Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/569

Rh Brunswick, who sent him to a house of business at Cassel as clerk. He soon got tired, however, of the mono- tonous commercial routine, and selected the more active life of a farmer, in which capacity he spent the years from 1835 to 1837 in Saxony. But the uneventful agricultural life was unable to repress in him the innate roving instinct which, according to his own statement, had received a strong impulse in his eighth year by the perusal of Robinson Crusoe. The word “ America” had from that time exercised on him an irresistible charm, and so he went in 1837 from Bremen to New York. He travelled on foot over all parts of the United States, working as he went for his bare sub- sistence, and then settled for some time in Arkansas, where he led the life of a roving sportsman. Only now and then he visited inhabited places to see civilized society, and to earn some means by whatever work he could obtain. Thus he went in 1842 to Point Coupée in Louisiana, where he undertook the management of a hotel. This time, however, he did not return with the acquired means to the backwoods, but repaired to his German home to see his mother and other relatives, after having led an adventurous life for six years and a half. On his return to Germany he found himself, to his great surprise, known as an author, on a limited scale at least. His mother had shown his diary, which he regularly sent home, and which contained descrip— tions of his adventures in the New \Vorld, to the editor of the Rosen, who readily published them in his periodical. The travelling sketches having found great favour with the German public, Gerstitcker issued them, in 1844, in a collected form, under the title of Streif— and Jagdzz‘tge cl arch (lie Vercinigten Staaten Nordamer-i/cas. His next literary labours consisted of translations from the English, during the performance of which it occurred to him that he might himself become an original author, since he was able to delineate original characters, to relate remarkable occurrences, and to describe romantic scenery from his own experience, whilst others were obliged to draw upon their imagination only in producing works of ﬁction. Accord— ingly Gerstacker issued, in 1845, his ﬁrst novel, Die Ir’egnlatoren in Arkansas, and henceforth the stream of his productivencss ﬂowed on uninterruptedly. In 1849 he again repaired to America, being this time provided with a grant from the then “ German Government,” and acting at the same time as correspondent to the Augsbzu'ger Allgem. Zeitung. After having made very extensive travels both in America, Polynesia, and Australia, he returned in 1852 to Leipsic. In 1860 his innate restlessness drove him to South America, chieﬂy with a view of inspecting the Ger— man colonies there. After having traversed nearly all the principal South American countries he returned to Germany, but for a short time only, for in 1862 he accompanied the Duke Ernest of Coburg—Gotha to Egypt and Abyssinia. This was his last great journey, after the return from which he lived ﬁrst near Gotha and then at Brunswick, where he died on May 31, 1872. Gerstacker was greatly esteemed and liked as a man, on account of his genial temper and straightforward character, and as an author he enjoyed an almost unprecedented popularity at home and was very favourably known abroad. The charm of his productions consists in the natural fresh— ness of his descriptions, nearly all of which have an exotic background, and in the originality of his characters, the most prominent of which are drawn from real life. He dld not possess any high literary power, and probably never touched up what he had once written 3 his writings lack therefore on the whole that artistic ﬁnish which forms one of the principal elements of a good writer. This defect, however, impresses even on his works of ﬁction the stamp of probability, nay of truthfulness. His writings nowhere betray that intention of producing an effect which so often destroys the illusion of the reader in elaborately worked out productions. He generally writes in a homely, ungar— nished manner, just as a traveller would relate his adven- tures amidst a circle of friends. His writings, therefore, nearly always rivet the attention of the reader from begin- ning to end. The works of Gerstacker have, besides, the merit that they formed a wholesome counterpoise against the too idealistic tendency of the literature of Germany, against the lax and realistic school of France, and against the morbid sensationalism which prevailed in England. A number of his works have been translated into several modern languages, but mostly into English 3 their descrip- tions of exciting adventures on land and sea affording, with their sturdy humour, congenial reading to the English- speaking community in the Old and New W'orld. His best works, from a literary point of view, are, besides the above- mentioned Ifegulatoren, his Fluszpira ten cles .leississippi, his South Sea novel Tahiti, his Australian romance Die beiden Striiﬂinge, his JlIatrosenleben and Blau Wasser. His collected works have been issued in a cheap and handy edition published at Jena.  GERVAIS, (1816–1879), an eminent palaeonto logist, was born September 26, 1816, at Paris, where he obtained the diplomas of doctor of science and of medicine, and in 1835, as assistant to De Blainville in the laboratory of comparative anatomy at the Museum of Natural History, commenced palzeontological research. In 1841 he obtained the chair of zoology and comparative anatomy at the Faculty of Sciences in Montpellier, of which he was in 1856 appointed dean. In 1848—52 appeared his important work Zoologie et Paléontologie Franeaises, supplementary to the palzeontological publications of G. Cuvier and De Blainville 3 of this a second and greatly improved edition was issued in 1859. In 1865 he accepted the professorship of zoology at the Sorbonne, vacant through the death of Gratiolet 3 this post he left in 1868 for the chair of comparative anatomy at the Paris Museum of Natural History, the anatomical collections of which he greatly enriched by his exertions. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, in the place of Coste, January 26, 1874. Gervais was remarkable for the disinterestedness with which he devoted himself to the cause of science. He died February 10, 1879, in the sixty-third year of his age.

1em  GERVAISE, born about , was one of the monks of the priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, and witnessed the burning of the cathedral in. His earliest known literary effort was a Tractat-us (le Combus- tione et Reﬁlratione Dorobornensis Ecclesice, being an account of that conﬂagration and of the subsequent process of re- building, written probably about . This was followed about by I maginatio-nes de clisco-rdiis inter 77l0naf:’lt(/S C'antuarienses et Arc/iiepiscomzm Balde-winmn, a detalled relation of clerical disputes which had occurred duringthe episcopate of Baldwin from to. Gervalse’s