Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/819

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HES—HES
781

succecded his father in 1830. His policy in no degree lessened the popular discontent. His son Louis III., who succeeded in 1848, alarmed by the events in Paris of that year, and by commotions in his own country, gave way a little, but under the reaction of 1850 he again restored matters to their old state. Since that time, although no radical change has been effected, the liberal party in the state has been steadily gaining ground. In 1866 Hesse- Darmstadt supported Austria against Prussia, with the result that it had to pay a heavy indemnity and cede certain provinees, including the lately acquired Hesse-Homburg, to Prussia. In 1867 it entered the North German Confederation, and in 1870 the German Confederation. Louis 1V. sueeeeded his uncle in 1877.

A list of works on Hesse is to be found in Walther’s Litcrar- isches Handbuch fiir Geschichte und Landeskunde von Hessen, 1841. See also Steiner, Geschichte des Grossherzogthums Hessen, § vols., 1833-4; Tiirekheim, Zfistoire généalogique de la maison de Hesse, 1819-20 ; Heber, Geschichte des Grossherzogthums Hessen, 1837 ; Dielfenbach, Das Grossherzogthum Hessen in Vergangenheit unt Gegenwart, 1875; Voltz, Uebcrsicht der geologischen Verhdlt- nisse des Grossherzogthums Hessen, 1852 ; and works under Hesse.

HESSE-HOMBURG, a former landgraviate of Germany, consisted of two parts, the province of Homburg-vor-der- Hohe, on the right bank of the Rhine, and the lordship of Meisenheim (added in 1815), on the left bank, to the north of Frankfort-on-the-Main. It comprehended an area of 106 square miles; and its population in 1864 was 27,374. Homburg now forms part of the Prussian government district of Wiesbaden, and Meisenheim of the government district of Coblentz.


Hesse-Homburg was formed into a separate landgraviate in 1596, by Frederick I., son of George I. of Hesse-Darmstadt. By his two sons it was divided into the parts Hesse-Homburg and Hesse-Hom- burg-Bingenheim ; but the latter returned by inheritance to the original line in 1681. In the reign of Frederick V. (1751-1820) Hesse-Homburg was in 1806 incorporated with Hesse-Darmstadt, but that state was obliged by the Vienna congress to recognize the independence of Hesse-Homburg, which at the same time was increased by the district of Meisenheim. Frederick V. became a member of the German Confederation in 1817. After his death, his five sons successively filled the throne. The last, Ferdinand Henry Frederick, granted a liberal constitution to his people, but in the reaction of 1850 cancelled it. On his death on Mareh 24, 1866, the landgraviate reverted by inheritance to the grand-duke of Hesse-Darmstadt ; but in September of the same year that ruler was forecd to cede it to Prussia, in consequence of having supported Austria in the Seven Wecks’ War.

HESSIAN FLY, a name originally given in the United States in 1776 during the War of Independence to a small fly very destructive to wheat, supposed to have been brought over in straw by the Hessian troops employed on the British sile. It is a species of Cectdomyia, described under the nime C. destructor by the American entomologist Siy, and belonging to the Dipterous family Cecidumyiide, the num2rous members of which produce galls, distortions, and other injuries in the plants they attack. It was often thought that this insect occurred in England; but the indigenous English wheat-midge, also very destructive, is an allied species, Diplosis tritic. A species found in Hungiry and Germany, where it has committed great dimige, has been supposed to be the true Hessian fly, which has also been recordel from Minorca and Naples; Cohn notices its ravages in Silesia, and Kiinstler in Austria ; and Kaltenbach (who identifies C. secalina, Loew, with it) siys it is more or less common in Germany, and that it originally cam2 from Europe. Nevertheless, many good authorities have considered that the destructive European fly is not identical with the North American insect, though closely allied to it, and of similar habits. In the United States this minute midge has been a dreadful scourge at times, even to the extent of causing local famine. The femile lays 20 or 30 eggs in a crease of the leaf of the young plant, and the larvee when hatched work their way between the leaf and the stalk, till they come to a joint, a little below the surface, where they remain, head down, suck- ing the sap, and turn to pupz enclosed in a covering; this is known as the “ flax-seed” condition. The injury occasioned is not detected until the plant grows higher. There are two broods every year, one reaching the fly state in May, the other in August or carly in September; as the fly only lives a few weeks, wheat that is sown so late as nut to come up until the second brood has disappeared escapes harm. ‘The usual result of the attack is that small aborted ears only are formed, the few grains of which shrivel and will scarcely ripen, the straw also being of inferior quality. The perfect insect is smaller than the common gnat, which it sumewhat resembles, and from which its size and more simple antennze distinguish it. The larve are spindle- shaped and reddish-white, with the intestinal canal show- ing through the skin when tull grown; they are about one-seventh of an inch long, and are provided with small hooks near the head ; at this stage they group themselves in regular rings round the stem attacked. A very minute natural parasite, Semzvtellus destructor, belonging to the division Pteromalides of the Hymenopterous family Chalci- dide is, luckily for agriculturists, usually so plentiful as to be able to keep down the fly, on the larva and pupz of which its own larve feed.


Besides the original aecount by Say (in the Journal of the academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia, 1817), his countryman, Dr Asa Fitch, has published a history of this insect in the 7rans- actions of the New York State Agricultural Society, 1846; and in England the celebrated entomologist Kirby gave an account of it in the Magazine of Natural History, 1829. It is figured in the American Naturalist, vol. ii. p. 163. A map showing its dis- tribution will be found in Ilayden’s Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey for 1875.

HESSUS, Helius Eobanus (14881540), a distinguished German humanist of the 16th century, was born January 6, 1488, at Bockendorf near Frankenberg in Hesse. His family name is not known: the baptismal name Eoban he owed to a local saint ; Hessus merely indi- cates the land of his origin ; while the prenomen Helius was assumed by himself partly with reference to the sun-god, patron of poets, and partly also, it is said, with reference to the fact that he had been Lorn ona Sunday. His early education was received in the monastery of Haina, where his father held a menial position, and afterwards at Frankenberg ; in 1503 he entered the university of Erfurt, where in 1505 Crotus Rubianus and Ulrich von Hutten became his fellow-students and his firm friends. Though devoting himself enthusiastically to the composition of Latin verse, in which he soon became an acknowledged master, he was far from neglecting the other studies of the place, and shortly after his graduation he held fora short time the post of rector of the St Severus school. Compelled by disturbances to leave Erfurt in 1510, he for five years led a somewhat wandering life, in the course of which he passed sume time in Leipsic as a student of law; in 1515 he returned to his former post at Erfurt, and in 1516 became professor of belles-lettres. He was now pro- minently associated with Reuchlin, Peutinger, Mutianus, as well as with Crotus Rubianus and Hutten; and from the first he fully identified himself with the cause of Luther and the Reformation, In 1526 he went as teacher of rhetoric and poetry to Nuremberg, but in 1534 returned to Erfurt, whence in 1536 he was called to the chair of poetry and history in Marburg. There he died October 5, 1540.


Hessus was generally regarded by his contemporarics both in Germany and elsewhere as the foremost Latin poet of the age ; ‘‘ if Erasmus was the modern Cicero, Eoban was Virgil and Ovid.” His most popular works were a translation into Latin distichs of the Psalms, which passed through more than forty editions, and Latin hexameter translations of Theocritus and of the Zliad. He also published Silva, a collection of idylls, epigrams, and occasional pieces, and a scries of Christian Heroide, in imitation of Ovid. His Epistole were edited by his friend Joachim Camerarius, who also published his Life (1553). See the monographs of Herz (HE. Hesse, ein Lehrer u. Dichterleben aus der Reformationszeit, 1860), Schwert- zell (HE. Hessus, ein Lebensbild aus der Reformationszeit, 1874), and Krause (/f.E. Hessus, sein Leben u. seine Werke, 1879) ; also Strauss, UTrich von Hutten (1858 ; 2d ed. 1871; Engl. transl. 1874).