Egypt.—By law No. 10 of 1905 all lotteries are prohibited with certain exceptions, and it is made illegal to hawk the tickets or offer them for sale or to bring illegal lotteries in any way to the notice of the public. The authorized lotteries are those for charitable purposes, e.g. those of the benevolent societies of the various foreign communities.
United States.—In the United States many of the states make gaming a penal offence when the bet is upon an election, or a horse race, or a game of hazard. Betting contracts and securities given upon a bet are often made void, and this may destroy a gaming note in the hands of an innocent purchaser for value. The subject lies outside of the province of the federal government. By the legislation of some states the loser may recover his money if he sue within a limited time, as he might have done in England under 9 Anne c. 19.
Authorities.—Brandt on Games (1872); Oliphant, Law of Horses, &c. (6th ed. by Lloyd, 1908); Schwabe on the Stock Exchange (1905); Melsheimer on the Stock Exchange (4th ed., 1905); Coldridge and Hawksford, The Law of Gambling (1895); Stutfield, Betting (3rd ed., 1901).
(W. F. C.)
[1] Leake on Contracts (4th ed.), p. 529.
[2] Pollock, Contracts (7th ed.), p. 313.
[3] Burge v. Ashby, 1900, 1 Q.B. 744.
GAMUT (from the Greek letter gamma, used as a musical symbol, and ut, the first syllable of the medieval hymn Sanctus Johannes), a term in music used to mean generally the whole compass or range of notes possessed by an instrument or voice. Historically, however, the sense has developed from its stricter musical meaning of a scale (the recognized musical scale of any period), originating in the medieval “great scale,” of which the invention has usually been ascribed to Guido of Arezzo (q.v.) in the 11th century. The whole question is somewhat obscure, but, in the evolution of musical notation out of the classical alphabetical system, the invention of the medieval gamut is more properly assigned to Hucbald (d. 930). In his system of scales the semitone was always between the 2nd and 3rd of a tetrachord, as G, A, ♭ B, C, so the ♮ B and ♯ F of the second octave were in false relation to the ♭ B and ♮F of the first two tetrachords. To this scale of four notes, G, A, ♭ B, C, were subsequently added a note below and a note above, which made the hexachord with the semitone between the 3rd and 4th both up and down, as F, G, A, ♭ B, C, D. It was at a much later date that the 7th, our leading note, was admitted into a key, and for this the first two letters of the last line of the above-named hymn, “Sanctus Johannes,” would have been used, save for the notion that as the note Mi was at a semitone below Fa, the same vowel should be heard at a semitone below the upper Ut, and the syllable Si was substituted for Sa. Long afterwards the syllable Ut was replaced by Do in Italy, but it is still retained in France; and in these two countries, with whatever others employ their nomenclature, the original Ut and the substituted Do stand for the sound defined by the letter C in English and German terminology. The literal musical alphabet thus accords with the syllabic: