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GOBLET—GODALMING
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1883); G. E. Grum-Grzhimailo, Opisanie Puteshestviya v Sapadniy Kitai (1898–1899); V. A. Obruchev, Centralnaya Asiya, Severniy Kitai i Nan-schan, 1892–1894 (1900–1901); V. I. Roborovsky and P. K. Kozlov, Trudy Ekspeditsiy Imp. Russ. Geog. Obshchestva Po Centralnoy Asiy, 1893–1895 (1900, &c.); Roborovsky, Trudy Tibetskoi Ekspeditsiy, 1889–1890; Sven Hedin, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899–1902 (6 vols., 1905–1907); Futterer, Durch Asien (1901, &c.); K. Bogdanovich, Geologicheskiya Isledovaniya v Vostochnom Turkestane and Trudiy Tibetskoy Ekspeditsiy, 1889–1890; L. von Loczy, Die wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse der Reise des Grafen Széchenyi in Ostasien, 1877–1880 (1883); Ney Elias, in Journ. Roy. Geog. Soc. (1873); C. W. Campbell’s “Journeys in Mongolia,” in Geographical Journal (Nov. 1903); Pozdnievym, Mongolia and the Mongols (in Russian, St Petersburg, 1897 &c.); Deniker’s summary of Kozlov’s latest journeys in La Géographie (1901, &c.); F. von Richthofen, China (1877). (J. T. Be.) 


GOBLET, RENÉ (1828–1905), French politician, was born at Aire-sur-la-Lys, in the Pas de Calais, on the 26th of November 1828, and was educated for the law. Under the Second Empire, he helped to found a Liberal journal, Le Progrès de la Somme, and in July 1871 was sent by the department of the Somme to the National Assembly, where he took his place on the extreme left. He failed to secure election in 1876, but next year was returned for Amiens. He held a minor government office in 1879, and in 1882 became minister of the interior in the Freycinet cabinet. He was minister of education, fine arts and religion in Henri Brisson’s first cabinet in 1885, and again under Freycinet in 1886, when he greatly increased his reputation by an able defence of the government’s education proposals. Meanwhile his extreme independence and excessive candour had alienated him from many of his party, and all through his life he was frequently in conflict with his political associates, from Gambetta downwards. On the fall of the Freycinet cabinet in December he formed a cabinet in which he reserved for himself the portfolios of the interior and of religion. The Goblet cabinet was unpopular from the outset, and it was with difficulty that anybody could be found to accept the ministry of foreign affairs, which was finally given to M. Flourens. Then came what is known as the Schnaebele incident, the arrest on the German frontier of a French official named Schnaebele, which caused immense excitement in France. For some days Goblet took no definite decision, but left Flourens, who stood for peace, to fight it out with General Boulanger, then minister of war, who was for the despatch of an ultimatum. Although he finally intervened on the side of Flourens, and peace was preserved, his weakness in face of the Boulangist propaganda became a national danger. Defeated on the budget in May 1887, his government resigned; but he returned to office next year as foreign minister in the radical administration of Charles Floquet. He was defeated at the polls by a Boulangist candidate in 1889, and sat in the senate from 1891 to 1893, when he returned to the popular chamber. In association with MM. E. Lockroy, Ferdinand Sarrien and P. L. Peytral he drew up a republican programme which they put forward in the Petite République française. At the elections of 1898 he was defeated, and thenceforward took little part in public affairs. He died in Paris on the 13th of September 1905.


GOBLET, a large type of drinking-vessel, particularly one shaped like a cup, without handles, and mounted on a shank with a foot. The word is derived from the O. Fr. gobelet, diminutive of gobel, gobeau, which Skeat takes to be formed from Low Lat. cupellus, cup, diminutive of cupa, tub, cask (see Drinking-Vessels).


GOBY. The gobies (Gobius) are small fishes readily recognized by their ventrals (the fins on the lower surface of the chest) being united into one fin, forming a suctorial disk, by which these fishes are enabled to attach themselves in every possible position to a rock or other firm substances. They are essentially coast-fishes, inhabiting nearly all seas, but disappearing towards the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans. Many enter, or live exclusively in, such fresh waters as are at no great distance from the sea. Nearly 500 different kinds are known. The largest British species, Gobius capito, occurring in the rock-pools of Cornwall, measures 10 in. Gobius alcocki, from brackish and fresh waters of Lower Bengal, is one of the very smallest of fishes, not measuring over 16 millimetres (= 7 lines). The males are usually more brilliantly coloured than the females, and guard the eggs, which are often placed in a sort of nest made of the shell of some bivalve or of the carapace of a crab, with the convexity turned upwards and covered with sand, the eggs being stuck to the inner surface of this roof.

Fig. 1.Gobius lentiginosus. Fig. 2.—United
Ventrals of Goby.
Fig. 3.Periophthalmus koelreuteri.

Close allies of the gobies are the walking fish or jumping fish (Periophthalmus), of which various species are found in great numbers on the mud flats at the mouths of rivers in the tropics, skipping about by means of the muscular, scaly base of their pectoral fins, with the head raised and bearing a pair of strongly projecting versatile eyes close together.


GOCH, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the Niers, 8 m. S. of Cleves at the junction of the railways Cologne-Zevenaar and Boxtel-Wesel. Pop. (1905) 10,232. It has a Protestant and a Roman Catholic church and manufactures of brushes, plush goods, cigars and margarine. In the middle ages it was the seat of a large trade in linen. Goch became a town in 1231 and belonged to the dukes of Gelderland and later to the dukes of Cleves.


GOD, the common Teutonic word for a personal object of religious worship. It is thus, like the Gr. θεός and Lat. deus, applied to all those superhuman beings of the heathen mythologies who exercise power over nature and man and are often identified with some particular sphere of activity; and also to the visible material objects, whether an image of the supernatural being or a tree, pillar, &c. used as a symbol, an idol. The word “god,” on the conversion of the Teutonic races to Christianity, was adopted as the name of the one Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe, and of the Persons of the Trinity. The New English Dictionary points out that whereas the old Teutonic type of the word is neuter, corresponding to the Latin numen, in the Christian applications it becomes masculine, and that even where the earlier neuter form is still kept, as in Gothic and Old Norwegian, the construction is masculine. Popular etymology has connected the word with “good”; this is exemplified by the corruption of “God be with you” into “good-bye.” “God” is a word common to all Teutonic languages. In Gothic it is Guth; Dutch has the same form as English; Danish and Swedish have Gud, German Gott. According to the New English Dictionary, the original may be found in two Aryan roots, both of the form gheu, one of which means “to invoke,” the other “to pour” (cf. Gr. χέειν); the last is used of sacrificial offerings. The word would thus mean the object either of religious invocation or of religious worship by sacrifice. It has been also suggested that the word might mean a “molten image” from the sense of “pour.”


GODALMING, a market-town and municipal borough in the Guildford parliamentary division of Surrey, England, 34 m. S.W. of London by the London & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 8748. It is beautifully situated on the right bank of the Wey,