KOALA (Phascolarctus cinereus), a stoutly built marsupial, of the family Phascolmyidae, which also contains the wombats. This animal, which inhabits the south-eastern parts of the Australian continent, is about 2 ft. in length, and of an ash-grey colour, an excellent climber, residing generally in lofty eucalyptus trees, the buds and tender shoots of which form its principal food, though occasionally it descends to the ground in the night in search of roots. From its shape the koala is called by the colonists the “native bear”; the term “native sloth” being also applied to it, from its arboreal habits and slow deliberate movements. The flesh is highly prized by the natives, and is palatable to Europeans. The skins are largely imported into England, for the manufacture of articles in which a cheap and durable fur is required.
KOBDO, a town of the Chinese Empire, in north-west Mongolia, at the northern foot of the Mongolian Altai, on the right bank of the Buyantu River, 13 m. from its entrance into Lake Khara-usu; 500 m. E.S.E. of Biysk (Russian), and 470 m. W. of Ulyasutai. It is situated amidst a dreary plain, and consists of a fortress, the residence of the governor of the Kobdo district, and a small trading town, chiefly peopled by Chinese and a few Mongols. It is, however, an important centre for trade between the cattle-breeding nomads and Peking. It was founded by the Chinese in 1731, and pillaged by the Mussulmans in 1872. The district of Kobdo occupies the north-western corner of Mongolia, and is peopled chiefly by Mongols, and also by Kirghiz and a few Soyotes, Uryankhes and Khotons. It is governed by a Chinese commissioner, who has under him a special Mongol functionary (Mongol, dzurgan). The chief monastery is at Ulangom. Considerable numbers of sheep (about 1,000,000), sheepskins, sheep and camel wool are exported to China, while Chinese cottons, brick tea and various small goods are imported. Leather, velveteen, cotton, iron and copper goods boxes, &c., are imported from Russia in exchange for cattle, furs and wool. The absence of a cart road to Biysk hinders the development of this trade.
KOBELL, WOLFGANG XAVER FRANZ, Baron Von (1803-1882), German mineralogist, was born at Munich on the 19th of July 1803. He studied chemistry and mineralogy at Landshut (1820-1823), and in 1826 became professor of mineralogy in the university of Munich. He introduced some new methods of mineral analyses, and in 1835 invented the stauroscope for the study of the optical properties of crystals. He contributed numerous papers to scientific journals, and described many new minerals. He died at Munich on the 11th of November, 1882.
Publications.—Charakteristik der Mineralien (2 vols. 1830-1831); Tafeln zur Bestimmung der Mineralien &c. (1833; and later editions, ed. 12, by K. Oebbeke, 1884); Grundzüge der Mineralogie (1838); Geschichte der Mineralogie von 1650-1860 (1864).
KOCH, ROBERT (1843-1910), German bacteriologist, was born at Klausthal, Hanover, on the 11th of December 1843. He studied medicine at Göttingen, and it was while he was practising as a physician at Wollstein that he began those bacteriological researches that made his name famous. In 1876 he obtained a pure culture of the bacillus of anthrax, announcing a method of preventive inoculation against that disease seven years later. He became a member of the Sanitary Commission at Berlin and a professor at the School of Medicine in 1880, and five years later he was appointed to a chair in Berlin University and director of the Institute of Health. In 1882, largely as the result of the improved methods of bacteriological investigation he was able to elaborate, he discovered the bacillus of tuberculosis; and in the following year, having been sent on an official mission to Egypt and India to study the aetiology of Asiatic cholera, he identified the comma bacillus as the specific organism of that malady. In 1890 great hopes were aroused by the announcement that in tuberculin he had prepared an agent which exercised an inimical influence on the growth of the tubercle bacillus, but the expectations that were formed of it as a remedy for consumption were not fulfilled, though it came into considerable vogue as a means of diagnosing the existence of tuberculosis in animals intended for food. At the Congress on Tuberculosis held in London in 1901 he maintained that tuberculosis in man and in cattle is not the same disease, the practical inference being that the danger to men of infection from milk and meat is less than from other human subjects suffering from the disease. This statement, however, was not regarded as properly proved, and one of its results was the appointment of a British Royal Commission to study the question. Dr Koch also investigated the nature of rinderpest in South Africa in 1896, and found means of combating the disease. In 1897 he went to Bombay at the head of a commission formed to investigate the bubonic plague, and he subsequently undertook extensive travels in pursuit of his studies on the origin and treatment of malaria. He was summoned to South Africa a second time in 1903 to give expert advice on other cattle diseases, and on his return was elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In 1906-1907 he spent eighteen months in East Africa, investigating sleeping-sickness. He died at Baden-Baden of heart-disease on the 28th of May 1910. Koch was undoubtedly one of the greatest bacteriologists ever known, and a great benefactor of humanity by his discoveries. Honours were showered upon him, and in 1905 he was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine.
Among his works may be mentioned: Weitere Mitteilungen über ein Heilmittel gegen Tuberkulose (Leipzig, 1891); and Reiseberichte über Rinderpest, Bubonenpest in Indien und Afrika, Tsetse- oder Surra-Krankheit, Texasfieber, tropische Malaria, Schwarzwasserfieber (Berlin, 1898). From 1886 onwards he edited, with Dr Karl Flügge, the Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten (published at Leipzig). See Loeffler, “Robert Koch, zum 60ten Geburtstage” in Deut. Medizin. Wochenschr. (No. 50, 1903).