of the 15th century the whole region was familiar to Europeans.
For further information see Senegal, Gold Coast, Ivory Coast, French Guinea, Portuguese Guinea, Liberia, &c. For the history of European discoveries, consult G. E. de Azurara, Chronica de descobrimento e conquista de Guiné, published, with an introduction, by Barros de Santarem (Paris, 1841), English translation, The Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, by C. R. Beazley and E. Prestage (Hakluyt Society publications, 2 vols., London, 1896–1899, vol. ii. has an introduction on the early history of African exploration, &c. with full bibliographical notes). L. Estancelin, Recherches sur les voyages et découvertes des navigateurs normands en Afrique (Paris, 1832); Villault de Bellefond, Relation des costes d’Afrique appellées Guinée (Paris, 1669); Père Labat, Nouvelle Relation de l’Afrique occidentale (Paris, 1728); Desmarquets, Mém. chron. pour servir à l’hist. de Dieppe (1875); Santarem, Priorité de la découverte des pays situés sur la côte occidentale d’Afrique (Paris, 1842); R. H. Major, Life of Prince Henry the Navigator (London, 1868); and the elaborate review of Major’s work by M. Codine in the Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog. (1873); A. E. Nordenskiöld, Periplus (Stockholm, 1897); The Story of Africa, vol. i. (London, 1892), edited by Dr Robert Brown.
GUINEA, a gold coin at one time current in the United
Kingdom. It was first coined in 1663, in the reign of Charles II.,
from gold imported from the Guinea coast of West Africa by a
company of merchants trading under charter from the British
crown—hence the name. Many of the first guineas bore an
elephant on one side, this being the stamp of the company;
in 1675 a castle was added. Issued at the same time as the
guinea were five-guinea, two-guinea and half-guinea pieces.
The current value of the guinea on its first issue was twenty
shillings. It was subsidiary to the silver coinage, but this latter
was in such an unsatisfactory state that the guinea in course of
time became over-valued in relation to silver, so much so that
in 1694 it had risen in value to thirty shillings. The rehabilitation
of the silver coinage in William III.’s reign brought down
the value of the guinea to 21s. 6d. in 1698, at which it stood until
1717, when its value was fixed at twenty-one shillings. This
value the guinea retained until its disappearance from the
coinage. It was last coined in 1813, and was superseded in 1817
by the present principal gold coin, the sovereign. In 1718 the
quarter-guinea was first coined. The third-guinea was first
struck in George III.’s reign (1787). To George III.’s reign also
belongs the “spade-guinea,” a guinea having the shield on the
reverse pointed at the base or spade-shaped. It is still customary
to pay subscriptions, professional fees and honoraria of all kinds,
in terms of “guineas,” a guinea being twenty-one shillings.
GUINEA FOWL, a well-known domestic gallinaceous bird,
so called from the country whence in modern times it was
brought to Europe, the Meleagris and Avis or Gallina Numidica
of ancient authors.[1] Little is positively known of the wild stock
to which we owe our tame birds, nor can the period of its reintroduction
(for there is apparently no evidence of its domestication
being continuous from the time of the Romans) be assigned
more than roughly to that of the African discoveries of the
Portuguese. It does not seem to have been commonly known
till the middle of the 16th century, when John Caius sent a
description and figure, with the name Gallus Mauritanus, to
Gesner, who published both in his Paralipomena in 1555, and
in the same year Belon also gave a notice and woodcut under
the name of Poulle de la Guinée; but while the former authors
properly referred their bird to the ancient Meleagris, the latter
confounded the Meleagris and the turkey.
The ordinary guinea fowl of the poultry-yard (see also Poultry and Poultry-Farming) is the Numida meleagris of ornithologists. The chief or only changes which domestication seems to have induced in its appearance are a tendency to albinism generally shown in the plumage of its lower parts, and frequently, though not always, the conversion of the colour of its legs and feet from dark greyish-brown to bright orange. That the home of this species is West Africa from the Gambia[2] to the Gaboon is certain, but its range in the interior is quite unknown. It appears to have been imported early into the Cape Verd Islands, where, as also in some of the Greater Antilles and in Ascension, it has run wild. Representing the species in South Africa we have the N. coronata, which is very numerous from the Cape Colony to Ovampoland, and the N. cornuta of Drs Finsch and Hartlaub, which replaces it in the west as far as the Zambesi. Madagascar also has its peculiar species, distinguishable by its red crown, the N. mitrata of Pallas, a name which has often been misapplied to the last. This bird has been introduced to Rodriguez, where it is now found wild. Abyssinia is inhabited by another species, the N. ptilorhyncha,[3] which differs from all the foregoing by the absence of any red colouring about the head. Very different from all of them, and the finest species known, is the N. vulturina of Zanzibar, conspicuous by the bright blue in its plumage, the hackles that adorn the lower part of its neck, and its long tail. By some writers it is thought to form a separate genus, Acryllium. All these guinea fowls except the last are characterized by having the crown bare of feathers and elevated into a bony “helmet,” but there is another group (to which the name Guttera has been given) in which a thick tuft of feathers ornaments the top of the head. This contains four or five species, all inhabiting some part or other of Africa, the best known being the N. cristata from Sierra Leone and other places on the western coast. This bird, apparently mentioned by Marcgrave more than 200 years ago, but first described by Pallas, is remarkable for the structure—unique, if not possessed by its representative forms—of its furcula, where the head, instead of being the thin plate found in all other Gallinae, is a hollow cup opening upwards, into which the trachea dips, and then emerges on its way to the lungs. Allied to the genus Numida, but readily distinguished thereform among other characters by the possession of spurs and the absence of a helmet, are two very rare forms, Agelastes and Phasidus, both from western Africa. Of their habits nothing is known. All these birds are beautifully figured in Elliot’s Monograph of the Phasianidae, from drawings by Wolf. (A. N.)
GUINEA-WORM (Dracontiasis), a disease due to the Filaria medinensis, or Dracunculus, or Guinea-worm, a filarious nematode like a horse-hair, whose most frequent habitat is the subcutaneous and intramuscular tissues of the legs and feet. It is common on the Guinea coast, and in many other tropical and subtropical regions and has been familiarly known since ancient times. The condition of dracontiasis due to it is a very common one, and sometimes amounts to an epidemic. The black races are most liable, but Europeans of almost any social rank and of either sex are not altogether exempt. The worm lives in water, and, like the Filaria sanguinis hominis, appears to have an intermediate host for its larval stage. It is doubtful whether the worm penetrates the skin of the legs directly; it is not impossible that the intermediate host (a cyclops) which contains the larvae may be swallowed with the water, and that the larvae of the Dracunculus may be set free in the course of digestion.
GÜINES, a town in the interior of Havana province, Cuba,
about 30 m. S.E. of Havana. Pop. (1907) 8053. It is situated
on a plain, in the midst of a rich plantation district, chiefly
devoted to the cultivation of tobacco. The first railway in Cuba
was built from Havana to Güines between 1835 and 1838. One
of the very few good highways of the island also connects Güines
with the capital. The pueblo of Güines, which was built on a
great private estate of the same name, dates back to about 1735.
The church dates from 1850. Güines became a “villa” in 1814,
and was destroyed by fire in 1817.
GUINGAMP, a town of north-western France, capital of an
arrondissement in the department of Côtes-du-Nord, on the
- ↑ Columella (De re rustica, viii. cap. 2) distinguishes the Meleagris from the Gallina Africana or Numidica, the latter having, he says, a red wattle (palea, a reading obviously preferable to galea), while it was blue in the former. This would look as if the Meleagris had sprung from what is now called Numida ptilorhyncha, while the Gallina Africana originated in the N. meleagris, species which have a different range, and if so the fact would point to two distinct introductions—one by Greeks, the other by Latins.
- ↑ Specimens from the Gambia are said to be smaller, and have been described as distinct under the name of N. rendalli.
- ↑ Darwin (Anim. and Pl. under Domestication, i. 294), gives this as the original stock of the modern domestic birds, but obviously by an accidental error. As before observed, it may possibly have been the true μελεαγρίς of the Greeks.
