Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/843

 'GIVET went to Paris at the invitation of Francis I., who appointed him his chaplain, and tinder whose auspices he published shortly afterward his Hebrew-Latin edition of the book of Job. After filling for five years the chair of Hebrew in the university of Paris, he returned to Genoa, then torn by factions, was seriously wounded while trying to quell a riot, and thence pro- ceeded to Nebbio, where he spent the remain- der of his life in his episcopal duties. The prin- cipal work of Giustiniani is his Psalterium Ee- Irceum, Grcecum, Ardbicum, Chaldaicum, cum tribus Latinis Interpretationibus et Glossis (fol., Genoa, 1516). In a note to one of the psalms is the first printed biographical sketch of Christopher Columbus." He also left in man- uscript a polyglot New Testament. GIVET, a town of France, in the department of Ardennes, on the Meuse, 22 in. N. by E. of Mezieres, on the Belgian frontier ; pop. in 1866, 5,801. It is a fortified place of considerable importance, its principal defence being the citadel of Charlemont on an adjacent height. The town consists of Le Grand Givet, or Givet- Notre-Dame, on the right bank, and Le Petit Givet, or Givet-St.-Hilaire, with the fortress Charlemont, on the left bank of the Meuse, which are connected by a bridge built by Na- poleon I., and all of which are within the lines of fortification. Givet has manufactures of wire, pencils, and leather, for the last of which it is celebrated. GIVORS, a town of France, in the depart- ment of Rhone, on the Gier and the Rh6ne, 13 m. S. of Lyons; pop. in 1866, 9,957. It has extensive glassworks and tanneries, brick yards, founderies, and silk factories. The place is im- portant as a shipping point for coal. Near it the Givors-Gier canal, begun in 1765 and completed in 1781, joins the Rhone, which is thus connected with the Loire. In the vicin- ity are the ruins of the castle of St. Gerald and the convent of St. Ferreol. GIZEH, Ghizeh, or Jizeh, a town of Egypt, capital of a province of the same name, on the W. bank of the Nile, 3 m. S. W. of Cairo. It was once a large city, but is now a petty vil- lage surrounded by heaps of ruins. The khe- dive has a palace there. About 5 m. from the village stand the three great pyramids called those of Cheops, Cephren, and Mycerinus. At Gizeh are ovens in which eggs have been hatched artificially ever since the days of the Pharaohs. (See PYRAMIDS.) GIZZARD. See COMPARATIVE ANATOMY, vol. v., p. 181. GLACIAL THEORY. See DILUVIUM, and GLA- CIER. GLACIER (Fr. glacier, from glace, ice), a vast body of ice, filling some alpine valley, down which it slowly moves, the outlet of the snows which accumulate in the elevated portions of the mountain group. Glaciers may be found in all countries where extensive tracts lie above the snow line. In such localities the snows are ever accumulating, and the temperature GLACIER 827 not rising sufficiently for any considerable pro- portion to be melted and flow down, they fill the spaces between the summits. By the pres- sure exerted by these vast collections the yield- ing material is forced through whatever open- ing is presented for its passage, and the great valleys leading to the base of the mountains are packed full of ice, which results from the snow being solidified by pressure, or by its own melting and freezing again. This, solid as it appears, is steadily though imperceptibly urged onward, conforming to all the irregularities of its channel, split sometimes by immovable ledges of rock, which stand like islands in its course, yet closing again below them with no trace of the fissure. These bodies of ice ex- tend down the valleys till they reach a region where the temperature is sufficiently eleva- ted to melt away the supplies as they arrive. Though these have gradually diminished to- ward the lower extremity of the glacier, so that this has flattened away somewhat like a wedge, and has also become narrower, the termination is frequently abrupt and even inaccessible. It presents an apparently stationary wall of ice, which, though seen to be constantly wasting, may yet by observations continued several days be found steadily advancing from the mountain. During the summer currents of water formed from superficial thaws flow over its surface, at least in the daytime, and fall in cascades into the numerous chasms, which ex- tend across the glacier. They continue their course, hollowing out through the lower layers of the ice arched channels, which at the lower end appear like dark caverns extending far up into the icy mass. In high polar latitudes, where the line of perpetual snow comes down to the sea level, the phenomena of glaciers are displayed upon the grandest scale. Thus they were seen in lat. 79-80 by Dr. Kane in 1855, spreading over the western coast of Green- land, and sloping so gently toward the water that the effect of an inclined plane was per- ceived only by looking far into the interior toward the east. In this long range the an- gle of the slope was from 7 to 15. Yet the whole icy crust of this portion of the conti- nent was always advancing and stretching it- self out into the western bay, where masses of it were constantly detached and floated off as icebergs. From this glacier to the south- ern extremity of Greenland, more than 1,200 m., Dr. Kane imagined a deep unbroken sea of ice might extend along the central portions nearly the whole length of the continent. The study of the geology of California had enabled Prof. Whitney to point out the traces of im- mense glaciers which at a time geologically re- cent had existed in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. The alteration of the climate and the diminution of the rainfall consequent upon comparatively recent geological changes, have however caused the disappearance of the great- er part of these, and it was not till 1870 that Mr. Clarence King discovered actual glaciers on