Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/47

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GLOVER GLOWWORM 39 I the exact shape would cause a bad fit when the parts are sewed together, resulting in unequal strain and speedy fracture. By improvements introduced by M. Jouvin, the thumb piece, like the fingers, is of the same piece with the rest of the glove, requiring no seam for its at- tachment. The cutting also is performed in great part by punches of appropriate patterns, and some of these are provided with a toothed apparatus somewhat resembling a comb, which pricks the points for the stitches. The seams are sewed with perfect regularity by placing the edges to be united in the jaws of a vice, which terminate in fine brass teeth like those of a comb, but only ^ of an inch long. Between these the needle is passed in successive stitches. When the sewing is completed the gloves are etched, then placed in linen cloth, slightly amp, and beaten, by which they are rendered softer and more flexible. The last operation is pressing. In 1866, while England exported 680,664 pairs of leather gloves of British make, it imported 10, 61 9,220 pairs, of which 10,036,- 092 were from France. In the same year Eng- land exported 315,180 pairs of cotton gloves, chiefly to the United States. But in 1868 Ger- many was not only competing with England in leather gloves in the London market, but it sent three fourths of the cotton and Lisle thread gloves sold in England, and for export had se- cured nearly the entire trade of the United States, which had formerly bought this class of goods in Nottingham and Leicester. In 1868 the value of gloves made in France was estimated at 50,000,000 francs, and the manu- facture was increasing. The chief branch of the manufacture carried on in the United States is that of buckskin gloves, a kind more pecu- liarly American than any other ; and the most important seat of this business is at Glovers- ville, Fulton co., N. Y. Kid gloves are now made to some extent there and in New York. t GLOVER, Richard, an English poet and politi- cian, born in London in 1712, died there, Nov. 25, 1785. He was educated for a mercantile life, but early manifested a love of letters, and at the age of 16 wrote a poem to the memory of Sir Isaac Newton. In 1737 he published an epic on the Persian invasion of Greece, entitled " Le- onidas," which was thought to have an appli- cation to English politics, and was for a time much admired. A continuation of it, under the title of the " Atheniad," appeared in 1787. His "London, or the Progress of Commerce," and a ballad called "Hosier's Ghost" (1739), were written to rouse his countrymen to a war with Spain. He was active in politics as an opponent of Walpole, and was returned to par- liament for Weymouth in 1760. He wrote sev- eral tragedies, and a diary which was published in 1813, and in the following year appeared an " Inquiry " attempting to prove that he was the author of the letters of -Junius. GLOVERSVILLE, a village in the town of Johnstown, Fulton co., New York, 40 m. N. W. of Albany, at the terminus of the Fonda, Johns- town, and Glovers ville railroad, which con- nects with the New York Central at Fonda, 7 m. distant; pop. in 1870, 4,518. It is chiefly noted for its extensive manufactures of gloves and mittens. The business was commenced in 1803, and the village now contains about 140 establishments, manufacturing two thirds of the kid and buckskin gloves and mittens made in the United States. There are also manufac- tories of machine and glove patterns, organs, railroad lamps, carriages, kid and other leath- er, a planing mill, two national banks, three weekly newspapers, and seven churches. GLOWWORM, a name given to several serri- corn beetles, constituting the genus lampyris (Fab.). The antennae are short, with cylindri- cal and compressed articulations ; the head is concealed beneath the anterior margin of the thorax ; the eyes and the mouth are small ; the body is rather soft and depressed, with the sides of the abdomen serrated; the elytra are coriaceous and slightly flexible. The females are wingless, with rudiments of elytra at the base of the abdomen, and their general appear- ance to the uneducated eye is that of a worm, explaining fully the popular name of glow- Glowworm (Lampyris splendidula). 1. Male. 2. Female. 3. Larva of L. noctiluca. worm in England, and ver luisant in France. In the old Linnasan genus lampyris there were as many as 60 species, which have been distrib- uted into different genera, so that there were only nine species left in the genus in the last edition of Dejean's catalogue. There are four well known species of glowworm in Europe, L. noctiluca, Italica, splendidula, and Tiemip- tera ; the second is probably the species whose luminous faculty was known to the ancients, the Aa/zTrovpt? of the Greeks, and cicindela of the Romans. Both sexes are luminous, though the light is stronger in the female ; the light does not come from the thorax as in the fire- fly (elater), but from the posterior part of the abdomen on its upper and under surfaces. The English glowworm (L. noctiluca, Linn.) is the largest European species, about two thirds of an inch long in the male, and the female about an inch ; the male is brownish gray, with a reddish gray margin on the superior portion of the thorax, and has both wings and elytra; the female is wingless, of a uniform yellow white, with a very thin skin below ; in both sexes the luminous spots show themselves as