GARLIC 



GARNETS 



the quantity used in cooking. This varies 

 greatly with national taste, from a maximum 

 in Spain to a minimum 

 in Britain. The plant 

 seems to have been intro : 

 duced along the Mediter- 

 ranean from the East in 

 very early times, its 

 original home being per- 

 haps the Kirghiz steppes : 

 it is recorded as part of 

 the rations of the Egyp- 

 tian pyramid-builders, 

 and there perhaps the 

 Jews acquired their fond- 

 ness for it. It was, how- 

 ever, forbidden to the 

 priests of Isis. The 

 Roman soldiers were 

 given garlic as an excit- 

 ant (whence the peace- 

 loving maxim, allium ne 

 comedas); and the same 

 regimen was applied in 

 the still recent days of 

 cock-fighting. It had 

 also many medicinal ap- 

 plications. Many of the 

 Common Garlic species of Allium are 



(Attium sativum). popularly called garlic, 

 with some distinctive 



addition. A. oleraceum is sometimes called Wild 

 Garlic in England, and its young and tender leaves 

 are used as a pot-herb. 



Garlic, OIL OF. When the leaves, seeds, or 

 bulbs of garlic and other allied plants are distilled 

 with steam, about 0'2 per cent, of a brown oil, with 

 acrid taste and strong disagreeable odour, passes 

 over. By purification it is obtained as a pale yellow 

 oil having the odour of garlic, and it is then found 

 to consist of the sulphide of allyl, (C,H 5 ) 2 S. This 

 oil' is nearly related to the pungent oil of mustard, 

 CsHijNCS, an isomer of the sulphocyanide of allyl, 

 and is of much interest chemically, but it is of no 

 importance from an industrial or popular point of 

 view. 



Garnet* HENRY, is chiefly remembered for 

 his connection with the Gunpowder Plot. He was 

 born in 1555, and educated as a Protestant at 

 Winchester College. A few years after leaving 

 school he became a Roman Catholic, went abroad, 

 and entered the Society of Jesus. He acquired 

 among the Jesuits a considerable reputation for 

 learning and piety. In 1586 he was sent upon the 

 English mission, where for eighteen years he acted 

 as provincial of the Jesuits. The indiscreet zeal 

 with which he promoted certain Jesuit schemes for 

 the advancement of their order brought him into 

 odium with an influential section of the secular 

 clergy ; while his friendship and correspondence with 

 the extreme partisans of the Spanish faction brought 

 him under suspicion of treason. In the spring of 

 1605 he wrote to a Jesuit in Flanders in commenda- 

 tion of Guy Fawkes, when that conspirator went 

 over to the Netherlands in order to solicit the 

 co-operation of Sir William Stanley and others in 

 the plot of that yeai\ Garnet admitted that before 

 this he had come to know, in a general way, of 

 the projected treason, and that in July he heard 

 the particulars, under the seal of confession 

 (so lie said), from another Jesuit, Greenway. 

 At the time ot the discovery of the plot he was 

 present at the place of meeting appointed by the 

 conspirators, and shortly afterwards was appre- 

 hended on suspicion atHindlip. The chief grounds 

 for inferring his complicity in the plot were 

 derived from a secret conversation held by him in 



prison with a brother Jesuit, Oldcorn, overheard by 

 spies set for the purpose by the government. 



That Garnet knew the particulars of the mur- 

 derous design months before its attempted execu- 

 tion was proved and admitted. That this know- 

 ledge was derived exclusively from the confessional 

 rests upon his statement only. It would probably 

 have gone less hard with the prisoner had not his 

 judges been prejudiced against him, not indeed so 

 much on account of his creed as for his extraor- 

 dinary practice of equivocation when on his trial. 

 He was condemned for misprision of treason, and 

 executed May 3, 1606. In proof of his innocence 

 the story of a miraculous straw, touched by his 

 blood, and bearing a miniature portrait of the 

 Jesuit, was circulated among Roman Catholics ; 

 and it is said that the mere sight of the straw 

 made five hundred converts to his creed. Garnet 

 was considered by his co-religionists generally as a 

 martyr for the seal of confession, and as such was 

 proposed, with the rest of the victims of the penal 

 laws, for the honour of beatification ; but it is 

 remarkable that, while more than three hundred 

 candidates obtained the title of Blessed or Vener- 

 able, the objections of the ' devil's advocate ' in 

 the case of Father Garnet were so cogent that the 

 pope was induced to defer the introduction of his 

 cause. See GUNPOWDER PLOT, and works cited 

 there. 



Garnets, a group of minerals that crystallise in 

 the cubical system. Their commonest form is the 

 rhombic dodecahedron, or a combination of this 

 with the icositetrahedron. Their composition may 

 be represented by the general formula, M 3 R 2 Si 3 Oi 2 , 

 where M = Ca, Fe, Mg, Mn ; R 2 = A1 2 , Fe 2 , Cr 2 . thus 

 we have lime-alumina, iron-alumina, magnesia- 

 alumina, manganese-alumina, lime-iron, and lime- 

 chrome garnets. Garnets have a hardness ranging 



Garnet : 



a, a detached crystal ; 6, portion of rock with embedded 

 crystals. 



from about 7 to 8. Their lustre is vitreous 

 and resinous, and they are rarely transparent and 

 very seldom colourless. The most common colour 

 is some shade of red, but brown, yellow, green, and 

 even black varieties are known. Some of the better 

 known kinds are as follows : 



Lime-alumina Garnets. Grossular (grossula, 'a 

 gooseberry'), so called from its green colour the 

 tint is usually rather pale found in Siberia and in 

 Norway; Essonite or Cinnamon-stone (q.v. ); Suc- 

 cinite, amber-coloured, from Ala, Piedmont ; Roman- 

 zovite, brown or brownish-black, from Kimito, in 

 Finland. 



Iron-alumina Garnets. Almandine, the precious 

 or oriental garnet of jewellers ; red, transparent ; 

 "occurs as a rock-constituent in many crystalline 

 schists and granites, and occasionally also in 

 trachyte, and is met with in the sands and alluvial 

 soils which have resulted from the disintegration 

 of such rocks, as in Ceylon, Pegu, Hindustan, 

 Brazil, Greenland, Scotland, &c. Iron-alumina 

 garnets are often crowded with enclosures, have a 

 somewhat dull lustre, and are full of flaws ; such 

 are usually known as common garnet. Common 

 garnet often occurs massive, and not infrequently 



