nourishment from the stocks, always produce fruit of the same sort as the tree from which they were taken. This process, probably from the abundant supply of nourishment afforded to the graft, has the advantage of hastening the period of its bearing. On this account, many sorts of fruit-trees are principally raised in this way, as well as some ornamental plants of the tree and flower kind. It also affords the means of raising different varieties of the same kind of fruits and flowers on one stock.

GRAHAM, George, a celebrated clock and watch maker, and one of the most accurate artists of his day, was born at Kirklinton, in Cumberland, in 1675. He was received into the family of the celebrated Tompion, and became the inventor of several astronomical instruments, which much advanced the progress of science. He was a member of the royal society, and constructed the great mural arch in the observatory at Greenwich. He also composed the whole planetary system within the compass of a small cabinet, from which model all succeeding orreries have been formed. Several of his papers are in the Philosophical Transactions. He died in 1751.

GRAHAME, James, a Scottish poet, was bred to the bar, but forsook the law to take orders in the church of England. He then entered upon a curacy in the neighborhood of Durham, when he died in the prime of life, in 1811. His poetry is mostly of a meditative and religious character, but animated, flowery and descriptive. His principal pieces are the Sabbath, the Birds of Scotland, and British Georgics.

GRAIN; the name of a small weight, the 20th part of a scruple in apothecaries' weight, and the 24th of a pennyweight troy. GRAIN includes all those kinds of grass which bear a straw, and which are cultivated on account of their seeds for the production of meal or flour. The word corn, or its equivalent in other languages, is frequently applied exclusively to that kind of grain which constitutes the chief nourishment of the country; thus, in a great part of Germany, it is rye; in France, it is wheat; in the Low Countries, it is spelt (a sort of wheat); and in North America, it is maize. That the different kinds of grain grow wild in some countries, is well known, as, for example, barley and oats in Germany; but they have not the perfection of our cultivated grains. These all seem to be natives of warmer climates in Asia, Africa, America (South),

and to be annual plants, becoming hybernating only from cultivation, since a summer does not suffice, in northern climates, for their developement. In common with most grasses, they form their stalks or stems upon the lower joints of the root Their fascicular roots spread themselves out chiefly upon the surface of the ground, which they almost cover with their thick web, while a smaller part penetrates deeper, when they find looseness of soil and nourishment to attract them. All kinds of grain contain nutritious particles of a similar character, although they vary, both in their quantity and in their mixture, in various grains. These elements are,-1. gluten (q. v.), which affords the strongest nourishment for the animal body; 2. fecula or starch (q. v.), which is very nutritious, although not so much so as gluten, which, however, it seems to render more digestible; 3. a sweet mucilage, which is more nutritious than starch, but is small in quantity and renders the grain liable to the vinous and acetous fermentation; 4. the hulls, which consist of a fibrous matter, and contain a digestible, aromatic substance; 5. moisture, which is predominant even in the dryest grain, and increases the weight of the mass, although it lessens the specific gravity; it affords no nourishment, hastens the decomposition of all kinds of grain, if they are not kept very dry, and serves, after planting, to stiinulate the first motions of the germ.

GRAINGER, James, an English physician and poet in the last century, was born at Dunse, in Berwickshire, in 1724. His father placed him as a pupil with a surgeon at Edinburgh, where he attended the medical lectures at the university. Having finished his studies, he entered into the army as a regimental surgeon, and served in Germany till 1748; after which he took the degree of M. D., and settled in the metropolis. An Ode to Solitude procured him reputation in the literary world. In 1759, he published a translation of the Elegies of Tibullus. He then went to the West Indies, with a young gentleman to whom he had become tutor, and, on his arrival at Basseterre, in the island of St. Christopher, married the daughter of the governor. He engaged in medical practice at that place, and was very successful. His leisure was devoted to poetry; and he produced a didactic poem, in blank verse, entitled the Sugar Cane, and Bryan and Pereene, a ballad. The former he pub lished in 1764, during a visit to England. He then returned to Basseterre, where he died of an epidemic fever, in 1767

GRAND BANK OF NEWFOUNDLAND; lon. 49° 45 to 54° 45′ W.; lat. 41° 50 to 50° 24 N. This noted fishing-bank extends from N. to S., and is almost of a triangular shape. Between it and the island on the west, there is a broad channel of deep water. About 3000 small vessels, belonging chiefly to the U. States and Great Britain, are annually employed in the cod-fishery on this bank.

GRANDEE. In the kingdom of Castile, and in that of Arragon, there was a distinction of rank among the nobles of the country, who belonged partly to the higher, and partly to the lower, nobility. The ricos hombres (literally, rich men) made up the former; the knights (cavalleros) and gentlemen (hidalgos) the latter. The circumstances of the establishment of the new Christian states, which were founded and enlarged amid perpetual struggles against the Moors, procured an important share in the public affairs, for the descendants of the men who constituted the first armed associations for the deliverance of their country. These were the higher nobility. They limited the power of the king; they surrounded him, as his counsellors, by birthright, and had a priority of claim to the highest offices of state. As early as the 13th century, these rights were legally recognised as belonging to certain noble families, which had gained the respect of the people by their opulence and long possession of the favor of their princes; and even the name grandee occurs, about that age, in the code of laws (las siete partidas), which Alfonso X established in the kingdom of Castile. This distinction belonged only to the principal members of the higher nobility, as many were reckoned in this class who were not called grandees. But none were called grandees, who were not ricos hombres, i. e., descended from a family of the ancient nobility. The grandees consisted partly of the relatives of the royal house, and partly of such members of the high feudal nobility, distinguished for their wealth, as had, by the grant of a banner, received from the king the right to enlist soldiers under their own colors, and had thus acquired precedence of the other ricos hombres, which distinction regularly descended to their posterity. As ricos hombres, they partook of all the privileges of the high nobility: as such, they possessed certain feudal tenures (called royal fiefs or lordships), in consideration of which they were bound to serve the king with a proportionate number of lances (each of which consisted of a horseman with four or five armed attendants); these 49

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fiefs they could be deprived of only in certain cases determined by law. They were free from taxes, on account of serving the king with their property and persons in war. They could not be subjected to the jurisdiction of any civil or criminal judges, without the special commission of the king. They might, at any time, during the anarchy of the middle ages, leave the kingdom, together with their vassals, without hinderance, and withdraw themselves from the laws and feudal service of their country, and join another prince, even against their former sovereign, without being considered traitors on that account. Besides these general prerogatives of the higher nobility, and the priority of claim to the highest offices of state, the grandees possessed some peculiar distinctions. Such, in particular, was the right of covering the head in the presence of the king, with his permission, on all pub. lic occasions an ancient privilege among the Spaniards, which had its origin in the spirit of a limited feudal monarchy: this, however, was conceded also to the (so called) titulos (titled personages, viz., dukes and counts). The king called each of them "my cousin" (mi primo), while he addressed the other members of the high nobility only as "my kinsman" (mi pari ente). In the cortes, they sat immediate ly after the prelates, before the titulos They had free entrance into the palace and apartments of the king, and, on festi val occasions, sat in the royal chapel near the altar. Their wives participated in the external marks of respect belonging to the rank of their husbands: the queen rose up from her seat to receive them, and cushions were laid for them upon an elevated settee (estrada). After Ferdinand and Isabella, guided and assisted by the able Ximenes, crushed the power of the feudal nobility,the privileges of the higher nobility were diminished; and, at the close of the 15th century, the name of the ricos hombres was lost, together with their privileges. Though Ferdinand's successor, Charles V, was little inclined to give up the struggle for unlimited power, he nevertheless found many inducements to attach some of the principal men of the kingdom to himself, and to reward others for the important services which they had rendered him in the suppression of the insurrection of the commons. The rank which ancient custom had fixed in the respect of the people, he distinguished by the name of grandezza, and raised to be a particula order of nobility, the prerogatives of which. consisted mostly in external marks of dis