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 GEORGIA The characters used in the ecclesiastical style of writing differ from the common ones. The languages of the four tribes, the Georgians, the Mingrelians, the Suanethians, and the La- zians, are related to each other, and show a common development from one primitive form, either primitive Aryan or Dravidian ; but there is no foundation for connecting them with the languages spoken by tribes north of the Cauca- sus. The Georgian is written from left to right. It makes no distinction of gender. To distin- guish sex, the words male and female are intro- duced, except for the words king, queen, young man, young woman, him, and her. No article is used. There are two numbers, singular and plural, and six cases, nominative, genitive, da- tive, vocative, instrumental, and instrumental modal. There are special forms for the com- parative and superlative of adjectives. Nouns are inflected by means of suffixes, and verbs by means of suffixes, prefixes, and changes in the radical letters. The verbs are either active, passive, reciprocal, or neuter, and are modified according to one of the 20 classes of conjuga- GEORGIA BARK 729 tion into which they are divided. Prepositions govern either the genitive, dative, or instru- mental. Among the literary remains of an- cient Georgia, some of the manuscripts written in the ecclesiastical style of alphabet are prob- ably of high antiquity ; but most of them date subsequently to the introduction of Christianity, and consist of homilies and translations of por- tions of Scriptures, and of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek authors. Some manuscripts con- tain novels and romances ; one gives in verse the history of Shah Naos, and several, dating principally from the 17th century, are poetical works of some merit. The most important of Georgian manuscripts are: a volume of 63 treatises, historical and biographical, which has thrown much light on the history of the Khazars during the 8th century ; a translation of the Gospels by Droudch, dating from the 10th century ; and a romance entitled " Tariel, the Man with the Tiger Skin," a general of Queen Tainar, by Skhotta of Rustvel. The fol- lowing is a facsimile of the last verse of Rust- vel's romance : The literal translation is as follows : " Moses of Khori has glorified Amiran, the son of Da- redjan; the poem of Abdul Messia, written by Khevtel, and the history of Dilar by the inde- fatigable writer Geth Sargis of Tmogvi, were worthy of praise ; but Rustvel has wept with- out ceasing over his Tariel." Among similar compositions, an epic on Queen Tamar, by Tchakhadze, ranks equally high. During the 18th century, in spite of the incessant wars that harassed the country, there was a rich supply of meritorious literature, and the lan- guage attained that definiteness, richness, and energy which are now its most prominent features. Prince Sulkhan-Saba-Orbelian pub- lished in that century a dictionary of the lan- guage, containing at least 25,000 words, and King Vakhtang VI. caused an extensive his- tory of the country to be written. The Rus- sian language has now generally superseded the Georgian in the schools, and books in the Georgian language are printed in Russian char- acters. The language and literature of the Georgians have been specially studied by Ade- lung, Brosset, Dorn, Josselin, Klaproth, Saint- Martin, and Tchubinoff. Brosset is considered the highest authority on the subject. Ethno- logical studies of the Georgian race are con- tained in the books of travel of Cunynghame, Dorn, Dubois de Montpereux, W. J. Hamilton, Haxthausen, Mounsey, Poulett- Cameron, and Wagner. See Histoire de la Georgie depuis V antiquite jusqu'au XIX" siecle, traduite du georgien, by Brosset (2 vols. 4to, St. Peters- burg, 1849-'57); "History of Grusia," by Baratoff (St. Petersburg, 1865 et seq.) ; and La Georgie, by De Villeneuve (Paris, 1871). GEORGIA, Gnlf of, an arm of the sea lying be- tween Vancouver island and the mainland of British Columbia, between lat. 48 50' and 50 K, and Ion. 122 40' and 125 W. On the south it is connected with the strait of Juan de Fuca by Haro and Rosario straits, and on the north with Queen Charlotte sound. Howe sound and Jervis and Burrard inlets run from it into the mainland. Fraser river flows into it. Its length is about 100 m. ; greatest breadth, 30 m. At each extremity of the gulf is an archi- pelago, and it contains several large islands. GEORGIA BARK, the common name of Pinck- neya pulens, one of the handsomest of our native shrubs. It grows in bogs and along the banks of streams from South Carolina to Flori- da, and sometimes attains the height of 20 ft.,