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 632 GARTH GAS sisting of 26 pieces, each in form of a garter, enamelled azure ; the George, or figure of St. George on horseback encountering the dragon, attached to the collar, and the lesser George pendent from a broad dark blue ribbon over the left shoulder; the star, of eight points, silver, upon the centre of which is the cross of St. George, gules, encircled with the gar- ter; and the ribbon of the order, garter blue. By a statute passed Jan. 15, 1805, the order is to consist of the sovereign and 25 knights companions, together with such lineal descendants of George II. as may be elected, always excepting the prince of Wales, who is a constituent part of the original institution. Special statutes have since at different times been proclaimed for the admission of sovereigns and extra knights, the latter of whom have, however, always become part of the 25 com- panions on the occurrence of vacancies. The last sovereign elected was the sultan Abdul- Aziz, who was invested by the queen on board of her yacht at the naval review, July 17, 1867. The knights are designated as K. G., " knights of the garter;" their strict designation, how- ever, is equites aurece periscelidis, " knights of the golden garter." At the beginning of 1873 there were, besides the queen and the prince of Wales, 47 knights of the garter. They were : the duke of Edinburgh, Prince Arthur, and Prince Leopold, sons of the queen; the ex- king of Hanover and the duke of Cambridge, members of the royal family ; the ex-emperor of the French, the king of Italy, the emperor of Germany, the king of Portugal, the king of Denmark, the king of the Belgians, the empe- ror of Austria, the emperor of Russia, the sul- tan of Turkey, and the emperor of Brazil ; the crown prince of Germany, and 7 other Ger- man dukes and princes, and 24 British peers. The officers of the order were: the bishop of Winchester, prelate ; the bishop of Oxford, chancellor; the garter principal of arms, and the usher of the black rod. GARTH, Sir Samuel, an English physician and poet, born in Yorkshire, died in London, Jan. 18, 1719. He studied medicine at Cambridge, settled in London in 1693, and soon secured an extensive practice, and became noted for his classical taste, liberality, and social habits. A quarrel had existed for some years between the physicians who advocated and the apothe- caries who opposed the establishment of a free dispensary for the poor. Garth sided with the former, and wrote in their support "The Dis- pensary," a satirical poem of 2,000 lines in imitation of Boileau's Lutrin (1699 ; 9th re- vised ed., 1706).. Garth was the leading whig physician of the time, and a member of the Kit-cat club. He wrote several short poems, and partly made a translation of Ovid's " Met- amorphoses" (1717), to which Dryden, Ad- dison, Gay, and many others contributed. He wasjmighted by George I. in 1714. GARTNER, Joseph, a German botanist, born in Calw, Wiirtemberg, March 22, 1732, died July 13, 1791. He studied at Tubingen and Gottingen, travelled in Italy, France, England, and Holland, became professor of anatomy at Tubingen in 1761, and of botany at St. Peters- burg in 1768. He returned to Calw after two years, where he devoted himself for the re- mainder of his life to the study of botany, ma- king several long journeys for that purpose. His labors are important in the history of this science, since he was the first to observe that plants are naturally divided into classes by their carpological features. His principal work is De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1789-'91). GARVE, Christian, a German philosopher, born in Breslau, Jan. 7, 1742, died there, Dec. 1, 1798. He succeeded Gellert as professor of philosophy at Leipsic in 1769, but ill health compelled him to return to Breslau in 1772. Kant appreciated his rare psychological genius and his benevolent nature. His numerous writings, some of which are in Latin, relate chiefly to the philosophy of history and of life, and to ethics and literature. He translated works of Aristotle, Paley, and Adam Smith, and Cicero's De Officiis, the last at the sugges- tion of Frederick the Great, of whom Garve was an enthusiastic admirer, as evinced in his Fragmente relating to that monarch. GAS (Sax. gast, Ger. Geist, Dutch geest, spirit), a generic term used to designate any aeriform fluid which is neither liquefied nor solidified at ordinary temperatures and pressure, introduced by Van Helmont in the early part of the 17th century. Excepting the atmosphere, little was known of aSriform bodies by the ancients ; but, under the name spiritus or flatus, artificial gas had been referred to by writers between the 14th and 17th centuries. It seems, however, to have been generally believed that such gases were only impure atmospheric air. Paracelsus noticed the evolution of gas by the action of oil of vitriol on iron as an eruption of air, but seems to have attached no special importance to it. Van Helmont was the first to attempt any systematic examination of gases, and to make a distinction between them and vapors ; but his knowledge was necessarily imperfect, as he was not aware of the fact, long afterward demonstrated by Faraday, that most gases are condensible as well as vapors. The different gases are described under their respective titles. Most of their physical properties, and their ab- sorption by liquids and solids, are treated of in the articles HEAT, PNEUMATICS, ATMOSPHEEE, and ABSORPTION, together with notices of the principal discoveries pertaining thereto. The laws of their chemical combination are treat- ed in the article ATOMIC THEOEY. In the present article will be considered the general management and the diffusion of gases, and illuminating gas. I. MANAGEMENT OF GASES. The collection and preservation of gases for experiment and observation may be effected by one of three methods, depending upon the nature of the gas and the mode of its genera-