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.
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).
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.
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 deter-
mination 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.
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 Stadtrecht 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.
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,
