In 710 Pippin of Heristal presented the site of the town to Bishop Suitbert, who built the Benedictine monastery round which the town gradually formed. Until 1214 Kaiserswerth lay on an island, but in that year Count Adolph V. of Berg, who was besieging it, dammed up effectually one arm of the Rhine. About the beginning of the 14th century Kaiserswerth, then an imperial city, came to the archbishopric of Cologne, and afterwards to the duchy of Juliers, whence, after some vicissitudes, it finally passed into the possession of the princes of the palatinate, whose rights, long disputed by the elector of Cologne, were legally settled in 1772. In 1702 the fortress was captured by the Austrians and Prussians, and the Kaiserpfalz, whence the young emperor Henry IV. was abducted by Archbishop Anno of Cologne in 1062, was blown up. See J. Disselhoff, _Das Diaconissenmutterhaus zu Kaiserswerth_ (new ed., 1903; Eng. trans., 1883). KAITHAL, or KYTHAL, an ancient town of British India in Karnal district, Punjab. Pop. (1901), 14,408. It is said to have been founded by the mythical hero Yudisthira, and is connected by tradition with the monkey-god Hanuman. In 1767 it fell into the hands of the Sikh chieftain, Bhai Desu Singh, whose descendants, the bhais of Kaithal, ranked among the most powerful Cis-Sutlej chiefs. Their territories lapsed to the British in 1843. There remain the fort of the bhais, and several Mahommedan tombs of the 13th century and later. There is some trade in grain, sal-ammoniac, live stock and blankets; and cotton, saltpetre, lac ornaments and toys are manufactured. KAKAPO, the Maori name, signifying "night parrot," and frequently adopted by English writers, of a bird, commonly called by the British in New Zealand the "ground-parrot" or "owl-parrot." The existence of this singular form was first made known in 1843 by Ernst Dieffenbach (_Travels in N. Zealand_, ii. 194), from some of its tail-feathers obtained by him, and he suggested that it was one of the _Cuculidae_, possibly belonging to the genus _Centropus_, but he added that it was becoming scarce, and that no example had been seen for many years. G. R. Gray, noticing it in June 1845 (_Zool. Voy. "Erebus" and "Terror,"_ pt. ix. p. 9), was able to say little more of it, but very soon afterwards a skin was received at the British Museum, of which, in the following September, he published a figure (_Gen. Birds_, pt. xvii.), naming it _Strigops[1] habroptilus_, and rightly placing it among the parrots, but he did not describe it technically for another eighteen months (_Proc. Zool. Society_, 1847, p. 61). Many specimens have now been received in Europe, so that it is represented in most museums, and several examples have reached England alive.