Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/91

Rh  1em  GARLIC (Greek, cKépoSov; Latin, .Ifllimn; Italian, A giro ; 1‘ reuch, A ll ; German, 11 noblauch), Allmm satwam, Linn., a bulbous perennial plant of the tribe Ilyacinthinece of the natural order Liliacece, indigenous apparently to the south of Europe and to the East, having entire, obscurer keeled leaves, a deciduous spathe, a bulbiferous globose umbel, and whitish ﬂowers, with exsert pistil and stamens. ' The bulb, which is the only part eaten, has membranous scales, in the axils of which are 10 or 12 cloves, or smaller bulbs. From these new bulbs can be procured by planting out in February or March. The bulbs are best preserved hung in a dry place. If of fair size, twenty of them weigh about 1 H). To prevent the plant from running to leaf, Pliny (Nat. Hist., xix. 34) advises to bend the stalk downward, and cover with earth ; seeding, he observes, may be prevented by twisting the stalk. Garlic is cultivated in the same manner as the . It is stated to have been grown in England before . The percentage composition of the bulbs is given by Mr Sully (Trans. Hort. Soc. Loml., new ser., iii. p. 60) as water 8409, organic matter 1388, and inorganic matter 1'53,—that of the leaves being water 8714, organic matter 1127, and inorganic matter 1'59. The bulb has a strong and characteristic odour, and an acrid taste, and yields an offensively smelling oil, essence of garlic, identical with allylie sulphide (C3H5)2S (see Hofmanu and Cahours, Joan-n. Chem. Soc, x. p. 320). This, when garlic has been eaten, is evolved by the excretory organs, the activity of which it promotes. From the earliest times garlic has been used as an article of diet. It formed part of the food of the Israelites in Egypt (Numb. xi. 5), and of the labourers employed by Cheops in the construction of his pyramid, and is still grown in Egypt, where, however, the Syrian is the kind most esteemed (see Rawlinson’s Herodotus, ii. 125). It was largely consumed by the ancient Greek and Roman soldiers, sailors, and rural classes (cf. Virg., Ecl., ii. 11), and, as Pliny tells us (N.H., xix. 32), by the African peasantry. Galen eulogizes it as the rustie’s theriac (see F. Adams’s I’aulus JEyineta, p. 99), and Alexander Neckam, a writer of the (see Wright’s edition of his works, p. 473, 1863), recommends it as a palliative of the heat of the sun in ﬁeld labour. “ The people in places where the simoon is frequent,” says Elphinstoue (An Account of the Kingdom of Can/ml, p. 140, 1815), “eat garlic, and rub their lips and noses with it, when they go out in the heat of the summer, to prevent their suffering by the simoon.” “O dura messorum ilia,” exelaims Horace (Epoch, iii.), as he records his detestation of the popular eseulent, to smell of which was accounted a sign of vulgarity Shakespeare, Coriol., iv. 6, and Meas. for Meas., iii. 2). In England garlic is seldom used except as a seasoning, but in the southern countries of Europe it is a common ingredient in dishes, and is largely consumed by the agricultural population. Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads, as a supper for Hecate (Theophrastus, Characters, AamBaquovias) ; and according to Pliny garlic and onions were invocated as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium in Lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic in aversion as food. Garlic possesses stimulant and stomachie properties, and was of old, as still sometimes now, employed as a medicinal remedy. Pliny (N.H., xx. 23) gives an exceedingly long list of complaints in which it was considered beneﬁcial. Dr Sydenham valued it as an application in confluent smallpox, and, says Cullen (ilfat. Med” ii. p. 174, 1789), found some dropsies cured by it alone. The volatile oil has proved efﬁcacious in in— digestion, and in Some stages of bronchitis, especially in the acute form of the disease in infants, also in chronic colds, and as a rubefacient and nervine tonic ; and poultices of the pounded pulp are recommended for the convulsions and suﬂ'ocative catarrh of infants (Wood, Treat. on Therapeutics, p. 451, 1874). With lemon—juice garlic has also been re- sorted to for the cure of diphtheria (Brit. and For. ﬁled.- C’hir. lieu, 1860, i. p. 281 The wild “ Crow Garlic” and “ Field Garlic” of Britain are the Linneau species Alliam vineale and A. oleracemn respectively.

1em  GARNET (German, Granat; French, Grenat), a mineral the name of which is derived from the Latin granatum, the pomegranate, or, as Lydgate calls it, “garnet appille” (see Halliwell,’Dict., i. p. 392), on account of the resemblance of its granular varieties to the seeds of that fruit. Several sorts of garnets, with other stones, seem to have been included under the terms dvﬁpag and cctrlm-nculas, employed by Theophrastus and Pliny. Garnet occurs in crystals, mostly dodecahedral or trapezohedral, very rarely octahedral, of the isometric, regular, or cubical system, also in pebbles and grains (as in alluvial deposits), and massive, with a granular or coarse lamellar structure. It varies in diaphaneity from transparent to nearly opaque; is red, red-brown, or black in colour, less frequently white, yellow, pink, or green; has a vitreous to resinous lustre, a white streak, dodeea— hedral cleavage, hardness of 6'5 to 75, speciﬁc gravity of 3'15 to 4'30, and an uneven sub-eonchoidal fracture ; and is brittle and sometimes friable, or, in the compact cryptoerystalline varieties, tough. Before the blowpipe it gives a brown, green, or black (often magnetic) glass, which hydro- chloric acid decomposes, with the separation of gelatinous silica. Previous to melting, the mineral is but little affected by the acid. The least fusible forms are the lime-iron garnets. It has been shown by Professor Church that, although unaffected by exposure to a full red heat for a quarter of an hour, iron garnet may by fusion have its speciﬁc gravity lowered from 4059 to 3204. By almost complete fusion a specimen of almandine garnet examined by him had its speciﬁc gravity increased from 4'103 to 4208. Long-continued ignition effected only a slight increase in the density of various specimens of lime garnet (see Jom'n. Chem. Soc, vol. xvii. p. 388). Garnets, which through the isomorphism of their constituents are extremely variable in chemical composition, are silicates of the general formula B”3R“’2.Si3012, or 3R"O,R“’2O3.3Si02, in which R"=calcium, magnesium, iron, and manganese, and I'll": aluminium, iron, and chromium. Occasionally rarer metals