GARDINER, a city of Kennebec county, Maine, U.S.A., at the confluence of Cobbosseecontee river with the Kennebec, 6 m. below Augusta. Pop. (1890) 5491; (1900) 5501 (537 foreign-born); (1910) 5311. It is served by the Maine Central railway. The site of the city is only a few feet above sea-level, and the Kennebec is navigable for large vessels to this point; the water of the Cobbosseecontee, falling about 130 ft. in a mile, furnishes the city with good power for its manufactures (chiefly paper, machine-shop products, and shoes). The city exports considerable quantities of lumber and ice. Gardiner was founded in 1760 by Dr Sylvester Gardiner (1707-1786), and for a time the settlement was called Gardinerston; in 1779, when it was incorporated as a town, the founder being then a Tory, it was renamed Pittston. But in 1803, when that part of Pittston which lay on the W. bank of the Kennebec was incorporated as a separate town and new life was given to it by the grandson of the founder, the present name was adopted. Gardiner was chartered as a city in 1849. The town of Pittston, on the E. bank of the Kennebec, had a population of 1177 in 1900.
GARDNER, PERCY (1846- ), English classical archaeologist, was born in London, and was educated at the City of London school and Christ’s College, Cambridge (fellow, 1872). He was Disney professor of archaeology at Cambridge from 1880 to 1887, and was then appointed professor of classical archaeology at Oxford, where he had a stimulating influence on the study of ancient, and particularly Greek, art. He also became prominent as an historical critic on Biblical subjects. Among his works are: Types of Greek Coins (1883); A Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias (with F. Imhoof-Blumer, 1887); New Chapters in Greek History (1892), an account of excavations in Greece and Asia Minor; Manual of Greek Antiquities (with F.B. Jevons, 2nd ed. 1898); Grammar of Greek Art (1905); Exploratio Evangelica (1899), on the origin of Christian belief; A Historic View of the New Testament (1901); Growth of Christianity (1907).
His brother, Ernest Arthur Gardner (1862- ), educated at the City of London school and Caius College, Cambridge (fellow, 1885), is also well known as an archaeologist. From 1887 to 1895 he was director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, and later became professor of archaeology at University College, London. His publications include: Introduction to Greek Epigraphy (1887); Ancient Athens (1902); Handbook of Greek Sculpture (1905); Six Greek Sculptors (1910). He was elected first Public Orator of London University in 1910.
GARDNER, a township of Worcester county, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Pop. (1890) 8424; (1900) 10,813, of whom 3449 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 14,699. The township is traversed by the Boston & Maine railway. It has an area of 21.4 sq. m. of hill country, well watered with streams and ponds, and includes the villages of Gardner (15 m. by rail W. of Fitchburg), South Gardner and West Gardner. In the township are the state colony for the insane, the Henry Heywood memorial hospital, and the Levi Heywood memorial library (opened in 1886), a memorial to Levi Heywood (1800-1882), a prominent local manufacturer of chairs, who invented various kinds of chair-making machinery. By far the principal industry of the township (dating from 1805) is the manufacture of chairs, the township having in 1905 the largest chair factory in the world; among the other manufactures are toys, baby-carriages, silver-ware and oil stoves. In 1905 the total factory product of the township was valued at $5,019,019, the furniture product alone amounting to $4,267,064, or 85.2% of the total. Gardner, formed from parts of Ashburnham, Templeton, Westminster and Winchenden, was incorporated in 1785, and was named in honour of Col. Thomas Gardner (1724-1775), a patriot leader of Massachusetts, who was mortally wounded in the battle of Bunker Hill.
See W.D. Herrick, History of the Town of Gardner (Gardner, 1878), covering the years 1785-1878.
GARE-FOWL[1] (Icelandic, Geirfugl; Gaelic, Gearbhul), the anglicized form of the Hebridean name of a large sea-bird now considered extinct, formerly a visitor to certain remote Scottish islands, the Great Auk of most English book-writers, and the Alca impennis of Linnaeus. In size it was hardly less than a tame goose, and in appearance it much resembled its smaller and surviving relative the razor-bill (Alca torda); but the glossy black of its head was varied by a large patch of white occupying nearly all the space between the eye and the bill, in place of the razor-bill’s thin white line, while the bill itself bore eight or more deep transverse grooves instead of the smaller number and the ivory-like mark possessed by the species last named. Otherwise the coloration was similar in both, and there is satisfactory evidence that the gare-fowl’s winter-plumage differed from that of the breeding-season just as is ordinarily the case in other members of the family Alcidae to which it belongs. The most striking characteristic of the gare-fowl, however, was the comparatively abortive condition of its wings, the distal portions of which, though the bird was just about twice the linear dimensions of the razor-bill, were almost exactly of the same size as in that species—proving, if more direct evidence were wanting, its inability to fly.
| Gare-Fowl, or Great Auk. |