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 [Cookery] and [Heating]). 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 [Shell-heaps]). “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, Viscount (1850- ), 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 [Egypt], 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 [Transvaal], 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,[1] 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 a rural landscape in England, as they had done in the days when the poet Cowper wrote of them. “But an evil time soon came upon the species. It must have been always hated by the henwife, but the resources of civilization in the shape of the gun and the gin were denied to her. They were, however, employed with fatal zeal by the gamekeeper; for the kite, which had long afforded the supremest sport to the falconer, was now left friendless,”[2] and in a very few years it seems to have been exterminated throughout the greater part of England, certain woods in the Western Midlands, as well as Wales, excepted. In these latter a small remnant still exists; but the well-wishers of this beautiful species are naturally chary of giving information that might lead to its further persecution. In Scotland there is no reason to suppose that its numbers suffered much diminution until about 1835, or even later, when the systematic destruction of “vermin” on so many moors was begun. In Scotland, however, it is now as much restricted to certain districts as in England or Wales, and those districts it would be most inexpedient to indicate.
The kite is, according to its sex, from 25 to 27 in. in length, about one half of which is made up by its deeply forked tail, capable of great expansion, and therefore a powerful rudder, enabling the bird while soaring on its wide wings, more than 5 ft. in extent, to direct its circling course with scarcely a movement that is apparent to the spectator below. Its general colour is pale reddish-brown or cinnamon, the head being greyish-white, but almost each feather has the shaft dark. The tail feathers are broad, of a light red, barred with deep brown, and furnish the salmon fisher with one of the choicest materials of his “flies.” The nest, nearly always built in the crotch of a large tree, is formed of sticks intermixed with many strange substances collected as chance may offer, but among them rags[3] seem always to have a place. The eggs, three or four in number, are of a dull white, spotted and blotched with several shades of brown, and often lilac. It is especially mentioned by old authors that in Great Britain the kite was resident throughout the year; whereas on the Continent it is one of the most regular and marked migrants, stretching its wings towards the south in autumn, wintering in Africa, and returning in spring to the land of its birth.
There is a second European species, not distantly related, the Milvus migrans or M. ater of most authors,[4] smaller in size, with a general dull blackish-brown plumage and a less forked tail. In some districts this is much commoner than the red kite, and on one occasion it has appeared in England. Its habits are very like those of the species already described, but it seems to be more addicted to fishing. Nearly allied to this black kite are the M. aegyptius of Africa, the M. govinda (the common pariah kite of India),[5] the M. melanotis of Eastern Asia, and the M. affinis and M. isurus; the last is by some authors removed to another genus or sub-genus as Lophoictinia, and is peculiar to Australia, while M. affinis also occurs in Ceylon, Burma, and some of the Malay countries as well. All these may be considered true kites, while those next to be mentioned are more aberrant forms. First there is Elanus, the type of which is E. caeruleus, a beautiful little bird, the black-winged kite of English authors, that comes to the south of Europe from Africa, and has several congeners—E. axillaris and E. scriptus of Australia being most worthy of notice. An extreme development of this form is found in the African Nauclerus riocourii, as well as in Elanoides furcatus, the swallow-tailed kite, a widely-ranging bird in America, and remarkable for its length of wing and tail, which gives it a marvellous power of flight, and serves to explain the unquestionable fact of its having twice appeared in Great Britain. To Elanus also Ictinia, another American form, is allied, though perhaps more remotely, and it is represented by I. mississippiensis, the Mississippi kite, which is by some considered to be but the northern race of the Neotropical I. plumbea. Gampsonyx, Rostrhamus and Cymindis, all belonging to the Neotropical region, complete the series of forms that seem to compose the sub-family Milvinae, though there may be doubt about the last, and some systematists would thereto add the perns or honey-buzzards, Perninae.
(A. N.)