with even fifty times its weight of that liquid forms a thick mucilage.
Part of it only is soluble in water, and that resembles gummic acid in
being precipitated by alcohol and ammonium oxalate, but differs
from it in giving a precipitate with neutral lead acetate and none
with borax. The insoluble part of the gum is a calcium salt of
bassorin (C12H20O10), which is devoid of taste and smell, forms a
gelatinoid mass with water, but by continued boiling is rendered
soluble.
Gum tragacanth is used in calico-printing as a thickener of colours and mordants; in medicine as a demulcent and vehicle for insoluble powders, and as an excipient in pills; and for setting and mending beetles and other insect specimens. It is medicinally superior to gum acacia, as it does not undergo acetous fermentation. The best pharmacopeial preparation is the Mucilago Tragacanthae. The compound powder is a useless preparation, as the starch it contains is very liable to ferment.
Gum kuteera resembles in appearance gum tragacanth, for which the attempt has occasionally been made to substitute it. It is said to be the product of Sterculia urens, a plant of the natural order Sterculiaceae.
Cherry tree gum is an exudation from trees of the genera Prunus and Cerasus. It occurs in shiny reddish lumps, resembling the commoner kinds of gum arabic. With water, in which it is only partially soluble, it forms a thick mucilage. Sulphuric acid converts it into l-arabinose; and nitric acid oxidizes it to oxalic acid (without the intermediate formation of mucic acid as in the case of gum arabic).
Gum of Bassora, from Bassora or Bussorah in Asia, is sometimes imported into the London market under the name of the hog tragacanth. It is insipid, crackles between the teeth, occurs in variable-sized pieces, is tough, of a yellowish-white colour, and opaque, and has properties similar to gum tragacanth. Its specific gravity is 1.36. It contains only 1% of soluble gum or arabin. Under the name of Caramania gum it is mixed with inferior kinds of gum tragacanth before exportation.
Mucilage.—Very many seeds, roots, &c., when infused in boiling water, yield mucilages which, for the most part, consist of bassorin. Linseed, quince seed and marshmallow root yield it in large quantity. In their reactions the different kinds of mucilage present differences; e.g. quince seed yields only oxalic acid when treated with nitric acid, and with a solution of iodine in zinc iodide it gives, after some time, a beautiful red tint. Linseed does not give the latter reaction; by treatment with boiling nitric acid it yields mucic and oxalic acids.
Gum Resins.—This term is applied to the inspissated milky juices of certain plants, which consist of gum soluble in water, resin and essential oil soluble in alcohol, other vegetable matter and a small amount of mineral matter. They are generally opaque and solid, and often brittle. When finely powdered and rubbed down with water they form emulsions, the undissolved resin being suspended in the gum solution. Their chief uses are in medicine. Examples are ammoniacum, asafetida, bdellium, euphorbium, gamboge, myrrh, sagapanum and scammony.
GÜMBEL, KARL WILHELM VON, Baron (1823–1898),
German geologist, was born at Dannenfels, in the Palatinate
of the Rhine, on the 11th of February 1823, and is known chiefly
by his researches on the geology of Bavaria. He received a
practical and scientific education in mining at Munich and
Heidelberg, taking the degree of Ph.D. at Munich in 1862;
and he was engaged for a time at the colliery of St Ingbert and
as a surveyor in that district. In 1851, when the Geological
Survey of Bavaria was instituted, Gümbel was appointed chief
geologist; in 1863 he was made honorary professor of geognosy
and surveying at the university of Munich, and in 1879, Oberberg
director of the Bavarian mining department with which the
Geological Survey was incorporated. His geological map of
Bavaria appeared in 1858, and the official memoir descriptive
of the detailed work, entitled Geognostische Beschreibung des
Königreichs Bayern was issued in three parts (1861, 1868 and
1879). He subsequently published his Geologie von Bayern in
2 vols. (1884–1894), an elaborate treatise on geology, with special
reference to the geology of Bavaria. In the course of his long
and active career he engaged in much palaeontological work:
he studied the fauna of the Trias, and in 1861 introduced the
term Rhaetic for the uppermost division of that system; he
supported at first the view of the organic nature of Eozoon (1866
and 1876), he devoted special attention to Foraminifera, and
described those of the Eocene strata of the northern Alps (1868);
he dealt also with Receptaculites (1875) which he regarded as a
genus belonging to the Foraminifera. He died on the 18th of
June 1898.
GUMBINNEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province
of East Prussia, on the Pissa, an affluent of the Pregel, 22 m. by
rail S.W. of Eydtkuhnen on the line to Königsberg. Pop. (1905),
14,194. The surrounding country is pleasant and fruitful, and
the town has spacious and regular streets shaded by linden
trees. It has a Roman Catholic and three Evangelical churches,
a synagogue, a gymnasium, two public schools, a public library,
a hospital and an infirmary. In the market square there is a
statue of the king of Prussia Frederick William I., who in 1724
raised Gumbinnen to the rank of a town, and in 1732 brought
to it a number of persons who had been driven from Salzburg by
religious persecution. On the bridge over the Pissa a monument
has been erected to the soldiers from the neighbourhood who
fell in the Franco-German war of 1870–71. Iron founding and
the manufacture of machinery, wool, cotton, and linen weaving,
stocking-making, tanning, brewing and distilling are the principal
industries. There are horse and cattle markets, and some trade
in corn and linseed.
See J. Schneider, Aus Gumbinnens Vergangenheit (Gumbinnen, 1904).
GUMBO, or Okra, termed also Okro, Ochro, Ketmia,
Gubbo and Syrian mallow (Sans. Tindisa, Bengali Dheras,
Pers. Bámiyah—the Bammia of Prosper Alpinus; Fr.
Gombaut, or better Gombo, and Ketmie comestible), Hibiscus
esculentus, a herbaceous hairy annual plant of the natural order
Malvaceae, probably of African origin, and now naturalized or
cultivated in all tropical countries. The leaves are cordate,
and 3 to 5-lobed, and the flowers yellow, with a crimson centre;
the fruit or pod, the Bendi-Kai of the Europeans of southern
India, is a tapering, 10-angled capsule, 4 to 10 in. in length,
except in the dwarf varieties of the plant, and contains numerous
oval dark-coloured seeds, hairy at the base. Three distinct
varieties of the gumbo (Quiabo and Quimgombo) in Brazil have
been described by Pacheco. The unripe fruit is eaten either
pickled or prepared like asparagus. It is also an ingredient
in various dishes, e.g. the gumbo of the Southern United States
and the calalou of Jamaica; and on account of the large amount
of mucilage it contains, it is extensively consumed, both fresh
and in the form of the prepared powder, for the thickening of
broths and soups. For winter use it is salted or sliced and dried.
The fruit is grown on a very large scale in the vicinity of Constantinople.
It was one of the esculents of Egypt in the time
of Abul-Abbas el-Nebāti, who journeyed to Alexandria in 1216
(Wüstenfeld, Gesch. d. arab. Ärzte, p. 118, Gött., 1840), and is
still cultivated by the Egyptians, who called it Bammgé.
The seeds of the gumbo are used as a substitute for coffee. From their demulcent and emollient properties, the leaves and immature fruit have long been in repute in the East for the preparation of poultices and fomentations. Alpinus (1592) mentions the employment of their decoction in Egypt in ophthalmia and in uterine and other complaints.
The musk okra (Sans., Latákasturiká, cf. the Gr. κάστωρ; Bengali, Latákasturi; Ger. Bisamkörnerstrauch; Fr. Ketmie musquée), Hibiscus Abelmoschus (Abelmoschus moschatus), indigenous to India, and cultivated in most warm regions of the globe, is a suffruticose plant, bearing a conical 5-ridged pod about 3 in. in length, within which are numerous brown reniform seeds, smaller than those of H. esculentus. The seeds possess a musky odour, due to an oleo-resin present in the integument, and are known to perfumers under the name of ambrette as a substitute for musk. They are said to be used by the Arabs for scenting coffee. The seeds (in the Fantee language, Incromahom) are used in Africa as beads; and powdered and steeped in rum they are valued in the West Indies as a remedy for snakebites. The plant yields an excellent fibre, and, being rich in mucilage, is employed in Upper India for the clarifying of sugar. The best-perfumed seeds are reported to come from Martinique.
See P. Alpinus, De plantis Aegypti, cap. xxvii. p. 38 (Venice, 1592); J. Sontheimer’s Abd Allah ibn Ahmad, &c., i. 118 (Stuttgart,
