194 



GETHSEMANE 



GEYSER 



Transylvania and Wallachia. They were conquered 

 by Darius Hystaspes in 515 B.C., and then accom- 

 panied him in his campaign against the Scythians. 

 Both Alexander the Great, in 335, and Lysimachos, 

 in 292, made attempts to subdue them, but neither 

 was successful. During the first half of the 1st 

 century B.C. they became politically united with the 

 Dacians, a cognate race who had settled in their 

 territories. The Getse, as distinct from the Dacians, 

 sided with Octavius against Antony, and during 

 the greater part of the 1st century after Christ con- 

 tinued to harass the Roman legions. In 106 B.C. 

 the Dacians and Getae were subdued by Trajan, 

 their country being added to the empire. Subse- 

 quently the Getae became fused with the Goths 

 (q.v.), who invaded their lands, and afterwards 

 carried many of them with them in their westward 

 migrations. 



Gethsemane (Heb. gath, 'a wine-press,' and 

 shemen, ' oil ' ), the scene of our Saviour's agony on 

 the night before his Passion, was a small farm or 

 estate at the foot of Mount Olivet, somewhere on 

 the east slope of the Kedron valley, and rather more 

 than half a mile from the city of Jerusalem. 

 Attached to it was a garden or orchard, a favourite 

 resort of Christ and his disciples. The place is not 

 now exactly known, but an enclosure with a few old 

 olive-trees is pointed out to travellers as the site of 

 the garden. 



Gettysburg, capital of Adams county, Penn- 

 sylvania, built on several hills, 50 miles by rail 

 SSW. of Harrisburg. It contains a Lutheran 

 college (1832) and seminary (1826). Pop. 3495. 

 Gettysburg was the scene of one of the gieatest 

 battles of the civil war (July 1-3, 1863), when the 

 Union General Meade gained a hard-fought victory 

 over the Confederate General Lee. Near the town 

 there are numerous monuments commemorating in- 

 cidents of the battle ; and in the national cemetery 

 is a national monument of granite, 60 feet high. 



Geulincx, or GEULINGX, ARNOLD, a Dutch 

 philosopher, one of the disciples of Descartes (q.v.), 

 and a leading exponent of the speculative doc- 

 trine known as Occasionalism. Very little that is 

 authentic is known about his life. He was born at 

 Antwerp in 1625 ; for twelve years, from 1646, he 

 lectured successfully at Louvain, was then deposed 

 for some reason not ascertained, and, after living 

 at Ley den in great distress, was in 1665 appointed 

 professor of Philosophy there, but died four years 

 later. His ideas are expounded in books entitled 

 Saturnalia, Logica, Ethica, published in his lifetime, 

 arid in Annotata pnecurrentia ad Cartesii Principia 

 ( 1690 ) and Metapliysica Vera ( 1691 ), which appeared 

 after his death. The salient point of his teaching is 

 an endeavour to explain the relations which obtain 

 between soul and body, the mutual interaction of 

 which under stimulus he ascribed to divine inter- 

 vention and preordained arrangement. See works 

 by Grimm (Jena, 1875), Pfleiderer (Tub. 1882), 

 and Samtleben (Halle, 1886). 



Geillll, a genus of Rosacese, sub-order Poten- 

 tillefe, distinguished from Potentilla by the hard- 

 ened hooked styles which crown the carpels, so that 

 the fruit becomes a bur. Two species are common 

 natives of Britain, G. urbanum, the Wood Avens 

 or Herb Bennet, and G. rivale, Water Avens, the 

 former with erect yellow flowers, and the latter 

 with nodding flowers of a brownish hue. The former 

 grows in hedges and thickets, the latter in wet 

 meadows and woods, and sometimes even in very 

 aipine situations. The so-called G. intermedium is 

 usually regarded as a mere hybrid of these two 

 species. Both are aromatic, tonic, and astringent, 

 and of old repute among herbalists ; the rootstock 

 of the former was formerly gathered in early spring 

 to impart its clove-like flavour to ale, and is still 



"Water Avens (Geum rivale). 



used in the preparation of liqueurs. G. canadense, 

 the Chocolate Root 

 or Blood Root of 

 North America, 

 has some reputa- 

 tion as a mild 

 tonic. 



Geyser, or 

 GEYSIR ( Icelandic 

 geysa, ' to burst 

 out violently ' ), is 

 the name applied 

 to eruptive foun- 

 tains or steam and 

 hot water met with 

 in various quarters 

 of the globe, espe- 

 cially in Iceland, 

 North America, 

 New Zealand, 

 Tibet, and the 

 Azores. The water 

 of these springs is 

 often clear and 

 limpid, but fre- 

 quently thick, tur- 

 bid, and heavily charged with mud ; examples of 

 the latter have been discovered in Burma. The 

 mineral substances held in solution in geysers are 

 numerous and varied in character, including sodium 

 chloride, calcium sulphate, sodium sulphate, cal- 

 cium carbonate, magnesium carbonate, ammonium 

 carbonate, potassium chloride, silica, various sili- 

 cates, sulphur, ferric oxide, aluminium oxide, car- 

 bonic acid, &c. Some of these substances, becoming 

 separated from the water by evaporation, form 

 basin-shaped cones of solid matter, from the midst 

 of which the geyser rises, and in course of time 

 assume proportions of considerable magnitude ; the 

 cones are principally of a calcareous or siliceous 

 character, the latter, known as siliceous sinter or. 

 geyserite, being apparently most common. It is 

 either a compact, dull, sometimes, but less fre- 

 quently, translucent laminated substance, or shape- 

 less, porous mass, occasionally impregnated with 

 ferric oxide, which produces' a red or pink tinge. 



Geysers occur only in regions where volcanic 

 activity has but lately become dormant, but is 

 not yet altogether extinct, and the phenomena 

 connected with them are connected with seismic 

 action. Bunsen and Descloizeaux have formulated 

 a theory explaining the phenomena, which has met 

 with wide acceptance and is generally preferred to 

 the views held by such authorities as Bischof, 

 Mackenzie, Herschel, Von Nidda, and others. 

 Shortly stated, the explanation put forward by the 

 two former is as follows, founding upon observa- 

 tions made at the Great Geyser of Iceland. In the 

 tube of this geyser, and near the surface, the water 

 temperature is 212 F., increasing downwards until 

 a degree of heat is reached very far above the 

 boiling-point of water under ordinary atmospheric 

 pressure, fluidity being maintained by the weight 

 of the column of water above. The water in the 

 tube or funnel of the geyser communicates with an 

 area directly acted upon by the source of the sub- 

 terranean heat, such communication being attained 

 by means of a lateral chamber or passage. Far 

 down in the funnel steam is generated, which, 

 rising immediately into the cooler water above, is 

 condensed, heating the upper water until the 

 boiling-point is reached, and relieving the pressure 

 upon the lower portions of the greatly heated 

 water, which flaslies into steam. This alteration 

 passing down the funnel results in closely following 

 explosions of steam, shooting the whole contents 

 high into the air, and producing the well-known 

 outward manifestations associated with geysers. 



