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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Kelly, Edward" to "Kite", Volume 15, Slice 7

VOLUME XV SLICE VII Kelly, Edward to Kite (continued 11)

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KIPPIS, ANDREW (1725-1795), English nonconformist divine and biographer, son of Robert Kippis, a silk-hosier, was born at Nottingham on the 28th of March 1725. From school at Sleaford in Lincolnshire he passed at the age of sixteen to the nonconformist academy at Northampton, of which Dr Doddridge was then president. In 1746 Kippis became minister of a church at Boston; in 1750 he removed to Dorking in Surrey; and in 1753 he became pastor of a Presbyterian congregation at Westminster, where he remained till his death on the 8th of October 1795. Kippis took a prominent part in the affairs of his church. From 1763 till 1784 he was classical and philological tutor in Coward’s training college at Hoxton; and subsequently for some years at another institution of the same kind at Hackney. In 1778 he was elected a fellow of the Antiquarian Society, and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1779.

Kippis was a very voluminous writer. He contributed largely to The Gentleman’s Magazine, The Monthly Review and The Library; and he had a good deal to do with the establishment and conduct of The New Annual Register. He published also a number of sermons and occasional pamphlets; and he prefixed a life of the author to a collected edition of Dr Nathaniel Lardner’s Works (1788). He wrote a life of Dr Doddridge, which is prefixed to Doddridge’s Exposition of the New Testament (1792). His chief work is his edition of the Biographia Britannica, of which, however, he only lived to publish 5 vols. (folio, 1778-1793). In this work he had the assistance of Dr Towers. See notice by A. Rees, D.D., in The New Annual Register for 1795.

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KIRBY, WILLIAM (1759-1850), English entomologist, was born at Witnesham in Suffolk on the 19th of September 1759. From the village school of Witnesham he passed to Ipswich grammar school, and thence to Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1781. Taking holy orders in 1782, he spent his entire life in the peaceful seclusion of an English country parsonage at Barham in Suffolk. His favourite study was natural history; and eventually entomology engrossed all his leisure. His first work of importance was his Monographia Apum Angliae (2 vols. 8vo, 1802), which as the first scientific treatise on its subject brought him into notice with the leading entomologists of his own and foreign countries. The practical result of a friendship formed in 1805 with William Spence, of Hull, was the jointly written Introduction to Entomology (4 vols., 1815-1826; 7th ed., 1856), one of the most popular books of science that have ever appeared. In 1830 he was chosen to write one of the Bridgewater Treatises, his subject being The History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals (2 vols., 1835). This undeniably fell short of his earlier works in point of scientific value. He died on the 4th of July 1850.

Besides the books already mentioned he was the author of many papers in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, the Zoological Journal and other periodicals; Strictures on Sir James Smith’s Hypothesis respecting the Lilies of the Field of our Saviour and the Acanthus of Virgil (1819); Seven Sermons on our Lord’s Temptations (1829); and he wrote the sections on insects in the Account of the Animals seen by the late Northern Expedition while within the Arctic Circle (1821), and in Fauna Boreali-Americana (1837). His Life by the Rev. John Freeman, published in 1852, contains a list of his works.

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KIRCHER, ATHANASIUS (1601-1680), German scholar and mathematician, was born on the 2nd of May 1601, at Geisa near Fulda. He was educated at the Jesuit college of Fulda, and entered upon his noviciate in that order at Mainz in 1618. He became professor of philosophy, mathematics, and Oriental languages at Würzburg, whence he was driven (1631) by the troubles of the Thirty Years’ War to Avignon. Through the influence of Cardinal Barberini he next (1635) settled in Rome, where for eight years he taught mathematics in the Collegio Romano, but ultimately resigned this appointment to study hieroglyphics and other archaeological subjects. He died on the 28th of November 1680.

Kircher was a man of wide and varied learning, but singularly devoid of judgment and critical discernment. His voluminous writings in philology, natural history, physics and mathematics often accordingly have a good deal of the historical interest which attaches to pioneering work, however imperfectly performed; otherwise they now take rank as curiosities of literature merely. They include Ars Magnesia (1631); Magnes, sive de arte magnetica opus tripartitum (1641); and Magneticum naturae regnum (1667); Prodromus Coptus (1636); Lingua Aegyptiaca restituta (1643); Obeliscus Pamphilius (1650); and Oedipus Aegyptiacus, hoc est universalis doctrinae hieroglyphicae instauratio (1652-1655)—works which may claim the merit of having first called attention to Egyptian hieroglyphics; Ars magna lucis et umbrae in mundo (1645-1646); Musurgia universalis, sive ars magna consoni et dissoni (1650); Polygraphia, seu artificium linguarum quo cum omnibus mundi populis poterit quis respondere (1663); Mundus subterraneus, quo subterrestris mundi opificium, universae denique naturae divitiae, abditorum effectuum causae demonstrantur (1665-1678); China illustrata (1667); Ars magna sciendi (1669); and Latium (1669), a work which may still be consulted with advantage. The Specula Melitensis Encyclica (1638) gives an account of a kind of calculating machine of his invention. The valuable collection of antiquities which he bequeathed to the Collegio Romano has been described by Buonanni (Musaeum Kircherianum, 1709; republished by Battara in 1773).

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KIRCHHEIM-UNTER-TECK, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Württemberg, is prettily situated on the Lauter, at the north-west foot of the Rauhe Alb, 15 m. S.E. of Stuttgart by rail. Pop. (1905), 8830. The town has a royal castle built in 1538, two schools and several benevolent institutions. The manufactures include cotton goods, damask, pianofortes, machinery, furniture, chemicals and cement. The town also has wool-spinning establishments and breweries, and a corn exchange. It is the most important wool market in South Germany, and has also a trade in fruit, timber and pigs. In the vicinity are the ruins of the castle of Teck, the hereditary stronghold of the dukes of that name. Kirchheim has belonged to Württemberg since 1381.

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KIRCHHOFF, GUSTAV ROBERT (1824-1887), German physicist, was born at Königsberg (Prussia) on the 12th of March 1824, and was educated at the university of his native town, where he graduated Ph.D. in 1847. After acting as privat-docent at Berlin for some time, he became extraordinary professor of physics at Breslau in 1850. Four years later he was appointed professor of physics at Heidelberg, and in 1875 he was transferred to Berlin, where he died on the 17th of October 1887. Kirchhoff’s contributions to mathematical physics were numerous and important, his strength lying in his powers of stating a new physical problem in terms of mathematics, not merely in working out the solution after it had been so formulated. A number of his papers were concerned with electrical questions. One of the earliest was devoted to electrical conduction in a thin plate, and especially in a circular one, and it also contained a theorem which enables the distribution of currents in a network of conductors to be ascertained. Another discussed conduction in curved sheets; a third the distribution of electricity in two influencing spheres; a fourth the determination of the constant on which depends the intensity of induced currents; while others were devoted to Ohm’s law, the motion of electricity in submarine cables, induced magnetism, &c. In other papers, again, various miscellaneous topics were treated—the thermal conductivity of iron, crystalline reflection and refraction, certain propositions in the thermodynamics of solution and vaporization, &c. An important part of his work was contained in his Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik (1876), in which the principles of dynamics, as well as various special problems, were treated in a somewhat novel and original manner. But his name is best known for the researches, experimental and mathematical, in radiation which led him, in company with R. W. von Bunsen, to the development of spectrum analysis as a complete system in 1859-1860. He can scarcely be called its inventor, for not only had many investigators already used the prism as an instrument of chemical inquiry, but considerable progress had been made towards the explanation of the principles upon which spectrum analysis rests. But to him belongs the merit of having, most probably without knowing what had already been done, enunciated a complete account of its theory, and of thus having firmly established it as a means by which the chemical constituents of celestial bodies can be discovered through the comparison of their spectra with those of the various elements that exist on this earth.

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KIRCHHOFF, JOHANN WILHELM ADOLF (1826-1908), German classical scholar and epigraphist, was born in Berlin on the 6th of January 1826. In 1865 he was appointed professor of classical philology in the university of his native city. He died on the 26th of February 1908. He is the author of Die Homerische Odyssee (1859), putting forward an entirely new theory as to the composition of the Odyssey; editions of Plotinus (1856), Euripides (1855 and 1877-1878). Aeschylus (1880), Hesiod (Works and Days, 1889), Xenophon, On the Athenian Constitution (3rd ed., 1889); Über die Entstehungszeit des Herodotischen Geschichtswerkes (2nd ed., 1878); Thukydides und sein Urkundenmaterial (1895).

The following works are the result of his epigraphical and palaeographical studies: Die Umbrischen Sprachdenkmäler (1851); Das Stadlrecht von Bantia (1853), on the tablet discovered in 1790 at Oppido near Banzi, containing a plebiscite relating to the municipal affairs of the ancient Bantia; Das Gotische Runenalphabet (1852); Die Fränkischen Runen (1855); Studien zur Geschichte des Griechischen Alphabets (4th ed., 1887). The second part of vol. iv. of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (1859, containing the Christian inscriptions) and vol. i. of the C. I. Atticarum (1873, containing the inscriptions before 403) with supplements thereto (vol. iv. pts. 1-3, 1877-1891) are edited by him.

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KIRGHIZ, a large and widespread division of the Turkish family, of which there are two main branches, the Kara-Kirghiz of the uplands and the Kirghiz-Kazaks of the steppe. They jointly number about 3,000,000, and occupy an area of perhaps the same number of square miles, stretching from Kulja westwards to the lower Volga, and from the headstreams of the Ob southwards to the Pamir and the Turkoman country. They seem closely allied ethnically to the Mongolians and in speech to the Tatars. But both Mongols and Tatars belonged themselves originally to one racial stock and formed part of the same hordes or nomadic armies: also the Western Turks have to a large extent lost their original physique and become largely assimilated to the regular “Caucasian” type. But the Kirghiz have either remained nearly altogether unmixed, as in the uplands, or else have intermingled in the steppe mainly with the Volga Kalmucks in the west, and with the Dzungarian nomads in the east, all alike of Mongol stock. Hence they have everywhere to a large extent preserved the common Mongolian features, while retaining their primitive Tatar speech. Physically they are a middle-sized, square-built race, inclined to stoutness, especially in the steppe, mostly with long black hair, scant beard or none, small, black and oblique eyes, though blue or grey also occur in the south, broad Mongoloid features, high cheekbones, broad, flat nose, small mouth, brachycephalous head, very small hands and feet, dirty brown or swarthy complexion, often yellowish, but also occasionally fair. These characteristics, while affiliating them directly to the Mongol stock, also betray an admixture of foreign elements, probably due to Finnish influences in the north, and Tajik or Iranian blood in the south. Their speech also, while purely Turkic in structure, possesses, not only many Mongolian and a few Persian and even Arabic words, but also some terms unknown to the other branches of the Mongolo-Tatar linguistic family, and which should perhaps be traced to the Kiang-Kuan, Wu-sun, Ting-ling, and other peoples of South Siberia partly absorbed by them.

The Kara-Kirghiz.—The Kara or “Black” Kirghiz, so called from the colour of their tents, are known to the Russians either as Chernyie (Black) or Dikokammenyie (Wild Stone or Rocky) Kirghiz, and are the Block Kirghiz of some English writers. They are on the whole the purest and best representatives of the race, and properly speaking to them alone belongs the distinctive national name Kirghiz or Krghiz. This term is commonly traced to a legendary chief, Kirghiz, sprung of Oghuz-Khan, ninth in descent from Japheth. It occurs in its present form for the first time in the account of the embassy sent in 569 by the East Roman emperor Justin II. to the Uighur Khan, Dugla-Ditubulu, where it is stated that this prince presented a slave of the Kirghiz tribe to Zemark, head of the mission. In the Chinese chronicles the word assumes the form Ki-li-ki-tz’, and the writers of the Yuan dynasty (1280-1367) place the territory of these people 10,000 li north-west of Pekin, about the headstreams of the Yenisei. In the records of the T’ang dynasty (618-907) they are spoken of under the name of Kha-kia-tz’ (pronounced Khaka, and sometimes transliterated Haka), and it is mentioned that these Khakas were of the same speech as the Khoei-khu. From this it follows that they were of Mongolo-Tatar stock, and are wrongly identified by some ethnologists with the Kiang-Kuan, Wu-sun, or Ting-ling, all of whom are described as tall, with red hair, “green” or grey eyes, and fair complexion, and must therefore have been of Finnish stock, akin to the present Soyotes of the upper Yenisei.

The Kara-Kirghiz are by the Chinese and Mongolians called Burut, where ut is the Mongolian plural ending, as in Tangut, Yakut, modified to yat in Buryat, the collective name of the Siberian Mongolians of the Baikal district. Thus the term Bur is the common Mongolian designation both of the Baikal Mongols and of the Kara-Kirghiz, who occupied this very region and the upper Yenisei valley generally till comparatively recent times. For the original home of their ancestors, the Khakas, lay in the south of the present governments of Yeniseisk and Tomsk, stretching thence southwards beyond the Sayan range to the Tannuola hills in Chinese territory. Here the Russians first met them in the 17th century, and by the aid of the Kazaks exterminated all those east of the Irtish, driving the rest farther west and south-westwards. Most of them took refuge with their kinsmen, the Kara-Kirghiz nomad highlanders, whose homes, at least since the 13th century, have been the Ala-tau range, the Issyk-kul basin, the Tekes, Chu and Talass river valleys, the Tian-shan range, the uplands draining both to the Tarim and to the Jaxartes and Oxus, including Khokand, Karateghin and Shignan southwards to the Pamir table-land, visited by them in summer. They thus occupy most of the uplands along the Russo-Chinese frontier, between 35° and 50° N. lat. and between 70° and 85° E. long.

The Kara-Kirghiz are all grouped in two main sections—the On or “Right” in the east, with seven branches (Bogu, Sary-Bagishch, Son-Bagishch, Sultu or Solye, Cherik, Sayak, Bassinz), and the Sol or “Left” in the west, with four branches (Kokche or Kûchy, Soru, Mundus, Kitai or Kintai). The Sol section occupies the region between the Talass and Oxus headstreams in Ferghana (Khokand) and Bokhara, where they come in contact with the Galchas or Highland Tajiks. The On section lies on both sides of the Tian-shan, about Lake Issyk-kul, and in the Chu, Tekes and Narin (upper Jaxartes) valleys.

The total number of Kara-Kirghiz exceeds 800,000.

All are essentially nomads, occupied mainly with stock breeding, chiefly horses of a small but hardy breed, sheep of the fat-tailed species, oxen used both for riding and as pack animals, some goats, and camels of both species. Agriculture is limited chiefly to the cultivation of wheat, barley and millet, from the last of which a coarse vodka or brandy is distilled. Trade is carried on chiefly by barter, cattle being taken by the dealers from China, Turkestan and Russia in exchange for manufactured goods.

The Kara-Kirghiz are governed by the “manaps,” or tribal rulers, who enjoy almost unlimited authority, and may even sell or kill their subjects. In religious matters they differ little from the Kazaks, whose practices are described below. Although generally recognizing Russian sovereignty since 1864, they pay no taxes.

The Kazaks.—Though not unknown to them, the term Kirghiz is never used by the steppe nomads, who always call themselves simply Kazaks, commonly interpreted as riders. The first authentic reference to this name is by the Persian poet and historian Firdousi (1020), who speaks of the Kazak tribes as much dreaded steppe marauders, all mounted and armed with lances. From this circumstance the term Kazak came to be gradually applied to all freebooters similarly equipped, and it thus spread from the Aralo-Caspian basin to South Russia, where it still survives under the form of Cossack, spelt Kazak or Kozak in Russian. Hence though Kazak and Cossack are originally the same word, the former now designates a Mongolo-Tatar nomad race, the latter various members of the Slav family. Since the 18th century the Russians have used the compound expression Kirghiz-Kazak, chiefly in order to distinguish them from their own Cossacks, at that time overrunning Siberia. Siegmund Herberstein (1486-1566) is the first European who mentions them by name, and it is noteworthy that he speaks of them as “Tartars,” that is, a people rather of Turki than Mongolian stock.

In their present homes, the so-called “Kirghiz steppes,” they are far more numerous and widespread than their Kara-Kirghiz kinsmen, stretching almost uninterruptedly from Lake Balkash round the Aral and Caspian Seas westwards to the lower Volga, and from the river Irtish southwards to the lower Oxus and Ust-Urt plateau. Their domain, which is nearly 2,000,000 sq. m. in extent, thus lies mainly between 45° and 55° N. lat. and from 45° to 80° E. long. Here they came under the sway of Jenghiz Khan, after whose death they fell to the share of his son Juji, head of the Golden Horde, but continued to retain their own khans. When the Uzbegs acquired the ascendancy, many of the former subjects of the Juji and Jagatai hordes fell off and joined the Kazaks. Thus about the year 1500 were formed two powerful states in the Kipchak and Kheta steppes, the Mogul-Ulus and the Kazak, the latter of whom, under their khan Arslane, are said by Sultan Baber to have had as many as 400,000 fighting men. Their numbers continued to be swollen by voluntary or enforced accessions from the fragments of the Golden Horde, such as the Kipchaks, Naimans, Konrats, Jalairs, Kankali, whose names are still preserved in the tribal divisions of the Kazaks. And as some of these peoples were undoubtedly of true Mongolian stock, their names have given a colour to the statement that all the Kazaks were rather of Mongol than of Turki origin. But the universal prevalence of a nearly pure variety of the Turki speech throughout the Kazak steppes is almost alone sufficient to show that the Tatar element must at all times have been in the ascendant. Very various accounts have been given of the relationship of the Kipchak to the Kirghiz, but at present they seem to form a subdivision of the Kirghiz-Kazaks. The Kara-Kalpaks are an allied but apparently separate tribe.

The Kirghiz-Kazaks have long been grouped in three large “hordes” or encampments, further subdivided into a number of so-called “races,” which are again grouped in tribes, and these in sections, branches and auls, or communities of from five to fifteen tents. The division into hordes has been traditionally referred to a powerful khan, who divided his states amongst his three sons, the eldest of whom became the founder of the Ulu-Yuz, or Great Horde, the second of the Urta-Yuz, or Middle Horde, and the third of the Kachi-Yuz, or Little Horde. The last two under their common khan Abulkhair voluntarily submitted in 1730 to the Empress Anne. Most of the Great Horde were subdued by Yunus, khan of Ferghana, in 1798, and all the still independent tribes finally accepted Russian sovereignty in 1819.

Since 1801 a fourth division, known as the Inner or Bukeyevskaya Horde, from the name of their first khan, Bukei, has been settled in the Orenburg steppe.

But these divisions affect the common people alone, all the higher orders and ruling families being broadly classed as White and Black Kost or Bones. The White Bones comprise only the khans and their descendants, besides the issue of the khojas or Moslem “saints.” The Black Bones include all the rest, except the Telengut or servants of the khans, and the Kûl or slaves.

The Kazaks are an honest and trustworthy people, but heavy, sluggish, sullen and unfriendly. Even the hospitality enjoined by the Koran is displayed only towards the orthodox Sunnite sect. So essentially nomadic are all the tribes that they cannot adopt a settled life without losing the very sentiment of their nationality, and becoming rapidly absorbed in the Slav population. They dwell exclusively in semicircular tents consisting of a light wooden framework, and red cloth or felt covering, with an opening above for light and ventilation.

The camp life of the Kazaks seems almost unendurable to Europeans in winter, when they are confined altogether to the tent, and exposed to endless discomforts. In summer the day is spent mostly in sleep or drinking koumiss, followed at night by feasting and the recital of tales, varied with songs accompanied by the music of the flute and balalaika. But horsemanship is the great amusement of all true Kazaks, who may almost be said to be born in the saddle. Hence, though excellent riders, they are bad walkers. Though hardy and long-lived, they are uncleanly in their habits and often decimated by small-pox and Siberian plague. They have no fixed meals, and live mainly on mutton and goat and horse flesh, and instead of bread use the so-called balamyk, a mess of flour fried in dripping and diluted in water. The universal drink is koumiss, which is wholesome, nourishing and a specific against all chest diseases.

The dress consists of the chapân, a flowing robe of which one or two are worn in summer and several in winter, fastened with a silk or leather girdle, in which are stuck a knife, tobacco pouch, seal and a few other trinkets. Broad silk or cloth pantaloons are often worn over the chapân, which is of velvet, silk, cotton or felt, according to the rank of the wearer. Large black or red leather boots, with round white felt pointed caps, complete the costume, which is much the same for both sexes.

Like the Kara-Kirghiz, the Kazaks are nominally Sunnites, but Shamanists at heart, worshipping, besides the Kudai or good divinity, the Shaitan or bad spirit. Their faith is strong in the talchi or soothsayer and other charlatans, who know everything, can do everything, and heal all disorders at pleasure. But they are not fanatics, though holding the abstract doctrine that the “Kafir” may be lawfully oppressed, including in this category not only Buddhists and Christians, but even Mahommedans of the Shiah sect. There are no fasts or ablutions, mosques or mollahs, or regular prayers. Although Mussulmans since the beginning of the 16th century, they have scarcely yet found their way to Mecca, their pilgrims visiting instead the more convenient shrines of the “saints” scattered over eastern Turkestan. Unlike the Mongolians, the Kazaks treat their dead with great respect, and the low steppe hills are often entirely covered with monuments raised above their graves.

Letters are neglected to such an extent that whoever can merely write is regarded as a savant, while he becomes a prodigy of learning if able to read the Koran in the original. Yet the Kazaks are naturally both musical and poetical, and possess a considerable number of national songs, which are usually repeated with variations from mouth to mouth.

The Kazaks still choose their own khans, who, though confirmed by the Russian government, possess little authority beyond their respective tribes. The real rulers are the elders or umpires and sultans, all appointed by public election. Brigandage and raids arising out of tribal feuds, which were formerly recognized institutions, are now severely punished, sometimes even with death. Capital punishment, usually by hanging or strangling, is inflicted for murder and adultery, while three, nine or twenty-seven times the value of the stolen property is exacted for theft.

The domestic animals, daily pursuits and industries of the Kazaks differ but slightly from those of the Kara-Kirghiz. Some of the wealthy steppe nomads own as many as 20,000 of the large fat-tailed sheep. Goats are kept chiefly as guides for these flocks; and the horses, though small, are hardy, swift, light-footed and capable of covering from 50 to 60 miles at a stretch. Amongst the Kazaks there are a few workers in silver, copper and iron, the chief arts besides, being skin dressing, wool spinning and dyeing, carpet and felt weaving. Trade is confined mainly to an exchange of live stock for woven and other goods from Russia, China and Turkestan.

Since their subjection to Russia the Kazaks have become less lawless, but scarcely less nomadic. A change of habit in this respect is opposed alike to their tastes and to the climatic and other outward conditions. See also Turks.

Literature.—Alexis Levshin, Description des hordes et des steppes des Kirghiz-Kazaks, translated from the Russian by Ferry de Cigny (1840); W. Radloff, Proben der Volksliteratur der Türkischen Stämme Südsiberiens; Ch. de Ujfalvy, Le Kohistan, le Ferghanah, et Kouldja; also Bull. de la Soc. de Géo. (1878-1879); Semenoff, paper in Petermann’s Mittheilungen (1859), No. 3; Valikhanov’s Travels in 1858-1859; Madame de Ujfalvy, papers in Tour du Monde (1874); Vambéry, Die primitive Cultur des Turko-Tatarischen Volkes; P. S. Pallas, Observations sur les Kirghiz (1769; French trans., 1803); Andriev, “La Horde Moyenne,” in Bull. de la Soc. de Géogr. de St Petersburg (1875); Radomtsev, Excursion dans le steppe Kirghiz; Lansdell, Russian Centralasia (1885); Jadrinzer, La Sibérie (1886). Skrine and Ross, Heart of Asia (1899); E. H. Parker, A Thousand Years of the Tartars (1895). Various Russian works by Nalivkin, published in Turkestan, contain much valuable information, and N. N. Pantusov, Specimens of Kirghiz Popular Poetry, with Russian translations (Kazan, 1903-1904).

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KIRIN, a province of central Manchuria, with a capital bearing the same name. The province has an area of 90,000 sq. m., and a population of 6,500,000. The chief towns besides the capital are Kwang-chêng-tsze, 80 m. N.W. of the capital, and Harbin on the Sungari river. The city of Kirin is situated at the foot of the Lau-Ye-Ling mountains, on the left bank of the Sungari or Girin-ula, there 300 yds. wide, and is served by a branch of the Manchurian railway. The situation is one of exceptional beauty; but the streets are narrow, irregular and indescribably filthy. The western part of the town is built upon a swamp and is under water a great part of the year. The dockyards are supplied with machinery from Europe and are efficient. Tobacco is the principal article of trade, the kind grown in the province being greatly prized throughout the Chinese empire under the name of “Manchu leaf.” Formerly ginseng was also an important staple, but the supply from this quarter of the country has been exhausted. Outside the town lies a plain “thickly covered with open coffins containing the dead bodies of Chinese emigrants exposed for identification and removal by their friends; if no claim is made during ten years the remains are buried on the spot.” Kirin was chosen by the emperor K’anghi as a military post during the wars with the Eleuths; and it owes its Chinese name of Ch’uen-ch’ang, i.e. Naval Yard, to his building there the vessels for the transport of his troops. The population was estimated at 300,000 in 1812; in 1909 it was about 120,000.

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KIRK, SIR JOHN (1832- ), British naturalist and administrator, son of the Rev. John Kirk, was born at Barry, near Arbroath, on the 19th of December 1832. He was educated at Edinburgh for the medical profession, and after serving on the civil medical staff throughout the Crimean War, was appointed in February 1858 physician and naturalist to David Livingstone’s second expedition to Central Africa. He was by Livingstone’s side in most of his journeyings during the next five years, and was one of the first four white men to behold Lake Nyassa (Sept. 16, 1859). He was finally invalided home on the 9th of May 1863. The reputation he gained during this expedition led to his appointment in January 1866 as acting surgeon to the political agency at Zanzibar. In 1868 he became assistant political agent, being raised to the rank of consul-general in 1873 and agent in 1880. He retired from that post in 1887. The twenty-one years spent by Kirk in Zanzibar covered the most critical period of the history of European intervention in East Africa; and during the greater part of that time he was the virtual ruler of the country. With Seyyid Bargash, who became sultan in 1870, he had a controlling influence, and after the failure of Sir Bartle Frere’s efforts he succeeded in obtaining (June 5, 1873) the sultan’s signature to a treaty abolishing the slave trade in his dominions. In 1877 Bargash offered to a British merchant—Sir W. Mackinnon—a lease of his mainland territories, and he gave Kirk a declaration in which he bound himself not to cede territory to any other power than Great Britain, a declaration ignored by the British government. When Germany in 1885 claimed districts considered by the sultan to belong to Zanzibar, Kirk intervened to prevent Bargash going in person to Berlin to protest and induced him to submit to the dismemberment of his dominions. In the delicate negotiations which followed Kirk used his powers to checkmate the German designs to supplant the British in Zanzibar itself; this he did without destroying the Arab form of government. He also directed the efforts, this time successful, to obtain for Britain a portion of the mainland—Bargash in May 1887 granting to Mackinnon a lease of territory which led to the foundation of British East Africa. Having thus served both Great Britain and Zanzibar, Kirk resigned his post (July 1887), retiring from the consular service. In 1889-1890 he was a plenipotentiary at the slave trade conference in Brussels, and was one of the delegates who fixed the tariff duties to be imposed in the Congo basin. In 1895 he was sent by the British government on a mission to the Niger; and on his return he was appointed a member of the Foreign Office committee for constructing the Uganda railway. As a naturalist Kirk took high rank, and many species of the flora and fauna of Central Africa were made known by him, and several bear his name, e.g. the Otogale kirkii (a lemuroid), the Madoqua kirkii (a diminutive antelope), the Landolphia kirkii and the Clematis kirkii. For his services to geography he received in 1882 the patrons’ medal of the Royal Geographical Society, of which society he became foreign secretary. Kirk was created K.C.B. in 1900. He married, in 1867, Miss Helen Cooke.

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KIRKBY, JOHN (d. 1290), English ecclesiastic and statesman, entered the public service as a clerk of the chancery during the reign of Henry III. Under Edward I. he acted as keeper of the great seal during the frequent absences of the chancellor, Robert Burnell, being referred to as vice-chancellor. In 1282 he was employed by the king to make a tour through the counties and boroughs for the purpose of collecting money; this and his other services to Edward were well rewarded, and although not yet ordained priest he held several valuable benefices in the church. In 1283 he was chosen bishop of Rochester, but owing to the opposition of the archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, he did not press his claim to this see. In 1286, however, two years after he had become treasurer, he was elected bishop of Ely, and he was ordained priest and then consecrated by Peckham. He died at Ely on the 26th of March 1290. Kirkby was a benefactor to his see, to which he left some property in London, including the locality now known as Ely Place, where for many years stood the London residence of the bishop of Ely.

Kirkby’s Quest is the name given to a survey of various English counties which was made under the bishop’s direction probably in 1284 and 1285. For this see Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids, 1284-1431, vol. i. (London, 1899).

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KIRKCALDY (locally pronounced Kerkawdi), a royal, municipal and police burgh and seaport of Fifeshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 34,079. It lies on the Firth of Forth, 26 m. N. of Edinburgh by the North British railway, via the Forth Bridge. Although Columba is said to have planted a church here, the authoritative history of the town does not begin for several centuries after the era of the saint. In 1240 the church was bestowed by David, bishop of St Andrews, on Dunfermline Abbey, and in 1334 the town with its harbour was granted by David II. to the same abbey, by which it was conveyed to the bailies and council in 1450, when Kirkcaldy was created a royal burgh. In the course of another century it had become an important commercial centre, the salt trade of the district being then the largest in Scotland. In 1644, when Charles I. raised it to a free port, it owned a hundred vessels, and six years later it was assessed as the sixth town in the kingdom. After the Union its shipping fell off, Jacobite troubles and the American War of Independence accelerating the decline. But its linen manufactures, begun early in the 18th century, gradually restored prosperity; and when other industries had taken root its fortunes advanced by leaps and bounds, and there is now no more flourishing community in Scotland. The chief topographical feature of the burgh is its length, from which it is called the “lang toun.” Formerly it consisted of little besides High Street, with closes and wynds branching off from it; but now that it has absorbed Invertiel, Linktown and Abbotshall on the west, and Pathhead, Sinclairtown and Gallatown on the east, it has reached a length of nearly 4 m. Its public buildings include the parish church, in the Gothic style, St Brycedale United Free church, with a spire 200 ft. high, a town-hall, corn exchange, public libraries, assembly rooms, fever hospital, sheriff court buildings, people’s club and institute, high school (1894)—on the site of the ancient burgh school (1582)—the Beveridge hall and free library, and the Adam Smith memorial hall. To the west lies Beveridge Park of 110 acres, including a large sheet of water, which was presented to the town in 1892. The harbour has an inner and outer division, with wet dock and wharves. Plans for its extension were approved in 1903. They include the extension of the east pier, the construction of a south pier 800 ft. in length, and of a tidal harbour 5 acres in area and a dock of 4 acres. Besides the manufacture of sheeting, towelling, ticks, dowlas and sail-cloth, the principal industries include flax-spinning, net-making, bleaching, dyeing, tanning, brewing, brass and iron founding, and there are potteries, flour-mills, engineering works, fisheries, and factories for the making of oil-cloth and linoleum. In 1847 Michael Nairn conceived the notion of utilizing the fibre of cork and oil-paint in such a way as to produce a floor-covering more lasting than carpet and yet capable of taking a pattern. The result of his experiments was oil-cloth, in the manufacture of which Kirkcaldy has kept the predominance to which Nairn’s enterprise entitled it. Indeed, this and the kindred linoleum business (also due to Nairn, who in 1877 built the first linoleum factory in Scotland) were for many years the monopoly of Kirkcaldy. There is a large direct export trade with the United States. Among well-known natives of the town were Adam Smith, Henry Balnaves of Halhill, the Scottish reformer and lord of session in the time of Queen Mary; George Gillespie, the theologian and a leading member of the Westminster Assembly, and his younger brother Patrick (1617-1675), a friend of Cromwell and principal of Glasgow University; John Ritchie (1778-1870), one of the founders of the Scotsman; General Sir John Oswald (1771-1840), who had a command at San Sebastian and Vittoria. Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie castle, about 1½ m. W. of the town, was sent with Sir David Wemyss to bring the Maid of Norway to Scotland in 1290; Sir Walter Scott was therefore in error in adopting the tradition that identified him with the wizard of the same name, who died in 1234. Carlyle and Edward Irving were teachers in the town, where Irving spent seven years, and where he made the acquaintance of the lady he afterwards married. Kirkcaldy combines with Dysart, Kinghorn and Burntisland to return one member to parliament.

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KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE, SIR WILLIAM (c. 1520-1573), Scottish politician, was the eldest son of Sir James Kirkcaldy of Grange (d. 1556), a member of an old Fifeshire family. Sir James was lord high treasurer of Scotland from 1537 to 1543 and was a determined opponent of Cardinal Beaton, for whose murder in 1546 he was partly responsible. William Kirkcaldy assisted to compass this murder, and when the castle of St Andrews surrendered to the French in July 1547 he was sent as a prisoner to Normandy, whence he escaped in 1550. He was then employed in France as a secret agent by the advisers of Edward VI., being known in the cyphers as Corax; and later he served in the French army, where he gained a lasting reputation for skill and bravery. The sentence passed on Kirkcaldy for his share in Beaton’s murder was removed in 1556, and returning to Scotland in 1557 he came quickly to the front; as a Protestant he was one of the leaders of the lords of the congregation in their struggle with the regent, Mary of Lorraine, and he assisted to harass the French troops in Fife. He opposed Queen Mary’s marriage with Darnley, being associated at this time with Murray, and was forced for a short time to seek refuge in England. Returning to Scotland, he was accessory to the murder of Rizzio, but he had no share in that of Darnley; and he was one of the lords who banded themselves together to rescue Mary after her marriage with Bothwell. After the fight at Carberry Hill the queen surrendered herself to Kirkcaldy, and his generalship was mainly responsible for her defeat at Langside. He seems, however, to have believed that an arrangement with Mary was possible, and coming under the influence of Maitland of Lethington, whom in September 1569 he released by a stratagem from his confinement in Edinburgh, he was soon “vehemently suspected of his fellows.” After the murder of Murray Kirkcaldy ranged himself definitely among the friends of the imprisoned queen. About this time he forcibly released one of his supporters from imprisonment, a step which led to an altercation with his former friend John Knox, who called him a “murderer and throat-cutter.” Defying the regent Lennox, Kirkcaldy began to strengthen the fortifications of Edinburgh castle, of which he was governor, and which he held for Mary, and early in 1573 he refused to come to an agreement with the regent Morton because the terms of peace did not include a section of his friends. After this some English troops arrived to help the Scots, and in May 1573 the castle surrendered. Strenuous efforts were made to save Kirkcaldy from the vengeance of his foes, but they were unavailing; Knox had prophesied that he would be hanged, and he was hanged on the 3rd of August 1573.

See Sir James Melville’s Memoirs, edited by T. Thomson (Edinburgh, 1827); J. Grant, Memoirs and Adventures of Sir W. Kirkaldy (Edinburgh, 1849); L. A. Barbé, Kirkcaldy of Grange (1897); and A. Lang, History of Scotland, vol. ii. (1902).

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KIRKCUDBRIGHT (pron. Ker-kú-bri), a royal and police burgh, and county town of Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 2386. It is situated at the mouth of the Dee, 6 m. from the sea and 30 m. S.W. of Dumfries by the Glasgow & South-Western railway, being the terminus of a branch line. The old form of the name of the town was Kilcudbrit, from the Gaelic Cil Cudbert, “the chapel of Cuthbert,” the saint’s body having lain here for a short time during the seven years that lapsed between its exhumation at Lindisfarne and the re-interment at Chester-le-Street. The estuary of the Dee is divided at its head by the peninsula of St Mary’s Isle, but though the harbour is the best in south-western Scotland, the great distance to which the tide retreats impairs its usefulness. Among the public buildings are the academy, Johnstone public school, the county buildings, town-hall, museum, Mackenzie hall and market cross, the last-named standing in front of the old court-house, which is now used as a drill hall and fire-station. No traces remain of the Greyfriars’ or Franciscan convent founded by Alexander II., nor of the nunnery that was erected in the parish of Kirkcudbright. The ivy-clad ruins of Bomby castle, founded in 1582 by Sir Thomas Maclellan, ancestor of the barons of Kirkcudbright, stand at the end of the chief street. The town, which witnessed much of the international strife and Border lawlessness, was taken by Edward I. in 1300. It received its royal charter in 1455. After the battle of Towton, Henry VI. crossed the Solway (August 1461) and landed at Kirkcudbright to join Queen Margaret at Linlithgow. It successfully withstood the English siege in 1547 under Sir Thomas Carleton, but after the country had been overrun was compelled to surrender at discretion. Lord Maxwell, earl of Morton, as a Roman Catholic, mustered his tenants here to act in concert with the Armada; but on the approach of King James VI. to Dumfries he took ship at Kirkcudbright and was speedily captured. The burgh is one of the Dumfries district group of parliamentary burghs. On St Mary’s Isle was situated the seat of the earl of Selkirk, at whose house Robert Burns gave the famous Selkirk grace:—

“Some ha’e meat; and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we ha’e meat, and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.”

Fergus, lord of Galloway, a celebrated church-builder of the 12th century, had his principal seat on Palace Isle in a lake called after him Loch Fergus, near St Mary’s Isle, where he erected the priory de Trayle, in token of his penitence for rebellion against David I. The priory was afterwards united as a dependent cell to the abbey of Holyrood. Dundrennan Abbey, 4½ m. S.E., was, however, his greatest achievement. It was a Cistercian house, colonized from Rievaulx, and was built in 1140. There now remain only the transept and choir, a unique example of the Early Pointed style. Tongueland (or Tungland), 2½ m. N. by E., has interesting historical associations. It was the site of a Premonstratensian abbey built by Fergus, and it was here that Queen Mary rested in her flight from the field of Langside (May 13, 1568). The well near Tongueland bridge from which she drank still bears the name of the Queen’s Well.

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KIRKCUDBRIGHTSHIRE (also known as the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright and East Galloway), a south-western county of Scotland, bounded N. and N.W. by Ayrshire, W. and S.W. by Wigtownshire, S. and S.E. by the Irish Sea and Solway Firth, and E. and N.E. by Dumfriesshire. It includes the small islands of Hestan and Little Ross, which are utilized as lighthouse stations. It has an area of 575,565 acres or 899 sq. m. The north-western part of the shire is rugged, wild and desolate. In this quarter the principal mountains are Merrick (2764 ft.), the highest in the south of Scotland, and the group of the Rinns of Kells, the chief peaks of which are Corscrine (2668), Carlins Cairn (2650), Meikle Millyea (2446) and Millfire (2350). Towards the south-west the chief eminences are Lamachan (2349), Larg (2216), and the bold mass of Cairnsmore of Fleet (2331). In the south-east the only imposing height is Criffel (1866). In the north rises the majestic hill of Cairnsmuir of Carsphairn (2612), and close to the Ayrshire border is the Windy Standard (2287). The southern section of the shire is mostly level or undulating, but characterized by much picturesque scenery. The shore is generally bold and rocky, indented by numerous estuaries forming natural harbours, which however are of little use for commerce owing to the shallowness of the sea. Large stretches of sand are exposed in the Solway at low water and the rapid flow of the tide has often occasioned loss of life. The number of “burns” and “waters” is remarkable, but their length seldom exceeds 7 or 8 m. Among the longer rivers are the Cree, which rises in Loch Moan and reaches the sea near Creetown after a course of about 30 m., during which it forms the boundary, at first of Ayrshire and then of Wigtownshire; the Dee or Black Water of Dee (so named from the peat by which it is coloured), which rises in Loch Dee and after a course mainly S.E. and finally S., enters the sea at St Mary’s Isle below Kirkcudbright, its length being nearly 36 m.; the Urr, rising in Loch Urr on the Dumfriesshire border, falls into the sea a few miles south of Dalbeattie 27 m. from its source; the Ken, rising on the confines of Ayrshire, flows mainly in a southerly direction and joins the Dee at the southern end of Loch Ken after a course of 24 m. through lovely scenery; and the Deugh which, rising on the northern flank of the Windy Standard, pursues an extraordinarily winding course of 20 m. before reaching the Ken. The Nith, during the last few miles of its flow, forms the boundary with Dumfriesshire, to which county it almost wholly belongs. The lochs and mountain tarns are many and well distributed; but except Loch Ken, which is about 6 m. long by ½ m. wide, few of them attain noteworthy dimensions. There are several passes in the hill regions, but the only well-known glen is Glen Trool, not far from the district of Carrick in Ayrshire, the fame of which rests partly on the romantic character of its scenery, which is very wild around Loch Trool, and more especially on its associations with Robert Bruce. It was here that when most closely beset by his enemies, who had tracked him to his fastness by sleuth hounds, Bruce with the aid of a few faithful followers won a surprise victory over the English in 1307 which proved the turning-point of his fortunes.

Geology.—Silurian and Ordovician rocks are the most important in this county; they are thrown into oft-repeated folds with their axes lying in a N.E.-S.W. direction. The Ordovician rocks are graptolitic black shales and grits of Llandeilo and Caradoc age. They occupy all the northern part of the county north-west of a line which runs some 3 m. N. of New Galloway and just S. of the Rinns of Kells. South-east of this line graptolitic Silurian shales of Llandovery age prevail; they are found around Dalry, Creetown, New Galloway, Castle Douglas and Kirkcudbright. Overlying the Llandovery beds on the south coast are strips of Wenlock rocks; they extend from Bridgehouse Bay to Auchinleck and are well exposed in Kirkcudbright Bay, and they can be traced farther round the coast between the granite and the younger rocks. Carboniferous rocks appear in small faulted tracts, unconformable on the Silurian, on the shores of the Solway Firth. They are best developed about Kirkbean, where they include a basal red breccia followed by conglomerates, grits and cement stones of Calciferous Sandstone age. Brick-red sandstones of Permian age just come within the county on the W. side of the Nith at Dumfries. Volcanic necks occur in the Permian and basalt dikes penetrate the Silurian at Borgue, Kirkandrews, &c. Most of the highest ground is formed by the masses of granite which have been intruded into the Ordovician and Silurian rocks; the Criffel mass lies about Dalbeattie and Bengairn, another mass extends east and west between the Cairnsmore of Fleet and Loch Ken, another lies N.W. and S.E. between Loch Doon and Loch Dee and a small mass forms the Cairnsmore of Carsphairn. Glacial deposits occupy much of the low ground; the ice, having travelled in a southerly or south-easterly direction, has left abundant striae on the higher ground to indicate its course. Radiation of the ice streams took place from the heights of Merrick, Kells, &c.; local moraines are found near Carsphairn and in the Deagh and Minnoch valleys. Glacial drumlins of boulder clay lie in the vales of the Dee, Cree and Urr.

Climate and Agriculture.—The climate and soil are better fitted for grass and green crops than for grain. The annual rainfall averages 45.7 in. The mean temperature for the year is 48° F.; for January 38.5°; for July 59°. The major part of the land is either waste or poor pasture. More than half the holdings consist of 50 acres and over. Oats is the predominant grain crop, the acreage under barley being small and that under wheat insignificant. Turnips are successfully cultivated, and potatoes are the only other green crop raised on a moderately large scale. Sheep-rearing has been pursued with great enterprise. The average is considerably in excess of that for Scotland. Blackfaced and Cheviots are the most common on the high ground, and a cross of Leicester with either is also in favour. Cattle-breeding is followed with steady success; the black polled Galloway is the general breed, but Aryshires have been introduced for dairying, cheese-making occupying much of the farmers’ attention. Horses are extensively raised, a breed of small-sized hardy and spirited animals being specifically known as Galloways. Most of the horses are used in agricultural work, but a large number are also kept for stock; Clydesdales are bred to some extent. Pig-rearing is an important pursuit, pork being supplied to the English markets in considerable quantities. During the last quarter of the 19th century the number of pigs increased 50%. Bee-keeping has been followed with special care and the honey of the shire is consequently in good repute. The proportion of woodland in the county is small.

Industries.—The shire ranks next to Aberdeen as a granite-yielding county and the quarries occupy a large number of hands. In some towns and villages there are manufactures of linen, woollen and cotton goods; at various places distilling, brewing, tanning and paper-making are carried on, and at Dalbeattie there are brick and tile works. There is a little ship-building at Kirkcudbright. The Solway fishery is of small account, but salmon fishing is prosecuted at the mouth of certain rivers, the Dee fish being notable for their excellence.

The only railway communication is by the Glasgow & South-Western railway running from Dumfries to Castle Douglas, from which there is a branch to Kirkcudbright, and the Portpatrick and Wigtownshire railway, beginning at Castle Douglas and leaving the county at Newton Stewart. These are supplemented by coaches between various points, as from New Galloway to Carsphairn, from Dumfries to New Abbey and Dalbeattie, and from Auchencairn to Dalbeattie.

Population and Government.—The population was 39,985 in 1891 and 39,383 in 1901, when 98 persons spoke Gaelic and English. The chief towns are Castle Douglas (pop. in 1901, 3018), Dalbeattie (3469), Kirkcudbright (2386), Maxwelltown (5796) with Creetown (991), and Gatehouse of Fleet (1013). The shire returns one member to parliament, and the county town (Kirkcudbright) belongs to the Dumfries district group of parliamentary burghs, and Maxwelltown is combined with Dumfries. The county forms part of the sheriffdom of Dumfries and Galloway, and there is a resident sheriff-substitute at Kirkcudbright. The county is under school-board jurisdiction. There is an academy at Kirkcudbright, high schools at Dumfries and Newton Stewart, and technical classes at Kirkcudbright, Dalbeattie, Castle Douglas and Dumfries.

History.—The country west of the Nith was originally peopled by a tribe of Celtic Gaels called Novantae, or Atecott Picts, who, owing to their geographical position, which prevented any ready intermingling with the other Pictish tribes farther north, long retained their independence. After Agricola’s invasion in A.D. 79 the country nominally formed part of the Roman province, but the evidence is against there ever having been a prolonged effective Roman occupation. After the retreat of the Romans the Novantae remained for a time under their own chiefs, but in the 7th century accepted the overlordship of Northumbria. The Saxons, soon engaged in struggles with the Norsemen, had no leisure to look after their tributaries, and early in the 9th century the Atecotts made common cause with the Vikings. Henceforward they were styled, probably in contempt, Gallgaidhel, or stranger Gaels (i.e. Gaels who fraternized with the foreigners), the Welsh equivalent for which, Gallwyddel, gave rise to the name of Galloway (of which Galway is a variant), which was applied to their territory and still denotes the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright and the shire of Wigtown. When Scotland was consolidated under Kenneth MacAlpine (crowned at Scone in 844), Galloway was the only district in the south that did not form part of the kingdom; but in return for the services rendered to him at this crisis Kenneth gave his daughter in marriage to the Galloway chief, Olaf the White, and also conferred upon the men of Galloway the privilege of marching in the van of the Scottish armies, a right exercised and recognized for several centuries. During the next two hundred years the country had no rest from Danish and Saxon incursions and the continual lawlessness of the Scandinavian rovers. When Malcolm Canmore defeated and slew Macbeth in 1057 he married the dead king’s widow Ingibiorg, a Pictish princess, an event which marked the beginning of the decay of Norse influence. The Galloway chiefs hesitated for a time whether to throw in their lot with the Northumbrians or with Malcolm; but language, race and the situation of their country at length induced them to become lieges of the Scottish king. By the close of the 11th century the boundary between England and Scotland was roughly delimited on existing lines. The feudal system ultimately destroyed the power of the Galloway chiefs, who resisted the innovation to the last. Several of the lords or “kings” of Galloway, a line said to have been founded by Fergus, the greatest of them all, asserted in vain their independence of the Scottish crown; and in 1234 the line became extinct in the male branch on the death of Fergus’s great-grandson Alan. One of Alan’s daughters, Dervorguila, had married John de Baliol (father of the John de Baliol who was king of Scotland from 1292 until his abdication in 1296), and the people, out of affection for Alan’s daughter, were lukewarm in support of Robert Bruce. In 1308 the district was cleared of the English and brought under allegiance to the king, when the lordship of Galloway was given to Edward Bruce. Later in the 14th century Galloway espoused the cause of Edward Baliol, who surrendered several counties, including Kirkcudbright, to Edward III. In 1372 Archibald the Grim, a natural son of Sir James Douglas “the Good,” became Lord of Galloway and received in perpetual fee the Crown lands between the Nith and Cree. He appointed a steward to collect his revenues and administer justice, and there thus arose the designation of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The high-handed rule of the Douglases created general discontent, and when their treason became apparent their territory was overrun by the king’s men in 1455; Douglas was attainted, and his honours and estates were forfeited. In that year the great stronghold of the Thrieve, the most important fortress in Galloway, which Archibald the Grim had built on the Dee immediately to the west of the modern town of Castle Douglas, was reduced and converted into a royal keep. (It was dismantled in 1640 by order of the Estates in consequence of the hostility of its keeper, Lord Nithsdale, to the Covenant.) The famous cannon Mons Meg, now in Edinburgh Castle, is said, apparently on insufficient evidence, to have been constructed in order to aid James III. in this siege. As the Douglases went down the Maxwells rose, and the debateable land on the south-east of Dumfriesshire was for generations the scene of strife and raid, not only between the two nations but also among the leading families, of whom the Maxwells, Johnstones and Armstrongs were always conspicuous. After the battle of Solway Moss (1542) the shires of Kirkcudbright and Dumfries fell under English rule for a short period. The treaty of Norham (March 24, 1550) established a truce between the nations for ten years; and in 1552, the Wardens of the Marches consenting, the debateable land ceased to be matter for debate, the parish of Canonbie being annexed to Dumfriesshire, that of Kirkandrews to Cumberland. Though at the Reformation the Stewartry became fervent in its Protestantism, it was to Galloway, through the influence of the great landowners and the attachment of the people to them, that Mary owed her warmest adherents, and it was from the coast of Kirkcudbright that she made her luckless voyage to England. Even when the crowns were united in 1603 turbulence continued; for trouble arose over the attempt to establish episcopacy, and nowhere were the Covenanters more cruelly persecuted than in Galloway. After the union things mended slowly but surely, curious evidence of growing commercial prosperity being the enormous extent to which smuggling was carried on. No coast could serve the “free traders” better than the shores of Kirkcudbright, and the contraband trade flourished till the 19th century. The Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 elicited small sympathy from the inhabitants of the shire.

See Sir Herbert Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway (Edinburgh, 1896); Rev. Andrew Symson, A Large Description of Galloway (1684; new ed., 1823); Thomas Murray, The Literary History of Galloway (1822); Rev. William Mackenzie, History of Galloway (1841); P. H. McKerlie, History of the Lands and their Owners in Galloway (Edinburgh, 1870-1879); Galloway Ancient and Modern (Edinburgh, 1891); J. A. H. Murray, Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland (London, 1873).

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KIRKE, PERCY (c. 1646-1691), English soldier, was the son of George Kirke, a court official to Charles I. and Charles II. In 1666 he obtained his first commission in the Lord Admiral’s regiment, and subsequently served in the Blues. He was with Monmouth at Maestricht (1673), and was present during two campaigns with Turenne on the Rhine. In 1680 he became lieutenant-colonel, and soon afterwards colonel of one of the Tangier regiments (afterwards the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regt.) In 1682 Kirke became governor of Tangier, and colonel of the old Tangier regiment (afterwards the Queen’s Royal West Surrey). He distinguished himself very greatly as governor, though he gave offence by the roughness of his manners and the wildness of his life. On the evacuation of Tangier “Kirke’s Lambs” (so called from their badge) returned to England, and a year later their colonel served as a brigadier in Faversham’s army. After Sedgemoor the rebels were treated with great severity; but the charges so often brought against the “Lambs” are now known to be exaggerated, though the regiment shared to the full in the ruthless hunting down of the fugitives. It is often stated that it formed Jeffreys’s escort in the “Bloody Assize,” but this is erroneous. Brigadier Kirke took a notable part in the Revolution three years later, and William III. promoted him. He commanded at the relief of Derry, and made his last campaign in Flanders in 1691. He died, a lieutenant-general, at Brussels in October of that year. His eldest son, Lieut.-General Percy Kirke (1684-1741), was also colonel of the “Lambs.”

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KIRKEE (or Kirki), a town and military cantonment of British India in Poona district, Bombay, 4 m. N.W. of Poona city. Pop. (1901), 10,797. It is the principal artillery station in the Bombay presidency, and has a large ammunition factory. It was the scene of a victory over Baji Rao, the last peshwa, in 1817.

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KIRKINTILLOCH, a municipal and police burgh of Dumbartonshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 10,680. It is situated 8 m. N.E. of Glasgow, by the North British railway, a portion of the parish extending into Lanarkshire. It lies on the Forth & Clyde canal, and the Kelvin—from which Lord Kelvin, the distinguished scientist, took the title of his barony—flows past the town, where it receives from the north the Glazert and from the south the Luggie, commemorated by David Gray. The Wall of Antoninus ran through the site of the town, the Gaelic name of which (Caer, a fort, not Kirk, a church) means “the fort at the end of the ridge.” The town became a burgh of barony under the Comyns in 1170. The cruciform parish church with crow-stepped gables dates from 1644. The public buildings include the town-hall, with a clock tower, the temperance hall, a convalescent home, the Broomhill home for incurables (largely due to Miss Beatrice Clugston, to whom a memorial was erected in 1891), and the Westermains asylum. In 1898 the burgh acquired as a private park the Peel, containing traces of the Roman Wall, a fort, and the foundation of Comyn’s Castle. The leading industries are chemical manufactures, iron-founding, muslin-weaving, coal mining and timber sawing. Lenzie, a suburb, a mile to the south of the old town, contains the imposing towered edifice in the Elizabethan style which houses the Barony asylum. David Gray, the poet, was born at Merkland, near by, and is buried in Kirkintilloch churchyard, where a monument was erected to his memory in 1865.

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KIRK-KILISSEH (Kirk-Kilisse or Kirk-Kilissia), a town of European Turkey, in the vilayet of Adrianople, 35 m. E. of Adrianople. Pop. (1905), about 16,000, of whom about half are Greeks, and the remainder Bulgarians, Turks and Jews. Kirk-Kilisseh is built near the headwaters of several small tributaries of the river Ergene, and on the western slope of the Istranja Dagh. It owes its chief importance to its position at the southern outlet of the Fakhi defile over these mountains, through which passes the shortest road from Shumla to Constantinople. The name Kirk-Kilisseh signifies “four churches,” and the town possesses many mosques and Greek churches. It has an important trade with Constantinople in butter and cheese, and also exports wine, brandy, cereals and tobacco.

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KIRKSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Adair county, Missouri, U.S.A., about 129 m. N. by W. of Jefferson City. Pop. (1900), 5966, including 112 foreign-born and 291 negroes; (1910), 6347. It is served by the Wabash and the Quincy, Omaha & Kansas City railways. It lies on a rolling prairie at an elevation of 975 ft. above the sea. It is the seat of the First District Missouri State Normal School (1870); of the American School of Osteopathy (opened 1892); and of the related A. T. Still Infirmary (incorporated 1895), named in honour of its founder, Andrew Taylor Still (b. 1820), the originator of osteopathic treatment, who settled here in 1875. In 1908 the School of Osteopathy had 18 instructors and 398 students. Grain and fruit are grown in large quantities, and much coal is mined in the vicinity of Kirksville. Its manufactures are shoes, bricks, lumber, ice, agricultural implements, wagons and handles. Kirksville was laid out in 1842, and was named in honour of Jesse Kirk. It was incorporated as a town in 1857 and chartered as a city of the third class in 1892. In April 1899 a cyclone caused serious damage to the city.

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KIRKWALL (Norse, Kirkjuvagr, “church bay”), a royal, municipal and police burgh, seaport and capital of the Orkney Islands, county of Orkney, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 3711. It is situated at the head of a bay of the same name on the east of the island of Pomona, or Mainland, 247 m. N. of Leith and 54 m. N. of Wick by steamer. Much of the city is quaint-looking and old-fashioned, its main street (nearly 1 m. long) being in parts so narrow that two vehicles cannot pass each other. The more modern quarters are built with great regularity and the suburbs contain several substantial villas surrounded by gardens. Kirkwall has very few manufactures. The linen trade introduced in the middle of the 18th century is extinct, and a like fate has overtaken the kelp and straw-plaiting industries. Distilling however prospers, and the town is important not only as regards its shipping and the deep-sea fishery, but also as a distributing centre for the islands and the seat of the superior law courts. The port has two piers. Kirkwall received its first charter from James III. in 1486, but the provisions of this instrument being disregarded by such men as Robert (d. 1592) and Patrick Stewart (d. 1614), 1st and 2nd earls of Orkney, and others, the Scottish parliament passed an act in 1670 confirming the charter granted by Charles II. in 1661. The prime object of interest is the cathedral of St Magnus, a stately cruciform red sandstone structure in the severest Norman, with touches of Gothic. It was founded by Jarl Rognvald (Earl Ronald) in 1137 in memory of his uncle Jarl Magnus who was assassinated in the island of Egilshay in 1115, and afterwards canonized and adopted as the patron saint of the Orkneys. The remains of St Magnus were ultimately interred in the cathedral. The church is 234 ft. long from east to west and 56 ft. broad, 71 ft. high from floor to roof, and 133 ft. to the top of the present spire—the transepts being the oldest portion. The choir was lengthened and the beautiful eastern rose window added by Bishop Stewart in 1511, and the porch and the western end of the nave were finished in 1540 by Bishop Robert Reid. Saving that the upper half of the original spire was struck by lightning in 1671, and not rebuilt, the cathedral is complete at all points, but it underwent extensive repairs in the 19th century. The disproportionate height and narrowness of the building lend it a certain distinction which otherwise it would have lacked. The sandstone has not resisted the effects of weather, and much of the external decorative work has perished. The choir is used as the parish church. The skellat, or fire-bell, is not rung now. The church of St Olaf, from which the town took its name, was burned down by the English in 1502; and of the church erected on its site by Bishop Reid—the greatest building the Orkneys ever had—little more than the merest fragment survives. Nothing remains of the old castle, a fortress of remarkable strength founded by Sir Henry Sinclair (d. 1400), earl and prince of Orkney and 1st earl of Caithness, its last vestiges having been demolished in 1865 to provide better access to the harbour; and the earthwork to the east of the town thrown up by the Cromwellians has been converted into a battery of the Orkney Artillery Volunteers. Adjoining the cathedral are the ruins of the bishop’s palace, in which King Haco died after his defeat at Largs in 1263. The round tower, which still stands, was added in 1550 by Bishop Reid. It is known as the Mass Tower and contains a niche in which is a small effigy believed to represent the founder, who also endowed the grammar school which is still in existence. To the east of the remains of the bishop’s palace are the ruins of the earl’s palace, a structure in the Scottish Baronial style, built about 1600 for Patrick Stewart, 2nd earl of Orkney, and on his forfeiture given to the bishops for a residence. Tankerness House is a characteristic example of the mansion of an Orkney laird of the olden time. Other public buildings include the municipal buildings, the sheriff court and county buildings, Balfour hospital, and the fever hospital. There is daily communication with Scrabster pier (Thurso), via Scapa pier, on the southern side of the waist of Pomona, about 1½ m. to the S. of Kirkwall; and steamers sail at regular intervals from the harbour to Wick, Aberdeen and Leith. Good roads place the capital in touch with most places in the island and a coach runs twice a day to Stromness. Kirkwall belongs to the Wick district group of parliamentary burghs, the others being Cromarty, Dingwall, Dornoch and Tain.

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KIRRIEMUIR, a police burgh of Forfarshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 4096. It is situated on a height above the glen through which the Gairie flows, 6¼ m. N.W. of Forfar by a branch line of the Caledonian railway of which it is the terminus. There are libraries, a public hall and a park. The staple industry is linen-weaving. The hand-loom lingered longer here than in any other place in Scotland and is not yet wholly extinct. The Rev. Dr Alexander Whyte (b. 1837) and J. M. Barrie (b. 1860) are natives, the latter having made the town famous under the name of “Thrums.” The original Secession church—the kirk of the Auld Lichts—was founded in 1806 and rebuilt in 1893. Kinnordy, 1½ m. N.W., was the birthplace of Sir Charles Lyell the geologist; and Cortachy castle, a fine mansion in the Scottish Baronial style, about 4 m. N., is the seat of the earl of Airlie.

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KIRSCH (or Kirschenwasser), a potable spirit distilled from cherries. Kirsch is manufactured chiefly in the Black Forest in Germany, and in the Vosges and Jura districts in France. Generally the raw material consists of the wild cherry known as Cerasus avium. The cherries are subjected to natural fermentation and subsequent distillation. Occasionally a certain quantity of sugar and water are added to the cherries after crushing, and the mass so obtained is filtered or pressed prior to fermentation. The spirit is usually “run” at a strength of about 50% of absolute alcohol. Compared with brandy or whisky the characteristic features of kirsch are (a) that it contains relatively large quantities of higher alcohols and compound ethers, and (b) the presence in this spirit of small quantities of hydrocyanic acid, partly as such and partly in combination as benzaldehyde-cyanhydrine, to which the distinctive flavour of kirsch is largely due.

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KIR-SHEHER, the chief town of a sanjak of the same name in the Angora vilayet of Asia Minor, situated on a tributary of the Kizil Irmak (Halys), on the Angora-Kaisarieh road. It is on the line of the projected railway from Angora to Kaisarieh. The town gives its name to the excellent carpets made in the vicinity. On the outskirts there is a hot chalybeate spring. Population about 9000 (700 Christians, mostly Armenians). Kir-sheher represents the ancient Mocissus, a small town which became important in the Byzantine period: it was enlarged by the emperor Justinian, who re-named it Justinianopolis, and made it the capital of a large division of Cappadocia, a position it still retains.

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KIRWAN, RICHARD (1733-1812), Irish scientist, was born at Cloughballymore, Co. Galway, in 1733. Part of his early life was spent abroad, and in 1754 he entered the Jesuit novitiate either at St Omer or at Hesdin, but returned to Ireland in the following year, when he succeeded to the family estates through the death of his brother in a duel. In 1766, having conformed to the established religion two years previously, he was called to the Irish bar, but in 1768 abandoned practice in favour of scientific pursuits. During the next nineteen years he resided chiefly in London, enjoying the society of the scientific men living there, and corresponding with many savants on the continent of Europe, as his wide knowledge of languages enabled him to do with ease. His experiments on the specific gravities and attractive powers of various saline substances formed a substantial contribution to the methods of analytical chemistry, and in 1782 gained him the Copley medal from the Royal Society, of which he was elected a fellow in 1780; and in 1784 he was engaged in a controversy with Cavendish in regard to the latter’s experiments on air. In 1787 he removed to Dublin, where four years later he became president of the Royal Irish Academy. To its proceedings he contributed some thirty-eight memoirs, dealing with meteorology, pure and applied chemistry, geology, magnetism, philology, &c. One of these, on the primitive state of the globe and its subsequent catastrophe, involved him in a lively dispute with the upholders of the Huttonian theory. His geological work was marred by an implicit belief in the universal deluge, and through finding fossils associated with the trap rocks near Portrush he maintained basalt was of aqueous origin. He was one of the last supporters in England of the phlogistic hypothesis, for which he contended in his Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids (1787), identifying phlogiston with hydrogen. This work, translated by Madame Lavoisier, was published in French with critical notes by Lavoisier and some of his associates; Kirwan attempted to refute their arguments, but they proved too strong for him, and he acknowledged himself a convert in 1791. His other books included Elements of Mineralogy (1784), which was the first systematic work on that subject in the English language, and which long remained standard; An Estimate of the Temperature of Different Latitudes (1787); Essay of the Analysis of Mineral Waters (1799), and Geological Essays (1799). In his later years he turned to philosophical questions, producing a paper on human liberty in 1798, a treatise on logic in 1807, and a volume of metaphysical essays in 1811, none of any worth. Various stories are told of his eccentricities as well as of his conversational powers. He died in Dublin in June 1812.

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KISFALUDY, KÁROLY [Charles] (1788-1830), Hungarian author, was born at Téte, near Raab, on the 6th of February 1788. His birth cost his mother her life and himself his father’s undying hatred. He entered the army as a cadet in 1804; saw active service in Italy, Servia and Bavaria (1805-1809), especially distinguishing himself at the battle of Leoben (May 25, 1809), and returned to his quarters at Pest with the rank of first lieutenant. It was during the war that he composed his first poems, e.g. the tragedy Gyilkos (“The Murder,” 1808), and numerous martial songs for the encouragement of his comrades. It was now, too, that he fell hopelessly in love with the beautiful Katalin Heppler, the daughter of a wealthy tobacco merchant. Tiring of the monotony of a soldier’s life, yet unwilling to sacrifice his liberty to follow commerce or enter the civil service, Kisfaludy, contrary to his father’s wishes, now threw up his commission and made his home at the house of a married sister at Vörröck, where he could follow his inclinations. In 1812 he studied painting at the Vienna academy and supported himself precariously by his brush and pencil, till the theatre at Vienna proved a still stronger attraction. In 1812 he wrote the tragedy Klára Zách, and in 1815 went to Italy to study art more thoroughly. But he was back again within six months, and for the next three years flitted from place to place, living on the charity of his friends, lodging in hovels and dashing off scores of daubs which rarely found a market. The united and repeated petitions of the whole Kisfaludy family failed to bring about a reconciliation between the elder Kisfaludy and his prodigal son. It was the success of his drama Ilka, written for the Fehérvár dramatic society, that first made him famous and prosperous. The play was greeted with enthusiasm both at Fehérvár and Buda (1819). Subsequent plays, The Voivode Stiber and The Petitioners (the first original Magyar dramas), were equally successful. Kisfaludy’s fame began to spread. He had found his true vocation as the creator of the Hungarian drama. In May 1820 he wrote three new plays for the dramatic society (he could always turn out a five-act drama in four days) which still further increased his reputation. From 1820 onwards, under the influence of the great critic Kazinczy, he learnt to polish and refine his style, while his friend and adviser György Gaal (who translated some of his dramas for the Vienna stage) introduced him to the works of Shakespeare and Goethe. By this time Kisfaludy had evolved a literary theory of his own which inclined towards romanticism; and in collaboration with his elder brother Alexander (see below) he founded the periodical Aurora (1822), which he edited to the day of his death. The Aurora was a notable phenomenon in Magyar literature. It attracted towards it many of the rising young authors of the day (including Vörösmarty, Bajza and Czuczor) and speedily became the oracle of the romanticists. Kisfaludy’s material position had now greatly improved, but he could not shake off his old recklessness and generosity, and he was never able to pay a tithe of his debts. The publication of Aurora so engrossed his time that practically he abandoned the stage. But he contributed to Aurora ballads, epigrams, short epic pieces, and, best of all, his comic stories. Kisfaludy was in fact the founder of the school of Magyar humorists and his comic types amuse and delight to this day. When the folk-tale became popular in Europe, Kisfaludy set to work upon folk-tales also and produced (1828) some of the masterpieces of that genre. He died on the 21st of November 1830. Six years later the great literary society of Hungary, the Kisfaludy Társaság, was founded to commemorate his genius. Apart from his own works it is the supreme merit of Kisfaludy to have revived and nationalized the Magyar literature, giving it a range and scope undreamed of before his time.

The first edition of Kisfaludy’s works, in 10 volumes, appeared at Buda in 1831, shortly after his death, but the 7th edition (Budapest 1893) is the best and fullest. See Ferenc Toldy, Lives of the Magyar Poets (Hung.) (Budapest, 1870); Zsolt Beöthy, The Father of Hungarian Comedy (Budapest, 1882); Tamás Szana, The Two Kisfaludys (Hung.) (Budapest, 1876). Kisfaludy’s struggles and adventures are also most vividly described in Jókai’s novel, Eppur si muove (Hung.).

Sándor [Alexander] Kisfaludy (1772-1844), Hungarian poet, elder brother of the preceding, was born at Zala on the 27th of September 1772, educated at Raab, and graduated in philosophy and jurisprudence at Pressburg. He early fell under the influence of Schiller and Kleist, and devoted himself to the resuscitation of the almost extinct Hungarian literature. Disgusted with his profession, the law, he entered the Life Guards (1793) and plunged into the gay life of Vienna, cultivating literature, learning French, German and Italian, painting, sketching, assiduously frequenting the theatre, and consorting on equal terms with all the literary celebrities of the Austrian capital. In 1796 he was transferred to the army in Italy for being concerned with some of his brother officers of the Vienna garrison in certain irregularities. When Milan was captured by Napoleon Kisfaludy was sent a prisoner of war to Vaucluse, where he studied Petrarch with enthusiasm and fell violently in love with Caroline D’Esclapon, a kindred spirit to whom he addressed his melancholy Himfy Lays, the first part of the subsequently famous sonnets. On returning to Austria he served with some distinction in the campaigns of 1798 and 1799 on the Rhine and in Switzerland; but tiring of a military life and disgusted at the slowness of his promotion, he quitted the army in September 1799, and married his old love Rózá Szegedy at the beginning of 1800. The first five happy years of their life were passed at Kám in Vás county, but in 1805 they removed to Sümeg where Kisfaludy gave himself up entirely to literature.

At the beginning of the 19th century he had published a volume of erotics which made him famous, and his reputation was still further increased by his Regék or Tales. During the troublous times of 1809, when the gentry of Zala county founded a confederation, the palatine appointed Kisfaludy one of his adjutants. Subsequently, by command, he wrote an account of the movement for presentation to King Francis, which was committed to the secret archives, and Kisfaludy was forbidden to communicate its contents. In 1820 the Marczebánya Institute crowned his Tales and the palatine presented him with a prize of 400 florins in the hall of the Pest county council. In 1822 he started the Aurora with his younger brother Károly (see above). When the academy was founded in 1830 Kisfaludy was the first county member elected to it. In 1835 he resigned because he was obliged to share the honour of winning the academy’s grand prize with Vörösmarty. After the death of his first wife (1832) he married a second time, but by neither of his wives had he any child. The remainder of his days were spent in his Tusculum among the vineyards of Sümeg and Somla. He died on the 28th of October 1844. Alexander Kisfaludy stands alone among the rising literary schools of his day. He was not even influenced by his friend the great critic Kazinczy, who gave the tone to the young classical writers of his day. Kisfaludy’s art was self-taught, solitary and absolutely independent. If he imitated any one it was Petrarch; indeed his famous Himfy szerelmei (“The Loves of Himfy”), as his collected sonnets are called, have won for him the title of “The Hungarian Petrarch.” But the passion of Kisfaludy is far more sincere and real than ever Petrarch’s was, and he completely Magyarized everything he borrowed. After finishing the sonnets Kisfaludy devoted himself to more objective writing, as in the incomparable Regék, which reproduce the scenery and the history of the delightful counties which surround Lake Balaton. He also contributed numerous tales and other pieces to Aurora. Far less successful were his plays, of which Hunyádi János (1816), by far the longest drama in the Hungarian language, need alone be mentioned.

The best critical edition of Sándor Kisfaludy’s works is the fourth complete edition, by David Angyal, in eight volumes (Budapest, 1893). See Tamás Szana, The two Kisfaludys (Hung.) (Budapest, 1876); Imre Sándor, The Influence of the Italian on the Hungarian Literature (Hung.) (Budapest, 1878); Kálmán Sümegi, Kisfaludy and his Tales (Hung.) (Budapest, 1877).

(R. N. B.)

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KĪSH, or Kais (the first form is Persian and the second Arabic), an island in the Persian Gulf. It is mentioned in the 12th century as being the residence of an Arab pirate from Oman, who exacted a tribute from the pearl fisheries of the gulf and had the title of “King of the Sea,” and it rose to importance in the 13th century with the fall of Siraf as a transit station of the trade between India and the West. In the 14th century it was supplanted by Hormuz and lapsed into its former insignificance. The island is nearly 10 m. long and 5 m. broad, and contains a number of small villages, the largest, Mashi, with about 100 houses, being situated on its north-eastern corner in 26° 34′ N. and 54° 2′ E. The highest part of the island has an elevation of 120 ft. The inhabitants are Arabs, and nearly all pearl fishers, possessing many boats, which they take to the pearl banks on the Arabian coast. The water supply is scanty and there is little vegetation, but sufficient for sustaining some flocks of sheep and goats and some cattle. Near the centre of the north coast are the ruins of the old city, now known as Harira, with remains of a mosque, with octagonal columns, masonry, water-cisterns (two 150 ft. long, 40 ft. broad, 24 ft. deep) and a fine underground canal, or aqueduct, half a mile long and cut in the solid rock 20 ft. below the surface. Fragments of glazed tiles and brown and blue pottery, of thin white and blue Chinese porcelain, of green céladon (some with white scroll-work or figures in relief), glass beads, bangles, &c., are abundant. Kīsh is the Kataia of Arrian; Chisi and Quis of Marco Polo; Quixi, Queis, Caez, Cais, &c., of Portuguese writers; and Khenn, or Kenn, of English.

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KISHANGARH, a native state of India, in the Rajputana agency. Area, 858 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 90,970, showing a decrease of 27% in the decade, due to the famine of 1899-1900; estimated revenue, £34,000; there is no tribute. The state was founded in the reign of the emperor Akbar, by a younger son of the raja of Jodhpur. In 1818 Kishangarh first came into direct relations with the British government, by entering into a treaty, together with the other Rajput states, for the suppression of the Pindari marauders by whom the country was at that time overrun. The chief, whose title is maharaja, is a Rajput of the Rathor clan. Maharaja Madan Singh ascended the throne in 1900 at the age of sixteen, and attended the Delhi Durbar of 1903 as a cadet in the Imperial Cadet Corps. The administration, under the diwan, is highly spoken of. Irrigation from tanks and wells has been extended; factories for ginning and pressing cotton have been started; and the social reform movement, for discouraging excessive expenditure on marriages, has been very successful. The state is traversed by the Rajputana railway. The town of Kishangarh is 18 m. N.W. of Ajmere by rail. Pop. (1901), 12,663. It is the residence of many Jain merchants.

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KISHINEV (Kishlanow of the Moldavians), a town of south-west Russia, capital of the government of Bessarabia, situated on the right bank of the Byk, a tributary of the Dniester, and on the railway between Odessa and Jassy in Rumania, 120 m. W.N.W. from the former. At the beginning of the 19th century it was but a poor village, and in 1812 when it was acquired by Russia from Moldavia it had only 7000 inhabitants; twenty years later its population numbered 35,000, while in 1862 it had with its suburbs 92,000 inhabitants, and in 1900 125,787, composed of the most varied nationalities—Moldavians, Walachians, Russians, Jews (43%), Bulgarians, Tatars, Germans and Gypsies. A massacre (pogrom) of the Jews was perpetrated here in 1903. The town consists of two parts—the old or lower town, on the banks of the Byk, and the new or upper town, situated on high crags, 450 to 500 ft. above the river. The wide suburbs are remarkable for their gardens, which produce great quantities of fruits (especially plums, which are dried and exported), tobacco, mulberry leaves for silkworms, and wine. The buildings of the town are sombre, shabby and low, but built of stone; and the streets, though wide and shaded by acacias, are mostly unpaved. Kishinev is the seat of the archbishop of Bessarabia, and has a cathedral, an ecclesiastical seminary with 800 students, a college, and a gardening school, a museum, a public library, a botanic garden, and a sanatorium with sulphur springs. The town is adorned with statues of Tsar Alexander II. (1886) and the poet Pushkin (1885). There are tallow-melting houses, steam flour-mills, candle and soap works, distilleries and tobacco factories. The trade is very active and increasing, Kishinev being a centre for the Bessarabian trade in grain, wine, tobacco, tallow, wool and skins, exported to Austria and to Odessa. The town played an important part in the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877-78, as the chief centre of the Russian invasion.

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KISHM (also Arab. Jazīrat ut-tawīlah, Pers. Jazarīh i darāz, i.e. Long Island), an island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, separated from the Persian mainland by the Khor-i-Jafari, a strait which at its narrowest point is less than 2 m. broad. On British Admiralty charts it figures as “Clarence Strait,” the name given to it by British surveyors in 1828 in honour of the duke of Clarence (William IV.). The island is 70 m. long, its main axis running E.N.E. by W.S.W. Its greatest breadth is 22 m. and the mean breadth about 7 m. A range of hills from 300 to 600 ft. high, with strongly marked escarpments, runs nearly parallel to the southern coast; they are largely composed, like those of Hormuz and the neighbouring mainland, of rock salt, which is regularly quarried in several places, principally at Nimakdan (i.e. salt-cellar) and Salakh on the south coast, and forms one of the chief products of the island, finding its way to Muscat, India and Zanzibar. In the centre of the island some hills, consisting of sandstone and marl, rise to an elevation of 1300 ft. In its general aspect the island is parched and barren-looking, like the south of Persia, but it contains fertile portions, which produce grain, dates, grapes, melons, &c. Traces of naphtha were observed near Salakh, but extensive boring operations in 1892 did not lead to any result. The town of Kishm (pop. 5000) is on the eastern extremity of the island. The famous navigator, William Baffin, was killed here in January 1622 by a shot from the Portuguese castle close by, which a British force was then besieging. Lafit (Laft, Leit), the next place in importance (reduced by a British fleet in 1809), is situated about midway on the northern coast in the most fertile part of the island. There are also many flourishing villages. At Basidu or Bassadore (correct name Baba Sa’idu), on the western extremity of the island, the British government maintained until 1879 a sanatorium for the crews of their gunboats in the gulf, with barracks for a company of sepoys belonging to the marine battalion at Bombay, workshops, hospital, &c. The village is still British property, but its occupants are reduced to a couple of men in charge of a coal depot, a provision store and about 90 villagers. In December 1896 a terrible earthquake destroyed about four-fifths of the houses on the island and over 1000 persons lost their lives. The total population is generally estimated at about 15,000 to 20,000, but the German Admiralty’s Segelhandbuch für den Persischen Golf for 1907 has 40,000.

Kishm is the ancient Oaracta, or Uorochta, a name said to have survived until recently in a village called Brokt, or Brokht. It was also called the island of the Beni Kavan, from an Arab tribe of that name which came from Oman.

(A. H.-S.)

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KISKUNFÉLEGYHÁZA, a town of Hungary, in the county of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun, 80 m. S.S.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900), 33,242. Among the principal buildings are a fine town hall, a Roman Catholic gymnasium and a modern large parish church. The surrounding country is covered with vineyards, fruit gardens, and tobacco and corn fields. The town itself, which is an important railway junction, is chiefly noted for its great cattle-market. Numerous Roman urns and other ancient relics have been dug up in the vicinity. In the 17th century the town was completely destroyed by the Turks, and it was not recolonized and rebuilt till 1743.

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KISLOVODSK, a town and health-resort of Russian Caucasia, in the province of Terek, situated at an altitude of 2690 ft., in a deep caldron-shaped valley on the N. side of the Caucasus, 40 m. by rail S.W. of Pyatigorsk. Pop. (1897), 4078. The limestone hills which surround the town rise by successive steps or terraces, and contain numerous caves. The mineral waters are strongly impregnated with carbonic acid gas and have a temperature of 51° F. The principal spring is known as Narsan, and its water is called by the Circassians the “drink of heroes.”

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KISMET, fate, destiny, a term used by Mahommedans to express all the incidents and details of man’s lot in life. The word is the Turkish form of the Arabic gismat, from gasama, to divide.

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KISS, the act of pressing or touching with the lips, cheek, hand or lips of another, as a sign or expression of love, affection, reverence or greeting. Skeat (Etym. Dict., 1898) connects the Teut. base kussa with Lat. gustus, taste, and with Goth. kustus, test, from kinsan, to choose, and takes “kiss” as ultimately a doublet of “choice.”

For the liturgical osculum pacis or “kiss of peace,” see Pax. See further C. Nyrop, The Kiss and its History, trans. by W. F. Harvey (1902); J. J. Claudius, Dissertatio de salulationibus veterum (Utrecht, 1702); and “Baisers d’étiquette” (1689) in Archives curieuses de l’histoire de France (1834-1890, series ii. tom. 12).

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KISSAR, or Gytarah Barbaryeh, the ancient Nubian lyre, still in use in Egypt and Abyssinia. It consists of a body having instead of the traditional tortoiseshell back a shallow, round bowl of wood, covered with a sound-board of sheepskin, in which are three small round sound-holes. The arms, set through the sound-board at points distant about the third of the diameter from the circumference, have the familiar fan shape. Five gut strings, knotted round the bar and raised from the sound-board by means of a bridge tailpiece similar to that in use on the modern guitar, are plucked by means of a plectrum by the right hand for the melody, while the left hand sometimes twangs some of the strings as a soft drone accompaniment.

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KISSINGEN, a town and watering-place of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, delightfully situated in a broad valley surrounded by high and well-wooded hills, on the Franconian Saale, 656 ft. above sea-level, 62 m. E. of Frankfort-on-Main, and 43 N.E. of Würzburg by rail. Pop. (1900), 4757. Its streets are regular and its houses attractive. It has an Evangelical, an English, a Russian and three Roman Catholic churches, a theatre, and various benevolent institutions, besides all the usual buildings for the lodging, cure and amusement of the numerous visitors who are attracted to this, the most popular watering-place in Bavaria. In the Kurgarten, a tree-shaded expanse between the Kurhaus and the handsome colonnaded Konversations-Saal, are the three principal springs, the Rákóczy, the Pandur and the Maxbrunnen, of which the first two, strongly impregnated with iron and salt, have a temperature of 51.26° F.; the last (50.72°) is like Selters or Seltzer water. At short distances from the town are the intermittent artesian spring Solensprudel, the Schönbornsprudel and the Theresienquelle; and in the same valley as Kissingen are the minor spas of Bocklet and Brückenau. The waters of Kissingen are prescribed for both internal and external use in a great variety of diseases. They are all highly charged with salt, and productive government salt-works were at one time stationed near Kissingen. The number of persons who visit the place amounts to about 20,000 a year. The manufactures of the town, chiefly carriages and furniture, are unimportant; there is also a trade in fruit and wine.

The salt springs were known in the 9th century, and their medicinal properties were recognized in the 16th, but it was only during the 19th century that Kissingen became a popular resort. The town belonged to the counts of Henneberg until 1394, when it was sold to the bishop of Würzburg. With this bishopric it passed later to Bavaria. On the 10th of July 1866 the Prussians defeated the Bavarians with great slaughter near Kissingen. On the 13th of July 1874 the town was the scene of the attempt of the fanatic Kullmann to assassinate Prince Bismarck, to whom a statue has been erected. There are also monuments to Kings Louis I. and Maximilian I. of Bavaria.

See Balling, Die Heilquellen und Bäder zu Kissingen (Kissingen, 1886); A. Sotier, Bad Kissingen (Leipzig, 1883); Werner, Bad Kissingen als Kurort (Berlin, 1904); Leusser, Kissingen für Herzkranke (Würzburg, 1902); Diruf, Kissingen und seine Heilquellen (Würzburg, 1892); and Roth, Bad Kissingen (Würzburg, 1901).

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KISTNA, or Krishna, a large river of southern India. It rises near the Bombay sanatorium of Mahabaleshwar in the Western Ghats, only about 40 m. from the Arabian Sea, and, as it discharges into the Bay of Bengal, it thus flows across almost the entire peninsula from west to east. It has an estimated basin area of 97,000 sq. m., and its length is 800 m. Its source is held sacred, and is frequented by pilgrims in large numbers. From Mahabaleshwar the Kistna runs southward in a rapid course into the nizam’s dominions, then turns to the east, and ultimately falls into the sea by two principal mouths, carrying with it the waters of the Bhima from the north and the Tungabadhra from the south-west. Along this part of the coast runs an extensive strip of land which has been entirely formed by the detritus washed down by the Kistna and Godavari. The river channel is throughout too rocky and the stream too rapid to allow navigation even by small native craft. In utility for irrigation the Kistna is also inferior to its two sister streams, the Godavari and Cauvery. By far the greatest of its irrigation works is the Bezwada anicut, begun by Sir Arthur Cotton in 1852. Bezwada is a small town at the entrance of the gorge by which the Kistna bursts through the Eastern Ghats and immediately spreads over the alluvial plain. The channel there is 1300 yds. wide. During the dry season the depth of water is barely 6 ft., but sometimes it rises to as much as 36 ft., the maximum flood discharge being calculated at 1,188,000 cub. ft. per second. Of the two main canals connected with the dam, that on the left bank breaks into two branches, the one running 39 m. to Ellore, the other 49 m. to Masulipatam. The canal on the right bank proceeds nearly parallel to the river, and also sends off two principal branches, to Nizampatam and Comamur. The total length of the main channels is 372 m. and the total area irrigated in 1903-1904 was about 700,000 acres.

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