HUARAZ, a city of northern Peru and capital o£ the department of Ancachs, on the left bank of the Huaraz, or Santa river, about 190 m. N.N.W. of Lima and 58 m. from the coast. Pop. (1876) 4851, (1906 estimate) 6000. Huaraz is situated in a narrow fertile valley of the Western Cordillera, at a considerable elevation above sea-level, and has a mild climate. A railway projected to connect Huaraz with the port of Chimbote, on the Bay of Chimbote, a few miles S. of the mouth of the Santa river, was completed from Chimbote to Suchimán (33 m.) in 1872, when work was suspended for want of money. In the valley of the Huaraz cattle are raised, and wheat, sugar and fruit, gold, silver, copper and coal are produced. Alfalfa is grown by stock-raisers, and the cattle raised here are among the best in the Peruvian market. In the vicinity of Huaraz are megalithic ruins similar to those of Tiahunaco and Cuzco, showing that the aboriginal empire preceding the Incas extended into northern Peru.
HUARTE DE SAN JUAN, or Huarte Y Navarro, Juan (c. 1530-1592), Spanish physician and psychologist, was born at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (Lower Navarre) about 1530, was educated at the university of Huesca, where he graduated in medicine, and, though it appears doubtful whether he practised as a physician at Huesca, distinguished himself by his professional skill and heroic zeal during the plague which devastated Baeza in 1566. He died in 1592. His Examen de ingenios para las ciencias (1575) won him a European reputation, and was translated by Lessing. Though now superseded, Huarte’s treatise is historically interesting as the first attempt to show the connexion between psychology and physiology, and its acute ingenuity is as remarkable as the boldness of its views.
HUASTECS, a tribe of North American Indians of Mayan stock, living to the north of Vera Cruz. They are of interest to the ethnologist as being so entirely detached from the other Mayan tribes of Central America. The theory is that the Mayas came from the north and that the Huastecs were left behind in the migration southward.
HUBER, FRANÇOIS (1750-1831), Swiss naturalist, was born at Geneva on the 2nd of July 1750. He belonged to a family which had already made its mark in the literary and scientific world: his great-aunt, Marie Huber (1695-1753), was known as a voluminous writer on religious and theological subjects, and as the translator and epitomizer of the Spectator (Amsterdam, 3 vols., 1753); and his father Jean Huber (1721-1786), who had served for many years as a soldier, was a prominent member of the coterie at Ferney, distinguishing himself by his Observations sur le vol des oiseaux (Geneva, 1784). François Huber was only fifteen years old when he began to suffer from an affection of the eyes which gradually resulted in total blindness; but, with the aid of his wife, Marie Aimée Lullin, and of his servant, François Burnens, he was able to carry out investigations that laid the foundations of our scientific knowledge of the life history of the honey-bee. His Nouvelles Observations sur les abeilles was published at Geneva in 1792 (Eng. trans., 1806). He assisted Jean Senebier in his Mém. sur l’influence de l’air, &c., dans la germination (Geneva, 1800); and he also wrote “Mém. sur l’origine de la cire” (Bibliothèque britannique, tome xxv.), a “Lettre à M. Pictet sur certains dangers que courent les abeilles” (Bib. brit. xxvii), and “Nouvelles Observ. rel. au sphinx Atropos” (Bib. brit. xxvii). He died at Lausanne on the 22nd of December 1831. De Candolle gave his name to a genus of Brazilian trees—Huberia laurina.
Pierre Huber (1777-1840) followed in his father’s footsteps. His best-known work is Recherches sur les mœurs des fourmis indigènes (Geneva and Paris, 1810; new ed., Geneva, 1861), and he also wrote various papers on entomological subjects.
See the account of François Huber, by De Candolle, in Bibl. universelle (1832); and the notice of Pierre in Bibl. univ. (1886); also Haag, La France protestante.