GERACE or Gieraci, a town of Italy in the province of Reggio di Calabria, about 59 miles from Ileggio on the railway between that city and Monasterace, is situated on a limestone hill not far from the coast, 30 miles N.N.E. of Cape Spartivcnto, between the rivers Merico and Novito. It is the seat of a bishop and of a subprefect, and has a civil and criminal court dependent on that of Catanzaro. The citadel, formerly of great strength, was reduced to ruins by the earthquake of 1793 ; and the cathedral was at the same time so severely injured that only a portion of the crypt remained available for public worship. There is a gOod trade. in a white wine known as l'ino Greco; silk is manu- factured; and the warm sulphur springs of the neigbour- hood attract patients to the town. - About 5 miles off, at Torre (1i lerace, are the ruins of the Greek city of Loeri I'lpizel‘yhyrii, from which Gerace derived materials for its buildings, and more especially fine marble columns for the cathedral. The population in 1871 was 7257. This Gerace is not to be confounded with Gerace Siculo, a town of between 3000 and 4000 inhabitants, 4 miles from Cefalu, which was the first place in Sicily erected into a marquisate.
GERANIUM is the name of a genus of polypetalous exogenous plants, which is taken by botanists as the type of the natural order Geraniacece. The name, as a scientific appellation, has a much more restricted application than when taken in its popular sense. Formerly the genus Geranium was almost conterminous with the order Ger- uniacew, which latter had then a more limited meaning than is given to it by those of our leading botanists of the present day who include in it the Tropceolacecc, the Oxal'i- Jared), and the Balsaminacece. Then as now the geranium was very popular as a garden plant, and the species included in the original genus became widely known under that name, which has more or less clung to them ever since, in spite of scientific changes which have removed the larger number of them to the genus Pelargonium. This result has been probably brought about in some degree by an error of the nurserymen, who seem in many cases to have acted on the conclusion that the group commonly known as Scarlet Geraniums were really geraniums and not pelargoniums, and have in consequence inserted them under the former name in their trade catalogues. In fact it may be said that, from a popular point of view, the pelargoniums of the botanist are better known as geraniums than are the geraniums themselves.
The species of Geranium bear the English name of Cranesbill, and consist mostly of herbs, of annual or perennial duration, dispersed throughout the temperate regions of the world. They number nearly a hundred, and bear a considerable family resemblance. The leaves are for the most part palmatcly-lobed, and the flowers are regular, consisting of five sepals, five imbricating petals, alternating vith five glandules at their base, ten stamens, and a beaked ovary. Some dozen or more species are natives of the British Isles ; and many of those of exotic origin form hand- some border plants iu our gardens of hardy perennials. Amongst these G. iber-zk‘um, G. [)l(l{_I/pei(llm)t, G. sanguineum, G. Buck/(ousimmm, and the double-flowered varieties of G. gar-(dense are conspicuous. The genus is not without its virtues, G. macalutum being the alum-root of North America, used there as an astringent in diarrhoea, dysentery, and such like complaints, while the native Herb lobert of English hedgesides, G. Robertianum, which is both astringent and aromatic, is used as a remedy in nephritic. disorders.
From these regular-flowered herbs, with which they had been mixed up by the earlier botanists, L’Heritier in 1787 separated those plants which have since borne the name of I’llmi'gom'um, and which, though agreeing with them in certain points of structure, differ in others which are ad- mitted to be of generic value. One obvious distinction of I’elmyonium is that the flowers are irregular, the two petals which stand uppermost being different—larger, smaller, or differently marked—from the other three, which latter are Occasionally wanting. This difference of irregularity the modern florist has done very much to annul, for the increased size given to the flowers by high breeding has usually been accompanied by the enlargement of the smaller petals, so that a very near approach to regularity has been in some cases attained. Another well-marked difference however remains in l’elm'gonium: the back or dorsal sepal is fur- nished with a hollow spur, which spur is adnate, i.e., joined for its whole length with the flower-stalk; while in Geranium there is no spur. This peculiarity is best seen by cutting clean through the flower-stalk just behind the flower, when in I’elm'gmii-um there will be seen the hollow tube of the spur, which in the ease of Geranium will not be found as it does not exist, but the stalk will appear as a solid mass. There are other characters which support those already pointed out, such as the absence of the glandules, and the declination of the stamens; but the features already described offer the most ready and obvious distinctions.
To recapitulate, the geraniums properly so-called are regular-flowered herbs with the flower stalks solid, while many geraniums falsely so-called in popular language are really pelargoniums, and may be distinguished by their irregular flowers and hollow flower stalks. In a great majority of cases too, the pelargoniums so commonly mct with in greenhouses and summer parterres are of shrubby or sub-shrubby habit.
GERARD of Cremona (1114–1187), the mediaeval translator of Ptolemy and Avicenna, was born at Cremona, Lombardy, in 1114. Dissatisfied with the meagre philosophies of his Italian teachers, he went to Toledo to study among the Moors, who were at that time the chief depositaries and interpreters of the wisdom of the ancients, and, having thus acquired a knowledge of the Arabic language, he appears to have devoted the remainder of his life to the business of making Latin translations from its literature. The date of his return to his native town is uncertain, but he is known to have died there in 1187. His original version of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine was the basis of all the very numerous subsequent Latin editions of that well-known work; and the Latin translation by which alone Ptolemy’s Almagest until the discovery of the original [ Greek ] was known to Europe is also ascribed to him. In addition to these, be translated various other treatises in medicine, mathematics, and astronomy, to the number, it is said, of sixty-six ; but some of the works with which he has been credited (including the translation of the Almansorius of Er-Razi or Rhazes) are more probably due to a later Gerard also called “Cremonensis,” but more precisely “de Sabloneta.” See Boneompagni, Del/u Vita e delle ()pere (Ii G/zerardo Crcmonense e di G/zcrardo (Ia Sabbionelta.
GERARD, variously surnamed Tum, Tunc, Tenque, or Thom (c. 1040–1120), founder of the order of the knights hospitallers of St John or of Malta, was born at Amalfi about the year 1040. According to other accounts Martigues in Provence was his birthplace, while one authority even names the Chateau d’Avesnes in Hainault. Whether as a soldier or a merchant, he in the course of the latter part of the 11th century found his way to Jerusalem, where a hospice had for some time existed for the convenience of those who wished to visit the holy places. Of this institution Gerard became guardian or provost at a date not later than 1100; and here he organized that religious order of St John which received papal recognition from Pascal II. in 1113, by a bull which was renewed and confirmed by Calixtus II. shortly before the death of Gerard in 1120.
