Wolfs hypothesis, was at once candid and conservative. He was an occasional contributor to the Edinburgh Review, and to classical journals, and engaged in the controversies respecting the state of the English universities, and the merits of the Elgin marbles. His collections, comprising coins, medals, gems, bronzes, original drawings by the most eminent masters, Italian, French, and Flemish (including a large collection of Claude's), valued at £30,000, he bequeathed to the British museum. It was his wish that in return a trusteeship of the national establishment should be vested in his family, and an act of parliament to that effect was passed a few weeks after his death, which happened on the 24th of April, 1824. Mr. Knight was not a mere scholar and dilettante; he interested himself actively in the management of his estate, rebuilding Downton castle, and he was a keen hunter and rider.—F. E.
KNIGHT, Samuel, an English divine and biographical writer, born in London in 1674, was educated at Trinity college, Cambridge, and became chaplain to the earl of Orford, through whose influence he obtained two livings in Cambridgeshire. He was afterwards made a prebend of Ely, and in 1717 was presented to the rectory of Bluntesham in Huntingdonshire. In 1730 he was appointed chaplain to George II., and in 1735 was promoted to the archdeaconry of Berks. He died at Bluntesham in 1746. Two works which he published—a life of Erasmus, 1724, and of Dean Colet, 1726—are written with little elegance, but contain some valuable details. He had also collected materials for the lives of Bishops Overall, Grosseteste, and Patrick; and, from his stores of information, rendered important assistance to several authors of his time.—G. BL.
KNIGHT, Thomas Andrew, an eminent horticulturist, brother of Richard Payne, was born on the 10th of October, 1758, and died in London on 11th May, 1838. His early education, like that of his brother, was much neglected; but he showed great powers of observation. He was sent to Balliol college, Oxford, and graduated there. He was interested in physiological researches. In 1795 he read a paper to the Royal Society on the inheritance of disease by fruit-trees, and the propagation of debility by grafting. He made experiments also on vegetable fertilization, on the movement of the sap, the germination of the seed, and the influence of light upon leaves. The subject of fruit-trees and grafting specially engaged his attention, and he propounded the statement that the finest kinds of apples and pears in this country were disappearing on account of old age; that they were really dying out, and that it was impossible to prolong their lives by grafting; for that the slip or stem taken from an old tree inherited the debility of the parent, and would not live beyond the natural limit of the parent's life. He thought that all our grafted fruit-trees were now attaining their limit of age. He therefore set himself to procure new varieties from seed, and he succeeded in producing many excellent kinds. He fertilized the flowers of some of the best cultivated apples and pears with pollen taken from the crab stock, and the seed thus produced was carefully cultivated. He directed his attention during his life to practical matters of this sort, and endeavoured to improve the races of cultivated fruits. He was an excellent horticulturist, and occupied for many years the chair of the Horticultural Society. Many of his theoretical views, however, have not been confirmed by subsequent physiologists. Among his writings are the following—"A Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear, and on the Manufacture of Cider and Perry;" "Pomona Herefordiensis;" besides numerous physiological and horticultural papers, published in the Transactions of the Royal and Horticultural Societies.—J. H. B.
KNIGHTON, Henry, a canon-regular of Leicester, is the writer of a chronicle styled "De Eventibus Angliæ," which is printed in Twysden's Collection of Ten Historians, fol., 1652. The history properly begins at the Conquest, for the account of Saxon affairs in the first book is very brief. It is continued to 1395 when the author lived. He confesses to having copied from Ralph Higden, whom he imitates in the acrostical device of making the initial letters of the first fifteen chapters furnish his name thus—"Henricus Cnitton." He also wrote an account of the deposition of Richard II., which will also be found in the volume of Decem Scriptores. The most valuable part of his works is that relating to contemporary events. There is a notice of this writer by Selden in the preface to Twysden.—R. H.
KNIPPERDOLLING, Bernard, was a fanatical anabaptist of the city of Munster, and took a leading part in the violent excesses which were enacted there in 1533-35, under the leadership of the Dutch anabaptists and false prophets, John Matthiesen of Haarlem and John Beccold of Leyden. When John of Leyden was proclaimed king of Munster, and "God's sword" to conquer and put down all other opposing kings, Knipperdolling took his place as one of his highest ministers, and stood on the steps of his throne bearing a naked sword. Such madness could not be long endured, and when the city was taken in 1535 by Philip of Hesse, Knipperdolling deservedly shared the fate of Beccold the fanatical king, and Krechting his fanatical chancellor. They were all three put to death in the same market-place which had so often been the theatre of their public blasphemies and excesses; and their bodies were afterwards suspended in iron cages upon the tower of the church of St. Lambert.—P. L.
KNIPSTROW, Johann, an eminent Pomeranian reformer, was born in 1497 near Havelberg, and was educated in a Franciscan cloister in Silesia, and at the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. Soon after Luther published his theses against Tetzel, the young student defended them at Frankfort against that impudent monk, who, fortified with a set of "Disputationes" drawn up against Luther by Wimpina, rector of the university, had challenged all the world to dispute with him on a certain day. The meeting was solemn; three hundred monks were present, most of whom agreed with Tetzel, and those of them who did not were overawed by the authority of Wimpina. Tetzel promised himself an easy victory, when young Knipstrow unexpectedly rose up, and confuted him so powerfully that the monk was dumb, and left the place in confusion. This was in 1518; and to prevent any such similar escapade in future, the young Franciscan was sent off the same year to the remote cloister of Pyritz in Pomerania. But he was able to read Luther there as well as at Frankfort, and he not only became a Lutheran himself, but converted the whole monastery. When the people of the town heard of it, they pressed him to preach to them also; and the result was that the whole town was Lutheranized. In 1523 he was on the point of being imprisoned at Pyritz by his abbot, and fled to Stettin, from whence he moved in 1524 to Stargard, and in 1525 to Stralsund. In 1535 he was made general superintendent of the district of Wolgast, and in 1539 professor of theology at Greifswald. In 1547 he was rector of the university, and took his doctor's degree. He survived till 1556. He wrote against the Leipsic Interim, and also against the errors of Osiander.—P. L.
* KNOBLAUCH, Karl Hermann, a distinguished cultivator of experimental physics, professor of physics in the university of Halle, was born at Berlin on the 11th of April, 1820. His researches have had reference chiefly to the phenomena of radiant heat (especially its emission, absorption, double refraction, diffraction, and polarization), and to the magnetic properties of crystalline bodies. Most of them have appeared in Poggendorff's Annalen.—W. J. M. R.
* KNOBLECHER, N___, a German missionary, was born about 1800. Educated at Rome, he set out in November, 1849, with a trading expedition to the White Nile. In January, 1850, he reached the Rapids, which had hitherto arrested the progress of travellers; nothing daunted, he pushed on and entered upon a country in which no white man had ever before been seen. He pushed his researches nearly as far south as the equator, but still saw the river stretching away before him. Later in the same year, its probable source was determined by Kraff, another German traveller, to be a snowy mountain in the third degree of south latitude. After a daring and, geographically speaking, a very interesting journey, Knoblecher returned to the missionary station at Khartoum, where he was subsequently visited by Mr. Bayard Taylor. His missionary efforts completely failed, partly through the jealousy of the Egyptian merchants, who represented him to the natives as a magician.—W. J. P.
KNOLLER, Martin von, a celebrated German artist, and one of the revivers of fresco painting in the eighteenth century. He was born at Steinach in the Tyrol in 1725, and was placed by a patron, Von Hormayr, with an obscure master of the name of Pögel living in Innspruck; but he was obliged to return home to assist his father, also a painter, in the menial work of the house. In about the year 1745, however, the painter Paul Troger was passing through Steinach, and he was so much struck by the ability displayed by Knoller in such works as he saw,
