Sub-order 1.--EUICHTHYDINA with a forked tail.
(i.) Fam. Ichthydidae, without bristles. Genera: _Ichthydium,
Lepidoderma_.
(ii.) Fam. Chaetonotidae, with bristles. Genera: _Chaetonotus,
Chaetura_.
Sub-order 2.--APODINA, tail not forked. Genera: _Dasydytes, Gossea,
Stylochaeta_.
The genus _Aspidiophorus_ recently described by Voigt seems in some
respects intermediate between _Lepidoderma_ and _Chaetonotus_.
_Zelinkia_ and _Philosyrtis_ are two slightly aberrant forms described
by Giard from certain diatomaceous sands. Altogether there must be
some forty to fifty described species.
The group is an isolated one and shows no clear affinities with any of
the great phyla. Those that are usually dwelt on are treated with the
Rotifers and Nematoda and Turbellaria.
LITERATURE.--A.C. Stokes, _The Microscope_ (Detroit, 1887-1888); C.
Zelinka, _Zeitschr. wiss. Zool._ xlix., 1890, p. 209; M. Voigt,
_Forschber. Plön._ Th. ix., 1904, p. 1; A. Giard, _C. R. Soc. Biol._
lvi. pp. 1061 and 1063; E. Daday, _Termes. Fuzetek._ xxiv. p. 1; F.
Zschokke, _Denk. Schweiz. Ges._ xxxvii. p. 109; S. Hlava, _Zool. Anz._
xxviii., 1905, p. 331. (A. E. S.)
GATAKER, THOMAS (1574-1654), English divine, was born in London in
September 1574, and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. From 1601
to 1611 he held the appointment of preacher to the society of Lincoln's
Inn, which he resigned on accepting the rectory of Rotherhithe. In 1642
he was chosen a member of the assembly of divines at Westminster, and
annotated for that assembly the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Lamentations. He disapproved of the introduction of the Covenant, and
declared himself in favour of episcopacy. He was one of the forty-seven
London clergymen who disapproved of the trial of Charles I. He was
married four times, and died in July 1654.
His principal works, besides some volumes of sermons are--_On the
Nature and Use of Lots_ (1619), a curious treatise which led to his
being accused of favouring games of chance; _Dissertatio de stylo Novi
Testamenti_ (1648); _Cinnus, sive Adversaria miscellanea, in quibus
Sacrae Scripturae primo, deinde aliorum scriptorum, locis aliquam
multis lux redditur_ (1651), to which was afterwards subjoined
_Adversaria Posthuma_; and his edition of _Marcus Antoninus_ (1652),
which, according to Hallam, is the "earliest edition of any classical
writer published in England with original annotations," and, for the
period at which it was written, possesses remarkable merit. His
collected works were published at Utrecht in 1698.
GATCHINA, a town of Russia, in the government of St Petersburg, 29 m. by
rail S. of the city of St Petersburg, in 59° 34' N. and 30° 6' E. Pop.
(1860) 9184; (1897) 14,735. It is situated in a flat, well-wooded, and
partly marshy district, and on the south side of the town are two lakes.
Among its more important buildings are the imperial palace, which was
founded in 1770 by Prince Orlov, and constructed according to the plans
of the Italian architect Rinaldi; a military orphanage, founded in 1803;
and a school for horticulture. Among the few industrial establishments
is a porcelain factory. At Gatchina an alliance was concluded between
Russia and Sweden on the 29th of October 1799.
GATE, an opening into any enclosure for entrance or exit, capable of
being closed by a barrier at will. The word is of wide application,
embracing not only the defensive entrance ways into a fortified place,
with which this article mainly deals, or the imposing architectural
features which form the main entrances to palaces, colleges, monastic
buildings, &c., but also the common five-barred barrier which closes an
opening into a field. The most general distinction that can be made
between "door" and "gate" is that of size, the greater entrance into a
court containing other buildings being the "gate," the smaller entrances
opening directly into the particular buildings the "doors," or that of
construction, the whole entrance way being a "gate" or gateway, the
barrier which closes it a "door." A further distinction is drawn by
applying "door" to the solid barriers or "valves" of wood, metal, &c.,
made in panels and fitted to a framework, and "gate" to an openwork
structure, whether of metal or wood (see further DOOR and METAL-WORK).
The ultimate origin of the word is obscure; the early forms appear with
a palatalized initial letter, still surviving in such dialectical forms
as "yate," or in Scots "yett." It is probably connected with the root of
"get," in the sense either of "means of access" or of "holding,"
"receptacle"; cf. Dutch _gat_, hole. There may be a connexion, however,
with "gate," now usually spelled "gait," a manner of walking,[1] but
originally a way, passage; cf. Ger. _Gasse_, narrow street, lane.
The entrance through the enclosing walls of a city or fortification has
been from the earliest times a place of the utmost importance,
considered architecturally, socially or from the point of view of the
military engineer. In the East the "gate" was and still is in many
Mahommedan countries the central place of civic life. Here was the seat
of justice and of audience, the most important market-place, the spot
where men gathered to receive and exchange news. The references in the
Bible to the gates of the city in all these varied aspects are
innumerable (cf. Gen. xix. 1; Deut. xxv. 7; Ruth iv. 1; 2 Sam. xix. 8; 2
Kings vii. 1). Later the seat of justice and of government is
transferred to the gate of the palace of the king (cf. Dan. ii. 49, and
Esther ii. 19), and this use is preserved to-day in the official title
of the seat of government of the Turkish empire at Constantinople, the
"Sublime Porte," a translation of the Turkish _Bab Aliy_ (_bab_, gate,
and _aliy_, high). A full account with many modern instances of Eastern
customs will be found in Sir Charles Warren's article "Gate" in
Hastings's _Dict. of Bible_. For the "pylon," the typical gate of
Egyptian architecture, see ARCHITECTURE.
The gates into a walled town or other fortified place were necessarily
in early times the chief points on which the attack concentrated, and
the features, common throughout the ages, of flanking or surmounting
towers and of galleries over the entrance way, are found in the Assyrian
gate at Khorsabad (cf. 2 Chron. xxvi. 9; 2 Sam. xviii. 24). With the
coming of peaceful times to a city or the removal of the fear of sudden
attack, the gateways would take a form adapted more for ready exit and
entrance than for defence, though the possibility of defending them was
not forgotten. Such city gates often had separate openings for entrance
and exit, and again for foot passengers and for vehicles. The
Gallo-Roman gate at Autun has four entrances, two just wide enough to
admit carriages, and two narrow alleys for foot passengers. A fine
example of a Roman city gate, dating from the time of Constantine, is at
Trèves. It is four storeys high, with ornamental windows, and decorated
with columns on each storey. The two outer wings project beyond the
central part, the two entrance ways are 14 ft. wide, and could be closed
by doors and a portcullis. The chambers in the storeys above were used
for the purposes of civil administration. In more modern times city
gateways have often followed the type of the Roman triumphal arch, with
a single wide opening and purely ornamental superstructure. On the other
hand, the defensive gate formed by an archway entering as it were
through a tower has been constantly followed as a type of entrance to
buildings of an entirely peaceful character. A fine example of such a
gateway, originally built for defence, is at Battle Abbey; this was
built by Abbot Retlynge in 1338, when Edward III. granted a licence to
fortify and crenellate the abbey. Such gateways are typical of Tudor
palaces, as at St James's or at Hampton Court, and are the most common
form in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. The Tom Gate at Christ
Church, Oxford, with its surmounted domed bell tower, or the cupola
resting on columns at Queen's College, Oxford, are further examples of
the gate architecturally considered.
The changes the fortified gateway has undergone in construction and the
varying relative importance it has held in the scheme of defence follow
the lines of development taken by the history of FORTIFICATION AND
SIEGECRAFT (q.v.). The following is a short sketch of the main stages in
its history. A good example of the Roman fortified city gate still
remains at Pompeii. Here there is one passage way for vehicles, 14 ft.
wide; this is open to the sky. The two footways on either side are
arched, with openings in the centre on to the central way. The doors of
the gate are on the city side, but a portcullis (_cataracta_) closed it
on the country side. The gateways of the Roman permanent camps (_castra
stativa_) were four in number, the _porta praetoria_ and _Decumana_ at
either end, with _principalis dextra_ and _sinistra_ on the side (see
also CAMP). At Pevensey (_Anderida_) a small postern on the north side
of the Roman walls was laid bare in 1906-1907, in which the passage
curves in the thickness of the wall, and from a width admitting two men
abreast narrows so that one alone could block it. Flanking towers or
bastions guarded the main entrances, while in front were built outworks,
of palisades, &c., to protect it; these were known as _procastra_ or
_antemuralia_, and the entrances to these were placed so that they could
be flanked from the main walls.
In the defence of a fortified place the gate had not only to be
protected from sudden surprise, but also had to undergo protracted
attacks concentrated upon it during a siege. Thus until the coming of
gunpowder, the ingenuity of military engineers was exhausted in
accumulating the most complicated defences round the gateways, and the
strength of a fortified place could be estimated by the fewness of its
gates. Viollet-le-Duc (_Dict. de l'arch. du moyen âge_, s.v. _Porte_)
takes the Narbonne and Aude gates (E. and W.) of Carcassonne as typical
instances of this complication. The following brief account of the
Narbonne Gate (fig. 1), one of the principal parts of the work on the
fortifications begun by Philip the Bold in 1285, will give some idea of
the varied means of defence, which may be found individually if not
always in such collective abundance in the fortified gateways of the
middle ages. Two massive towers flanked the actual entrance and were
linked across by an iron chain; over the entrance (E) was a
machicolation, further added to in time of war by a hoarding of timber;
and an outer portcullis fell in front of the heavy iron-lined doors. On
to the passage way between the first and second doors opened a square
machicolation (G) from which the defenders in the upper chambers of the
gate could attack an enemy that had succeeded in breaking through the
first entrance or had been trapped by the falling of the first
portcullis. Another machicolation (I) opened from the roof in front of
the second portcullis and second door. So much for the gate itself; but
before an attack could reach that point, the following defences had to
be passed: an immense circular barbican (A) protected the entrance
across the moat and through the outer _enceinte_ of the city. This
entrance was flanked by a masked return of the wall (C), while palisades
(P) still further hampered the assailant in his passage across the
"lists" to the foot of the gate towers. Here sappers would find
themselves exposed to a fire from the loopholes and from the
machicolated hoardings above them, while the projecting horns with which
the face of the towers terminated forced them to uncover themselves to a
flanking fire from the indents in the main curtain on either side of the
towers.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Plan of the Narbonne Gate of the city of
Carcassonne.]
The later history of the gateway is merged in that of modern
fortification. The more elaborate the gate defences the greater was the
inducement for the besieger to attack the walls, and improvements in
methods of siegecraft ultimately compelled the defender to develop the
_enceinte_ from its medieval form of a ring wall with flanking towers to
the 17th century form of bastions, curtains, tenailles and ravelins, all
intimately connected in one general scheme of defence. By Vauban's time
there is little to distinguish the position and defences of the gateways
from the rest of the fortifications surrounding a town. A road from the
country usually entered one of the ravelins, sinking into the glacis,
crossing the ditch of the ravelin and piercing the parapet almost at
right angles to its proper direction (see fig. 2, which also shows a
typical arrangement of minor communications such as ramps and
staircases). From the interior of the ravelin it passed across the main
ditch to a gate in the curtain of the enceinte. The road was in fact
artificially made to wind in such a way that it was kept under fire from
the defences throughout, while the part of it inside the works was bent
so as to place a covering mass between the enemy's fire and troops using
the road for a sortie. Thus the gate itself was merely a barrier against
a _coup de main_ and to keep out unauthorized persons. In conditions
precluding the making of a breach in the walls, i.e. in surprises and
assaults _de vive force_, the gateway and accompanying drawbridge
continue to play their part in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, but
they seldom or never appear as the objectives of a siege _en règle_. In
Vauban's works, and those of most other engineers, there was generally a
postern giving access to the floor of the main ditch, in the centre of
the curtain escarp. The gates of Vauban's and later fortresses are
strong heavy wooden doors, and the gateways more or less ornamental
archways, exactly as in many private mansions of castellar form. In
modern fortresses the gate of a detached fort or an _enceinte de sureté_
is intended purely as a defence against an unexpected rush. The usual
method is to have two gates, the outer one a lattice or portcullis of
iron bars and the inner one a plate of half-inch steel armour, backed by
wood and loopholed. The defenders of the gate can by this arrangement
fire from the inner loopholes through the outer gate upon the
approaches, and also keep the enemy under fire whilst he is trying to
force the outer gate itself. The ditches are crossed either by
drawbridges or by ramps leading the road down to the floor of the ditch.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Plan of Gate Arrangements of an 18th Century
Fortress.]
The "gate" as a barrier to be removed and as an entrance to be passed is
of constant occurrence in figurative language and in symbolical usage.
The gates of the temple of Janus (q.v.) at Rome stood open in war and
closed in peace. The _pylon_ of ancient Egypt had a symbolical meaning
in the Book of the Dead, and religious significance attaches to the
_torii_, one of the outward signs of the Shinto religion in Japan, the
Buddhist _toran_, and to the Chinese _pai-loo_, the honorific gateways
erected to ancestors. The gates of heaven and hell, the gates of death
and darkness, the wide and narrow gates that lead to destruction and
life (Matt. vii. 13 and 14), are familiar metaphorical phrases in the
Bible. In Greek and Roman legend dreams pass through gates of
transparent horn if true, if deceptive and false through opaque gates of
ivory (Hom. _Od_. xix. 560 sq.; Virg. _Aen_. vi. 893). (C. We.)