Part 40

A horse affected with glanders may inoculate himself, and thereby produce the farcy. I have known this happen to a horse while at grass. The horse had an itching in his hind leg, which led him to rub and bite the part, and, at the same time, rub on it the glanderous matter which flowed from his nostril. The possibility of this circumstance taking place may be easily proved by inoculating a glandered horse, in any part of his body, with some of his own matter. There are many ways in which a sound horse may be accidentally inoculated with the matter of glanders, for the slightest scratch in any part of the body is sufficient. Horses that are cleaned with a curry comb are very liable to be scratched in those parts where the bones are prominent, such as the inside of the hock or knee, the shank bones and the head. To such scratches glanderous matter may be applied by the hands of the groom after he has been examining the nose of a glandered horse, or wiping off the matter from his nostrils; or by the horse himself transferring glanderous matter from the nose of a diseased horse, or from the manger, or other part where any matter has been deposited, for horses are very fond of rubbing their noses against the manger or stall, and a glandered horse will generally try to rub off the matter from his nose against the manger, the rack, the stall, or against another horse; and if a sound horse happen to stand by one that is glandered, they will often be seen nabbing or gently biting each other, or rubbing noses. In short, having proved that glanders is thus communicated, we can conceive a variety of ways in which a horse may be accidentally inoculated.

The reader may form some idea of the extent of such losses when informed that large inn-keepers have been nearly ruined by them. I had occasion to condemn eight horses at one time, in one establishment, which, added to those already lost, amounted in value to five hundred pounds. In one regiment fifty glandered horses were shot in one day. The twenty-third French dragoons, when quartered in Italy, in March, 1809, had seventy-six horses at one time affected with glanders and farcy, or suspected of being so affected.

As I have demonstrated the manner in which glanders is communicated, it is needless to say any thing of the mode of prevention, except briefly observing, that it can only be accomplished by preventing any glanderous matter from coming near a horse, or mixing with his food or water; and that the only method of purifying an infected stable, is to remove every thing on which glanderous matter may have fallen, and to wash and scrape the fixtures, such as the rack and manger, thoroughly. I have in a former edition advised a fumigation with the gas which arises from a mixture of common salt, manganese, and oil of vitriol; because I have found that glanderous matter which has been exposed to this gas is rendered quite innocent, though an ass be inoculated with it; and I have directed the stable to be first thoroughly cleansed, because if any dry hard glanderous matter should remain, the water employed in cleansing the stable will have moistened it, and thereby enable the fumigation to mix with it, and destroy its poisonous quality.—_White._

GLARE, _v._ To shine so as to dazzle the eyes.

GLARE, _s._ Overpowering lustre, splendour, such as dazzles the eye; a fierce piercing look.

GLASS, _s._ An artificial substance made by fusing salts and flint or sand together, with a vehement fire; a glass vessel of any kind; a looking-glass; a glass to help the sight; an hour-glass, a glass used in measuring time by the flux of sand; a cup of glass used to drink in; the quantity of wine usually contained in a glass; a perspective glass.

GLASSY, _a._ Vitreous; resembling glass, as in smoothness, lustre, or brittleness.

GLEAD, _s._ A kind of hawk.

GLEN, _s._ A valley, a dale.

GLIRES, _s._ The fourth order of the class Mammalia in the Linnæan system. It includes animals with two foreteeth, a cutting one in each jaw, no tusks, and claws formed for running, as the hare, rabbit, &c.

GLOW-WORM, _s._ A small creeping insect with a luminous tail.

GLUE, _s._ A viscous cement. The best is made from the parings of hides and other offals, by boiling them well in water, then straining off all impurities, and, lastly, boiling them again.

GLUE, _v._ To join with a viscous cement; to unite.

GLUTE, _s._ The slimy substance in a hawk’s pannel.

GLYN, _s._ A hollow between two mountains.

GNARL, _v._ To growl, to murmur, to snarl.

GNASH, _v._ To grind or collide the teeth.

GNAT, _s._ A small winged stinging insect.

GNAW, _v._ To exercise the teeth.

GOAR, _s._ Any edging sewed upon cloth.

GOAT, _s._ An animal that seems a middle species between deer and sheep.

GODWIT, _s._ A bird of particular delicacy.

Buffon enumerates eight species of this division of the scolopax genus, under the name of barges, including the foreign kinds; and Latham makes out the same number of different sorts, all British. They are a timid, shy, and solitary tribe; their mode of subsistence constrains them to spend their lives amidst the fens, searching for their food in the mud and wet soil, where they remain during the day, shaded and hidden among reeds and rushes, in that obscurity which their timidity makes them prefer. They seldom remain above a day or two in the same place, and it often happens that in the morning not one is to be found in those marshes where they were numerous the evening before. They remove in a flock in the night, and when there is moonlight, may be seen and heard passing at a vast height.

Their bills are long and slender, and, like the common snipe’s, are smooth and blunt at the tip; their legs are of various colours, and long. When pursued by the sportsman, they run with great speed, are very restless, and spring at a great distance, and make a scream as they rise. Their voice is somewhat extraordinary, and has been compared to the smothered bleating of a goat. They delight in salt marshes, and are rare in countries remote from the sea. Their flesh is delicate and excellent food.

_Common Godwit_, _Godwyn_, _Yarnhelp_ or _Yarnhip_.—(_Scolopax ægocephala_, LINN. _La grande Barge Grise_, BUFF.)

The weight of this bird is about twelve ounces; length about sixteen inches; the bill is four inches long, and bent a little upwards, black at the point, gradually softening into a pale purple towards the base; a whitish streak passes from the bill over each eye; the head, neck, back, scapulars, and coverts, are of a dingy pale brown, each feather marked down the middle with a dark spot. The fore part of the breast is streaked with black; the belly, vent, and tail, are white, the latter regularly barred with black; the webs of the first six quill feathers are black, edged on the interior sides with reddish brown; the legs are in general dark coloured, inclining to a greenish blue.

The godwit is met with in various parts of Europe, Asia, and America; in Great Britain, in the spring and summer, it resides in the fens and marshes, where it rears its young, and feeds upon small worms and insects. During these seasons it only removes from one marsh to another; but when the winter sets in with severity, it seeks the salt marshes and the seashore.

The godwit is much esteemed by epicures as a great delicacy, and sells very high. It is caught in nets, to which it is allured by a stale or stuffed bird, in the same manner, and in the same season, as the ruffs and reeves.—_Bewick._

GOLD, _s._ The purest, heaviest, and most precious of all metals; money.

_To dye fine bright Gold Colours._—First dye a very bright yellow with turmeric, lift out your stuff, and add a teaspoonful of madder; return it, and boil it about three minutes, and draw a part for the first shade; then put in a tablespoonful of turmeric, boil it up smartly; lift out your stuff and add better than a teaspoonful of madder; put it into the pot again, and boil it about seven minutes, and draw the second shade. For the third do the same, only adding some turmeric as before, and two teaspoonfuls of madder; or, if you see there is not a proper difference between the shades, add more madder, boil the wool in this ten minutes, and draw for the third shade. Add more turmeric, and three or four more teaspoonfuls of madder, or more, till you bring it near to a blood orange.

The lightest of these shades mixes the olive camel, the second the light rail, the third the dark rail and brown coughlan, and the fourth mixes the golden sooty. This is the best way to dye gold colours. Any man who is not a regular dyer can only be called a fancy dyer, and therefore can give no regular rules. If you are a judge of these colours, you will know by your eye when you get the proper shade. If the first two of them should not be enough of the gold, add more madder by pinches, lest you should overpower it. Divide each shade of the colours into two parts, for fine olives, bordering on muscle’s-beard. Put down a clean vessel with clean water, and put your lightest shade into it, first boiling in it about the size of a horse-bean of copperas. Throw in your stuff, be smart in passing it under your liquor, and in an instant you have a fine golden olive. Put in the size of a pea more of copperas, and put your next shade, and so on till all is done. You are to put in as much as two peas in the last. A little of the dark shade helps the March olive camel, and I have mixed out of these, with a little brown sable, a very good olive camel. All turmeric dyes, when put with binding stuff, stand well. Be careful your turmeric and madder be sound, if not, all is lost. Sound turmeric is very bright, and of a sweet smell. Sound madder is of an oily feel and a sweet smell, and is bright in colour; that which resembles brick-dust is bad, and gives no colour. The madder that is the best may be discovered easily by the taste.—_Ancient Recipe._

GOLDEN, _a._ Made of gold, consisting of gold; shining; yellow, of the colour of gold; valuable.

GOLDEN EAGLE. _Vide_ EAGLE.

The golden eagle is said to be not unfrequent in the mountainous parts of Ireland and Scotland. It breeds in the most inaccessible rocks, and lays three or four white eggs, Selby says two, of a greyish white colour, clouded with spots of reddish brown.

Smith, in the History of Kerry, says, a poor man in that county got a comfortable subsistence for his family, during a summer of famine, out of an eagle’s nest.

Pennant informs us it is frequent in Scotland, and adds, that it is very destructive to deer, which it will seize between the horns, and, by incessantly beating it with its wings, soon makes a prey of the harassed animal; that it builds in cliffs of rocks near the deer forests, and makes great havoc not only amongst them, but also the white hares and ptarmigans.

Willoughby gives a curious account of the nest of this species found in the woodlands, near the river Derwent, in the Peak of Derbyshire. He says it was made of large sticks, lined with two layers of rushes, between which was one of heath; that in it was one young and an addle egg, and by them a lamb, a hare, and three heath-poults.

Instances have been recorded of infants being carried to their nests; and in the Orkneys there is a law which entitles any person killing one of these birds, to a hen out of every house in the parish in which it is killed. They are remarkable for their longevity, and abstinence from food. Pennant mentions one enduring hunger for twenty-one days.

As we were sporting in the neighbourhood of Ben-Lomond, on the summit of the lesser mountains that form its base, a grouse, (Tetrao Scoticus), was wounded, and flew with difficulty eighty or a hundred paces. An eagle, apparently of this species, perceiving the laborious flight of the grouse, descended with rapid wing from the adjacent lofty cliffs, before our guns were re-loaded, and, in defiance of the shouts made to deter him, carried off his prey.

In another part of the Western Highlands of Scotland, we had an opportunity of witnessing the power of the flight of this bird in pursuit of its quarry. An old black-cock (Tetrao tetrix) was sprung, and was instantly pursued by the eagle, (who must have been on a neighbouring rock unperceived,) across the glen, the breadth of which was at least two miles. The eagle made several unsuccessful pounces, but as there was no cover and the bird large, it probably fell a victim in the end.—_Smith_—_Pennant_—_Montagu._

GOLDEN-EYE (_Anas clangula_, LINN.; _Le Garrot_, BUFF.) _s._

The weight of this species varies from twenty-six ounces to two pounds. The length is nineteen inches, and the breadth thirty-one. The bill is bluish-black, short, thick, and elevated at the base; the head large, slightly crested, and black, or rather of a glossy bottle-green, with violet reflections; a large white spot is placed on the space on each side between the corners of the mouth and the eyes, the irides of which are of a golden-yellow; the throat, and a small portion of the upper part of the neck, are of a sooty or velvet-black; the lower, to the shoulders, the breast, belly, and vent, white; but some of the side-feathers, and those which cover the thighs, are tipped with black; the scapulars white and deep black; of the latter colour are also the adjoining long tertial feathers, and those on the greater part of the back; the first fourteen primary quills, with all the outside edge of the wing, including the ridge and a portion of the coverts, are brownish black; the middle part of the wing is white, crossed by a narrow black stripe, which is formed by the tips of the lesser coverts; tail dark, hoary brown; legs short, of a reddish yellow colour, with the webs dusky; the inner and hinder toes are furnished with lateral webs; on the latter these webs are large and flapped. Willoughby says, “the windpipe hath a labyrinth at the divarication, and besides, above swells out into a belly or puff-like cavity.”

These birds do not congregate in large flocks, nor are they numerous on the British shores, or on the lakes in the interior. They are late in taking their departure northward in the spring, the specimens before mentioned being shot in April. In their flight they make they air whistle with the vigorous quick strokes of their wings; they are excellent divers, and seldom set foot on the shore, upon which, it is said, they walk with great apparent difficulty, and, except in the breeding season, only repair to it for the purpose of taking their repose.

The attempts which were made by M. Baillon to domesticate these birds, he informs the Count de Buffon, quite failed of success.

* * * * *

An extraordinary occurrence took place, March, 1810, near Drumburgh, a fisherman, placed a flounder-net in the river Eden, which is subject to the flux and reflux of the tide, and on his returning to take up his net, instead of finding fish, he found it loaded with wild ducks; during his absence, a fleet of these birds had alighted below the net, and on the flowing of the tide, were carried, from the contraction of the channel, with great impetuosity into the net, and were drowned. He caught one hundred and seventy golden-eyed wild ducks, supposed to be from the Orkneys, as very rarely any of that species frequent that part of the country.—_Bewick._

GOLDEN ORIOLE (_Oriolus galbula_, LINN.), _s._

This is the only species ever found in England, a few instances of which only are on record. It is about the size of a blackbird: length nine inches and a half. The bill is brownish red; irides red. General colour of the plumage fine golden yellow; between the bill and eye a streak of black; the wings black, marked here and there with yellow, and a patch of the same in the middle of the wing; the two middle feathers of the tail are black, inclining to olive at the base, the very tips yellow; the base half of the others black, the rest yellow; legs lead-colour; claws black.

The female is of a dull greenish brown in those parts where the male is black. Wings dusky; tail dirty green; all but the two middle feathers yellowish white at the ends.

This beautiful bird is not uncommon in France, where it breeds. The nest is curiously constructed, in shape like a purse: it is fastened to the extreme forked branches of tall trees, composed of fibres of hemp, or straw mixed with fine dry stalks of grass, and lined with moss and liverwort. She is said to be so tenacious of her eggs as to suffer herself to be taken on the nest.—_Montagu._

GOLDFINCH, (_Carduelis communis_, CUVIER,) _s._ A singing bird.

This beautiful bird is rather less than the chaffinch. The bill is white, with a black point; irides dusky; the forehead and chin rich scarlet; top of the head black; cheeks white, bounded with black; hind part of the head white; breast pale tawny brown; the coverts of the wings black; quill feathers dusky black, barred across with bright yellow; tips white; belly white; the tail feathers black; most of them marked with a white spot near their ends; legs whitish.

The female differs very little in plumage from the male: in general, the smaller coverts of the wings are not so black. Young birds are brown about the head for some time after they leave the nest, and are by some called grey-pates.

The goldfinch is subject to variety in confinement; sometimes wholly black; others black and white, or quite white. A variety is sometimes taken by the birdcatchers with white spots under the throat: such is termed a cheverel. It makes a very elegant nest, formed externally of bents, moss, and liverwort, woven together with wool; lined sometimes with wool or hair, covered with thistle down, or willow cotton.

These birds will in general take the materials for building, which they can most easily procure. On the tenth of May I observed a pair of goldfinches beginning to make their nest in my garden; they had formed the ground-work with moss, grass, &c., as usual, but on my scattering small parcels of wool in different parts of the garden, they, in a great measure, left off the use of their own stuff, and employed the wool. Afterwards, I gave them cotton, on which they rejected the wool and proceeded with the cotton; the third day I supplied them with fine down, on which they forsook both the other and finished their work with this last article. The nest, when completed, was somewhat larger than is usually made by this bird, but retained the pretty roundness of figure and neatness of workmanship, which is proper to the goldfinch. The nest was completed in the space of three days, and remained unoccupied for the space of four days; the first egg not being laid till the seventh day from beginning the work. The eggs are four or five in number, of a bluish white, with a few spots, chiefly at the larger end.

The goldfinch is easily tamed and easily taught, and its capability of learning the notes of other birds is well known; but the tricks it may be taught to perform are truly astonishing. A few years ago the Sieur Roman exhibited his birds, which were goldfinches, linnets, and canaries. One appeared dead, and was held up by the tail or claw without exhibiting any signs of life; a second stood on its head with its claws in the air; a third imitated a Dutch milkmaid going to market, with pails on its shoulders; a fourth mimicked a Venetian girl looking out at a window; a fifth appeared as a soldier, and mounted guard as a sentinel; and the sixth acted as a cannoneer with a cap on its head, a firelock on its shoulder, and a match in its claw, and discharged a small cannon. The same bird also acted as if it had been wounded. It was wheeled in a barrow, to convey it, as it were, to the hospital; after which, it flew away before the company: the seventh turned a kind of windmill: and the last bird stood in the midst of some fireworks which were discharged all round it, and this without exhibiting the least symptom of fear.

They may also be taught to draw up little buckets or cups with food and water. To teach them this, there must be put round them a narrow soft leather belt, in which there must be four holes—two for the wings, and two for the feet. The belt is joined a little below the breast, where there is a ring, to which the chain is attached, that supports the little bucket or cup. We have seen both the goldfinch and lesser redpole perform this action, but in a different manner. Their cage had no wires,—only a back-board, a bottom-board, and one perch. To one foot of the bird was attached a light slender chain, which allowed it more exercise than it could have had in the common wire cage; at the outer edge of the bottom-board was a ring, through which ran the chain, to each end of which were fastened the little buckets that held the food and water, which the bird drew up with its foot and bill; and as one bucket was drawn up, the other sunk, thus lessening the difficulty, and lightening the task.—_Montagu_—_Bolton_—_Syme._

GOOSANDER (_Mergus merganser_, LINN.), _s._ a species of diver.

This is the largest species of merganser; weight about four pounds; length two feet four inches. The bill three inches long, narrow, serrated, or toothed, on the edges of both mandibles; the tip of the upper hooked; colour red: irides the same; the head and upper part of the neck glossy greenish black; the feathers on the crown and back of the head are long and loose; the rest of the neck, breast, and under parts, white; the sides, above the thighs, undulated with dusky lines; the upper part of the back black; lower part of the back, rump, and tail coverts, brownish ash-colour; the lesser wing coverts white; the rest ash-colour, with some white; the greater quill feathers are black, with ash-colour on the interior webs of some of the inner ones; the secondaries white, margined with greenish black on the outer webs; the scapulars nearest the body black, the others white; the tail consists of eighteen ash-coloured feathers, with dusky shafts; legs orange; in some specimens the breast is of a rosy buff-colour.

The goosander sometimes visits our rivers and lakes in severe winters, but retires to the more northern latitudes of Greenland and Iceland, where it breeds. In the Orkneys and Hebrides it is found the whole year round, while in the other districts it is only a winter visitant. It is not uncommon on the continent of Europe and Asia, but most plentiful towards the north. It is a winter inhabitant of the sea shore, and fresh water lakes of America, where they usually associate in small parties of six and eight. They disappear from that country in the month of April, and return in November. Its food consists entirely of fish, for which it dives with great celerity, and holds its slippery prey with great security, by means of its toothed bill, which is admirably adapted to the purpose.—_Montagu._

GOOSE, _s._ A large waterfowl. _Vide_ ANSER.