Besides pamphlets on the Catholic and slavery questions, as well as several fugitive jeux d'esprit, and a number of unsigned articles in the Analytical Review, Geddes also published a metrical translation and adaptation of Select Satires of Horace (1779), and a verbal rendering of the First Book of the Iliad of Homer (1792). The Memoirs of his life and writings by his friend Dr Mason Good appeared in 1803, and his unfinished work on the Psalms in 1807. GEELONG, one of the leading towns in Victoria, coeval with Melbourne in the history of Australian settlement, is pleasantly situated on Corio Bay, au extensive western arm of Port Phillip, 45 miles S. W. of Melbourne, in 39° 8' S. lat. and. 144' 21' E. long. The town slopes to the bay on the north side and to the Barwon river on the south, and its position in this respect, as well as the shelter it obtains from the Bellarine range of hills, renders it the healthiest town in the colony. Its streets are wide and laid out at right angles, and there are many handsome public and private buildings. It has a botanical garden, and two parks Inaintained by the municipality. The public buildings comprise a mechanics' institute (with a library containing nearly 12,000 volumes), a public library, a town hall, a firebrigade establishment, a handsome and commodious hospital, a supreme court, and orphan and benevolent asylums. The town is supplied with water from large state. constructed reservoirs in the Brisbane ranges, some 25 miles distant. As a manufacturing centre Geelong is of considerable importance. It contains extensive woollen mills and tanneries on the Barwon river, and paper of good quality is largely made in the neighbourhood Geelong harbour has area and depth enough to hold all the navies of the world. The bar at the entrance has been cut (at an expense of £C000) to admit vessels of heavy draught, and some of the largest wool ships are able to load at the wharves, which are connected by railway with all parts of the colony. The population of the city proper is a little over 12,000, but with the adjacent boroughs of Geelong West, Chilwell, and Newtown the total is increased to 24,000. GEESTEMÜNDE, a seaport in the Prussian province of Hanover, in the district or Landdrostei of Stade, situated, as the name indicates, at the mouth of the Geeste, a right-hand affluent of the estuary of the Weser. It lies about 32 miles N. of Bremen, and is the terminus of a railway from that city. The interest of the place is purely naval and commercial, its origin dating no further back than 1857, when the construction of the harbour was commenced. The great basin opened in 1863 has a length of 1785 English feet, a breadth of 410, and a depth of nearly-23, and can accommodate 24 or 25 of the largest ships of the line; and the petroleum basin opened in 1874 has a length of 820 feet and a breadth of 147. To the left of the great basin lies a canal, which has a length of 13,380 feet and a breadth of 155; and from this canal there strikes off another of similar proportions. The whole port is protected by powerful fortifications, and it lies outside of the limit of the German customs. Since 1864 the trade has been almost trebled, the number of vessels being 617 sea-going ships entering in 1875 and upwards of 2000 river craft. Among the industrial establishments of the town are shipbuilding yards, foundries, engineering works, and steam mills. The population, exclusive of the garrison, was 3218 in 1871, and 3436 in 1875; and if the neighbouring commune of Geestendorf be included, the total for 1871 was 9148, and for 1875 10,425.

GEFLE, Latinized as Gevalia, a seaport town of Sweden, at the head of the Gefleborglån, about a mile from the shore of the gulf of Bothnia, near the mouth of the Gefle-Å, 50 miles E. of Fahlun, and about the same distance N. of Upsala. With the former city it has been connected by railway since 1859, and with the latter and Stockholm since 1874. As the river at that place is divided into three channels, the town consists of four portions, communicating

with each other by wooden bridges. In 1869 it was almost destroyed by fire, but it has been rebuilt, and may still be reckoned one of the prettiest, as it is certainly one of the busiest, of Swedish towns. The principal buildings are the castle, originally founded in the 16th century by King John III., but rebuilt since its destruction by fire in 1727; a beautiful council-house erected by Gustavus III., who held a diet in the town in 1792; a hospital, an exchange, and a freemason's lodge in the Gothic style. An orphan asylum, a gymnasium, removed to Gefle from Stockholm in 1668, and a public library may also be mentioned. Possessing an excellent harbour, and recently restored wharves to which large vessels have easy access, Gefle is the great port for the Dalecarlian district, and thus ranks in Sweden next to Stockholm and Gottenburg, It has about 100 ships of its own, and carries on a good trade in the export of timber, tar, flax, and linen, and in the import of grain, salt, coal, &c. The manufactures of the town include sailcloth and linen, tobacco, leather, iron wares, and machinery. In 1873 the population was 16,265. GEIGER, ABRAHAM (1810-1874), one of the ablest leaders of the modern Jewish school of theology and criticism, was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, May 24, 1810. After receiving from his father and uncle the elements of an ordinary rabbinical education, he was in his eleventh year sent to the gymnasium, whence in 1829 he passed to the university of Heidelberg, which he soon afterwards exchanged for that of Bonn. As a student he greatly distinguished himself both in philosophy and in philology, and at the close of his course wrote on the. relations of Judaism and Mahometanism a prize-essay which was afterwards published, in 1833, under the title Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthum aufgenommen?

In

November 1832 he went to Wiesbaden as rabbi of the synagogue there, and, still pursuing the line of scientific study upon which he had entered during his undergraduate course, became in 1835 one of the most active promoters of the Zeitschrift für Jüdische Theologie, which appeared from 1835 to 1839, and again from 1842 to 1847. In 1838 he removed to Breslau, where he continued to reside for the next twenty-five years, and where he wrote some of his most important works, including his Lehr- und Lesebuch zur Sprache der Mischna (1845), his Studien from Maimonides (1850), his translation into German of the poems of Juda ha-Levi (Abu'l Hassan) in 1851, and the Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der innern Entwickelung des Judenthums (1857). The lastnamed work especially attracted much attention at the time of its appearance, and may be said to have marked a new departure in the methods of studying the records of Judaism. In 1863 Geiger became head of the synagogue of his native town, whence he removed in 1870 to Berlin, where, in addition to his duties as chief rabbi, he took the principal charge of the newly established seminary for Jewish science. The Urschrift was followed by a more exhaustive handling of one of its topics in Die Sadducäer und Pharisäer (1863), and by a more thoroughgoing application of its leading principles in an elaborate history of Judaism (Das Judenthum u. seine Geschichte) in 1865-71. Geiger also contributed frequently on Hebrew, Samaritan, and Syriac subjects to the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, and from 1862 until his death (which occurred on the 23d of October 1874) he was editor of a periodical entitled Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben. He also published a Jewish prayer-book (Israelitisches Gebetbuch) which is well known in Germany, besides a variety of minor monographs on historical and literary sub jects connected with the fortunes of his people. gemeine Einleitung and five volumes of Nachgelassene Schriften were edited by his son L. Geiger in 1875.

An All

GEIJER, ERIK GUSTAF (1783-1847), Sweden's greatest historian, was born at Ransäter in Värmland, January 12, 1783, of a family that had immigrated from Austria in the time of Gustavus Adolphus. At sixteen he left Carlstad gymnasium for the university of Upsala, where in 1803 he carried off the Swedish Academy's great prize for an Åreminne öfver Riksförståndaren Sten Sture. He graduated in 1806, and in 1810 returned from a year's residence in England to become "docent" in his university. Soon afterwards he accepted a post in the public record office at Stockholm, where, with eleven friends, he founded the "Gothic Society," to whose organ Iduna he contributed a number of prose essays and the songs Manhem, Vikingen, Den siste kampen, Den siste skalden, Odalbonden, Kolargossen, and others, whose simplicity and earnestness, warm feeling, and strong patriotic spirit are dearer to his nation for the fine melodies to which he set them. About the same time he issued a volume of hymns (1812), of which several are inserted in the Swedish Psalter. Geijer's lyric muse was soon after silenced by his call to be assistant to Fart, professor of history of Upsala (1815), whom he succeeded in that chair in 1817. u 1824 he was elected to the Swedish Academy. A single volume of a great projected work, Svea Rikes Häfder, itself a masterly critical examination of the sources of Sweden's legendary history, appeared in 1825. Geijer's researches in its preparation had severely strained his health, and he went the same year on a tour through Denmark and part of Germany, his impressions from which are recorded in his Minnen (1834). In 1832-36 he published three volumes of his Svenska folkets historia, a clear view of the political and social development of Sweden down to the close of Queen Christina's reign. The acute critical. insight, just thought, and finished historical art of these two incomplete works of Geijer entitle him to the first place among Swedish historians. His chief other historical and political writings are his Kort teckning af Sveriges tillstånd och af de fornämste handlande personer under tiden från Karl XII.'s död till Gustaf III.'s anträde af regjeringen (Stockh. 1838), and Feodalism och republikanism, ett bidrag till Samhällsförfattningens historia (1844), which led to a controversy with the historian Fryxell regarding the part played in history by the Swedish aristocracy. Geijer also edited, with the aid of Schröder, a continuation of Fant's Scriptores svecicarum medii ævi (181825). and, by himself, Thorild's Samlade skrifter (1819–25), and Konung Gustaf III's efterlemnade Papper (3. vols. 1843-45). Geijer's academic lectures, of which the last three, published in 1845, under the title Om vår tids inre hällsforhållanden, i synnerhet med afseende på Fäderneslandet, involved him in another controversy with Fryxell, exercised a great influence over his students, who especially testified to their attachment after the failure of the prosecution for alleged anti-Trinitarian heresies in his Thorild, tillika en philosophisk eller ophilosophisk bekännelse (1820). A number of his extempore lectures, recovered from notes. were published by Ribbing in 1856. Failing health forced Geijer to resign his chair in 1846, after which he removed to Stockholm for the purpose of completing his Svenska folkets historia, and died there 23d April 1847. Samlade skrifter (13 vols. 1849-55; new ed. 1873-75) include a large number of philosophical and political essays contributed to reviews, particularly to Literaturbladet (1838-39), a periodical edited by himself, which attracted great attention in its day by its pronounced liberal views on public questions, a striking contrast to those he had defended in 1828-30, when, as again in 1840-41, he represented Upsala university in the Swedish diet.

His

Geijer's style is strong and manly. His genius bursts out in sudden flashes that light up the dark corners of bistory A few strokes. and a personality stands before us

|

instinct with life. His language is at once the scholar's and the poet's; with his profoundest thought there beats in unison the warmest, the noblest, the most patriotic heart. Geijer came to the writing of history fresh from researche in the whole field of Scandinavian antiquity, researches whose first-fruits are garnered in numerous articles in Iduna and his masterly treatise Om den gamla nordiska folk visan, prefixed to the collection of Svenska folkvisor which he edited with A. A. Afzelius (3 vols. 1814-16). The development of freedom is the idea that gives unity to all his historical writings. This idea is not subjective; he traces it in the darkest annals of his country. Sweden, he repeats, is the only European land that has not been trod by foreign armies, that has never accepted the yoke of serfdom. There, on the whole, the king has ever been the people's faithfullest ally, and all his great designs for the country's external and internal gain have been carried out "by the help of God and Sweden." Throughout life Geijer was what he professed to be, a seeker; and to no philosophic system did he yield absolute allegiance. Yet his writings mark a new era in Swedish history, the rise of a "critical school" whose aim is to draw the truth without distortion, and present reality without a foil

For Geijer's biography, see his own Minnen (1834), which contains copious extracts from his letters and diaries; Malmström, Min1848, and printed among his Tal och esthetiska afhandlingar (1868), nestal öfver E. G. Geijer, addressed to the Upsala students, June 6, and Grunddragen af Svenska vitterhetens hafdar (1866-68); and S: A, Hollander, Minne af E. G. Geijer (1869).

GEIKIE, WALTER (1795-1837), a Scotch subjectpainter, was born at Edinburgh, November 9, 1795. In his second year he was attacked by a nervous fever by which he permanently lost the faculty of hearing, but through the careful attention of his father he was enabled to obtain a good education. His artistic talent was first manifested, while he was still very young, by attempts to cut out representations of objects in paper, and to draw figures with chalk on floors and walls. Before he had the advantage of the instruction of a master, he had attained considerable proficiency in sketching both figures and landscapes from nature, and in 1812 he was admitted into the drawing academy of the board of Scotch manufactures, where he made very rapid progress in the use of the pencil. He first exhibited in 1815, and was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1831, and a fellow in 1834. He died on the 1st August 1837, and was interred in the Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh. Owing to his want of feeling for colour Geikie was not a successful painter in oils, but he sketched in India ink with great truth and humour the scenes and characters of Scottish lower-class life in his native city. The characteristics he depicts are somewhat obvious. and superficial, but his humour is never coarse, and he is surpassed by few in the power of representing the broadly ludicrous and the plain and homely aspects of humble life. A series of etchings which exhibit very high excellen ence were published by him in 1829-31, and a collection of eighty-one of these was repablished posthumously in 1841, with a biographical introduction by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart.

GEILER, or GEYLER, VON KAISLRSBERG JOHANN (1445-1510), one of the greatest of the popular preachers of the 15th century, was born at Schaffhausen, March 16, 1445, but from 1448 passed his childhood and youth at Kaisersberg in Upper Alsace, from which place his current designation is de.ived. In 1460 he entered the university of Freiburg in Baden, where, after graduation, he lectured for some time on the Sentences of Petrus Lombardus, the Commentaries of Alexander Halensis, and several of the works of Aristotle. A living interest in theological subjects, which had been awakened within him by the study of Gerson, led in 1471 to his removal to the university of Basel at that

period a centre of attraction to some of the most earnest | spirits of the time. Made a doctor of theology in 1475, he received a professorship at Freiburg in the following year; but his tastes began to incline him more strongly to the vocation of a preacher, while his fervour and eloquence soon led to his receiving numerous invitations to the larger towns. Ultimately he accepted in 1478 a call to the cathedral of Strasburg, where he continued to work with. few interruptions until within a short time of his death, which occurred on the 10th of March 1510. The beautiful pulpit erected for him in 1481 in the nave of the cathedral, when the chapel of St Lawrence had proved too small, still bears witness to the popularity he enjoyed as a preacher in the immediate sphere of his labours, and the testimonies of Sebastian Brandt, Beatus Renanus, Reuchlin, Melanchthon, and others who survived him, abundantly show how powerful, how healthy, and how widespread had been the influence of his personal character. His sermons-bold, incisive, abounding in quaint illustrations, nor altogether wanting in instances of what would now be called bad taste-taken down as he spoke them, and circulated (sometimes without his knowledge or consent) by his friends, told perceptibly on the German thought as well as on the German speech of his time.

Among the many volumes published under his name only two appear to have had the benefit of his revision, namely, Der Seelen Paradies von waren und volkomnen Tugenden, and that entitled Das irrig Schaf. Of the rest, probably the best known is a series of lectures on his friend Seb. Brandt's well-known work the Navicula or Speculum Fatuorum, of which an edition was published at Strasburg in 1511 under the following title:-Navicula sive speculum fatuorum præstantissimi sacrarum literarum doctoris Joannis Geiler Keysersbergii concionatoris Argentinensis in sermones juxta turmarum seriem divisa; suis figuris jam signita; atque a Jacobo Othero diligenter collecta. Compendiosa vita ejusdem descriptio per Beatum Rhenanum Selestatinum.

See Von Ammon, Geyler's Leben, Lehren, und Predigten (1826); Stöber, Essai Historique et Littéraire sur la Vie et les Sermons de Geiler (1834); and C. Schmidt in Herzog's Real-Encycl., iv. 714 (1855).

GEISSLER, HEINRICH (1814-79), a distinguished practical physicist, was born at the village of Igelshieb in Saxe-Meiningen, Germany, where he was educated as a glass-blower. After many years spent in travelling from city to city in the exercise of his craft, he settled at Bonn, where he speedily gained a high reputation, not only for his surpassing skill and ingenuity of conception in the fabrication of physical apparatus, but for his comprehensive knowledge, acquired chiefly in later life, of the natural sciences. With Plücker, in 1852, by means of an ingeniously contrived instrument, in which mercury was made to compensate for the expansion of the glass, he ascertained the maximum density of water to be at 3.8° C. He also determined the coefficient of expansion for ice between - 24° and -7°, and for water freezing at 0°. In 1869, in conjunction with Vogelsang, he proved the existence of liquid carbon dioxide in cavities in quartz and topaz, and later he obtained amorphous from ordinary phosphorus by means of the electric current. He is best known as the inventor of the sealed glass tubes which bear his name, by means of which are exhibited the phenomena accompanying the discharge of electricity through highly rarefied vapours and gases (see ELECTRICITY, vol. viii. p. 64). Among other apparatus contrived by him are his vaporimeter, mercury air-pump, balances, normal thermometer, and areometer. From the university of Bonn, on the occasion of its jubilee, he received the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy. He died on the 24th of January 1879, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. See A. W. Hofmann, Ber. d. deut. chem. Ges., 1879, p. 148.

GELA, an ancient city on the south coast of Sicily, on a river of the same name, near the site of the modern Terranuova between Girgenti and Camerina. Founded by a joint colony of Cretans and Rhodians (the latter mainly

from the city of Lindus), it soon rose to wealth and power, and by 582 B.C. it was able to become the mother-city of Agrigentum, by which it was however destined before long to be surpassed. The most important among its rulers were the following:-Cleander, who subverted the oligarchy and made himself despot (505-498 B.C.); Hippocrates, his brother, who raised Gela to its highest pitch of eminence (498-491 B.C.); Gelon, who immediately succeeded Hippocrates, and rapidly pursued the same career of aggrandizement till in 485 B.C. he got possession of Syracuse, and gave the first blow to his native city by removing the seat of government to his new conquest; and finally Hiero, the brother of Gelon, who succeeded to the sovereignty in 478 B.C. The decadent Gela was laid waste by Phalaris of Agrigentum, and in the time of Strabo it was nothing more than a heap of ruins. Eschylus died at Gela in 456 B.C.; and it was the birthplace of Apollodorus, a comic poet of note.

GELASIUS, the name of two popes.

GELASIUS I. succeeded Felix III. in 492, and confirmed the estrangement between the Eastern and Western Churches by insisting on the removal of the name of Acacius, bishop of Constantinople, from the diptychs. He was also the first decidedly to assert the supremacy of the papal over the imperial power, and the superiority of the pope to the general councils. He is the author of De duabus in Christo naturis adversus Eutychen et Nestorium. Five of his letters have also come down to us, and he is most probably the author of Liber Sacrementorum, published at Rome in 1680; but the so-called Decretum Gelasii de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis is evidently a forgery. Gelasius died in 496, and was canonized, his day being the 18th November.

GELASIUS II. (Giovanni da Gaeta) was of noble descent, and was born at Gaeta about 1050. He received his theo. logical education in the abbey of Monte Casino, and afterwards held the office of chancellor under Urban II., and of cardinal-deacon under Pascal II. On the death of Pascal II. he was elected pope by the cardinals, 18th January 1118, and when his person was seized by Cencius Frangipani, a partisan of the emperor Henry V., he was almost immediately set at liberty through the general uprising of the people in his behalf. The sudden appearance of the emperor, however, compelled him to leave Rome for Gaeta, and the imperial party chose an anti-pope, Burdinus, archbishop of Braga, under the name of Gregory VIII. Gelasius, at a council held at Capua, fulminated bulls of excommunication against his ecclesiastical rival and the emperor; and under the protection of the Norman princes he was able to return to Rome, where he stayed for a time in partial concealment, but having barely escaped capture by the Frangipani while celebrating mass in the church of St Praxede, he left the city, and after wandering through various parts of Italy and France died in the abbey of Clugny, January 19, 1119.

GELATIN. When intercellular connective tissue, as met with in skin, tendons, ligaments, and the fascia of the muscles, of which it forms the basis, is treated with water, preferably hot, or in presence of dilute acids, for some time, a solution is obtained which in cooling solidifies to a jelly. The dissolved substance bears the name of Gelatin or Glutin.

The same substance is obtained when the matrix of bones is submitted to similar treatment, after previous removal of the lime salts by means of mineral acids. Again, when unossified cartilage, as for instance the bone-cartilages of the vertebrate foetus, is treated with water or dilute acids a solution is obtained which also gelatinizes on cooling. The coagulation in this case, however, is due, not to gelatin, but to a closely allied substance called chondrin. At one

time it was supposed that in each of these three cases the gelatinizing materials obtained were formed by the hydration or by a physical metamorphosis of a different substance pre-existing in the respective tissues, to which the names collagen, ossein, and chondrogen were given respectively the two former yielding gelatin, and the last chondrin. Further experiments have made it more probable that gelatin and chondrin do not differ essentially from their parent tissues, analyses of tendons and of gelatin or isinglass a very fine form of gelatin obtainable from the sturgeon) agreeing within the range of experimental error. At the same time, as Foster observes in the case of chondrin, the fact that its extraction from cartilage requires an amount of boiling with water, much more than would be necessary to dissolve the same amount of dried product, points rather the other way. Most probably the change which occurs is of a purely physical character.

True gelatigenous tissue occurs in all mature vertebrates, with the single exception, according to Hoppe-Seyler, of that in other respects anomalous vertebrate, Amphioxus lanceolatus. In the embryo it does not appear till late in foetal life, chondrin being found instead; and the change which brings gelatin into the place of chondrin is effected, not by a metamorphosis of the latter, but by its removal, and the independent formation of gelatin. The tissue in question was believed to be peculiar to Vertebrata until Hoppe-Seyler discovered it in the bodies of Octopus and Sepiola. By boiling these cephalopods with water he obtained large quantities of gelatin free from chondrin, but in an extension of his experiments to other invertebrates, as cockchafers and Anodon and Unio, no such tissue could be detected. Gelatin, as such, is not met with in any of the normal fluids of the body, but occurs in the blood in cases of Leukhamia.

Various qualities of impure gelatin are prepared on the Large scale by boiling up the hides of oxen, skins of calves, and spongy parts of horns; from any of the crude gelatins the pure substance may be obtained by bleaching with sulphurous acid and steeping repeatedly in warm water, when in the state of soft jelly.

Pure gelatin is an amorphous, brittle, nearly transparent substance, faintly yellow, tasteless, and inodorous, neutral to vegetable colours, and unaltered by exposure to dry air. Submitted to analysis it exhibits an elementary composition agreeing closely with that of chondrin, containing in round numbers C 50, H 7, N 18, O +S 24 per cent.; whilst chondrin contains about 3 per cent. less nitrogen and more oxygen.

Nothing is known with any certainty as to its chemical constitution, or of the mode in which it is formed from albuminoids. Besides a similarity in elementary constituents, it exhibits in a general way a connexion with that large and important class of animal substances called proteids, being, like them, amorphous, soluble in acids and alkalies, and giving in solution a left-handed rotation of the plane of polarization. Nevertheless, the ordinary well-recognized reactions for proteids are but faintly observed in the case of gelatin, and the only substances which at once and freely precipitate it from solution are corrosive sublimate, strong alcohol, and tannic acid.

According to Wanklyn, gelatin is distinctly differentiated from such substances as casein and albumin by a marked difference in behaviour when treated successively with boiling potash and alkaline permanganate. All nitrogenous organic substances yield large quantities of ammonia when decomposed by boiling with these solutions; but whereas albuminoids give up their ammonia at two successive stages, one of which is achieved by the action of potash alone, the other on the subsequent addition of permanganate, gelatin yields the same amount after the action of permanganate

alone, as the total obtainable by the successive actions of the two reagents. Now, as there appear to be good grounds for believing the molecule of albuminoids to contain one or more urea-residues, and as urea, and presumably therefore a urea-residue, would yield its ammonia to potash alone, Wanklyn concludes that gelatin differs in constitution from albuminoids by containing no urea. On the other hand, as Foster observes, the behaviour of gelatin as a food (see below), in diminishing the amount of fat used by an animal fed partly on it, as well as the quantity of nitrogen abstracted from other sources, is readily intelligible on the hypothesis that it splits into a urea and a fat moiety. Although gelatin in a dry state is unalterable by exposure to air, its solution exhibits, like all the proteids, a remarkable tendency to putrefaction; but a characteristic feature of this process in the case of gelatin is that the solution assumes a transient acid reaction. The ultimate products of this decomposition are the same as are produced by prolonged boiling with acid (see below). It has been found that oxalic acid, over and above the action common to all dilute acids of preventing the solidification of gelatin solutions, has the further property of preventing in a large measure this tendency to putrefy when the gelatin is treated with hot solutions of this acid, and then freed from adhering acid by means of carbonate of lime. Gelatin so treated has been called metagelatin.

Strange to say, in spite of the marked tendency of gelatin solutions to develop ferment-organisms, and undergo putrefaction, the stability of the substance in the dry state is such that it has even been used, and with some success, as a means of preserving perishable foods. The process, invented by Dr Campbell Morfit, consists in im pregnating the foods with gelatin, and then drying them till about 10 per cent. or less of water is present. Milk gelatinized in this way is superior in several respects to the products of the ordinary condensation process, more especially in the retention of a much larger proportion of albuminoids.

Gelatin has a marked affinity for water, abstracting it from admixture with alcohol, for example. Solid gelatin steeped for some hours in water absorbs a certain amount and swells up, in which condition a gentle heat, as that of the water-bath, serves to convert it into a liquid; or this may be readily produced by the addition of a trace of alkali or mineral acid, or by strong acetic acid. In the last case, however, or if we use the mineral acids in a more concentrated form, the solution obtained has lost its power of solidifying, though not that of acting as a glue. By prolonged boiling of strong aqueous solutions at a high, or of weak solutions at a lower temperature, the characteristic properties of gelatin are impaired and ultimately destroyed. After this treatment it acts less powerfully as a glue, loses its tendency to solidify, and becomes increasingly soluble in cold water; nevertheless the solutions yield on precipitation with alcohol a substance identical in composition with gelatin.

By prolonged boiling in contact with hydrolytic agents, such as sulphuric acid or caustic alkali, it yields quantities of leucin and glycocoll (so-called "sugar of gelatin," this being the method by which glycocoll was first prepared), but no tyrosin. In this last respect it agrees with its near allies, chondrin and elastin, and differs from the great body of proteids, the characteristic solid products of the decomposition of which are leucin and tyrosin. At the same time the formation of glycocoll differentiates it from chondrin, from which, moreover, it can be readily distinguished by its non-precipitability by acetate of lead.

When it is mixed with copper sulphate a bright green liquid is formed, from which the copper cannot be thrown Addition of potash to the down free of organic matter.