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

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​BEAD, a small globule or ball used in necklaces, and made of different materials, as metal, coral, diamond, amber, ivory, stone, pottery, glass, rock-crystal and seeds. The word is derived from the Middle Eng. bede, from the common Teutonic word for “to pray,” cf. German beten and English bedesman, the meaning being transferred from “prayer” to the spherical bodies strung on a rosary and used in counting prayers. Beads have been made from remote antiquity, and are found in early Egyptian tombs; variegated glass beads, found in the ground in certain parts of Africa, as Ashantiland, and highly prized by the natives as aggry-beads, are supposed to be of Egyptian or Phoenician origin. Beads of the more expensive materials are strung in necklaces and worn as articles of personal adornment, while the cheaper kinds are employed for the decoration of women’s dress. Glass beads have long been used for purposes of barter with savage tribes, and are made in enormous numbers and varieties, especially in Venice, where the manufacture has existed from at least the 14th century. Glass, either transparent, or of opaque coloured enamel (smalti), or having complex patterns produced by the twisting of threads of coloured glass through a transparent body, is drawn out into long tubes, from which the beads are pinched off, and finished by being rotated with sand and ashes in heated cylinders.
In architecture, the term “bead” is given to a small cylindrical moulding, in classic work often cut into bead and reel.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beacon

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​BEACON (from the O. Eng. béacn, a sign, cf. “beckon,” another form of the same word), a signal, especially a fire lit on a high hill, structure or building for the purpose of sending a message of alarm or of important news over long distances. Such was the courier-fire (ἄγγαρος πῦρ) that brought the news of the fall of Troy to Argos (Aeschylus, Agamemnon), or the chain of signals that told of the approach of the Spanish Armada, or which circled the British Isles in the jubilee years of 1887 and 1897. The word occurs in many names for lofty and conspicuous hills, such as Dunkery Beacon in Somerset, the highest point on Exmoor. On many such hills the remains of old beacon towers and cressets are still found. The word is used generally of a lighthouse, but technically it means either a small unattended light, a superstructure on a floating buoy, such as a staff and cage, or staff and globe, or an unlighted structure, forming a conspicuous object at sea, used in each case to guide or warn sailors. (See Lighthouse and Buoy.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beaker

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​BEAKER (Scottish bicker, Lat. bicarium, Ger. Becher, a drinking-bowl), a large wide-mouthed drinking-cup or laboratory vessel. See Drinking-Vessels.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geelong

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​GEELONG, a seaport of Grant county, Victoria, Australia, situated on an extensive land-locked arm of Port Phillip known as Corio Bay, 45 m. by rail S.W. of Melbourne. Pop. of the city proper (1901) 12,399; with the adjacent boroughs of Geelong West, and Newton-and-Chilwell, 23,311. Geelong slopes to the bay on the north and to the Barwon river on the south, and its position in this respect, as well as the shelter it obtains from the Bellarine hills, renders it one of the healthiest towns in Victoria. As a manufacturing centre it is of considerable importance. The first woollen mill in the colony was established here, and the tweeds, cloths and other woollen fabrics of the town are noted throughout Australia. There are extensive tanneries, flour-mills and salt works, while at Fyansford, 3 m. distant, there are important cement works and paper-mills. The extensive vineyards in the neighbourhood of the town were destroyed under the Phylloxera Act, but replanting subsequently revived this industry. Corio Bay, a safe and commodious harbour, is entered by two channels across its bar, one of which has a depth of 231/2 ft. There is extensive quayage, and the largest wool ships are able to load alongside the wharves, which are connected by rail with all parts of the colony. The facilities given for shipping wool direct to England from this port have caused a very extensive wool-broking trade to grow up in the town. The country surrounding Geelong is agricultural, but there are large limestone quarries east of the town, and in the Otway Forest, 23 m. distant, coal is worked. Geelong was incorporated in 1849.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geestemünde

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​GEESTEMÜNDE, a seaport town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, on the right bank of the Weser, at the mouth of the Geeste, which separates it from Bremerhaven, 32 m. N. from Bremen by rail. Pop. (1905) 23,625. The interest of the place is purely naval and commercial, its origin dating no farther back than 1857, when the construction of the harbour was begun. The great basin, which can accommodate large sea-going vessels, was completed in 1863, the petroleum basin was opened in 1874, and additional wharves have been constructed for the reception of vessels engaged in the fishing industry. The fish market of Geestemünde is the most important in Germany, and the auction hall practically determines the price of fish throughout the empire. The whole port is protected by powerful fortifications. Among the industrial establishments of the town are shipbuilding yards, foundries, engineering works and saw-mills.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geffroy, Mathieu Auguste

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​GEFFROY, MATHIEU AUGUSTE (1820–1895), French historian, was born in Paris. After studying at the École Normale Supérieure he held history professorships at various lycées. His French thesis for the doctorate of letters, Étude sur les pamphlets politiques et religieux de Milton (1848), showed that he was attracted towards foreign history, a study for which he soon qualified himself by mastering the Germanic and Scandinavian languages. In 1851 he published a Histoire des états scandinaves, which is especially valuable for clear arrangement and for the trustworthiness of its facts. Later, a long ​stay in Sweden furnished him with valuable documents for a political and social history of Sweden and France at the end of the 18th century. In 1864 and 1865 he published in the Revue des deux mondes a series of articles on Gustavus III. and the French court, which were republished in book form in 1867. To the second volume he appended a critical study on Marie Antoinette et Louis XVI apocryphes, in which he proved, by evidence drawn from documents in the private archives of the emperor of Austria, that the letters published by Feuillet de Conches (Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette et Madame Elisabeth, 1864–1873) and Hunolstein (Corresp. inédite de Marie Antoinette, 1864) are forgeries. With the collaboration of Alfred von Arneth, director of the imperial archives at Vienna, he edited the Correspondance secrète entre Marie-Thérèse et le comte de Mercy-Argenteau (3 vols., 1874), the first account based on trustworthy documents of Marie Antoinette’s character, private conduct and policy. The Franco-German War drew Geffroy’s attention to the origins of Germany, and his Rome et les Barbares: étude sur la Germanie de Tacite (1874) set forth some of the results of German scholarship. He was then appointed to superintend the opening of the French school of archaeology at Rome, and drew up two useful reports (1877 and 1884) on its origin and early work. But his personal tastes always led him back to the study of modern history. When the Paris archives of foreign affairs were thrown open to students, it was decided to publish a collection of the instructions given to French ambassadors since 1648 (Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeurs et ministres de France depuis le traité de Westphalie), and Geffroy was commissioned to edit the volumes dealing with Sweden (vol. ii., 1885) and Denmark (vol. xiii., 1895). In the interval he wrote Madame de Maintenon d’après sa correspondance authentique (2 vols., 1887), in which he displayed his penetrating critical faculty in discriminating between authentic documents and the additions and corrections of arrangers like La Beaumelle and Lavallée. His last works were an Essai sur la formation des collections d’antiques de la Suède and Des institutions et des mœurs du paganisme scandinave: l’Islande avant le Christianisme, both published posthumously. He died at Bièvre on the 16th of August 1895.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geibel, Emanuel

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​GEIBEL, EMANUEL (1815–1884), German poet, was born at Lübeck on the 17th of October 1815, the son of a pastor in the city. He was originally intended for his father’s profession, and studied at Bonn and Berlin, but his real interests lay not in theology but in classical and romance philology. In 1838 he accepted a tutorship at Athens, where he remained until 1840. In the same year he brought out, in conjunction with his friend Ernst Curtius, a volume of translations from the Greek. His first poems, Zeitstimmen, appeared in 1841; a tragedy, König Roderich, followed in 1843. In the same year he received a pension from the king of Prussia, which he retained until his invitation to Munich by the king of Bavaria in 1851 as honorary professor at the university. In the interim he had produced König Sigurds Brautfahrt (1846), an epic, and Juniuslieder (1848, 33rd ed. 1901), lyrics in a more spirited and manlier style than his early poems. A volume of Neue Gedichte, published at Munich in 1857, and principally consisting of poems on classical subjects, denoted a further considerable advance in objectivity, and the series was worthily closed by the Spätherbstblätter, published in 1877. He had quitted Munich in 1869 and returned to Lübeck, where he died on the 6th of April 1884. His works further include two tragedies, Brunhild (1858, 5th ed. 1890), and Sophonisbe (1869), and translations of French and Spanish popular poetry. Beginning as a member of the group of political poets who heralded the revolution of 1848, Geibel was also the chief poet to welcome the establishment of the Empire in 1871. His strength lay not, however, in his political songs but in his purely lyric poetry, such as the fine cycle Ada and his still popular love-songs. He may be regarded as the leading representative of German lyric poetry between 1848 and 1870. ​ Geibel’s Gesammelte Werke were published in 8 vols. (1883, 4th ed. 1906); his Gedichte have gone through about 130 editions. An excellent selection in one volume appeared in 1904. For biography and criticism, see K. Goedeke, E. Geibel (1869); W. Scherer’s address on Geibel (1884); K. T. Gaedertz, Geibel-Denkwürdigkeiten (1886); C. C. T. Litzmann, E. Geibel, aus Erinnerungen, Briefen und Tagebüchern (1887), and biographies by C. Leimbach (2nd ed., 1894), and K. T. Gaedertz (1897).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geel, Jacob

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​GEEL, JACOB (1789–1862), Dutch scholar and critic, was born at Amsterdam on the 12th of November 1789. In 1823 he was appointed sub-librarian, and in 1833 chief librarian and honorary professor at Leiden, where he died on the 11th of November 1862. Geel materially contributed to the development of classical studies in Holland. He was the author of editions of Theocritus (1820), of the Vatican fragments of Polybius (1829), of the Ὀλυμπιακός of Dio Chrysostom (1840) and of numerous essays in the Rheinisches Museum and Bibliotheca critica nova, of which he was one of the founders. He also compiled a valuable catalogue of the MSS. in the Leiden library, wrote a history of the Greek sophists, and translated various German works into Dutch.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geffcken, Friedrich Heinrich

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​GEFFCKEN, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH (1830–1896), German diplomatist and jurist, was born on the 9th of December 1830 at Hamburg, of which city his father was senator. After studying law at Bonn, Göttingen and Berlin, he was attached in 1854 to the Prussian legation at Paris. For ten years (1856–1866) he was the diplomatic representative of Hamburg in Berlin, first as chargé d’affaires, and afterwards as minister-resident, being afterwards transferred in a like capacity to London. Appointed in 1872 professor of constitutional history and public law in the reorganized university of Strassburg, Geffcken became in 1880 a member of the council of state of Alsace-Lorraine. Of too nervous a temperament to withstand the strain of the responsibilities of his position, he retired from public service in 1882, and lived henceforth mostly at Munich, where he died, suffocated by an accidental escape of gas into his bedchamber, on the 1st of May 1896. Geffcken was a man of great erudition and wide knowledge and of remarkable legal acumen, and from these qualities proceeded the personal influence he possessed. He was moreover a clear writer and made his mark as an essayist. He was one of the most trusted advisers of the Prussian crown prince, Frederick William (afterwards the emperor Frederick), and it was he (it is said, at Bismarck’s suggestion) who drew up the draft of the New German federal constitution, which was submitted to the crown prince’s headquarters at Versailles during the war of 1870–71. It was also Geffcken who assisted in framing the famous document which the emperor Frederick, on his accession to the throne in 1888, addressed to the chancellor. This memorandum gave umbrage, and on the publication by Geffcken in the Deutsche Rundschau (Oct. 1888) of extracts from the emperor Frederick’s private diary during the war of 1870–71, he was, at Bismarck’s instance, prosecuted for high treason. The Reichsgericht (supreme court), however, quashed the indictment, and Geffcken was liberated after being under arrest for three months. Publications of various kinds proceeded from his pen. Among these are Zur Geschichte des orientalischen Krieges 1853–1856 (Berlin, 1881); Frankreich, Russland und der Dreibund (Berlin, 1894); and Staat und Kirche (1875), English translation by E. F. Fairfax (1877). His writings on English history have been translated by S. J. Macmullan and published as The British Empire, with essays on Prince Albert, Palmerston, Beaconsfield, Gladstone, and reform of the House of Lords (1889).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gefle

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​GEFLE, a seaport of Sweden on an inlet of the Gulf of Bothnia, chief town of the district (län) of Gefleborg, 112 m. N.N.W. of Stockholm by rail. Pop. (1900) 29,522. It is the chief port of the district of Kopparberg, with its iron and other mines and forests. The exports consist principally of timber and wood-pulp, iron and steel. The harbour, which has two entrances about 20 ft. deep, is usually ice-bound in mid-winter. Large vessels generally load in the roads at Gråberg, 6 m. distant. There are slips and shipbuilding yards, and a manufacture of sail-cloth. The town is an important industrial centre, having tobacco and leather factories, electrical and other mechanical works, and breweries. At Skutskär at the mouth of the Dal river are wood-pulp and saw mills, dealing with the large quantities of timber floated down the river; and there are large wood-yards in the suburb of Bomhus. Gefle was almost destroyed by fire in 1869, but was rebuilt in good style, and has the advantage of a beautiful situation. The principal buildings are a castle, founded by King John III. (1568–1592), but rebuilt later, a council-house erected by Gustavus III., who held a diet here in 1792, an exchange, and schools of commerce and navigation.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Geige

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​GEIGE (O. Fr. gigue, gige; O. Ital. and Span. giga; Prov. gigua; O. Dutch gighe), in modern German the violin; in medieval German the name applied to the first stringed instruments played with a bow, in contradistinction to those whose strings were plucked by fingers or plectrum such as the cithara, rotta and fidula, the first of these terms having been very generally used to designate various instruments whose strings were plucked. The name gîge in Germany, of which the origin is uncertain, and its derivatives in other languages, were in the middle ages applied to rebecs having fingerboards. As the first bowed instruments in Europe were, as far as we know, those of the rebab type, both boat-shaped and pear-shaped, it seems probable that the name clung to them long after the bow had been applied to other stringed instruments derived from the cithara, such as the fiddle (videl) or vielle. In the romances of the 12th and 13th centuries the gîge is frequently mentioned, and generally associated with the rotta. Early in the 16th century we find definite information concerning the Geige in the works of Sebastian Virdung (1511), Hans Judenkünig (1523), Martin Agricola (1532), Hans Gerle (1533); and from the instruments depicted, of two distinct types and many varieties, it would appear that the principal idea attached to the name was still that of the bow used to vibrate the strings. Virdung qualifies the word Geige with Klein (small) and Gross (large), which do not represent two sizes of the same instrument but widely different types, also recognized by Agricola, who names three or four sizes of each, discant, alto, tenor and bass. Virdung’s Klein Geige is none other than the rebec with two C-shaped soundholes and a raised fingerboard cut in one piece with the vaulted back and having a separate flat soundboard glued over it, a change rendered necessary by the arched bridge. Agricola’s Klein Geige with three strings was of a totally different construction, having ribs and wide incurvations but no bridge; there was a rose soundhole near the tailpiece and two C-shaped holes in the shoulders. Agricola (Musica instrumentalis) distinctly mentions three kinds of Geigen with three, four and five strings. From him we learn that only one position was as yet used on these instruments, one or two higher notes being occasionally obtained by sliding the little finger along. A century later Agricola’s Geige was regarded as antiquated by Praetorius, who reproduces one of the bridgeless ones with five strings, a rose and two C-shaped soundholes, and calls it an old fiddle; under Geige he gives the violins. (K. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gegenbaur, Carl

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​GEGENBAUR, CARL (1826–1903), German anatomist, was born on the 21st of August 1826 at Würzburg, the university of which he entered as a student in 1845. After taking his degree in 1851 he spent some time in travelling in Italy and Sicily, before returning to Würzburg as Privatdocent in 1854. In 1855 he was appointed extraordinary professor of anatomy at Jena, where after 1865 his fellow-worker, Ernst Haeckel, was professor of zoology, and in 1858 he became the ordinary professor. In 1873 he was appointed to Heidelberg, where he was professor of anatomy and director of the Anatomical Institute until his retirement in 1901. He died at Heidelberg on the 14th of June 1903. The work by which perhaps he is best known is his Grundriss der vergleichenden Anatomie (Leipzig, 1874; 2nd edition, 1878). This was translated into English by W. F. Jeffrey Bell (Elements of Comparative Anatomy, 1878), with additions by E. Ray Lankester. While recognizing the importance of comparative embryology in the study of descent, Gegenbaur laid stress on the higher value of comparative anatomy as the basis of the study of homologies, i.e. of the relations between corresponding parts in different animals, as, for example, the arm of man, the foreleg of the horse and the wing of a fowl. A distinctive piece of work was effected by him in 1871 in supplementing the evidence adduced by Huxley in refutation of the theory of the origin of the skull from expanded vertebrae, which, formulated independently by Goethe and Oken, had been championed by Owen. Huxley demonstrated that the skull is built up of cartilaginous pieces; Gegenbaur showed that “in the lowest (gristly) fishes, where hints of the original vertebrae might be most expected, the skull is an unsegmented gristly brain-box, and that in higher forms the vertebral nature of the skull cannot be maintained, since many of the bones, notably those along the top of the skull, arise in the skin.” Other publications by Gegenbaur include a Text-book of Human Anatomy (Leipzig, 1883, new ed. 1903), the Epiglottis (1892) and Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates in relation to the Invertebrates (Leipzig, 2 vols., 1898–1901). In 1875 he founded the Morphologisches Jahrbuch, which he edited for many years. In 1901 he published a short autobiography under the title Erlebtes und Erstrebtes.
See Fürbringer in Heidelberger Professoren aus dem 19ten Jahrhundert (Heidelberg, 1903).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gegenschein

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​GEGENSCHEIN (Ger. gegen, opposite, and schein, shine), an extremely faint luminescence of the sky, seen opposite the direction of the sun. Germany was the country in which it was first discovered and described. The English rendering “counterglow” is also given to it. Its faintness is such that it can be seen only by a practised eye under favourable conditions. It is invisible during the greater part of June, July, December and January, owing to its being then blotted out by the superior light of the Milky Way. It is also invisible during moonlight and near the horizon, and the neighbourhood of a bright star or planet may interfere with its recognition. When none of these unfavourable conditions supervene it may be seen at nearly any time when the air is clear and the depression of the sun below the horizon more than 20°. (See Zodiacal Light.)