OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lochmaben

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​LOCHMABEN, a royal and police burgh of Dumfriesshire, Scotland, 8 m. N.E. of Dumfries, with a station on the Caledonian railway company’s branch from Dumfries to Locherbie. Pop. (1901) 1328. It is delightfully situated, there being eight lakes in the immediate neighbourhood, while the river Annan, and the Waters of Ae, Kinnel and Dryfe are in the vicinity. The town hall is a handsome edifice with clock tower. At the south end of Castle Loch, the chief lake, stand the ruins, a mere shell, of Lochmaben Castle, dating from the 13th century, where local tradition declares that Robert Bruce was born—an honour which is also claimed, however, for Turnberry Castle on the coast of Ayrshire. In the parish church is a bell said to have been presented to King Robert by the pope after reconciliation with him. A statue of the king stands in front of the town hall. Whether it were his birthplace or not, the associations of Bruce with Lochmaben were intimate. He exempted his followers in the district from feudal service and their descendants—the “kindly tenants of Lochmaben”—were confirmed in their tenure by the court of session in 1824. The Castle Loch is the only fresh water in Scotland, and possibly in the British Isles, where the vendace (coregonus vandesius) occurs. This fish, which is believed to be growing scarcer, is alleged on doubtful authority to have been ​introduced by Queen Mary. It is captured by the sweep-net in August, and is esteemed as a delicacy. The lakes adjoining the town afford the inhabitants exceptional advantages for the game of curling. There was once a team of Lochmaben Curlers entirely composed of shoemakers (souters) who held their own against all comers, and their prowess added the phrase “to souter” to the vocabulary of the sport, the word indicating a match in which the winners scored “game” to their opponents’ “love.” Lochmaben unites with Annan, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright and Sanquhar (the Dumfries burghs) in returning one member to parliament.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Local Government

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​LOCAL GOVERNMENT, a phrase specially adopted in English usage for the decentralized or deconcentrated administration, within a state or national and central government, of local affairs by local authorities. It is restricted not only in respect ​of area but also in respect of the character and extent of the duties assigned to them. It is not to be confused with local self-government in the wider sense in which the words are sometimes employed, e.g. for the granting by the crown of self-government to a colony; the expression, in a general way, may mean this, but “local government” as technically used in England refers more narrowly to the system of county or municipal administration, and English usage transfers it to denote the similar institutions in other countries. The growth and persistence of this kind of subordinate government is due practically to the need of relieving the central authority in the state, and to experience of the failure of a completely centralized bureaucracy. The degree to which local government is adopted varies considerably in different countries, and those which are the best examples of it in modern times—the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Germany—differ very much in their local institutions, partly through historical, partly through temperamental, causes. A certain shifting of ideas from time to time, as to what is local and what is central, is inevitable, and the same view is not possible in countries of different configuration, history or political system. The history and present state of the local government in the various countries are dealt with in the separate articles on them (England, Germany, &c.), in the sections dealing with government and administration, or political institutions.
The best recent comparative study of local government is Percy Ashley’s Local and Central Government (Murray, 1906), an admirable account of the evolution and working of the systems in England, France, Prussia and United States. Other important works, in addition to general works on constitutional law, are J. A. Fairlie’s Municipal Administration, Shaw’s Municipal Government in Continental Europe, Redlich and Hirst’s Local Government in England, Mr and Mrs Sidney Webb’s elaborate historical inquiry into English local government (1906), and for Germany, Bornhak’s Geschichte des preussischen Verwaltungsrechts.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Local Government Board

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​LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, a department of the administration of the United Kingdom, constituted in 1871. It is the successor of the General Board of Health, established in 1848 pursuant to the Public Health Act of that year. The General Board of Health continued in existence until 1854, when it was reconstituted. Its existence under its new constitution was originally limited to one year, but was extended from year to year until 1858, when it was allowed to expire, its powers under the various acts for the prevention of diseases being transferred to the privy council, while those which related to the control of local authorities passed to the secretary of state for the home department, to whose department the staff of officers and clerks belonging to the board was transferred. This state of affairs continued until 1871, when the Local Government Board was created by the Local Government Board Act 1871. It consists of the lord president of the council, the five principal secretaries of state, the lord privy seal, the chancellor of the exchequer and a president appointed by the sovereign. The board itself seldom meets, and the duties of the department are discharged by the president assisted by a parliamentary and a permanent secretary and a permanent staff. The president and one of the secretaries usually have seats in parliament, and the president is generally a member of the cabinet. The salary of the president, formerly £2000, was raised in 1910 to £5000 a year. The board has all the powers of the secretary of state under the Public Health Act 1848, and the numerous subsequent acts relating to sanitary matters and the government of sanitary districts; together with all the powers and duties of the privy council under the acts relating to the prevention of epidemic disease and to vaccination. The powers and duties of the board have been largely added to by legislation since its creation; it may be said that the board exercises a general supervision over the numerous authorities to whom local government has been entrusted (see England: Local Government). A committee presided over by Lord Jersey in 1904 inquired into the constitution and duties of the board, but made no recommendation as to any change therein. It recommended, however, an increase in the salaries of the president and of the parliamentary and permanent secretaries.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Loches

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​LOCHES, a town in France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Indre-et-Loire, 29 m. S.E. of Tours by rail, on the left bank of the Indre. Pop. (1906) 3751. The town, one of the most picturesque in central France, lies at the foot of the rocky eminence on which stands the castle of the Anjou family, surrounded by an outer wall 11/4 m. in circumference, and consisting of the old collegiate church of St Ours, the royal lodge and the donjon. The church of St Ours dates from the 10th to the 12th centuries; among its distinguishing features are the huge stone pyramids surmounting the nave and the beautiful carving of the west door. The royal lodge, built by Charles VII. and used as the subprefecture, contains the tomb of Agnes Sorel and the oratory of Anne of Brittany. The donjon includes, besides the ruined keep (12th century), the Martelet, celebrated as the prison of Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan, who died there in 1508, and the Tour Ronde, built by Louis XI. and containing the famous iron cages in which state prisoners, including—according to a story now discredited—their inventor Cardinal Balue, were confined. Loches has an hôtel-de-ville and several houses of the Renaissance period. It has a tribunal of first instance, a communal college and a training college. Liqueur-distilling and tanning are carried on together with trade in farm-produce, wine, wood and live-stock.
On the right bank of the Loire, opposite the town and practically its suburb, is the village of Beaulieu-lès-Loches, once the seat of a barony. Besides the parish church of St Laurent, a beautiful specimen of 12th-century architecture, it contains the remains of the great abbey church of the Holy Sepulchre founded in the 11th century by Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou, who is buried in the chancel. This chancel, which with one of the older transepts now constitutes the church, dates from the 15th century. The Romanesque nave is in ruins, but of the two towers one survives intact; it is square, crowned with an octagonal steeple of stone, and is one of the finest extant monuments of Romanesque architecture.
Loches (the Roman Leucae) grew up round a monastery founded about 500 by St Ours and belonged to the counts of Anjou from 886 till 1205. In the latter year it was seized from King John of England by Philip Augustus, and from the middle of the 13th century till after the time of Charles IX. the castle was a residence of the kings of France.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lochaber

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​LOCHABER, a district of southern Inverness-shire, Scotland, bounded W. by Loch Linnhe, the river and loch Lochy, N. by the Corryarrick range and adjoining hills, N.E. and E. by the district of Badenoch, S.E. by the district of Rannoch and S. by the river and loch Leven. It measures 32 m. from N.E. to S.W. and 25 m. from E. to W., and is remarkable for wild and romantic scenery, Ben Nevis being the chief mountain. The district has given its name to a celebrated type of axe, consisting of a long shaft with a blade like a scythe and a large hook behind it, which, according to Sir Walter Scott, was introduced into the Highlands and Ireland from Scandinavia. It was the weapon of the old City Guard of Edinburgh. The pathetic song of “Lochaber no more” was written by Allan Ramsay.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Galangal

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​GALANGAL, formerly written “galingale,” and sometimes “garingal,” rhizoma galangae (Arab. Kholínjan; Ger. Galgantwurzel; Fr. Racine de Galanga), a drug, now obsolete, with an aromatic taste like that of mingled ginger and pepper. Lesser galangal root, radix galangae minoris, the ordinary galangal of commerce, is the dried rhizome of Alpinia officinarum, a plant of the natural order Zingiberaceae, growing in the Chinese island of Hainan, where it is cultivated, and probably also in the woods of the southern provinces of China. The plant is closely allied to Alpinia calcarata, the rhizome of which is sold in the bazaars of some parts of India as a sort of galangal. Its stems attain a length of about 4 ft., and its leaves are slender, lanceolate and light-green, and have a hot taste; the flowers are white with red veins, and in simple racemes; the roots form dense masses, sometimes more than a foot in diameter; and the rhizomes grow horizontally, and are 3/4 in. or less in thickness. Galangal seems to have been unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and to have been first introduced into Europe by Arabian physicians. It is mentioned in the writings of Ibn Khurdádbah, an Arabian geographer who flourished in the latter half of the 9th century, and “gallengar” (gallingale or galangal) is one of the ingredients in an Anglo-Saxon receipt for a “wen salve” (see O. Cockayne, Saxon Leechdoms, vol. iii. p. 13). In the middle ages, as at present in Livonia, Esthonia and central Russia, galangal was in esteem in Europe both as a medicine and a spice, and in China it is still employed as a therapeutic agent. Its chief consumption is in Russia, where it is used as a cattle-medicine, and as a flavouring for liqueurs.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Galashiels

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​GALASHIELS, a municipal and police burgh of Selkirkshire, Scotland. Pop. (1891) 17,367; (1901) 13,615. It is situated on Gala Water, within a short distance of its junction with the Tweed, 33½ m. S.S.E. of Edinburgh by the North British railway. The town stretches for more than 2 m. along both banks of the river, the mills and factories occupying the valley by the stream, the villas and better-class houses the high-lying ground on either side. The principal structures include the municipal buildings, corn exchange, library, public hall, and the market cross. The town is under the control of a provost, bailies and council, and, along with Hawick and Selkirk, forms the Hawick (or Border) group of parliamentary burghs. The woollen manufactures, dating from the close of the 16th century, are the most important in Scotland, though now mainly confined to the weaving of tweeds. Other leading industries are hosiery, tanning (with the largest yards in Scotland), dyeing, iron and brass founding, engineering and boot-making. Originally a village built for the accommodation of pilgrims to Melrose Abbey (4 m. E. by S.), it became, early in the 15th century, an occasional residence of the Douglases, who were then keepers of Ettrick Forest, and whose peel-tower was not demolished till 1814. Galashiels was created into a burgh of barony in 1599. The Catrail or Picts’ Work begins near the town and passes immediately to the west. Clovenfords, 3½ m. W., is noted for the Tweed vineries, which are heated by 5 m. of water-pipes, and supply the London market throughout the winter. Two miles farther W. by S. is Ashestiel, where Sir Walter Scott resided from 1804 to 1812, where he wrote his most famous poems and began Waverley, and which he left for Abbotsford.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gairloch

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​GAIRLOCH (Gaelic geàrr, short), a sea loch, village and parish in the west of the county of Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. Pop. of parish (1901) 3797. The parish covers a large district on the coast, and stretches inland beyond the farther banks of Loch Maree, the whole of which lies within its bounds. It also includes the islands of Dry and Horisdale in the loch, and Ewe in Loch Ewe, and occupies a total area of 200,646 acres. The place and loch must not be confounded with Gareloch in Dumbartonshire. Formerly an appanage of the earldom of Ross, Gairloch has belonged to the Mackenzies since the end of the 15th century. Flowerdale, an 18th-century house in the pretty little glen of the same name, lying close to the village, is the chief seat of the Gairloch branch of the clan Mackenzie. William Ross (1762–1790), the Gaelic poet, who was schoolmaster of Gairloch, of which his mother was a native, was buried in the old kirkyard, where a monument commemorates him.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gaiseric

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​GAISERIC, or Genseric (c. 390–477), king of the Vandals, was a son of King Godegisel (d. 406), and was born about 390. Though lame and only of moderate stature, he won renown as a warrior, and became king on the death of his brother Gonderic in 428. In 428 or 429 he led a great host of Vandals from Spain into Roman Africa, and took possession of Mauretania. This step is said to have been taken at the instigation of Boniface, the Roman general in Africa; if true, Boniface soon repented of his action, and was found resisting the Vandals and defending Hippo Regius against them. At the end of fourteen months Gaiseric raised the siege of Hippo; but Boniface was forced to fly to Italy, and the city afterwards fell into the hands of the Vandals. Having pillaged and conquered almost the whole of Roman Africa, the Vandal king concluded a treaty with the emperor Valentinian III. in 435, by which he was allowed to retain his conquests; this peace, however, did not last long, and in October 439 he captured Carthage, which he made the capital of his kingdom. According to some authorities Gaiseric at this time first actually assumed the title of king. In religious matters he was an Arian, and persecuted the members of the orthodox church in Africa, although his religious policy varied with his relations to the Roman empire. Turning his attention in another direction he built a fleet, and the ravages of the Vandals soon made them known and feared along the shores of the Mediterranean. “Let us make,” said Gaiseric, “for the dwellings of the men with whom God is angry,” and he left the conduct of his marauding ships to wind and wave. In 455, however, he led an expedition to Rome, stormed the city, which for fourteen days his troops were permitted to plunder, and then returned to Africa laden with spoil. He also carried with him many captives, including the empress Eudoxia, who is said to have invited the Vandals into Italy. The Romans made two attempts to avenge themselves, one by the Western emperor, Majorianus, in 460, and the other by the Eastern emperor, Leo I., eight years later; but both enterprises failed, owing principally to the genius of Gaiseric. Continuing his course on the sea the king brought Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands under his rule, and even extended his conquests into Thrace, Egypt and Asia Minor. Having made peace with the eastern emperor Zeno in 476, he died on the 25th of January 477. Gaiseric was a cruel and cunning man, possessing great military talents and superior mental gifts. Though the effect of his victories was afterwards neutralized by the successes of Belisarius, his name long remained the glory of the Vandals. The name Gaiseric is said to be derived from gais, a javelin, and reiks, a king.
See Vandals; also T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vol. ii. (London, 1892); E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. J. B. Bury, 1896–1900); L. Schmidt, Geschichte der Vandalen (Leipzig, 1901); and F. Martroye, Genseric; La Conquête vandale en Afrique (Paris, 1907).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gairdner, James

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​GAIRDNER, JAMES (1828–), English historian, son of John Gairdner, M.D., was born in Edinburgh on the 22nd of March 1828. Educated in his native city, he entered the Public Record Office in London in 1846, becoming assistant keeper of the public records (1859–1893). Gairdner’s valuable and painstaking contributions to English history relate chiefly to the reigns of Richard III., Henry VII. and Henry VIII. For the “Rolls Series” he edited Letters and Papers illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII. (London, 1861–1863), and Memorials of Henry VII. (London, 1858); and he succeeded J. S. Brewer in editing the Letters and Papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII. (London, 1862–1905). He brought out the best edition of the Paston Letters (London, 1872–1875, and again 1896), for which he wrote a valuable introduction; and for the Camden Society he edited the Historical collections of a Citizen of London (London, 1876), and Three 15th-century Chronicles (London, 1880). His other works include excellent monographs on Richard III. (London, 1878, new and enlarged edition, Cambridge, 1898), and on Henry VII. (London, 1889, and subsequently); The Houses of Lancaster and York (London, 1874, and other editions); The English Church in the 16th century (London, 1902); Lollardy and the Reformation in England (1908); and contributions to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Dictionary of National Biography, the Cambridge Modern History, and the English Historical Review. Gairdner received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the university of Edinburgh in 1897, and was made a C.B. in 1900.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Galago

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​GALAGO, the Senegal name of the long-tailed African representatives of the lemur-like Primates, which has been adopted as their technical designation. Till recently the galagos have been included in the family Lemuridae; but this is restricted to the lemurs of Madagascar, and they are now classed with the lorises and pottos in the family Nycticebidae, of which they form the section Galaginae, characterized by the great elongation of the upper portion of the feet (tarsus) and the power of folding the large ears. Throughout the greater part of Africa south of the ​Sahara galagos are widely distributed in the wooded districts, from Senegambia in the west to Abyssinia in the east, and as far south as Natal. They pass the day in sleep, but are very active at night, feeding on fruits, insects and small birds. When they descend to the ground they sit upright, and move about by jumping with their hind-legs like jerboas. They are pretty little animals, varying from the size of a small cat to less than that of a rat, with large eyes and ears, soft woolly fur and long tails. There are several species, of which G. crassicaudatus from Mozambique is the largest; together with G. garnetti of Natal, G. agisymbanus of Zanzibar, and G. monteiroi of Angola, this represents the subgenus Otolemur. The typical group includes G. senegalensis (or galago) of Senegal, G. alleni of West and Central Africa, and G. moholi of South Africa; while G. demidoffi of West and Central Africa and G. anomurus of French Congoland represent the subgenus Hemigalago. (R. L.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gaisford, Thomas

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​GAISFORD, THOMAS (1779–1855), English classical scholar, was born at Iford, Wiltshire, on the 22nd of December 1779. Proceeding to Oxford in 1797, he became successively student and tutor of Christ Church, and was in 1811 appointed regius professor of Greek in the university. Taking orders, he held (1815–1847) the college living of Westwell, in Oxfordshire, and other ecclesiastical preferments simultaneously with his professorship. From 1831 until his death on the 2nd of June 1855, he was dean of Christ Church. As curator of the Bodleian and principal delegate of the University Press he was instrumental in securing the co-operation of distinguished European scholars as collators, notably Bekker and Dindorf. Among his numerous contributions to Greek literature may be mentioned, Hephaestion’s Encheiridion (1810); Poëtae Graeci minores (1814–1820); Stobaeus’ Florilegium (1822); Herodotus, with variorum notes (1824); Suidas’ Lexicon (1834); Etymologicon magnum (1848); Eusebius’s Praeparatio (1843) and Demonstratio evangelica (1852). In 1856 the Gaisford prizes, for Greek composition, were founded at Oxford to perpetuate his memory.