ganner (ganer)

A dialectal form of gander. gannet (gan'et), n. [ OF. gante = Pg. Pr. gant a; of Teut. origin); Gannet ( Sula ba ana), adult and young. It inhabits the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America, feeds on fish, which it catches by pouncing down upon them from on high, and congregates in vast numbers to breed in certain rocky places on the seacoast. It is a strong flier, but is not found far from land. Some of the principal breeding-places are the He brides, St. Kilda, Ailsa Craig, and the Ba Rock, on the Euro pean coast, and the "Gannet Rock," in the gulf of St. Lawrence. The flesh is rank, but young some times eaten, and the old birds are taken unumber their feathers. 2. pl. The birds of the family Sulida; the boobies, of which there are several species, of the genera Sula and Dysporus. Ganocephala (gan-o-sef'a-lä), n. pl. [NL., neut. pl. of ganocephalus: see ganocephalous.] An order of extinct labyrinthodont amphibians. The endoskeleton is notochordal and o eous; the bodies of the vertebræ are each represented by a basal inter centrum and a pair of pleurocentra; there is no occipital condyle; the vomer is divided; the temporal fo æ are overarched by bone; and the head is covered with polished horny or ganoid plates, whence the name. The genera Arch egos a urus and Dendrerpeton are adduced by Owen as examples of this order. Owen has distinguished the oldest forms [of labyrintho donts] with armoured skull as Ganocephala. Claus, Zoology (trans.), II. 188.