factories. In October of the same year he was made an inspector of factories—an office which gave full scope to his activity and benevolence for nearly thirty years. In 1861 he went to Italy, which he had before visited with his brother in 1816, and while there he lost his wife. Returning to England, he published a translation of Villari's Life of Savonarola. M. Cousin's work on education in Holland was also translated by him; but his principal production was the interesting memoir of his brother, which has gone through several editions. Mr. Horner died on the 12th of March, 1864.—J. D.
HORNIUS, Georgius, a learned German writer, born in 1620 at Greussen, where he was educated. He afterwards removed to Holland, and came to England, where he became a presbyterian. He became professor at Harderwijk on the Zuyder Zee, and at Leyden, where he died in 1670. He was a man of great learning, but not of equal judgment. He had a controversy with Vossius as to the age of the world. In his later years he suffered from insanity. Besides some works relating to ecclesiastical history he published "History of England in 1645-46," a curious book called "Noah's Ark," &c.—B. H. C.
HORREBOW, HORREBOV, or HORREBOE, Peter, a Danish astronomer, was born at Lœkstoer on the 14th of May, 1679, and died at Copenhagen on the 15th of April, 1764. He was the son of a fisherman, and in his youth had to struggle with many difficulties in the pursuit of knowledge. He entered the university of Copenhagen in 1703, and studied under Olof Rœmer. In 1713 he was appointed to the professorship of astronomy and mathematics, which he held for forty years, and resigned in 1753 in favour of his second son. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and of many other scientific bodies in the north of Europe. His writings for the most part appeared in the Viderskabernes Selskabs Skrifter (Memoirs of the Danish Academy of Sciences) from 1704 till 1716, and in a collection entitled Opera Mathematico-Physica, published in 1740 in thirteen volumes, 4to. He was a strong partisan of the Cartesian vortices. He left three sons—The eldest, Niels, was born in 1712, took the degree of doctor of laws in 1740, was an assessor of the high court of Copenhagen from 1744 till 1747, travelled in Iceland in 1750 and 1751, and died in 1760.—The second, Christian, was born at Copenhagen on the 15th of April, 1718, succeeded his father as professor of astronomy in 1753, and died on the 19th of September, 1776.—The third son, Peter, an astronomer and meteorologist, was born in 1728, and died in 1812. His principal works were, "De Transitu Veneris per Discum Solis," 1761, and a "Table of Meteorological Observations for Twenty-six Years," 1780.—W. J. M. R.
HORROX, Jeremiah, an eminent English astronomer, was born in 1619 at Toxteth in Lancashire. After receiving a classical education, he was sent to Emanuel college, Cambridge; and having there studied mathematics and natural philosophy, he returned to his family at the age of fourteen. He devoted himself to astronomy with no other work than the Progymnasmata of Philip Lansberg. At this time he met with a young man who lived at Broughton, near Manchester, William Crabtree, who lent him the works of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, and with whom he kept up an interesting correspondence on astronomical subjects during the rest of his life. According to Professor Rigaud, Horrox took holy orders, and became a curate at Hoole, near Preston. Having obtained some astronomical instruments, he made a number of observations on the moon, with the view of rectifying the theory of her motion as given by Kepler. He was the first who observed that the lunar motions might be represented by an elliptic orbit, with a variable eccentricity and an oscillatory motion on the line of the apsides; suppositions which Newton afterwards showed to be consequences of the theory of gravitation, and which he erroneously ascribed to Halley. Next in importance to this discovery was his observations, made at Hoole, on the transit of Venus over the sun's disc, which astronomers predicted, and which took place on the 4th December, 1639. Though at this time only twenty years of age, he had computed more accurately than others the time of this transit, of which he has given an interesting account in his treatise entitled "Venus sub Sole Visa." He had just completed this interesting work at the close of 1640, and was about to give it to the world, when he died at Toxteth on the 3rd of January, 1641, in the twenty-second year of his age. The manuscript of the work passed into the hands of Huygens, who gave it to Hevelius, by whom it was published, with notes, in his treatise, Mercurius in Sole Visus, which appeared at Dantzic in 1662. The other manuscripts of Horrox came into the possession of Dr. Wallis, who published them in 1672. They consist of the defence of Kepler against the attacks of Lansberg, the correspondence of Horrox with Crabtree, in which there is a most interesting account of their calculations and preparations for observing the transit of Venus, the theory of the moon rectified, and the calculations of the lunar motions on the Horroxian theory, by Flamstead. Other manuscripts of Horrox have been lost, probably in Ireland, to which his brother had carried them, or perhaps in the great fire in London in 1666. William Crabtree did not long survive his friend, and it is believed that he was one of the victims of the civil war which then raged in England. An account of the observations of Horrox and Crabtree on the transit of Venus will be found in the Annual Register for 1761, and in Ferguson's Astronomy, chap, xxiii., art. 7.—D. B.
HORSBURGH, James, a British seaman and hydrographer, was born at Elie in Fifeshire, on the 23d of September, 1762. Although his parents were poor farm-labourers, they sent him to a school at which he learned bookkeeping, elementary mathematics, and navigation. At the age of fifteen he entered the merchant service as an apprentice in a collier brig, and steadily rose, by knowledge, intelligence, and good conduct, until he became first mate in an East Indiaman. A ship in which he held that post having been wrecked on an island whose place was inaccurately laid down on the charts, he was induced to turn his attention to hydrography, and for some time occupied his leisure in teaching himself to draw and engrave. Having prepared accurate charts from his own observations of the Straits of Macassar, the Philippine Islands, Dampier's Straits, and the coasts of New Guinea, together with sailing directions, he sent them to Dalrymple, then hydrographer to the East India Company, the directors of which published the charts and sailing directions, and rewarded Horsburgh. In 1796 he returned from Bombay to England in command of a ship. He remained for a short time in London, and became acquainted with many of the scientific men of the time. Besides continuing to survey and map the eastern seas, he made various important scientific observations, and is stated to have been the first to discover the regular semidiurnal oscillations of the barometer in tropical latitudes.—(Phil. Trans., 1804.) In 1806 he finally returned to England, and became a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1809 he was appointed hydrographer to the East India Company. He died on the 14th of April, 1836, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. Few have contributed more to the safety of navigation than he has done. His principal work is "Sailing Directions for the East Indies, New Holland, China, the Cape of Good Hope, and Intermediate Ports." He also wrote some theological works.—W. J. M. R.
HORSEFIELD, Thomas, an eminent zoologist and botanist, was born at Bottleham in Pennsylvania on 12th May, 1773, and died in London on the 24th July, 1859. His parents were American. He was educated for the medical profession in the university of Pennsylvania, and took the degree of doctor of medicine in 1798. He went to Java in 1799, and resided there and in Sumatra for nearly twenty years. He became a friend of Sir Stamford Raffles, who is said to have imbibed from him that taste for natural history which he displayed so conspicuously afterwards. Horsefield also visited the island of Banca, and drew up a very full account of its mineralogy, geology, botany, and zoology. He left the Eastern archipelago in 1818, and came to England with Raffles. In 1820 he was appointed keeper of the museum of the East India Company, a situation which he held up to his death, a period of more than forty years. His most important work is "Zoological researches in Java and the neighbouring Islands," published in 1821 and 1822. Selections from his botanical writings were published by his friends Robert Brown and W. Bennett, under the title "Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores." He contributed valuable papers to the Transactions of the Batavian Society, among others, an experimental inquiry into the physiological action of the Upas Antiar poison. He also presented papers to the Linnæan Transactions, the Zoological Journal, and the Proceedings of the Zoological Society. He drew up a catalogue of some of the zoological departments of the East Indian museum, and devoted much attention to lepidopterous insects, elucidating their metamorphoses. He was a fellow of the Royal and Linnæan societies.—J. H. B.
