The following are his principal works : Geology of the Connecticut Valley, 1823 ; Catalogue of Plants within twenty miles of Amherst, 1829; Dyspepsia Forestalled and Resisted, 1830; Reports on the Geology of Massachusetts, 1832, 1835,1838, and 1841; A Wreath for the Tomb, 1839; Fossil Footsteps in the United States, 1848; Outlines of Geology, 1855; Illustrations of Surface Geology, 1856; Ichnology of New England, 1858 ; Religious Lectures on the Peculiar Phenomena of the Four Seasons, 1850 ; History of a Zoological Tem perance Convention in Central Africa, 1850 ; The Religion of Geology vnd its Connected Sciences, 1851 ; Religious Truths illustrated from Science, 1857; Reminiscences of Amherst College, 1863; and various papers in the Biblical Repository, the Bibliothcca Sacra, the American Journal of Science, and other periodicals.
HITCHIN, a market-town of Hertfordshire, England, is situated on the small river Hiz, 34 miles from London, on the Great Northern Railway. It is for the most part neatly built of brick, and the streets are generally spacious. The principal buildings are the parish church in the later style of English architecture, with a fine porch, an Adoration of the Magi by Rubens, a small crypt said to have been used by Cromwell as a prison for the Royalists, and many inter esting monuments ; Hitchin Priory, the residence of the Radcliffe family; various chapels, schools, and banks; the infirmary, the workhouse, the town-hall, and the corn exchange. Malting and straw-plaiting are extensively carried on. There are also breweries and manufactories of agricultural implements. The population of the local board district in 1871 was 7630, and of the parish 8850.
Hitchin occurs in Domesday Book under the name of Hiz, a modification of the Saxon Hicce or Hitche, which appears more prominently in the present form of the name. During the Saxon heptarchy it formed part of the royal demesne of the king of Mercia. It was bestowed by Edward the Confessor upon Harold, and after the battle of Hastings it was retained by "William the Conqueror. By William Kufus it was granted to Bernard de Bailiol, and on the accession of John Baliol to the throne of Scotland it reverted to the crown of England, after which it was bestowed by Edward III. on his fifth son, Edmund de Langley.
HITTITES, a warlike and powerful nation, whose centre lay in the far north of Syria, between the Orontes and the Euphrates, but whose outposts about 1200 b.c. extended as far to the west as the AEgean sea. In the Egyptian inscriptions they are called the Khita or Kheta ; in the Assyrian, the Khatti ; in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Khittim. Some confusion has been caused in the treatment of the history of the Hittites by the uncritical use of the Old Testament. It is true that the Khittim or Hittites are repeatedly mentioned among the tribes which in habited Canaan before the Israelites (Gen. xv. 20 ; Ex. iii. 8, 17, xiii. 5, xxiii. 23, 28, xxxiii. 2, xxxiv. 11 ; Num. xiii. 29 ; Dent. vii. 1, xx. 17 ; Josh. iii. 10, ix. 1, xi. 3, xii. 8, xxiv. 11; Judg. iii. 5 ; 1 Kings ix. 20 ; 2 Chr. viii. 7; Ezra ix. 1; Neh. ix. 8), but the lists of these pre-Israelitish populations cannot be taken as strictly historical documents. Not to dwell on the cases of the Perizzitcs (properly speak ing, an appellative and not an ethnic name), and the Kenites and other Arab races, sometimes included, but evidently by an anachronism (see vol. iv. p. 763), it is obvious that narratives written, or (as all will agree) edited, so long after the events referred to cannot be taken as of equal authority with Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions. How meagre the tradition respecting the Ilittites was in the time of the great Elohistic narrator is shown by the picture of Hittite life in Gen. xxiii. As Ewald remarks, " Abraham s allies in war are Amorites ; but when he desires to obtain a possession peaceably he turns to the Hittites." Yet the undoubtedly authentic inscriptions of Egypt and Assyria reveal the Hittites in far different guise, as pre-eminently a warlike, conquering race. Not less unfavourable to the accuracy of the Old Testament references to the Hittites is the evidence deducible from proper names. As we shall see presently, the Hittite names preserved in Egyptian and Assyrian records are on the whole strikingly un-Semitic. The three Hittite names given in the Old Testament (Ephron, Gen. xxiii. 8, 10; Ahimelech, 1 Sam. xxvi. 6; Uriah, 2 Sam. xi. 3, xxiii. 39) are, however, of undeniably Semitic origin. Is it unnatural to infer that these three names are no less fictitious than the Semitic names ascribed in the Old Testament to the non-Semitic Philistines 1 It is not surprising that at least two eminent Egyptologists (Chabas, Ebers) should absolutely deny the identity of the Khita and the Khittim. This, however, seerns to be going too far. The Old Testament writers clearly meant by the latter name the same people as the Egyptian inscriptions by the former, but in their time the memory of the Khita had grown so dim that they could include it among other shadowy names of conquered Canaanitish peoples. No impartial scholar, indeed, will deny that a branch of the Khita may once have existed in Palestine. Unfortunately there is no historical evidence that it did so. In fact, the most trustworthy notices in the Old Testament itself point to the Hittites as a nation beyond the borders of the land of Israel. In 2 Kings vii. 6 we find "the kings of the Hittites" mentioned side by side with "the kings of the Egyptians;" in 1 Kings x. 29 the same phrase occurs parallel with " the kings of Aram "; and in 2 Sam. xxiv. 6 we should probably read, " and they came I to Gilead, and to the land of the Hittites unto Kaclesh." The position of Heth in the table of nations (Gen. x. 15) may also be regarded as a vestige of an accurate geographical tradition.
