Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 04.djvu/333

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GENNESARET, LAKE OF 281 GENTIAN China), who had given shelter to two of his enemies. A great battle was fought in which the King of Tangut was totally defeated with the loss of 300,000 men. The victor remained some time in his newly subdued provinces, from which he also sent two of his sons to complete the conquest of northern China. At his death in Mongolia, in 1227, his immense dominions were divided among his four sons. GENNESARET, LAKE OF. See Galilee, Sea of. GENOA (jen'o-a) (ancient Genua), a city of Italy, situated on the Gulf of Genoa, at the foot of the Apennines, the capital of the province and the most important seaport; 801 miles S. E. of Paris. In a nine-mile circuit it rises like an amphitheater of churches, palaces and houses. The streets are lined with tall buildings, some of them of marble and handsome architecture, but now in many cases hotels or business places. Of the palaces the most famous are the ducal palace formerly inhabited by the doges, and the Doria, presented in 1529 to the great Genoese citizen Andrea Doria, whose residence it was during his presi- dency of the republic. The palaces Brignole-Sale, Reale, Durazzo-Pallavi- cini, Spinola, Balbi-Senarega, and others possess great interest on account of their historical fame and architectural beauty. Many of them contain galleries of paint- ings ; the Brignole Sale has works by Van Dyck, Rubens, Albrecht Dtirer, Paolo Veronese, Guercino, etc. Among the churches are the cathedral of St. Lorenzo, a grand old pile in the Italian Gothic style; the church of St. Ambrogio (1589), containing pictures by Guido Reno and Rubens; the church of St. Stefano, containing an altarpiece by Giulio Romano; L'Annunziata, splendid inside with marbles and rich gilding. The marble municipal palace, built in the Late Renaissance style, and the palace of the Dogana must also be mentioned. Genoa has a university, founded in 1243, a library of 116,000 volumes; also nu- merous technical schools. The hospital, the asylum for the poor (capacity 2,200), the deaf and dumb institution, and the hospital for the insane are among the finest institutions of their kind in Italy. There are numerous excellent philan- thropic foundations, as the Fieschi, an asylum for female orphans. The public library contains over 50,000 volumes ; and there are the Academy of Fine Arts, founded (1751) by the Doria family; the Carlo Felice Theater, one of the finest in Italy; and the Verdi Institute of Music. There is a fine monument to Columbus by Lanzio (1862). Genoa is the commercial outlet of a wide extent of country, of which the chief exports are rice, wine, olive oil, silk goods, coral, paper, macaroni, and marble. The imports are principally raw cotton, wheat, sugar, coal, hides, coffee, raw wool, fish, petroleum, iron, machin- ery, and cotton and woolen textiles. The principal industries are iron works, cot- ton and cloth mills, macaroni works, tanneries, sugar refineries, and vesta- match, filigree, and paper factories. Pop. commune, about 300,000; province, pop. 1,120,000. GENOA, GULF OF, a large indenta- tion in the N. shore of the Mediter- ranean, N. of Corsica, having between the towns of Oneglia on the W. and Spezia on the E. a width of nearly 90 miles, with a depth of about 30 miles. GENS, in Roman antiquities, a class or house, the individuals composing which were termed in reference to each other Gentiles. Each gens was made up of a certain number of branches or fam- ilies (familiae) and each familia was composed of individual members. Sev- eral gentes (plural) made up the curiae and tribes. The members of each gens bore a common name, as the Fabian gens, the Julian gens, etc., and were united by certain common religious rites. GENSERIC, or GEISERIC, a king of the Vandals. He passed from Spain to Africa, where he took Carthage, and laid the foundation, in Africa, of the Vandal kingdom, which was composed of Numi- dia, Mauritania, Carthage, Corsica, Sar- dinia, and the Balearic Isles. In the course of his military expeditions he in- vaded Italy, and sacked Rome in 455. He died in 477. GENTIAN (-shan), in botany, the English name of the genus Gentiana. Numerous species exist almost all over the world, the best known being the marsh gentian {Gentiana pneumoman- the), the spring gentian (G. vema) , the small alpine gentian (G. nivalis), the small-flowered gentian (G. amarella) , the field gentian {G. catnpestris) , and the American fringed gentians (G. crin- ata and G. detonsa) . G. lutea grows in Switzerland and the mountainous parts of Germany. In pharmacy, Gentianx radix (gen- tian root), the dried root of Gentiana lutea. The root occurs in lenghtened cylindrical pieces, from half an inch to one inch in diameter, and several inches long, wrinkled longitudinally, and often twisted; brown externally, yellow, tough, and spongy within; it has a sweet sm<^ll and a sweet and bitter taste. It is used to prepare Extractum gentianx (Extract