arrangement which may be advantageously followed with bulbous
plants generally. In hot summer weather they should have a good
mulching of well-decayed manure, and, as soon as the flower spikes
are produced, liquid manure may occasionally be given them with
advantage.
The gladiolus is easily raised from seeds, which should be sown in March or April in pots of rich soil placed in slight heat, the pots being kept near the glass after they begin to grow, and the plants being gradually hardened to permit their being placed out-of-doors in a sheltered spot for the summer. Modern growers often grow the seeds in the open in April on a nicely prepared bed in drills about 6 in. apart and 12 in. deep, covering them with finely sifted gritty mould. The seed bed is then pressed down evenly and firmly, watered occasionally and kept free from weeds during the summer. In October they will have ripened off, and must be taken out of the soil, and stored in paper bags in a dry room secure from frost. They will have made little bulbs from the size of a hazel nut downwards, according to their vigour. In the spring they should be planted like the old bulbs, and the larger ones will flower during the season, while the smaller ones must be again harvested and planted out as before. The time occupied from the sowing of the seed until the plant attains its full strength is from three to four years. The approved sorts, which are identified by name, are multiplied by means of bulblets or offsets or “spawn,” which form around the principal bulb or corm; but in this they vary greatly, some kinds furnishing abundant increase and soon becoming plentiful, while others persistently refuse to yield offsets. The stately habit and rich glowing colours of the modern gladioli render them exceedingly valuable as decorative plants during the late summer months. They are, moreover, very desirable and useful flowers for cutting for the purpose of room decoration, for while the blossoms themselves last fresh for some days if cut either early in the morning or late in the evening, the undeveloped buds open in succession, if the stalks are kept in water, so that a cut spike will go on blooming for some time.
GLADSHEIM (Old Norse Gladsheimr), in Scandinavian
mythology, the region of joy and home of Odin. Valhalla,
the paradise whither the heroes who fell in battle were escorted,
was situated there.
GLADSTONE, JOHN HALL (1827–1902), English chemist,
was born at Hackney, London, on the 7th of March 1827. From
childhood he showed great aptitude for science; geology was
his favourite subject, but since this in his father’s opinion did
not afford a career of promise, he devoted himself to chemistry,
which he studied under Thomas Graham at University College,
London, and Liebig at Giessen, where he graduated as Ph.D.
in 1847. In 1850 he became chemical lecturer at St Thomas’s
hospital, and three years later was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society at the unusually early age of twenty-six. From 1858
to 1861 he served on the royal commission on lighthouses, and
from 1864 to 1868 was a member of the war office committee
on gun-cotton. From 1874 to 1877 he was Fullerian professor
of chemistry at the Royal Institution, in 1874 he was chosen
first president of the Physical Society, and in 1877–1879 he was
president of the Chemical Society. In 1897 the Royal Society
recognized his fifty years of scientific work by awarding him the
Davy medal. Dr Gladstone’s researches were large in number
and wide in range, dealing to a great extent with problems
that lie on the border-line between physics and chemistry.
Thus a number of his inquiries, and those not the least important,
were partly chemical, partly optical. He determined the optical
constants of hundreds of substances, with the object of discovering
whether any of the elements possesses more than one atomic
refraction. Again, he investigated the connexion between the
optical behaviour, density and chemical composition of ethereal
oils, and the relation between molecular magnetic rotation and
the refraction and dispersion of nitrogenous compounds. So
early as 1856 he showed the importance of the spectroscope
in chemical research, and he was one of the first to notice that
the Fraunhofer spectrum at sunrise and sunset differs from that
at midday, his conclusion being that the earth’s atmosphere
must be responsible for many of its absorption lines, which
indeed were subsequently traced to the oxygen and water-vapour
in the air. Another portion of his work was of an electro-chemical
character. His studies, with Alfred Tribe (1840–1885) and W.
Hibbert, in the chemistry of the storage battery, have added
largely to our knowledge, while the “copper-zinc couple,” with
which his name is associated together with that of Tribe, among
other things, afforded a simple means of preparing certain
organo-metallic compounds, and thus promoted research in
branches of organic chemistry where those bodies are especially
useful. Mention may also be made of his work on phosphorus,
on explosive substances, such as iodide of nitrogen, gun-cotton
and the fulminates, on the influence of mass in the process of
chemical reactions, and on the effect of carbonic acid on the
germination of plants. Dr Gladstone always took a great
interest in educational questions, and from 1873 to 1894 he was
a member of the London School Board. He was also a member
of the Christian Evidence Society, and an early supporter of
the Young Men’s Christian Association. His death occurred
suddenly in London on the 6th of October 1902.
GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809–1898), British
statesman, was born on the 29th of December 1809 at No. 62
Rodney Street, Liverpool. His forefathers were Gledstanes
of Gledstanes, in the upper ward of Lanarkshire; or in Scottish
phrase, Gledstanes of that Ilk. As years went on their estates
dwindled, and by the beginning of the 17th century Gledstanes
was sold. The adjacent property of Arthurshiel remained in
the hands of the family for nearly a hundred years longer. Then
the son of the last Gledstanes of Arthurshiel removed to Biggar,
where he opened the business of a maltster. His grandson,
Thomas Gladstone (for so the name was modified), became a
corn-merchant at Leith. He happened to send his eldest son,
John, to Liverpool to sell a cargo of grain there, and the energy
and aptitude of the young man attracted the favourable notice
of a leading corn-merchant of Liverpool, who recommended him
to settle in that city. Beginning his commercial career as a
clerk in his patron’s house, John Gladstone lived to become
one of the merchant-princes of Liverpool, a baronet and a
member of parliament. He died in 1851 at the age of eighty-seven.
Sir John Gladstone was a pure Scotsman, a Lowlander
by birth and descent. He married Anne, daughter of Andrew
Robertson of Stornoway, sometime provost of Dingwall. Provost
Robertson belonged to the Clan Donachie, and by this marriage
the robust and business-like qualities of the Lowlander were
blended with the poetic imagination, the sensibility and fire
of the Gael.
John and Anne Gladstone had six children. The fourth son, William Ewart, was named after a merchant of Liverpool who was his father’s friend. He seems to have been a remarkably good child, and much beloved at home. In 1818 or 1819 Mrs Gladstone, who belonged to the Childhood and education. Evangelical school, said in a letter to a friend, that she believed her son William had been “truly converted to God.” After some tuition at the vicarage of Seaforth, a watering-place near Liverpool, the boy went to Eton in 1821. His tutor was the Rev. Henry Hartopp Knapp. His brothers, Thomas and Robertson Gladstone, were already at Eton. Thomas was in the fifth form, and William, who was placed in the middle remove of the fourth form, became his eldest brother’s fag. He worked hard at his classical lessons, and supplemented the ordinary business of the school by studying mathematics in the holidays. Mr Hawtrey, afterwards headmaster, commended a copy of his Latin verses, and “sent him up for good”; and this experience first led the young student to associate intellectual work with the ideas of ambition and success. He was not a fine scholar, in that restricted sense of the term which implies a special aptitude for turning English into Greek and Latin, or for original versification in the classical languages. “His composition,” we read, “was stiff,” but he was imbued with the substance of his authors; and a contemporary who was in the sixth form with him recorded that “when there were thrilling passages of Virgil or Homer, or difficult passages in the Scriptores Graeci, to translate, he or Lord Arthur Hervey was generally called up to edify the class with quotation or translation.” By common consent he was pre-eminently God-fearing, orderly and conscientious. “At Eton,” said Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury, “I was a thoroughly idle boy, but I was saved from some worse things by getting to know Gladstone.” His most intimate friend was Arthur Hallam, by universal acknowledgment the most remarkable Etonian of his day; but he was not
