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GOOSE.

forward than in ducks, and so better adapted for walking; the neck of moderate length, with sixteen vertebræ, a character which widely distinguishes them from swans. In general, geese spend more of their time on land than any other of the Anatida, feeding on grass and other herbage, berries, seeds, and other vegetable food. Although large birds, and of bulky form, they have great powers of flight. They strike with their wings in fighting, and there is a hard callous knob or tubercle at the bend of the wing, which in some species becomes a spur. The DOMESTIC G. is regarded as deriving its origin from the GRAY LAG G. or COMMON WILD G. (A. ferus); but all the species seem very capable of domestication, and several of them have been to some extent domesticated. The Gray Lag G. is almost three feet in length from the tip of the bill to the extremity of the short tail. Its extent of wing is about five feet. The wings do not reach to the extremity of the tail. The weight of the largest birds is about ten pounds. The colour of the plumage is gray, varying in some parts to grayish brown; the rump and belly white, the tail grayish brown and white; the bill is orange, the nail at the tip of the upper mandible white. The young are darker than the adults. The Gray Lag G. is common in some parts of the centre and south of Europe, also in many parts of Asia, and in the north of Africa, but it is not known in America. It is a bird of temperate rather than of cold climates. In some countries, it is found at all seasons of the year, but it deserts its most northern haunts in severe weather, migrating southward; its flocks, like those of others of this genus, flying at a great height, beyond the reach of shot, except of the rifle, one bird always leading the flock, the rest sometimes following in a single line, but more generally in two lines converging to the leading bird. The Gray Lag G. was formerly abundant in the fenny parts of England, and resided there all the year, but the drainage of the fens has made it now a rare bird, and only known as a winter visitant in the British Islands. It frequents bays of the sea and estuaries as well as inland waters, and often leaves the waters to visit moors, meadows, and cultivated fields, generally preferring an open country, or taking its place, as remote as possible from danger, in the middle of a field. These excursions are often made by night, and no small mischief is often done by a flock of hungry geese to a field of newly-sprung wheat or other crop. At the breeding season, the winter-flocks of wild geese break up into pairs; the nests are made in moors or on tussocks in marshes; the eggs vary in number from five to eight or rarely twelve or fourteen; they are of a dull white colour, fully three inches long, and two inches in

diameter.

Although the common G. has been long domesticated, and it was probably among the very first of domesticated birds, the varieties do not differ widely from each other. Emden Geese are remarkable for their perfect whiteness; Toulouse Geese, for their large size. As a domesticated bird, the G. is of great value, both for the table, and on account of its quills, and of the fine soft feathers. The quills supplied all Europe with pens before steel pens were invented, and have not ceased to be in great demand. Geese must have free access to water, and when this is the case, they are easily reared, and rendered profitable. Two broods are sometimes produced in a season, ten or eleven in a brood, and the young geese are ready for the table in three months after they leave the shell. They live, if permitted, to a great age. Willughby records an instance of one that reached the age of eighty years, and was killed at last for its mischievousness. Great flocks

of geese are kept in some places in England, particularly in Lincolnshire, and regularly plucked five times a year, for feathers and quills. Geese intended for the table are commonly shut up for a few weeks, and fattened before being killed. Great numbers are imported from Holland and Germany for the London market, and fattened in England in establishments entirely devoted to this purpose. Goose-hams are an esteemed delicacy. The gizzards, heads, and legs of geese are also sold in sets, under the name of giblets, to be used for pies. The livers of geese have long been in request among epicures; but the pâte de foie d'oie, or pâté de foie gras of Strasburg, is made from livers in a state of morbid enlargement, caused by keeping the geese in an apartment of very high temperature. Large goose-livers were a favourite delicacy of the ancient Roman epicures.

The Gray Lag G. is the largest of the native British species. The next to it in size, and by far the most abundant British wild goose, is the BEAN G. (A. segetum), a very similar bird; the bill longer, orange, with the base and nail black; the plumage mostly gray, but browner than in the Gray Lag G., the rump dark brown. The wings

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extend beyond the tail. The habits scarcely differ from those of the Gray Lag G., but the Bean G. is a more northern species. It is common in all the northern parts of Europe and Asia; and great numbers breed in Nova Zembla, Greenland, and other most northern regions. Large flocks are to be seen in many parts of Britain in winter, particularly during severe frosts, but a few also breed in the north of Scotland, and even in the north of England. The Bean G. is easily domesticated, but generally keeps apart from the ordinary tame geese.-The WHITE-FRONTED G., or LAUGHING G. (A. albifrons), is a frequent winter visitant of Britain; a native of Europe, Asia, and America, breeding chiefly on the coasts and islands of the arctic seas. is only about 27 inches in its utmost length. The plumage is mostly gray; there is a conspicuous white space on the forehead. It has been often tamed. Similar to it in size is the PINK-FOOTED G. (A. brachyrhynchus), a species which has a very short bill. In England it is rare, and a mere winter visitor, but it breeds in great numbers in some of the Hebrides.-The SNOW G. (A. hyperboreus) is found in all the regions within the arctic circle, but most abundantly in America, where it migrates southward in winter, as far as the Gulf of Mexico. It is somewhat smaller than the Bean Goose. The general colour of the plumage is pure white, the

5

It

GOOSEBERRY-GOOSEBERRY CATERPILLAR.

quill feathers brownish black. The feathers imported are trained in various ways, but it is necessary to from the Hudson's Bay territories are in great part prune so that they may not be choked up with the produce of this beautiful species, and probably shoots, whilst care ought to be taken to have an many of the fine white goose feathers imported from abundant supply of young wood, which produces Russia. Its flesh is greatly esteemed.-The CANADA the largest berries. Besides its well known wholeG. (A. Canadensis) is one of the most abundant someness and pleasantness, and its use for making North American species, breeding even in the milder an excellent preserve and jelly, the ripe fruit is latitudes, but in vast numbers in the more northern used for making wine and vinegar. An effervescent parts, from which it migrates southwards on the gooseberry wine, which might well claim attention approach of winter. It was introduced into Britain under its own name, is often fraudulently sold as at least 200 years ago, and may now be regarded as champagne. The use of unripe gooseberries for fully naturalised; a great ornament of lakes and tarts increases the value of this fruit-shrub. The artificial ponds, from which it makes excursions in G. season is prolonged by training plants on north small flocks over the surrounding districts. In the walls, and by covering the bushes with matting uniform breadth of the bill it resembles swans. It when the fruit is about ripe. Unripe gooseberries is fully three feet and a half from the tip of the bill are kept in jars or bottles, closely sealed, and to the extremity of the tail; but its neck is long placed in a cool cellar, to be used for tarts in and slender, and it does not exceed the common winter. When the bottles are filled, they are heated, G. in weight so much as in length. The bill, the by means of boiling water or otherwise, to expel as feet, the head, great part of the neck, the quill- much air as possible before they are corked and feathers, the rump, and the tail are black; there is sealed. Various derivations have been given of a crescent-shaped white patch on the throat, whence the name G., but most probably the first syllable this species has received the name of the CRAVAT is a corruption of groseille, the French name of the G.; the back, wings, and flanks are grayish brown, fruit, from which also comes the Scotch grozet or the breast and belly pure white. The Canada G. grozart. In some parts of England, the G. is called has a peculiar resounding hoarse cry. It is easily feaberry.-Among the other species of G. most reduced to the most complete domestication. Its worthy of notice are R. cynosbati, a native of Canada, flesh affords great part of the winter supplies of of Japan, and of the mountains of India, much the Hudson's Bay residents, and is much used in resembling the common G. in foliage and habit, a salted state. The CHINA G., or GUINEA G. (A. the fruit more acid than the cultivated G.; R. Guineensis or cygnoides), of which the native country divaricatum, a native of the north-west coast of is supposed to be Guinea, has long been known America, with smooth, black, globose, acid fruit; in Britain in a state of domestication. It has an R. irriguum, also from the north-west coast of elevated knob at the base of the upper mandible, America, with well-flavoured globose fruit, half an which has obtained it the name of Knobbed Goose. inch in diameter; R. oxyacanthoides, a native of -Other species of geese are noticed in the articles Canada, with small, globose, red, green, or purplish BARNACLE GOOSE and CEREOPSIS; and species berries of an agreeable taste; R. gracile, found in closely allied to those noticed in this article are mountain-meadows from New York to Virginia, found in India and other parts of the world. with blue or purplish berries of exquisite flavour; R. aciculare, a Siberian species, with sweet, wellflavoured yellowish or purplish smooth berries; all of which, and probably others, seem to deserve more attention than they have yet received from horticulturists. The SNOWY-FLOWERED G. (R. niveum), a native of the north-west coast of America, is remarkable for its beautiful white pendulous flowers. Its berries in size and colour resemble black currants, are acid, with a very agreeable flavour, and make delicious tarts. Another species from the same region (R. speciosum) is very ornamental in pleasure-grounds, and is remarkable for its shining leaves, its flowers with four stamensthe other species having five-and the great length of the filaments.-R. saxatile, a native of Siberia, and other species, forming a sub-genus called Botrycarpum, have a character somewhat intermediate between currants and gooseberries, being prickly shrubs, but having their flowers in racemes. saxatile has small, smooth, globose, dark purple berries, like currants, which are very agreeable. GOOSEBERRY, COROMANDEL. See CARAM

R.

GOOSEBERRY (Grossularia), a sub-genus of the genus Ribes (see CURRANT), distinguished by a thorny stem, a more or less bell-shaped calyx and flowers on 1-3-flowered stalks.-The common G. (Ribes Grossularia) is a native of many parts of Europe and the north of Asia, growing wild in rocky situations and in thickets, particularly in mountainous districts; but it is a doubtful native of Britain, although now to be seen in hedges and thickets almost everywhere. Some botanists have distinguished as species the variety having the berries covered with gland-bearing hairs (sete); that having the germens covered with soft unglandular hairs, and the berries ultimately smooth; and that which has even the germens smooth (R. Grossularia, R. uva-crispa, and R. reclinatum); but these varieties seem to have no definite limits in nature. The varieties produced by cultivation are very numerous, chiefly in England, where, and particularly in Lancashire, greater attention is paid to the cultivation of this valuable fruit-shrub than in any other part of the world. In the south of Europe, it is little known. It does not appear to have been known to the ancients. Its cultivation GOOSEBERRY, PERUVIAN. See PHYSALIS. cannot be certainly referred to an earlier date than the 17th c., and was only in its infancy at GOOSEBERRY CATERPILLAR, the larva of the middle of the 18th, when the largest goose- Abraxas grossulariata, a moth of a whitish colour, berries produced in Lancashire scarcely weighed with yellow streaks, and spotted with black. The more than 10 dwts., whereas the prize-gooseberries of larva is beautifully coloured, with black and white that county now sometimes exceed 30 dwts. Many stripes, and in its progression forms an elevated well-known diversities of form, colour, and flavour, loop with its body. It feeds on the foliage of as well as of size, mark the different varieties. the gooseberry and currant.-Another moth, of For the production of new varieties, the G. is pro- which the caterpillar also feeds on the leaves of pagated by seed; otherwise, generally by cuttings, these shrubs, is Halias Vanaria. Both the moth which grow very freely. Any good garden soil and the caterpillar are smaller than the former. suits the gooseberry. It is rather the better of But more destructive than either of these is the a little shade, but suffers from much. The bushes | larva of a saw-fly, Nematus ribesii, which deposits

BOLA.

GOPHER WOOD-GORDIANUS.

GORDIAN-KNOT.

its eggs along the ribs on the under surface of the afterwards affording a similar parental protection leaves; the larva is green and 'shagreened' with to the young fry. minute black tubercles. Many remedies have been proposed and tried to prevent the ravages of these larvæ, of which, perhaps, the best are picking off the leaves observed to be covered with the eggs of the saw-fly, and dusting with powder of white hellebore, which, if carefully and sufficiently applied, is most efficacious, killing any kind of larva.

GO'PHER WOOD. The probable identity of the gopher wood of Scripture with the Cypress (q. v.), is maintained partly on account of the qualities of the wood, and partly on account of the agreement of the radical consonants of the names. GÖPPINGEN, a small town of the kingdom of Würtemberg, is situated on the right bank of the Fils, 27 miles north-west from Ulm, and is a station on the railway from Ulm to Stuttgart. It is an industrious, cleanly, and flourishing town, possessing a town-hall, a large castle, and mineral baths, and carrying on manufactures of woollen cloth, earthenwares, and some trade in wool. Pop. (1871) 8649. GORAL (Antilope Goral, or Nemorhedus Goral), an animal of the antelope family, inhabiting in large herds the elevated plains of Nepaul. It is of a grayish-brown colour, dotted with black, the cheeks white; the hair is short; the horns are short, inclined, recurved, and pointed. It is a wild and fleet animal, and when pursued, takes refuge in rocky heights. Its flesh is highly esteemed.

GORAMY, or GOURAMI (Osphromenus olfax), a fish of the family Anabasida or Labyrinthibranchida, a native of China and the Eastern Archipelago, highly esteemed for the table, and which has on that account been introduced into Mauritius, Cayenne, and the French West India Islands. Its form is deep in proportion to its length, the head small, and terminating in a rather sharp short

Goramy (Osphromenus olfax).

snout, the mouth small, the tail rounded, the dorsal and anal fins having numerous rather short spines, the first ray of the ventral fins extending into a very long filament. It is sometimes kept in large jars by the Dutch residents in Java, and fed on water-plants. It was introduced into Mauritius about the middle of the 18th c., and soon spread from the tanks in which it was at first kept into the streams, multiplying abundantly. The success which has attended the introduction of this fish into countries remote from those in which it is indigenous, holds out great encouragement to other attempts of the same kind. The G. is interesting also on other accounts. It is one of the nestbuilding fishes, and at the breeding season forms its nest by entangling the stems and leaves of aquatic grasses. Both the male and female watch the nest for a month or more with careful vigilance, and violently drive away every other fish which approaches, till the spawn is hatched,

over.

The traditional origin of this famous knot was as follows: Gordius, a Phrygian peasant, was once ploughing in his fields, when an eagle settled on his yoke of oxen, and remained till the labour of the day was Surprised at so wonderful a phenomenon, he sought an explanation of it, and was informed by a prophetess of Telmissus that he should offer sacrifice to Zeus. He did so, and out of gratitude for the kindness shewn him, married the prophetess, by whom he had a son, the famous Midas. When Midas grew up, disturbances broke out in Phrygia, and the people sent messengers to the oracle at Delphi, to ask about choosing a new king. The messengers were informed that a king would come to them riding on a car, and that he would restore peace. Returning to Phrygia, they announced these things, and while the people were talking about them, Gordius, with his father, very opportunely arrived in the requisite manner. was immediately elected king, whereupon he dedicated his car and yoke to Zeus, in the acropolis of Gordium (a city named after himself), the knot of the yoke being tied in so skilful a manner, oracle declared whoever should unloose it would be ruler of all Asia. When Alexander the Great came to Gordium, he cut the knot in two with his sword, and applied the prophecy to himself.

He

that an

GORDIA'NUS, the name of three Roman emperors, father, son, and grandson.-The first, MARCUS ANTONIUS G., was grandson of Annius Severus, and was descended by the father's side from the famous family of the Gracchi. He was remarkable for his attachment to literary pursuits. After being ædile, in which capacity he celebrated the gladiatorial sports with great magnificence, he twice filled the office of consul, first as the colleague of Caracalla, in 213 A. D.; and second, as the colleague of Alexander Severus. Soon afterwards, he was appointed proconsul of Africa, where he gained the affections and esteem of the people by his modest and gentle manners, his splendid liberality, and his refined literary taste; his old age was spent in the study of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Virgil. The tyranny and injustice of the Emperor Maximinus having at length excited a rebellion against his authority in Africa, the imperial procurator there was murdered by a band of nobles who had formed a conspiracy against him on account of his cruelty. G., now in his 80th year, was proclaimed emperor, after having vainly refused the dangerous honour. He received the title of Africanus, and his son was conjoined with him in the exercise of imperial authority. The Roman senate acknowledged both, and proclaimed Maximinus, then absent in Pannonia, an enemy to his country. The younger G., however, was defeated in battle by Capellianus, viceroy of Mauritania, before Carthage, and his father, in an agony of grief, put a period to his own existence, having been emperor for little more than a month. In his personal appearance, G. is said to have greatly resembled Augustus.-MARCUS ANTONIUS G., grandson of the preceding, was raised to the dignity of Cæsar along with Pupienus Maximus and Balbinus, who were also elected emperors in opposition to Maximinus; and, in the same year, after all three had fallen by the hands of their own soldiers, Marcus Antonius was elevated by the Prætorian bands to the rank of Augustus. Assisted by his father-in-law, Misitheus, a man distinguished for his wisdom, virtue, and courage, whom he made prefect of the

GORDIUS-GORDON.

Prætorians, he marched, in the year 242, into Asia, against the Persians, who, under Shahpûr (Sapor), had taken possession of Mesopotamia, and had advanced into Syria. Antioch, which was threatened by them, was relieved by G., the Persians were obliged to withdraw from Syria beyond the Euphrates, and G. was just about to march into their country, when Misitheus died. Philip the Arabian, who succeeded Misitheus, stirred up dissatisfaction in the army against G. by the falsest treachery, and finally goaded on the ignorant and passionate soldiery to assassinate the emperor, 244 A. D. But knowing the great affection which the Roman people had for the gallant and amiable G., he declared in his dispatch to the senate that the latter had died a natural death, and that he himself had been unanimously chosen to succeed him.

were given by King Malcolm Ceanmohr (1057— 1093 A. D.) to the progenitor of the house, as a reward for slaying, in the forest of Huntly, a wild boar, the terror of all the Merse. But in the 11th c., there were neither heraldic bearings in Scotland nor Gordons in Berwickshire. The first trace of the family is about the end of the 12th c., or the beginning of the 13th c., when it appears in record as witnessing charters by the great Earls of March or Dunbar, and as granting patches of land and rights of pasturage to the monks of Kelso. About a century afterwards, it enters the page of history in the person of Sir Adam of Gordon. He is found, in 1305, high in the confidence of King Edward I. of England, holding under that prince the office of joint justiciar of Lothian, and sitting in the English council at Westminster as one of the representatives of Scotland. GO'RDIUS, a genus of Annelida, of the very banner of Bruce, who rewarded his adherence, tardy He seems to have been among the last to join the simplest structure; very much elongated and threadlike, with no greater marks of articulation as it was, by a grant of the northern lordship of than slight transverse folds, no feet, no gills, no but it was renewed by King David II. in 1357, Strathbogie. The grant failed of effect at the time; tentacles, although there is a knotted nervous chord. and by King Robert II. in 1376. Under this last The mouth is a mere pore at one end of the animal; renewal, Sir John of Gordon, the great-grandson of the other end or tail is slightly bifid, and has Sir Adam, entered into possession, and so transbeen often mistaken for the head. The species ferred the chief seat and power of the family from inhabit moist situations, are sometimes found on the the Merse and Teviotdale to the banks of the Dee, leaves of plants, but more frequently in stagnant the Deveron, and the Spey. Its direct male line pools, and in mud or soft clay, through which they work their way with great ease. They often twist Homildon in 1402, leaving an only child, a daughter, came to an end in his son Sir Adam, who fell at themselves into complex knots, whence their name G., from the celebrated Gordian-knot and many of through two illegitimate brothers-John of Gordon to inherit his lands, but transmitting his name them are sometimes found thus twisted together; of Scurdargue, and Thomas of Gordon of Ruthven but they are also often to be found extended in the to a wide circle of the gentry of Mar, Buchan, water. The most common species in Britain is G. and Strathbogie, who, calling themselves 'Gordons,' aquaticus, of which the popular name is HAIR EEL; and a notion still prevails in many parts of the styled the descendants of their niece Setoncountry, that it is nothing else than a horse-hair, which has somehow acquired life by long immersion in water, and which is destined in due course of time to become an eel of the ordinary kind and dimensions; in proof of all which many an honest observer is ready to present himself as an eye-witness who has often seen these very slender eels in his walks. A popular notion prevails in Sweden, that the bite of the G. causes whitlow. When the pools in which the G. lives are dried up, it becomes shrivelled, and apparently lifeless, but revives on the application of moisture. The Abbé Fontana kept one in a drawer for three years, and although perfectly dry and hard, it soon recovered vigour on being put into water. Gordii are extremely common

in the Thames.

GORDON, THE FAMILY OF. The origin of this great Scottish historical house is still wrapped in some measure of obscurity. Uncritical genealogists of the 17th c. affected to trace its descent from a mythical High Constable of Charlemagne, a Duke of Gordon, who, it was said, flourished about the year 800, and drew his lineage from the Gordoni, a tribe which, taking its name from the town of Gordunia, in Macedonia, had settled in Gaul before the days of Julius Cæsar. These fables and fancies have long ceased to be believed. Nor is more credit given to the conjecture that the family, having carried its name from Normandy to England in the train of the Conqueror, soon afterwards passed on from England to Scotland. No proof has been found of any connection between the Gordons of France and the Gordons of Scotland. There is little or no doubt now that the Scottish Gordons took their name from the lands of Gordon in Berwickshire. Their earliest historian, writing in the 16th c., says that these lands, together with the arms of three boars' heads,

Gordons.'

HUNTLY, MARQUISES OF HUNTLY, AND DUKES OF LORDS OF GORDON AND BADENOCH, EARLS OF GORDON.-Elizabeth of Gordon, the heiress of Sir Adam, married before 1408 Alexander of Seton (the son of Sir William of Seton), who, before 1437, who took the name of Gordon, was made Earl of was created Lord of Gordon. Their son Alexander, Huntly in 1445, and Lord of Badenoch a few years afterwards. He acquired by marriage the baronies of Cluny, Aboyne, and Glenmuick in Aberdeenshire; and had grants from the crown of the Highland counties of Inverness and Moray. He died in 1470, lordship of Badenoch, and of other lands in the and was succeeded by his second son George, the second earl, who married Annabella, daughter of King James I., and added to the territories of his house the lands of Schivas in Aberdeenshire, and the Boyne, the Enzie, and Netherdale in Banffshire. He was chancellor of Scotland from 1498 to 1502, and dying soon afterwards, was succeeded by his son Alexander, the third earl, who enlarged the family domains by the acquisition of Strathaven (or Strathdoun) in Banffshire, and of the Brae of Lochaber in Inverness-shire. He commanded the left wing of the Scottish army at Flodden; and, escaping the carnage of that disastrous field, survived till the year 1524. He was succeeded by his grandson George, the fourth earl, under whom the family reached, perhaps, its highest pitch of power. He added the earldom of Moray to its already vast possessions, and long held the great offices of lieutenant of the north and chancellor of the realm. He had the repute of being the wisest, the wealthiest, and the most powerful subject in Scotland. The crown, it is said, was counselled to clip his wings, lest he should attempt, like the Douglases in the previous age, to awe or overshadow the throne. He was stripped of the earldom of

GORDON.

heir-male of the body of the first marquis. The estates went to the duke's nephew, Charles, fifth duke of Richmond and Lennox, the son of Lady Charlotte Gordon, eldest daughter of the fourth duke of Gordon by his marriage with the sprightly Jane Maxwell, daughter of Sir William Maxwell of Monreith.

EARLS OF SUTHERLAND.-About the year 1512, Adam Gordon of Aboyne, second son of the second Earl of Huntly, married Elizabeth, the heiress of Sutherland, and in her right became Earl of Sutherland. Neither he nor his wife, it appears, could write their own names. Their descendants, the Earls of Sutherland, continued to bear the surname of Gordon through six or seven generations, till the beginning of the 18th c., when they exchanged it for the surname of Sutherland, which had been borne by the Countess Elizabeth before her marriage with Adam Gordon.

Moray, and, rushing into revolt, was routed and slain at Corrichie in 1562. Sentence of forfeiture was pronounced upon his corpse, but it was rescinded in 1567, and his son George succeeded as fifth earl. He died in 1576. The family had stood aloof from the Reformation, and his son and successor, George, the sixth earl, was conspicuous as the head of the Roman Catholic power in Scotland. He defeated a VISCOUNT OF MELGUND, VISCOUNTS OF ABOYNE, Protestant army sent against him under the Earl of EARLS OF ABOYNE, AND MARQUISES OF HUNTLY. Argyle in 1594; but submitting to the king, obtained-Lord John Gordon, second son of the first Marquis an easy pardon, and was made Marquis of Huntly of Huntly, was made Viscount of Melgund and in 1599. He died in 1636, leaving a character of Lord Aboyne in 1627. Three years afterwards, he which we have an instructive sketch by a neighbour was burned to death in the tower of Frendraught. and contemporary. This mighty marquis,' says In 1632, his elder brother, George, was made Visthe northern annalist, John Spalding, 'was of a great count of Aboyne, and on his succession to the Marspirit, for in time of troubles he was of invincible quisate of Huntly in 1636, the title of Viscount of courage, and boldly bore down all his enemies Aboyne devolved on his third son, who distinguished triumphantly. He was never inclined to war nor himself on the king's side during the wars of the trouble himself; but by the pride and insolence of Covenant, and died, it is said, of a broken heart, a his kin, was diverse times drawn in trouble, which few days after the execution of Charles I., in 1649. he bore through valiantly. He loved not to Lord Charles Gordon, third son of the second Marbe in the laws contending against any man, but quis of Huntly, was made Earl of Aboyne in 1660. loved rest and quietness with all his heart; and in His great-great-grandson, George, who had been a time of peace, he lived moderately and temperately favourite at the court of Marie Antoinette, succeeded in his diet, and fully set to building and planting of as fifth Earl of Aboyne in 1794, on the death of his all curious devices. A well set neighbour in his father, and as eighth Marquis of Huntly in 1836, marches, disposed rather to give nor take a foot of on the death of the last Duke of Gordon. ground wrongously. He was heard say he never drew sword in his own quarrel. In his youth, a prodigal spender; in his elder age, more wise and worldly, yet never counted for cost in matters of credit and honour; a great householder; a terror to his enemies, whom, with his prideful kin, he ever held under great fear, subjection, and obedience. He was mightily envied by the kirk for his religion, and by others for his greatness, and had thereby much trouble.' We mark a new social stage when we are told that he was the first head of his house who bought' land. His son George, the second marquis, distinguished himself by the zeal with which he espoused the royal cause in the great civil war of his time. You may take my head from my shoulders,' he said, in answer to tempting offers from the Covenanters, but not my heart from the king.' Such was the state he kept, that when he took up house in Aberdeen in 1639, he was attended daily by 24 gentlemen, of whom three were of the rank of barons, while eight gentlemen were charged with the watch of his mansion by night. He was beheaded at Edinburgh in 1649, and was succeeded by his son Lewis, the third marquis, who died in 1653. The family possessions had been impaired by war and forfeiture, but it appears that they still sufficed, in 1667, to yield £24,771 Scots a year to his son George, the fourth marquis, who was made EARLS OF ABERDEEN.-Some genealogists have Duke of Gordon in 1684. He held out the castle sought to ingraft this branch upon the parent stem of Edinburgh for King James at the Revolution; before it was transplanted to the north towards and dying in 1716, was succeeded by his son Alex- the end of the 14th century. But no evidence has ander, the second duke, who died in 1728. He been produced in support of this claim; and was the last Roman Catholic chief of his race, and, modern research holds by the old tradition, that as we are told by Boswell, lived in sequestered the house descends from one of the illegitimate magnificence, corresponding with the grand dukes brothers of Sir Adam of Gordon, who was slain of Tuscany,' with whom he believed that he could at Homildon in 1402. Its first possession seems count kindred. He never travelled in the north without a train of his vassals on horseback. His son, Cosmo George, the third duke, died in 1752, leaving three sons. The youngest, Lord George Gordon, led the Protestant mob which sacked London in 1780; the eldest, Alexander, the fourth duke, died in 1827, being succeeded by his son George, the fifth duke, on whose death, without issue, in 1836, the title of Duke of Gordon (being limited to the heirs-male of the body of the first duke) became extinct, the title of Earl of Huntly fell into abeyance, and the title of Marquis of Huntly was adjudged to the Earl of Aboyne, as

LORDS OF LOCHINVAR AND VISCOUNTS OF KENMURE.-William of Gordon, the second son of Sir Adam of Gordon, who figured in the reign of King Robert I. (1306—1329), had a grant from his father of the barony of Stitchel, in Teviotdale, and of the lands of Glenkens, in Galloway. He was the progenitor of the knightly family of Lochinvar, which in 1633 was raised to the peerage by the titles of Lord of Lochinvar and Viscount of Kenmure. William, the sixth viscount-the Kenmure's on and awa' of Jacobite song was beheaded in 1716 for his share in the rising of the previous year. The peerage, which was then forfeited, was restored in 1824, but has been in abeyance since the death of Adam, the ninth viscount, in 1847.

to have been Methlic on the banks of the Ythan. Patrick Gordon of Methlic fell under the banner of the Earl of Huntly at the battle of Arbroath in 1445. His son and successor was of sufficient mark to obtain the bishopric of Aberdeen for one of his younger sons in 1516. The family reached the rank of lesser baron in 1531, and the dignity of knight-baronet in 1642. Its chief, at this last dateSir John Gordon of Haddo-one of the most gallant of the northern cavaliers, was the proto-martyr of his party, the first of the royalists who suffered death by a judicial sentence. He was beheaded at the cross of Edinburgh by the Covenanters

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