In 1768 the abbey of St Blasien, with the library and church, was burnt to the ground, and the splendid new church which rose on the ruins of the old (1783) remained until its destruction by fire in 1874, at once a monument of Gerbert’s taste in architecture and of his Habsburg sympathies. It was at his request that it was made the mausoleum of all the Austrian princes buried outside Austria, whose remains were solemnly transferred to its vaults. In connexion with its consecration he published his Historia Nigrae Silvae, ordinis S. Benedicti coloniae (3 vols., St Blasien, 1783).
Gerbert, who was beloved and respected by Catholics and Protestants alike, died on the 3rd of May 1793.
See Joseph Bader, Das ehemalige Kloster St Blasien und seine Gelehrtenakademie (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1874), which contains a chronological list of Gerbert’s works.
GERBIL, or Gerbille, the name of a group of small, elegant, large-eyed, jumping rodents typified by the North African Gerbillus aegyptiacus (or gerbillus), and forming a special subfamily, Gerbillinae, of the rat tribe or Muridae. They are found over the desert districts of both Asia and Africa, and are classed in the genera Gerbillus (or Tatera), Pachyuromys, Meriones, Psammomys and Rhombomys, with further divisions into subgenera. They have elongated hind-limbs and long hairy tails; and progress by leaps, in the same manner as jerboas, from which they differ in having five hind-toes. The cheek-teeth have transverse plates of enamel on the crowns; the number of such plates diminishing from three in the first tooth to one or one and a half in the third. The upper incisor teeth are generally marked by grooves. Gerbils are inhabitants of open sandy plains, where they dwell in burrows furnished with numerous exits, and containing large grass-lined chambers. The Indian G. indicus produces at least a dozen young at a birth. All are more or less completely nocturnal.
GERENUK, the Somali name of a long-necked aberrant gazelle, commonly known as Waller’s gazelle (Lithocranius walleri), and ranging from Somaliland to Kilimanjaro. The long neck and limbs, coupled with peculiarities in the structure of the skull, entitle the gerenuk, which is a large species, to represent a genus. The horns of the bucks are heavy, and have a peculiar forward curvature at the tips; the colour of the coat is red-fawn, with a broad brown band down the back. Gerenuk are browsing ruminants, and, in Somaliland, are found in small family-parties, and feed more by browsing on the branches and leaves of trees and shrubs than by grazing. Frequently they raise themselves by standing on their hind-legs with the fore-feet resting against the trunk of the tree on which they are feeding. Their usual pace is an awkward trot, not unlike that of a camel; and they seldom break into a gallop. The Somali form has been separated as L. sclateri, but is not more than a local race. (See [Antelope].)
GERGOVIA (mod. Gergovie), in ancient geography, the chief town of the Arverni, situated on a hill in the Auvergne, about 8 m. from the Puy de Dôme, France. Julius Caesar attacked it in 52 B.C., but was beaten off; some walls and earthworks seem still to survive from this period. Later, when Gaul had been subdued, the place was dismantled and its Gaulish inhabitants resettled 4 m. away in the plain at the new Roman city of Augustonemĕtum (mod. Clermont-Ferrand).