Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/872

 838 K A N K A N which was to play so important and delusive a role in sub sequent Arctic explorations. Kane was determined not to give up the search for Franklin, but Government refused all help. In spite of feeble health, he travelled through the States lecturing to obtain funds, and gave up his pay for twenty months. Mr Grinnell again came to the rescue, with the brig &quot;Advance,&quot; which was equipped with the help of Mr Peabody and some of the learned societies. It sailed in the end of June 1853, and on August 23d reached 78 41 in Rensselaer Bay, off the coast of Greenland, where it remained fast during the whole time the expedition was out. During the first winter a sledge party was sent out, and reached 79 50, though at the expense of terrible sufferings. During the second winter the expedition suf fered greatly from want of food and fuel, as well as from scurvy. Still Kane carried on with incessant diligence his scientific observations magnetic, meteorological, astrono mical, and tidal ; and the results were afterwards published in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vols. x.-xiii., 1858. One of the most notable incidents of this expedi tion was the journey made by Morton, one of the staff, up Kennedy Channel, as far as Cape Independence, in 81 22 N. lat., whence he saw what he and Kane firmly believed to be an &quot;open polar sea.&quot; No doubt a large area of open water was seen, but a permanent open sea in this direction has long ago been proved a myth, though doubt less the constant shif tings of the ice often leave considerable areas of water uncovered at continually shifting points. After the endurance of the greatest hardships, it was finally resolved to abandon the ship, which was done on May 1 7, 1855, Upernivik being reached after many difficulties on August 5. Kane reached home in October in good health, and set himself at once to write the narrative of his expe dition, which was published in 1856. In October of the same year he left Philadelphia for England in search of health. From England he went to Cuba, where he died at Havana on February 16, 1857, at the early age of thirty- seven. Between his first and second arctic voyages, Kane made the acquaintance of the Fox family, the celebrated spiritualists. With one of the daughters, Margaret Fox, he carried on a lengthened correspondence, which was afterwards published by the lady, who declares that they were privately married before Kane left for England. Not withstanding his weak health, Kane was a man of restless activity and high intelligence, but much of that activity appears to have been wasted. He certainly did a vast amount of work during his short life, but will be re membered mainly for his chivalrous and self-sacrificing but fruitless search for Franklin, during which he ap preciably advanced our knowledge of the Arctic area, and made important contributions to physics and biology. See, besides the works mentioned above, Biography of E. K. Kane, by William Elder, 1858; Life of K K. Kane and other American Explorers, by S. M. Smucker; The Love-Life of Dr Kane, containing the Correspondence and a History of the Engagement and Secret Marriage between E. K. Kane and Margaret Fox, New York, 1866; &quot; Discoveries of Dr Kane,&quot; in Jour, of the Roy. Geog. Soc., vol. xxviii., reprinted in. G. S. Arctic Papers of 1875. KANEFF, or KANIEFF, a town of Russia, in the Kieff government, on the Dnieper, 141 miles south-east of Kieff. The population, which in 1863 was returned as 6838, was about 8000 in 1879; but neither the trade nor the in dustry of the place is of importance. Vsevolod of Kieff founded a church at Kanieff in 1144, and in the latter part of the same century the place was the annual rendezvous of the forces collected to give protection to the merchant ships returning from, Greece. In 1880 Poniatoffski, to whom it had passed from Stanislaus Augustus, gave the revenues of the town and the site of the royal court to the prior of the Basilians who assigned them to the Kaneff schools of the brotherhood. The ad ministration of the Boguslaff district was transferred to Kaneff in 1837, and in 1844 the district took the name of that town. KANGAROO. When Captain Cook, during his first memorable voyage of discovery, was detained, for the purpose of refitting his ship at Endeavour river, on the north-east coast of Australia, a strange-looking animal, entirely unknown to them, was frequently seen by the ship s company; and it is recorded in the annals of the voyage that, on the 14th of July 1770, &quot; Mr Gore, who went out this day with his gun, had the good fortune to kill one of the animals which had been so much the subject of our speculation,. . . and which is called by the natives kanguroo,&quot; 1 a name which, though it does not appear to be now known to any of the aboriginal tribes of the country, has been adopted for this animal in all European languages, with only slight modifications of spelling. With the exception of a passing glimpse in the beginning of the same century by the Dutch traveller Bruyn of some living examples of an allied species, to be referred to presently, this was the first introduction to the civilized world of any member of a group of animals now so familiar. The affinities of the species, skins of which were brought home by Captain Cook and subsequent voyagers, were recognized by Schreber as nearer to the American opossums (then the only known marsupials) than to any other mammals with which zoologists were acquainted, and consequently it was placed by him, in his great work on the Mammalia, then in the course of publication, in the genus Didelphis, with gigantea for a specific designation, the latter having been FIG. 1. Kangaroo (Alacropus gigantcus}. bestowed upon it by Zimmerman under the impression that it was a huge species of jerboa. Soon afterwards (1791) Dr Shaw very properly formed a new genus for its recep tion, which he named Macropus, in allusion to the peculiar length of its hind foot. By the name thus formed, Macropus giganteus, this kind of kangaroo has ever since been known in zoological literature. Further explorations in Australia and the neighbouring islands have led to the discovery of a very considerable number of species, which are now included in the family Macropodidse, one of the subdivisions of the order Marsu- pialia, for the characters of which see MAMMALIA. The Macropodidse, or kangaroos, taken as a whole, form a very well marked family, easily distinguished from the remaining members of the order by their general conforma tion, and by peculiarities in the structure of their limbs, teeth, and other organs. They vary in size from that of a sheep down to a small rabbit. The bead, especially in the larger species, is small, compared with the rest of the body, , J Hawkesworth, Collection of Voyages, vol. iii. p. 577 (1773).