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Rh Masulipatam being captured from the French by Colonel Forde, with a force sent by Lord Clive from Calcutta, the power of the English in the greater part of the district was complete.

KIT (1) (probably an adaptation of the Middle Dutch kitte, a wooden tub, usually with a lid and handles; in modern Dutch kit means a tankard), a tub, basket or pail used for holding milk, butter, eggs, fish and other goods; also applied to similar receptacles for various domestic purposes, or for holding a workman’s tools, &c. By transference “kit” came to mean the tools themselves, but more commonly personal effects such as clothing, especially that of a soldier or sailor, the word including the knapsack or other receptacle in which the effects are packed. (2) The name (perhaps a corruption of “cittern” Gr.  ) of a small violin, about 16 in. long, and played with a bow of nearly the same length, much used at one time by dancing-masters. The French name is pochette, the instrument being small enough to go into the pocket.

KITAZATO, SHIBASABURO (1856– &emsp;&emsp; ), Japanese doctor of medicine, was born at Kumamoto in 1856 and studied in Germany under Koch from 1885 to 1891. He became one of the foremost bacteriologists of the world, and enjoyed the credit of having discovered the bacilli of tetanus, diphtheria and plague, the last in conjunction with Dr Aoyama, who accompanied him to Hong-Kong in 1894 during an epidemic at that place.

KIT-CAT CLUB, a club of Whig wits, painters, politicians and men of letters, founded in London about 1703. The name was derived from that of Christopher Cat, the keeper of the pie-house in which the club met in Shire Lane, near Temple Bar. The meetings were afterwards held at the Fountain tavern in the Strand, and latterly in a room specially built for the purpose at Barn Elms, the residence of the secretary, Jacob Tonson, the publisher. In summer the club met at the Upper Flask, Hampstead Heath. The club originally consisted of thirty-nine, afterwards of forty-eight members, and included among others the duke of Marlborough, Lords Halifax and Somers, Sir Robert Walpole, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Steele and Addison. The portraits of many of the members were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, himself a member, of a uniform size suited to the height of the Barn Elms room in which the club dined. The canvas, 36 × 28 in., admitted of less than a half-length portrait but was sufficiently long to include a hand, and this is known as the kit-cat size. The club was dissolved about 1720.

KITCHEN (O.E. cycene; this and other cognate forms, such as Dutch keuken, Ger. Küche, Dan. kökken, Fr. cuisine, are formed from the Low Lat. cucina, Lat. coquina, coquere, to cook), the room or place in a house set apart for cooking, in which the culinary and other domestic utensils are kept. The range or cooking-stove fitted with boiler for hot water, oven and other appliances, is often known as a “kitchener” (see and ). Archaeologists have used the term “kitchen-midden,” i.e. kitchen rubbish-heap (Danish kökken-mödding) for the rubbish heaps of prehistoric man, containing bones, remains of edible shell-fish, implements, &c. (see ). “Midden,” in Middle English mydding, is a Scandinavian word, from myg, muck, filth, and dyng, heap; the latter word gives the English “dung.”

KITCHENER, HORATIO HERBERT KITCHENER, (1850– &emsp;&emsp; ), British field marshal, was the son of Lieut.-Colonel H. H. Kitchener and was born at Bally Longford, Co. Kerry, on the 24th of June 1850. He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1868, and was commissioned second lieutenant, Royal Engineers, in 1871. As a subaltern he was employed in survey work in Cyprus and Palestine, and on promotion to captain in 1883 was attached to the Egyptian army, then in course of re-organization under British officers. In the following year he served on the staff of the British expeditionary force on the Nile, and was promoted successively major and lieutenant-colonel by brevet for his services. From 1886 to 1888 he was commandant at Suakin, commanding and receiving a severe wound in the action of Handub in 1888. In 1888 he commanded a brigade in the actions of Gamaizieh and Toski. From 1889 to 1892 he served as adjutant-general of the army. He had become brevet-colonel in the British army in 1888, and he received the C.B. in 1889 after the action of Toski. In 1892 Colonel Kitchener succeeded Sir Francis (Lord) Grenfell as sirdar of the Egyptian army, and three years later, when he had completed his predecessor’s work of re-organizing the forces of the khedive, he began the formation of an expeditionary force on the vexed military frontier of Wady Halfa. The advance into the Sudan (see, Military Operations) was prepared by thorough administrative work on his part which gained universal admiration. In 1896 Kitchener won the action of Ferket (June 7) and advanced the frontier and the railway to Dongola. In 1897 Sir Archibald Hunter’s victory of Abu Hamed (Aug. 7) carried the Egyptian flag one stage farther, and in 1898 the resolve to destroy the Mahdi’s power was openly indicated by the despatch of a British force to co-operate with the Egyptians. The sirdar, who in 1896 became a British major-general and received the K.C.B., commanded the united force, which stormed the Mahdist zareba on the river Atbara on the 8th of April, and, the outposts being soon afterwards advanced to Metemmeh and Shendy, the British force was augmented to the strength of a division for the final advance on Khartum. Kitchener’s work was crowned and the power of the Mahdists utterly destroyed by the victory of Omdurman (Sept. 2), for which he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kitchener of Khartoum, received the G.C.B., the thanks of parliament and a grant of £30,000. Little more than a year afterwards, while still sirdar of the Egyptian army, he was promoted lieutenant-general and appointed chief-of-staff to Lord Roberts in the South African War (see, History). In this capacity he served in the campaign of Paardeberg, the advance on Bloemfontein and the subsequent northward advance to Pretoria, and on Lord Roberts’ return to England in November 1900 succeeded him as commander-in-chief, receiving at the same time the local rank of general. In June 1902 the long and harassing war came to its close, and Kitchener was rewarded by advancement to the dignity of viscount, promotion to the substantive rank of general “for distinguished service,” the thanks of parliament and a grant of £50,000. He was also included in the Order of Merit.

Immediately after the peace he went to India as commander-in-chief in the East Indies, and in this position, which he held for seven years, he carried out not only many far-reaching administrative reforms but a complete re-organization and strategical redistribution of the British and native forces. On leaving India in 1909 he was promoted field marshal, and succeeded the duke of Connaught as commander-in-chief and high commissioner in the Mediterranean. This post, not of great importance in itself, was regarded as a virtual command of the colonial as distinct from the home and the Indian forces, and on his appointment Lord Kitchener (after a visit to Japan) undertook a tour of inspection of the forces of the empire, and went to Australia and New Zealand in order to assist in drawing up local schemes of defence. In this mission he was highly successful, and earned golden opinions. But soon after his return to England in April 1910 he declined to take up his Mediterranean appointment, owing to his dislike of its inadequate scope, and he was succeeded in June by Sir Ian Hamilton.

KITE, the Falco milvus of Linnaeus and Milvus ictinus of modern ornithologists, once probably the most familiar bird of prey in Great Britain, and now one of the rarest. Three or four hundred years ago foreigners were struck with its abundance in the streets of London. It was doubtless the scavenger in ordinary of that and other large towns (as kindred species now are in Eastern lands), except where its place was taken by the raven; for Sir Thomas Browne (c. 1662) wrote of the latter at Norwich—“in good plentie about the citty which makes so few kites to be seen hereabout.” John Wolley has well remarked of the modern Londoners that few “who see the paper toys hovering over the parks in fine days of summer, have any idea that the bird from which they derive their name used to float all day in hot weather high over the heads of their ancestors.” Even at the beginning of the 19th century the kite formed a feature of many 