GAB 
GAD 
✓ 
G. 
G in grammar, the seventh letter and 
» fifth consonant of our alphabet ; but 
in the Greek, and all the Oriental languages, 
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 to- 
gether, so as scarce to touch, by a small 
incurvation of the sides of the tongue up- 
wards, with the top touching the palate, at 
the same time that the breath is pretty 
strongly pressed through the lips a little 
opened. 1 
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 let- 
ter 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 being 
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 records, 
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 ozier-twigs, of a cylindrical 
form, having different dimensions, accord- 
ing 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 co- 
ver 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 together with small 
branches in the manner of common fences. 
Batteries are often made of gabions. 
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. 
Gad fly, or Breeze fly, names given to 
the black and yellow bodied oestrus; a fly 
nearly as large as the common blue flesh 
fly. See CEstrus. , 
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, co- 
vered with deciduous scales ; fins all cover- 
ed by the common skin; more than one 
dorsal fin, of which the rays are unarmed ; 
ventral fins slender and ending in a point. 
There are twenty-three species, of which 
we shall notice those which follow: 
G. morhua, or the common cod, inhabits 
the northern seas, both of Europe and Ame- 
rica, in innumerable shoals, and constitutes 
an important article of human subsistence. 
Its general length is from two to three feet, 
and its common weight from fourteen to 
thirty pounds. It has occasionally, how- 
ever, been known to weigh upwards of 
seventy. Its food consists of small fish, 
worms, crabs, and other testaceous fishes, 
and its voracity is extraordinary. It is 
prolific in the extreme, no less than a mil- 
lion of eggs having been counted in a single 
roe. Its sound, or air-bladder, is preserved 
with salt, and considered as a luxury ; it is 
also converted into a sort of isinglass, in 
preparing which the inhabitants of Iceland 
are particularly skilful. Off the coasts of 
Cape Breton, Novia Scotia, and New Eng- 
land, and, more especially, on the great 
sand-bank off Newfoundland, this fish is 
found in inexhaustible 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 induse* 
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