Duke of Florence he painted a triptych, a panel of which probably survives in the fine "Pieta" at the Uffizi; for Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, a "Crucifixion" (Brussels Museum), with portraits of the Duke, his wife and son; and for Cosimo de' Medici a "Madonna, with Patron Saints" (c.1450, Städel Institute, Frankfort). The great paintings of Italy, however, had no influence upon his art. He returned to Brussels, where he died June 16, 1464, as a member of a religious fraternity.

Rogier van der Weyden's art was as deeply religious as his personality. In sentiment it represents a reaction against the placid painting of Jan van Eyck, intended for comfortable middle classes, and appeals to the more popular religious tendency of the day. His intense dramatic action sometimes leads to exaggeration, and his drawing, though always careful, is sometimes defective. His colors are less bright and luminous than Van Eyck's, being rendered with dawn and twilight effects. The heads, with their large eyes and prominent brows, are wonderfully expressive and spiritual. His influence was even wider than Van Eyck's. In the Netherlands Hans Memling was his pupil, and he exercised a formative influence upon Dierich Bouts and Quentin Massys. The Cologne school of the later fifteenth century was dependent upon him; Martin Schongauer of Colmar was probably his pupil, and even Wolgemut and the Nurembergers felt his influence. Through his designs for reliefs he had a wide influence upon the sculpture of his day.

To Rogier's earliest period no paintings can with certainty be ascribed. About 1440 he painted a "Descent from the Cross," now in the Madrid Museum; replica in the sacristy of the Escorial. Of his later achievements the great altar-piece in seven panels of "The Last Judgment" (1449), in the Hospital at Beaune (Côted'Or), France, is one of the most important. Of great originality is the altar-piece representing "The Seven Sacraments," in the Antwerp Museum. The Old Pinakothek at Munich possesses an "Adoration of the Magi," which became a model for later painters, and "Saint Luke Painting the Madonna." In the Berlin Museum are three altar-pieces, including the celebrated Middelburg Altar, with the "Adoration of the Holy Child." Consult the biographics by Wauters (Brussels, 1856) and Pinchart (ib., 1876); also Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Early Flemish Painters (London, 1872); Müntz, in Revue de l'art chrétien (1895); and Firmenich-Richartz, in Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, vol. x. (Leipzig, 1898-99).

WEYER'S CAVE. A large stalactite cavern in Augusta County, Va., opening into a western spur of the Blue Ridge, 11 miles north

east of Staunton. It ranks next in importance

to the Mammoth and Wyandotte Caves, and contains several chambers, of which the largest is Washington's Hall, 250 feet long and more than 90 feet high.

WEYLER, vã'ê-lâr', NICOLAU VALERIANO, Marquis of Teneriffe (1838-). A Spanish general. He was born in Palma, island of Majorca, December 17, 1838. He entered the army, was military attaché of the Spanish Legation in the United States during the Civil War, and accom

panied General Sheridan on some of his campaigns. In the ten years' war in Cuba (186878) he held a command under Balmaceda, and in 1873 served in Spain against the Carlists, with some distinction. In 1879 he was made Governor-General of the Canaries and in 1889 CaptainGeneral of the Philippines, where he amassed a fortune. He was later commissioned as Provincial Governor of Catalonia, and in 1896 he was sent to Cuba, in response to the demands of the advocates of severe methods, to succeed Martinez Campos (q.v.). His ruthless policy aroused a strong protest in the United States, and he was recalled in 1897. In 1900 the military party gained ascendency in the Government and he was Cabinet, which held office from March, 1901, to made Captain-General of Madrid. In the Sagasta December, 1902, he was Minister of War.

WEYMAN, wi'man or wa'man, STANLEY JOHN (1855-). An English novelist of the romantic school. He was born at Ludlow, Shropshire, August 7, 1855, and was educated at Shrewsbury and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was called to the bar in 1881, and practiced until 1889. His first three romances, The House of the Wolf (1890), The New Rector (1891), and The Story of Francis Cludde (1891), were fol lowed by A Gentleman of France (1893), which established his fame as a romanticist. It was translated into several languages. Without quite equaling this effort, Weyman has since published Under the Red Robe (1894), My Lady Rotha (1894), Memoirs of a Minister of France (1895), The Red Cockade (1895), The Man in Black (1896), Shrewsbury (1897), The Castle Inn (1898), Sophia (1900), In Kings Byways, twelve short stories (1902), and several other romances.

There

WEYMOUTH, wa'muth. A town, including several villages, in Norfolk County, Mass., 12 miles southeast of Boston, on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (Map: Massachusetts, F 3). It has the Tufts Library with more than 20,000 volumes, and the Fogg Library. Weymouth is primarily an industrial town, being especially interested in the manufacture of shoes and in wool-scouring. are also car-repair shops here. The water-works are owned and operated by the town. Population, in 1890, 10,866; in 1900, 11,324. Thomas Weston came to Weymouth in 1622, but the first permanent settlement was made by Capt. Robert Gorges in 1623. It was here that Thomas Morton of Merrymount was first seized in 1628 by the Plymouth colonists. Until 1635, when it Indian name, Wessagusset. Consult C. F. Adams, was incorporated, the place was called by its Jr., Proceedings on the 250th Anniversary of the Permanent Settlement (Boston, 1874).

WEYMOUTH, or MELCOMBE REGIS AND WEYMOUTH. A seaport and fashionable watering

place in Dorsetshire, England, on a bay at the

mouth of the Wey, four miles north of the Isle of Portland, and eight miles south of Dorchester (Map: England, D 6). A fortified point, called the Nothe, separates the old town of Weymouth, lying to the south, and Melcombe-Regis, extending to the north. The two communicate by means of a bridge. The old town is uninteresting in appearance. Melcombe Regis, elegantly built, stands on a narrow peninsula, with the sea on the east, and an estuary on the west side. Its

chief features are the sea-terrace and an esplanade, over a mile long, adorned with a statue of George III. Ship and boat building, rope and sail making, and brewing are carried on, and there is steam traffic with France and the Channel Islands. The boroughs were united in 1571, and enlarged in 1895. Population, in 1901, 19,831.

WEYPRECHT, vi'prěкt, KARL (1838-81). A German Polar explorer, born near Michelstadt, Hesse. He entered the Austrian navy in 1856, and with Payor undertook, in 1871, an expedition to Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, and in 1872-74 led the great Austrian Arctic expedition, the result of which was the discovery and exploration of Franz Josef Land. At the meeting of German naturalists at Gratz in 1875, he proposed a plan to substitute for the polar expeditions a systematic exploration by means of an international system of permanent observation stations. This plan was carried into effect in 1882-83, after Weyprecht had died at Michel stadt. He published: Die Metamorphosen des Polareises (1879); Astronomische und geodätische Bestimmungen der oesterreichisch-ungarischen arktischen Expedition (1877); Praktische Anleitung zur Beobachtung der Polarlichter und der magnetischen Erscheinungen in hohen Breiten (1881), besides contributions to Petermann's Mitteilungen and other periodicals. Consult Littrow, Karl Weyprecht, Erinnerung und Briefe (Vienna, 1881).

WEYR, vir, RUDOLF (1847-). An Austrian sculptor, born in Vienna. He was a pupil of Bauer and Cesar in the academy, where with his group of "Samson and Delilah" he won the Reichel prize in 1870. In 1878 he was awarded in competition the work of decorating the Grillparzer monument (reliefs of the Hexedra). He attained repute through his decorative reliefs and his experiments in polychrome sculpture. His works include the great fountain before the Imperial Palace, Vienna; his chef d'œuvre, the great frieze of the "Triumphal Procession of Bacchus and Ariadne" for the pediment of the new Burgtheater; and numerous decorative features for the museum and university buildings.

WHALE (AS. hwal, OHG. wal-fisc, Ger. Wal-fisch, whale). Any large marine mammal of the order Cetacea (q.v.), the only essential difference between a whale and a dolphin or porpoise being the size, although the name is more particularly applicable to the toothless or whale bone whales. One of the most widely current popular errors in zoology is the notion that a whale is some kind of a fish. The warm blood, the well-developed brain, the double circulation, the lungs, and the mammary glands and reproductive organs, all combine, however, to show clearly the far higher organization of a whale as compared with even the highest fishes. The young of whales are born alive, well developed after a long pregnancy, and are suckled and cared for by the mother as in the case of land mammals. Nevertheless, in their extreme adaptation to an exclusively aquatic life, whales have certain superficial resemblances to fishes, especially in the elongated, tapering body, the finlike limbs, and the termination of the body in a caudal fin, the principal organ of locomotion. The skin of a whale is, however, smooth and without scales, although there are frequently

VOL XVII.-43.

barnacles and parasitic crustaceans attached to it in considerable numbers. The only outgrowths of the skin are hair-like bristles near the mouth, and these are not always present, being rather a characteristic of the young. The fore limbs of whales are supported by the same bones as in other mammals, but are very much flattened, and the digits, which have an unusual number of phalanges, are all united in a common skin. The clavicle is wanting, the scapula is very large, and the humerus and forearm bones are very short. The hind limbs are entirely wanting, the only evidence of their ancestral occurrence being a pair of small, slender bones, completely imbedded in the body wall and not connected with the backbone, supposed to represent vestigial ischia. The caudal fin, unlike that of a fish, is flattened horizontally, and the two halves, known as 'flukes,' are therefore right and left, not dorsal and ventral as in a fish; this fin is connected with the body by a narrow but extremely muscular part, known as the 'small.' Not only does the tail serve as the organ of locomotion, but it is also the most effective weapon

of both offense and defense which the true whales possess. Most whales have more or less of a dorsal fin on the median line of the back, but it is simply an outgrowth of the integument, and even in those forms where it is most highly developed it has no bony supports. The head of a whale is very large proportionately, in some species as much as one-third of the total length.

The eyes are small, as is the ear-opening; there are no external ears. The nostrils or nostril (there is often only one) are situated far back from the nose, on the vertex of the head, and are closed by a plug-like valve, which can only be opened by pressure from the inside. through the nostrils, and is merely the release The so-called blowing' of a whale takes place of the long-confined moisture-laden breath, which condenses in the cooler air and gives the appearance of a column of water being blown from

the nostrils. The old idea that a whale takes water in at the mouth and blows it out through the nostrils is entirely baseless, although water may be blown into the air if the breath is released before the animal has quite reached the surface. The mouth of a whale is always large, though the esophagus may be quite narrow. Teeth are wanting in the true whales, but in all other cetaceans they are present, at least in the lower jaw, and in the embryos of true whales they are found well formed about the middle of fœtal life, but they are gradually absorbed and no trace of them exists at birth. The teeth are always simple, with conical or compressed crowns and single roots, and there is only one set, milk teeth not being developed. The number of teeth shows a wide range of variation.

In the toothless whales the roof of the mouth is provided with a large number of verti cal horny plates, quite close together, placed transversely on each side, so that there is a bare space in the median line. The outer end of each plate is smooth and hard, but the inner end is frayed out into long bristly fibres, so that the roof of the mouth looks as though covered with hair. (See WHALEBONE.) paratus serves as a sieve for straining out the minute animals on which these whales feed, the water being taken into the mouth anteriorly and then let run out at the sides of the mouth,

This whole ap

between the ends of the baleen-plates. The surface water of the ocean swarms with animal life, on the feeding grounds of the whale this consists largely of mollusks of various kinds, together with more or less crustacean material. All this animal life is collectively known by whale-fishermen as 'brit' and is the only food supply of the toothless whales. Owing to the large size of the mouth, the maxillary and mandibular bones of the skull are greatly elongated, giving the cranium proper a disproportionately small appearance, although it is in reality of relatively good size. There are always seven vertebræ in the neck, but they are crowded close together, are practically immobile, and are more or less fused together into a single piece. The remaining vertebræ are remarkably large, numerous, and very freely movable upon each other. There is no union of any of them in the sacral region. All the bones of a whale are spongy, the cavities being filled with oil.

There are many peculiarities in the soft parts of the whales, notably the development of 'blubber,' a layer of fat, consisting of a dense mesh of areolar tissue, the interstices of which are filled with oil. This is an extraordinary nonconductor of heat and serves to maintain the temperature of the body, thus replacing the external coat of hair present in other mammals but wanting in all cetaceans. The salivary glands of a whale are rudimentary or wanting, the stomach is many-chambered and quite peculiar, the intestinal cæcum is wanting or very small, the gall-bladder is wanting, the larynx has a peculiar shape, the blood system is remarkable for its plexuses, both arterial and venous, the brain is large and round, with numerous and complex cerebral surface convolutions, and the mammary glands are situated far back, one on each side of the female reproductive opening. There is a special arrangement of dilated ducts and compressor muscles, so that the milk can be forced into the mouth of the young one in considerable quantities at a time, by the action of the mother, so that 'sucking'

under water is made feasible.

Whales are very widely distributed in all parts of the ocean and are frequently gregarious, sometimes occurring in thousands. Some species, however, are generally seen singly or in pairs. A few species appear to be regularly migratory, while others wander almost at will, restricted by no natural barriers. All whales are carnivorous, but only the killers (q.v.) eat other warm-blooded vertebrates. Fishes and squids are the chief articles of diet of the toothed whales, while small mollusks and other invertebrates maintain the whalebone whales. Whales are generally timid, inoffensive animals, active and graceful in their movements and very affectionate toward one another. The parents and offspring are especially attached to each other.

Commercially whales are of great importance, although they were much more so in the past. Ambergris, spermaceti, whale oil, whalebone, and ivory are the principal substances supplied by these animals, although leather is made from the skins of some of the smaller species. Before the discovery of petroleum, illuminating oil was derived almost wholly from whale oil, but kerosene has now entirely supplanted the animal oil. Numerous substances have also been discovered or

1. Diagram of the matrix of the baleen-plate, the dotted line, a, showing the outline of the pulp which forms b, the central fibrous part of the plate; c, external layers of firm substance formed by the elastic cementing material. 2. A vertical section of four baleen-plates in situ; the transverse bar at the top represents the vascular gum from which the pulps proceed that penetrate the base of the plates. Below this is shown the elastic substance cementing the plates together, beyond which the plates project free and terminate in a fringe of bristles. 3. Transverse section of a portion of a baleen-plate showing the area of the tubular cavities of the coarse central fibres, and the outer, denser substance.

the whale fishery, but spermaceti is one of the principal productions of the sperm whale. It is a peculiar oily substance, which at the body temperature of the whale is a whitish fluid, but on cooling becomes solidified. After purification by refining it is a white crystalline substance used largely in pharmacy and in making candles. It is nearly odorless and tasteless. Whale oil and whalebone are still widely used. although so generally replaced by cheaper substitutes. Whalebone is exceptionally tough and elastic, and no perfect substitute has yet been found. Whale ivory is derived from the teeth of the sperm whale, which are five or six inches long, very solid, and composed of a superior grade of ivory.

For obvious reasons, the study of the anatomy, development, and natural history of whales is attended with unusual difficulties, and the accumulation of large series of specimens in mu seums is out of the question. It is therefore a matter of considerable question whether a given species of whale wanders into all parts of the ocean, and the number of species and their geographical distribution is practically unknown. Not more than 25 well-defined species of whale can be recognized, though nearly three times that many have been named. The classification is based primarily on the presence or absence of teeth after birth, the two suborders Denticete and Mysticete being generally accepted, though under varying names.

The Denticete (Odontoceti, Delphinoidea) include, besides the toothed whales, all those other cetaceans known as dolphins, narwhals, porpoises, killers, etc. The most important whale in this group is the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), also called cachalot and spermaceti whale. It has a very wide geographical range,

1. WHITE WHALE or BELUGA. 2. CALIFORNIA GRAY WHALE. 3. SULPHUR BOTTOM (Pacific).

4. FINBACK (Pacific).

5. RIGHT WHALE.

6. BOWHEAD WHALE.

7. HUMPBACK (Pacific).

8. SPERM WHALE.