368 



GRAVITY 



GRAY 



Clerk-Maxwell, who showed that if in a medium, 

 such as that of the luminiferous ether, there be 

 pressure along, and tension at right angles to the 

 lines of force, the effect would be an attraction 

 such as that of gravitation. The main objection to 

 all these proffered hypotheses is that they pre- 

 supposed the existence of quantities of energy in 

 the universe which are absolutely enormous com- 

 pared with the effects they produce ; or, at all 

 events, postulate some cause working not in 

 accordance with the known laws of energy. 



Gravity, SPECIFIC. See SPECIFIC GRAVITY. 



Gray, a town in the French department of 

 Haute-Saone, on the Sa6ne, which is nere crossed 

 by a stone bridge of the 13th century, 25 miles 

 NW. of Besancon. It has remains of an ancient 

 castle of the dukes of Burgundy, some trade in 

 corn, flour, and iron, and iron-industries and boat- 

 building. Pop. 6737. 



Gray, ASA, an eminent American botanist, born 

 at Paris, Oneida county, New York, November 18, 

 1810. He took his degree of M.D. in 1831, but 

 Soon relinquished the practice of medicine, and 

 devoted himself to his favourite study of botany. 

 In 1834 he received the appointment of botanist 

 of the United States exploring expedition to the 

 southern seas ; but, as a long delay took place 

 before it was ready to sail, he resigned his post in 

 1837. He was afterwards elected professor of 

 Botany in the university of Michigan, but declined 

 the appointment, and in 1842 became Fisher pro- 

 fessor of Natural History at Harvard. In 1873 he 

 retired from the chair, but still retained charge of 

 the great herbarium he had presented to the uni- 

 versity in 1864 ; and in 1874 he succeeded Agassiz 

 as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He 

 ranks among the leading botanists of the age. 

 His numerous writings evince equal ability in 

 communicating elementary knowledge and in 

 elucidating recondite theories. He came forward 

 at a time when the old artificial systems of botany 

 were giving way to the natural system which has 

 taken their place, and he was the first in America, 

 in conjunction with Dr John Torrey, to arrange 

 the heterogeneous assemblage of species upon the 

 natural basis of affinity ; and he became an in- 

 fluential supporter of the Darwinian theories of 

 evolution. In 1838 he commenced, with Dr Torrey, 

 the Flora of North America; and in 1848-50 

 appeared the Genera Flone Americce Boreali- 

 Orientalis Illustrata. Among his remaining works 

 may be mentioned, besides memoirs on the botan- 

 Scal results of several government exploring expe- 

 ditions, and a number of text-books that have long 

 been in general use in the United States, A Free 

 Examination of Darwin's Treatise ( 1861 ), Darwinia 

 (1876), and Natural Science and Religion (1880). 

 He died 30th January 1888. A selection from his 

 scientific papers was published in 2 vols. in 1889. 

 He was a member of the principal learned societies 

 of both America and Europe, to whose transactions 

 and to periodicals he contributed much. His 

 Letters, edited by Jane L. Gray, appeared in 1893. 



Gray, DAVID, a minor poet, was born 29th 

 January 1838, at Duntiblae, on the south side of 

 the Luggie, about 8 miles from Glasgow. He was 

 the eldest of the eight children of an industrious 

 weaver, who gave him as good an education as he 

 could at the Normal School and university of 

 Glasgow, in the hope of making him a Free Church 

 minister. But the boy began early to write verses, 

 and seems to have made from the beginning an 

 enormously exaggerated estimate of his own pro- 

 mise. In May 1860 he started for London along 

 with Robert Buchanan, with the usual lofty hopes, 

 and quickly met the usual discouragements. He 

 made an appeal to Monckton Milnes, afterwards 



Lord Houghton, who found him some employment, 

 but failed to get his poems printed. Meantime 

 consumption seized him, and a stay in Devonshire, 

 for which Milnes, Sydney Dobell, and other friends 

 had found him the means, proving useless, he went 

 home to his parents at Merkland, a mile from Kirk- 

 intilloch, to die. The end came quickly, 3d Decem- 

 ber 1861, but the day before he had had the happi- 

 ness to hold in his hand a specimen page of tne 

 volume of his poems in print. The volume was 

 entitled The Luggie and other Poems (1862), and 

 was prefaced by an introduction by R. Monck- 

 ton Milnes and a memoir by J. Hedderwick. His 

 latest work was his best, and, indeed, the sonnets 

 grouped together here under the title ' In the 

 Shatlows ' are stamped with a solemn and touch- 

 ing beauty of their own. An enlarged edition, 

 edited by Sheriff Glassford Bell, appeared in 1874. 

 See also R. Buchanan's too high-pitched essay, in 

 David Gray, and other Essays ( 1868). 



Gray, ELISHA, an American inventor, was born 

 at Barnesville, Ohio, 2d August 1835. and studied 

 at Oberlin College, meanwhile supporting himself 

 by working as a carpenter. He was afterwards 

 engaged in the manufacture of telegraphic appar- 

 atus. His patents number about fifty, including 

 several for the speaking telephone, of which he 

 claims the invention, and others for a multiplex 

 telegraph, by which he has succeeded in sending 

 eight messages at a time. He died 21st January 1901. 



Gray, JOHN EDWARD, English naturalist, born 

 at Walsall in 1800, was educated for the medical 

 profession. After assisting his father, author of 

 Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia, in the prepara- 

 tion of his Natural Arrangement of British Plants 

 in 1821, he entered in 1824 the British Museum as 

 assistant in the Natural History Department, and in 

 1840 was appointed keeper of the Zoological Collec- 

 tions, a post which he retained till 1874. A few 

 months later, on 7th March 1875, he died in London. 

 To him belongs the merit of having made the zoo- 

 logical collections of the British Museum the most 

 complete in the world. Dr Gray wrote much on 

 subjects connected with his department. The 

 titles of his books and papers number more than 

 500. Of these the most important are his cata- 

 logues of the British Museum collections, which 

 are not mere lists, but are enriched with synonyms 

 and ample notes. Next to these come Illustrations 

 of Indian Zoology (1830-35) and The Knowsley 

 Menagerie and Aviary (1846-60). Dr Gray also 

 assisted in the formation of some of the most pros- 

 perous scientific societies of London, and was a 

 vice-president of the Zoological Society. His wife, 

 MARIA EMMA, wrote Figures of Molluscous Ani- 

 mals for the Use of Students (5 vols. 1842-57). 

 His brother, GEORGE ROBERT GRAY (1808-72), an 

 officer in the Zoological Department of the British 

 Museum from 1831 till his death, is known as 

 author of The Genera of Birds (1849), and of 

 works on the birds of Polynesia and New Guinea. 



Gray, THOMAS, one of the greatest of English 

 poets, in value if not in bulk, was born in Cornhill, 

 London, 26th December 1716. His father, Philip 

 Gray, a money-scrivener, was of so violent and 

 jealous a temper that his wife (Dorothy Antrobus) 

 was obliged to separate from him, and it was mainly 

 through her own exertions that the boy was placed 

 at Eton, and afterwards at Cambridge, where two 

 of her brothers were fellows of colleges, and after- 

 wards tutors at Eton. Both the mother and her 

 sister Mary loved the boy with a devotion that 

 was rewarded by a life-long and passionate attach- 

 ment. In 1727 he was sent to Eton, whither in 

 the same year also came Horace Walpole, son 

 of the prime-minister. As a boy Gray was shy 

 and studious, and he carried the same temper to 



