GADWALL (of doubtful etymolow; hardly from gad, to run about + teen, as the variant spelling gadtcell, influenced by popular etymology, implies), or GRAY DUCK. A fresh-water duck (Chaulelasmus strepera), not quite so large as the mallard, nor often seen in the Eastern United States, but common in the interior and in Flor ida. It breeds from Kansas northward, and during the summer is circumpolar in its distri bution. In the winter it migrates as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, Southern Asia, and the north of Africa. In color the gadwall chiefly black and white, with some brown, buff, and chestnut. This duck breeds in marshes, and lays from seven to nine cream-white eggs. Ex cept at the breeding season, it is usually seen in small flocks, and an individual is sometimes to be found in a flock of other clucks. It is a favorite game cluck, and highly esteemed for the table.
GIVA (Lat., from Gk.Raia, Gaia), or GE. The earth, honored among the Greeks as a goddess, though her personality is never very sharply de fined. The Theogonies of the mythologists, though differing in details, represent her as the first-born of Chaos, and by Uranus (q.v.) the mother of the
Titans (q.v.), Cyclopes (q.v.), and the hundred handed monsters. Angered at Uranus's treat ment of his children, she helped Cronus mutilate his father. When Cronus in his turn was de posed by Zeus, Ga a, angry at the fate of her children, the Titans, produced the Giants, who warred against the gods, and, after their over throw, the monster Typhoeus. When he was con quered by Zeus, Gxa became reconciled to the new dynasty. In accordance with the varying points of view from which the earth was regard ed, we find Gaza reverenced not merely as the universal mother, but as a goddess of death and the shades, and as an oracular divinity, though in Achna, seems to have been the only place where an oracle of Gma existed in his toric times. In art, Gna appears chiefly in con nection with the birth of Erichthonius (see ERECHTHEUS ) and the Gigantomachia; in both scenes she appears as rising out of the earth, only the upper part of the body being visible.