GURNARD (Trigla), a genus of fishes forming a group of the family of “mailed cheeks” (Triglidae), and easily recognized by three detached finger-like appendages in front of the pectoral fins, and by their large, angular, bony head, the sides of which are protected by strong, hard and rough bones. The pectoral appendages are provided with strong nerves, and serve not only as organs of locomotion when the fish moves on the bottom, but also as organs of touch, by which it detects small animals on which it feeds. Gurnards are coast-fishes, generally distributed over the tropical and temperate areas; of the forty species known six occur on the coast of Great Britain, viz. the red gurnard (T. pini), the streaked gurnard (T. lineata), the sapphirine gurnard (T. hirundo), the grey gurnard (T. gurnardus), the piper (T. lyra) and the long-finned gurnard (T. obscura or T. lucerna). Although never found very far from the coast, gurnards descend to depths of several hundred fathoms; and as they are bottom-fish they are caught chiefly by means of the trawl. Not rarely, however, they may be seen floating on the surface of the water, with their broad, finely coloured pectoral fins spread out like fans. In very young fishes, which abound in certain localities on the coast in the months of August and September, the pectorals are comparatively much longer than in the adult, extending to the end of the body; they are beautifully coloured and kept expanded, the little fishes looking like butterflies. When caught and taken out of the water, gurnards emit a grunting noise, which is produced by the vibrations of a diaphragm situated transversely across the cavity of the bladder and perforated in the centre. This grunting noise gave rise to the name “gurnard,” which is probably an adaptation or variation of the Fr. grognard, grumbler, cf. the Fr. grondin, gurnard, from gronder, and Ger. Knurrfisch. Their flesh is very white, firm and wholesome.
| Trigla pleuracanthica. |
GURNEY, the name of a philanthropic English family of bankers and merchants, direct descendants of Hugh de Gournay, lord of Gournay, one of the Norman noblemen who accompanied William the Conqueror to England. Large grants of land were made to Hugh de Gournay in Norfolk and Suffolk, and Norwich has since that time been the headquarters of the family, the majority of whom were Quakers. Here in 1770 the brothers John and Henry Gurney founded a banking-house, the business passing in 1779 to Henry’s son, Bartlett Gurney. On the death of Bartlett Gurney in 1802 the bank became the property of his three cousins, of whom John Gurney (1750-1809) was the most remarkable. One of his daughters was Elizabeth Fry; another married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. Of his sons one was Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847), a well-known philanthropist of the day; another, Samuel Gurney (1786-1856) assumed on his father’s death the control of the Norwich bank. Samuel Gurney also took over about the same time the control of the London bill-broking business of Richardson, Overend & Company, in which he was already a partner. This business had been founded in 1800 by Thomas Richardson, clerk to a London bill-discounter, and John Overend, chief clerk in the bank of Smith, Payne & Company at Nottingham, the Gurneys supplying the capital. At that time bill-discounting was carried on in a spasmodic fashion by the ordinary merchant in addition to his regular business, but Richardson considered that there was room for a London house which should devote itself entirely to the trade in bills. This, at that time, novel idea proved an instant success. The title of the firm was subsequently changed to Overend, Gurney & Company, and for forty years it was the greatest discounting-house in the world. During the financial crisis of 1825 Overend, Gurney & Company were able to make short loans to many other bankers. The house indeed became known as “the bankers’ banker,” and secured many of the previous clients of the Bank of England. Samuel Gurney died in 1856. He was a man of very charitable disposition, and during the latter years of his life charitable and philanthropic undertakings almost monopolized his attention. In 1865 the business of Overend, Gurney & Company, which had come under less competent control, was converted into a joint stock company, but in 1866 the firm suspended payment with liabilities amounting to eleven millions sterling.
GURNEY, EDMUND (1847-1888), English psychologist, was born at Hersham, near Walton-on-Thames, on the 23rd of March 1847. He was educated at Blackheath and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a high place in the classical tripos and obtained a fellowship. His work for the schools was done, says his friend F. W. H. Myers, “in the intervals of his practice on the piano.” Dissatisfied with his own executive skill as a musician, he wrote The Power of Sound (1880), an essay on the philosophy of music. He then studied medicine with no intention of practising, devoting himself to physics, chemistry and physiology. In 1880 he passed the second M.B. Cambridge examination in the science of the healing profession. These studies, and his great logical powers and patience in the investigation of evidence, he devoted to that outlying field of psychology which is called “Psychical Research.” He asked whether, as universal tradition declares, there is an unexplored region of human faculty transcending the normal limitations of sensible knowledge. That there is such a region it was part of the system of Hegel to declare, and the subject had been metaphysically treated by Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Du Prel, Hamilton and others, as the philosophy of the Unconscious or Subconscious. But Gurney’s purpose was to approach the subject by observation and experiment, especially in the hypnotic field, whereas vague and ill-attested anecdotes had hitherto been the staple of the evidence of metaphysicians. The tendency of his mind was to investigate whatever facts may give a colour of truth to the ancient belief in the persistence of the conscious human personality after the death of the body. Like Joseph Glanvill’s, the natural bent of Gurney’s mind was sceptical. Both thought the current and traditional reports of supernormal occurrences suggestive and worth investigating by the ordinary methods of scientific observation, and inquisition into evidence at first hand. But the method of Gurney was, of course, much more strict than that of the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, and it included hypnotic and other experiments unknown to Glanvill. Gurney began at what he later saw was the wrong end by studying, with Myers, the “séances” of professed spiritualistic “mediums” (1874-1878). Little but detection of imposture came of this, but an impression was left that the subject ought not to be abandoned. In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded. (See [Psychical Research].) Paid mediums were discarded, at least for the time, and experiments were made in “thought-transference” and hypnotism. Personal evidence as to uninduced hallucinations was also collected. The first results are embodied in the volumes of Phantasms of the Living, a vast collection (Podmore, Myers and Gurney), and in Gurney’s remarkable essay, Hallucinations. The chief consequence was to furnish evidence for the process called “telepathy,” involving the provisional hypothesis that one human mind can affect another through no recognized channel of sense. The fact was supposed to be established by the experiments chronicled in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and it was argued that similar experiences occurred spontaneously, as, for example, in the many recorded instances of “deathbed wraiths” among civilized and savage races. (Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. chapter xi., especially pp. 449-450, 1873. Lang, Making of Religion, pp. 120-124, 1898.) The dying man is supposed to convey the hallucination of his presence as one living person experimentally conveys his thought to another, by “thought-transference.” Gurney’s hypnotic experiments, marked by great exactness, patience and ingenuity, were undertaken in 1885-1888. Their tendency was, in Myers’s words, “to prove—so far as any one operator’s experience in this protean subject can be held to prove anything—that there is sometimes, in the induction of hypnotic phenomena, some agency at work which is neither ordinary nervous stimulation (monotonous or sudden) nor suggestion conveyed by any ordinary channel to the subject’s mind.” These results, if accepted, of course corroborate the idea of telepathy. (See Gurney, “Hypnotism and Telepathy,” Proceedings S. P. R. vol. iv.) Experiments by MM. Gibert, Janet, Richet, Héricourt and others are cited as tending in the same direction. Other experiments dealt with “the relation of the memory in the hypnotic state to the memory in another hypnotic state, and of both to the normal or waking memory.” The result of Gurney’s labours, cut short by his early death, was to raise and strengthen the presumption that there exists an unexplored region of human faculty which ought not to be neglected by science as if the belief in it were a mere survival of savage superstition. Rather, it appears to have furnished the experiences which, misinterpreted, are expressed in traditional beliefs. That Gurney was credulous and easily imposed upon those who knew him, and knew his penetrating humour, cannot admit; nor is the theory likely to be maintained by those whom bias does not prevent from studying with care his writings. In controversy “he delighted in replying with easy courtesy to attacks envenomed with that odium plus quam theologicum which the very allusion to a ghost or the human soul seems in some philosophers to inspire.” In discussion of themes unpopular and obscure Gurney displayed the highest tact, patience, good temper, humour and acuteness. There never was a more disinterested student. In addition to his work on music and his psychological writings, he was the author of Tertium Quid (1887), a collection of essays, on the whole a protest against one-sided ideas and methods of discussion. He died at Brighton on 23rd June 1888, from the effects of an overdose of narcotic medicine.
(A. L.)
GURWOOD, JOHN (1790-1845), British soldier, began his career in a merchant’s office, but soon obtained an ensigncy in the 52nd (1808). With his regiment he served in the “Light Division” of Wellington’s army throughout the earlier Peninsular campaigns, and at Ciudad Rodrigo (19th Jan. 1812) he led one of the forlorn hopes and was severely wounded. For his gallant conduct on this occasion Wellington presented Gurwood with the sword of the French governor of Ciudad Rodrigo. A little later, transferring to the 9th Light Dragoons, he was made brigade-major to the Guards’ cavalry which had just arrived in the Peninsula. In the latter part of the war he served as brigade-major to Lambert’s brigade of the sixth infantry division, and was present at the various actions in which that division played a conspicuous part—the Nivelle, the Nive, Orthes and Toulouse. At Waterloo Captain Gurwood was for the third time severely wounded. In the first twelve years of the peace he was promoted up to the grade of lieut.-colonel, and in 1841 became brevet-colonel. He was for many years the duke of Wellington’s private secretary, and was entrusted by him with the collection and editing of the Wellington Despatches, which occupied Gurwood from 1837 to the end of his life. This work is a monument of industrious skill, and earned its author a Civil List Pension of £200. But overwork and the effects of his wounds had broken his health, and he committed suicide on Christmas day 1845. He was a C.B. and deputy-lieutenant of the Tower.