GENTIAN 



2420 



GEODESY 



widow of Valentinian, who was eager for re- 

 venge against Maximus, her husband's mur- 

 derer. After two weeks of plunder he left 

 the city with his soldiers, carrying off Eudoxia 

 and her two daughters. At the date of his 

 death he still was in possession of all his 

 conquests. 



GENTIAN, jen'shan,a flower found through- 

 out America and Europe in moist woods and 

 meadows. The species best known is the 

 fringed gentian, which, through Bryant's poem 

 To the Fringed Gentian, will live in the mem- 



Thou blossom ! bright with autumn dew, 

 And colour'd with the heaven's own blue, 

 That openest when the quiet light 

 Succeeds the keen and frosty night. 



BRYANT : To the Fringed Gentian. 

 In the illustration: (a) Fringed gentian; (&) 

 bottle gentian ; (c) solitary gentian ; (d) downy 

 gentian. 



ory forever. It is also the flower which inspired 

 Montgomery's Gentianella and Emily Dickin- 

 son's The Fringed Gentian. It appears in Sep- 

 tember and October, "when woods are bare and 

 birds are flown," "an undisputed queen," grow- 

 ing from one to two feet high, dressed in long 

 green leaves and fringed flowers of delicate 

 misty blue. The blue gentian is the state 

 flower of Wyoming. 



The common yellow gentian is found in the 

 Alps and the Pyrenees, often growing in loca- 

 tions 3,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea. The 

 Alpine peasants- gather the yellowish-brown bit- 

 ter root of this species and sell it for flavoring 

 bitters and for use as a tonic and in diseases 

 of the digestive organs. Large quantities of 



the root are imported into the United States 

 and Canada. 



Other species of gentian found in America are 

 the downy gentian, with stem rough and hairy, 

 the solitary gentian, each slender stem bearing 

 but one large bell-shaped, light-blue flower, and 

 the closed or bottle gentian, in which the flow- 

 ers never open. The gentian is said to have 

 been named after a king of Illyria. 



GENTILES, jcn' tylz, in ancient times re- 

 ferred to all nations of the world other than 

 the Jews, who, as the chosen people of God, 

 considered themselves set apart for a special 

 mission in the world. Their religion with all 

 its truths was given to the Jews that they 

 might be a light to the Gentiles, but, through 

 the strict laws enacted to prevent them from 

 becoming corrupted by association with idola- 

 ters, they soon felt contempt for the latter. 

 Even the Christian Jews were offended when 

 Peter, taught by the vision at Joppa, went to 

 visit and eat with Cornelius, who was one of 

 the hated race (Acts X, 28; XI, 3). However, 

 the early Church consisted largely of Gentiles, 

 who seemed more willing than the Jews to 

 adopt Christianity. To-day the word has a 

 broader meaning, for the Mormons consider 

 as Gentiles all persons not of their faith. They 

 include Jews in this designation. 



GENUS, je'nus. This word, which means 

 kind, is used in the biological sciences to indi- 

 cate one step in classification. Animals or 

 plants which have many characteristics in com- 

 mon, but do not resemble each other closely 

 enough to be grouped as a species, may con- 

 stitute a genus. The subject is more fully 

 explained in the article CLASSIFICATION. 



GEODESY, jeod'esi, the science which 

 treats of the shape, size and curvature of the 

 earth. Geodesy is really a branch of survey- 

 ing, by which great distances are measured 

 and points on the earth's surface are located by 

 a method of surveying called triangulation. 

 It rests upon the principle in trigonometry 

 that if one side and two angles of a triangle 

 are known the other sides and angle can be 

 computed. 



Suppose scientists wished to determine the 

 exact position of a distant mountain peak. 

 They would first measure a base line ab (see 

 illustration) on the most level tract of land in 

 their locality, making it from five to ten miles 

 long and measuring it several times to make 

 sure that the distance is exact. Then they 

 would s3t their surveying instrument (a theod- 

 olite) at a and point it to c, recording the 



