798 



HORNPIPE HORSE. 



eepted. He immediately drew up a plnn, which lie 

 laid before the society, and devoted himself to ii:itnr;il 

 history and the Oriental languages, with the greatest 

 teal. In Feb. 1797, he was in London, where the 

 society gave him their instructions; he then went by 

 the way of Paris to Marseilles, where he embarked. 

 After having visited Cyprus, he landed at Alexandria, 

 and remained some months in Cairo, to learn the 

 language of the Maugrabins or Southern Arabians. 

 When the landing of the French in Egypt became 

 known, he, like all the other Europeans, was detained 

 in the castle, in order to save them from the rage 

 of the people. General Bonaparte, being informed of 

 Hornemann's plans, gave him passports, and showed 

 a disposition to promote his objects in every way 

 possible. Sept. 5, 1799, Hornemann left Cairo with 

 the caravan of Fezzan; on the 8th, he entered the 

 Lybian desert, reached Siouah on the 16th, an oasis 

 already visited by Brown, and arrived, after a tedious 

 journey of seventy-four days, at Mourzouk, the capi- 

 tal of Fezzan. Here he staid some time, and made 

 an excursion to Tripoli, which he left again, Jan. 29, 

 1800. April 12, he wrote that he was on the point 

 of setting out with the great caravan of Bornou. 

 From that time, nothing certain was known of him 

 till 1818, when Von Zach, in his Correspondence 

 A&tronomique , communicated a letter from the Eng- 

 lish captain Smith, according to which Hornemann 

 died on his return from Tripoli to Fezzan, of a fever, 

 caused by drinking cold water, after being exposed 

 to great fatigue, and lies buried at Aucalus. His 

 companion, the bey of Fezzan assured the captain, 

 that he had sent Hornemann's papers to the British 

 consul at Tripoli. Hornemann himself had sent his 

 journal from Tripoli to England. It was written in 

 German, and, in 1802, the African society published 

 * translation of it. In the same year, the original 

 was published by Charles Konig. It contains much 

 valuable information, with useful notes, by Rennel, 

 Young, and Marsden. 



HORNPIPE; a dance, of which the name is pro- 

 bably derived from the instrument played during its 

 performance. That it was not unusual to give to 

 certain airs the names of the instruments on which 

 they were commonly played, appears from the word 

 Geig, which, with little variation, is made to signify 

 both a fiddle and the air called a jig. The instru- 

 ment called the horn-pipe is common in Wales. Its 

 name in Welsh is the pib-corn (horn-pipe). It con- 

 sists of a wooden pipe, with holes at stated distances, 

 and a horn at each end. 



HORNSTONE. See Quartz. 



HOROLOGY. See Watch and Clock Making. 



HOROSCOPE (from vga, time, and <rxevnv, to 

 observe); a careful observation of the moment of 

 birth, and of the position of the celestial bodies at 

 the time, for the purpose of predicting the fortune of 

 the infant. It is also used for a scheme or figure of 

 the position of the heavens at any time. The heavens 

 were divided by astrologers, for this purpose, into 

 twelve parts, called houses, to each of which was as- 

 signed its particular virtue or influence. The ascen- 

 dant was that part of the heavens which was rising 

 in the east at the moment; this is the first house, or 

 house of life, and contained the five degrees imme- 

 diately above the horizon, and the twenty-five beneath 

 it; the second was the house of riches, &c.; the 

 seventh, or angle of the west, the house of marriage; 

 the eighth, the house of death. See Astrologer of the 

 Nineteenth Century (1825), and Manual of Astrology, 

 \ 828. 



HORROX, JEREMIAH; an English astronomer of 

 the seventeenth century, born about 1619, and edu- 

 cated at Cambridge. He accurately observed the 

 transit of Venus over the sun's disk, Nov. 24, 1639. 



He died .Ian. 3, 1641, only a few days after he had 

 finished his treatise entitled Venus in Sole visa. 

 Other productions of his pen, left in an imperfect 

 state, were collected and published by doctor Wallis, 

 in 1673, under the title of Opera posthuma. Horrox 

 seems to have been the first who ever predicted or 

 observed the passage of Venus over the sun's disk, 

 from which he deduced many useful observations 

 though not aware of the full advantages to be derive 

 from an examination of that important phenomenon. 

 His theory of lunar motions afforded assistance to 

 Newton, who always spoke of Horrox as a mathe- 

 matical genius of the highest order. 



HORS D'GEUVRE (French}; meaning a thing of 

 secondary importance, often used for a secondary 

 dish at entertainments. It is also used for an un- 

 necessary deviation from the chief subject in works 

 of art. 



HORS A. See Hen gist. 



HORSE (equus caballus, Lin.) a beautiful and 

 useful quadruped, classed by naturalists as forming 

 the order of solipedes, which are thus described : a 

 single toe on each foot, included in a broad hoof; six 

 cutting teeth or nippers, in each jaw; two very small 

 tusks; grinders with a flat crown, presenting when 

 worn different figures, formed by the enamelled plates 

 of the interior; stomach small and simple, intestines 

 very large; a valve at the cardiac orifice, the coecuin 

 or blind gut of considerable dimensions; neither gall 

 bladder nor clavicles. The horse family contains 

 five varieties. 1. The horse. 2. The jiclita or wild 

 mule. 3. The ass. 4. The zebra. 5. The quagga. 

 The horse is found wild in many countries, but Ara- 

 bia produces the most beautiful breed, and also the 

 most generous, swift, courageous, and persevering. 

 They occur, though not in great numbers, even in 

 the deserts of that country, and the natives make use 

 of every stratagem to take them. They select the 

 most promising for breeding, and cherish and cultivate 

 the race with a degree of kindness, which can scarcely 

 be surpassed. It is believed that Arabia is the 

 original country of the horse, since there, instead of 

 crossing the breed, the utmost care is taken to keep 

 it entire. The Arabian breed of horses has been 

 diffused in Barbary, Egypt, and Persia, and the 

 horses of Nubia are described as being of superior 

 beauty even to those of Arabia, but from an erroneous 

 manner of feeding them are apt to become too fat. 

 Large herds of wud horses are sometimes seen in the 

 southern parts of Siberia, in the deserts of the Mon- 

 gol territory, and among the Kalhas, to the nortli- 

 west of China. At the cape of Good Hope there 

 are numbers of wild horses, but they are small, vici- 

 ous, and untameable. They are found also in other 

 parts of Africa, but the savages there seem ignorant 

 of their value, and also of the methods of taming them. 

 In the Pampas or plains of South America, on the 

 banks of the river La Plata, there are immense troops 

 of wild horses, which are descended from those of 

 Andalusia, originally carried thither by the Spanish 

 conquerors. These herds occupy a tract of country 

 chiefly between the river Negro and the country of 

 the Patagonians, and are sometimes in herds of ten 

 thousand. Among these herds, each stallion appro- 

 priates as many mares as he can, which he keeps 

 collected and protects, so that every large t 

 consists of many distinct families. Moldavia also 

 abounds with a race of wild horses of which the 

 habits are precisely similar to those of South Ame- 

 rica. 



Of the various modes of judging of a horse's age, 

 the best is from a carefid inspection of the teeth. 

 Five days after birth, the four teeth in front, called 

 nippers, begin to shoot ; these are cast off at the age 

 of two years and a half, but are soon renewed and 



