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Rh 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 1 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.

KIRRIEMUIR, a police burgh of Forfarshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 4096. It is situated on a height above the glen through which the Gairie flows, 6 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, 1 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.

 KIRSCH (or ), 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.

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.

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.

KISFALUDY, KÁROLY [] (1788–1830), Hungarian author, was born at Téte, near Raab, on the 6th of February