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Page 795 : GRAPE-FRUIT — GRASS

Ontario, Michigan and the cooler parts of Georgia and Alabama.

Grape=Fruit, a species of Citrus, to which oranges and lemons belong. The species is C. decumana, and it is popularly known by the names pomelo and shaddock as well as grape-fruit. It is native to the Malayan and Polynesian islands, and seems to be most extensively cultivated in India, Florida and California, although of general occurrence in tropical and subtropical countries. The ordinary globular forms of the market are pomelos or grape-fruits, while the pear-shaped shaddocks are seldom found in the markets.

Grape Phyl′loxe′ra, a small insect with sucking beak, that is very destructive to vineyards. It belongs to the plant-lice. Its injuries have been most extensive in France, and many memoirs have been written about it. There are two forms, one attacking the roots, the other the leaves. They produce swelling on the root and galls on the leaves. It has been corn-batted with only partial success.

Grape=Sugar. See

Graph′ite. Graphite is a relatively incombustible form of carbon. It occurs chiefly in association with highly meta-morpnic rocks, and is supposed to be of vegetable origin. Highly metamorphic coal sometimes becomes graphitic; that is, coal may be so metamorphosed as to be partially changed into graphite. Some of the coal of Rhode Island is graphitic. The principal use of graphite is for the manufacture of crucibles and pencils. In the manufacture of crucibles it is mixed with clay, and its value for this purpose depends on its infusibility. Only the finer grades of graphite are used in the manufacture of pencils, and for the manufacture of the best grades of pencils the graphite must be carefully freed from all impurities. Graphite is used in limited quantities for many other purposes, as stove polish, lubricants for machinery, etc. In 1906 the total product from the United States was 19,097 tons. The commercial product was derived from Alabama, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The largest and purest supply of the United States comes from Ticonderoga, N. Y. Canada also produces graphite. The value of graphite depends largely upon its purity, the highest grades being of great value.

Graph′ophone. An instrument invented by Charles S. Tainter and Chickester A. Bell for reproducing sounds, particularly human speech and music. It is much the same in principle and construction as the phonograph invented by Edison, but has minor mechanical advantages, for example, a wax-coated cylinder instead of one made entirely of wax.

Graph′otype. This is a process which makes it possible for the artist actually to draw his own engravings, instead of having them merely copied for printing. The original method dates from 1860, when De Witt C. Hitchcock used an ink made of lampblack and glue upon a surface of compressed French chalk resting on a zinc plate. When the uninked chalk has been removed, the remainder may be hardened in a silicate, and the picture is then electrotyped.

Grass. The usual name of members of the family Gramineæ, which is one of the largest and certainly one of the most useful groups of plants as well as one of the most peculiar. Grasses are world-wide in their dis-tribution, and are remarkable in the display of individuals, commonly growing so densely over large areas as to form a close turf. Associating with them the sedges, which resemble them in habit, there are about 6,000 species. Here belong the various cereals, as wheat, barley, rye, oats, rice etc.; also sugar-canes, sorghum, bamboos and pasture-grasses. The flowers are small, having no floral leaves and consisting chiefly of three stamens surrounding a single pistil, whose ovary ripens into the grain or characteristic seed-like fruit of the group. One of the most noteworthy features of the group is the prominent development of peculiar bracts in connection with the flowers. Each flower is completely protected or even inclosed by one or more of these bracts; and, as they usually overlap one another, the flowers are invisible until the bracts spread apart to permit the long dangling stamens to appear. These bracts are the so-called chaff of wheat and other cereals, and by botanists are called glumes, those glumes most closely associated with the flowers being the palets. In the temperate regions grasses for the most part are lowly plants, while in the subtropical and tropical regions they rise until such forms as the canes and bamboos form growths that may be called forests. The ordinary grasses of the United States may be roughly grouped as turf-forming grasses and bunch-grasses. The former spread by creeping rootstocks, and soon form a compact mat or turf. Such grasses are naturally the most suitable for lawns and pastures. The bunch-grasses are more characteristic of poor soils or of dry regions, and occur abundantly on our western plains, growing, as the name suggests, in clumps or stools.

FLOWER [image]

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