GENERATION. Here, if we possess ourselves of the simple notions or concepts, Point, Line, Revolution, we may attain to the notion, Circle, without examining actual circles in the concrete. So we may define an oval, or ellipse, and many other figures. This practice of referring to a simpler order of concepts for the constituents of a given one, is the main function of the Definition, which applies, therefore, to complex notions, and not to such as are ultimate, or simple in the extreme degree. To define in the last resort, we must come to quoting the particulars. We cannot define a line by anything more elementary. To say, with Euclid, that it is length without breadth, is no assistance, as we must still go to our experience for examples of length; and length is not a more simple idea than line, being, in fact, but another word for the same thing. Nevertheless, it has been often supposed that there are general notions independent of all experience, or reference to particulars; the form commonly given to the foundations of the science of mathematics having favoured this view. The name 'genus' is also connected with the present subject. It is co-relative with another word, 'species,' which, however, is itself to some extent a generalisation; for every species is considered to have individuals under it. Thus, in Zoology, felis is a genus of animals, and the lion, tiger, cat, &c., are among its species; but each of those species is the generalisation of an innumerable number of individual lions, tigers, &c., differing considerably from one another, so that to express the species we are still obliged to have recourse to the operations of comparison, abstraction, and definition. Genus and species, therefore, introduce to us the existence of successive generalisations, more and more extensive in their range of application, and possessing, in consequence, a smaller amount of similarity or community of feature (see EXTENSION). GENERATION. See REPRODUCTION. GENERATION. A term in use in Mathematics. One geometrical figure is said to be generated by another, when produced or formed by an operation performed upon the other. Thus a cone is generated by making a right-angled triangle revolve about one of its sides adjoining the right angle as an axis. In arithmetic, in the same way, a number is said to be generated when produced by an operation performed on one or more other numbers. Thus, 36 is generated by the involution of 6 to the 2d power, or by the multiplication of 4 and 9. GENERATION, ETERNAL. See TRINITY, DOCTRINE OF THE. GENERATION, SPONTANEOUS. From the earliest period to the termination of the middle ages, no one called in question the doctrine that, under certain favourable conditions, of which putrefaction was one of the most important, animals might be produced without parents. Anaximander and Empedocles attributed to this form of generation all the living beings which first peopled the globe. Aristotle, without committing himself to so general a view, maintains that animals are sometimes formed in putrefying soil, sometimes in plants, and sometimes in the fluids of other animals, and lays down the following general principle, that every dry substance which becomes moist, and every moist body which is dried, produces living creatures, provided it is fit for nourishing them.' The views of Lucretius on this subject are shewn in the following lines : Nonne vides quæcunque morâ, fluidoque liquore Corpora tabuerint, in parva animalia verti?" And Pliny maintains that 'quædam gignuntur ex non genitis, et sine ullâ simili origine." Virgil's directions for the production of bees are known to 199 every reader of the Georgics, and an expression in the Book of Judges (xiv. 14) probably points to a similar opinion. Passing from classical times to the later period of the middle ages, and the two succeeding centuries, we may quote amongst the advocates of this theory Cardan-who, in his treatise De Subtilitate (1542), asserts that water engenders fishes, and that many animals spring from fermentation-Aldrovandus, Licetus, Gassendi, Scaliger, Van Helmont, who gives special instructions for the artificial production of mice, and Kircher, who in his Mundus Subterraneus (in the chapter 'De Panspermia Rerum') describes, and actually figures, certain animals which were produced under his own eyes by the transforming influence of water on fragments of the stems of different plants! Redi, the celebrated Italian naturalist, whose Experiments on the Generation of Insects were published in 1668, seems to have been the first opponent that the doctrine of spontaneous generation encountered. In this work, he proves that the worms and insects which appear in decaying substances are in reality developed from eggs, deposited in those substances by the parents. Leuwenhoek, Vallisneri, Swammerdam, and other eminent naturalists, soon contributed additional facts and arguments in favour of Redi's view; and as from the time of Redi to the present day, the tide of opinion has generally turned strongly against the doctrine in question, it is unnecessary to carry the historical sketch further. The entozoa, however, continued to be a great stumbling-block. 'When,' says Professor Owen, the entozoologist contemplated the tania fixed to the intestine, with its uncinated and suctorious head buried in the mucous membrane, rooted to the spot, and imbibing nourishment like a plant-when he saw the sluggish distoma (or fluke) adhering by its sucker to the serous membrane of a closed internal cavity, he naturally asked himself how they got there; and finding no obvious solution to the difficulty of the transit on the part of such animals, he was driven to the hypothesis of spontaneous generation to solve the difficulty. It is no wonder that Rudolphi (1808) and Bremser (1824), who studied the entozoa rather as naturalists than physiologists, should have been led to apply to them the easy explanation which Aristotle had given for the coming into being of all kinds of Vermes-viz., that they were spontaneously generated. No other explanation, in the then state of the knowledge of the development of the entozoa, appeared to be adequate to account for the fact of their getting into the interior cavities and tissues of higher animals.' The recent investigations of Von Siebold, Küchenmeister, Van Beneden, Philippi, &c., regarding the development and metamorphoses of the entozoa, have, however, tended to remove nearly all the difficulties which this subject presented; and the advocates of spontaneous generation are fairly driven from this, one of the last of their battle-fields. The only point at present in dispute is, whether microscopic organisms (animals or plants) may be spontaneously generated. It is well known that if we examine under the microscope a drop of water in which almost any animal or vegetable substances have been infused, and which contains the particles of such substances in a state of decay or decomposition, it is found to swarm with minute living organisms. The question at issue is this: Are these organisms developed in the water, if the necessary precautions have been taken to exclude every animalcule or germ capable of development both from the water and from the air that has 673 GENERATION-GENERATIONS. The phenomenon has been observed in many of the hydrozoa, in various entozoa, in annelids, in molluscoids (salpa), and in insects (aphides); and its nature will be best understood by our giving one or two illustrations. access to it? A well-known experiment, devised by or with the intervention of a determinate number of Professor Schulze of Berlin (a description of which generations.' may be found in Owen's Lectures on the Invertebrate Animals, 2d ed. p. 44), shews that with due precautions in reference to these points, no animal or vegetable organisms are produced. This experiment was continued uninterruptedly from the 28th of May until the beginning of August, and when, at last, the professor separated the different parts of the apparatus, he could not find in the whole liquid the slightest trace of infusoria or confervæ, or of mould; but all three presented themselves in great abundance a few days after he had left the flask standing open.' A vessel with a similar infusion, which he placed near the apparatus, contained vibriones and monads on the second day of the experiment, to which were soon added larger polygastric infusoria. A few years ago, M. Pouchet announced that he had repeated Schulze's experiment with every precaution, but that animalcules and plants were invariably developed in the infusion on which he operated. To prove that the atmospheric air contained no germs, he substituted artificial air-that is to say, a mixture of 21 parts of oxygen gas with 79 of nitrogen. The air was introduced into a flask containing an infusion of hay, prepared with distilled water and hay that had been exposed for twenty minutes to a temperature of 212°. He thus apparently guarded against the presence of any germs or animalcules in the infusion or in the air. The whole was then hermetically sealed, so that no other air could gain access; yet after all these precautions, minute animal and vegetable organisms appeared in the infusion. He repeated the experiment with pure oxygen gas instead of air, and obtained similar results. These experiments are described by Pouchet in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles (1858, 4th series, vol. ix. p. 372), and the same volume contains important articles by Milne Edwards, and by De Quatrefages, in opposition to Pouchet's views. A very large majority of our physiologists of the present day reject the doctrine; most of the apparently exceptional cases, as, for example, the mysterious presence of the entozoa, have been found to admit of ready explanation; and if we do not positively deny the possibility that animalcules may be generated spontaneously, we may at all events assert that such a mode of generation is not probable, and has certainly not been proved to exist. Those who wish to know more fully the arguments that may be adduced in favour of, and in opposition to, the doctrine, are referred, on the one hand, to Pouchet's Hétérogénie, ou Traité de la Génération Spontanée, basé sur de Nouvelles Expériences (1859); and, on the other, to Pasteur's Mémoire sur les Corpuscules Organisés qui existent dans l'Atmosphere; Examen de la Doctrine des Générations Spontanées, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique (3d ser. 1862, vol. lxiv. pp. 1-110), which seems to place the question beyond the reach of any further discussion. GENERATIONS, ALTERNATION OF, a phrase devised by Steenstrup, a Danish naturalist, about twenty years ago, to signify the remarkable and till now inexplicable natural phenomenon of an animal producing an offspring, which at no time resembles its parent, but which, on the other hand, itself brings forth a progeny which returns in its form and nature to the parent animal, so that the maternal animal does not meet with its resemblance in its own brood, but in its descendants in the second, third, or fourth degree or generation; this always taking place in the different animals which exhibit the phenomenon in a determinate generation, We commence with the development of the medusa or jelly fishes, which belong to the class hydrozoa. The medusa discharges living young, which, after having burst the covering of the egg, swim about freely for some time in the body of the mother. When first discharged or born, they have no resemblance whatever to the perfect meduse, but are little cylindrical bodies (fig. 1, a), covered a B Fig. 1. k with cilia, moving with considerable rapidity, and resembling infusoria. After moving freely in the water for some days, each little animal fixes itself to some object by one extremity (e), while at the opposite extremity a depression is gradually formed, the four corners (b,f) becoming elongated, and gradually transformed into tentacles (c). These tentacles increase in number till the whole of the upper margin is covered with them (g). Transverse wrinkles are then seen on the body at regular intervals, appearing first above, and then extending downwards. As these wrinkles grow deeper, the edge of each segment presents a toothed appearance, so that the organism resembles an artichoke or pinecone, surmounted by a tuft of tentacles (h). The segments gradually become more separated, until they are united by only a very slender axis, when they resemble a pile of shallow cups placed within each other (i). At length the upper segment disengages itself, and then the others in succession. Each segment (d) continues to develop itself until it becomes a complete medusa (k); while the basis or stalk remains, and produces a new colony. Here, then, we have the egg of the medusa gradually developed into the polypoid organism (h), to which the term strobila (from strobilos, a pine-cone) has been given. This polype, by gemmation and fission, yields medusa with reproductive organs. The phenomenon of alternation of generations in the Cestoid Worms (q. v.), and in certain Trematoid Worms (see FLUKE), has already been noticed, and will be further discussed in the article TAPEWORMS. The fission of certain annelids (Syllis and Myrianida), (see REPRODUCTION), presents an example, although at first sight a less obvious one, of alternation of generations, the non-sexual parent worm yielding by fissure progeny containing sper matozoa and ova, from which again a non-sexual generation is produced. The Salpa (mollusca or molluscoids belonging to the family Tunicata) are usually regarded as affording a good illustration of the phenomenon under consideration. It was in these animals that it was originally noticed by Chamisso, who accom panied Kotzebue in his voyage round the world (1815-1818). The Salpa (from twenty to forty in GENESEE-GENESIS. each. The individuals thus joined in chains (fig. 2, Several high physiological authorities, amongst whom we may especially mention Huxley ('On the Anatomy of Salpæ,' in Phil. Trans. for 1851, and 'On Animal Individuality,' in Ann. of Nat. Hist., 2d ser., vol. ix. p. 505), and Carpenter (Principles of Comparative Physiology, 1854), object to the term 'alternation of generations.' The detached portions of the stock originating in a single generative act are termed Zooids by these writers, whilst by the term animal or entire animal (the equivalent of Zoon) they understand in the lower tribes, as in the higher, the collective product of a single generative act. Here they include under the title of one generation all that intervenes between one generative act and the next. If,' says Dr Carpenter, 'the phenomena be viewed under this aspect, it will be obvious that the so-called "alternation of generations" has no real existence; since in every case the whole series of forms which is evolved by continuous development from one generative act repeats itself precisely in the products of the next generative act. The alternation, which is very frequently presented in the forms of the lower animals, is between the products of the generative act and the products of gemmation, and the most important difference between them usually consists in this that the former do not contain the generative apparatus which is evolved in the latter alone. The generating zöoid may be merely a segment cast off from the body at large, as in the case of the Tape-worms (q. v.), or it may contain a combination of generative and locomotive organs, as in the self-dividing Annelide. It may possess, however, not merely locomotive organs, but a complete nutritive apparatus of its own, which is the case in all those instances in which the zöoid is cast off in an early stage of its development, and has to attain an increased size, and frequently also to evolve the generative organs, subsequently to its detachment; of this we have examples in the Medusa budded off from Hydroid Polypes, and in the aggregate Salpæ.' -Principles of Comparative Physiology, p. 529. GENESEE', a remarkable river of North America, the states of Pennsylvania and New York, flows rises about 10 miles south of the boundary between north through the western portion of the latter state, and after a course of 145 miles falls into Lake Ontario, 7 miles north of the city of Rochester. The G. is not only notable for the varied and romantic character of its scenery, but is also famous for its extraordinary falls. Of these falls, which are five in number, three, occurring within a distance of two miles, in the vicinity of the town of Portage, about 90 miles from the mouth of the river, are respectively 60, 90, and 110 feet high. The other two, the one occurring immediately above Rochester, and the other about 3 miles below that city, are both of about 100 feet. GE'NESIS, or more fully GENESIS KOSMOU (Origin, Generation of the World), is the name first given by the Septuagint to the opening book of the Pentateuch. In the Hebrew canon it is called Bereshith (In the Beginning), from the initial word; in the Talmud, it is sometimes referred to as The Book of Creation,' or 'The Book of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' Its Masoretic division into fifty chapters, followed in the English Bible, or into 12 large and 43 small encyclical sections (Sedarim, Parshioth), has been grounded rather on convenience than on any corresponding division of the subject-matter. The book seems of itself to fall most naturally into two totally distinct parts: the first of which would extend from the beginning to the call of Abraham (c. i.—xii.), and embrace the account of the creation, paradise, fall, the gener ations between Adam and Noah, together with their religion, arts, settlements, and genealogy, the deluge, the repeopling of the earth, the tower of Babel, the dispersion of the human race, and the generations between Noah and Abraham: thus forming an introduction to the second part (c. xii.—l.), or the history of the patriarchs (Abraham, Lot, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, and Joseph); the whole concluding with the settlement of Jacob's family in Egypt. Another division seems indicated by the inscription Toledoth (Origin, Generation), which occurs ten times in the course of the book, introducing at each repetition a new cycle of the narrative, and which would thus split the whole (from c. ii. 4) into ten distinct sections of disproportionate length. The period of time over which the Book of Genesis extends has been variously computed; the number of years commonly assigned to it is about 2300; the variations in calculation seldom exceeding units or tens of years; Bishop Hales alone, following the Septuagint, reckons 3619 years. Being a portion, and the introductory portion of the Pentateuch-at the same time that it forms a complete whole in itself-it cannot but be considered as laying down the basis for that theocracy of which the development is recorded in the succeeding books. While the design and plan of the Pentateuch is thus also that of Genesis, the latter, however discordant its constituent parts may seem, does not lack the necessary unity. Beginning with the cosmogony, or rather geogony, i. e., the GENESIS. the whole Pentateuch being a Mosaic of fragments by various authors. Both these notions have now been pretty generally rejected, chiefly on account of their incompatibility with the apparent unity of the whole work and its single parts. The theory adopted by the majority of biblical critics of our day, among whom may be mentioned Wette, Lengerke, Knobel, Stähelin, Bleek, Tuch, Delitzsch, and Bunsen, is the 'Complementary,' according to which the author of the Pentateuch-the Jehovist-had worked upon an old Elohistic fundamental record which embraced the time from the creation to the death of Joshua, altering, enlarging, and completely rewriting it. Ewald and Hupfeld, however, assume four writers; the former two Elohists and two Jehovists, the latter three Elohists and one Jehovist; while the apologetic school of Hengstenberg, Hävernick, Keil, attempts to uphold the primitive theory of one single author. Considered from the remotest time as a book generation of the earth with its animate and inanimate products, and all created things which bear upon and influence it visibly, the record gradually narrows into the history of man, and with the distinct aim of tracing the fate of the one chosen family and people, it singles out Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. The narrative dwells with careful minuteness upon their fortunes, laying especial stress on their intimate communion with God, and, with the three last, on the reiterated promises of the land which they should inherit: they and their seed after them.' The remainder of the human race is summarily treated of; the various founders of tribes and peoples that represent it being generally but briefly named. It is only in the case of brothers, or very near relations of the elect, that certain incidents of their lives are more fully recorded; plainly with the intention of proving the inferiority of their claims to divine consideration, or even of representing them as meet objects of the displeasure of the Almighty:-Ham, Ishmael, Esau. written under the influence of divine inspiration From c. xxxvii. to the end of the book, we have a term very differently understood—and thus exclusively the one chosen family of Jacob and his children before our eyes; and the strictly national character, which the narrative now assumes, excludes everything but the fortunes of this particular house. Here, also, an unbroken, flowing style takes the place of the former apparently sketchy and sometimes abrupt manner. With the occupation by Jacob's rapidly developing tribe of the land of Goshen, this first great patriarchal period is brought to a fitting close, and the second ushered in, when the tribe reappears after a lapse of time as a people. The Maker of all things, having by the creation of one man and one woman placed all mankind on an equal footing, by his Sovereign will subsequently elected one righteous from out the mass of human corruption, and through this man's progeny-whose history is told at length -mankind is in the end to be reclaimed:-this seems the pith of the book, considered as a religious history of man. A certain apparent difference of style and language; the occurrence of what seemed gaps on the one, and repetitions and contradictions on the other hand; the special headings (Toledoth) above mentioned; and, lastly, the different use of the term for the divine name, led very early to the question of the integrity of Genesis. Celsus, Isaac, C. Jasos, Aben Esra, Karlsstadt, Spinoza, all assumed smaller or larger interpolations; that is, pieces evidently not written by the author of the book himself, but added afterwards. It was not before 1753 that the Hypothesis of Documents,' based on the alternate use of the word Jehova (Everlasting) and Elohim (Almighty) was first broached. While the Talmud, Tertullian, St Augustine, Chrysostom, Jehudah Hallevi, &c., had all endeavoured to explain how the individual word was always necessary in the special passage where it occurred, Astruc, a Belgian physician, published in that year his Conjectures sur les Mémoires originaux dont il paroit que Moyse s'est servi pour composer le livre de Genèse, in which he endeavoured to shew that this writer, or rather editor of the book, had made use of two large and ten small-respectively 'Elohistic' and 'Jehovistic' -documents for his composition. This theory was at first received with silent contempt in the writer's own country. The only man who took any notice of it was Charban, who at the same time excused himself for refuting this 'absurd but dangerous' theory. It soon, however, found its way to Germany, where it was warmly advocated and developed by Eichhorn (Repert. and Introd.), Ilgen, and Gramberg. A further step was taken by Vater and Hartmann, to whom belongs the 'Hypothesis of Fragments,' or of raised above all doubt as to its truthfulness, various efforts were made, from the days of the earliest interpreters to our own, to explain, by allegory and symbol, such of its statements as in their plain sense seemed incomprehensible to human understanding. Philo and the Alexandrines generally, Papias, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and others, in all seriousness spiritualised into divine parable that which was given as history; so much so, that St Augustine exemplifying the spirit of the times-shortly after his conversion, explains paradise to represent nothing more than the happiness of mankind, the four rivers the four virtues, the serpent the devil, the coats of skin immortality, &c. In more recent times, however, after Luther had restored the belief in the literal meaning of the text, some have gone so far as to refer all that is not within the grasp of human reason to the region of myth, and to point to the obvious similarity between the biblical narrative of the paradise, its four rivers, the serpent, the apple, the fall, &c.; and certain legends, common to most eastern nations in the remotest times, as a proof that they were all derived from one and the same mythical source. Since the revival of science in the 16th c., another and much graver difficulty, however, has arisenviz., how certain distinct and explicit statements of the Scripture, allowing of but one translation, were to be reconciled with certain undeniable physical facts. It is more especially the Mosaic cosmogony, as contained in the opening chapters of Genesis, which has given rise to violent controversies. The age of the world, which, according to the Bible, would be 6000, or at most, between 7000 and 8000 years; its creation and the formation of the whole system of the universe in six days; have been declared by astronomers and geologists, who reckon the period of the existence of the earth by millions, of the universe by millions upon millions, to be subjects on which information must be sought else where than in the Bible. Most of the apologists have to a certain degree granted this, and they only differ among themselves as to the extent to which the Bible, a book intended for religious instruction exclusively, has reserved such knowledge as has been or may be acquired by scientific investigation. The words of the biblical record themselves, so far from being in contradiction to the results of human knowledge, are said to convey, if not directly, yet by implication all that science more plainly teaches. The two principal methods of reconciliation advanced in this country are those of Dr Buckland and Hugh Miller (and their followers) respectively, the first of whom adopts and amplifies the Chalmerian GENET-GENEVA. interpolation of the geological ages before the first day (an opinion strangely enough to be found already in the Midrash (q. v.): Before our present world, the Almighty had created worlds upon worlds, and destroyed them again'), the latter the Cuvierian expansion of the six days into geological ages. On the other hand, it is asserted both by those who hold that the Bible is entirely the work of man, and by those who take it as a mixture of the divine and the human element, that the biblical notion of the cosmogony, as well as of all the other physical phenomena, are simply in accordance with the state of science in the days when the book was compiled. The apologists adduce, as a further proof of the authenticity of the Bible, the surpassing sublimity and moral superiority of its cosmogony as compared with all others. The dualism of God and matter, which, according to the different pagan systems, are either eternally co-existent or fused into each other, is exchanged for the awful and moving idea of a one personal God, who first created, then moulded, and everlastingly sustains the universe, lavishing his highest gifts on man, made in his own image, and standing towards him in the living relation of a son to a father. The occurrence of similar traditions in the religious records of other primeval nations is taken as a corroborating proof of the historical truth of the biblical account. Recent investigations have likewise affirmed the division of mankind into three principal races, corresponding to Shem, Ham, and Japhet, to be substantially correct, as far as language is concerned. well as throughout Africa. It is gray, with small round or oblong black or brown spots; the tail, which is as long as the body, ringed with black and white. It frequents the banks of brooks. Its fur is a considerable article of commerce. It is easily domesticated, and is kept in houses in Constantinople to catch mice. There was an order of knighthood in France, founded The GENET is sometimes met with in Heraldry. by Charles Martel, called the order of the G., but it has long ceased to exist. The question whether Moses really was the author or compiler of Genesis has been negatived by some, chiefly on the ground that certain apparently obso- GENE'VA (Fr. Genève, Ger. Genf, Ital. Ginevra), lete names mentioned are explained by others which the most populous and flourishing town of Switzerfirst came into use at a much later time, and that land, capital of the canton of the same name, is there are allusions made to events which happened situated on the southern extremity of the Lake of centuries after Moses. Graves, Faber, Rosenmüller, Geneva, 70 miles north-east from Lyon, in France. and others, consider such passages to be late addi- At the time of the contests between the Helvetii tions. The further question whether Moses wrote and the Romans, G. belonged to the country of the it while at Midian, or during the forty days on Allobrogi. It was afterwards included in the Roman Mount Sinai, or during the forty years' sojourn in the Provincia Maxima Sequanorum, and was a place of desert, will be considered in the article PENTATEUCH, Some importance under the Burgundian kings. On where also some other points in connection with the the dissolution of the kingdom of Burgundy, G. composition of this book will be glanced at. Of fell under the dominion of the Ostrogoths; in the opinions on the other side, we will briefly mention year 536, under that of the Franks; and towards that of Lengerke, who holds the Elohist to have the end of the 9th c., under the new kingdom of written under Solomon, and the Jehovist under Burgundy. It had been made a bishop's seat in Hezekiah; of Tuch, who places the former in the the 5th c., and from the 12th c. continual feuds time of Saul, the latter in that of Solomon; and of arose between the bishops and the Counts. of Bleek, who assigns to the Elohist the time of Saul Savoy with regard to the supremacy. The citizens or the Judges, and to the Jehovist the beginning of took advantage of these dissensions to obtain fresh David's reign. liberties and privileges for themselves. In 1518, the Genevese concluded an alliance with Freiburg, and shortly after with Bern, and thus G. became a member of the Swiss confederation. Of the infinite number of ancient and modern writers who have commented on Genesis, we will mention Cyril of Alexandria, Ephraem Syrus, Theodoret, Procopius, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Jitzchaki (commonly, but wrongly, called Jarchi), Aben-Ezra, Levi b. Gershom, Abrabanel, Mendelssohn, Michaelis, Vater, Bohlen, Rosenmüller, Eichhorn, Augusti, Faber, Graves, Schumann, Tuch, Knobel, Herder, Hamann, Baumgarten, Delitzsch, Hengstenberg, Keil, Kalisch, Kurtz, &c. See also Turner's and Hävernick's Introductions to Genesis; Hugh Miller's Testimony of the Rocks; Pye Smith's Relation between Scripture and Science; Dr Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise; Goodwin's Mosaic Cosmogony, &c. GE'NET (Genetta), a genus of quadrupeds of the family Viverrida, nearly allied to the Civets (q. v.), but having only a rudimentary odoriferous pouch, and claws perfectly retractile, as in the Felida. The approximation to that family also appears in the vertical contraction of the pupil of the eye. The doctrines of the Reformation, boldly and enthusiastically preached by William Farel, met with general acceptance in Geneva. In conjunction with Bern, the citizens expelled the adherents of the Dukes of Savoy-the so-called Mamelukes from the town, and declared the bishopric vacant. In August 1535, the Reformed religion was established by law; and in 1541, Calvin was invited to take up his residence permanently in G., as public teacher of theology. It was he who chiefly impressed the stamp of rigid morality, not unalloyed with pedantry, on the minds of the citizens of G., and awakened a taste for the exact sciences. The town, which had hitherto been merely a place of trade, thus acquired an important influence over the spiritual life of Europe, and became the centre of education for the Protestant youth of Great Britain, France, Germany, and 677 |