323 



GEMINI. 



GENDER. 



330 



to which it will serve as a varnish ; they can be made into a substitute 

 for carton, for address and visiting cards ; they can be employed by 

 wood engravers in transferring or copying designs ; and when made 

 extremely thin, they can be used as wrappers and envelopes for 

 fancy articles, as materials for transparent artificial flowers, and as a 

 substitute for paper on which printing in gold may be effected. 



The size used by paper hangers, white-washers, &c. is a kind of thin 

 glue made from parchment cuttings. Jeffery's marine glue, an uncom- 

 monly powerful cement used in shipbuilding, is not properly a glue at 

 all ; it is a combination of other substances than gelatine. 



GE'MINI (the twins), the third constellation in the Zodiac. The 

 Greeks refer it not only to the fable of Castor and Pollux, but also to 

 those of Hercules and Apollo, Triptolemus and lasion, Amphion and 

 Zethus, &c. 



The principal stars are as follows : 



Character. 



No. in Catalogue 

 of Flamstccd. 



13 

 24 

 27 

 34 



No. in Catalogue 

 of British 

 Association. 



2047 

 2163 

 2194 

 2237 

 2485 



Magnitude. 

 3 



2-5 

 3 

 4 

 1 



This constellation derives its name from two remarkable stars, of the 

 firbt and second magnitude, to which the names of Castor (or a Gemi- 

 norum) and Pollux (or 3 Geminoruin) are given. The latter star is 

 marked by Flamsteed as of the first magnitude, by the greater part of 

 astronomers as of the second, and by Piazzi as of the third ! Thusj 

 two stars, whose proximity will cause them to be easily recognised 

 when once known, may be found by drawing a line through the belt of 

 Orion and the two bright stars the line of which cuts through the 

 belt. This line, lengthened upwards, will pass very near to the two 

 stars of Gemini. They axe also about halfway between Regulus and 

 Aldebaran : and if the Great Bear and Orion be seen together, then 

 Capella on the one side, and Castor and Pollux on the other, will be 

 conspicuous boundaries of the intermediate space. 

 GEMS. [CAMKO; INTACLIO.] 



: v ARTIFICIAL. [GLASS.] 



GENDARMERIE (from Gem d'Armet, men-at-arms) was a chosen 

 corps of cavalry under the old monarchy of France : it is mentioned 

 with praise in the wars of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Under the 

 present system the gendarmerie is a body of soldiers entrusted with 

 the police all over France ; it furnishes patrols, arrests criminals, 

 examines the passports of travellers, and contributes to the mainte- 

 nance of good order. Gendarmes are generally stationed at the barriers 

 or gates of the towns, at the principal inns on the roads, at markets 

 and fairs, and along the lines of the frontiers. They are divided into 

 foot and horse : yendarm's a pied , yeiidanncs a cheval. They form a 

 distinct corps in the army, under their own superior officers, who are 

 under the orders of the ministers of the interior and of police ; but in 

 case of war, they may be called into active service like the other corps 

 of the army. The gendarmerie is mostly recruited from old and 

 deserving soldiers of other regiments, who consider it as a promotion, 

 s they have better pay and enjoy greater liberty. This explains why 

 the gendarmes, generally speaking, are remarkably well behaved and 

 trusty men, who, while strictly executing their duties, behave with 

 considerable civility towards unoffending people, such as travellers, and 

 especially foreigners. The same description of troops exists in the 

 Italian states, where they are called Carabineers. 



GENDER is a grammatical principle entering into the structure of 

 many languages, according to which nouns are distributed into classes. 

 There are, strictly speaking, but two genders, masculine and feminine ; 

 those which belong to neither of those classes were said to be neutriut 

 generis, of neither gender : this third class are called somewhat incor- 

 rectly neuters, and hence by a second irregularity it is the ordinary 

 practice of grammarians to speak of three genders. 



That sexual distinction was the fountain from whence the doctrine 

 of grammatical gender was derived cannot be reasonably disputed. 

 As a consequence of this the principle must have been confined 

 originally to living beings, and among these it must have been still 

 further limited to those animals where the distinction of the sex was 

 readily perceived, as in the mane of the lion, the plumage of the pea- 

 cock, ur the magnitude of the bull. In the smaller animals it would 

 be often difficult to ascertain the sex, and useless to denote it. But 

 utility and truth are not the sole governing principles of language ; 

 th^y are often sacrificed to the love of imagery and personification. 

 Thus the beautiful and pleasing absurdity which characterises the 

 language of fable recommends itself to the infant mind whether of the 

 savage or the child. The rose, the lily, the sun, the moon, are all 

 f,h the faculty of speech, ;md it then becomes almost neces- 

 sary to add the distinction of sex. Here the choice must depend upon 

 the association of ideas. Action, freedom, strength, magnitude, and 

 'ice, are the marked attributes of the male; sufferance, sub- 

 jection, timidity, together with pregnancy, of the female. In the 

 application of these notions, the realities of nature are often neglected. 

 The domestic aniimK having lost all the violence of the natural state, 

 Convey to the mind the idea of eomtthiug i'uniiuiic. Thus suiong the 



Romans even the dog was in ordinary language considered to be of 

 that gender, perhaps because it was inferior in power to the wild wolf ; 

 while the English, contrasting that noble and powerful animal with 

 the clean and delicate but irritable cat, have allotted the masculine 

 gender to the dog, to the other the feminine. The feathered creation 

 again, by their small size, their weakness, and the delicacy of their 

 plumage, are naturally associated with the tender sex, with the ex- 

 ception commonly of the eagle, kite, hawk, &c. 



" In the meanwhile the neuter is employed to denote that the notion 

 of gender is not entertained ; it is therefore, as Grimm has well ob- 

 served, the proper grammatical form for the young of animals, where 

 the sexual distinctions are imperfectly developed. Thus in the greater 

 part of the Teutonic languages, the terms for foal, calf, lamb, child, 

 &c., are of the neuter gender ; and in the Greek there occur many 

 similar forms, as TIKVOV, f)pe<t>os, &c. Hence, by an easy connection 

 the diminutives generally in the Greek and Teutonic languages are of 

 the same gender; and this principle is carried to such an extent that a 

 neuter diminutival suffix is at tunes employed in the formation of the 

 names of women, as Dorcium, Glycerium, in Terence, maydchen, Gretchen, 

 " little Margaret " in German. In the further extension of the idea of 

 gender, first to material objects without life, and then to abstract 

 terms and mental notions, the directing associations are weaker, and 

 the mind is ill a state of oscillation. It may be observed! however, 

 that abstract nouns, or to speak more correctly, general terms, are 

 usually included among the feminines, perhaps from a notion of preg- 

 nancy, the one term including a large aggregate, of concrete ideas. 

 There are indeed exceptions to this principle ; for instance, in the 

 large family of Latin words which have the suffix or (honor, pudor, &c.), 

 but this variety is probably to be explained by the similarity of the 

 termination to the masculine suffix tor. The French language has 

 corrected this anomaly iu la pmltur, &c. We have here probably an 

 explanation of the principle by which in Greek a feminine article 

 attached to what is commonly a masculine substantive gives it the 

 power of a collective, as iTnros, m. " a horse," but jj itnros, " the horse," 

 that is " the cavalry ; " rj a ( u7/Aos. " the body of camels." The same 

 peculiarity belongs to the Arabic and Hebrew, and indeed is still pre- 

 served in a modern Semitic language, the Galla. 



The mode of denoting gender is also deserving of consideration. 

 One of the most direct methods would appear to be to assign names 

 absolutely different to the male and female, that is, in those cases 

 where the terms are used in their natural, not in their metaphorical 

 sense. Thus we have in our own language boy and yirl, hone and mare, 

 bull and coir, &c. One of the defects of such a principle would be the 

 want of a general rule by which to denote the gender in any new 

 instance, and the consequent multiplication of terms. But indepen- 

 dently of the advantages and disadvantages of this notation, there are 

 good reasons for believing that in fact the distinction of sex was not 

 originally denoted by an absolute difference of term. The word man 

 for instance, in the oldest Teutonic language had the general meaning 

 of a human being, like the Greek avBpuiros, or Latin homo, and only 

 gained the exclusive notion of a male when its derivative mannuco or 

 mcntclic was formed to express the general idea. The German term 

 frau again is now confined to the female, but there is found in nearly 

 all the older dialects of the Oeriuan a masculine so nearly identical 

 (fraului, Gothic; fro, old high German; froho, old Saxon; fretr, 

 Anglo-Saxon) that the notion of the female can scarcely have been 

 inherent hi the word. Similar results would be given by an exami- 

 nation of the English word maid, the Latin puo; &c. In the animal 

 kingdom the same confusion prevails. The Latin mis is commonly 

 feminine ; and in fact our English term cice may be indisputably 

 proved to be the same word; still, in the earlier form of the Latin 

 language, the word was also applied in the sense of aries. It occur*, 

 for instance, in the name of the sacrifice Sumetaurilia, where the word 

 taurus leads us to expect the idea of a ram in oris, and of a boar in !w ; 

 and in fact ancient reliefs prove that the animals sacrificed at this 

 festival were uncastrated males. The word eus, corresponding in 

 ordinary signification, as also in form, to the English sow, is a parallel 

 case. Indeed both Greek and Latin exhibit this very word as not con- 

 fined to either sex. A long enumeration of similar instances, with the 

 necessary proofs, would be out of place here. It will be sufficient to 

 notice that the English terms mare and hen appear in other branches 

 of the Teutonic language as representatives of the male. Lastly, 

 those who attribute to these monosyllabic forms a distinct notion of 

 gender will find it difficult to avoid the inference that if yulltis for 

 example, originally meant a cock, and not as is here maintained, a, find 

 generally, yoitina included the notion of both sexes, a female cock. A 

 mere simple mode of denoting gender is by the addition of a special 

 suffix. Thus the Latin termination on, like the Italian one, appears to 

 have carried with it the idea of a man, as in the familiar cognomina 

 Nasun, Vapitou, &c. Thus again, Icon, " a lion," is in reality formed 

 of two words, le or //, the simple name of the animal, and on, man or 

 male. The form II (nom. Ais) occurs in the Greek language as well as 

 \iiav ; and moreover, if the name of the animal was thus monosyllabic, 

 it is seen at once how natural it was to adopt it, as was in fact the 

 case, for the hieroglyphical symbol, or at any rato for the Hebrew 

 character of the letter 1. The addition of the feminine suffix ina or 

 aina, to the same root le gave the female, leaena ; and indeed the same 

 sutiix appears in yulliiia, rijiiia, the Greek /3aai\ii>>>a, the German 



