GANJAM, a district of British India, in the extreme north-east of the Madras Presidency. It has an area of 8372 sq. m. Much of the district is exceedingly mountainous and rocky, but is interspersed with open valleys and fertile plains. Pleasant groves of trees in the plains give to the scenery a greener appearance than is usually met with in the districts to the south. The mountainous tract known as the Maliyas, or chain of the Eastern Ghats, has an average height of about 2000 ft.—its principal peaks being Singharaj (4976 ft.), Mahendragiri (4923) and Devagiri (4535). The hilly region forms the agency of Ganjam, with an area of 3483 sq. m. and a population (in 1901) of 321,114, mostly wild backward tribes, incapable of being governed under ordinary conditions and therefore ruled by an agent of the governor with special powers. The chief rivers are the Rushikulya, the Vamsadhara and the Languliya. The sea and river fisheries afford a livelihood to a considerable section of the population. The hilly region abounds in forests consisting principally of sal, with satin-wood, ebony and sandal-wood in smaller quantities.
Ganjam formed part of the ancient kingdom of Kalinga. Its early history is involved in obscurity, and it was not till after the Gajapati dynasty ascended the throne of Orissa that this tract became even nominally a part of their dominions. Owing to the nature of the country the rising Mahommedan power was long kept at bay; and it was not till nearly a century after the first invasion of Orissa that a Mahommedan governor was sent to govern the Chicacole Circars, which included the present district of Ganjam. In 1753 Chicacole, with the Northern Circars, were made over to the French by Salabat Jang for the maintenance of his French auxiliaries. In 1759 Masulipatam was taken by an English force sent from Bengal, and the French were compelled to abandon Ganjam and their other factories in the north. In 1765 the Northern Circars (including Ganjam) were granted to the English by imperial firman, and in August 1768 an English factory was founded at Ganjam, protected by a fort. The present district of Ganjam was constituted in 1802. In the earlier years of British rule considerable difficulty was experienced in the administration of the district; and on more than one occasion the refractory large landholders had to be coerced by means of regular troops. In 1816 Ganjam was overrun by the Pindaris; and in 1836 occurred the Gumsur campaign, when the British first came into contact with the aboriginal Kondhs, the suppression of whose practice of human sacrifice was successfully accomplished. A petty rising of a section of the Kondhs occurred in 1865, which was, however, suppressed without the aid of regular troops.
In 1901 the pop. of the district was 2,010,256, showing an increase of 20% in the decade. There are two systems of government irrigation: (1) the Rushikulya project, and (2) the Ganjam minor rivers system. The principal crops are rice, other food grains, pulse, oil seeds and a little sugar-cane and cotton. Salt is evaporated, as a government monopoly, along the coast. Sugar is refined, according to German methods, at Aska, where rum also is produced. A considerable trade is conducted at the ports of Gopalpur and Calingapatam, which are only open roadsteads. The district is traversed throughout by the East Coast railway (Bengal-Nagpur system), which was opened from Calcutta to Madras in 1900. There are colleges at Berhampore and Parlakimedi. The headquarters station is Berhampore; the town of Ganjam occupied this position till 1815, when it was found unhealthy, and its importance has since declined.
GANNAL, JEAN NICOLAS (1791-1852), French chemist, was born at Sarre-Louis on the 28th of July 1791. In 1808 he entered the medical department of the French army, and witnessed the retreat from Moscow in 1812. After the downfall of the empire he worked at the École Polytechnique in Paris and subsequently at the Faculty of Sciences as assistant to L.J. Thénard. His contributions to technical chemistry included a method of refining borax, the introduction of elastic rollers formed of gelatin and sugar for use in printing, and processes for manufacturing glue and gelatin, lint, white lead, &c. The Institute awarded him a Montyon prize in 1827 for his advocacy of chlorine as a remedy in pulmonary phthisis, and again in 1835 for his discovery of the efficacy of solutions of aluminium acetate and chloride for preserving anatomical preparations. In the latter part of his life he turned his attention to embalmment, his method depending on the injection of solutions of aluminium salts into the arteries. He died at Paris in January 1852. His son Felix, born in 1829, also devoted himself to the question of the disposal of the dead, among his publications being Mort réelle et mort apparente (1868), Inhumation et crémation (1876), and Les Cimetières (1885), a work on the history and law of burial, of which only one volume appeared.
GANNET (O.E. ganot) or Solan Goose,[1] the Pelecanus bassanus of Linnaeus and the Sula bassana of modern ornithologists, a large sea-fowl long known as a numerous visitor, for the purpose of breeding, to the Bass Rock at the entrance of the Firth of Forth, and to certain other islands off the coast of Britain, of which four are in Scottish waters—namely, Ailsa Craig, at the mouth of the Firth of Clyde; the group known collectively as St Kilda; Suleskerry, some 40 m. north-east of the Butt of Lewis; and the Stack and Skerry, about the same distance westward of Stromness. It appears also to have two stations off the coast of Ireland, the Skellig Islands and the Stags of Broadhaven, and it resorts besides to Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel—its only English breeding-place. Farther to the northward its settlements are Myggenaes, the most westerly of the Faeroes, and various small islands off the coast of Iceland, of which the Vestmannaeyjar, the Reykjanes Fuglaskér and Grimsey are the chief. On the western side of the Atlantic it appears to have but five stations, one in the Bay of Fundy, and four rocks in the Gulf of St Lawrence. On all these seventeen places the bird arrives about the end of March or in April and departs in autumn when its young are ready to fly; but even during the breeding-season many of the adults may be seen on their fishing excursions at a vast distance from their home, while at other times of the year their range is greater still, for they not only frequent the North Sea and the English Channel, but stray to the Baltic, and, in winter, extend their flight to the Madeiras, while the members of the species of American birth traverse the ocean from the shores of Greenland to the Gulf of Mexico.
| Gannet, or Solan Goose. |
Apparently as bulky as a goose, and with longer wings and tail, the gannet weighs considerably less. The plumage of the adult is white, tinged on the head and neck with buff, while the outer edge and principal quills of the wings are black, and some bare spaces round the eyes and on the throat reveal a dark blue skin. The first plumage of the young is of a deep brown above, but paler beneath, and each feather is tipped with a triangular white spot. The nest is a shallow depression, either on the ground itself or on a pile of turf, grass and seaweed—which last is often conveyed from a great distance. The single egg it contains has a white shell of the same chalky character as a cormorant’s. The young are hatched blind and naked, but the slate-coloured skin with which their body is covered is soon clothed with white down, replaced in due time by true feathers of the dark colour already mentioned. The mature plumage is believed not to be attained for some three years. Towards the end of summer the majority of gannets, both old and young, leave the neighbourhood of their breeding-place, and, betaking themselves to the open sea, follow the shoals of herrings and other fishes (the presence of which they are most useful in indicating to fishermen) to a great distance from land. Their prey is almost invariably captured by plunging upon it from a height, and a company of gannets fishing presents a curious and interesting spectacle. Flying in a line, each bird, when it comes over the shoal, closes its wings and dashes perpendicularly into the waves, whence it emerges after a few seconds, and, shaking the water from its feathers, mounts in a wide curve, and orderly takes its place in the rear of the string, to repeat its headlong plunge so soon as it again finds itself above its prey.[2]
Structurally the gannet presents many points worthy of note, such as its closed nostrils, its aborted tongue, and its toes all connected by a web—characters which it possesses in common with most of the other members of the group of birds (Steganopodes) to which it belongs. But more remarkable still is the system of subcutaneous air-cells, some of large size, pervading almost the whole surface of the body, communicating with the lungs, and capable of being inflated or emptied at the will of the bird. This peculiarity has attracted the attention of several writers—Montagu, Sir R. Owen (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1831, p. 90), and Macgillivray.