Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/560

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542
GAYAL—GAY-LUSSAC
  

places, are held in high esteem by the pilgrims; but they are not pure Brahmans, and are looked down upon by those who are. They live an idle and dissolute life, but are very wealthy, from contributions extorted from the pilgrims. Buddh Gaya, about 6 m. S. of Gaya city, is one of the holiest sites of Buddhism, as containing the tree under which Sakyamuni attained enlightenment. In addition to many ruins and sculptures, there is a temple restored by the government in 1881. Another place of religious interest is a temple of great antiquity, which crowns the highest peak of the Barabar hills, and at which a religious fair is held each September, attended by 10,000 to 20,000 pilgrims. At the foot of the hill are numerous rock caves excavated about 200 B.C. The opium poppy is largely cultivated. There are a number of lac factories. Manufactures consist of common brass utensils, black stone ornaments, pottery, tussur-silk and cotton cloth. Formerly paper-making was an important manufacture in the district, but it has entirely died out. The chief exports are food grains, oil seeds, indigo, crude opium (sent to Patna for manufacture), saltpetre, sugar, blankets, brass utensils, &c. The imports are salt, piece goods, cotton, timber, bamboos, tobacco, lac, iron, spices and fruits. The district is traversed by four branches of the East Indian railway. In 1901 it suffered severely from the plague.

See District Gazetteer (1906); Sir A. Cunningham, Mahabodhi (1892).


GAYAL, a domesticated ox allied to the Gaur, but distinguished, among other features, by the more conical and straighter horns, and the straight line between them. Gayal are kept by the natives of the hill-districts of Assam and parts of Tenasserim and Upper Burma. Although it has received a distinct name, Bos (Bibos) frontalis, there can be little doubt that the gayal is merely a domesticated breed of the gaur, many gayal-skulls showing characters approximating to those of the gaur.


GAYANGOS Y ARCE, PASCUAL DE (1809–1897), Spanish scholar and Orientalist, was born at Seville on the 21st of June 1809. At the age of thirteen he was sent to be educated at Pont-le-Voy near Blois, and in 1828 began the study of Arabic under Silvestre de Sacy. After a visit to England, where he married, he obtained a post in the Spanish treasury, and was transferred to the foreign office as translator in 1833. In 1836 he returned to England, wrote extensively in English periodicals, and translated Almakkari’s History of the Mahommedan Dynasties in Spain (1840–1843) for the Royal Asiatic Society. In England he also made the acquaintance of Ticknor, to whom he was very serviceable. In 1843 he returned to Spain as professor of Arabic at the university of Madrid, which post he held until 1881, when he was made director of public instruction. This office he resigned upon being elected senator for the district of Huelva. His latter years were spent in cataloguing the Spanish manuscripts in the British Museum; he had previously continued Bergenroth’s catalogue of the manuscripts relating to England in the Simancas archives. His best-known original work is his dissertation on Spanish romances of chivalry in Rivadeneyra’s Biblioteca de autores españoles. He died in London on the 4th of October 1897.


GAYARRÉ, CHARLES ÉTIENNE ARTHUR (1805–1895), American historian, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on the 9th of January 1805. After studying at the Collège d’Orléans he began, in 1826, to study law in Philadelphia, and three years later was admitted to the bar. In 1830 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives of Louisiana, in 1831 was appointed deputy attorney-general of his state, in 1833 became presiding judge of the city court of New Orleans, and in 1834 was elected as a Jackson Democrat to the United States Senate. On account of ill-health, however, he immediately resigned without taking his seat, and for the next eight years travelled in Europe and collected historical material from the French and the Spanish archives. In 1844–1845 and in 1856–1857 he was again a member of the state House of Representatives, and from 1845 to 1853 was secretary of state of Louisiana. He supported the Southern Confederacy during the Civil War, in which he lost a large fortune, and after its close lived chiefly by his pen. He died in New Orleans on the 11th of February 1895. He is best known as the historian of Louisiana. He wrote Histoire de la Louisiane (1847); Romance of the History of Louisiana (1848); Louisiana: its Colonial History and Romance (1851), reprinted in A History of Louisiana; History of Louisiana: the Spanish Domination (1854); Philip II. of Spain (1866); and A History of Louisiana (4 vols., 1866), the last being a republication and continuation of his earlier works in this field, the whole comprehending the history of Louisiana from its earliest discovery to 1861. He wrote also several dramas and romances, the best of the latter being Fernando de Lemos (1872).


GAY-LUSSAC, JOSEPH LOUIS (1778–1850), French chemist and physicist, was born at St Léonard, in the department of Haute Vienne, on the 6th of December 1778. He was the elder son of Antoine Gay, procureur du roi and judge at Pont-de-Noblac, who assumed the name Lussac from a small property he had in the neighbourhood of St Léonard. Young Gay-Lussac received his early education at home under the direction of the abbé Bourdieux and other masters, and in 1794 was sent to Paris to prepare for the École Polytechnique, into which he was admitted at the end of 1797 after a brilliant examination. Three years later he was transferred to the École des Ponts et Chaussées, and shortly afterwards was assigned to C. L. Berthollet, who wanted an able student to help in his researches. The new assistant scarcely came up to expectations in respect of confirming certain theoretical views of his master’s by the experiments set him to that end, and appears to have stated the discrepancy without reserve; but Berthollet nevertheless quickly recognized the ability displayed, and showed his appreciation not only by desiring to be Gay-Lussac’s “father in science,” but also by making him in 1807 an original member of the Société d’Arcueil. In 1802 he was appointed demonstrator to A. F. Fourcroy at the École Polytechnique, where subsequently (1809) he became professor of chemistry, and from 1808 to 1832 he was professor of physics at the Sorbonne, a post which he only resigned for the chair of chemistry at the Jardin des Plantes. In 1831 he was elected to represent Haute Vienne in the chamber of deputies, and in 1839 he entered the chamber of peers. He died in Paris on the 9th of May 1850.

Gay-Lussac’s earlier researches were mostly physical in character and referred mainly to the properties of gases, vapour-tensions, hygrometry, capillarity, &c. In his first memoir (Ann. de Chimie, 1802) he showed that different gases are dilated in the same proportion when heated from 0° to 100°C. Apparently he did not know of Dalton’s experiments on the same point, which indeed were far from accurate; but in a note he explained that “le cit. Charles avait remarqué depuis 15 ans la même propriété dans ces gaz; mais n’ayant jamais publié ses résultats, c’est par le plus grand hasard que je les ai connus.” In consequence of his candour in thus rescuing from oblivion the observation which his fellow-citizen did not think worth publishing, his name is sometimes dissociated from this law, which instead is known as that of Charles. In 1804 he had an opportunity of prosecuting his researches on air in somewhat unusual conditions, for the French Academy, desirous of securing some observations on the force of terrestrial magnetism at great elevations above the earth, through Berthollet and J. E. Chaptal obtained the use of the balloon which had been employed in Egypt, and entrusted the task to him and J. B. Biot. In their first ascent from the garden of the Conservatoire des Arts on the 24th of August 1804 an altitude of 4000 metres (about 13,000 ft.) was attained. But this elevation was not considered sufficient by Gay-Lussac, who therefore made a second ascent by himself on the 16th of September, when the balloon rose 7016 metres (about 23,000 ft.) above sea-level. At this height, with the thermometer marking 91/2 degrees below freezing, he remained for a considerable time, making observations not only on magnetism, but also on the temperature and humidity of the air, and collecting several samples of air at different heights. The magnetic observations, though imperfect, led him to the conclusion that the magnetic effect at all attainable elevations above