Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/80

70   GANNAL, (1791–1852), a distinguished French technical chemist, was born at Sarre~Louis, July 28, 1791. At the age of fourteen he was placed in a druggist’s establishment, where he acquired a knowledge of chemical manipulation. In 1808 he entered the medical department of the French army, and in the campaign of 1812 he witnessed the disastrous retreat from Moscow. After the downfall of the empire he obtained a situation at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, and subsequently acted as chemical assistant to Thénard. Having commenced research in industrial chemistry, he devised a method for the reﬁning of borax, by which the price of that salt was reduced from 6 francs to 60 centimes per II). He was the ﬁrst to intro- duce into printing the use of elastic rollers, which he formed of a mixture of gelatin and sugar, and his process for the melting of tallow and hardening it with acids prepared the way for the manufacture of wax-candles. In 1823 he took out a patent for the making of glue and gelatin. His experiments with the latter substance demonstrated the incorrectness of the opinion, held by Darcet and others, that it possessed highly nutritive properties. He obtained one of the Montyon prizes of the Institute in 1827 for the em- ployment of chlorine in the treatment of catarrh and phthisis, and again in 1835 for his discovery of the efﬁcacy of injec- tions of solutions of acetate and chloride of aluminium in preserving anatomical preparations. Turning his attention next to embalmment, he showed that it could be accomplished without mutilation of the body, and with greater economy than after the old methods, by injecting into one of the carotid arteries solutions of aluminium salts. Gannal died at Paris in 1852. The following are among his works :—

1em  GANNAT, a town of France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Allier, is situated on the Andelot, an afﬂuent of the Allier, 33 miles S. by W. of Moulins. The vicinity is very pleasant, but the town is badly built and the streets are crooked and narrow. It possesses a tribunal of primary instance, a hospital, and a secondary school. There are limeworks, tanneries, cutleries, and some trade in corn, fruits, wine, and cattle. The town was formerly surrounded by walls, and what remains of its old castle is now used as a prison. The church of Sainte-Croix possesses a choir in the pure Auvergne style of the, and also some fine paintings. The population in 1876 was 5042.  {{ti|1em|{{larger|GANNET}} (Anglo-Saxon, gmwl) or {{sc|Solan Goose}}, The phrase ga'notcs bred" (Gannet’s bath), a periphrasis for the sea, occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in reference to events which took place {{9link|975|975{{nbsp}}{{lang|la|{{abbr|{{sc|a.d.}}|Latin: Anno Domini, “in the Year of the Lord”}}}}, as pointed out by Prof. Cunningham, whose learned treatise on this bird (ll/1's, 1866, p. 1) nearly exhausts all that can be said of its history and habits. A few pages further on (p. 13) this writer remarksz—“The name Gannet is intimately con- nected with our modern English Gander, both words being modifica- tions of the ancient British ‘gan ' or ‘ gans,’ which is the same word with the modern German ‘Gans,’ which in its turn corresponds with the old High German ‘ Kans,’ the Greek x-ﬁy, the Latin anscr, and the Sanskrit ‘ hansa,‘ all of which possess the same signiﬁcation, viz. , a Goose. The origin of the names Solan or Soland, Sulan, Sula, and Haf-sula, which are evidently all closely related, is not so obvious. Martin [1'03]. St. Kilda] informs us that ‘ some imagine that the word Solan comes from the Irish Souler, corrupted and adapted to the. Scottish language, gm: ocuh's irretortis c longinquo respiciat jn-wdam.’ The earlier writers in general derive the word from the Latin solea, in consequence of the bird's supposed habit of hatching its egg with its foot; and in a note intercalated into Ray’s deseription of the Solan Goose in the edition of his Itineraries published by the Ray Society, and edited by Dr Lankester, we are told, though no authority for the statement is given, that ‘the Gannet, Sula. (/Iba, should be written Solent Goose, i.c., a channel goose.” Ilereon an editorial note remarks that this last statement appears to have been a suggestion of Yarrell's, and that it seems at least as possible that the “Solent” took its name from the bird. the Pelcccmus bassanus of Linnaeus and the Sula basscma of modern ornithologists, a large sea-fowl long known as at numerous visitor, for the purpose of breeding, to the Bass took at the entrance of the Firth of Forth, and to certain other islands off the coast of Britain, of which four are in Scottish waters—namely, Ailsa Craig, at the mouth of the Firth of Clyde ; the group known collectively as St Kilda ; Suleskerry, some 40 miles north-east of the Butt of Lewis ; and the Stack and Skerry, about the same distance west- ward of Stromness. It appears also to have two stations off the coast of Ireland, the Skellig Islands and the Stags of Broadhaven, and it resorts besides to Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel—its only English breeding-place. Further to the northward its settlements are Myggenzes, the most westerly of the Faroes, and various small islands off the coast of Iceland, of which the Vestmannaeyjar, the ‘leykjanes Fuglaskér, and Grimsey are the chief. On the western side of the Atlantic it appears to have but ﬁve stations, one in the Bay of Fundy, and four rocks in the Gulf of St Lawrence. On all these seventeen places the bird arrives about the end of March or in April and departs in autumn when its young are ready to ﬂy; but even during the breeding-season many of the adults may be seen on their ﬁshing excursions at a vast distance from their home, while at other times of the year their range is greater still, for they not only frequent the North Sea and the English Channel, but stray to the Baltic, and, in winter, extend their ﬂight to the Madciras, while the members of the species of American birth traverse the ocean from the shores of Greenland to the Gulf of Mexico.}} Apparently as bulky as a Goose, and with longer wings and tail, the Gannet weighs considerably less. The plum— age of the adult is white, tinged on the head and neck with buff, while the outer edge and principal quills of the wing are black, and some bare spaces round the eyes and on the throat reveal a dark blue skin. The ﬁrst plumage of the young is of a deep brown above, but paler beneath, and each feather is tipped with a triangular white spot. The

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