of the insurrection in Thessaly in January 1878, and supported by Delyanni as minister of foreign affairs he sent an army of 10,000 men to help the insurgents against Turkey. The troops were recalled on the understanding that Greece should be represented at the Congress of Berlin. In October 1880 the fall of the Tricoupi ministry restored him to power, when he resumed his warlike policy, but repeated appeals to the courts of Europe yielded little practical result, and Koumoundouros was obliged to reduce his territorial demands and to accept the limited cessions in Thessaly and Epirus, which were carried out in July 1881. His ministry was overturned in 1882 by the votes of the new Thessalian deputies, who were dissatisfied with the administrative arrangements of the new province, and he died at Athens on the 9th of March 1883.
KOUSSO (Kosso or Cusso), a drug which consists of the
panicles of the pistillate flowers of Brayera anthelmintica, a
handsome rosaceous tree 60 ft. high, growing throughout the
table-land of Abyssinia, at an elevation of 3000 to 8000 ft.
above the sea-level. The drug as imported is in the form of
cylindrical rolls, about 18 in. in length and 2 in. in diameter,
and comprises the entire inflorescence or panicle kept in form by
a band wound transversely round it. The active principle is
koussin or kosin, C31H38O10, which is soluble in alcohol and
alkalis, and may be given in doses of thirty grains. Kousso
is also used in the form of an unstrained infusion of 14 to 12 oz.
of the coarsely powdered flowers, which are swallowed with the
liquid. It is considered to be an effectual vermifuge for Taenia
solium. In its anthelmintic action it is nearly allied to male
fern, but it is much inferior to that drug and is very rarely used
in Great Britain.
KOVALEVSKY, SOPHIE (1850–1891), Russian mathematician,
daughter of General Corvin-Krukovsky, was born at Moscow
on the 15th of January 1850. As a young girl she was fired
by the aspiration after intellectual liberty that animated so
many young Russian women at that period, and drove them to
study at foreign universities, since their own were closed to them.
This led her, in 1868, to contract one of those conventional
marriages in vogue at the time, with a young student, Waldemar
Kovalevsky, and the two went together to Germany to
continue their studies. In 1869 she went to Heidelberg, where
she studied under H. von Helmholtz, G. R. Kirchhoff, L. Königsberger
and P. du Bois-Reymond, and from 1871–1874 read privately
with Karl Weierstrass at Berlin, as the public lectures
were not then open to women. In 1874 the university of
Göttingen granted her a degree in absentia, excusing her from
the oral examination on account of the remarkable excellence
of the three dissertations sent in, one of which, on the theory
of partial differential equations, is one of her most remarkable
works. Another was an elucidation of P. S. Laplace’s mathematical
theory of the form of Saturn’s rings. Soon after this
she returned to Russia with her husband, who was appointed
professor of palaeontology at Moscow, where he died in 1883.
At this time Madame Kovalevsky was at Stockholm, where
Gustaf Mittag Leffler, also a pupil of Weierstrass, who had been
recently appointed to the chair of mathematics at the newly
founded university, had procured for her a post as lecturer.
She discharged her duties so successfully that in 1884 she was
appointed full professor. This post she held till her death on
the 10th of February 1891. In 1888 she achieved the greatest
of her successes, gaining the Prix Bordin offered by the Paris
Academy. The problem set was “to perfect in one important
point the theory of the movement of a solid body round an immovable
point,” and her solution added a result of the highest
interest to those transmitted to us by Leonhard Euler and J. L.
Lagrange. So remarkable was this work that the value of the
prize was doubled as a recognition of unusual merit. Unfortunately
Madame Kovalevsky did not live to reap the full reward
of her labours, for she died just as she had attained the height of
her fame and had won recognition even in her own country by
election to membership of the St Petersburg Academy of Science.
See E. de Kerbedz, “Sophie de Kowalevski,” Benidiconti del circolo mathematico di Palermo (1891); the obituary notice by G. Mittag Leffler in the Acta mathematica, vol. xvi.; and J. C. Poggendorff, Biographisch-literarisches Handwörterbuch.
KOVNO (in Lithuanian Kauna), a government of north-western
Russia, bounded N. by the governments of Courland
and Vitebsk, S.E. by that of Vilna, and S. and S.W. by Suwalki
and the province of East Prussia, a narrow strip touching the
Baltic near Memel. It has an area of 15,687 sq. m. The level
uniformity of its surface is broken only by two low ridges which
nowhere rise above 800 ft. The geological character is varied,
the Silurian, Devonian, Jurassic and Tertiary systems being all
represented; the Devonian is that which occurs most frequently,
and all are covered with Quaternary boulder-clays. The soil
is either a sandy clay or a more fertile kind of black earth. The
government is drained by the Niemen, Windau, Courland Aa and
Dvina, which have navigable tributaries. In the flat depressions
covered with boulder-clays there are many lakes and marshes,
while forests occupy about 2512% of the surface. The climate is
comparatively mild, the mean temperature at the city of Kovno
being 44°F. The population was 1,156,040 in 1870, and 1,553,244
in 1897. The estimated population in 1906 was 1,683,600.
It is varied, consisting of Lithuanians proper and Zhmuds
(together 74%), Jews (14%), Germans (212%), Poles (9%), with
Letts and Russians; 76.6% are Roman Catholics, 13.7% Jews,
4.5% Protestants, and 5% belong to the Greek Church. Of the
total 788,102 were women in 1897 and 147,878 were classed as
urban. The principal occupation of the inhabitants is agriculture,
63% of the surface being under crops; both grain (wheat,
rye, oats and barley) and potatoes are exported. Flax is cultivated
and the linseed exported. Dairying flourishes, and horse
and cattle breeding are attracting attention. Fishing is important,
and the navigation on the rivers is brisk. A variety of
petty domestic industries are carried on by the Jews, but only
to a slight extent in the villages. As many as 18,000 to 24,000
men are compelled every year to migrate in search of work.
The factories consist principally of distilleries, tobacco and steam
flour-mills, and hardware manufactories. Trade, especially the
transit trade, is brisk, from the situation of the government
on the Prussian frontier, the custom-houses of Yerburg and Tauroggen
being amongst the most important in Russia. The chief
towns of the seven districts into which the government is divided,
with their populations in 1897, are Kovno (q.v.), Novo-Alexandrovsk
(6370), Ponevyezh (13,044), Rosieny (7455), Shavli
(15,914), Telshi (6215) and Vilkemir (13,509).
The territory which now constitutes the government of Kovno was formerly known as Samogitia and formed part of Lithuania. During the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries the Livonian and Teutonic Knights continually invaded and plundered it, especially the western part, which was peopled with Zhmuds. In 1569 it was annexed, along with the rest of the principality of Lithuania, to Poland; and it suffered very much from the wars of Russia with Sweden and Poland, and from the invasion of Charles XII. in 1701. In 1795 the principality of Lithuania was annexed to Russia, and until 1872, when the government of Kovno was constituted, the territory now forming it was a part of the government of Vilna.
KOVNO, a town and fortress of Russia, capital of the government
of the same name, stands at the confluence of the Niemen
with the Viliya, 550 m. S.W. of St Petersburg by rail, and 55 m.
from the Prussian frontier. Pop. (1863), 23,937; (1903), 73,743,
nearly one-half being Jews. It consists of a cramped Old Town
and a New Town stretching up the side of the Niemen. It is a
first-class fortress, being surrounded at a mean distance of 212 m.
by a girdle of forts, eleven in number. The town lies for the most
part in the fork and is guarded by three forts in the direction
of Vilna, one covers the Vilna bridge, while the southern approaches
are protected by seven. Kovno commands and bars
the railway Vilna-Eydtkuhnen. Its factories produce nails,
wire-work and other metal goods, mead and bone-meal. It is
an important entrepôt for timber, cereals, flax, flour, spirits,
bone-meal, fish, coal and building-stone passing from and to
Prussia. The city possesses some 15th-century churches. It
was founded in the 11th century; and from 1384 to 1398 belonged
