( ; !; I > 



GKIHJKS 



121 



mingled \\itli iiilM-rcleH. The leg are short, the 

 i-ualh slow, measured, and stealthy, although 

 i Ml can also run very nimbly when danger 

 piemen, and often disappear \er\ suddenly when 

 they seem almost to lie -truck or caught. The 

 feet ure remarkable, being adapted for adhering 

 to smooth surface-, -'> that geckos remlily eliluli 

 the smoothest trees or walls, or creep inverted on 

 eei lilies, or hang on the lower side of the large 

 lease- in which tropical vegetation aliounds. The 

 Itody and tail are never crested, hut are sometimes 

 famished with lateral membranes, variously fes- 

 tooned or fringed. 'I'll'- lateral memhraiie is some 

 times even so large as to he of use to arl>oreal 

 species in enabling them to take long leaps from 

 hraneh to hnineh. The geckos feed chielly on 

 insects. They are more or leas nocturnal in their 

 haliits. They are nathes of warm climates, and 



I Fringed Gecko (Ptychozoon homalocephalum). 



are very widely distributed over the world, heing 

 especially numerous in the Indian and Australian 

 !'- ions. Two species are found in the south of 

 Europe, hoth of which frequently enter houses, as 

 do the geckos of Egypt, India, and other warm 

 countries. The name gecko ts derived from a 

 peculiar cry often uttered hy some of the species, 

 and which in some of them resembles syllables 

 distinctly pronounced, whilst others are described 

 as enlivening the night in tropical forests by a 

 harsh cackle. The geckos have, in almost all 

 parts of the world where they are found, a bad 

 reputation as venomous, and as imparting in- 

 jurious qualities to food which they touch ; but 

 there is no good evidence in support of any such 

 opinion, in accordance with which, however, an 

 Egyptian gecko is even known as ' the father of 

 leprosy.' 



4.'d, WILLIAM, inventor of the art of stereo- 

 typing, was an Edinburgh goldsmith, who from 

 IV'-'.'i onwards bent his energies to the Stereotyping 

 (<|.v.)of hooka. He entered into partnership with 

 a I. nndon capitalist, and was commissioned by the 

 university of Cambridge to stereotype some prayer- 

 books and bibles, though only two prayer-books 

 were actually finished ; for, owing to the unfair 

 treatment of his partner and the injustice of his 

 own workmen. Ceil was compelled to abandon the 

 enterprise. He returned to Edinburgh a disap- 



C M'II ted man, and died there on 19th October 174i>. 

 is most noteworthy production after his return 

 home was a stereotyped edition of Sal lust ( 1739). 

 ^e Mi-iiinir by Nichols (1781). 



Geddes, ALEXANDER, a biblical critic, trans- 

 lator, and miscellaneous writer, was IKMTI at Arra- 

 dowl, in the parish of Kutliven, Banffshire, in 17.'<7. 

 His parents were Roman Catholics, and he was 

 educated for a priest, first at Scalan, a monastic 



seminary in the Highlands, next at the Scot* 

 College, 1'urix, where he acquired a knowledge of 

 Hebrew, Creek, Italian, French, Spanish, German, 

 and Dutch. In 1704 he returned to Scotland, and 

 live years later took a cure of souls at Auchin- 

 halrig in lianllshire, where lie remained for ten 

 years. Here he made himself conspicuous hy a 

 breadth of sympathy with the I'rotcstantH around 

 him, so extraordinary as to lead to his Iwing 

 deposed from all his ecclesiastical functions. The 

 university of Aberdeen made him LL. I). Geddes 

 now resolved to letake himself to literature, 

 and proceeded to London in 17NO. He had long 

 planned a translation of the Bible into English 

 for the use of Roman Catholics, and he was 

 now, through the munificence of Lord Petre, 

 enabled to devote himself to the work. The first 

 volume appeared in 1792; the second in 1793, 

 carrying the translation as fai as the end of the 

 historical books ; and the third was issued in 1800, 

 containing his Critical Remarks on the Hebrew 

 Xn-ifititret. These volumes, especially the last, are 

 startlingly heretical, and offended Catholics and 

 I'rotestants alike. They exhibit as thorough-going 

 Rationalism as is to be found in Eichhoin or 

 Paulus, eliminating the supernatural element from 

 the Scriptures; such stories as that of the (Yea 

 tion in Genesis leing merely poetical or philo- 

 sophical fictions, and such figures as Moses merely 

 men who by a pious fraud contrived to add a divine 

 sanction to mere human wisdom. These opinions 

 naturally enough exposed Geddes to the charge of 

 infidelity. He died in London, 26th February 

 1802. His poems, even Bardontachia, are jiow of 

 no importance. See the Life by Dr Mason Good 

 (1803). 



<'<llrs. ANDREW, a painter, was born at 

 Edinburgh in 1789. He began to study at the 

 Royal Academy in London in 1807, and first ex- 

 hibited in Edinburgh, producing successful pictures 

 in 1808 and in 1810, in the latter year the ' Draught - 



Slayers.' This, along with 'The Discovery of the 

 cottish Regalia,' exhibited at the Royal Academy, 

 London, in 1821, and 'Christ and the Woman of 

 Samaria,' are esteemed his best pictures, though he 

 also excelled in jjortrait-painting. He ranks higher 

 as an etcher. In 1831 he was elected A. It. A., and 

 died in 1844. 



, an obscure woman whose name 

 is memorable in tradition from her having liegun 

 the riotous resistance to the introduction of a 

 Service-book prepared by Laud into the Church of 

 Scotland in 1637. The day fixed for this hated 

 innovation was Sunday the 23d July, and an im- 

 mense crowd filled the High Kirk of St Giles, 

 Edinburgh, on the occasion. On Dean H anna's 

 beginning to read the collect for the day, Jenny 

 Geddes, who kept a vegetable-stall in the High 

 Street, threw her stool at his head, shouting : ' Deil 

 colic the watne o' thee ; out, thou false thief ! dost 

 thou say mass at my lug ? ' A great uproar at once 

 arose, and both dean and bishop ( David Lindsav) 

 had to flee for their lives from the fury of the mob. 

 This tumult proved the deathblow of the liturgy in 

 Scotland. Tins famous exploit is unfortunately 

 lacking in historical evidence lieyond a fairly early 

 and persistent tradition. Still Svdserf in 1661 

 mentions 'the immortal Jenet Geddes, princess of 

 the Trone adventurers,' as having burned 'her 

 leather chair of state ' evidently an object already 

 famous at the Restoration lionfires, and the story 

 appears with name and full detail in Phillips' 

 Continuation of BaLfr's Chrunirhle, published in 

 1660, the heroine leing stated as 'yet living at 

 the time of this relation.' An idle' attempt has 

 been made to set up a rival claimant in one 

 Barbara Hamilton or Mein, but Jenny Geddes still 



