Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/154

142 half. The colour of the upper part of the body is a rusty grey, and of the under part white, while these are separated from each other by a well-deﬁned black band on each side. These bands unite on the breast, and are continued as a single black band until reaching the lower jaw, when they again divide and form two transverse bands on the head, termin- ating at the base of the horns. The head otherwise is white, as also are the limbs, with the exception of the thighs, which are black. The striking appearance presented by this antelope is in great part due to the absence of any blending in the different colours of its body. The gems- bok avoids the woods, living on the open plains in pairs or in small groups of four or ﬁve. Possessing powerful weapons of attack in its long spear-like horns, and with ample courage to use them, this animal, especially when wounded, is a formidable antagonist both to man and to the numerous beasts of prey which are attracted to the karroos of the Cape by the presence of this and other ruminant species. It is said to defend itself not unfrequently with success against the lion. Its ﬂesh is esteemed as a delicacy, and its hide forms a valuable leather.  GENDARMERIE, a body of troops or police in France, composed of gendarmcs, or men-at-arms. In the days of chivalry they were mounted and armed cap-a-pie, and attended each by ﬁve soldiers of inferior rank and more lightly armed. They were then furnished by the ﬂats, and marched in the train of the knights and esquires. In this feudal gendarmerie was replaced by the compagm'es d’onlonnance which Charles VII. formed when the English were driven out of France, and which were distributed throughout the whole extent of the kingdom for preserving order and maintaining the king’s authority. These companies, ﬁfteen in number, were composed of 100 lances or gendarmes fully equipped, each of whom was attended by at least three archers, one coutillz'cr (soldier armed with a cutlass) and one varlet (soldier’s servant). The states-general of Orleans had voted a subsidy of 1,200,000 livres in perpetuity to keep up this national soldiery, which replaced the bands of mercenaries who for about a century had made France their prey. The number and composition of the compagm'cs d’ordommnce were changed more than once before the reign ofLouis XIV. This sovereign on his accession to the throne found only eight companies of gendarmes; but after the victory of Fleurus (1690), which had been decided by their courage, he increased their number to sixteen. The four ﬁrst companies were designated by the names of Gendarmes écossaz's, G'enclurmes anglais, Gendarmes bourguignons, and Gen- (larmesﬂamands, from the nationality of the soldiers who had originally composed them ; but at that time they con- sisted entirely of French soldiers and ofﬁcers. These four companies had a captain—general, who was the king. The ﬁfth company was that of the queen; and the others bore the name of the princes who respectively commanded them. This organization lasted till 1787, when Louis XVI. dis- solved it, only retaining the Gendarmes écossais in his body- guard. The great Revolution swept away all these institu- tions of the monarchy, and, With the exception of a short revival of the Gendarmes de la garde at the Restoration, the word gendarmerie had thenceforth an altogether different meaning. It has been since that time employed to denote a military police, whose duties are to watch over the public safety, keep order, and enforce the execution of the laws. This police force superseded the old maréchaussée.

1em 1em 1em  GENEALOGY. Biblical.—The word “genealogy” (ycvcahoyt’a), which occurs twice in the New Testament (1 Tim. i. 4; Tit. iii. 9; compare also Heb. vii. 3, 6) in the ordinary concrete sense of “ pedigree” or “ list of ancestors,” is of somewhat frequent occurrence in the authorized version of the Old Testament scriptures, but only in Chronicles- Ezra-Nehemiah, where the words 3'02 and C'DZDU, which are peculiar to that work, are invariably rendered “ genealogy" and “to reckon by genealogy.” This translation, however, is of somewhat doubtful accuracy; for, whatever the original meaning of the root 3'0; may have been, there seems to be no room for doubt that the noun and the verb connected with it were used in later Hebrew simply to denote respectively the roll and the act of registration; and that the “book” alluded to in Neh. vii. 5 (in A. V. “ register of the genealogy”) was genealogical only in so far as the individuals registered in it were classiﬁed according to their “houses,” “families,” and “tribes.” While I catalogue of this sort was admirably ﬁtted to be a per- manent record of tribal relations in Israel, as these subsisted at the time of its compilation, there is not any reason to suppose that it made any attempt to trace them through previous generations. The scripture genealogies, properly