huge extinct animal are rather creditable to the ingenuity of natives of America, or of barbarians of the Old World ; but their late corrtimrance in the rrridst of European culture shows how recently the principles of comparative anatomy obtained their present hold on the public rrriud. A tooth weighing 42 lb, and a thigh-bone 17 feet long, having been found in New England in 1712 (they were probably mastodou), Dr Increase Mather thereupon communicated to the Iloyal Society of London his confirmation from them of the existence of men of prodigious stature in the ante- diluviarr world (see the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxiv. p. 85; D. Wilson, Prehistoric JIan, vol. i. p. 54). The giants in the streets of Basel and supporting the arms of Lucerue appear to have originated from certain fossil bones found in 1577, examined by the physician Felix Plater, and pronounced to have belonged to a giant some 16 or 19 feet high. These bones have since been referred to a very different geological genus, but within the present century Plater’s giant skeleton was accepted as a genuine relic of
the giants who once inhabited the earth. See the dissertation of Le Cat, cited in the 5th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1817).GIANT’S CAUSEWAY, a promontory of columnar basalt, situated on the coast of Antrim in the north of Ireland. It is divided by whin-dykes into the Little Causeway, the Middle Causeway or “ Honeycomb,” as it is locally termed, and the Larger 01' Grand Causeway. The pillars composing it are close-fitting and for the mest part somewhat irregular hexagons, made up of articulated por- tions varying from a few inches to sorrre feet in depth, and concave 0r convex at the upper and lower surfaces. In diameter the pillars vary from 15 to 20 inches, and in height some are as much as 20 feet. The Great Causeway is chiefly from 20 to 30, and for a few yards in sorrre places nearly 40 feet in breadth, exclusive of outlying broken pieces of rock. It is highest at its narrowest part. At about half a dozen yards from the cliff, widening and be- coming lower, it extends outwards into a parade or plat— form, which lras a slight seaward inclination, but is easily walked on, and for nearly 100 yards is always above water. At the distance of about 150 yards from the cliff it turns a little to the eastward for 20 or 30 yards, and then sinks into the sea. The neighbouring cliffs exhibit in many places columns similar to those of the Giant’s Causeway, a corr- siderable exposure of them being visible at a distance of about 100 roods in the bay to the eastward. A group of these columns, from their arrangement, have been fancifully named the “ Giant’s Organ.” The most remarkable of the cliffs is the Pleaskin, the upper pillars of which have the appearance of a colonnade, and are 60 feet in height; beneath these is a mass of coarse black amygdaloid, of the same thickness, underlain by a second range of basaltic pillars, from 40 to 50 feet in height. Near the Giant’s Causeway are the ruins of the castles of Dunseverick and Dunluce, situated high above the sea on insulated crags, and the swinging bridge of Carrick-a-Rede, spanning a chasm of 80 feet deep, and connecting a rock, which is used as a salmon-fishing station, with the mainland. 1" airlread, a pro montory compOsed of columnar greerrstone, the highcst point on the coast, has an altitude of 550 feet.
GIARRE, a town of Sicily, in the province of Catania, between Etna and the sea, with a station on the railway from MeSsina to Catania, distant from the former 40 miles, and from the latter nearly 19. It is a flourishing place of 6956 inhabitants, according to the census of 1871, or of 9990 if the suburbs of Macchia, St Giovanni, and St Alfio are included; but it has little to show except a handsome modern church, and is mainly of interest as the point from which tourists start to visit the remains of the gigantic chestnut tree of the hundred horses (vli ccnto carat/i).
GIAVENO, a market-town of Italy, in the province of Turin, and circondario of Susa, about 16 rrrilcs W. of Turin, at the foot of the Cottiarr Alps, and on the left bank of the Sangone, a head water of the Po. It possesses a fine old castle, an almshouse, a gymnasium, a children's asylum, several well-built churches, and an ancient abbatial resi- dence ; and its inhabitants manufacture paper and silk, and maintain a trade in wine and timber. Population of the town in 1871 5722, and of the commune 9638.
GIB, Adam (1714–1785), the leader of the Antiburgher section of the Scottish Secession Church, was born April 14, 1714, in the parish of Muckhart, Pcrthshire, and, on the completion of his literary and theological studies at Edinburgh and Perth, was licensed as a preacher in 17-10. In the following year he was ordained minister of the large Secession congregation of Bristo, Edinburgh, being the first in the city inducted into such a charge; and there his powerful intellect and his intensity of character soon secured for him a position of considerable prominence. In 1742 he caused some stir by the publication of an in- vective entitled A warning against comzlenanciny [/18 nzinz'strations of J/r George ll'lu'tq/icltl ; and in 1745 he was almost the only minister of Edinburgh who continrred to preach, and to preach against rebellion, while the tr0ops of Charles Edward were in occupation of the town. When in 1747 “ the Associate Synot ,” by a narrow majority, decided not to give full immediate effect to a judgment which had been passed in the previous year against the lawfulness of the “ Burgess Oath,”[1] Gib led the protesting minority, “1m forthwith separated from their brethren and formed the Antiburgher Synod. It was chiefly rrnder his influence that it was agreed by this ecclesiastical body at subsequent. meetings to summon t0 the bar their “ Burg-her 7’ brethren, and finally to depose and exconununicatc them for contu- rnacy. In 1705 he made a vigorous and able reply to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which had stigmatized the Secession as “threatening the peace of the country;” and this apology was further developed in his Display of the Secesa-ion Testimony, published in 1771. From 1753 (when after protracted litigation he was Com- pelled to leave the Bristo church) till within a short period of his death, which took place J 11110 18, 1788, he preached regularly in Nicolson Street church, which is said to have been filled every Srrnday with an audience of 2000 per-Sons. Besides other publications, he wrote a volunre of Sal-rut Contemplations (1786), to which was appended an “ Essay on Liberty and Necessity” in reply to Lord Kames.
GIBBON, Edward (1737–1794), one of the most ce-Lc- brated historians of any age or country, was also his own historian. He has left us one of the rrrost piquant auto- biographies ever written. In the following sketch the chief incidents of his life will be condensed from that authentic source. For more than facts, even for the setting of these, it is needless to say that it would be unwise to trust to any man’s autobiography——though Gibbon’s is as frank as most. There are points on which vanity will say too nruclr, and perhaps others on which modesty will say too little.
of considerable antiquity; among his rcnroter ancestors he reckons the Lord High T reasurcr F iennes, Lord Say and
Sele, whom Shakespeare has inrmortalized in his Henry VI.
- ↑ This was an oath imposed upon all burgesses of Edinburgh, Glas- gow, Perth, and sonre other towns, by which they “professed and allowed the true religion presently professed within this realm, and authorized by the laws thereof." The question was whether these words implied an approbation of the Established Church, with all its ‘ ‘ corruptions."
