury and Mr Chamberlain; but his eyes were soon opened to the real nature of President Kruger’s government, and he enthusiastically welcomed and supported the national feeling which sent men from the outlying portions of the Empire to assist in upholding British supremacy in South Africa. Grant did not live to see the conclusion of peace, his death occurring at Kingston on the 10th of May 1902. At the time of his death The Times observed that “it is acknowledged on all hands that in him the Dominion has lost one of the ablest men that it has yet produced.” He was the author of a number of works, of which the most notable besides Ocean to Ocean are, Advantages of Imperial Federation (1889), Our National Objects and Aims (1890), Religions of the World in Relation to Christianity (1894) and volumes of sermons and lectures. Grant married in 1872 Jessie, daughter of William Lawson of Halifax.
GRANT, JAMES (1822-1887), British novelist, was born in Edinburgh on the 1st of August 1822. His father, John Grant, was a captain in the 92nd Gordon Highlanders and had served through the Peninsular War. For several years James Grant was in Newfoundland with his father, but in 1839 he returned to England, and entered the 62nd Foot as an ensign. In 1843 he resigned his commission and devoted himself to writing, first magazine articles, but soon a profusion of novels, full of vivacity and incident, and dealing mainly with military scenes and characters. His best stories, perhaps, were The Romance of War (his first, 1845), Bothwell (1851), Frank Hilton; or, The Queen’s Own (1855), The Phantom Regiment and Harry Ogilvie (1856), Lucy Arden (1858), The White Cockade (1867), Only an Ensign (1871), Shall I Win Her? (1874), Playing with Fire (1887). Grant also wrote British Battles on Land and Sea (1873-1875) and valuable books on Scottish history. Permanent value attaches to his great work, in three volumes, on Old and New Edinburgh (1880). He was the founder and energetic promoter of the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights. In 1875 he became a Roman Catholic. He died on the 5th of May 1887.
GRANT, JAMES AUGUSTUS (1827-1892), Scottish explorer of eastern equatorial Africa, was born at Nairn, where his father was the parish minister, on the 11th of April 1827. He was educated at the grammar school and Marischal College, Aberdeen, and in 1846 joined the Indian army. He saw active service in the Sikh War (1848-49), served throughout the mutiny of 1857, and was wounded in the operations for the relief of Lucknow. He returned to England in 1858, and in 1860 joined J. H. Speke (q.v.) in the memorable expedition which solved the problem of the Nile sources. The expedition left Zanzibar in October 1860 and reached Gondokoro, where the travellers were again in touch with civilization, in February 1863. Speke was the leader, but Grant carried out several investigations independently and made valuable botanical collections. He acted throughout in absolute loyalty to his comrade. In 1864 he published, as supplementary to Speke’s account of their journey, A Walk across Africa, in which he dealt particularly with “the ordinary life and pursuits, the habits and feelings of the natives” and the economic value of the countries traversed. In 1864 he was awarded the patron’s medal of the Royal Geographical Society, and in 1866 given the Companionship of the Bath in recognition of his services in the expedition. He served in the intelligence department of the Abyssinian expedition of 1868; for this he was made C.S.I. and received the Abyssinian medal. At the close of the war he retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He had married in 1865, and he now settled down at Nairn, where he died on the 11th of February 1892. He made contributions to the journals of various learned societies, the most notable being the “Botany of the Speke and Grant Expedition” in vol. xxix. of the Transactions of the Linnaean Society.
GRANT, SIR JAMES HOPE (1808-1875), English general, fifth and youngest son of Francis Grant of Kilgraston, Perthshire, and brother of Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., was born on the 22nd of July 1808. He entered the army in 1826 as cornet in the 9th Lancers, and became lieutenant in 1828 and captain in 1835. In 1842 he was brigade-major to Lord Saltoun in the Chinese War, and specially distinguished himself at the capture of Chin-Kiang, after which he received the rank of major and the C.B. In the first Sikh War of 1845-46 he took part in the battle of Sobraon; and in the Punjab campaign of 1848-49 he commanded the 9th Lancers, and won high reputation in the battles of Chillianwalla and Guzerat (Gujarat). He was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel and shortly afterwards to the same substantive rank. In 1854 he became brevet-colonel, and in 1856 brigadier of cavalry. He took a leading part in the suppression of the Indian mutiny of 1857, holding for some time the command of the cavalry division, and afterwards of a movable column of horse and foot. After rendering valuable service in the operations before Delhi and in the final assault on the city, he directed the victorious march of the cavalry and horse artillery despatched in the direction of Cawnpore to open up communication with the commander-in-chief Sir Colin Campbell, whom he met near the Alambagh, and who raised him to the rank of brigadier-general, and placed the whole force under his command during what remained of the perilous march to Lucknow for the relief of the residency. After the retirement towards Cawnpore he greatly aided in effecting there the total rout of the rebel troops, by making a detour which threatened their rear; and following in pursuit with a flying column, he defeated them with the loss of nearly all their guns at Serai Ghat. He also took part in the operations connected with the recapture of Lucknow, shortly after which he was promoted to the rank of major-general, and appointed to the command of the force employed for the final pacification of India, a position in which his unwearied energy, and his vigilance and caution united to high personal daring, rendered very valuable service. Before the work of pacification was quite completed he was created K.C.B. In 1859 he was appointed, with the local rank of lieutenant-general, to the command of the British land forces in the united French and British expedition against China. The object of the campaign was accomplished within three months of the landing of the forces at Pei-tang (1st of August 1860). The Taku Forts had been carried by assault, the Chinese defeated three times in the open and Peking occupied. For his conduct in this, which has been called the “most successful and the best carried out of England’s little wars,” he received the thanks of parliament and was gazetted G.C.B. In 1861 he was made lieutenant-general and appointed commander-in-chief of the army of Madras; on his return to England in 1865 he was made quartermaster-general at headquarters; and in 1870 he was transferred to the command of the camp at Aldershot, where he took a leading part in the reform of the educational and training systems of the forces, which followed the Franco-German War. The introduction of annual army manœuvres was largely due to Sir Hope Grant. In 1872 he was gazetted general. He died in London on the 7th of March 1875.
Incidents in the Sepoy War of 1857-58, compiled from the Private Journal of General Sir Hope Grant, K.C.B., together with some explanatory chapters by Capt. H. Knollys, Royal Artillery, was published in 1873, and Incidents in the China War of 1860 appeared posthumously under the same editorship in 1875.
GRANT, SIR PATRICK (1804-1895), British field marshal, was the second son of Major John Grant, 97th Foot, of Auchterblair, Inverness-shire, where he was born on the 11th of September 1804. He entered the Bengal native infantry as ensign in 1820, and became captain in 1832. He served in Oudh from 1834 to 1838, and raised the Hariana Light Infantry. Employed in the adjutant-general’s department of the Bengal army from 1838 until 1854, he became adjutant-general in 1846. He served under Sir Hugh Gough at the battle of Maharajpur in 1843, winning a brevet majority, was adjutant-general of the army at the battles of Moodkee in 1845 (twice severely wounded), and of Ferozshah and Sobraon in 1846, receiving the C.B. and the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel. He took part in the battles of Chillianwalla and Gujarat in 1849, gaining further promotion, and was appointed aide-de-camp to the queen. He served also in Kohat in 1851 under Sir Charles Napier. Promoted major-general in 1854, he was commander-in-chief of the Madras army from 1856 to 1861. He was made K.C.B. in 1857, and on General Anson’s death was summoned to Calcutta to take supreme command of the army in India. From Calcutta he directed the operations against the mutineers, sending forces under Havelock and Outram for the relief of Cawnpore and Lucknow, until the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell from England as commander-in-chief, when he returned to Madras. On leaving India in 1861 he was decorated with the G.C.B. He was promoted lieutenant-general in 1862, was governor of Malta from 1867 to 1872, was made G.C.M.G. in 1868, promoted general in 1870, field marshal in 1883 and colonel of the Royal Horse Guards and gold-stick-in-waiting to the queen in 1885. He married as his second wife, in 1844, Frances Maria, daughter of Sir Hugh (afterwards Lord) Gough. He was governor of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, from 1874 until his death there on the 28th of March 1895.
GRANT, ROBERT (1814-1892), British astronomer, was born at Grantown, Scotland, on the 17th of June 1814. At the age of thirteen the promise of a brilliant career was clouded by a prolonged illness of such a serious character as to incapacitate him from all school-work for six years. At twenty, however, his health greatly improved, and he set himself resolutely, without assistance, to repair his earlier disadvantages by the diligent study of Greek, Latin, Italian and mathematics. Astronomy also occupied his attention, and it was stimulated by the return of Halley’s comet in 1835, as well as by his success in observing the annular eclipse of the sun of the 15th of May 1836. After a short course at King’s College, Aberdeen, he obtained in 1841 employment in his brother’s counting-house in London. During this period the idea occurred to him of writing a history of physical astronomy. Before definitely beginning the work he had to search, amongst other records, those of the French Academy, and for that purpose took up his residence in Paris in 1845, supporting himself by giving lessons in English. He returned to London in 1847. The History of Physical Astronomy from the Earliest Ages to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century was first published in parts in The Library of Useful Knowledge, but after the issue of the ninth part this mode of publication was discontinued, and the work appeared as a whole in 1852. The main object of the work is, in the author’s words, “to exhibit a view of the labours of successive inquirers in establishing a knowledge of the mechanical principles which regulate the movements of the celestial bodies, and in explaining the various phenomena relative to their physical constitution which observation with the telescope has disclosed.” The lucidity and completeness with which a great variety of abstruse subjects were treated, the extent of research and the maturity of judgment it displayed, were the more remarkable, when it is remembered that this was the first published work of one who enjoyed no special opportunities, either for acquiring materials, or for discussing with others engaged in similar pursuits the subjects it treats of. The book at once took a leading place in astronomical literature, and earned for its author in 1856 the award of the Royal Astronomical Society’s gold medal. In 1859 he succeeded John Pringle Nichol as professor of astronomy in the University of Glasgow. From time to time he contributed astronomical papers to the Monthly Notices, Astronomische Nachrichten, Comptes rendus and other scientific serials; but his principal work at Glasgow consisted in determining the places of a large number of stars with the Ertel transit-circle of the Observatory. The results of these labours, extending over twenty-one years, are contained in the Glasgow Catalogue of 6415 Stars, published in 1883. This was followed in 1892 by the Second Glasgow Catalogue of 2156 Stars, published a few weeks after his death, which took place on the 24th of October 1892.
See Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, liii., 210 (E. Dunkin); Nature, Nov. 10, 1892; The Times, Nov. 2, 1892; Roy. Society’s Catalogue of Scient. Papers.
(A. A. R.*)
GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON (1822-1885), American soldier, and eighteenth president of the United States, was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on the 27th of April 1822. He was a descendant of Matthew Grant, a Scotchman, who settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630. His earlier years were spent in helping his father, Jesse R. Grant, upon his farm in Ohio. In 1839 he was appointed to a place in the military academy at West Point, and it was then that his name assumed the form by which it is generally known. He was christened Hiram, after an ancestor, with Ulysses for a middle name. As he was usually called by his middle name, the congressman who recommended him for West Point supposed it to be his first name, and added thereto the name of his mother’s family, Simpson. Grant was the best horseman of his class, and took a respectable place in mathematics, but at his graduation in 1843 he only ranked twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine. In September 1845 he went with his regiment to join the forces of General Taylor in Mexico; there he took part in the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma and Monterey, and, after his transfer to General Scott’s army, which he joined in March 1847, served at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey and at the storming of Chapultepec. He was breveted first lieutenant for gallantry at Molino del Rey and captain for gallantry at Chapultepec. In August 1848, after the close of the war, he married Julia T. Dent (1826-1902), and was for a while stationed in California and Oregon, but in 1854 he resigned his commission. His reputation in the service had suffered from allegations of intemperate drinking, which, whether well founded or not, certainly impaired his usefulness as a soldier. For the next six years he lived in St Louis, Missouri, earning a scanty subsistence by farming and dealings in real estate. In 1860 he removed to Galena, Illinois, and became a clerk in a leather store kept by his father. At that time his earning capacity seems not to have exceeded $800 a year, and he was regarded by his friends as a broken and disappointed man. He was living at Galena at the outbreak of hostilities between the North and South.
[For the history of the Civil War, and of Grant’s battles and campaigns, the reader is referred to the article American Civil War. To the “call to arms” of 1861 Grant promptly responded. After some delay he was commissioned colonel of the 21st Illinois regiment and soon afterwards brigadier-general. He was shortly assigned to a territorial command on the Mississippi, and first won distinction by his energy in seizing, on his own responsibility, the important point of Paducah, Kentucky, situated at the confluence of the two great waterways of the Tennessee and the Ohio (6th Sept. 1861). On the 7th of November he fought his first battle as a commander, that of Belmont (Missouri), which, if it failed to achieve any material result, certainly showed him to be a capable and skilful leader. Early in 1862 he was entrusted by General H. W. Halleck with the command of a large force to clear the lower reaches of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, and, whatever criticism may be passed on the general strategy of the campaign, Grant himself, by his able and energetic work, thoroughly deserved the credit of his brilliant success of Fort Donelson, where 15,000 Confederates were forced to capitulate. Grant and his division commanders were promoted to the rank of major-general U.S.V. soon afterwards, but Grant’s own fortunes suffered a temporary eclipse owing to a disagreement with Halleck. When, after being virtually under arrest, he rejoined his army, it was concentrated about Savannah on the Tennessee, preparing for a campaign towards Corinth, Miss. On the 6th of April 1862 a furious assault on Grant’s camps brought on the battle of Shiloh (q.v.). After two days’ desperate fighting the Confederates withdrew before the combined attack of the Army of the Tennessee under Grant and the Army of the Ohio under Buell. But the Army of the Tennessee had been on the verge of annihilation on the evening of the first day, and Grant’s leadership throughout was by no means equal to the emergency, though he displayed his usual personal bravery and resolution. In the grand advance of Halleck’s armies which followed Shiloh, Grant was relieved of all important duties by his assignment as second in command of the whole force, and was thought by the army at large to be in disgrace. But Halleck soon went to Washington as general-in-chief, and Grant took command of his old army and of Rosecrans’ Army of the Mississippi. Two victories (Iuka and Corinth) were won in the autumn of 1862, but the credit of both fell to Rosecrans, who commanded in the field, and the nadir of Grant’s military fortunes was reached when the first advance on Vicksburg (q.v.), planned on an unsound basis, and complicated by a series of political intrigues (which had also caused the adoption of the original scheme), collapsed after the minor reverses of Holly Springs and Chickasaw Bayou (December 1862).
It is fair to assume that Grant would have followed other unsuccessful generals into retirement, had he not shown that, whatever his mistakes or failures, and whether he was or was not sober and temperate in his habits, he possessed the iron determination and energy which in the eyes of Lincoln and Stanton, and of the whole Northern people, was the first requisite of their generals. He remained then with his army near Vicksburg, trying one plan after another without result, until at last after months of almost hopeless work his perseverance was crowned with success—a success directly consequent upon a strange and bizarre campaign of ten weeks, in which his daring and vigour were more conspicuous than ever before. On the 4th of July 1863 the great fortress surrendered with 29,491 men, this being one of the most important victories won by the Union arms in the whole war. Grant was at once made a major-general in the regular army. A few months later the great reverse of Chickamauga created an alarm in the North commensurate with the elation that had been felt at the double victory of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and Grant was at once ordered to Chattanooga, to decide the fate of the Army of the Cumberland in a second battle. Four armies were placed under his command, and three of these concentrated at Chattanooga. On the 25th of November 1863 a great three-days’ battle ended with the crushing defeat of the Confederates, who from this day had no foothold in the centre and west.
After this, in preparation for a grand combined effort of all the Union forces, Grant was placed in supreme command, and the rank of lieutenant-general revived for him (March 1864). Grant’s headquarters henceforth accompanied the Army of the Potomac, and the lieutenant-general directed the campaign in Virginia. This, with Grant’s driving energy infused into the best army that the Union possessed, resolved itself into a series, almost uninterrupted, of terrible battles. Tactically the Confederates were almost always victorious, strategically, Grant, disposing of greatly superior forces, pressed back Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to the lines of Richmond and Petersburg, while above all, in pursuance of his explicit policy of “attrition,” the Federal leader used his men with a merciless energy that has few, if any, parallels in modern history. At Cold Harbor six thousand men fell in one useless assault lasting an hour, and after two months the Union armies lay before Richmond and Petersburg indeed, but had lost no fewer than 72,000 men. But Grant was unshaken in his determination. “I purpose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer,” was his message from the battlefield of Spottsylvania to the chief of staff at Washington. Through many weary months he never relaxed his hold on Lee’s army, and, in spite of repeated partial reverses, that would have been defeats for his predecessors, he gradually wore down his gallant adversary. The terrible cost of these operations did not check him: only on one occasion of grave peril were any troops sent from his lines to serve elsewhere, and he drew to himself the bulk of the men whom the Union government was recruiting by thousands for the final effort. Meanwhile all the other campaigns had been closely supervised by Grant, preoccupied though he was with the operations against his own adversary. At a critical moment he actually left the Virginian armies to their own commanders, and started to take personal command in a threatened quarter, and throughout he was in close touch with Sherman and Thomas, who conducted the campaigns on the south-east and the centre. That he succeeded in the efficient exercise of the chief command of armies of a total strength of over one million men, operating many hundreds of miles apart from each other, while at the same time he watched and manœuvred against a great captain and a veteran army in one field of the war, must be the greatest proof of Grant’s powers as a general. In the end complete success rewarded the sacrifices and efforts of the Federals on every theatre of war; in Virginia, where Grant was in personal control, the merciless policy of attrition wore down Lee’s army until a mere remnant was left for the final surrender.
Grant had thus brought the great struggle to an end, and was universally regarded as the saviour of the Union. A careful study of the history of the war thoroughly bears out the popular view. There were soldiers more accomplished, as was McClellan, more brilliant, as was Rosecrans, and more exact, as was Buell, but it would be difficult to prove that these generals, or indeed any others in the service, could have accomplished the task which Grant brought to complete success. Nor must it be supposed that Grant learned little from three years’ campaigning in high command. There is less in common than is often supposed between the buoyant energy that led Grant to Shiloh and the grim plodding determination that led him to Vicksburg and to Appomattox. Shiloh revealed to Grant the intensity of the struggle, and after that battle, appreciating to the full the material and moral factors with which he had to deal, he gradually trained his military character on those lines which alone could conduce to ultimate success. Singleness of purpose, and relentless vigour in the execution of the purpose, were the qualities necessary to the conduct of the vast enterprise of subduing the Confederacy. Grant possessed or acquired both to such a degree that he proved fully equal to the emergency. If in technical finesse he was surpassed by many of his predecessors and his subordinates, he had the most important qualities of a great captain, courage that rose higher with each obstacle, and the clear judgment to distinguish the essential from the minor issues in war.—(C. F. A.)]
After the assassination of President Lincoln a disposition was shown by his successor, Andrew Johnson, to deal severely with the Confederate leaders, and it was understood that indictments for treason were to be brought against General Lee and others. Grant, however, insisted that the United States government was bound by the terms accorded to Lee and his army at Appomattox. He went so far as to threaten to resign his commission if the president disregarded his protest. This energetic action on Grant’s part saved the United States from a foul stain upon its escutcheon. In July 1866 the grade of general was created, for the first time since the organization of the government, and Grant was promoted to that position. In the following year he became involved in the deadly quarrel between President Johnson and Congress. To tie the president’s hands Congress had passed the Tenure of Office Act, forbidding the president to remove any cabinet officer without the consent of the Senate; but in August 1867 President Johnson suspended Secretary Stanton and appointed Grant secretary of war ad interim until the pleasure of the Senate should be ascertained. Grant accepted the appointment under protest, and held it until the following January, when the Senate refused to confirm the president’s action, and Secretary Stanton resumed his office. President Johnson was much disgusted at the readiness with which Grant turned over the office to Stanton, and a bitter controversy ensued between Johnson and Grant. Hitherto Grant had taken little part in politics. The only vote which he had ever cast for a presidential candidate was in 1856 for James Buchanan; and leading Democrats, so late as the beginning of 1868, hoped to make him their candidate in the election of that year; but the effect of the controversy with President Johnson was to bring Grant forward as the candidate of the Republican party. At the convention in Chicago on the 20th of May 1868 he was unanimously nominated on the first ballot. The Democratic party nominated the one available Democrat who had the smallest chance of beating him—Horatio Seymour, lately governor of New York, an excellent statesman, but at that time hopeless as a candidate because of his attitude during the war. The result of the contest was at no time in doubt; Grant received 214 electoral votes and Seymour 80.
The most important domestic event of Grant’s first term as president was the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution on the 30th of March 1870, providing that suffrage throughout the United States should not be restricted on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude. The most important event in foreign policy was the treaty with Great Britain of the 8th of May 1871, commonly known as the Treaty of Washington, whereby several controversies between the United States and Great Britain, including the bitter questions as to damage inflicted upon the United States by the “Alabama” and other Confederate cruisers built and equipped in England, were referred to arbitration. In 1869 the government of Santo Domingo (or the Dominican Republic) expressed a wish for annexation by the United States, and such a step was favoured by Grant, but a treaty negotiated with this end in view failed to obtain the requisite two-thirds vote in the Senate. In May 1872 something was done towards alleviating the odious Reconstruction laws for dragooning the South, which had been passed by Congress in spite of the vetoes of President Johnson. The Amnesty Bill restored civil rights to all persons in the South, save from 300 to 500 who had held high positions under the Confederacy. As early as 1870 President Grant recommended measures of civil service reform, and succeeded in obtaining an act authorizing him to appoint a Civil Service commission. A commission was created, but owing to the hostility of the politicians in Congress it accomplished little. During the fifty years since Crawford’s Tenure of Office Act was passed in 1820, the country had been growing more and more familiar with the spectacle of corruption in high places. The evil rose to alarming proportions during Grant’s presidency, partly because of the immense extension of the civil service, partly because of the growing tendency to alliance between spoilsmen and the persons benefited by protective tariffs, and partly because the public attention was still so much absorbed in Southern affairs that little energy was left for curbing rascality in the North. The scandals, indeed, were rife in Washington, and affected persons in close relations with the president. Grant was ill-fitted for coping with the difficulties of such a situation. Along with high intellectual powers in certain directions, he had a simplicity of nature charming in itself, but often calculated to render him the easy prey of sharpers. He found it almost impossible to believe that anything could be wrong in persons to whom he had given his friendship, and on several occasions such friends proved themselves unworthy of him. The feeling was widely prevalent in the spring of 1872 that the interests of pure government in the United States demanded that President Grant should not be elected to a second term. This feeling led a number of high-minded gentlemen to form themselves into an organization under the name of Liberal Republicans. They held a convention at Cincinnati in May with the intention of nominating for the presidency Charles Francis Adams, who had ably represented the United States at the court of St James’s during the Civil War. The convention, was, however, captured by politicians who converted the whole affair into a farce by nominating Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who represented almost anything rather than the object for which the convention had been called together. The Democrats had despaired of electing a candidate of their own, and hoped to achieve success by adopting the Cincinnati nominee, should he prove to be an eligible person. The event showed that while their defeat in 1868 had taught them despondency, it had not taught them wisdom; it was still in their power to make a gallant fight by nominating a person for whom Republican reformers could vote. But with almost incredible fatuity, they adopted Greeley as their candidate. As a natural result Grant was re-elected by an overwhelming majority.
The most important event of his second term was his veto of the Inflation Bill in 1874 followed by the passage of the Resumption Act in the following year. The country was still labouring under the curse of an inconvertible paper currency originating with the Legal Tender Act of 1862. There was a considerable party in favour of debasing the currency indefinitely by inflation, and a bill with that object was passed by Congress in April 1874. It was promptly vetoed by President Grant, and two months later he wrote a very sensible letter to Senator J. P. Jones of Nevada advocating a speedy return to specie payments. The passage of the Resumption Act in January 1875 was largely due to his consistent advocacy, and for these measures he deserves as high credit as for his victories in the field. In spite of these great services, popular dissatisfaction with the Republican party rapidly increased during the years 1874-1876. The causes were twofold: firstly, there was great dissatisfaction with the troubles in the Southern states, owing to the harsh Reconstruction laws and the robberies committed by the carpet-bag governments which those laws kept in power; secondly, the scandals at Washington, comprising wholesale frauds on the public revenue, awakened lively disgust. In some cases the culprits were so near to President Grant that many persons found it difficult to avoid the suspicion that he was himself implicated, and never perhaps was his hold upon popular favour so slight as in the summer and autumn of 1876.
After the close of his presidency in the spring of 1877 Grant started on a journey round the world, accompanied by his wife and one son. He was received with distinguished honours in England and on the continent of Europe, whence he made his way to India, China and Japan. After his return to America in September 1880 he went back to his old home in Galena, Illinois. A faction among the managers of the Republican party attempted to secure his nomination for a third term as president, and in the convention at Chicago in June 1880 he received a vote exceeding 300 during 36 consecutive ballots. Nevertheless, his opponents made such effective use of the popular prejudice against third terms that the scheme was defeated, and Garfield was named in his stead. In August 1881 General Grant bought a house in the city of New York. His income was insufficient for the proper support of his family, and accordingly he had become partner in a banking house in which one of his sons was interested along with other persons. The name of the firm was Grant and Ward. The ex-president invested in it all his available property, but paid no attention to the management of the business. His facility in giving his confidence to unworthy people was now to be visited with dire calamity. In 1884 the firm became bankrupt, and it was discovered that two of the partners had been perpetrating systematic and gigantic frauds. This severe blow left General Grant penniless, just at the time when he was beginning to suffer acutely from the disease which finally caused his death. Down to this time he had never made any pretensions to literary skill or talent, but on being approached by the Century Magazine with a request for some articles he undertook the work in order to keep the wolf from the door. It proved a congenial task, and led to the writing of his Personal Memoirs, a frank, modest and charming book, which ranks among the best standard military biographies. The sales earned for the general and his family something like half a million dollars. The circumstances in which it was written made it an act of heroism comparable with any that Grant ever showed as a soldier. During most of the time he was suffering tortures from cancer in the throat, and it was only four days before his death that he finished the manuscript. In the spring of 1885 Congress passed a bill creating him a general on the retired list; and in the summer he was removed to a cottage at Mount M’Gregor, near Saratoga, where he passed the last five weeks of his life, and where he died on the 23rd of July 1885. His body was placed in a temporary tomb in Riverside Drive, in New York City, overlooking the Hudson river.
Grant showed many admirable and lovable traits. There was a charming side to his trustful simplicity, which was at times almost like that of a sailor set ashore. He abounded in kindliness and generosity, and if there was anything especially difficult for him to endure, it was the sight of human suffering, as was shown on the night at Shiloh, where he lay out of doors in the icy rain rather than stay in a comfortable room where the surgeons were at work. His good sense was strong, as well as his sense of justice, and these qualities stood him in good service as president, especially in his triumphant fight against the greenback monster. Altogether, in spite of some shortcomings, Grant was a massive, noble and lovable personality, well fit to be remembered as one of the heroes of a great nation.
(J. Fi.)
General Grant’s son, Frederick Dent Grant (b. 1850), graduated at the U.S. Military Academy in 1871, was aide-de-camp to General Philip Sheridan in 1873-1881, and resigned from the army in 1881, after having attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was U.S. minister to Austria in 1889-1893, and police commissioner of New York city in 1894-1898. He served as a brigadier-general of volunteers in the Spanish-American War of 1898, and then in the Philippines, becoming brigadier-general in the regular army in February 1901 and major-general in February 1906.
Bibliography.—Adam Badeau’s Military History of U. S. Grant (3 vols., New York, 1867-1881), and Grant in Peace (Hartford, 1887), are appreciative but lacking in discrimination. William Conant Church’s Ulysses S. Grant and the Period of National Preservation and Reconstruction (New York, 1897) is a good succinct account. Hamlin Garland’s Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character (New York, 1898) gives especial attention to the personal traits of Grant and abounds in anecdote. See also Grant’s Personal Memoirs (2 vols., New York, 1885-1886); J. G. Wilson’s Life and Public Services of U. S. Grant (New York, 1886); J. R. Young’s Around the World with General Grant (New York, 1880); Horace Porter’s Campaigning with Grant (New York, 1897); James Ford Rhodes’s History of the United States (vols. iii.-vii., New York, 1896-1906); James K. Hosmer’s Appeal to Arms and Outcome of the Civil War (New York, 1907); John Eaton’s Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen (New York, 1907), and various works mentioned in the articles American Civil War, Wilderness Campaign, &c.
President Lincoln was Grant’s most unwavering supporter. Many amusing stories are told of his replies to various deputations which waited upon him to ask for Grant’s removal. On one occasion he asked the critics to ascertain the brand of whisky favoured by Grant, so that he could send kegs of it to the other generals. The question of Grant’s abstemiousness was and is of little importance. The cause at stake over-rode every prejudice and the people of the United States, since the war, have been in general content to leave the question alone, as was evidenced by the outcry raised in 1908, when President Taft reopened it in a speech at Grant’s tomb.
The permanent tomb is of white granite and white marble and is 150 ft. high with a circular cupola topping a square building 90 ft. on the side and 72 ft. high; the sarcophagus, in the centre of the building, is of red Wisconsin porphyry. The cornerstone was laid by President Harrison in 1892, and the tomb was dedicated on the 27th of April 1897 with a splendid parade and addresses by President McKinley and General Horace Porter, president of the Grant Monument Association, which from 90,000 contributions raised the funds for the tomb.
GRANT (from A.-Fr. graunter, O. Fr. greanter for creanter, popular Lat. creantare, for credentare, to entrust, Lat. credere, to believe, trust), originally permission, acknowledgment, hence the gift of privileges, rights, &c., specifically in law, the transfer of property by an instrument in writing, termed a deed of grant. According to the old rule of common law, the immediate freehold in corporeal hereditaments lay in livery (see Feoffment), whereas incorporeal hereditaments, such as a reversion, remainder, advowson, &c., lay in grant, that is, passed by the delivery of the deed of conveyance or grant without further ceremony. The distinction between property lying in livery and in grant is now abolished, the Real Property Act 1845 providing that all corporeal tenements and hereditaments shall be transferable as well by grant as by livery (see Conveyancing). A grant of personal property is properly termed an assignment or bill of sale.
GRANTH, the holy scriptures of the Sikhs, containing the spiritual and moral teaching of Sikhism (q.v.). The book is called the Adi Granth Sahib by the Sikhs as a title of respect, because it is believed by them to be an embodiment of the gurus. The title is generally applied to the volume compiled by the fifth guru Arjan, which contains the compositions of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion; of his successors, Guru Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das and Arjan; hymns of the Hindu bhagats or saints, Jaidev, Namdev, Trilochan, Sain, Ramanand, Kabir, Rai Das, Pipa, Bhikhan, Beni, Parmanand Das, Sur Das, Sadhna and Dhanna Jat; verses of the Mahommedan saint called Farid; and panegyrics of the gurus by bards who either attended them or admired their characters. The compositions of the ninth guru, Teg Bahadur, were subsequently added to the Adi Granth by Guru Govind Singh. One recension of the sacred volume preserved at Mangat in the Gujrat district contains a hymn composed by Mira Bai, queen of Chitor. The Adi Granth contains passages of great picturesqueness and beauty. The original copy is said to be in Kartarpur in the Jullundur district, but the chief copy in use is now in the Har Mandar or Golden Temple at Amritsar, where it is daily read aloud by the attendant Granthis or scripture readers.
There is also a second Granth which was compiled by the Sikhs in 1734, and popularly known as the Granth of the tenth Guru, but it has not the same authority as the Adi Granth. It contains Guru Govind Singh’s Jāpji, the Akāl Ustit or Praise of the Creator, thirty-three sawaias (quatrains containing some of the main tenets of the guru and strong reprobation of idolatry and hypocrisy), and the Vachitar Natak or wonderful drama, in which the guru gives an account of his parentage, divine mission and the battles in which he was engaged. Then come three abridged translations by different hands of the Devi Mahatamya, an episode in the Markandeya Puran, in praise of Durga, the goddess of war. Then follow the Gyan Parbodh or awakening of knowledge, accounts of twenty-four incarnations of the deity, selected because of their warlike character; the Hazare de Shabd; the Shastar Nam Mala, which is a list of offensive and defensive weapons used in the guru’s time, with special reference to the attributes of the Creator; the Tria Charitar or tales illustrating the qualities, but principally the deceit of women; the Kabit, compositions of a miscellaneous character; the Zafarnama containing the tenth guru’s epistle to the emperor Aurangzeb, and several metrical tales in the Persian language. This Granth is only partially the composition of the tenth guru. The greater portion of it was written by bards in his employ.
The two volumes are written in several different languages and dialects. The Adi Granth is largely in old Punjabi and Hindi, but Prakrit, Persian, Mahratti and Gujrati are also represented. The Granth of the Tenth Guru is written in the old and very difficult Hindi affected by literary men in the Patna district in the 16th century. In neither of these sacred volumes is there any separation of words. As there is no separation of words in Sanskrit, the gyanis or interpreters of the guru’s hymns prefer to follow the ancient practice of junction of words. This makes the reading of the Sikh scriptures very difficult, and is one of the causes of the decline of the Sikh religion.
The hymns in the Adi Granth are arranged not according to the gurus or bhagats who compose them, but according to rags or musical measures. There are thirty-one such measures in the Adi Granth, and the hymns are arranged according to the measures to which they are composed. The gurus who composed hymns, namely the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and ninth gurus, all used the name Nanak as their nom-de-plume. Their compositions are distinguished by mahallas or wards. Thus the compositions of Guru Nanak are styled mahalla one, the compositions of Guru Angad are styled mahalla two, and so on. After the hymns of the gurus are found the hymns of the bhagats under their several musical measures. The Sikhs generally dislike any arrangement of the Adi Granth by which the compositions of each guru or bhagat should be separately shown.
All the doctrines of the Sikhs are found set forth in the two Granths and in compositions called Rahit Namas and Tanakhwah Namas, which are believed to have been the utterances of the tenth guru. The cardinal principle of the sacred books is the unity of God, and starting from this premiss the rejection of idolatry and superstition. Thus Guru Govind Singh writes:
“Some worshipping stones, put them on their heads;
Some suspend lingams from their necks;
Some see the God in the South; some bow their heads to the West.
Some fools worship idols, others busy themselves with worshipping the dead.
The whole world entangled in false ceremonies hath not found God’s secret.”
Next to the unity of God comes the equality of all men in His sight, and so the abolition of caste distinctions. Guru Nanak says:
“Caste hath no power in the next world; there is a new order of beings,
Those whose accounts are honoured are the good.”
The concremation of widows, though practised in later times by Hinduized Sikhs, is forbidden in the Granth. Guru Arjan writes:
“She who considereth her beloved as her God,
Is the blessed sati who shall be acceptable in God’s Court.”
It is a common belief that the Sikhs are allowed to drink wine and other intoxicants. This is not the case. Guru Nanak wrote:
“By drinking wine man committeth many sins.”
Guru Arjan wrote:
“The fool who drinketh evil wine is involved in sin.”
And in the Rahit Nama of Bhai Desu Singh there is the following:
“Let a Sikh take no intoxicant; it maketh the body lazy; it diverteth men from their temporal and spiritual duties, and inciteth them to evil deeds.”
It is also generally believed that the Sikhs are bound to abstain from the flesh of kine. This, too, is a mistake, arising from the Sikh adoption of Hindu usages. The two Granths of the Sikhs and all their canonical works are absolutely silent on the subject. The Sikhs are not bound to abstain from any flesh, except that which is obviously unfit for human food, or what is killed in the Mahommedan fashion by jagging an animal’s throat with a knife. This flesh-eating practice is one of the main sources of their physical strength. Smoking is strictly prohibited by the Sikh religion. Guru Teg Bahadur preached to his host as follows:
“Save the people from the vile drug, and employ thyself in the service of Sikhs and holy men. When the people abandon the degrading smoke and cultivate their lands, their wealth and prosperity shall increase, and they shall want for nothing ... but when they smoke the vile vegetable, they shall grow poor and lose their wealth.”
Guru Govind Singh also said:
“Wine is bad, bhang destroyeth one generation, but tobacco destroyeth all generations.”
In addition to these prohibitions Sikhism inculcates most of the positive virtues of Christianity, and specially loyalty to rulers, a quality which has made the Sikhs valuable servants of the British crown.
The Granth was translated by Dr Trumpp, a German missionary, on behalf of the Punjab government in 1877, but his rendering is in many respects incorrect, owing to insufficient knowledge of the Punjabi dialects. The Sikh Religion, &c., in 6 vols. (London, 1909) is an authoritative version prepared by M. Macauliffe, in concert with the modern leaders of the Sikh sect.
(M. M.)
GRANTHAM, THOMAS ROBINSON, 1st Baron (c. 1695-1770), English diplomatist and politician, was a younger son of Sir William Robinson, Bart. (1655-1736) of Newby, Yorkshire, who was member of parliament for York from 1697 to 1722. Having been a scholar and minor fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Thomas Robinson gained his earliest diplomatic experience in Paris and then went to Vienna, where he was English ambassador from 1730 to 1748. During 1741 he sought to make peace between the empress Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great, but in vain, and in 1748 he represented his country at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. Returning to England he sat in parliament for Christchurch from 1749 to 1761. In 1754 Robinson was appointed a secretary of state and leader of the House of Commons by the prime minister, the duke of Newcastle, and it was on this occasion that Pitt made the famous remark to Fox, “the duke might as well have sent us his jackboot to lead us.” In November 1755 he resigned, and in April 1761 he was created Baron Grantham. He was master of the wardrobe from 1749 to 1754 and again from 1755 to 1760, and was joint postmaster-general in 1765 and 1766. He died in London on the 30th of September 1770.
Grantham’s elder son, Thomas Robinson (1738-1786), who became the 2nd baron, was born at Vienna on the 30th of November 1738. Educated at Westminster School and at Christ’s College, Cambridge, he entered parliament as member for Christchurch in 1761, and succeeded to the peerage in 1770. In 1771 he was sent as ambassador to Madrid and retained this post until war broke out between England and Spain in 1779. From 1780 to 1782 Grantham was first commissioner of the board of trade and foreign plantations, and from July 1782 to April 1783 secretary for the foreign department under Lord Shelburne. He died on the 20th of July 1786, leaving two sons, Thomas Philip, who became the 3rd baron, and Frederick John afterwards 1st earl of Ripon.
Thomas Philip Robinson, 3rd Baron Grantham (1781-1859). in 1803 took the name of Weddell instead of that of Robinson. In May 1833 he became Earl de Grey of Wrest on the death of his maternal aunt, Amabell Hume-Campbell, Countess de Grey (1751-1833), and he now took the name of de Grey. He was first lord of the admiralty under Sir Robert Peel in 1834-1835 and from 1841 to 1844 lord-lieutenant of Ireland. On his death without male issue his nephew, George Frederick Samuel Robinson, afterwards marquess of Ripon (q.v.), succeeded as Earl de Grey.
GRANTHAM, a municipal and parliamentary borough of Lincolnshire, England; situated in a pleasant undulating country on the river Witham. Pop. (1901) 17,593. It is an important junction of the Great Northern railway, 105 m. N. by W. from London, with branch lines to Nottingham, Lincoln and Boston; while there is communication with Nottingham and the Trent by the Grantham canal. The parish church of St Wulfram is a splendid building, exhibiting all the Gothic styles, but mainly Early English and Decorated. The massive and ornate western tower and spire, about 280 ft. in height, are of early Decorated workmanship. There is a double Decorated crypt beneath the lady chapel. The north and south porches are fine examples of a later period of the same style. The delicately carved font is noteworthy. Two libraries, respectively of the 16th and 17th centuries, are preserved in the church. At the King Edward VI. grammar school Sir Isaac Newton received part of his education. A bronze statue commemorates him. The late Perpendicular building is picturesque, and the school was greatly enlarged in 1904. The Angel Hotel is a hostelry of the 15th century, with a gateway of earlier date. A conduit dating from 1597 stands in the wide market-place. Modern public buildings are a gild hall, exchange hall, and several churches and chapels. The Queen Victoria Memorial home for nurses was erected in 1902-1903. The chief industries are malting and the manufacture of agricultural implements. Grantham returns one member to parliament. The borough falls within the S. Kesteven or Stamford division of the county. Grantham was created a suffragan bishopric in the diocese of Lincoln in 1905. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 1726 acres.
Although there is no authentic evidence of Roman occupation, Grantham (Graham, Granham in Domesday Book) from its situation on the Ermine Street, is supposed to have been a Roman station. It was possibly a borough in the Saxon period, and by the time of the Domesday Survey it was a royal borough with 111 burgesses. Charters of liberties existing now only in the confirmation charter of 1377 were granted by various kings. From the first the town was governed by a bailiff appointed by the lord of the manor, but by the end of the 14th century the office of alderman had come into existence. Finally government under a mayor and alderman was granted by Edward IV. in 1463, and Grantham became a corporate town. Among later charters, that of James II., given in 1685, changed the title to that of government by a mayor and 6 aldermen, but this was afterwards reversed and the old order resumed. Grantham was first represented in parliament in 1467, and returned two members; but by the Redistribution Act of 1885 the number was reduced to one. Richard III. in 1483 granted a Wednesday market and two fairs yearly, namely on the feast of St Nicholas the Bishop, and the two following days, and on Passion Sunday and the day following. At the present day the market is held on Saturday, and fairs are held on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday following the fifth Sunday in Lent; a cherry fair on the 11th of July and two stock fairs on the 26th of October and the 17th of December.
GRANTLEY, FLETCHER NORTON, 1st Baron (1716-1789), English politician, was the eldest son of Thomas Norton of Grantley, Yorkshire, where he was born on the 23rd of June 1716. He became a barrister in 1739, and, after a period of inactivity, obtained a large and profitable practice, becoming a K.C. in 1754, and afterwards attorney-general for the county palatine of Lancaster. In 1756 he was elected member of parliament for Appleby; he represented Wigan from 1761 to 1768, and was appointed solicitor-general for England and knighted in 1762. He took part in the proceedings against John Wilkes, and, having become attorney-general in 1763, prosecuted the 5th Lord Byron for the murder of William Chaworth, losing his office when the marquess of Rockingham came into power in July 1765. In 1769, being now member of parliament for Guildford, Norton became a privy councillor and chief justice in eyre of the forests south of the Trent, and in 1770 was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1777, when presenting the bill for the increase of the civil list to the king, he told George III. that parliament has “not only granted to your majesty a large present supply, but also a very great additional revenue; great beyond example; great beyond your majesty’s highest expense.” This speech aroused general attention and caused some irritation; but the Speaker was supported by Fox and by the city of London, and received the thanks of the House of Commons. George, however, did not forget these plain words, and after the general election of 1780, the prime minister, Lord North, and his followers declined to support the re-election of the retiring Speaker, alleging that his health was not equal to the duties of the office, and he was defeated when the voting took place. In 1782 he was made a peer as Baron Grantley of Markenfield. He died in London on the 1st of January 1789. He was succeeded as Baron Grantley by his eldest son William (1742-1822). Wraxall describes Norton as “a bold, able and eloquent, but not a popular pleader,” and as Speaker he was aggressive and indiscreet. Derided by satirists as “Sir Bullface Doublefee,” and described by Horace Walpole as one who “rose from obscure infamy to that infamous fame which will long stick to him,” his character was also assailed by Junius, and the general impression is that he was a hot-tempered, avaricious and unprincipled man.
See H. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., edited by G. F. R. Barker (1894); Sir N. W. Wraxall, Historical and Posthumous Memoirs, edited by H. B. Wheatley (1884); and J. A. Manning, Lives of the Speakers (1850).
GRANTOWN, the capital of Speyside, Elginshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 1568. It lies on the left bank of the Spey, 23¼ m. S. of Forres by the Highland railway, with a station on the Great North of Scotland’s Speyside line connecting Craigellachie with Boat of Garten. It was founded in 1776 by Sir James Grant of Grant, and became the chief seat of that ancient family, who had lived on their adjoining estate of Freuchie (Gaelic, fraochach, “heathery”) since the beginning of the 15th century, and hence were usually described as the lairds of Freuchie. The public buildings include the town hall, court house and orphan hospital; and the industries are mainly connected with the cattle trade and the distilling of whisky. The town, built of grey granite, presents a handsome appearance, and being delightfully situated in the midst of the most beautiful pine and birch woods in Scotland, with pure air and a bracing climate, is an attractive resort. Castle Grant, immediately to the north, is the principal mansion of the earl of Seafield, the head of the Clan Grant. In a cave, still called “Lord Huntly’s Cave,” in a rocky glen in the vicinity, George, marquess of Huntly, lay hid during Montrose’s campaign in 1644-45.
GRANULITE (Lat. granulum, a little grain), a name used by petrographers to designate two distinct classes of rocks. According to the terminology of the French school it signifies a granite in which both kinds of mica (muscovite and biotite) occur, and corresponds to the German Granit, or to the English “muscovite biotite granite.” This application has not been accepted generally. To the German petrologists “granulite” means a more or less banded fine-grained metamorphic rock, consisting mainly of quartz and felspar in very small irregular crystals, and containing usually also a fair number of minute rounded pale-red garnets. Among English and American geologists the term is generally employed in this sense. The granulites are very closely allied to the gneisses, as they consist of nearly the same minerals, but they are finer grained, have usually less perfect foliation, are more frequently garnetiferous, and have some special features of microscopic structure. In the rocks of this group the minerals, as seen in a microscopic slide, occur as small rounded grains forming a mosaic closely fitted together. The individual crystals have never perfect form, and indeed rarely any traces of it. In some granulites they interlock, with irregular borders; in others they have been drawn out and flattened into tapering lenticles by crushing. In most cases they are somewhat rounded with smaller grains between the larger. This is especially true of the quartz and felspar which are the predominant minerals; mica always appears as flat scales (irregular or rounded but not hexagonal). Both muscovite and biotite may be present and vary considerably in abundance; very commonly they have their flat sides parallel and give the rock a rudimentary schistosity, and they may be aggregated into bands—in which case the granulites are indistinguishable from certain varieties of gneiss. The garnets are very generally larger than the above-mentioned ingredients, and easily visible with the eye as pink spots on the broken surfaces of the rock. They usually are filled with enclosed grains of the other minerals.
The felspar of the granulites is mostly orthoclase or cryptoperthite; microcline, oligoclase and albite are also common. Basic felspars occur only rarely. Among accessory minerals, in addition to apatite, zircon, and iron oxides, the following may be mentioned: hornblende (not common), riebeckite (rare), epidote and zoisite, calcite, sphene, andalusite, sillimanite, kyanite, hercynite (a green spinel), rutile, orthite and tourmaline. Though occasionally we may find larger grains of felspar, quartz or epidote, it is more characteristic of these rocks that all the minerals are in small, nearly uniform, imperfectly shaped individuals.
On account of the minuteness with which it has been described and the important controversies on points of theoretical geology which have arisen regarding it, the granulite district of Saxony (around Rosswein, Penig, &c.) may be considered the typical region for rocks of this group. It should be remembered that though granulites are probably the commonest rocks of this country, they are mingled with granites, gneisses, gabbros, amphibolites, mica schists and many other petrographical types. All of these rocks show more or less metamorphism either of a thermal character or due to pressure and crushing. The granites pass into gneiss and granulite; the gabbros into flaser gabbro and amphibolite; the slates often contain andalusite or chiastolite, and show transitions to mica schists. At one time these rocks were regarded as Archean gneisses of a special type. Johannes Georg Lehmann propounded the hypothesis that their present state was due principally to crushing acting on them in a solid condition, grinding them down and breaking up their minerals, while the pressure to which they were subjected welded them together into coherent rock. It is now believed, however, that they are comparatively recent and include sedimentary rocks, partly of Palaeozoic age, and intrusive masses which may be nearly massive or may have gneissose, flaser or granulitic structures. These have been developed largely by the injection of semi-consolidated highly viscous intrusions, and the varieties of texture are original or were produced very shortly after the crystallization of the rocks. Meanwhile, however, Lehmann’s advocacy of post-consolidation crushing as a factor in the development of granulites has been so successful that the terms granulitization and granulitic structures are widely employed to indicate the results of dynamometamorphism acting on rocks at a period long after their solidification.
The Saxon granulites are apparently for the most part igneous and correspond in composition to granites and porphyries. There are, however, many granulites which undoubtedly were originally sediments (arkoses, grits and sandstones). A large part of the highlands of Scotland consists of paragranulites of this kind, which have received the group name of “Moine gneisses.”
Along with the typical acid granulites above described, in Saxony, India, Scotland and other countries there occur dark-coloured basic granulites (“trap granulites”). These are fine-grained rocks, not usually banded, nearly black in colour with small red spots of garnet. Their essential minerals are pyroxene, plagioclase and garnet: chemically they resemble the gabbros. Green augite and hypersthene form a considerable part of these rocks, they may contain also biotite, hornblende and quartz. Around the garnets there is often a radial grouping of small grains of pyroxene and hornblende in a clear matrix of felspar: these “centric” structures are frequent in granulites. The rocks of this group accompany gabbro and serpentine, but the exact conditions under which they are formed and the significance of their structures is not very clearly understood.
(J. S. F.)
GRANVELLA, ANTOINE PERRENOT, Cardinal de (1517-1586), one of the ablest and most influential of the princes of the church during the great political and ecclesiastical movements which immediately followed the appearance of Protestantism in Europe, was born on the 20th of August 1517 at Besançon, where his father, Nicolas Perrenot de Granvella (1484-1550), who afterwards became chancellor of the empire under Charles V., was practising as a lawyer. Later Nicolas held an influential position in the Netherlands, and from 1530 until his death he was one of the emperor’s most trusted advisers in Germany. On the completion of his studies in law at Padua and in divinity at Louvain, Antoine held a canonry at Besançon, but he was promoted to the bishopric of Arras when barely twenty-three (1540). In his episcopal capacity he attended several diets of the empire, as well as the opening meetings of the council of Trent; and the influence of his father, now chancellor, led to his being entrusted with many difficult and delicate pieces of public business, in the execution of which he developed a rare talent for diplomacy, and at the same time acquired an intimate acquaintance with most of the currents of European politics. One of his specially noteworthy performances was the settlement of the terms of peace after the defeat of the league of Schmalkalden at Mühlberg in 1547, a settlement in which, to say the least, some particularly sharp practice was exhibited. In 1550 he succeeded his father in the office of secretary of state; in this capacity he attended Charles in the war with Maurice, elector of Saxony, accompanied him in the flight from Innsbruck, and afterwards drew up the treaty of Passau (August 1552). In the following year he conducted the negotiations for the marriage of Mary of England and Philip II. of Spain, to whom, in 1555, on the abdication of the emperor, he transferred his services, and by whom he was employed in the Netherlands. In April 1559 Granvella was one of the Spanish commissioners who arranged the peace of Cateau Cambrésis, and on Philip’s withdrawal from the Netherlands in August of the same year he was appointed prime minister to the regent, Margaret of Parma. The policy of repression which in this capacity he pursued during the next five years secured for him many tangible rewards, in 1560 he was elevated to the archiepiscopal see of Malines, and in 1561 he received the cardinal’s hat; but the growing hostility of a people whose religious convictions he had set himself to trample under foot ultimately made it impossible for him to continue in the Low Countries, and by the advice of his royal master he, in March 1564, retired to Franche Comté. Nominally this withdrawal was only of a temporary character, but it proved to be final. The following six years were spent in comparative quiet, broken, however, by a visit to Rome in 1565; but in 1570 Granvella, at the call of Philip, resumed public life by accepting another mission to Rome. Here he helped to arrange the alliance between the Papacy, Venice and Spain against the Turks, an alliance which was responsible for the victory of Lepanto. In the same year he became viceroy of Naples, a post of some difficulty and danger, which for five years he occupied with ability and success. He was summoned to Madrid in 1575 by Philip II. to be president of the council for Italian affairs. Among the more delicate negotiations of his later years were those of 1580, which had for their object the ultimate union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal, and those of 1584, which resulted in a check to France by the marriage of the Spanish infanta Catherine to Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy. In the same year he was made archbishop of Besançon, but meanwhile he had been stricken with a lingering disease; he was never enthroned, but died at Madrid on the 21st of September 1586. His body was removed to Besançon, where his father had been buried. Granvella was a man of great learning, which was equalled by his industry, and these qualities made him almost indispensable both to Charles V. and to Philip II.
Numerous letters and memoirs of Granvella are preserved in the archives of Besançon. These were to some extent made use of by Prosper Levêque in his Mémoires pour servir (1753), as well as by the Abbé Boisot in the Trésor de Granvella. A commission for publishing the whole of the letters and memoirs was appointed by Guizot in 1834, and the result has been the issue of nine volumes of the Papiers d’État du cardinal de Granvelle, edited by C. Weiss (Paris, 1841-1852). They form a part of the Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, and were supplemented by the Correspondance du cardinal Granvelle, 1565-1586, edited by M. E. Poullet and G. J. C. Piot (12 vols., Brussels, 1878-1896). See also the anonymous Histoire du cardinal de Granville, attributed to Courchetet D’Esnans (Paris, 1761); J. L. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic; M. Philippson, Ein Ministerium unter Philipp II. (Berlin, 1895); and the Cambridge Modern History (vol. iii. 1904).
GRANVILLE, GRANVILLE GEORGE LEVESON-GOWER, 2nd Earl (1815-1891), English statesman, eldest son of the 1st Earl Granville (1773-1846), by his marriage with Lady Harriet, daughter of the duke of Devonshire, was born in London on the 11th of May 1815. His father, Granville Leveson-Gower, was a younger son of Granville, 2nd Lord Gower and 1st marquess of Stafford (1720-1803), by his third wife; an elder son by the second wife (a daughter of the 1st duke of Bridgwater) became the 2nd marquess of Stafford, and his marriage with the daughter and heiress of the 17th earl of Sutherland (countess of Sutherland in her own right) led to the merging of the Gower and Stafford titles in that of the dukes of Sutherland (created 1833), who represent the elder branch of the family. As Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, the 1st Earl Granville (created viscount in 1815 and earl in 1833) entered the diplomatic service and was ambassador at St Petersburg (1804-1807) and at Paris (1824-1841). He was a Liberal in politics and an intimate friend of Canning. The title of Earl Granville had been previously held in the Carteret family.
After being at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, young Lord Leveson went to Paris for a short time under his father, and in 1836 was returned to parliament in the Whig interest for Morpeth. For a short time he was under-secretary for foreign affairs in Lord Melbourne’s ministry. In 1840 he married Lady Acton (Marie Louise Pelline de Dalberg, widow of Sir Richard Acton; see Acton and Dalberg). From 1841 till his father’s death in 1846, when he succeeded to the title, he sat for Lichfield. In the House of Lords he signalized himself as a Free Trader, and Lord John Russell made him master of the buckhounds (1846). He proved a useful member of the party, and his influence and amiable character were valuable in all matters needing diplomacy and good breeding. He became vice-president of the Board of Trade in 1848, and took a prominent part in promoting the great exhibition of 1851. In the latter year, having already been admitted to the cabinet, he succeeded Palmerston at the foreign office until Lord John Russell’s defeat in 1852; and when Lord Aberdeen formed his government at the end of the year, he became first president of the council, and then chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster (1854). Under Lord Palmerston (1855) he was president of the council. His interest in education (a subject associated with this office) led to his election (1856) as chancellor of the London University, a post he held for thirty-five years; and he was a prominent champion of the movement for the admission of women, and also of the teaching of modern languages. From 1855 Lord Granville led the Liberals in the Upper House, both in office, and, after Palmerston’s resignation in 1858, in opposition. He went in 1856 as head of the British mission to the tsar’s coronation in Moscow. In June 1859 the queen, embarrassed by the rival ambitions of Palmerston and Russell, sent for him to form a ministry, but he was unable to do so, and Palmerston again became prime minister, with Lord John as foreign secretary and Granville as president of the council. In 1860 his wife died, and to this heavy loss was shortly added that of his great friends Lord and Lady Canning and of his mother (1862); but he devoted himself to his political work, and retained his office when, on Palmerston’s death in 1865, Lord Russell (now a peer) became prime minister and took over the leadership in the House of Lords. He was made Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and in the same year married again, his second wife being Miss Castalia Campbell. From 1866 to 1868 he was in opposition, but in December 1868 he became colonial secretary in Gladstone’s first ministry. His tact was invaluable to the government in carrying the Irish Church and Land Bills through the House of Lords. On the 27th of June 1870, on Lord Clarendon’s death, he was transferred to the foreign office. Lord Granville’s name is mainly associated with his career as foreign secretary (1870-1874 and 1880-1885); but the Liberal foreign policy of that period was not distinguished by enterprise or “backbone.” Lord Granville personally was patient and polite, but his courteous and pacific methods were somewhat inadequate in dealing with the new situation then arising in Europe and outside it; and foreign governments had little scruple in creating embarrassments for Great Britain, and relying on the disinclination of the Liberal leaders to take strong measures. The Franco-German War of 1870 broke out within a few days of Lord Granville’s quoting in the House of Lords (11th of July) the curiously unprophetic opinion of the permanent under-secretary (Mr Hammond) that “he had never known so great a lull in foreign affairs.” Russia took advantage of the situation to denounce the Black Sea clauses of the treaty of Paris, and Lord Granville’s protest was ineffectual. In 1871 an intermediate zone between Asiatic Russia and Afghanistan was agreed on between him and Shuválov; but in 1873 Russia took possession of Khiva, within the neutral zone, and Lord Granville had to accept the aggression. When the Conservatives came into power in 1874, his part for the next six years was to criticize Disraeli’s “spirited” foreign policy, and to defend his own more pliant methods. He returned to the foreign office in 1880, only to find an anti-British spirit developing in German policy which the temporizing methods of the Liberal leaders were generally powerless to deal with. Lord Granville failed to realize in time the importance of the Angra Pequeña question in 1883-1884, and he was forced, somewhat ignominiously, to yield to Bismarck over it. Whether in Egypt, Afghanistan or equatorial and south-west Africa, British foreign policy was dominated by suavity rather than by the strength which commands respect. Finally, when Gladstone took up Home Rule for Ireland, Lord Granville, whose mind was similarly receptive to new ideas, adhered to his chief (1886), and gracefully gave way to Lord Rosebery when the latter was preferred to the foreign office; the Liberals had now realized that they had lost ground in the country by Lord Granville’s occupancy of the post. He went to the Colonial Office for six months, and in July 1886 retired from public life. He died in London on the 31st of March 1891, being succeeded in the title by his son, born in 1872. Lord Granville was a man of much charm and many friendships, and an admirable after-dinner speaker. He spoke French like a Parisian, and was essentially a diplomatist; but he has no place in history as a constructive statesman.
The life of Lord Granville (1905), by Lord Fitzmaurice, is full of interesting material for the history of the period, but being written by a Liberal, himself an under-secretary for foreign affairs, it explains rather than criticizes Lord Granville’s work in that department.
(H. Ch.)
GRANVILLE, JOHN CARTERET, Earl (1690-1763), English statesman, commonly known by his earlier title as Lord Carteret, born on the 22nd of April 1690, was the son of George, 1st Lord Carteret, by his marriage with Grace Granville, daughter of Sir John Granville, 1st earl of Bath, and great grandson of the Elizabethan admiral, Sir Richard Grenville, famous for his death in the “Revenge.” The family of Carteret was settled in the Channel Islands, and was of Norman descent. John Carteret was educated at Westminster, and at Christ Church, Oxford. Swift says that “with a singularity scarce to be justified he carried away more Greek, Latin and philosophy than properly became a person of his rank.” Throughout life Carteret not only showed a keen love of the classics, but a taste for, and a knowledge of, modern languages and literatures. He was almost the only Englishman of his time who knew German. Harte, the author of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus, acknowledged the aid which Carteret had given him. On the 17th of October 1710 he married at Longleat Lady Frances Worsley, grand-daughter of the first Viscount Weymouth. He took his seat in the Lords on the 25th of May 1711. Though his family, on both sides, had been devoted to the house of Stuart, Carteret was a steady adherent of the Hanoverian dynasty. He was a friend of the Whig leaders Stanhope and Sunderland, took a share in defeating the Jacobite conspiracy of Bolingbroke on the death of Queen Anne, and supported the passing of the Septennial Act. Carteret’s interests were however in foreign, and not in domestic policy. His serious work in public life began with his appointment, early in 1719, as ambassador to Sweden. During this and the following year he was employed in saving Sweden from the attacks of Peter the Great, and in arranging the pacification of the north. His efforts were finally successful. During this period of diplomatic work he acquired an exceptional knowledge of the affairs of Europe, and in particular of Germany, and displayed great tact and temper in dealing with the Swedish senate, with Queen Ulrica, with the king of Denmark and Frederick William I. of Prussia. But he was not qualified to hold his own in the intrigues of court and parliament in London. Named secretary of state for the southern department on his return home, he soon became helplessly in conflict with the intrigues of Townshend and Sir Robert Walpole. To Walpole, who looked upon every able colleague, or subordinate, as an enemy to be removed, Carteret was exceptionally odious. His capacity to speak German with the king would alone have made Sir Robert detest him. When, therefore, the violent agitation in Ireland against Wood’s halfpence (see Swift, Jonathan) made it necessary to replace the duke of Grafton as lord lieutenant, Carteret was sent to Dublin. He landed in Dublin on the 23rd of October 1724, and remained there till 1730. In the first months of his tenure of office he had to deal with the furious opposition to Wood’s halfpence, and to counteract the effect of Swift’s Draper’s Letters. The lord lieutenant had a strong personal liking for Swift, who was also a friend of Lady Carteret’s family. It is highly doubtful whether Carteret could have reconciled his duty to the crown with his private friendships, if government had persisted in endeavouring to force the detested coinage on the Irish people. Wood’s patent was however withdrawn, and Ireland settled down. Carteret was a profuse and popular lord lieutenant who pleased both the “English interest” and the native Irish. He was at all times addicted to lavish hospitality, and according to the testimony of contemporaries was too fond of burgundy. When he returned to London in 1730, Walpole was firmly established as master of the House of Commons, and as the trusted minister of King George II. He had the full confidence of Queen Caroline, whom he prejudiced against Carteret. Till the fall of Walpole in 1742, Carteret could take no share in public affairs except as a leader of opposition of the Lords. His brilliant parts were somewhat obscured by his rather erratic conduct, and a certain contempt, partly aristocratic and partly intellectual, for commonplace men and ways. He endeavoured to please Queen Caroline, who loved literature, and he has the credit, on good grounds, of having paid the expenses of the first handsome edition of Don Quixote to please her. But he reluctantly, and most unwisely, allowed himself to be entangled in the scandalous family quarrel between Frederick, prince of Wales, and his parents. Queen Caroline was provoked into classing him and Bolingbroke, as “the two most worthless men of parts in the country.” Carteret took the popular side in the outcry against Walpole for not making war on Spain. When the War of the Austrian Succession approached, his sympathies were entirely with Maria Theresa—mainly on the ground that the fall of the house of Austria would dangerously increase the power of France, even if she gained no accession of territory. These views made him welcome to George II., who gladly accepted him as secretary of state in 1742. In 1743 he accompanied the king of Germany, and was present at the battle of Dettingen on the 27th of June. He held the secretaryship till November 1744. He succeeded in promoting an agreement between Maria Theresa and Frederick. He understood the relations of the European states, and the interests of Great Britain among them. But the defects which had rendered him unable to baffle the intrigues of Walpole made him equally unable to contend with the Pelhams. His support of the king’s policy was denounced as subservience to Hanover. Pitt called him “an execrable, a sole minister who had renounced the British nation.” A few years later Pitt adopted an identical policy, and professed that whatever he knew he had learnt from Carteret. On the 18th of October 1744 Carteret became Earl Granville on the death of his mother. His first wife died in June 1743 at Aschaffenburg, and in April 1744 he married Lady Sophia Fermor, daughter of Lord Pomfret—a fashionable beauty and “reigning toast” of London society, who was younger than his daughters. “The nuptials of our great Quixote and the fair Sophia,” and Granville’s ostentatious performance of the part of lover, were ridiculed by Horace Walpole. The countess Granville died on the 7th of October 1745, leaving one daughter Sophia, who married Lord Shelburne, 1st marquis of Lansdowne. This marriage may have done something to increase Granville’s reputation for eccentricity. In February 1746 he allowed himself to be entrapped by the intrigues of the Pelhams into accepting the secretaryship, but resigned in forty-eight hours. In June 1751 he became president of the council, and was still liked and trusted by the king, but his share in government did not go beyond giving advice, and endeavouring to forward ministerial arrangements. In 1756 he was asked by Newcastle to become prime minister as the alternative to Pitt, but Granville, who perfectly understood why the offer was made, declined and supported Pitt. When in October 1761 Pitt, who had information of the signing of the “Family Compact” wished to declare war on Spain, and declared his intention to resign unless his advice was accepted, Granville replied that “the opinion of the majority (of the Cabinet) must decide.” He spoke in complimentary terms of Pitt, but resisted his claim to be considered as a “sole minister” or, in the modern phrase, “a prime minister.” Whether he used the words attributed to him in the Annual Register for 1761 is more than doubtful, but the minutes of council show that they express his meaning. Granville remained in office as president till his death. His last act was to listen while on his death-bed to the reading of the preliminaries of the treaty of Paris. He was so weak that the under-secretary, Robert Wood, author of an essay on The Original Genius of Homer, would have postponed the business, but Granville said that it “could not prolong his life to neglect his duty,” and quoted the speech of Sarpedon from Iliad xii. 322-328, repeating the last word (ἴομεν) “with a calm and determined resignation.” He died in his house in Arlington Street, London, on the 22nd of January 1763. The title of Granville descended to his son Robert, who died without issue in 1776, when the earldom of this creation became extinct.
A somewhat partisan life of Granville was published in 1887, by Archibald Ballantyne, under the title of Lord Carteret, a Political Biography.
GRANVILLE, a town of Cumberland county, New South Wales, 13 m. by rail W. of Sydney. Pop. (1901) 5094. It is an important railway junction and manufacturing town, producing agricultural implements, tweed, pipes, tiles and bricks; there are also tanneries, flour-mills, and kerosene and meat export works. It became a municipality in 1885.
GRANVILLE, a fortified sea-port and bathing-resort of north-western France, in the department of Manche, at the mouth of the Bosq, 85 m. S. by W. of Cherbourg by rail. Pop. (1906) 10,530. Granville consists of two quarters, the upper town built on a promontory jutting into the sea and surrounded by ramparts, and the lower town and harbour lying below it. The barracks and the church of Notre-Dame, a low building of granite, partly Romanesque, partly late Gothic in style, are in the upper town. The port consists of a tidal harbour, two floating basins and a dry dock. Its fleets take an active part in deep sea fishing, including the cod-fishing off Newfoundland, and oyster-fishing is carried on. It has regular communication with Guernsey and Jersey, and with the islands of St Pierre and Miquelon. The principal exports are eggs, vegetables and fish; coal, timber and chemical manures are imported. The industries include ship-building, fish-salting, the manufacture of cod-liver oil, the preserving of vegetables, dyeing, metal-founding, rope-making and the manufacture of chemical manures. Among the public institutions are a tribunal and a chamber of commerce. In the commune are included the Iles Chausey about 7½ m. N.W. of Granville (see Channel Islands). Granville, before an insignificant village, was fortified by the English in 1437, taken by the French in 1441, bombarded and burned by the English in 1695, and unsuccessfully besieged by the Vendean troops in 1793. It was again bombarded by the English in 1803.
GRANVILLE, a village in Licking county, Ohio, U.S.A., in the township of Granville, about 6 m. W. of Newark and 27 m. E. by N. of Columbus. Pop. of the village (1910) 1394; of the township (1910) 2442. Granville is served by the Toledo & Ohio Central and the Ohio Electric railways, the latter reaching Newark (where it connects with the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis and the Baltimore & Ohio railways), Columbus, Dayton, Zanesville and Springfield. Granville is the seat of Denison University, founded in 1831 by the Ohio Baptist Education Society and opened as a manual labour school, called the Granville Literary and Theological Institution. It was renamed Granville College in 1845, and took its present name in 1854 in honour of William S. Denison of Adamsville, Ohio, who had given $10,000 to the college. The university comprised in 1907-1908 five departments: Granville College (229 students), the collegiate department for men; Shepardson College (246 students, including 82 in the preparatory department), the collegiate department for women, founded as the Young Ladies’ Institute of Granville in 1859, given to the Baptist denomination in 1887 by Dr Daniel Shepardson, its principal and owner, and closely affiliated for scholastic purposes, since 1900, with the university, though legally it is still a distinct institution; Doane Academy (137 students), the preparatory department for boys, established in 1831, named Granville Academy in 1887, and renamed in 1895 in honour of William H. Doane of Cincinnati, who gave to it its building; a conservatory of music (137 students); and a school of art (38 students).
In 1805 the Licking Land Company, organized in the preceding year in Granville, Massachusetts, bought 29,040 acres of land in Ohio, including the site of Granville; the town was laid out, and in the last months of that year settlers from Granville, Mass., began to arrive. By January 1806 the colony numbered 234 persons; the township was incorporated in 1806 and the village was incorporated in 1831. There are several remarkable Indian mounds near Granville, notably one shaped like an alligator.
See Henry Bushnell, History of Granville, Ohio (Columbus, O., 1889).
GRAPE, the fruit of the vine (q.v.). The word is adopted from the O. Fr. grape, mod. grappe, bunch or cluster of flowers or fruit, grappes de raisin, bunch of grapes. The French word meant properly a hook; cf. M.H.G. krapfe, Eng. “grapnel,” and “cramp.” The development of meaning seems to be vine-hook, cluster of grapes cut with a hook, and thence in English a single grape of a cluster. The projectile called “grape” or “grape-shot,” formerly used with smooth-bore ordnance, took its name from its general resemblance to a bunch of grapes. It consisted of a number of spherical bullets (heavier than those of the contemporary musket) arranged in layers separated by thin iron plates, a bolt passing through the centre of the plates binding the whole together. On being discharged the projectile delivered the bullets in a shower somewhat after the fashion of case-shot.
GRAPHICAL METHODS, devices for representing by geometrical figures the numerical data which result from the quantitative investigation of phenomena. The simplest application is met with in the representation of tabular data such as occur in statistics. Such tables are usually of single entry, i.e. to a certain value of one variable there corresponds one, and only one, value of the other variable. To construct the graph, as it is called, of such a table, Cartesian co-ordinates are usually employed. Two lines or axes at right angles to each other are chosen, intersecting at a point called the origin; the horizontal axis is the axis of abscissae, the vertical one the axis of ordinates. Along one, say the axis of abscissae, distances are taken from the origin corresponding to the values of one of the variables; at these points perpendiculars are erected, and along these ordinates distances are taken corresponding to the related values of the other variable. The curve drawn through these points is the graph. A general inspection of the graph shows in bold relief the essential characters of the table. For example, if the world’s production of corn over a number of years be plotted, a poor yield is represented by a depression, a rich one by a peak, a uniform one over several years by a horizontal line and so on. Moreover, such graphs permit a convenient comparison of two or more different phenomena, and the curves render apparent at first sight similarities or differences which can be made out from the tables only after close examination. In making graphs for comparison, the scales chosen must give a similar range of variation, otherwise the correspondence may not be discerned. For example, the scales adopted for the average consumption of tea and sugar must be ounces for the former and pounds for the latter. Cartesian graphs are almost always yielded by automatic recording instruments, such as the barograph, meteorograph, seismometer, &c. The method of polar co-ordinates is more rarely used, being only specially applicable when one of the variables is a direction or recorded as an angle. A simple case is the representation of photometric data, i.e. the value of the intensity of the light emitted in different directions from a luminous source (see Lighting).
The geometrical solution of arithmetical and algebraical problems is usually termed graphical analysis; the application to problems in mechanics is treated in Mechanics, § 5, Graphic Statics, and Diagram. A special phase is presented in Vector Analysis.
GRAPHITE, a mineral species consisting of the element carbon crystallized in the rhombohedral system. Chemically, it is thus indentical with the cubic mineral diamond, but between the two there are very wide differences in physical characters. Graphite is black and opaque, whilst diamond is colourless and transparent; it is one of the softest (H = 1) of minerals, and diamond the hardest of all; it is a good conductor of electricity, whilst diamond is a bad conductor. The specific gravity is 2.2, that of diamond is 3.5. Further, unlike diamond, it never occurs as distinctly developed crystals, but only as imperfect six-sided plates and scales. There is a perfect cleavage parallel to the surface of the scales, and the cleavage flakes are flexible but not elastic. The material is greasy to the touch, and soils everything with which it comes into contact. The lustre is bright and metallic. In its external characters graphite is thus strikingly similar to molybdenite (q.v.).
The name graphite, given by A. G. Werner in 1789, is from the Greek γράφειν, “to write,” because the mineral is used for making pencils. Earlier names, still in common use, are plumbago and black-lead, but since the mineral contains no lead these names are singularly inappropriate. Plumbago (Lat. plumbum, lead) was originally used for an artificial product obtained from lead ore, and afterwards for the ore (galena) itself; it was confused both with graphite and with molybdenite. The true chemical nature of graphite was determined by K. W. Scheele in 1779.
Graphite occurs mainly in the older crystalline rocks—gneiss, granulite, schist and crystalline limestone—and also sometimes in granite: it is found as isolated scales embedded in these rocks, or as large irregular masses or filling veins. It has also been observed as a product of contact-metamorphism in carbonaceous clay-slates near their contact with granite, and where igneous rocks have been intruded into beds of coal; in these cases the mineral has clearly been derived from organic matter. The graphite found in granite and in veins in gneiss, as well as that contained in meteoric irons, cannot have had such an origin. As an artificial product, graphite is well known as dark lustrous scales in grey pig-iron, and in the “kish” of iron furnaces: it is also produced artificially on a large scale, together with carborundum, in the electric furnace (see below). The graphite veins in the older crystalline rocks are probably akin to metalliferous veins and the material derived from deep-seated sources; the decomposition of metallic carbides by water and the reduction of hydrocarbon vapours have been suggested as possible modes of origin. Such veins often attain a thickness of several feet, and sometimes possess a columnar structure perpendicular to the enclosing walls; they are met with in the crystalline limestones and other Laurentian rocks of New York and Canada, in the gneisses of the Austrian Alps and the granulites of Ceylon. Other localities which have yielded the mineral in large amount are the Alibert mine in Irkutsk, Siberia and the Borrowdale mine in Cumberland. The Santa Maria mines of Sonora, Mexico, probably the richest deposits in the world, supply the American lead pencil manufacturers. The graphite of New York, Pennsylvania and Alabama is “flake” and unsuitable for this purpose.
Graphite is used for the manufacture of pencils, dry lubricants, grate polish, paints, crucibles and for foundry facings. The material as mined usually does not contain more than 20 to 50% of graphite: the ore has therefore to be crushed and the graphite floated off in water from the heavier impurities. Even the purest forms contain a small percentage of volatile matter and ash. The Cumberland graphite, which is especially suitable for pencils, contains about 12% of impurities.
(L. J. S.)
Artificial Manufacture.—The alteration of carbon at high temperatures into a material resembling graphite has long been known. In 1893 Girard and Street patented a furnace and a process by which this transformation could be effected. Carbon powder compressed into a rod was slowly passed through a tube in which it was subjected to the action of one or more electric arcs. E. G. Acheson, in 1896, patented an application of his carborundum process to graphite manufacture, and in 1899 the International Acheson Graphite Co. was formed, employing electric current from the Niagara Falls. Two procedures are adopted: (1) graphitization of moulded carbons; (2) graphitization of anthracite en masse. The former includes electrodes, lamp carbons, &c. Coke, or some other form of amorphous carbon, is mixed with a little tar, and the required article moulded in a press or by a die. The articles are stacked transversely in a furnace, each being packed in granular coke and covered with carborundum. At first the current is 3000 amperes at 220 volts, increasing to 9000 amperes at 20 volts after 20 hours. In graphitizing en masse large lumps of anthracite are treated in the electric furnace. A soft, unctuous form results on treating carbon with ash or silica in special furnaces, and this gives the so-called “deflocculated” variety when treated with gallotannic acid. These two modifications are valuable lubricants. The massive graphite is very easily machined and is widely used for electrodes, dynamo brushes, lead pencils and the like.
See “Graphite and its Uses,” Bull. Imperial Institute, (1906) P. 353. (1907) p. 70; F. Cirkel, Graphite (Ottawa, 1907).
(W. G. M.)
GRAPTOLITES, an assemblage of extinct zoophytes whose skeletal remains are found in the Palaeozoic rocks, occasionally in great abundance. They are usually preserved as branching or unbranching carbonized bodies, tree-like, leaf-like or rod-like in shape, their edges regularly toothed or denticulated. Most frequently they occur lying on the bedding planes of black shales; less commonly they are met with in many other kinds of sediment, and when in limestone they may retain much of their original relief and admit of a detailed microscopic study.
Each Graptolite represents the common horny or chitinous investment or supporting structure of a colony of zooids, each tooth-like projection marking the position of the sheath or theca of an individual zooid. Some of the branching forms have a distinct outward resemblance to the polyparies of Sertularia and Plumularia among the recent Hydroida (Calyptoblastea); in none of the unbranching forms, however, is the similarity by any means close.
The Graptolite polyparies vary considerably in size: the majority range from 1 in. to about 6 in. in length; few examples have been met with having a length or more than 30 in.
Very different views have been held as to the systematic place and rank of the Graptolites. Linnaeus included them in his group of false fossils (Graptolithus = written stone). At one time they were referred by some to the Polyzoa (Bryozoa), and later, by almost general consent, to the Hydroida (Calyptoblastea) among the Hydrozoa (Hydromedusae). Of late years an opinion is gaining ground that they may be regarded as constituting collectively an independent phylum of their own (Graptolithina).
There are two main groups, or sub-phyla: the Graptoloidea or Graptolites proper, and the Dendroidea or tree-like Graptolites; the former is typified by the unbranched genus Monograptus and the latter by the many-branched genus Dendrograptus.
A Monograptus makes its first appearance as a minute dagger-like body (the sicula), which represents the flattened covering of the primary or embryonic zooid of the colony. This sicula, which had originally the shape of a hollow cone, is formed of two portions or regions—an upper and smaller (apical or embryonic) portion, marked by delicate longitudinal lines, and having a fine tabular thread (the nema) proceeding from its apex; and a lower (thecal or apertural) portion, marked by transverse lines of growth and widening in the direction of the mouth, the lip or apertural margin of which forms the broad end of the sicula. This margin is normally furnished with a perpendicular spine (virgella) and occasionally with two shorter lateral spines or lobes.
A bud is given off from the sicula at a variable distance along its length. From this bud is developed the first zooid and first serial theca of the colony. This theca grows in the direction of the apex of the sicula, to which it adheres by its dorsal wall. Thus while the mouth of the sicula is directed downwards, that of the first serial theca is pointed upwards, making a theoretical angle of about 180° with the direction of that of the sicula.
From this first theca originates a second, opening in the same direction, and from the second a third, and soon, in a continuous linear series until the polypary is complete. Each zooid buds from the one immediately preceding it in the series, and intercommunication is effected by all the budding orifices (including that in the wall of the sicula) remaining permanently open. The sicula itself ceases to grow soon after the earliest theca have been developed; it remains permanently attached to the dorsal wall of the polypary, of which it forms the proximal end, its apex rarely reaching beyond the third or fourth theca.
A fine cylindrical rod or fibre (the so-called solid axis or virgula) becomes developed in a median groove in the dorsal wall of the polypary, and is sometimes continued distally as a naked rod. It was formerly supposed that a virgula was present in all the Graptoloidea; hence the term Rhabdophora sometimes employed for the Graptoloidea in general, and rhabdosome for the individual polypary; but while the virgula is present in many (Axonophora) it is absent as such in others (Axonolipa).
The Graptoloidea are arranged in eight families, each named after a characteristic genus: (1) Dichograptidae; (2) Leptograptidae; (3) Dicranograptidae; (4) Diplograptidae; (5) Glossograptidae (sub-family, Lasiograptidae); (6) Retiolitidae; (7) Dimorphograptidae; (8) Monograptidae.
In all these families the polypary originates as in Monograptus from a nema-bearing sicula, which invariably opens downwards and gives off only a single bud, such branching as may take place occurring at subsequent stages in the growth of the polypary. In some species young examples have been met with in which the nema ends above in a small membranous disk, which has been interpreted as an organ of attachment to the underside of floating bodies, probably sea weeds, from which the young polypary hung suspended.
Broadly speaking, these families make their first appearance in time in the order given above, and show a progressive morphological evolution along certain special lines. There is a tendency for the branches to become reduced in number, and for the serial thecae to become directed more and more upwards towards the line of the nema. In the oldest family—Dichograptidae—in which the branching polypary is bilaterally symmetrical and the thecae uniserial (monoprionidian)—there is a gradation from earlier groups with many branches to later groups with only two; and from species in which all the branches and their thecae are directed downwards, through species in which the branches become bent back more and more outwards and upwards, until in some the terminal thecae open almost vertically. In the genus Phyllograptus the branches have become reduced to four and these coalesce by their dorsal walls along the line of the nema, and the sicula becomes embedded in the base of the polypary. In the family of the Diplograptidae the branches are reduced to two; these also coalesce similarly by their dorsal walls, and the polypary thus becomes biserial (diprionidian), and the line of the nema is taken by a long axial tube-like structure, the nemacaulus or virgular tube. Finally, in the latest family, the Monograptidae, the branches are theoretically reduced to one, the polypary is uniserial throughout, and all the thecae are directed outwards and upwards.
1, Diptograptus, young sicula.
2, Monograptus dubius, sicula and first serial theca (partly restored).
3, Young form (all above after Wiman).
4a, Older form.
4b, Showing virgula (after Holm).
5, Rastrites distans.
6, Base of Diptograptus (after Wiman).
7, D. calcaratus.
8, Dimorphograptus.
9, Base of Didymograptus minulus (after Holm).
10, Young Dictyograptus, with primary disk.
11, Ibid. Diptograptus (after Ruedemann).
12 a-b, Base and transverse section, Retiolites Geinitzianus (after Holm).
13, Bryograptus Kjerulfi.
14, Dichograptus octobrachiatus, with central disk.
15, Didymograptus Murchisoni.
16, D. gibberulus.
17 a-b, Phyllograptus and transverse section.
18, Nemagraptus gracilis.
19, Dicranograptus ramosus.
20, Climacograptus Scharenbergi.
21, Glossograptus Hincksii.
22, Lasiograptus costatus (after Elles and Wood).
23, Dictyonema (-graptus) flabelliforme (-is).
24, Dictyonema (-dendron) peltatum with base of attachment.
25, D. cervicorne, branches (after Holm).
26, D. rarum (section after Wiman).
27, Dendrograptus Hallianus.
28, Synrhabdosome of Diptograptus (after Ruedemann).
S, Sicula.
u, Upper or apical portion.
l, Lower or apertural.
m, Mouth.
N, Nema.
nn, Nemacaulus or virgular tube.
V, Virgula.
vv, Virgella.
zz, Septal strands.
T, Theca.
C, Common canal (in Retiolites).
G, Gonangium.
g, Gonotheca.
b, Budding theca.
The thecae in the earliest family—Dichograptidae—are so similar in form to the sicula itself that the polypary has been compared to a colony of siculae; there is the greatest variation in shape in those of the latest family—Monograptidae—in some species of which the terminal portion of each theca becomes isolated (Rastrites) and in some coiled into a rounded lobe. The thecae in several of the families are occasionally provided with spines or lateral processes: the spines are especially conspicuous at the base in some biserial forms: in the Lasiograptidae the lateral processes originate a marginal meshwork surrounding the polypary.
Histologically, the perisarc or test in the Graptoloidea appears to be composed of three layers, a middle layer of variable structure, and an overlying and an underlying layer of remarkable tenuity. The central layer is usually thick and marked by lines of growth; but in Glossograptus and Lasiograptus it is thinned down to a fine membrane stretched upon a skeleton framework of lists and fibres, and in Retiolites this membrane is reduced to a delicate network. The groups typified by these three genera are sometimes referred to, collectively, as the Retioloidea, and the structure as retioloid.
It is the general practice of palaeontologists to regard each graptolite polypary (rhabdosome) developed from a single sicula as an individual of the highest order. Certain American forms, however, which are preserved as stellate groups, have been interpreted as complex umbrella-shaped colonial stocks, individuals of a still higher order (synrhabdosomes), composed of a number of biserial polyparies (each having a sicula at its outer extremity) attached by their nemacauli to a common centre of origin, which is provided with two disks, a swimming bladder and a ring of capsules.
In the Dendroidea, as a rule, the polypary is non-symmetrical in shape and tree-like or shrub-like in habit, with numerous branches irregularly disposed, and with a distinct stem-like or short basal portion ending below in root-like fibres or in a membranous disk or sheet of attachment. An exception, however, is constituted by the comprehensive genus Dictyonema, which embraces species composed of a large number of divergent and sub-parallel branches, united by transverse dissepiments into a symmetrical cone-like or funnel-shaped polypary, and includes some forms (Dictyograptus) which originate from a nema-bearing sicula and have been claimed as belonging to the Graptoloidea.
Of the early development of the polypary in the Dendroidea little is known, but the more mature stages have been fully worked out. In Dictyonema the branches show thecae of two kinds: (1) the ordinary tubular thecae answering to those of the Graptoloidea and occupied by the nourishing zooids; and (2) the so-called bithecae, birdnest-like cups (regarded by their discoverers as gonothecae) opening alternately right and left of the ordinary thecae. Internally, there existed a third set of thecae, held to have been inhabited by the budding individuals. In the genus Dendrograptus the gonothecae open within the walls of the ordinary thecae, and the branches present an outward resemblance to those of the uniserial Graptoloidea. But in striking contrast to what obtains among the Graptoloidea in general, the budding orifices in the Dendroidea become closed, and all the various cells shut off from each other.
The classification of the Dendroidea is as yet unsatisfactory: the families most conspicuous are those typified by the genera Dendrograptus, Dictyonema, Inocaulis and Thamnograptus.
As regards the modes of reproduction among the Graptolites little is known. In the Dendroidea, as already pointed out, the bithecae were possibly gonothecae, but they have been interpreted by some as nematophores. In the Graptoloidea certain lateral and vesicular appendages of the polypary in the Lasiograptidae have been looked upon as connected with the reproductive system; and in the umbrella-shaped synrhabdosomes already referred to, the common centre is surrounded by a ring of what have been regarded as ovarian capsules. The theory of the gonangial nature of the vesicular bodies in the Graptoloidea is, however, disputed by some authorities, and it has been suggested that the zooid of the sicula itself is not the product of the normal or sexual mode of propagation in the group, but owes its origin to a peculiar type of budding or non-sexual reproduction, in which, as temporary resting or protecting structures, the vesicular bodies may have had a share.
As respects the mode of life of the Graptolites there can be little doubt that the Dendroidea were, with some exceptions, sessile or benthonic animals, their polyparies, like those of the recent Calyptoblastea, growing upwards, their bases remaining attached to the sea floor or to foreign bodies, usually fixed. The Graptoloidea have also been regarded by some as benthonic organisms. A more prevalent view, however, is that the majority were pseudo-planktonic or drifting colonies, hanging from the underside of floating seaweeds; their polyparies being each suspended by the nema in the earliest stages of growth, and, in later stages, some by the nemacaulus, while others became adherent above by means of a central disk or by parts of their dorsal walls. Some of these ancient seaweeds may have remained permanently rooted in the littoral regions, while others may have become broken off and drifted, like the recent Sargassum, at the mercy of the winds and currents, carrying the attached Graptolites into all latitudes. The more complex umbrella-shaped colonies of colonies (synrhabdosomes) described as provided with a common swimming bladder (pneumatophore?) may have attained a holo-planktonic or free-swimming mode of existence.
The range of the Graptolites in time extends from the Cambrian to the Carboniferous. The Dendroidea alone, however, have this extended range, the Graptoloidea becoming extinct at the close of Silurian time. Both groups make their first appearance together near the end of the Cambrian; but while in the succeeding Ordovician and Silurian the Dendroidea are comparatively rare, the Graptoloidea become the most characteristic and, locally, the most abundant fossils of these systems.
The species of the Graptoloidea have individually a remarkably short range in geological time; but the geographical distribution of the group as a whole, and that of many of its species, is almost world-wide. This combination of circumstances has given the Graptoloidea a paramount stratigraphical importance as palaeontological indices of the detailed sequence and correlation of the Lower Palaeozoic rocks in general. Many Graptolite zones, showing a constant uniformity of succession, paralleled in this respect only by the longer known Ammonite zones of the Jurassic, have been distinguished in Britain and northern Europe, each marked by a characteristic species. Many British species and associations of genera and species, occurring on corresponding horizons to those on which they are found in Britain, have been met with in the graptolite-bearing Lower Palaeozoic formations of other parts of Europe, in America, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.
Bibliography.—Linnaeus, Systema naturae (12th ed. 1768); Hall, Graptolites of the Quebec Group (1865); Barrande, Graptolites de Bohème (1850); Carruthers, Revision of the British Graptolites (1868); H. A. Nicholson, Monograph of British Graptolites, pt. 1 (1872); id. and J. E. Marr, Phylogeny of the Graptolites (1895); Hopkinson, On British Graptolites (1869); Allman, Monograph of Gymnoblastic Hydroids (1872); Lapworth, An Improved Classification of the Rhabdophora (1873); The Geological Distribution of the Rhabdophora (1879, 1880); Walther, Lebensweise fossiler Meerestiere (1897); Tullberg, Skånes Grapioliter (1882, 1883); Törnquist, Graptolites Scanian Rastrites Beds (1899); Wiman, Die Graptolithen (1895); Holm, Gotlands Graptoliter (1890); Perner, Graptolites de Bohème (1894-1899); R. Ruedemann, Development and Mode of Growth of Diplograptus (1895-1896); Graptolites of New York, vol. i. (1904), vol. ii. (1908); Frech, Lethaea palaeozoica, Graptolithiden (1897); Elles and Wood, Monograph of British Graptolites (1901-1909).
(C. L.*)
GRASLITZ (Czech, Kraslice), a town of Bohemia, on the Zwodau, 145 m. N.W. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 11,803, exclusively German. Graslitz is one of the most important industrial towns of Bohemia, its specialities being the manufacture of musical instruments, carried on both as a factory and a domestic industry, and lace-making. Next in importance are cotton-spinning and weaving, machine embroidery, brewing, and the mother-of-pearl industry.
GRASMERE, a village and lake of Westmorland, in the heart of the English Lake District. The village (pop. of urban district in 1901, 781) lies near the head of the lake, on the small river Rothay and the Keswick-Ambleside road, 12½ m. from Keswick and 4 from Ambleside. The scenery is very beautiful; the valley about the lakes of Grasmere and Rydal Water is in great part wooded, while on its eastern flank there rises boldly the range of hills which includes Rydal Fell, Fairfield and Seat Sandal, and, farther north, Helvellyn. On the west side are Loughrigg Fell and Silver How. The village has become a favourite centre for tourists, but preserves its picturesque and sequestered appearance. In a house still standing William Wordsworth lived from 1799 to 1808, and it was subsequently occupied by Thomas de Quincey and by Hartley Coleridge. Wordsworth’s tomb, and also that of Coleridge, are in the churchyard of the ancient church of St Oswald, which contains a memorial to Wordsworth with an inscription by John Keble. A festival called the Rushbearing takes place on the Saturday within the octave of St Oswald’s day (August 5th), when a holiday is observed and the church decorated with rushes, heather and flowers. The festival is of early origin, and has been derived by some from the Roman Floralia, but appears also to have been made the occasion for carpeting the floors of churches, unpaved in early times, with rushes. Moreover, in a procession which forms part of the festivities at Grasmere, certain Biblical stories are symbolized, and in this a connexion with the ancient miracle plays may be found (see H. D. Rawnsley, A Rambler’s Note-Book at the English Lakes, Glasgow, 1902). Grasmere is also noted for an athletic meeting in August.
The lake of Grasmere is just under 1 m. in length, and has an extreme breadth of 766 yds. A ridge divides the basin from north to south, and rises so high as to form an island about the middle. The greatest depth of the lake (75 ft.) lies to the east of this ridge.
GRASS AND GRASSLAND, in agriculture. The natural vegetable covering of the soil in most countries is “grass” (for derivation see Grasses) of various kinds. Even where dense forest or other growth exists, if a little daylight penetrates to the ground grass of some sort or another will grow. On ordinary farms, or wherever farming of any kind is carried out, the proportion of the land not actually cultivated will either be in grass or will revert naturally to grass in time if left alone, after having been cultivated.
Pasture land has always been an important part of the farm, but since the “era of cheap corn” set in its importance has been increased, and much more attention has been given to the study of the different species of grass, their characteristics, the improvement of a pasture generally, and the “laying down” of arable land into grass where tillage farming has not paid. Most farmers desire a proportion of grass-land on their farms—from a third to a half of the area—and even on wholly arable farms there are usually certain courses in the rotation of crops devoted to grass (or clover). Thus the Norfolk 4-course rotation is corn, roots, corn, clover; the Berwick 5-course is corn, roots, corn, grass, grass; the Ulster 8-course, corn, flax, roots, corn, flax, grass, grass, grass; and so on, to the point where the grass remains down for 5 years, or is left indefinitely.
Permanent grass may be grazed by live-stock and classed as pasture pure and simple, or it may be cut for hay. In the latter case it is usually classed as “meadow” land, and often forms an alluvial tract alongside a stream, but as grass is often grazed and hayed in alternate years, the distinction is not a hard and fast one.
There are two classes of pasturage, temporary and permanent. The latter again consists of two kinds, the permanent grass natural to land that has never been cultivated, and the pasture that has been laid down artificially on land previously arable and allowed to remain and improve itself in the course of time. The existence of ridge and furrow on many old pastures in Great Britain shows that they were cultivated at one time, though perhaps more than a century ago. Often a newly laid down pasture will decline markedly in thickness and quality about the fifth and sixth year, and then begin to thicken and improve year by year afterwards. This is usually attributed to the fact that the unsuitable varieties die out, and the “naturally” suitable varieties only come in gradually. This trouble can be largely prevented, however, by a judicious selection of seed, and by subsequently manuring with phosphatic manures, with farmyard or other bulky “topdressings,” or by feeding sheep with cake and corn over the field.
All the grasses proper belong to the natural order Gramineae (see Grasses), to which order also belong all the “corn” plants cultivated throughout the world, also many others, such as bamboo, sugar-cane, millet, rice, &c. &c., which yield food for mankind. Of the grasses which constitute pastures and hay-fields over a hundred species are classified by botanists in Great Britain, with many varieties in addition, but the majority of these, though often forming a part of natural pastures, are worthless or inferior for farming purposes. The grasses of good quality which should form a “sole” in an old pasture and provide the bulk of the forage on a newly laid down piece of grass are only about a dozen in number (see below), and of these there are only some six species of the very first importance and indispensable in a “prescription” of grass seeds intended for laying away land in temporary or permanent pasture. Dr W. Fream caused a botanical examination to be made of several of the most celebrated pastures of England, and, contrary to expectation, found that their chief constituents were ordinary perennial ryegrass and white clover. Many other grasses and legumes were present, but these two formed an overwhelming proportion of the plants.
In ordinary usage the term grass, pasturage, hay, &c., includes many varieties of clover and other members of the natural order Leguminosae as well as other “herbs of the field,” which, though not strictly “grasses,” are always found in a grass field, and are included in mixtures of seeds for pasture and meadows. The following is a list of the most desirable or valuable agricultural grasses and clovers, which are either actually sown or, in the case of old pastures, encouraged to grow by draining, liming, manuring, and so on:—
Grasses.
Alopecurus pratensis Meadow foxtail.
Anthoxanthum odoratum Sweet vernal grass.
Avena elatior Tall oat-grass.
Avena flavescens Golden oat-grass.
Cynosurus cristatus Crested dogstail.
Dactylis glomerata Cocksfoot.
Festuca duriuscula Hard fescue.
Festuca elatior Tall fescue.
Festuca ovina Sheep’s fescue.
Festuca pratensis Meadow fescue.
Lolium italicum Italian ryegrass.
Phleum pratense Timothy or catstail.
Poa nemoralis Wood meadow-grass.
Poa pratensis Smooth meadow-grass.
Poa trivialis Rough meadow-grass.
Clovers, &c.
Medicago lupulina Trefoil or “Nonsuch.”
Medicago sativa Lucerne (Alfalfa).
Trifolium hybridum Alsike clover.
Trifolium pratense Broad red clover.
Trifolium pratense Perennial clover.
Trifolium perennne
Trifolium incarnatum Crimson clover or “Trifolium.”
Trifolium procumbens Yellow Hop-trefoil.
Trifolium repens White or Dutch clover.
Achillea Millefolium Yarrow or Milfoil.
Anthyllis vulneraria Kidney-vetch.
Lotus major Greater Birdsfoot Trefoil.
Lotus corniculatus Lesser Birdsfoot Trefoil.
Carum petroselinum Field parsley.
Plantago lanceolata Plantain.
Cichorium intybus Chicory.
Poterium officinale Burnet.
The predominance of any particular species is largely determined by climatic circumstances, the nature of the soil and the treatment it receives. In limestone regions sheep’s fescue has been found to predominate; on wet clay soil the dog’s bent (Agrostis canina) is common; continuous manuring with nitrogenous manures kills out the leguminous plants and stimulates such grasses as cocksfoot; manuring with phosphates stimulates the clovers and other legumes; and so on. Manuring with basic slag at the rate of from 5 to 10 cwt. per acre has been found to give excellent results on poor clays and peaty soils. Basic slag is a by-product of the Bessemer steel process, and is rich in a soluble form of phosphate of lime (tetra-phosphate) which specially stimulates the growth of clovers and other legumes, and has renovated many inferior pastures.
In the Rothamsted experiments continuous manuring with “mineral manures” (no nitrogen) on an old meadow has reduced the grasses from 71 to 64% of the whole, while at the same time it has increased the Leguminosae from 7% to 24%. On the other hand, continuous use of nitrogenous manure in addition to “minerals” has raised the grasses to 94% of the total and reduced the legumes to less than 1%.
As to the best kinds of grasses, &c., to sow in making a pasture out of arable land, experiments at Cambridge, England, have demonstrated that of the many varieties offered by seedsmen only a very few are of any permanent value. A complex mixture of tested seeds was sown, and after five years an examination of the pasture showed that only a few varieties survived and made the “sole” for either grazing or forage. These varieties in the order of their importance were:—
Cocksfoot 26
Perennial rye grass 16
Meadow fescue 13
Hard fescue 9
Crested dogstail 8
Timothy 6
White clover 4
Meadow foxtail 2
The figures represent approximate percentages.
Before laying down grass it is well to examine the species already growing round the hedges and adjacent fields. An inspection of this sort will show that the Cambridge experiments are very conclusive, and that the above species are the only ones to be depended on. Occasionally some other variety will be prominent, but if so there will be a special local reason for this.
On the other hand, many farmers when sowing down to grass like to have a good bulk of forage for the first year or two, and therefore include several of the clovers, lucerne, Italian ryegrass, evergreen ryegrass, &c., knowing that these will die out in the course of years and leave the ground to the more permanent species.
There are also several mixtures of “seeds” (the technical name given on the farm to grass-seeds) which have been adopted with success in laying down permanent pasture in some localities.
Young. De Laune. Leicester. Elliot. Cambridge
average. General
purpose
mixture.
Cocksfoot .. 8 4 8 8 4
Perennial ryegrass .. .. 2 6 10 10
Meadow fescue .. 6 2 .. 5 ..
Hard fescue .. 1 1 2 3 ..
Crested dogstail 3 2 .. 1 3 ..
Timothy .. 3 1 .. 2 2
Meadow foxtail .. 10 .. .. 1 1
Tall fescue .. 3 1 3½ .. 2
Tall oat grass .. .. 1 3 .. ..
Italian ryegrass .. .. 2 .. .. 5
Smooth meadow grass .. .. .. 1 .. ..
Rough meadow grass .. 1 .. 1 .. ..
Golden oat grass .. .. ¼ 1 .. ..
Sheep’s fescue .. 1 .. .. .. ..
Broad red clover .. 1 .. .. .. 2
Perennial red clover .. 1 .. 1½ .. 2
Alsike .. 1 1½ 1 .. 2
Lucerne (Alfalfa) .. .. .. .. .. 8
White clover 4 1 1 2 2 2
Kidney vetch 6 .. .. 2½ .. ..
Sheep’s parsley .. .. .. 1 .. ..
Yarrow 1 1 ¼ 1 .. ..
Burnet 8 .. .. 8 .. ..
Chicory 4 .. .. 2½ .. ..
Plantain 4 .. .. .. .. ..
Total ℔ per acre 30 40 17 40 30 40
Arthur Young more than 100 years ago made out one to suit chalky hillsides; Mr Faunce de Laune (Sussex) in our days was the first to study grasses and advocated leaving out ryegrass of all kinds; Lord Leicester adopted a cheap mixture suitable for poor land with success; Mr Elliot (Kelso) has introduced many deep-rooted “herbs” in his mixture with good results. Typical examples of such mixtures are given on preceding page.
Temporary pastures are commonly resorted to for rotation purposes, and in these the bulky fast-growing and short-lived grasses and clovers are given the preference. Three examples of temporary mixtures are given below.
One
year. Two
years. Three
or four
years.
Italian ryegrass 14 10 6
Cocksfoot 2 4 6
Timothy .. 2 3
Broad red clover 8 5 3
Alsike 3 2 2
Trefoil 3 2 2
Perennial ryegrass .. 5 10
Meadow fescue .. 2 2
Perennial red clover .. 2 2
White clover .. 1 2
Meadow foxtail .. 1 2
Total ℔ per acre 30 36 40
Where only a one-year hay is required, broad red clover is often grown, either alone or mixed with a little Italian ryegrass, while other forage crops, like trefoil and trifolium, are often grown alone.
In Great Britain a heavy clay soil is usually preferred for pasture, both because it takes most kindly to grass and because the expense of cultivating it makes it unprofitable as arable land when the price of corn is low. On light soil the plant frequently suffers from drought in summer, the want of moisture preventing it from obtaining proper root-hold. On such soil the use of a heavy roller is advantageous, and indeed on any soil excepting heavy clay frequent rolling is beneficial to the grass, as it promotes the capillary action of the soil-particles and the consequent ascension of ground-water.
In addition, the grass on the surface helps to keep the moisture from being wasted by the sun’s heat.
The graminaceous crops of western Europe generally are similar to those enumerated. Elsewhere in Europe are found certain grasses, such as Hungarian brome, which are suitable for introduction into the British Isles. The grasses of the American prairies also include many plants not met with in Great Britain. Some half-dozen species are common to both countries: Kentucky “blue-grass” is the British Poa pratensis; couch grass (Triticum repens) grows plentifully without its underground runners; bent (Agrostis vulgaris) forms the famous “red-top,” and so on. But the American buffalo-grass, the Canadian buffalo-grass, the “bunch” grasses, “squirrel-tail” and many others which have no equivalents in the British Islands, form a large part of the prairie pasturage. There is not a single species of true clover found on the prairies, though cultivated varieties can be introduced.
(P. McC.)
GRASSE, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH PAUL, Marquis de Grassetilly, Comte de (1722-1788), French sailor, was born at Bar, in the present department of the Alpes Maritimes. In 1734 he took service on the galleys of the order of Malta, and in 1740 entered the service of France, being promoted to chief of squadron in 1779. He took part in the naval operations of the American War of Independence, and distinguished himself in the battles of Dominica and Saint Lucia (1780), and of Tobago (1781). He was less fortunate at St Kitts, where he was defeated by Admiral Hood. Shortly afterwards, in April 1782, he was defeated and taken prisoner by Admiral Rodney. Some months later he returned to France, published a Mémoire justificatif, and was acquitted by a court-martial (1784). He died at Paris in January 1788.
His son Alexandre de Grasse, published a Notice bibliographique sur l’amiral comte de Grasse d’après les documents inédits in 1840. See G. Lacour-Gayet, La Marine militaire de la France sous le règne de Louis XV (Paris, 1902).
GRASSE, a town in the French department of the Alpes Maritimes (till 1860 in that of the Var), 12½ m. by rail N. of Cannes. Pop. (1906) town, 13,958; commune, 20,305. It is built in a picturesque situation, in the form of an amphitheatre and at a height o£ 1066 ft. above the sea, on the southern slope of a hill, facing the Mediterranean. In the older (eastern) part of the town the streets are narrow, steep and winding, but the new portion (western) is laid out in accordance with modern French ideas. It possesses a remarkably mild and salubrious climate, and is well supplied with water. That used for the purpose of the factories comes from the fine spring of Foux. But the drinking water used in the higher portions of the town flows, by means of a conduit, from the Foulon stream, one of the sources of the Loup. Grasse was from 1244 (when the see was transferred hither from Antibes) to 1790 an episcopal see, but was then included in the diocese of Fréjus till 1860, when politically as well as ecclesiastically, the region was annexed to the newly-formed department of the Alpes Maritimes. It still possesses a 12th-century cathedral, now a simple parish church; while an ancient tower, of uncertain date, rises close by near the town hall, which was formerly the bishop’s palace (13th century). There is a good town library, containing the muniments of the abbey of Lérins, on the island of St Honorat opposite Cannes. In the chapel of the old hospital are three pictures by Rubens. The painter J. H. Fragonard (1732-1806) was a native of Grasse, and some of his best works were formerly to be seen here (now in America). Grasse is particularly celebrated for its perfumery. Oranges and roses are cultivated abundantly in the neighbourhood. It is stated that the preparation of attar of roses (which costs nearly £100 per 2 ℔) requires alone nearly 7,000,000 roses a year. The finest quality of olive oil is also manufactured at Grasse.
(W. A. B. C.)
GRASSES, a group of plants possessing certain characters in common and constituting a family (Gramineae) of the class Monocotyledons. It is one of the largest and most widespread and, from an economic point of view, the most important family of flowering plants. No plant is correctly termed a grass which is not a member of this family, but the word is in common language also used, generally in combination, for many plants of widely different affinities which possess some resemblance (often slight) in foliage to true grasses; e.g. knot-grass (Polygonum aviculare), cotton-grass (Eriophorum), rib-grass (Plantago), scorpion-grass (Myosotis), blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium), sea-grass (Zostera). The grass-tree of Australia (Xanthorrhoea) is a remarkable plant, allied to the rushes in the form of its flower, but with a tall, unbranched, soft-woody, palm-like trunk bearing a crown of long, narrow, grass-like leaves and stalked heads of small, densely-crowded flowers. In agriculture the word has an extended signification to include the various fodder-plants, chiefly leguminous, often called “artificial grasses.” Indeed, formerly grass (also spelt gwrs, gres, gyrs in the old herbals) meant any green herbaceous plant of small size.
Yet the first attempts at a classification of plants recognized and separated a group of Gramina, and this, though bounded by nothing more definite than habit and general appearance, contained the Gramineae of modern botanists. The older group, however, even with such systematists as Ray (1703), Scheuchzer (1719), and Micheli (1729), embraced in addition the Cyperaceae (Sedge family), Juncaceae (Rush family), and some other monocotyledons with inconspicuous flowers. Singularly enough, the sexual system of Linnaeus (1735) served to mark off more distinctly the true grasses from these allies, since very nearly all of the former then known fell under his Triandria Digynia, whilst the latter found themselves under his other classes and orders.
I. Structure.—The general type of true grasses is familiar in the cultivated cereals of temperate climates—wheat, barley, rye, oats, and in the smaller plants which make up pastures and meadows and form a principal factor of the turf of natural downs. Less familiar are the grains of warmer climates—rice, maize, millet and sorgho, or the sugar-cane. Still farther removed are the bamboos of the tropics, the columnar stems of which reach to the height of forest trees. All are, however, formed on a common plan.
Root.—Most cereals and many other grasses are annual, and possess a tuft of very numerous slender root-fibres, much branched and of great length. The majority of the members of the family are of longer duration, and have the roots also fibrous, but fewer, thicker and less branched. In such cases they are very generally given off from just above each node (often in a circle) of the lower part of the stem or rhizome, perforating the leaf-sheaths. In some bamboos they are very numerous from the lower nodes of the erect culms, and pass downwards to the soil, whilst those from the upper nodes shrivel up and form circles of spiny fibres.
Stem.—The underground stem or rootstock (rhizome) of perennial grasses is usually well developed, and often forms very long creeping or subterranean rhizomes, with elongated internodes and sheathing scales; the widely-creeping, slender rhizomes in Marram-grass (Psamma), Agropyrum junceum, Elymus arenarius, and other sand-loving plants render them useful as sand-binders. It is also frequently short, with the nodes crowded. The turf-formation, which is characteristic of open situations in cool temperate climates, results from an extensive production of short stolons, the branches and the fibrous roots developed from their nodes forming the dense “sod.” The very large rhizome of the bamboos (fig. 1) is also a striking example of “definite” growth; it is much branched, the short, thick, curved branches being given off below the apex of the older ones and at right angles to them, the whole forming a series of connected arched axes, truncate at their ends, which were formerly continued into leafy culms. The rhizome is always solid, and has the usual internal structure of the monocotyledonous stem. In the cases of branching just cited the branches break directly through the sheath of the leaf in connexion with which they arise. In other cases the branches grow upwards through the sheaths which they ultimately split from above, and emerging as aerial shoots give a tufted habit to the plant. Good examples are the oat, cock’s-foot (Dactylis) and other British grasses. This mode of growth is the cause of the “tillering” of cereals, or the production of a large number of erect growing branches from the lower nodes of the young stem. Isolated tufts or tussocks are also characteristic of steppe—and savanna—vegetation and open places generally in the warmer parts of the earth.
The aerial leaf-bearing branches (culms) are a characteristic feature of grasses. They are generally numerous, erect, cylindrical (rarely flattened) and conspicuously jointed with evident nodes. The nodes are solid, a strong plate of tissue passing across the stem, but the internodes are commonly hollow, although examples of completely solid stems are not uncommon (e.g. maize, many Andropogons, sugar-cane). The swollen nodes are a characteristic feature. In wheat, barley and most of the British native grasses they are a development, not of the culm, but of the base of the leaf-sheath. The function of the nodes is to raise again culms which have become bent down; they are composed of highly turgescent tissue, the cells of which elongate on the side next the earth when the culm is placed in a horizontal or oblique position, and thus raise the culm again to an erect position. The internodes continue to grow in length, especially the upper ones, for some time; the increase takes place in a zone at the extreme base, just above the node. The exterior of the culms is more or less concealed by the leaf-sheaths; it is usually smooth and often highly polished, the epidermal cells containing an amount of silica sufficient to leave after burning a distinct skeleton of their structure. Tabasheer is a white substance mainly composed of silica, found in the joints of several bamboos. A few of the lower internodes may become enlarged and sub-globular, forming nutriment-stores, and grasses so characterized are termed “bulbous” (Arrhenatherum, Poa bulbosa, &c.). In internal structure grass-culms, save in being hollow, conform to that usual in monocotyledons; the vascular bundles run parallel in the internodes, but a horizontal interlacement occurs at the nodes. In grasses of temperate climates branching is rare at the upper nodes of the culm, but it is characteristic of the bamboos and many tropical grasses. The branches are strictly distichous. In many bamboos they are long and spreading or drooping and copiously ramified, in others they are reduced to hooked spines. One genus (Dinochloa, a native of the Malay archipelago) is scandent, and climbs over trees 100 ft. or more in height, Olyra latifolia, a widely-spread tropical species, is also a climber on a humbler scale.
Grass-culms grow with great rapidity, as is most strikingly seen in bamboos, where a height of over 100 ft. is attained in from two to three months, and many species grow two, three or even more feet in twenty-four hours. Silicic hardening does not begin till the full height is nearly attained. The largest bamboo recorded is 170 ft., and the diameter is usually reckoned at about 4 in. to each 50 ft.
Leaves.—These present special characters usually sufficient for ordinal determination. They are solitary at each node and arranged in two rows, the lower often crowded, forming a basal tuft. They consist of two distinct portions, the sheath and the blade. The sheath is often of great length, and generally completely surrounds the culm, forming a firm protection for the internode, the younger basal portion of which, including the zone of growth, remains tender for some time. As a rule it is split down its whole length, thus differing from that of Cyperaceae which is almost invariably (Eriospora is an exception) a complete tube; in some grasses, however (species of Poa, Bromus and others), the edges are united. The sheaths are much dilated in Alopecurus vaginatus and in a species of Potamochloa, in the latter, an East Indian aquatic grass, serving as floats. At the summit of the sheath, above the origin of the blade, is the ligule, a usually membranous process of small size (occasionally reaching 1 in. in length) erect and pressed around the culm. It is rarely quite absent, but may be represented by a tuft of hairs (very conspicuous in Pariana). It serves to prevent rain-water, which has run down the blade, from entering the sheath. Melica uniflora has in addition to the ligule, a green erect tongue-like process, from the line of junction of the edges of the sheath.
Fig. 2.—Magnified transverse section of one-half of a leaf-blade of Festuca rubra. The dark portions represent supporting and conducting tissue; the upper face bears furrows, at the bottom of each of which are seen the motor cells m.
The blade is frequently wanting or small and imperfect in the basal leaves, but in the rest is long and set on to the sheath at an angle. The usual form is familiar—sessile, more or less ribbon-shaped, tapering to a point, and entire at the edge. The chief modifications are the articulation of the deciduous blade on to the sheath, which occurs in all the Bambuseae (except Planotia) and in Spartina stricta; and the interposition of a petiole between the sheath and the blade, as in bamboos, Leptaspis, Pharus, Pariana, Lophatherum and others. In the latter case the leaf usually becomes oval, ovate or even cordate or sagittate, but these forms are found in sessile leaves also (Olyra, Panicum). The venation is strictly parallel, the midrib usually strong, and the other ribs more slender. In Anomochloa there are several nearly equal ribs and in some broad-leaved grasses (Bambuseae, Pharus, Leptaspis) the venation becomes tesselated by transverse connecting veins. The tissue is often raised above the veins, forming longitudinal ridges, generally on the upper face; the stomata are in lines in the intervening furrows. The thick prominent veins in Agropyrum occupy the whole upper surface of the leaf. Epidermal appendages are rare, the most frequent being marginal, saw-like, cartilaginous teeth, usually minute, but occasionally (Danthonia scabra, Panicum serratum) so large as to give the margin a serrate appearance. The leaves are occasionally woolly, as in Alopecurus lanatus and one or two Panicums. The blade is often twisted, frequently so much so that the upper and under faces become reversed. In dry-country grasses the blades are often folded on the midrib, or rolled up. The rolling is effected by bands of large wedge-shaped cells—motor-cells—between the nerves, the loss of turgescence by which, as the air dries, causes the blade to curl towards the face on which they occur. The rolling up acts as a protection from too great loss of water, the exposed surface being specially protected to this end by a strong cuticle, the majority or all of the stomata occurring on the protected surface. The stiffness of the blade, which becomes very marked in dry-country grasses, is due to the development of girders of thick-walled mechanical tissue which follow the course of all or the principal veins (fig. 2).
Inflorescence.—This possesses an exceptional importance in grasses, since, their floral envelopes being much reduced and the sexual organs of very great uniformity, the characters employed for classification are mainly derived from the arrangement of the flowers and their investing bracts. Various interpretations have been given to these glumaceous organs and different terms employed for them by various writers. It may, however, be considered as settled that the whole of the bodies known as glumes and paleae, and distichously arranged externally to the flower, form no part of the floral envelopes, but are of the nature of bracts. These are arranged so as to form spikelets (locustae), and each spikelet may contain one, as in Agrostis (fig. 3) two, as in Aira (fig. 4) three, or a great number of flowers, as in Briza (fig. 5) Triticum (fig. 6); in some species of Eragrostis there are nearly 60. The flowers are, as a rule, placed laterally on the axis (rachilla) of the spikelet, but in one-flowered spikelets they appear to be terminal, and are probably really so in Anthoxanthum (fig. 7) and in two anomalous genera, Anomochloa and Streptochaeta.
Fig. 7.—Spikelet of Anthoxanthum (enlarged) without the two lower barren glumes, showing the two upper awned barren glumes (g) and the flower.
In immediate relation with the flower itself, and often entirely concealing it, is the palea or pale (“upper pale” of most systematic agrostologists). This organ (fig. 13, 1) is peculiar to grasses among Glumiflorae (the series to which belong the two families Gramineae and Cyperaceae), and is almost always present, certain Oryzeae and Phalarideae being the only exceptions. It is of thin membranous consistence, usually obtuse, often bifid, and possesses no central rib or nerve, but has two lateral ones, one on either side; the margins are frequently folded in at the ribs, which thus become placed at the sharp angles. This structure was formerly regarded as pointing to the fusion of two organs, and the pale was considered by Robert Brown to represent two portions soldered together of a trimerous perianth-whorl, the third portion being the “lower pale.” The pale is now generally considered to represent the single bracteole, characteristic of Monocotyledons, the binerved structure being the result of the pressure of the axis of the spikelet during the development of the pale, as in Iris and others.
The flower with its pale is sessile, and is placed in the axis of another bract in such a way that the pale is exactly opposed to it, though at a slightly higher level. It is this second bract or flowering glume which has been generally called by systematists the “lower pale,” and with the “upper pale” was formerly considered to form an outer floral envelope (“calyx,” Jussieu; “perianthium,” Brown). The two bracts are, however, on different axes, one secondary to the other, and cannot therefore be parts of one whorl of organs. They are usually quite unlike one another, but in some genera (e.g. most Festuceae) are very similar in shape and appearance.
Fig. 8.—Spikelet of Stipa pennata. The pair of barren glumes (b) are separated from the flowering glume, which bears a long awn, twisted below the knee and feathery above. About ¾ nat. size.
The flowering glume has generally a more or less boat-shaped form, is of firm consistence, and possesses a well-marked central midrib and frequently several lateral ones. The midrib in a large proportion of genera extends into an appendage termed the awn (fig. 4), and the lateral veins more rarely extend beyond the glume as sharp points (e.g. Pappophorum). The form of the flowering glume is very various, this organ being plastic and extensively modified in different genera. It frequently extends downwards a little on the rachilla, forming with the latter a swollen callus, which is separated from the free portion by a furrow. In Leptaspis it is formed into a closed cavity by the union of its edges, and encloses the flower, the styles projecting through the pervious summit. Valuable characters for distinguishing genera are obtained from the awn. This presents itself variously developed from a mere subulate point to an organ several inches in length, and when complete (as in Andropogoneae, Aveneae and Stipeae) consists of two well-marked portions, a lower twisted part and a terminal straight portion, usually set in at an angle with the former, sometimes trifid and occasionally beautifully feathery (fig. 8). The lower part is most often suppressed, and in the large group of the Paniceae awns of any sort are very rarely seen. The awn may be either terminal or may come off from the back of the flowering glume, and Duval Jouve’s observations have shown that it represents the blade of the leaf of which the portion of the flowering glume below its origin is the sheath; the twisted part (so often suppressed) corresponds with the petiole, and the portion of the glume extending beyond the origin of the awn (very long in some species, e.g. of Danthonia) with the ligule of the developed foliage-leaf. When terminal the awn has three fibro-vascular bundles, when dorsal only one; it is covered with stomate-bearing epidermis.
Fig. 9 (left).—Spikelet of Leersia. f, Flowering glume; p, pale.
Fig. 10 (right).—Spikelet of Setaria, with an abortive branch (h) beneath it. b, Barren glumes; f, flowering glume; p, pale.
The flower with its palea is thus sessile in the axil of a floriferous glume, and in a few grasses (Leersia (fig. 9), Coleanthus, Nardus) the spikelet consists of nothing more, but usually (even in uniflorous spikelets) other glumes are present. Of these the two placed distichously opposite each other at the base of the spikelet never bear any flower in their axils, and are called the empty or barren glumes (figs. 3, 8). They are the “glumes” of most writers, and together form what was called the “gluma” by R. Brown. They rarely differ much from one another, but one may be smaller or quite absent (Panicum, Setaria (fig. 10), Paspalum, Lolium), or both be altogether suppressed, as above noticed. They are commonly firm and strong, often enclose the spikelet, and are rarely provided with long points or imperfect awns. Generally speaking they do not share in the special modifications of the flowering glumes, and rarely themselves undergo modification, chiefly in hardening of portions (Sclerachne, Manisuris, Anthephora, Peltophorum), so as to afford greater protection to the flowers or fruit. But it is usual to find, besides the basal glumes, a few other empty ones, and these are in two- or more-flowered spikelets (see Triticum, fig. 6) at the top of the rhachilla (numerous in Lophatherum), or in uniflorous ones (fig. 10) below and interposed between the floral glume and the basal pair.
The axis of the spikelet is frequently jointed and breaks up into articulations above each flower. Tufts or borders of hairs are frequently present (Calamagrostis, Phragmites, Andropogon), and are often so long as to surround and conceal the flowers (fig. 11). The axis is often continued beyond the last flower or glume as a bristle or stalk.
Fig. 11.—Spikelet of Reed (Phragmites communis) opened out.
a, b, Barren glumes.
c, c, Fertile glumes, each enclosing one flower with its pale d.
Note the zigzag axis (rhachilla) bearing long silky hairs.
Involucres or organs outside the spikelets also occur, and are formed in various ways. Thus in Setaria (fig. 10), Pennisetum, &c., the one or more circles of simple or feathery hairs represent abortive branches of the inflorescence; in Cenchrus (fig. 12) these become consolidated, and the inner ones flattened so as to form a very hard globular spiny case to the spikelets. The cup-shaped involucre of Cornucopia is a dilatation of the axis into a hollow receptacle with a raised border. In Cynosurus (Dog’s tail) the pectinate involucre which conceals the spikelet is a barren or abortive spikelet. Bracts of a more general character subtending branches of the inflorescence are singularly rare in Gramineae, in marked contrast with Cyperaceae, where they are so conspicuous. They however occur in a whole section of Andropogon, in Anomochloa, and at the base of the spike in Sesleria. The remarkable ovoid involucre of Coix, which becomes of stony hardness, white and polished (then known as “Job’s tears,” q.v.), is also a modified bract or leaf-sheath. It is closed except at the apex, and contains the female spikelet, the stalks of the male inflorescence and the long styles emerging through the small apical orifice.
Fig. 12.—Spikelet of Cenchrus echinatus enclosed in a bristly involucre.
Any number of spikelets may compose the inflorescence, and their arrangement is very various. In the spicate forms, with sessile spikelets on the main axis, the latter is often dilated and flattened (Paspalum), or is more or less thickened and hollowed out (Stenotaphrum, Rottboellia, Tripsacum), when the spikelets are sunk and buried within the cavities. Every variety of racemose and paniculate inflorescence obtains, and the number of spikelets composing those of the large kinds is often immense. Rarely the inflorescence consists of very few flowers; thus Lygeum Spartum, the most anomalous of European grasses, has but two or three large uniflorous spikelets, which are fused together at the base, and have no basal glumes, but are enveloped in a large, hooded, spathe-like bract.
Flower.—This is characterized by remarkable uniformity. The perianth is represented by very rudimentary, small, fleshy scales arising below the ovary, called lodicules; they are elongated or truncate, sometimes fringed with hairs, and are in contact with the ovary. Their usual number is two, and they are placed collaterally at the anterior side of the flower (fig. 13,) that is, within the flowering glume. They are generally considered to represent the inner whorl of the ordinary monocotyledonous (liliaceous) perianth, the outer whorl of these being suppressed as well as the posterior member of the inner whorl. This latter is present almost constantly in Stipeae and Bambuseae, which have three lodicules, and in the latter group they are occasionally more numerous. In Anomochloa they are represented by hairs. In Streptochaeta there are six lodicules, alternately arranged in two whorls. Sometimes, as in Anthoxanthum, they are absent. In Melica there is one large anterior lodicule resulting presumably from the union of the two which are present in allied genera. Professor E. Hackel, however, regards this as an undivided second pale, which in the majority of the grasses is split in halves, and the posterior lodicule, when present, as a third pale. On this view the grass-flower has no perianth. The function of the lodicules is the separation of the pale and glume to allow the protrusion of stamens and stigmas; they effect this by swelling and thus exerting pressure on the base of these two structures. Where, as in Anthoxanthum, there are no lodicules, pale and glume do not become laterally separated, and the stamens and stigmas protrude only at the apex of the floret (fig. 7). Grass-flowers are usually hermaphrodite, but there are very many exceptions. Thus it is common to find one or more imperfect (usually male) flowers in the same spikelet with bisexual ones, and their relative position is important in classification. Holcus and Arrhenatherum are examples in English grasses; and as a rule in species of temperate regions separation of the sexes is not carried further. In warmer countries monoecious and dioecious grasses are more frequent. In such cases the male and female spikelets and inflorescence may be very dissimilar, as in maize, Job’s tears, Euchlaena, Spinifex, &c.; and in some dioecious species this dissimilarity has led to the two sexes being referred to different genera (e.g. Anthephora axilliflora is the female of Buchloe dactyloides, and Neurachne paradoxa of a species of Spinifex). In other grasses, however, with the sexes in different plants (e.g. Brizopyrum, Distichlis, Eragrostis capitala, Gynerium), no such dimorphism obtains. Amphicarpum is remarkable in having cleistogamic flowers borne on long radical subterranean peduncles which are fertile, whilst the conspicuous upper paniculate ones, though apparently perfect, never produce fruit. Something similar occurs in Leersia oryzoides, where the fertile spikelets are concealed within the leaf-sheaths.
Androecium.—In the vast majority there are three stamens alternating with the lodicules, and therefore one anterior, i.e. opposite the flowering glume, the other two being posterior and in contact with the palea (fig. 13, 1 and 2). They are hypogynous, and have long and very delicate filaments, and large, linear or oblong two-celled anthers, dorsifixed and ultimately very versatile, deeply indented at each end, and commonly exserted and pendulous. Suppression of the anterior stamen sometimes occurs (e.g. Anthoxanthum, fig. 7), or the two posterior ones may be absent (Uniola, Cinna, Phippsia, Festuca bromoides). There is in some genera (Oryza, most Bambuseae) another row of three stamens, making six in all (fig. 13, 3); and Anomochloa and Tetrarrhena possess four. The stamens become numerous (ten to forty) in the male flowers of a few monoecious genera (Pariana, Luziola). In Ochlandra they vary from seven to thirty, and in Gigantochloa they are monadelphous.
Gynoecium.—The pistil consists of a single carpel, opposite the pale in the median plane of the spikelet. The ovary is small, rounded to elliptical, and one-celled, and contains a single slightly bent ovule sessile on the ventral suture (that is, springing from the back of the ovary); the micropyle points downwards. It bears usually two lateral styles which are quite distinct or connate at the base, sometimes for a greater length (fig. 14, 1), each ends in a densely hairy or feathery stigma (fig. 14). Occasionally there is but a single style, as in Nardus (fig. 14, 7), which corresponds to the midrib of the carpel. The very long and apparently simple stigma of maize arises from the union of two. Many of the bamboos have a third, anterior, style.
Comparing the flower of Gramineae with the general monocotyledonous plan as represented by Liliaceae and other families (fig. 15), it will be seen to differ in the absence of the outer row and the posterior member of the inner row of the perianth-leaves, of the whole inner row of stamens, and of the two lateral carpels, whilst the remaining members of the perianth are in a rudimentary condition. But each or any of the usually missing organs are to be found normally in different genera, or as occasional developments.
Fig. 15.—Diagrams of the ordinary Grass-flower.
1, Actual condition;
2, Theoretical, with the suppressed organs supplied.
a, Axis.
b, Flowering glume.
c, Palea.
d, Outer row of perianth leaves.
e, Inner row.
f, Outer row of stamens.
g, Inner row.
h, Pistil.
Pollination.—Grasses are generally wind-pollinated, though self-fertilization sometimes occurs. A few species, as we have seen, are monoecious or dioecious, while many are polygamous (having unisexual as well as bisexual flowers as in many members of the tribes Andropogoneae, fig. 18, and Paniceae), and in these the male flower of a spikelet always blooms later than the hermaphrodite, so that its pollen can only effect cross-fertilization upon other spikelets in the same or another plant. Of those with only bisexual flowers, many are strongly protogynous (the stigmas protruding before the anthers are ripe), such as Alopecurus and Anthoxanthum (fig. 7), but generally the anthers protrude first and discharge the greater part of their pollen before the stigmas appear. The filaments elongate rapidly at flowering-time, and the lightly versatile anthers empty an abundance of finely granular smooth pollen through a longitudinal slit. Some flowers, such as rye, have lost the power of effective self-fertilization, but in most cases both forms, self- and cross-fertilization, seem to be possible. Thus the species of wheat are usually self-fertilized, but cross-fertilization is possible since the glumes are open above, the stigmas project laterally, and the anthers empty only about one-third of their pollen in their own flower and the rest into the air. In some cultivated races of barley, cross-fertilization is precluded, as the flowers never open. Reference has already been made to cleistogamic species which occur in several genera.
Fig. 16.—Fruit of Sporobolus, showing the dehiscent pericarp and seed.
Fruit and Seed.—The ovary ripens into a usually small ovoid or rounded fruit, which is entirely occupied by the single large seed, from which it is not to be distinguished, the thin pericarp being completely united to its surface. To this peculiar fruit the term caryopsis has been applied (more familiarly “grain”); it is commonly furrowed longitudinally down one side (usually the inner, but in Coix and its allies, the outer), and an additional covering is not unfrequently provided by the adherence of the persistent palea, or even also of the flowering glume (“chaff” of cereals). From this type are a few deviations; thus in Sporobolus, &c. (fig. 16), the pericarp is not united with the seed but is quite distinct, dehisces, and allows the loose seed to escape. Sometimes the pericarp is membranous, sometimes hard, forming a nut, as in some genera of Bambuseae, while in other Bambuseae it becomes thick and fleshy, forming a berry often as large as an apple. In Melocanna the berry forms an edible fruit 3 or 4 in. long, with a pointed beak of 2 in. more; it is indehiscent, and the small seed germinates whilst the fruit is still attached to the tree, putting out a tuft of roots and a shoot, and not falling till the latter is 6 in. long. The position of the embryo is plainly visible on the front side at the base of the grain. On the other, posterior, side of the grain is a more or less evident, sometimes punctiform, sometimes elongated or linear mark, the hilum, the place where the ovule was fastened to the wall of the ovary. The form of the hilum is constant throughout a genus, and sometimes also in whole tribes.
The testa is thin and membranous but occasionally coloured, and the embryo small, the great bulk of the seed being occupied by the hard farinaceous endosperm (albumen) on which the nutritive value of the grain depends. The outermost layer of endosperm, the aleuron-layer, consists of regular cells filled with small proteid granules; the rest is made up of large polygonal cells containing numerous starch-grains in a matrix of proteid which may be continuous (horny endosperm) or granular (mealy endosperm). The embryo presents many points of interest. Its position is remarkable, closely applied to the surface of the endosperm at the base of its outer side. This character is absolute for the whole order, and effectually separates Gramineae from Cyperaceae. The part in contact with the endosperm is plate-like, and is known as the scutellum; the surface in contact with the endosperm forms an absorptive epithelium. In some grasses there is a small scale-like appendage opposite the scutellum, the epiblast. There is some difference of opinion as to which structure or structures represent the cotyledon. Three must be considered: (1) the scutellum, connected by vascular tissue with the vascular cylinder of the main axis of the embryo which it more or less envelops; it never leaves the seed, serving merely to prepare and absorb the food-stuff in the endosperm; (2) the cellular outgrowth of the axis, the epiblast, small and inconspicuous as in wheat, or larger as in Stipa; (3) the pileole or germ-sheath, arising on the same side of the axis and above the scutellum, enveloping the plumule in the seed and appearing above ground as a generally colourless sheath from the apex of which the plumule ultimately breaks (fig. 17, 4, b). The development of these structures (which was investigated by van Tieghem), especially in relation to the origin of the vascular bundles which supply them, favours the view that the scutellum and pileole are highly differentiated parts of a single cotyledon, and this view is in accord with a comparative study of the seedling of grasses and of other monocotyledons. The epiblast has been regarded as representing a second cotyledon, but this is a very doubtful interpretation.
Fig. 17.—A Grain of Wheat. 1, back, and 2, front view; 3, vertical section, showing (b) the endosperm, and (a) embryo; 4, beginning of germination, showing (b) the pileole and (c) the radicle and secondary rootlets surrounded by their coleorrhizae.
Germination.—In germination the coleorhiza lengthens, ruptures the pericarp, and fixes the grain to the ground by developing numerous hairs. The radicle then breaks through the coleorhiza, as do also the secondary rootlets where, as in the case of many cereals, these have been formed in the embryo (fig. 17, 4). The germ-sheath grows vertically upwards, its stiff apex pushing through the soil, while the plumule is hidden in its hollow interior. Finally the plumule escapes, its leaves successively breaking through at the tip of the germ-sheath. The scutellum meanwhile feeds the developing embryo from the endosperm. The growth of the primary root is limited; sooner or later adventitious roots develop from the axis above the radicle which they ultimately exceed in growth.
Means of Distribution.—Various methods of scattering the grain have been adopted, in which parts of the spikelet or inflorescence are concerned. Short spikes may fall from the culm as a whole; or the axis of a spike or raceme is jointed so that one spikelet falls with each joint as in many Andropogoneae and Hordeae. In many-flowered spikelets the rachilla is often jointed and breaks into as many pieces as there are fruits, each piece bearing a glume and pale. One-flowered spikelets may fall as a whole (as in the tribes Paniceae and Andropogoneae), or the axis is jointed above the barren glumes so that only the flowering glume and pale fall with the fruit. These arrangements are, with few exceptions, lacking in cultivated cereals though present in their wild forms, so far as these are known. Such arrangements are disadvantageous for the complete gathering of the fruit, and therefore varieties in which they are not present would be preferred for cultivation. The persistent bracts (glume and pale) afford an additional protection to the fruit; they protect the embryo, which is near the surface, from too rapid wetting and, when once soaked, from drying up again. They also decrease the specific gravity, so that the grain is more readily carried by the wind, especially when, as in Briza, the glume has a large surface compared with the size of the grain, or when, as in Holcus, empty glumes also take part; in Canary grass (Phalaris) the large empty glumes bear a membranous wing on the keel. In the sugar-cane (Saccharum) and several allied genera the separating joints of the axis bear long hairs below the spikelets; in others, as in Arundo (a reed-grass), the flowering glumes are enveloped in long hairs. The awn which is frequently borne on the flowering glume is also a very efficient means of distribution, catching into fur of animals or plumage of birds, or as often in Stipa (fig. 8) forming a long feather for wind-carriage. In Tragus the glumes bear numerous short hooked bristles. The fleshy berries of some Bambuseae favour distribution by animals.
The awn is also of use in burying the fruit in the soil. Thus in Stipa, species of Avena, Heteropogon and others the base of the glume forms a sharp point which will easily penetrate the ground; above the point are short stiff upwardly pointing hairs which oppose its withdrawal. The long awn, which is bent and closely twisted below the bend, acts as a driving organ; it is very hygroscopic, the coils untwisting when damp and twisting up when dry. The repeated twisting and untwisting, especially when the upper part of the awn has become fixed in the earth or caught in surrounding vegetation, drives the point deeper and deeper into the ground. Such grasses often cause harm to sheep by catching in the wool and boring through the skin.
A peculiar method of distribution occurs in some alpine and arctic grasses, which grow under conditions where ripening of the fruit is often uncertain. The entire spikelet, or single flowers, are transformed into small-leaved shoots which fall from the axes and readily root in the ground. Some species, such as Poa stricta, are known only in this viviparous condition; others, like our British species Festuca ovina and Poa alpina, become viviparous under the special climatic conditions.
II. Classification.—Gramineae are sharply defined from all other plants, and there are no genera as to which it is possible to feel a doubt whether they should be referred to it or not. The only family closely allied is Cyperaceae, and the points of difference between the two may be here brought together. The best distinctions are found in the position of the embryo in relation to the endosperm—lateral in grasses, basal in Cyperaceae—and in the possession by Gramineae of the 2-nerved palea below each flower. Less absolute characters, but generally trustworthy and more easily observed, are the feathery stigmas, the always distichous arrangement of the glumes, the usual absence of more general bracts in the inflorescence, the split leaf-sheaths, and the hollow, cylindrical, jointed culms—some or all of which are wanting in all Cyperaceae. The same characters will distinguish grasses from the other glumiferous orders, Restiaceae, and Eriocaulonaceae, which are besides further removed by their capsular fruit and pendulous ovules. To other monocotyledonous families the resemblances are merely of adaptive or vegetative characters. Some Commelinaceae and Marantaceae approach grasses in foliage; the leaves of Allium, &c., possess a ligule; the habit of some palms reminds one of the bamboos; and Juncaceae and a few Liliaceae possess an inconspicuous scarious perianth. There are about 300 genera containing about 3500 well-defined species.
The great uniformity among the very numerous species of this vast family renders its classification very difficult. The difficulty has been increased by the confusion resulting from the multiplication of genera founded on slight characters, and from the description (in consequence of their wide distribution) of identical plants under several different genera.
No characters for main divisions can be obtained from the flower proper or fruit (with the exception of the character of the hilum), and it has therefore been found necessary to trust to characters derived from the usually less important inflorescence and bracts.
Robert Brown suggested two primary divisions—Paniceae and Poaceae, according to the position of the most perfect flower in the spikelet; this is the upper (apparently) terminal one in the first, whilst in the second it occupies the lower position, the more imperfect ones (if any) being above it. Munro supplemented this by another character easier of verification, and of even greater constancy, in the articulation of the pedicel in the Paniceae immediately below the glumes; whilst in Poaceae this does not occur, but the axis of the spikelet frequently articulates above the pair of empty basal glumes. Neither of these great divisions will well accommodate certain genera allied to Phalaris, for which Brown proposed tentatively a third group (since named Phalarideae); this, or at least the greater part of it, is placed by Bentham under the Poaceae.
The following arrangement has been proposed by Professor Eduard Hackel in his recent monograph on the order.
A. Spikelets one-flowered, rarely two-flowered as in Zea, falling from the pedicel entire or with certain joints of the rachis at maturity. Rachilla not produced beyond the flowers.
a. Hilum a point; spikelets not laterally compressed.
α Fertile glume and pale hyaline; empty glumes thick, membranous to coriaceous or cartilaginous, the lowest the largest. Rachis generally jointed and breaking up when mature.
1. Spikelets unisexual, male and female in separate inflorescences or on different parts of the same inflorescence.
1. Maydeae.
2. Spikelets bisexual, or male and bisexual, each male standing close to a bisexual.
2. Andropogoneae.
β Fertile glume and pale cartilaginous, coriaceous or papery; empty glumes more delicate, usually herbaceous, the lowest usually smallest. Spikelets falling singly from the unjointed rachis of the spike or the ultimate branches of the panicle.
3. Paniceae.
b. Hilum a line; spikelets laterally compressed.
4. Oryzeae.
B. Spikelets one- to indefinite-flowered; in the one-flowered the rachilla frequently produced beyond the flower; rachilla generally jointed above the empty glumes, which remain after the fruiting glumes have fallen. When more than one-flowered, distinct internodes are developed between the flowers.
a. Culm herbaceous, annual; leaf-blade sessile, and not jointed to the sheath.
α Spikelets upon distinct pedicels and arranged in panicles or racemes.
I. Spikelets one-flowered.
i. Empty glumes 4. 5. Phalarideae.
ii. Empty glumes 2. 6. Agrostideae.
II. Spikelets more than one-flowered.
i. Fertile glumes generally shorter than the empty glumes, usually with a bent awn on the back.
7. Aveneae.
ii. Fertile glumes generally longer than the empty, unawned or with a straight, terminal awn.
9. Festuceae.
β Spikelets crowded in two close rows, forming a one-sided spike or raceme with a continuous (not jointed) rachis.
8. Chlorideae.
γ Spikelets in two opposite rows forming an equal-sided spike.
10. Hordeae.
b. Culm woody, at any rate at the base, leaf-blade jointed to the sheath, often with a short, slender petiole.
11. Bambuseae.
Tribe 1. Maydeae (7 genera in the warmer parts of the earth). Zea Mays (maize, q.v., or Indian corn) (q.v.). Tripsacum, 2 or 3 species in subtropical America north of the equator; Tr. dactyloides (gama grass) extends northwards to Illinois and Connecticut; it is used for fodder and as an ornamental plant. Coix Lacryma-Jobi (Job’s tears) q.v.
Fig. 18.—A pair of spikelets of Andropogon.
Tribe 2. Andropogoneae (25 genera, mainly tropical). The spikelets are arranged in spike-like racemes, generally in pairs consisting of a sessile and stalked spikelet at each joint of the rachis (fig. 18). Many are savanna grasses, in various parts of the tropics, for instance the large genus Andropogon, Elionurus and others. Saccharum officinarum (sugar-cane) (q.v.). Sorghum, an important tropical cereal known as black millet or durra (q.v.). Miscanthus and Erianthus, nearly allied to Saccharum, are tall reed-like grasses, with large silky flower-panicles, which are grown for ornament. Imperata, another ally, is a widespread tropical genus; one species I. arundinacea is the principal grass of the alang-alang fields in the Malay Archipelago; it is used for thatch. Vossia, an aquatic grass, often floating, is found in western India and tropical Africa. In the swampy lands of the upper Nile it forms, along with a species of Saccharum, huge floating grass barriers. Elionurus, a widespread savanna grass in tropical and subtropical America, and also in the tropics of the old world, is rejected by cattle probably on account of its aromatic character, the spikelets having a strong balsam-like smell. Other aromatic members are Andropogon Nardus, a native of India, but also cultivated, the rhizome, leaves and especially the spikelets of which contain a volatile oil, which on distillation yields the citronella oil of commerce. A closely allied species, A. Schoenanthus (lemon-grass), yields lemon-grass oil; a variety is used by the negroes in western Africa for haemorrhage. Other species of the same genus are used as stimulants and cosmetics in various parts of the tropics. The species of Heteropogon, a cosmopolitan genus in the warmer parts of the world, have strongly awned spikelets. Themeda Forskalii, which occurs from the Mediterranean region to South Africa and Tasmania, is the kangaroo grass of Australia, where, as in South Africa, it often covers wide tracts.
Tribe 3. Paniceae (about 25 genera, tropical to subtropical; a few temperate), a second flower, generally male, rarely hermaphrodite, is often present below the fertile flower. Paspalum, is a large tropical genus, most abundant in America, especially on the pampas and campos; many species are good forage plants, and the grain is sometimes used for food. Amphicarpum, native in the south-eastern United States, has fertile cleistogamous spikelets on filiform runners at the base of the culm, those on the terminal panicle are sterile. Panicum, a very polymorphic genus, and one of the largest in the order, is widely spread in all warm countries; together with species of Paspalum they form good forage grasses in the South American savannas and campos. Panicum Crus-galli is a polymorphic cosmopolitan grass, which is often grown for fodder; in one form (P. frumentaceum) it is cultivated in India for its grain. P. plicatum, with broad folded leaves, is an ornamental greenhouse grass. P. miliaceum is millet (q.v.), and P. altissimum, Guinea grass. In the closely allied genus Digitaria, which is sometimes regarded as a section of Panicum, the lowest barren glume is reduced to a point; D. sanguinalis is a very widespread grass, in Bohemia it is cultivated as a food-grain; it is also the crab-grass of the southern United States, where it is used for fodder.
In Setaria and allied genera the spikelet is subtended by an involucre of bristles or spines which represent sterile branches of the inflorescence. Setaria italica, Hungarian grass, is extensively grown as a food-grain both in China and Japan, parts of India and western Asia, as well as in Europe, where its culture dates from prehistoric times; it is found in considerable quantity in the lake dwellings of the Stone age.
In Cenchrus the bristles unite to form a tough spiny capsule (fig. 12); C. tribuloides (bur-grass) and other species are troublesome weeds in North and South America, as the involucre clings to the wool of sheep and is removed with great difficulty. Pennisetum typhoideum is widely cultivated as a grain in tropical Africa. Spinifex, a dioecious grass, is widespread on the coasts of Australia and eastern Asia, forming an important sand-binder. The female heads are spinose with long pungent bracts, fall entire when ripe and are carried away by wind or sea, becoming finally anchored in the sand and falling to pieces.
Tribe 4. Oryzeae (16 genera, mainly tropical and subtropical). The spikelets are sometimes unisexual, and there are often six stamens. Leersia is a genus of swamp grasses, one of which L. oryzoides occurs in the north temperate zone of both old and new worlds, and is a rare grass in Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire. Zizania aquatica (Tuscarora or Indian rice) is a reed-like grass growing over large areas on banks of streams and lakes in North America and north-east Asia. The Indians collect the grain for food. Oryza sativa (rice) (q.v.). Lygeum Spartum, with a creeping stem and stiff rush-like leaves, is common on rocky soil on the high plains bordering the western Mediterranean, and is one of the sources of esparto.
Fig. 19.—Phalarideae. Spikelet of Hierochloe.
Tribe 5. Phalarideae (6 genera, three of which are South African and Australasian; the others are more widely distributed, and represented in our flora). Phalaris arundinacea, is a reed-grass found on the banks of British rivers and lakes; a variety with striped leaves known as ribbon-grass is grown for ornament. P. canariensis (Canary grass, a native of southern Europe and the Mediterranean area) is grown for bird-food and sometimes as a cereal. Anthoxanthum odoratum, the sweet vernal grass of our flora, owes its scent to the presence of coumarin, which is also present in the closely allied genus Hierochloe (fig. 19), which occurs throughout the temperate and frigid zones.
Tribe 6. Agrostideae (about 35 genera, occurring in all parts of the world; eleven are British). Aristida and Stipa are large and widely distributed genera, occurring especially on open plains and steppes; the conspicuously awned persistent flowering glume forms an efficient means of dispersing the grain. Stipa pennata is a characteristic species of the Russian steppes. St. spartea (porcupine grass) and other species are plentiful on the North American prairies. St. tenacissima is the Spanish esparto grass (q.v.), known in North Africa as halfa or alfa. Phleum has a cylindrical spike-like inflorescence; P. pratense (timothy) is a valuable fodder grass, as also is Alopecurus pratensis (foxtail). Sporobolus, a large genus in the warmer parts of both hemispheres, but chiefly America, derives its name from the fact that the seed is ultimately expelled from the fruit. Agrostis is a large world-wide genus, but especially developed in the north temperate zone, where it includes important meadow-grasses. Calamagrostis and Deyeuxia are tall, often reed-like grasses, occurring throughout the temperate and arctic zones and upon high mountains in the tropics. Ammophila arundinacea (or Psamma arenaria) (Marram grass) with its long creeping stems forms a useful sand-binder on the coasts of Europe, North Africa and the Atlantic states of America.
Tribe 7. Aveneae (about 24 genera, seven of which are British). Holcus lanatus (Yorkshire fog, soft grass) is a common meadow and wayside grass with woolly or downy leaves. Aira is a genus of delicate annuals with slender hair-like branches of the panicle. Deschampsia and Trisetum occur in temperate and cold regions or on high mountains in the tropics; T. pratense (Avena flavescens) with a loose panicle and yellow shining spikelets is a valuable fodder-grass. Avena fatua is the wild oat and A. sativa the cultivated oat (q.v.). Arrhenatherum avenaceum, a perennial field grass, native in Britain and central and southern Europe, is cultivated in North America.
Tribe 8. Chlorideae (about 30 genera, chiefly in warm countries). The only British representative is Cynodon Dactylon (dog’s tooth, Bermuda grass) found on sandy shores in the south-west of England; it is a cosmopolitan, covering the ground in sandy soils, and forming an important forage grass in many dry climates (Bermuda grass of the southern United States, and known as durba, dub and other names in India). Species of Chloris are grown as ornamental grasses. Bouteloua with numerous species (mesquite grass, grama grass) on the plains of the south-western United States, afford good grazing. Eleusine indica is a common tropical weed; the nearly allied species E. Coracana is a cultivated grain in the warmer parts of Asia and throughout Africa. Buchloe dactyloides is the buffalo grass of the North American prairies, a valuable fodder.
Fig. 20.—Poa annua. Plant in Flower; about ½ nat. size. 1, one spikelet.
Tribe 9. Festuceae (about 83 genera, including tropical, temperate, arctic and alpine forms) many are important meadow-grasses; 15 are British. Gynerium argenteum (pampas grass) is a native of southern Brazil and Argentina. Arundo and Phragmites are tall reed-grasses (see Reed). Several species of Triodia cover large areas of the interior of Australia, and from their stiff, sharply pointed leaves are very troublesome. Eragrostis, one of the larger genera of the order, is widely distributed in the warmer parts of the earth; many species are grown for ornament and E. abyssinica is an important food-plant in Abyssinia. Koeleria cristata is a fodder-grass. Briza media (quaking grass) is a useful meadow-grass. Dactylis glomerata (cock’s-foot), a perennial grass with a dense panicle, common in pastures and waste places is a useful meadow-grass. It has become naturalized in North America, where it is known as orchard grass, as it will grow in shade. Cynosurus cristatus (dog’s tail) is a common pasture-grass. Poa, a large genus widely distributed in temperate and cold countries, includes many meadow and alpine grasses; eight species are British; P. annua (fig. 20) is the very common weed in paths and waste places; P. pratensis and P. trivialis are also common grasses of meadows, banks and pastures, the former is the “June grass” or “Kentucky blue grass” of North America; P. alpina is a mountain grass of the northern hemisphere and found also in the Arctic region. The largest species of the genus is Poa flabellata which forms great tufts 6-7 ft. high with leaves arranged like a fan; it is a native of the Falkland and certain antarctic islands where it is known as tussock grass. Glyceria fluitans, manna-grass, so-called from the sweet grain, is one of the best fodder grasses for swampy meadows; the grain is an article of food in central Europe. Festuca (fescue) is also a large and widely distributed genus, but found especially in the temperate and cold zones; it includes valuable pasture grasses, such as F. ovina (sheep’s fescue), F. rubra; nine species are British. The closely allied genus Bromus (brome grass) is also widely distributed but most abundant in the north temperate zone; B. erectus is a useful forage grass on dry chalky soil.
Fig. 21.—Spike of Wheat (Triticum sativum). About 2⁄3 nat. size.
Tribe 10. Hordeae (about 19 genera, widely distributed; six are British). Nardus stricta (mat-weed), found on heaths and dry pastures, is a small perennial with slender rigid stem and leaves, it is a useless grass, crowding out better sorts. Lolium perenne, ray- (or by corruption rye-) grass, is common in waste places and a valuable pasture-grass; L. italicum is the Italian ray-grass; L. temulentum (darnel) contains a narcotic principle in the grain. Secale cereale, rye (q.v.), is cultivated mainly in northern Europe. Agropyrum repens (couch grass) has a long creeping underground stem, and is a troublesome weed in cultivated land; the widely creeping stem of A. junceum, found on sandy sea-shores, renders it a useful sand-binder. Triticum sativum is wheat (q.v.) (fig. 21), and Hordeum sativum, barley (q.v.). H. murinum, wild barley, is a common grass in waste places. Elymus arenarius (lyme grass) occurs on sandy sea-shores in the north temperate zone and is a useful sand-binder.
Tribe 11. Bambuseae. Contains 23 genera, mainly tropical. See Bamboo.
III. Distribution.—Grasses are the most universally diffused of all flowering plants. There is no district in which they do not occur, and in nearly all they are a leading feature of the flora. In number of species Gramineae comes considerably after Compositae and Leguminosae, the two most numerous orders of phanerogams, but in number of individual plants it probably far exceeds either; whilst from the wide extension of many of its species, the proportion of Gramineae to other orders in the various floras of the world is much higher than its number of species would lead one to expect. In tropical regions, where Leguminosae is the leading order, grasses closely follow as the second, whilst in the warm and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, in which Compositae takes the lead, Gramineae again occupies the second position.
While the greatest number of species is found in the tropical zone, the number of individuals is greater in the temperate zones, where they form extended areas of turf. Turf- or meadow-formation depends upon uniform rainfall. Grasses also characterize steppes and savannas, where they form scattered tufts. The bamboos are a feature of tropical forest vegetation, especially in the monsoon region. As the colder latitudes are entered the grasses become relatively more numerous, and are the leading family in Arctic and Antarctic regions. The only countries where the order plays a distinctly subordinate part are some extra-tropical regions of the southern hemisphere, Australia, the Cape, Chili, &c. The proportion of graminaceous species to the whole phanerogamic flora in different countries is found to vary from nearly ¼th in the Arctic regions to about 1⁄25th at the Cape; in the British Isles it is about 1⁄12th.
The principal climatic cause influencing the number of graminaceous species appears to be amount of moisture. A remarkable feature of the distribution of grasses is its uniformity; there are no great centres for the order, as in Compositae, where a marked preponderance of endemic species exists; and the genera, except some of the smallest or monotypic ones, have usually a wide distribution.
The distribution of the tropical tribe Bambuseae is interesting. The species are about equally divided between the Indo-Malayan region and tropical America, only one species being common to both. The tribe is very poorly represented in tropical Africa; one species Oxytenanthera abyssinica has a wide range, and three monotypic genera are endemic in western tropical Africa. None is recorded for Australia, though species may perhaps occur on the northern coast. One species of Arundinaria reaches northwards as far as Virginia, and the elevation attained in the Andes by some species of Chusquea is very remarkable,—one, C. aristata, being abundant from 15,000 ft. up to nearly the level of perpetual snow.
Many grasses are almost cosmopolitan, such as the common reed, Phragmites communis; and many range throughout the warm regions of the globe, e.g. Cynodon Dactylon, Eleusine indica, Imperata arundinacea, Sporobolus indicus, &c., and such weeds of cultivation as species of Setaria, Echinochloa. Several species of the north temperate zone, such as Poa nemoralis, P. pratensis, Festuca ovina, F. rubra and others, are absent in the tropics but reappear in the antarctic regions; others (e.g. Phleum alpinum) appear in isolated positions on high mountains in the intervening tropics. No tribe is confined to one hemisphere and no large genus to any one floral region; facts which indicate that the separation of the tribes goes back to very ancient times. The revision of the Australian species by Bentham well exhibits the wide range of the genera of the order in a flora generally so peculiar and restricted as that of Australia. Thus of the 90 indigenous genera (many monotypic or very small) only 14 are endemic, 1 extends to South Africa, 3 are common to Australia and New Zealand, 18 extend also into Asia, whilst no fewer than 54 are found in both the Old and New Worlds; 26 being chiefly tropical and 28 chiefly extra-tropical.
Of specially remarkable species Lygeum is found on the sea-sand of the eastern half of the Mediterranean basin, and the minute Coleanthus occurs in three or four isolated spots in Europe (Norway, Bohemia, Austria, Normandy), in North-east Asia (Amur) and on the Pacific coast of North America (Oregon, Washington). Many remarkable endemic genera occur in tropical America, including Anomochloa of Brazil, and most of the large aquatic species with separated sexes are found in this region. The only genus of flowering plants peculiar to the arctic regions is the beautiful and rare grass Pleuropogon Sabinii, of Melville Island.
Fossil Grasses.—While numerous remains of grass-like leaves are a proof that grasses were widespread and abundantly developed in past geological ages, especially in the Tertiary period, the fossil remains are in most cases too fragmentary and badly preserved for the determination of genera, and conclusions based thereon in explanation of existing geographical distribution are most unsatisfactory. There is, however, justification for referring some specimens to Arundo, Phragmites, and to the Bambuseae.
Bibliography.—E. Hackel, The True Grasses (translated from Engler and Prantl, Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, by F. Lamson Scribner and E. A. Southworth); and Andropogoneae in de Candolle’s Monographiae phanerogamarum (Paris, 1889); K. S. Kunth, Revision des graminées (Paris, 1829-1835) and Agrostographia (Stuttgart, 1833); J. C. Döll in Martius and Eichler, Flora Brasiliensis, ii. Pts. II. and III. (Munich, 1871-1883); A. W. Eichler, Blüthendiagramme i. 119 (Leipzig, 1875); Bentham and Hooker, Genera plantarum, iii. 1074 (London, 1883); H. Baillon, Histoire des plantes, xii. 136 (Paris, 1893); J. S. Gamble, “Bambuseae of British India” in Annals Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, vii. (1896); John Percival, Agricultural Botany (chapters on “Grasses,” 2nd ed., London, 1902). See also accounts of the family in the various great floras, such as Ascherson and Graebner, Synopsis der mitteleuropäischen Flora; N. L. Britton and A. Brown, Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada (New York, 1896); Hooker’s Flora of British India; Flora Capensis (edited by W. Thiselton-Dyer); Boissier, Flora orientalis, &c. &c.
The word “grass” (O. Eng. gærs, græs) is common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch Ger. Goth, gras, Dan. græs; the root is the O. Teut. gra-, gro-, to increase, whence “grow,” and “green,” the typical colour of growing vegetation. The Indo-European root is seen in Lat. gramen. The O. Eng. grasian, formed from græs, gives “to graze,” of cattle feeding on growing herbage, also “grazier,” one who grazes or feeds cattle for the market; “to graze,” to abrade, to touch lightly in passing, may be a development of this from the idea of close cropping; if it is to be distinguished a possible connexion may be found with “glace” (Fr. glacer, glide, slip, Lat. glacies, ice), to glance off, the change in form being influenced by “grate,” to scrape, scratch (Fr. gratter, Ger. kratzen).