Chapter XV: Part 15

HORNBILL, the English name long generally given to all the birds of the family _Bucerotidae_ of modern ornithologists, from the extraordinary horn-like excrescence (_epithema_) developed on the bill of most of the species, though to which of them it was first applied seems doubtful. Among classical authors Pliny had heard of such animals, and mentions them (_Hist. Nat._ lib. x. cap. lxx.) under the name of _Tragopan_; but he deemed their existence fabulous, comparing them with _Pegasi_ and _Gryphones_--in the words of Holland, his translator (vol. i. p. 296)--"I thinke the same of the Tragopanades, which many men affirme to bee greater than the Aegle; having crooked hornes like a Ram on either side of the head, of the colour of yron, and the head onely red." Yet this is but an exaggerated description of some of the species with which doubtless his informants had an imperfect acquaintance. Medieval writers found Pliny's bird to be no fable, for specimens of the beak of one species or another seem occasionally to have been brought to Europe, where they were preserved in the cabinets of the curious, and thus Aldrovandus was able to describe pretty fairly and to figure (_Ornithologia_, lib. xii. cap. xx. tab. x. fig. 7) one of them under the name of "_Rhinoceros Avis_," though the rest of the bird was wholly unknown to him. When the exploration of the East Indies had extended farther, more examples reached Europe, and the "_Corvus Indicus cornutus_" of Bontius became fully recognized by Willughby and Ray, under the title of the "Horned Indian Raven or _Topau_ called the Rhinocerot Bird." Since the time of those excellent ornithologists our knowledge of the hornbills has been steadily increasing, but up to the third quarter of the 19th century there was a great lack of precise information, and the publication of D. G. Elliot's "_Monograph of the Bucerotidae_," then supplied a great want. He divides the family into two sections, the _Bucerotinae_ and the _Bucorvinae_. The former group contains most of the species, which are divided into many genera. Of these, the most remarkable is _Rhinoplax_, which seems properly to contain but one species, the _Buceros vigil_, _B. scutatus_ or _B. geleatus_ of authors, commonly known as the helmet-hornbill, a native of Sumatra and Borneo. This is easily distinguished by having the front of its nearly vertical and slightly convex _epithema_ composed of a solid mass of horn[1] instead of a thin coating of the light and cellular structure found in the others. So dense and hard is this portion of the "helmet" that Chinese and Malay artists carve figures on its surface, or cut it transversely into plates, which from their agreeable colouring, bright yellow with a scarlet rim, are worn as brooches or other ornaments. This bird, which is larger than a raven, is also remarkable for its long graduated tail, having the middle two feathers nearly twice the length of the rest. Nothing is known of its habits. Its head was figured by George Edwards in the 18th century, but little else had been seen of it until 1801, when John Latham described the plumage from a specimen in the British Museum, and the first figure of the whole bird, from an example in the Museum at Calcutta, was published by General Hardwicke in 1823 (_Trans. Linn. Society_, xiv. pl. 23). Yet more than twenty years elapsed before French naturalists became acquainted with it.

In the _Bucorvinae_ we have only the genus _Bucorvus_, or _Bucorax_ as some call it, confined to Africa, and containing at least two and perhaps more species, distinguishable by their longer legs and shorter toes, the ground-hornbills of English writers, in contrast to the _Bucerotinae_ which are chiefly arboreal in their habits, and when not flying move by short leaps or hops, while the members of this group walk and run with facility. From the days of James Bruce at least there are few African travellers who have not met with and in their narratives more or less fully described one or other of these birds, whose large size and fearless habits render them conspicuous objects.

As a whole the hornbills, of which more than 50 species have been described, form a very natural and in some respects an isolated group, placed by Huxley among his _Coccygomorphae_. It has been suggested that they have some affinity with the hoopoes (_Upupidae_), and this view is now generally accepted. Their supposed alliance to the toucans (_Rhamphastidae_) rests only on the apparent similarity presented by the enormous beak, and is contradicted by important structural characters. In many of their habits, so far as these are known, all hornbills seem to be much alike, and though the modification in the form of the beak, and the presence or absence of the extraordinary excrescence,[2] whence their name is derived, causes great diversity of aspect among them, the possession of prominent eyelashes (not a common feature in birds) produces a uniformity of expression which makes it impossible to mistake any member of the family. Hornbills are social birds, keeping in companies, not to say flocks, and living chiefly on fruits and seeds; but the bigger species also capture and devour a large number of snakes, while the smaller are great destroyers of insects. The older writers say that they eat carrion, but further evidence to that effect is required before the statement can be believed. Almost every morsel of food that is picked up is tossed into the air, and then caught in the bill before it is swallowed. They breed in holes of trees, laying large white eggs, and when the hen begins to sit the cock plasters up the entrance with mud or clay, leaving only a small window through which she receives the food he brings her during her incarceration.

This remarkable habit, almost simultaneously noticed by Dr Mason in Burma, S. R. Tickell in India, and Livingstone in Africa, and since confirmed by other observers, especially A. R. Wallace[3] in the Malay Archipelago, has been connected by A. D. Bartlett (_Proc. Zool. Society_, 1869, p. 142) with a peculiarity as remarkable, which he was the first to notice. This is the fact that hornbills at intervals of time, whether periodical or irregular is not yet known, cast the epithelial layer of their gizzard, that layer being formed by a secretion derived from the glands of the proventriculus or some other upper part of the alimentary canal. The epithelium is ejected in the form of a sack or bag, the mouth of which is closely folded, and is filled with the fruit that the bird has been eating. The announcement of a circumstance so extraordinary naturally caused some hesitation in its acceptance, but the essential truth of Bartlett's observations was abundantly confirmed by Sir W. H. Flower and especially by Dr J. Murie. These castings form the hen bird's food during her confinement. (A. N.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Apparently correlated with this structure is the curious
thickening of the "prosencephalic median septum" of the cranium as
also of that which divides the "prosencephalic" from the
"mesencephalic chamber," noticed by Sir R. Owen (_Cat. Osteol. Ser.
Mus. Roy. Coll. Surg. England_, i. 287); while the solid horny mass
is further strengthened by a backing of bony props, directed forwards
and meeting its base at right angles. This last singular arrangement
is not perceptible in the skull of any other species examined by the
present writer.

[2] Buffon, as was his manner, enlarges on the cruel injustice done
to these birds by Nature in encumbering them with this deformity,
which he declares must hinder them from getting their food with ease.
The only corroboration his perverted view receives is afforded by the
observed fact that hornbills, in captivity at any rate, never have
any fat about them.

[3] In _The Malay Archipelago_ (i. 213), Wallace describes a nestling
hornbill (_B. bicornis_) which he obtained as "a most curious object,
as large as a pigeon, but without a particle of plumage on any part
of it. It was exceedingly plump and soft, and with a semi-transparent
skin, so that it looked more like a bag of jelly, with head and feet
stuck on, than like a real bird."

HORNBLENDE, an important member of the amphibole group of rock-forming minerals. The name is an old one of German origin, and was used for any dark-coloured prismatic crystals from which metals could not be extracted. It is now applied to the dark-coloured aluminous members of the monoclinic amphiboles, occupying in this group the same position that augite occupies in the pyroxene group. The monoclinic crystals are prismatic in habit with a six-sided cross-section; the angle between the prism-faces (M), parallel to which there are perfect cleavages, is 55 deg. 49'. The colour (green, brown or black) and the specific gravity (3.0-3.3) vary with the amount of iron present. The pleochroism is always strong, and the angle of optical extinction on the plane of symmetry (x in the figure) varies from 0 deg. to 37 deg. The chemical composition is expressed by mixtures in varying proportions of the molecules Ca(Mg, Fe)3(SiO3)4, (Mg, Fe)(Al, Fe)2SiO6 and NaAl(SiO3)2. Numerous varieties have been distinguished by special names: edenite, from Edenville in New York, is a pale-coloured aluminous amphibole containing little iron; pargasite, from Pargas near Abo in Finland, a green or bluish-green variety; common hornblende includes the greenish-black and black kinds containing more iron. The dark-coloured porphyritic crystals of basalts are known as basaltic hornblende.

Hornblende occurs as an essential constituent of many kinds of igneous rocks, such as hornblende-granite, syenite, diorite, hornblende-andesite, basalt, &c.; and in many crystalline schists, for example, amphibolite and hornblende-schist which are composed almost entirely of this mineral. Well-crystallized specimens are met with at many localities, for example: brilliant black crystals (syntagmatite) with augite and mica in the sanidine bombs of Monte Somma, Vesuvius; large crystals at Arendal in Norway, and at several places in the state of New York; isolated crystals from the basalts of Bohemia. (L. J. S.)

HORN-BOOK, a name originally applied to a sheet containing the letters of the alphabet, which formed a primer for the use of children. It was mounted on wood and protected with transparent horn. Sometimes the leaf was simply pasted against the slice of horn. The wooden frame had a handle, and it was usually hung at the child's girdle. The sheet, which in ancient times was of vellum and latterly of paper, contained first a large cross--the criss-crosse--from which the horn-book was called the Christ Cross Row, or criss-cross-row. The alphabet in large and small letters followed. The vowels then formed a line, and their combinations with the consonants were given in a tabular form. The usual exorcism--"in the name of the Father and of the Sonne and of the Holy Ghost, Amen"--followed, then the Lord's Prayer, the whole concluding with the Roman numerals. The horn-book is mentioned in Shakespeare's _Love's Labour's Lost_, v. i, where the _ba_, the _a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_, and the horn, are alluded to by Moth. It is also described by Ben Jonson--

"The letters may be read, through the horn,
That make the story perfect."

HORNBY, SIR GEOFFREY THOMAS PHIPPS (1825-1895), British admiral of the fleet, son of Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby, the first cousin and brother-in-law of the 13th earl of Derby, by a daughter of Lieut.-General Burgoyne, commonly distinguished as "Saratoga" Burgoyne, was born on the 20th of February 1825. At the age of twelve he was sent to sea in the flagship of Sir Robert Stopford, with whom he saw the capture of Acre in November 1840. He afterwards served in the flagship of Rear-Admiral Josceline Percy at the Cape of Good Hope, was flag-lieutenant to his father in the Pacific, and came home as a commander. When the Derby ministry fell in December 1852 young Hornby was promoted to be captain. Early in 1853 he married, and as the Derby connexion put him out of favour with the Aberdeen ministry, and especially with Sir James Graham, the first lord of the Admiralty, he settled down in Sussex as manager of his father's property. He had no appointment in the navy till 1858, when he was sent out to China to take command of the "Tribune" frigate and convey a body of marines to Vancouver Island, where the dispute with the United States about the island of San Juan was threatening to become very bitter. As senior naval officer there Hornby's moderation, temper and tact did much to smooth over matters, and a temporary arrangement for joint occupation of the island was concluded. He afterwards commanded the "Neptune" in the Mediterranean under Sir William Fanshawe Martin, was flag-captain to Rear-Admiral Dacres in the Channel, was commodore of the squadron on the west coast of Africa, and, being promoted to rear-admiral in January 1869, commanded the training squadron for a couple of years. He then commanded the Channel Fleet, and was for two years a junior lord of the Admiralty. It was early in 1877 that he went out as commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, where his skill in manoeuvring the fleet, his power as a disciplinarian, and the tact and determination with which he conducted the foreign relations at the time of the Russian advance on Constantinople, won for him the K. C. B. He returned home in 1880 with the character of being perhaps the most able commander on the active list of the navy. His later appointments were to the Royal Naval College as president, and afterwards to Portsmouth as commander-in-chief. On hauling down his flag he was appointed G. C. B., and in May 1888 was promoted to be admiral of the fleet. From 1886 he was principal naval aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria, and in that capacity, and as an admiral of the fleet, was appointed on the staff of the German emperor during his visits to England in 1889 and 1890. He died, after a short illness, on the 3rd of March 1895. By his wife, who predeceased him, he left several children, daughters and sons, one of whom, a major in the artillery, won the Victoria Cross in South Africa in 1900.

His life was written by his daughter, Mrs Fred. Egerton, (1896).

HORNCASTLE, a market-town in the S. Lindsey or Horncastle parliamentary division of Lincolnshire, England, at the foot of a line of low hills called the Wolds, at the confluence of the Bain and Waring streams; the terminus of a branch line of the Great Northern railway, 130 m. N. from London. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4038. The church of St Mary is principally Decorated and Perpendicular, with some Early English remains and an embattled western tower. Queen Elizabeth's grammar school was founded in 1562. Other buildings are an exchange, a court-house and a dispensary founded in 1789. The prosperity of the town is chiefly dependent on agriculture and its well-known horse fairs. Brewing and malting are carried on, and there is some trade in coal and iron.

Remains have been found here which may indicate the existence of a Roman village. The manor of Horncastle (Hornecastre) belonged to Queen Edith in Saxon times and was royal demesne in 1086 and the head of a large soke. In the reign of Stephen it apparently belonged to Alice de Cundi, a partisan of the empress Maud, and passing to the crown on her death it was granted by Henry III. to Gerbald de Escald, from whom it descended to Ralph de Rhodes, who sold it to Walter Mauclerc, bishop of Carlisle in 1230. The see of Carlisle retained it till the reign of Edward VI. when it was granted to Edward, Lord Clinton, but was recovered in the following reign. In 1230 Henry III. directed the men of Horncastle to render a reasonable aid to the bishop, who obtained the right to try felons, hold a court leet and have free warren. An inquisition of 1275 shows that the bishop had then, besides the return of writs, the assize of bread and ale and waifs and strays in the soke. Horncastle was a centre of the Lincolnshire rebellion of 1536. Royalist troops occupied the town in 1643, and were pursued through its streets after the battle fought at Winceby. It was never a municipal or parliamentary borough, but during the middle ages it was frequently the residence of the bishops of Carlisle. Its prosperity has always depended largely on its fairs, the great horse fair described by George Borrow in _Romany Rye_ being granted to the bishop in 1230 for the octave of St Lawrence, together with the fair on the feast of St Barnabas. The three other fairs are apparently of later date.

See George Weir, _Historical and Descriptive Sketches of the Town and
Soke of Horncastle in the County of Lincoln and of Several Places
adjacent_ (London, 1820).

HORN DANCE, a medieval dance, still celebrated during the September "wakes" at Abbots Bromley, a village on the borders of Needwood Forest, Staffordshire. Six or seven men, each wearing a deer's skull with antlers, dance through the streets, pursued by a comrade who bestrides a mimic horse, and whips the dancers to keep them on the move. The horn-dance usually takes place on the Monday after Wakes Sunday, which is the Sunday next after the 4th of September. Originally the dance took place on a Sunday.

See _Strand Magazine_ for November 1896; also _Folk-lore_, vol. vii.
(1896), p. 381.

HORNE, GEORGE (1730-1792), English divine, was born on the 1st of November 1730, at Otham near Maidstone, and received his education at Maidstone school and University College, Oxford. In 1749 he became a fellow of Magdalen, of which college he was elected president in 1768. As a preacher he early attained great popularity, and was, albeit unjustly, accused of Methodism. His reputation was helped by several clever if somewhat wrong-headed publications, including a satirical pamphlet entitled _The Theology and Philosophy of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis_ (1751), a defence of the Hutchinsonians in _A Fair, Candid and Impartial State of the Case between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr Hutchinson_ (1753), and critiques upon William Law (1758) and Benjamin Kennicott (1760). In 1771 he published his well-known _Commentary on the Psalms_. a series of expositions based on the Messianic idea. In 1776 he was chosen vice-chancellor of his university; in 1781 he was made dean of Canterbury, and in 1790 was raised to the see of Norwich. He died at Bath on the 17th of January 1792.

His collected _Works_ were published with a Memoir by William Jones in
1799.

HORNE, RICHARD HENRY, or HENGIST (1803-1884), English poet and critic, was born in London on New Year's Day 1803. He was intended for the army, and entered at Sandhurst, but receiving no commission, he left his country and joined the Mexican navy. He served in the war against Spain, and underwent many adventures. Returning to England, he became a journalist, and in 1836-1837 edited _The Monthly Repository_. In 1837 he published two tragedies, _Cosmo de Medici_ and _The Death of Marlowe_, and in 1841 a _History of Napoleon_. The book, however, by which he lives is his epic of _Orion_, which appeared in 1843. It was published originally at a farthing, was widely read, and passed through many editions. In the next year he set forth a volume of critical essays called _A New Spirit of the Age_, in which he was assisted by Elizabeth Barrett (Mrs Browning), with whom, from 1839 to her marriage in 1846, he conducted a voluminous correspondence. In 1852 he went to Australia in company with William Howitt, and did not return to England until 1869. He received a Civil List pension in 1874, and died at Margate on the 13th of March 1884. Horne possessed extraordinary versatility, but, except in the case of _Orion_, he never attained to a very high degree of distinction. That poem, indeed, has much of the quality of fine poetry; it is earnest, vivid and alive with spirit. But Horne early drove his talent too hard, and continued to write when he had little left to say. In criticism he had insight and quickness. He was one of the first to appreciate Keats and Tennyson, and he gave valuable encouragement to Mrs Browning when she was still Miss Elizabeth Barrett.

HORNE, THOMAS HARTWELL (1780-1862), English theologian and bibliographer, was born in London on the 20th of October 1780, and was educated at Christ's Hospital, with S. T. Coleridge as an elder contemporary. On leaving school he became clerk to a barrister, but showed a keen taste for authorship. As early as 1800 he published _A Brief View of the Necessity and Truth of the Christian Revelation_, which was followed by several minor works on very varied subjects. In 1814, having been appointed librarian of the Surrey Institution, he issued his _Introduction to the Study of Bibliography_. This was followed in 1818 by his long matured work, the _Introduction to the Critical Study of the Holy Scriptures_, which rapidly attained popularity, and secured for its author widespread fame and an honorary M.A. degree from Aberdeen. In 1819 he received ordination from William Howley, bishop of London, and after holding two smaller livings was appointed rector of the united parishes of St Edmund the King and Martyr, and St Nicolas Acons in London. On the breaking up of the Surrey Institution in 1823, he was appointed (1824) senior assistant librarian in the department of printed books in the British Museum. After the project of making a classified catalogue had been abandoned, he took part in the preparation of the alphabetical one, and his connexion with the museum continued until within a few months of his death on the 27th of January 1862.

Horne's works exceed forty in number. The _Introduction_, edited by
John Ayre and S. P. Tregelles, reached a 12th edition in 1869; but,
owing to subsequent advances in biblical scholarship, it fell into
disuse.

HORNELL, a city of Steuben county, New York, U.S.A., on the Canisteo river, 90 m. S.E. of Buffalo. Pop. (1890) 10,996; (1900) 11,918, of whom 1230 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,617. Hornell is served by the Erie and the Pittsburg, Shawmut & Northern railways; the latter connects at Wayland (20 m. distant by rail) with the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad. In the city are St Ann's Academy, the St James Mercy Hospital, the Steuben Sanitarium, a public library, and a county court-house--terms of the county court being held here as well as in Bath (pop. in 1905, 3695), the county-seat, and in Corning. Hornell has extensive car shops of the Erie railroad, and among its manufactures are silk goods (silk gloves being a specially important product), sash, doors and blinds, leather, furniture, shoes, white-goods, wire-fences, foundry and machine shop products, electric motors, and brick and tile. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $3,162,677, an increase of 30.1% since 1900. The first settlement here was made in 1790, within the district of Erwin (then in Ontario county); after 1796 it was a part of Canisteo township, and the settlement itself was known as Upper Canisteo until 1820, when a new township was formed and named Hornellsville in honour of Judge George Hornell (d. 1813). The village of Hornellsville was incorporated in 1852, and in 1888 was chartered as a city; and by act of the state legislature the name was changed to Hornell in 1906.

See G. H. McMaster, _History of the Settlement of Steuben County_
(Bath, New York, 1849).

HORNEMANN, FREDERICK (fl. 1796-1800), German traveller in Africa, was born at Hildesheim. He was a young man when, early in 1796, he offered his services to the African Association of London as an explorer in Africa. By the association he was sent to Gottingen University to study Arabic and otherwise prepare for an expedition into the unknown regions of North Africa from the east. In September 1797 he arrived in Egypt, where he continued his studies. On the invasion of the country by the French he was confined in the citadel of Cairo, to preserve him from the fanaticism of the populace. Liberated by the French, he received the patronage of Bonaparte. On the 5th of September 1798 he joined a caravan returning to the Maghrib from Mecca, attaching himself to a party of Fezzan merchants who accompanied the pilgrims. As an avowed Christian would not have been permitted to join the caravan Hornemann assumed the character of a young mameluke trading to Fezzan. He then spoke, but indifferently, both Arabic and Turkish, and he was accompanied as servant and interpreter by Joseph Freudenburg, a German convert to Islam, who had thrice made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Travelling by way of the oases of Siwa and Aujila, a "black rocky desert" was traversed to Temissa in Fezzan. Murzuk was reached on the 17th of November 1798. Here Hornemann lived till June 1799, going thence to the city of Tripoli, whence in August of the same year he despatched his journals to London. He then returned to Murzuk. Nothing further is known with certainty concerning him or his companion. In Murzuk Hornemann had collected a great deal of trustworthy information concerning the peoples and countries of the western Sahara and central Sudan, and when he left Tripoli it was his intention to go direct to the Hausa country, which region he was the first European definitely to locate. "If I do not perish in my undertaking," he wrote in his journal, "I hope in five years I shall be able to make the Society better acquainted with the people of whom I have given this short description." The British consul at Tripoli heard from a source believed to be trustworthy that about June 1803 Jusef (Hornemann's Mahommedan name) was at Casna, i.e. Katsena, in Northern Nigeria, "in good health and highly respected as a marabout." A report reached Murzuk in 1819 that the traveller had gone to "Noofy" (Nupe), and had died there. Hornemann was the first European in modern times to traverse the north-eastern Sahara, and up to 1910 no other explorer had followed his route across the Jebel-es-Suda from Aujila to Temissa.

The original text of Hornemann's journal, which was written in German,
was printed at Weimar in 1801; an English translation, _Travels from
Cairo to Mourzouk_, &c., with maps and dissertations by Major James
Rennell, appeared in London in 1802. A French translation of the
English work, made by order of the First Consul, and augmented with
notes and a memoir on the Egyptian oases by L. Langles, was published
in Paris in the following year. The French version is the most
valuable of the three. Consult also the _Proceedings of the African
Association_ (1810), and the Geog. Jnl. Nov. 1906.

HORNER, FRANCIS (1778-1817), British economist, was born at Edinburgh on the 12th of August 1778. After passing through the usual courses at the high school and university of his native city, he devoted five years, the first two in England, to comprehensive but desultory study, and in 1800 was called to the Scottish bar. Desirous, however, of a wider sphere, Horner removed to London in 1802, and occupied the interval that elapsed before his admission to the English bar in 1807 with researches in law, philosophy and political economy. In February 1806 he became one of the commissioners for adjusting the claims against the nawab of Arcot, and in November entered parliament as member for St Ives. Next year he sat. for Wendover, and in 1812 for St Mawes, in the patronage of the marquis of Buckingham. In 1811, when Lord Grenville was organizing a prospective ministry, Horner had the offer, which he refused, of a treasury secretaryship. He had resolved not to accept office till he could afford to live out of office; and his professional income, on which he depended, was at no time proportionate to his abilities. His labours at last began to tell upon a constitution never robust, and in October 1816 his physicians ordered him to Italy, where, however, he sank under his malady. He died at Pisa, on the 8th of February 1817. He was buried at Leghorn, and a marble statue by Chantrey was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Without the advantages of rank, or wealth, or even of genius, Francis Horner rose to a high position of public influence and private esteem. His special field was political economy. Master of that subject, and exercising a sort of moral as well as intellectual influence over the House of Commons he, by his nervous and earnest rather than eloquent style of speaking, could fix its attention for hours on such dry topics as finance, and coinage, and currency. As chairman of the parliamentary committee for investigating the depreciation of bank-notes, for which he moved in 1810, he extended and confirmed his fame as a political economist by his share in the famous _Bullion Report_. It was chiefly through his efforts that the paper-issue of the English banks was checked, and gold and silver reinstated in their true position as circulating media; and his views on free trade and commerce have been generally accepted at their really high value. Horner was one of the promoters of the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1802. His articles in the early numbers of that publication, chiefly on political economy, form his only literary legacy.

See _Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P._, published by
his brother (see below) in 1843. Also the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly
Reviews_ for the same year; and _Blackwood's Magazine_, vol. i.

HORNER, LEONARD (1785-1864), Scottish geologist, brother of Francis Horner (above), was born in Edinburgh on the 17th of January 1785. His father, John Horner, was a linen merchant in Edinburgh, and Leonard, the third and youngest son, entered the university of Edinburgh in 1799. There in the course of the next four years he studied chemistry and mineralogy, and gained a love of geology from Playfair's _Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory_. At the age of nineteen he became a partner in a branch of his father's business, and went to London. In 1808 he joined the newly formed Geological Society and two years later was elected one of the secretaries. Throughout his long life he was ardently devoted to the welfare of the society; he was elected president in 1846 and again in 1860. In 1811 he read his first paper "On the Mineralogy of the Malvern Hills" (_Trans. Geol. Soc._ vol. i.) and subsequently communicated other papers on the "Brine-springs at Droitwich," and the "Geology of the S.W. part of Somersetshire." He was elected F.R.S. in 1813. In 1815 he returned to Edinburgh to take personal superintendence of his business, and while there (1821) he was instrumental in founding the Edinburgh School of Arts for the instruction of mechanics, and he was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Academy. In 1827 he was invited to London to become warden of the London University, an office which he held for four years; he then resided at Bonn for two years and pursued the study of minerals and rocks, communicating to the Geological Society on his return a paper on the "Geology of the Environs of Bonn," and another "On the Quantity of Solid Matter suspended in the Water of the Rhine." In 1833 he was appointed one of the commissioners to inquire into the employment of children in the factories of Great Britain, and he was subsequently selected as one of the inspectors. In later years he devoted much attention to the geological history of the alluvial lands of Egypt; and in 1843 he published his _Life_ of his brother Francis. He died in London on the 5th of March 1864.

See _Memoir of Leonard Horner_, by Katherine M. Lyell (1890)
(privately printed).

HORNES, MORITZ (1815-1868), Austrian palaeontologist, was born in Vienna on the 14th of July 1815. He was educated in the university and graduated Ph.D. He then became assistant in the Vienna mineralogical museum. He was distinguished for his researches on the Tertiary mollusca of the Vienna Basin, and on the Triassic mollusca of Alpine regions. Most of his memoirs were published in the _Jahrbuch der K. K. geol. Reichsanstalt_. In 1864 he introduced the term Neogene to include Miocene and Pliocene, as these formations are not always to be clearly separated: the fauna of the lower division being subtropical and gradually giving place in the upper division to Mediterranean forms. He died in Vienna on the 4th of November 1868. His son Dr Rudolf Hornes (b. 1850), professor of geology and palaeontology in the university of Graz, has also carried on researches among the Tertiary mollusca, and is author of _Elemente der Palaeontologie_ (1884).

HORNFELS (a German word meaning hornstone), the group designation for a series of rocks which have been baked and indurated by the heat of intrusive granitic masses and have been rendered massive, hard, splintery, and in some cases exceedingly tough and durable. Most hornfelses are fine-grained, and while the original rocks (such as sandstone, shale and slate, limestone and diabase) may have been more or less fissile owing to the presence of bedding or cleavage planes, this structure is effaced or rendered inoperative in the hornfels. Though they may show banding, due to bedding, &c., they break across this as readily as along it; in fact they tend to separate into cubical fragments rather than into thin plates. The commonest hornfelses (the "biotite hornfelses") are dark-brown to black with a somewhat velvety lustre owing to the abundance of small crystals of shining black mica. The "lime hornfelses" are often white, yellow, pale-green, brown and other colours. Green and dark-green are the prevalent tints of the hornfelses produced by the alteration of igneous rocks. Although for the most part the constituent grains are too small to be determined by the unaided eye, there are often larger crystals of garnet or andalusite scattered through the fine matrix, and these may become very prominent on the weathered faces of the rock.

The structure of the hornfelses is very characteristic. Very rarely do any of the minerals show crystalline form, but the small grains fit closely together like the fragments of a mosaic; they are usually of nearly equal dimensions and from the resemblance to rough pavement work this has been called _pflaster_ structure or pavement structure. Each mineral may also enclose particles of the others; in the quartz, for example, small crystals of graphite, biotite, iron oxides, sillimanite or felspar may appear in great numbers. Often the whole of the grains are rendered semi-opaque in this way. The minutest crystals may show traces of crystalline outlines; undoubtedly they are of new formation and have originated _in situ_. This leads us to believe that the whole rock has been recrystallized at a high temperature and in the solid state, so that there was little freedom for the mineral molecules to build up well-individualized crystals. The regeneration of the rock has been sufficient to efface most of the original structures and to replace the former minerals more or less completely by new ones. But crystallization has been hampered by the solid condition of the mass and the new minerals are formless and have been unable to reject impurities, but have grown around them.

Slates, shales and clays yield biotite hornfelses in which the most conspicuous mineral is black mica, in small scales which under the microscope are transparent and have a dark reddish-brown colour and strong dichroism. There is also quartz, and often a considerable amount of felspar, while graphite, tourmaline and iron oxides frequently occur in lesser quantity. In these biotite hornfelses the minerals, which consist of aluminium silicates, are commonly found; they are usually andalusite and sillimanite, but kyanite appears also in hornfelses, especially in those which have a schistose character. The andalusite may be pink and is then often pleochroic in thin sections, or it may be white with the cross-shaped dark enclosures of the matrix which are characteristic of chiastolite. Sillimanite usually forms exceedingly minute needles embedded in quartz. In the rocks of this group cordierite also occurs, not rarely, and may have the outlines of imperfect hexagonal prisms which are divided up into six sectors when seen in polarized light. In biotite hornfelses a faint striping may indicate the original bedding of the unaltered rock and corresponds to small changes in the nature of the sediment deposited. More commonly there is a distinct spotting, visible on the surfaces of the hand specimens. The spots are round or elliptical, and may be paler or darker than the rest of the rock. In some cases they are rich in graphite or carbonaceous matters; in others they are full of brown mica; some spots consist of rather coarser grains of quartz than occur in the matrix. The frequency with which this feature reappears in the less altered slates and hornfelses is rather remarkable, especially as it seems certain that the spots are not always of the same nature or origin. "Tourmaline hornfelses" are found sometimes near the margins of tourmaline granites; they are black with small needles of schorl which under the microscope are dark brown and richly pleochroic. As the tourmaline contains boron there must have been some permeation of vapours from the granite into the sediments. Rocks of this group are often seen in the Cornish tin-mining districts, especially near the lodes.

A second great group of hornfelses are the calc-silicate-hornfelses which arise from the thermal alteration of impure limestones. The purer beds recrystallize as marbles, but where there has been originally an admixture of sand or clay lime-bearing silicates are formed, such as diopside, epidote, garnet, sphene, vesuvianite, scapolite; with these phlogopite, various felspars, pyrites, quartz and actinolite often occur. These rocks are fine-grained, and though often banded are tough and much harder than the original limestones. They are excessively variable in their mineralogical composition, and very often alternate in thin seams with biotite hornfels and indurated quartzites. When perfused with boric and fluoric vapours from the granite they may contain much axinite, fluorite and datolite, but the aluminous silicates (andalusite, &c.) are absent from these rocks.

From diabases, basalts, andesites and other igneous rocks a third type of hornfels is produced. They consist essentially of felspar with hornblende (generally of brown colour) and pale pyroxene. Sphene, biotite and iron oxides are the other common constituents, but these rocks show much variety of composition and structure. Where the original mass was decomposed and contained calcite, zeolites, chlorite and other secondary minerals either in veins or in cavities, there are usually rounded areas or irregular streaks containing a suite of new minerals, which may resemble those of the calc silicate hornfelses above described. The original porphyritic, fluidal, vesicular or fragmental structures of the igneous rock are clearly visible in the less advanced stages of hornfelsing, but become less evident as the alteration progresses.

In some districts hornfelsed rocks occur which have acquired a schistose structure through shearing, and these form transitions to schists and gneisses which contain the same minerals as the hornfelses, but have a schistose instead of a hornfels structure. Among these may be mentioned cordierite and sillimanite gneisses, andalusite and kyanite mica schists, and those schistose calc silicate rocks which are known as cipolins. That these are sediments which have undergone thermal alteration is generally admitted, but the exact conditions under which they were formed is not always clear. The essential features of hornfelsing are ascribed to the action of heat, pressure and permeating vapours, regenerating a rock mass without the production of fusion (at least on a large scale). It has been argued, however, that often there is extensive chemical change owing to the introduction of matter from the granite into the rocks surrounding it. The formation of new felspar in the hornfelses is pointed out as evidence of this. While this "felspathization" may have occurred in a few localities, it seems conspicuously absent from others. Most authorities at the present time regard the changes as being purely of a physical and not of a chemical nature. (J. S. F.)

HORNING, LETTERS OF, a term in Scots law. Originally in Scotland imprisonment for debt was enforceable only in certain cases, but a custom gradually grew up of taking the debtor's oath to pay. If the debtor broke his oath, he became liable to the discipline of the Church. The civil power, further, stepped in to aid the ecclesiastical, and denounced him as a rebel, imprisoning his person and confiscating his goods. The method declaring a person a rebel was by giving three blasts on a horn and publicly proclaiming the fact; hence the expression, "put to the horn." The subsequent process, the warrant directing a messenger-at-arms to charge the debtor to pay or perform in terms of the letters, was called "letters of horning." This system of execution was simplified by an act of 1837 (Personal Diligence Act), and execution is now usually by diligence (see EXECUTION).

HORNPIPE, originally the name of an instrument no longer in existence, and now the name of an English national dance. The sailors' hornpipe, although the most common, is by no means the only form of the dance, for there is a pretty tune known as the "College Hornpipe," and other specimens of a similar kind might be cited. The composition of hornpipes flourished chiefly in the 18th century, and even Handel did not disdain to use the characteristic rhythm. The hornpipe may be written in 3/2 or in common time, and is always of a lively nature.

HORNSEY, a municipal borough in the Hornsey parliamentary division of Middlesex, England, suburban to London, 6 m. N. of St Paul's Cathedral, on the Great Northern railway. Pop. (1891) 44,523; (1901) 72,056. It is chiefly occupied by small residences of the working classes. The manor, called in the 13th century _Haringee_ (a name which survives as Harringay), belonged from an early date to the see of London, the bishops having a seat here. In 1387 the duke of Gloucester, uncle of Richard II., assembled in Hornsey Park the forces by the display of which he compelled the king to dismiss his minister de la Pole, earl of Suffolk; and in 1483 the park was the scene of the ceremonious reception of Edward V., under the charge of Richard, duke of Gloucester, by Edmund Shaw, lord mayor of London. The parish church of St Mary, Hornsey, retains its Perpendicular tower (c. 1500) and a number of interesting monuments. Finsbury Park, of 120 acres, and other smaller public grounds, are within the borough. Hornsey was incorporated in 1903 under a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors. Area, 2875 acres.

HOROWITZ, ISAIAH (c. 1555-c. 1630), Jewish rabbi and mystic, was born at Prague, and died at Safed, then the home of Jewish Kabbala. His largest work is called _Shelah_ (abbreviated from the initials of the full title _Shene luhoth ha-berit_, "Two Tables of the Covenant"). This is a compilation of ritual, ethics and mysticism, and had a profound influence on Jewish life. It has been often reprinted, especially in an abbreviated form.

For an account of the Jewish mystics at Safed see S. Schecter,
_Studies in Judaism_, series ii. (1908).

HORREUM, the Latin word for a magazine or storehouse for the storage of grain and other produce of the earth, and occasionally for that of agricultural implements. The storehouses of Rome were of the most extensive character, there being no fewer than 290 public horrea at the time of Constantine. They were used for the storage of food and merchandize of all kinds, being part of the great Roman system of providing food for the population, and they were supplied constantly with corn and other provisions from Africa, Spain and elsewhere.

HORROCKS, JEREMIAH (1619-1641), English astronomer, was born in 1619 at Toxteth Park, near Liverpool. His family was poor, and the register of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, testifies to his entry as sizar on the 18th of May 1632. Isolated in his scientific tastes, and painfully straitened in means, he pursued amid innumerable difficulties his purpose of self-education. His university career lasted three years, and on its termination he became a tutor at Toxteth, devoting to astronomical observations his brief intervals of leisure. In 1636 he met with a congenial spirit in William Crabtree, a draper of Broughton, near Manchester; and encouraged by his advice he exchanged the guidance of Philipp von Lansberg, a pretentious but inaccurate Belgian astronomer, for that of Kepler. He now set himself to the revision of the Rudolphine Tables (published by Kepler in 1627), and in the progress of his task became convinced that a transit of Venus overlooked by Kepler would nevertheless occur on the 24th of November (O.S.) 1639. He was at this time curate of Hoole, near Preston, having recently taken orders in the Church of England, although, according to the received accounts, he had not attained the canonical age. The 24th of November falling on a Sunday, his clerical duties threatened fatally to clash with his astronomical observations; he was, however, released just in time to witness the punctual verification of his forecast, and carefully noted the progress of the phenomenon during half an hour before sunset (3.15 to 3.45). This transit of Venus is remarkable as the first ever observed, that of 1631 predicted by Kepler having been invisible in western Europe. Notwithstanding the rude character of the apparatus at his disposal, Horrocks was enabled by his observation of it to introduce some important corrections into the elements of the planet's orbit, and to reduce to its exact value the received estimate of its apparent diameter.

After a year spent at Hoole, he returned to Toxteth, and there, on the eve of a long-promised visit to his friend Crabtree, he died, on the 3rd of January 1641, when only in his twenty-second year. To the inventive activity of the discoverer he had already united the patient skill of the observer and the practical sagacity of the experimentalist. Before he was twenty he had afforded a specimen of his powers by an important contribution to the lunar theory. He first brought the revolutions of our satellite within the domain of Kepler's laws, pointing out that her apparent irregularities could be completely accounted for by supposing her to move in an ellipse with a variable eccentricity and directly rotatory major axis, of which the earth occupied one focus. These precise conditions were afterwards demonstrated by Newton to follow necessarily from the law of gravitation.

In his speculations as to the physical cause of the celestial motions, his mind, though not wholly emancipated from the tyranny of gratuitous assumptions, was working steadily towards the light. He clearly perceived the significant analogy between terrestrial gravity and the force exerted in the solar system, and by the ingenious device of a circular pendulum illustrated the composite character of the planetary movements. He also reduced the solar parallax to 14" (less than a quarter of Kepler's estimate), corrected the sun's semi-diameter to 15' 45", recommended decimal notation, and was the first to make tidal observations.

Only a remnant of the papers left by Horrocks was preserved by the
care of William Crabtree. After his death (which occurred soon after
that of his friend) these were purchased by Dr Worthington, of
Cambridge; and from his hands the treatise _Venus in sole visa_ passed
into those of Hevelius, and was published by him in 1662 with his own
observations on a transit of Mercury. The remaining fragments were,
under the directions of the Royal Society, reduced by Dr Wallis to a
compact form, with the heading _Astronomia Kepleriana defensa et
promota_, and published with numerous extracts from the letters of
Horrocks to Crabtree, and a sketch of the author's life, in a volume
entitled _Jeremiae Horroccii opera posthuma_ (London, 1672). A memoir
of his life by the Rev. Arundell Blount Whatton, prefixed to a
translation of the _Venus in sole visa_, appeared at London in 1859.

For additional particulars, see J. E. Bailey's _Palatine Note-Book_,
ii. 253, iii. 17; Bailey's "Writings of Horrocks and Crabtree" (from
_Notes and Queries_, Dec. 2, 1882); _Notes and Queries_, 3rd series,
vol. v., 5th series, vols. ii., iv.; Martin's _Biographia
philosophica_, p. 271 (1764); R. Brickel, _Transits of Venus,
1639-1874_ (Preston, 1874); _Astronomical Register_, xii. 293;
Hevelii, _Mercurius in sole visus_, pp. 116-140; S. Rigaud's
_Correspondence of Scientific Men_; Th. Birch, _History of the Royal
Society_, i. 386, 395, 470; Sir E. Sherburne's _Sphere of M.
Manilius_, p. 92 (1675); Sir J. A. Picton's _Memorials of Liverpool_,
ii. 561; M. Gregson's _Fragments relative to the Duchy of Lancaster_,
p. 166 (1817); _Liverpool Repository_, i. 570 (1826); _Phil. Trans.
Abridged_, ii. 12 (1809); C. Hutton's _Phil. and Math. Dictionary_
(1815); _Penny Cyclopaedia_ (De Morgan); _Nature_, viii. 117, 137; J.
B. J. Delambre, _Hist. de l'astronomie moderne_, ii. 495; _Hist. de
l'astronomie au XVIII^e siecle_, pp. 28, 61, 74; W. Whewell, _Hist. of
the Inductive Sciences_, i. 331; R. Grant, _Hist. of Physical
Astronomy_, pp. 420, 545; J. Madler, _Geschichte der Himmelskunde_, i.
275; M. Marie, _Hist. des Sciences_, iv. 168, vi. 90; J. C. Houzeau,
_Bibl. Astr._ ii. 167. (A. M. C.)

HORROCKS, JOHN (1768-1804), British cotton manufacturer, was born at Edgeworth, near Bolton, in 1768. His father was the owner of a small quarry, and John Horrocks spent his early days in dressing and polishing millstones. The Lancashire cotton industry was then in its infancy, but Horrocks was greatly impressed with its future possibilities, and he managed to obtain a few spinning-frames which he erected in a corner of his father's offices. For a time he combined cotton-spinning on a very small scale with stone-working, but finally devoted himself entirely to cotton-spinning, working the frames with his own hands, and travelling through the Lancashire manufacturing districts to sell the yarn. His goods obtained a reputation for quality, and his customers increased so rapidly that in 1791 he removed to Preston, where he began to manufacture cotton shirtings and long-cloths in addition to spinning the cotton yarn. By taking full advantage of the machinery invented for manufacturing textiles, and by rigidly maintaining the quality of his goods, Horrocks rapidly developed his business, and with the aid of the capital of a local banker, whom he took into partnership, erected within a year of his arrival in Preston his first large mill, securing shortly afterwards from the East India Company a monopoly of the manufacture of cottons and muslins for the Indian market. The demand for Horrocks's goods continued to increase, and to cope with the additional work he took first an elder brother and in 1801 a Mr Whitehead and a Mr Miller into partnership, the title of the firm being altered to Horrockses, Miller & Co. In 1802 he entered parliament as tory member for Preston. He died in London in 1804 of brain-fever resulting from over-work.

HORSE (a word common to Teutonic languages in such forms as _hors_, _hros_, _ros_; cf. the Ger. _ross_), a name properly restricted to the domesticated horse (_Equus caballus_) and its wild or half-wild representatives, but in a zoological sense used as a general term for all the members of the family Equidae.

SPECIES

The distinctive characteristics of the family, and its position in the zoological system, are given in the articles EQUIDAE and PERISSODACTYLA. Here attention is concentrated on the leading features of the horse as contrasted with the other members of the same family, and subsequently on the anatomical structure of the former animal. The evolution of the existing representatives of the family from primitive extinct animals is summarized in the article EQUIDAE.

_Horse_, _Wild Horse_, _Pony_.--The horse (_Equus caballus_) is distinguished from the others by the long hairs of the tail being more abundant and growing quite or nearly from the base as well as the end and sides, and also by possessing a small bare callosity on the inner side of the hind leg, just below the "hock" or heel joint, in addition to the one on the inner side of the fore-arm above the carpus or "knee," common to all the genus. The mane is also longer and more flowing, and the ears are shorter, the limbs longer, and the head smaller.

Though existing horses are usually not marked in any definite manner, or only irregularly dappled, or spotted with light surrounded by a darker ring, many examples are met with showing a dark median dorsal streak like that found in all the other members of the genus, and even with dark stripes on the shoulders and legs.