GAB 



GAD 



Gin grammar, the seventh letter and 

 9 fifth consonant of our alphabet ; but 

 in the Greek, and all the Oriental Ian- 

 guages, it occupies the third place. It is 

 one of the mutes, and cannot be sounded 

 without the assistance of some vowel. Its 

 sound is formed by shutting the teeth 

 gently together, so as scarce to touch, by 

 a small incurvation of the sides of the 

 tongue upwards, with the top touching 

 the palate, at the same time that the 

 breath is pretty strongly pressed through 

 the lips a little opened. 



In English it has a hard and soft sound; 

 hard, as in the word game, gun, &c. ; and 

 soft, as in the word gesture, giant, &c. ; at 

 the end of words gh are pronounced like 

 Jf, as in the words rough, tough, &c The 

 letter g is also used in many; words where 

 the sound is not perceived, as in sign, 

 reign, &c. 



As a numeral, G was anciently used to 

 denote 400; and with a dash over it, thus, 

 G^ 400,000. In music it is the character or 

 mark of the treble cleff; and from its be- 

 ing placed at the head, or marking the 

 first sound in Guido's scale, the whole 

 scale took the name gamut. 



GABEL, a word met with in old re- 

 cords, signifying a tax, rent, custom, or 

 service, paid to the king, or other lord. 



GABEL, according to the French duties 

 or customs, a tax upon salt, which makes 

 the second article in the king's revenue, 

 and amounts to about one-fourth part of 

 the whole revenue of the kingdom. 



GABION, in fortification, is a kind of 

 basket, made of osier-twigs, of a cylindri- 

 cal form, having different dimensions, ac- 

 cording to what purpose it is used for. 

 Some gabions are five or six feet high, 

 and three feet in diameter : these serve in 

 sieges to carry on the approaches under 

 cover, when they come pretty near the 

 fortification. Those used in field-works 

 are three or four feet high, and two and 

 a half or three feet diameter. There are 

 also gabions about one foot high, 12 

 inches diameter at top, and from eight to 

 ten at bottom, which are placed along the 

 top of the parapet, to cover the troops in 

 firing over it ; they are filled with earth. 



In order to make them, some picquets, 

 three or four feet long, are stuck into the 

 ground, in form of a circle, and of a pro- 

 per diameter, wattled tpgether with small 



branches in the manner of common 

 fences. Batteries are often made of ga- 

 bions. 



GAD, among miners, a small punch of 

 iron, with a long wooden handle, used to 

 break up the ore. 



One of the miners holds this in his 

 hand, directing the point to a proper 

 place, while the other drives it into the 

 vein by striking it with a sledge hammer. 



GAI>^?/, or BREEZK^?/, names given to 

 a species of (Estrus. See QSsxiujs. 



GADUS, the cod, in natural history, a 

 genus of fishes of the order Jugulares. 

 Generic character : the head smooth ; gill 

 membrane, seven-rayed ; body oblong, 

 covered with deciduous scales ; fins all 

 covered by the common skin ; more than 

 one dorsal fin, of which the rays are un- 

 armed ; ventral fins slender and ending 

 in a point. There are twenty-three spe- 

 sies, of which we shall notice those which 

 follow : 



G. morhua, or the common cod, inha- 

 bits the northern seas, both of Europe 

 and America, in innumerable shoals, and 

 constitutes an important article of human 

 subsistence. Its general length is from 

 two or three feet, and its common weight 

 from fourteen to thirty pounds. It has oc- 

 casionally however been known to weigh 

 upwards of seventy. Its food consists of 

 small fish, worms, crabs, and other testa- 

 ceous fishes, and its voracity is extraordi- 

 nary. It is prolific in the extreme, 'no less 

 than a million of eggs having been count- 

 ed in a single roe. Its sound, or air-blad- 

 der,- is preserved with salt, and consider- 

 ed as a luxury ; it is also converted into a 

 sort of isinglass, in preparing which the 

 inhabitants of Iceland are particularly- 

 skilful. Off 1 the coasts of Cape Breton, 

 Nova Scotia, and New England, and, more 

 especially, on the great sand-bank off 

 Newfoundland, this fish is found in inex- 

 haustible abundance ; the neighbourhood 

 of the Polar Seas, where they return to 

 deposit their spawn, and the immense 

 number of worms to be found in these 

 sandy bottoms, being the grand induce- 

 ments to their preference of these situa- 

 tions. They are abundant also on the 

 southern and western coasts of Iceland, 

 but proceed towards the south only in 

 very diminished numbers, and are rarely 

 seeiMnthat direction beyond the Straights 



