GRATTAN 



2578 



GRAVITATION 



in the years of 1874-1876 damaged several 

 hundred millions of dollars worth of grain 

 crops in Western United States, a similar spe- 

 cies having also destroyed 'crops in Russia, 

 Southern Europe and other countries; the red- 

 legged grasshopper, common in Eastern Amer- 

 ica, having shorter wings than the western 

 species; the light brown Carolina locust and 

 the American locust of Southern United States. 

 See LOCUST. 



Long-horned Grasshopper. To this species, 

 more delicate than the short-horned grass- 

 hoppers, belong the slender, green, harmless 

 meadow grasshoppers, the dark-colored, wing- 

 less cricketlike grasshoppers or cave crickets, 

 the sand crickets, and the interesting katydids 

 (which see). 



Grasshoppers furnish a large proportion of 

 the food for many varieties of birds. M.S. 



Consult Howard's The Insect Book; Kellogg's 

 American Insects. 



GRATTAN, grat'an, HENRY (1746-1820), an 

 Irish politician and orator who, for his services 

 to his country, was voted $250,000 and "a 

 house and lands for him and his heirs forever" 

 by the Irish Parliament. He was born in 

 Dublin, was educated at Trinity College in 

 Dublin, and in 1772 was admitted to the Irish 

 bar. In 1775 he was elected as representative 

 of Charlemont to the Irish Parliament, into 

 which he infused such a spirit that mainly to 

 him was due the partial abolishment of the 

 heavy restrictions on Irish commerce. For 

 his services in obtaining this great concession 

 he was voted the gift above named. He be- 

 came the head of the Irish Whig party and 

 temporarily withdrew from Parliament, but 

 returned in 1805 as representative for Malton 

 and in 1806 for Dublin. His later years were 

 spent in working for Roman Catholic emanci- 

 pation. He did not have a strong voice, yet 

 he ranked high as an orator. His invective 

 against Bonaparte and his eulogy on Chatham 

 are not surpassed in British eloquence. He 

 died in London, and is buried in Westminster 

 Abbey. 



GRATZ, or GRAZ, grahtz, the capital of the 

 Austrian province of Styria, 140 miles south- 

 west of Vienna. It is beautifully situated in 

 a broad and fertile valley on both banks of 

 the Mur. On the Schlossberg, a hill 1,545 feet 

 high commanding a fine view of the city, for- 

 merly stood the citadel and fortifications, 

 which have been demolished to make room 

 for pleasure grounds. The cathedral is a no- 

 table building dating from the fifteenth century. 



The city has excellent railroad facilities and 

 conducts a large trade in iron and steel goods, 

 paper, woolen, cotton and silk goods, chemicals 

 and leather. Gratz is also noted for its litho- 

 graphic and printing establishments. It is one 

 of Europe's most ancient cities but nothing is 

 known of its history previous to the year A. D. 

 881. Population in 1910, 151,781. 



GRAVITATION, gravi ta' shun. If you hold 

 an iron ball or a stone or some similar object 

 in your hand you will feel a power constantly 

 drawing it towards the ground. It is as though 

 something were trying to pull it out of your 

 hand. And this is precisely true. Something 

 is trying to pull it out of your hand. It, is that 

 force which we call gravitation which is pulling 

 on the ball, trying to draw it back to the earth. 

 Every particle of matter in the universe at- 

 tracts every other particle of matter. Gravita- 

 tion is the general term given to this attraction 

 wherever it exists and it exists everywhere. 

 It is the force which holds the universe to- 

 gether. 



The attraction that keeps the moon revolv- 

 ing around the earth is gravitation. The force 

 that keeps the earth and other planets revolv- 

 ing around the sun is gravitation. The force 

 that keeps all the stars of the heavens in their 

 places is gravitation. Gravitation is the force 

 that holds bodies close to the earth's surface 

 instead of permitting them to fly off into 

 space. 



No matter how large or how small any given 

 bodies are, the force of gravitation is acting 

 between, them. A stone falls to the ground 

 because the earth attracts it; but the stone in 

 turn attracts the earth. Each moves to meet 

 the other, but the stone passes through a much 

 greater distance than does the earth, simply 

 because it is so much smaller. As a matter 

 of fact, the mass of the earth is so great that 

 its motion is imperceptible with relation to any 

 small object; but, put it within close range of 

 a mass as large as the sun and it would be 

 drawn to the surface of that object just as a 

 stone is drawn to its surface. 



The law of gravitation was discovered and 

 formulated by a famous English mathema- 

 tician named Sir Isaac Newton. Tradition has 

 it that Newton, as he sat in his beautiful 

 garden at Wollsthorpe one afternoon in the 

 fall of 1665, saw an apple fall to the ground 

 and this suggested a great truth to him. He 

 began to inquire of himself why it was that 

 the apple had fallen, and from this, as a begin- 

 ning, he formulated the laws of gravitation. 



