K E R K E R 49
to permanent vegetation: the island lies within the belt of rain of all seasons of the year, and is reached by no drying winds; its temperature is kept down by the surrounding vast expanse of sea; and it lies within the line of the cold Antarctic drift. The temperature is, however, very equable. During the transit expedition, the lowest winter temperature was seldom less than 32, while the summer temperature occasionally approached 70. Tempests and squalls are frequent, and the weather is rarely calm. On the lower slopes of the mountains a rank vegetation exists, which, from the conditions just mentioned, is constantly saturated with moisture. A rank grass, Festuca Cookii, grows thickly in places up to 300 feet, with Azorella, Cotula plumosa, &c. Sir J. D. Hooker enumerates twenty-one species of (lowering plants, and seven of ferns, lycopods, and Characeæ; at least seventy-four species of mosses, twenty-five of Hepaticæ, and sixty-one of lichens are known, and there are probably many more. Several of the marine and many species of freshwater algæ are peculiar to the island. The characteristic feature of the vegetation, however, is the Kerguelen cabbage (Pringlea antiscorbutica), a perennial cruciferous plant, in appearance somewhat like the garden cabbage. This cabbage and Azorella are found growing at a height of 1000 feet, while on the higher rocks a very handsome conspicuous lichen (Neuropogon Taylori), of a mingled bright sulphur-yellow and black colour, is found abundantly. Fur seals are still found in Kerguelen, though their numbers have been greatly reduced by reckless slaughter. One of the most characteristic animals of the island is the sea elephant (Macrorhinus leoninus), which is found in considerable abundance even far up the streams that flow into the fjords. The sea-leopard (Ogmorrhinus teptonyx) is pretty abundant on the coasts. All parts of the coast and even the lower slopes are covered with penguins of various species, mainly the Johnny penguin (Pygoscelis tæniata), rock-hopper (Eudyptes saltator), and king penguin (Aptenodytes longirostris). A teal (Querquedula Eatoni) peculiar to Kerguelen and the Crozets is also found in considerable numbers, and crowds of petrels, especially the giant petrel (Ossifraga gigantea), Halobæna cœrulca, and Prion desolatus frequent the island, as also skuas, gulls, sheath-bills (Chionis minor), albatross, terns (Sterna virgata?), cormorants (Phalacrocorax verrucosus), and Cape pigeons. The island shelters a considerable variety of insects, many of them with remarkable peculiarities of structure, and with a predominance of forms incapable of flying. The island is frequented by sealers and whalers, but has no permanent inhabitants. Kerguelen's Land was discovered by the French navigator Kerguelen Tremarec (born 1745, died 1797), on February 13, 1772, and partly surveyed by him in the following year. It was subsequently visited by Captain Cook, and also by Sir James C. Ross in 1840 in the "Erebus" and "Terror." It has occasionally formed a refuge for shipwrecked sailors. The "Challenger" spent some time at the island, and its staff visited and surveyed various parts of it in January 1874. Later in the same year it was occupied for several months (October 1874 to February 1875) by the expeditions sent from England, Germany, and the United States to observe the transit of Venus. Still the interior is all but unexplored, and we have only vague notions of a considerable part of the coast. The Admiralty chart is based chiefly on mining surveys and information obtained from whalers.
Literature. – Narratives of the voyages of Kerguelen, Cook, and Sir James Ross; Narrative of the Wreck of the "Favourite" on the Island of Desolation, edited by W. B. Clarke, M.D.; Hooker's Flora Antarctica; Phil. Trans., vol. 168, containing account of the collections made in Kerguelen by the English transit of Venus expedition in 1874-75; articles by Sir Wyville Thomson in Good Words, November and December 1874; H. N. Moseley's Notes by a Naturalist in the "Challenger"; Lord George Campbell's Log Letters from the "Challenger"; W. J. J. Spry's Cruise of the "Challenger"; Rev. S. J. Perry's Notes of a Voyage to Kerguelen.
KERKÚK, or Kerkook, a town of Asiatic Turkey, in the vilayet of Baghdad, is situated on the right bank of the Khasa Tshai, about 140 miles north of the city of Baghdad. A suburb, Mahalle, on the left bank of the stream, which is spanned by a bridge, contains the residence of the pasha. The citadel stands east of the river upon an artificial mound, 130 feet high, which in Niebuhr's time was still surrounded by an earthen rampart. The citadel hill is the residence of the old Nestorians, now adherents of the Church of Rome. Hound the foot of this hill run the dirty, crooked, and narrow streets of the lower town, with their flat-roofed, ugly houses, built partly of wood and partly of stone. The only large building is occupied by the bazaar, with passages one hundred paces long. Owing to its position at the junction of several routes, Kerkúk has a brisk transit trade in hides, Persian silks and cottons, colouring materials, fruit, and timber, on the way from Suleimanieh to the north. The natural warm springs at Kerkúk are used to supply baths. The surrounding country is fertile and well-cultivated; the petroleum and naphtha springs near the town are its most valuable commercial resource. Till lately the petroleum was used as fuel by the Turkish steamers on the Tigris; but English coal has now superseded it. The official designation of Kerkúk is Shahr Zul. The inhabitants, from twelve to fifteen thousand in number, are chiefly Mohammedan Kurds; there is a Jewish quarter beneath the citadel. The reputed sarcophagi of Daniel and the Hebrew children are shown in one of the mosques.
Kerkúk is the ancient metropolitan city Karkâ a' Beth Slôk ("fortress of the house of Seleucia").
See G. Hoffmann, Syr. Akten Pers. Märtyrer, Leips., 1880.
KERMAN. See Kirmán.
KERMANSHAH. See Kirmánsháhán.
KERMES (Arabic, ḳirmis), a crimson dye, now superseded by cochineal, obtained from Coccus ilicis, L. (Coccus vermilio, G. Planchon), an hemipterous insect found in Spain, Italy, the south of France, and other parts of the Mediterranean region, feeding on Quercus coccifera, a small shrub from 2 to 5 feet high. The discovery of the animal nature of kermes is due to Eméric, Garidel, and Cestoni. Until the year 1714 it was thought to be a gall or excrescence.
Like other members of the group to which it belongs, the female kermes insect is wingless, and furnished with a beak or sucker attached to its breast, by which it fixes itself immovably on its food plant, and through which it draws its nourishment. The male insect is unknown, two insects mistaken for it being, according to Planchon, para sitic hymenoptera of the chalcidian group, living in the kermes grains. In the month of May, when full grown, the insects are globose, 6 to 7 millim. in diameter, of a reddish-brown colour, and covered with an ash-coloured powder. They are found attached to the twigs or buds by a circular lower surface 2 millim. in diameter, and sur rounded by a narrow zone of white cottony down. At this time there are concealed under a cavity, formed by the approach of the abdominal wall of the insect to the dorsal one, thousands of eggs of a lively red colour, and smaller than poppy seed, which are protruded and ranged regularly beneath the insect. At the end of May or the beginning of June the young escape by a small orifice, near the point of attachment of the parent. They are then of a fine red colour, elliptic and convex in shape, but rounded at the two extremities, and bear two threads half as long as their body at their posterior extremity. At this period they are extremely active, and swarm with extraordinary rapidity all over the food plant, and in the course of two or three days attach themselves to fissures in the bark or buds, but rarely to the leaves. In warm and dry summers the insects breed again in the months of August and September, according to Eméric, and then they are more frequently found attached to the leaves. Usually, however, they remain immovable and apparently unaltered until the end of the succeeding March, when their bodies become gradually distended and lose all trace of abdominal rings. They then appear full of a reddish juice resembling discoloured blood. In this state, or when the eggs are ready to be extruded, the insects are collected. In some cases the insects from which the young are ready to escape are dried in the sun on linen cloths – care being taken to prevent the escape of the young from the cloths until they are dead. The young insects are then sifted from the shells, made into a pasts with vinegar, and dried on skins exposed to the sun, and the paste packed in skins is then ready for exportation to the East under the name of "pâte d'écarlate."
In the pharmacopœia of the ancients kermes triturated with vinegar was used as an outward application, especially in wounds of the nerves. From the 9th to the 16th
