given to the fourth wheel and pinion in one hour; consequently must perform a minute circle. And here it follows to consider true seconds: they have no regulation from the foregoing calculation, after it has produced sixty revolutions, by the fourth-wheel pinion, in one hour; therefore the fourth wheel, escapement-pinion, and escapement-wheel, are to govern the seconds and parts of seconds. There can be no true seconds performed upon the minute circle without the parts of seconds be first considered. First, fifths of seconds require 18,000 beats in one hour; secondly, two-ninths of seconds, which perform two seconds in nine beats, allowing four beats and a half for every second, which cuts the first second with the fifth beat, and coincides with the second second at the ninth beat; and so on, successively, through the minute, cutting the odd, and coinciding with the even numbers, which require 16,200 beats in the hour; and thirdly, fourths of seconds require 14,400 beats in the hour. No other number of beats, between 18,000 and 14,400, will give exact parts of seconds. Manufacturers who have not these numbers can neither give a true second nor a true minute; for the conclusion of the minute will be cut by a fractional part, more or less, until so many minutes are performed as there are parts in the integer. But to give 18,000 beats in the hour, for fifths of seconds, first it is to be considered that the fourth wheel has sixty revolutions in one hour; then, with seventy teeth in the fourth wheel, how many teeth of the fourth wheel will come into action with the escapement pinion? 60 revolutions, Multiplied by 70 teeth, in the fourth wheel. 4200 teeth The rule for examining the foregoing calculations must be tried as follows:-The number of hours required for the watch to go must be first considered; say thirty hours; then the number of the centre pinion must be given, say twelve; then multiply the hours by the centre pinion, which product being divided by the number of the great-wheel teeth, say sixty; the quotient will be the turns of chain the fusee should have to perform thirty hours: for example: 30 hours, multiplied by 12 the number of the centre pinion. 60) 360 product, divided by 60, the number of the great-wheel teeth. 6 quotient, the turns for the fusee chain. The same rule may be observed for any number of hours required, by multiplying the number of hours by the pinion given, and dividing the product by the number of the great-wheel teeth; the quotient will give the turns for the chain on the fusee. WATCHES, REPEATING, are such as by pulling a string, &c., repeat the hour, quarter, or minute, at any time of the day or night. This repetition was the invention of Mr. Barlow, and first put in practice by him in larger movements or clocks, about the year 1676. The contrivance immediately set the other artists to work, who soon contrived divers ways of effecting the same. But its application to pocket watches was not known before king James II.'s reign; when the ingenious inventor abovementioned, having directed Mr. Thompson to make a repeating watch, was soliciting a patent for the same. The talk of a patent engaged Mr. Quare to resume the thoughts of a like contrivance, which he had had in view some years before: he now effected it; and, being pressed to endeavour to prevent Mr. Barlow's patent, a watch of each kind was produced before the king and council; upon trial of which the preference was given to Mr. Quare's. The difference between them was, that Barlow's was made to repeat by pushing in two pieces on each side of the watch box; one of which repeated the hour and the other the quarter; whereas Quare's was made to repeat by a pin that stuck out near the pendant, which being thrust in (as now it is done by thrusting in the pendant itself), repeated both the hour and quarter with the same thrust. WATCHFIELD a hamlet of England, in Berkshire, near Great Farringdon. WATEEHOO, an island in the South Pacific Ocean, six miles long and four broad, discovered by captain Cook in 1777. It is a beautiful spot, with the surface varied by hills and plains, and covered with verdure. The language spoken was equally well understood by Omai, and by two New Zealanders. What its peculiarities may be, when compared with the other dialects, captain Cook was not able to point out. Long. 158° 15′ W., lat. 20° 1' S. WATELET (Claud Henry), a celebrated poet and lexicographer, born at Paris, in 1718. He was a member of the French Academy, and of several foreign societies. He was also receiver general of the finances; yet he died poor, in 1786. He wrote a poem on the Art of Painting; several Comedies; and other pieces of merit; and left A Dictionary of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving, which was published after his death. WATER, n. s., v. a., & v. n. WATERCRESSES, Sax. pærer; Belgic waeter Teutonic wasser ; Goth. wats, watz. A compound aeriform fluid. See below. The sea; urine; vein or lustre of a dia mond to water is to irrigate; supplywith drink WATERRAT, or moisture; diWATERWORK, n. s. versify, as with WATERY, adj. waves; to shed moisture; get or take in water: the compounds do not seem to need particular explanation: waterish and watery mean resembling water; thin; liquid; boggy . A river went out of Eden to water the garden. Gen. ii. 10. He set the rods he had pulled before the flocks in the Gen. xxx. 38. gutters in the watering troughs. Psalms. As the hart panteth after the water-brook, so panteth A gushing river of black gory blood, The watery kingdom is no bar Id. Knolles. Shakspeare. There be land-rats and water-rats. If thou couldst, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease, And purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee. 'Tis a good form, And rich: here is a water, look ye! Id. Id. Id. Id. I have seen in the Indies far greater waterfalls than Raleigh. those of Nilus. Waterfowl joy most in that air which is likest water. Bacon. This ill weed, rather cut off by the ground than plucked up by the root, twice or thrice grew forth been ever parched up. again; but yet, maugre the warmers and waterers, hath Carew. By water they found the sea, westward from Peru, always very calm. Abbot. Engines invented for mines and waterworks often fail Wilkins. in the performance. Those few escaped These reasons made his mouth to water Milton. Hudibras. The pike is bold, and lies near the top of the water, watching the motion of any frog, or water-rat, or Walton. mouse. Let them lie dry twelve months to kill the waterweeds, as water-lilies and bull-rushes. Chaste moral writing we may learn from hence, Id. Waller. Painters make colours into a soft consistence with water or oil; those they call watercolours, and these they term oil colours. Boyle. Could tears water the lovely plant, so as to make it grow again after once 'tis cut down, your friends would be so far from accusing your passion, that they would encourage it, and share it. Temple. Where the principles are only phlegm, what can be expected from the waterish matter, but an insipid manhood, and a stupid old infancy? Dryden. Less should I dawb it o'er with transitory praise, And watercolours of these days: These days! where e'en the extravagance of poetry Is at a loss for figures to express Men's follies, whimsies, and inconstancy. Swift. Id. Go to bed, after you have made water. WATER. In this paper we propose to draw into a focus a few popular and familiar views that may be taken of this interesting subject, referring to the articles AIR, CHEMISTRY, &c., for the more full elucidation of the scientific laws and principles in volved. Our chief object is to lead the general reader to the portal of its chemical characteristics. No substance in nature may more properly be called the common want' of all the vegetables, all the animals, all the races of mankind, than water-and none is more widely diffued. Its intimate connexion with life, throughout all the variety of living forms, will appear at once from the consideration that no animal or vegetable exists, for any two successive instants of time, in precisely the same state; it is constantly undergoing, we mean, some internal motion or change arising from its peculiar organisation. Its most solid parts are formed and sustained by decomposition from circulating fluids-and the basis of all the fluids thus circulating through every vessel and tube of orga.. nised existence is water. On the other hand, how abundantly does it minister to life externally! It has often been called the natural food of plants. While in the earth alone, deprived of moisture, all decay and perish: in water alone many of them will live and flourish to perfection. Witness the bulbous roots thus sustained, with which the ladies contrive to ornament our drawing-rooms; or the more homely experiment of growing mustard and cress on wetted baize. Witness, on a larger scale, those arid parts of the earth where nothing living relieves the eye of the traveller for miles; and the oases of the same desert regions, where, on the slightest supply of water, all is life and fertility: or, in still more surprising and magnificent contrast, living creatures of every size, and plants of all dethe margin and depths of the ocean, abounding in scriptions. The Water, as an aliment of man, has naturally engaged much of his attention. Considered in its various forms and preparations, no single article of food is so important to him. For this he first explored the depths of the earth; in all ages, and under all forms of religion, for this he has looked to heaven. Tribes of men, in early ages, as we read in Scripture, have been ready to go to war for particular wells; and the Bedouin Arabs frequently shed each other's blood to obtain possession of them to this day. In the recent expedition of major Dubarn into central Africa, the party arrived soon after noon, with the thermometer at 110° in the shade, at the well of Burr Kashifery. well was guarded (says our traveller); and we were told that until the shickh mina appeared not a drop was to be drawn. Towards evening the shickh appeared on the hills to the north-west attended by his troop. He seemed vastly glad to see us; said the well was ours-that our waterskins should be filled, and our camels should be watered before any body, and for nothing; and then, said he, sultan George the Great must be obliged to Mina Tahr, the woody chief of Gunda, and that will give more pleasure to Tahr's heart than payment; and who knows, said he, but when sultan George hears this he may send me a sword.' Thus, regarded as the common food of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, water becomes connected with agriculture, and various mechanical arts to obtain and preserve it, or to diffuse its living streams. Penetrating the atmosphere, and circulating above our heads, it is associated with the whole doctrine of aerial and atmospherical phenomena. It assists largely in painting the beautiful scenery of the sky, and in the whole economy of the clouds, while held in solution as vapor; now answering the purpose of a screen to the earth from the too powerful and scorching rays of the sun, and now yielding in fertilising showers, and in the gentle dew from heaven,' its most essential nourishment. Need we add that water, as a universal solvent, is also, in its elastic and fluid state, a universal cleanser; thus readily mixing with and assisting all other bodies of this character; or that it has become in almost every language, therefore, a symbol of purity; and in that of the conscience and the Bible of that purity of heart without which no man shall see God? In other views of it, as in the wide spread seas, it is the handmaid of commerce, the high road of nations; in the larger rivers the foundation of the opulence of cities; spreading or uniting mankind in a great scheme of providence; conveying from shore to shore, and interchanging from town to town, the productions of all the earth. Snow and ice are but forms of water-most important and beneficial forms. They assist in agriculture, as commissioned to clothe the ground, and protect and feed its productions in their tenderest state. The temperature of both in northern winters is not below the freezing point of 32°, while (in northern parts of the Russian empire for instance) the surrounding air is sometimes 60° or 70° below that point. In their congealed state they shield both plants and animals, therefore, from the more piercing cold of the atmosphere, and even the delicate horse will prefer lying in the common fields of a snowy night to the shelter of a common shed. The water they again yield in a fluid state is the first nourishment of the plants in early spring; while both the expansion and contraction of the water in this wonderful process tends to pulverise the soil, and to separate its parts from each other; to act, therefore, as the most effective plough that is ever put into the ground; rendering the whole penetrable to the air, the dews, the warmth of the sun, and to the other nutritive agencies of vegetation. To regard our subject popularly for a few minutes longer, we meet with ice, common water, and steam, the three principal forms of water, according to the different degrees of heat with which it is combined. Deprived of its usual quantity of caloric it assumes a solid form at 32° Fahrenheit; and near the poles may be formed, by the chisel of the statuary, similarly to stone or the hardest rocks. A mimic palace, it is well known, was built at St. Petersburgh, during the severe winter of 1740, from the ice of the river Neva. It was fifty-two feet long by sixteeen wide, consisting of blocks from two to three feet thick, disposed and ornamented with great care and taste, various parts being finely colored by water of different tints sprinkled upon them. Ten cannon were made of and mounted with ice at this time, and a leaden bullet was fired from one of them, in the presence of the whole Russian court, through a board two inches thick. This fact may be familiar to our readers; but another, singularly contrary to what is observed of other fluids, is worthy our particular remark here. Water heated above or cooled below 394° of Fahrenheit becomes of less specific gravity than in its natural state; that is, a less weight occupies a much greater space; a fact too astonishing ever, says an able observer, to have been discovered or imagined à priori. The wisdom and goodness of તે the great Artificer of the world will manifest itself in this arrangement, if we consider what would have been the consequences had water been subject to the general law, and, like other fluids, become specifically heavier by the loss of its caloric. In winter, when the atmosphere became reduced to 32°, the water on the surface of all lakes would have sunk as it froze; another sheet of water would have frozen immediately and sunk also; the ultimate consequence of which would have been the destruction of all their finny tribes; the beds of our rivers would have become repositories of immense masses of ice, which no subsequent summer could have thawed; and the world, in short, have been converted into a frozen chaos. How admirable the wisdom, how skilful the contrivance, that, by subjecting water to a law contrary to what is observed by other fluids, the water as it freezes becomes specifically lighter, and, swimming upon the surface, performs an important service by preserving a vast body of heat in the covered fluid from the effects of the surrounding cold, ready to receive its accustomed quantity again on the first change of the atmosphere! Indeed, had the transition of water from its solid into its liquid state not been accompanied by this great change in its relation to heat, every thaw would have occasioned a frightful inundation, and a single night's frost would have solidified our rivers and lakes. We have mentioned the expansion and contraction of water as it freezes or thaws. According to the calculations of the Florentine academicians, a spherule, or little globe of water, only one inch in diameter, expands in freezing with a force superior to the resistance of thirteen tons and a half weight. Major Williams attempted to prevent this expansion; but during the operation the iron plug which stopped the orifice of the bomb-shell containing the freezing water, and which was more than two pounds weight, was projected several hundred feet with great velocity; and in another experiment the shell burst. The law in question is eminently important, and nature has made it unalterable. This property of water is taken advantage of in splitting slate. At Colly Western the slates are dug from the quarries in large blocks. These are placed in an opposite direction to what they had in the quarry, and the rain is allowed to fall upon them; when it penetrates their fissures, and the first sharp frost freezes the water, which, expanding with its usual force, splits the slate into thin layers. Let us now look again, and a little more closely, at water as a fluid. In this state it is comparatively transparent, and distilled water is as much so as any body in nature-colorless, tasteless, and without smell. It is also without change, in proportion as it is free from admixtures; it seems liable to no spontaneous changes; and might be kept unaltered for ages in close vessels upon which it had no action. Distilled water, evaporated in a pure vessel, leaves no residuum. But water found within or upon the surface of the earth contains various earths, mineral, vegetable, and animal matters. Rain and snow water are comparatively purer; but these also contain tinctures of what floats in the air, or would mix with the watery vapors. Much stress was once laid by chemists upon the difficulty of procuring distilled water, and the necessity of repeating the process many times; but it was shown by Lavoisier that rain water once distilled, rejecting the first and last products, is as pure as it can be procured by any number of distillations. The Thames water has been long known for becoming soon putrid at sea, and quickly undergoing various spontaneous changes which belong to any thing but water. Upon what has been made known respecting it of late we shall not dwell; but may remark, in abatement of some claims upon the subject, that many impurities mingle with all water that do not alter, in any permanent or important way, its qualities. The great question is, what mingles with water chemically, and so does alter its qualities, and what mechanically only, and may, therefore, be readily removed by filtration? By a happy arrangement of providence most of the adventitious matters that are found in water are rather suspended than dissolved in it, or are united to it only mechanically and not chemically. Other admixtures, however, are of a different description, and require accurate chemical tests and analysation to detect them. We have mentioned the other most important form of water, considered popularly, steam. Combined with a smaller quantity of caloric than in its fluid state, let us remember, it becomes ice; combined with a larger or plus quantum it becomes vapor or steam; that is at the heat of 212° Fahrenheit. On this property of water depends that greatest of the modern inventions of science, the steamengine. At present we can only offer a familiar elucidation or two of the amazing increase of volume, and rapid condensation of steam in this way. Take a Florence flask with water in the bottom, boil it over a spirit lamp; and afterwards invert about two inches and a half of the neck in a vessel of cold water. The water will rise with a gush upwards into the flask, filling the vacuum; (and therefore nearly the flask), made by the steam having been condensed. However long we boil water in an open vessel, it may be observed, we cannot make it in the smallest degree hotter than its boiling point: then the vapor absorbs the heat, and carries it off as fast as it is generated. Yet by continued heat, united with additional compression, both the expansibility and temperature of steam may be greatly increased: and some constructors of steam-engines have availed themselves of this property, to augment the power and diminish the expense of them. These are what are called high pressure engines. But a singular difference has been lately noticed by M. Gay Lussac, with regard to the vessel in which water is boiled. He has ascertained that water boiling in a glass vessel has a temperature of 214-2°, and in a tin vessel contiguous to it of only 212°. A few particles of pounded glass, thrown into the former vessel, reduced the thermometer plunged in it to 212.6°, and iron filings to 212°. When the flame is withdrawn for a few seconds, from under a glass vessel of boiling water, the ebullition will recommence on throwing in a pinch of iron filings. Of what future importance this may be to chemistry, or the arts, we do not presume to judge: but only mention it as a singular and very modern observation (considering for how many centuries water has been boiled) on the peculiarities of that body. To return from this incidental notice of steam, and the steam-engine, we may suggest a few chemical tests of the purity of water. 1. Iron very commonly impregnates it: this is the case whenever it flows through a gravelly soil. The presence of iron may be detected by pouring into water prussiate of potash, when a blue precipitate is the result: the Prussian blue of commmerce. 2. The gallic acid, very astringent, or any vegetable astringents of that kind in water may be detected by pouring into it sulphate of iron, when a black inky precipitate results. This is not frequently seen in settled, but in unsettled or uncleared countries, like the western part of the United States, it is found through the falling of the leaves and bark of trees into standing waters. 3. The presence of lime in water is detected by breathing into it: the lungs decompose the atmospheric air, and, yielding carbonic acid, produce a carbonate of lime. 4. Passing now into that useful laboratory, the kitchen, copper, one of the most deadly poisons, is but too often carelessly in use there: its presence is to be detected by plunging a common iron knife into water. Copper is formed on the knife, arising from the greater affinity of iron for oxygen, the iron having decomposed the salt of copper in the water. 5. Do we suspect sulphuric acid to be present? It may be detected by pouring in the suspected water a vegetable infusion. Pour the tested body on the test, and the vegetable blue becomes a red. 6. Volatile alkali? This is detected in a simiar manner. Only the vegetable infusion now becomes green. The different temperature at which water boils, as compared with all spirituous liquids, is the foundation of the art of DISTILLATION, which see. In the largest application of the principles of that art in this country, i. e. to the distillation of gin, malt-wash is boiled from 190° to 195° Fahrenheit, (water not boiling until it arrives at 212°, as we have seen); when the spirit separates from the water, and comes over in the form of steam, which is condensed in passing through the long pipes of the worm surrounded with cold water. As an evening amusement we may attempt the French manufacture of brandy, without fear of a visit from the officers of excise: in fact distil it from port wine, over the spirit lamp: boiled in the retort, the steam will gradually come over and be condensed in the reservoir. 2. Ether may in a similar manner be boiled in water, but just warm. It boils at 98° in the air: in vacuo at 20° Fahrenheit. 3. Spirit-bombs show the expansive force of the steam of spirit, which like that of water is ungovernable at a certain point. Hence the explosion of steam-engines. Another familiar elucidation of the qualities of water may close this part of our subject. Viewing it generally in connexion with a yielding medium, we may imagine its particles have no actual hardness; and therefore cannot be subject to the laws of friction. But taken distilled in an exhausted tube; composing what is called a water-mallet; and the sound produced by the streams striking on the bottom of the tube, proves that there is a point at which its particles do not yield. The chemistry of water is very simple; it is comparatively of late discovery; yet nothing in the whole compass of experimental science appears, in its principal points, to be better established. Philosophy recognised water as an element, one of the four elements,' from the times of Aristotle to those of the late Mr. Cavendish. That gentleman demonstrated, about the year 1784, that it is composed, in fact, of two distinct aëriform. fluids-oxygen and hydrogen; containing eightyeight parts by weight out of every 100 of the former and twelve of the latter. This was the result of three years of laborious experiments. The late Mr. Watt, the celebrated improver of the steam-engine, seems to have inferred at the same period (in 1783), independently of Mr. Cavendish, that water was a compound body of the kind it has been since proved to be; as did the French chemist Lavoisier and La Place. A friend of the latter, count Monge of Paris, seems to have been the first that suggested an experiment which is often exhibited to the present day, as placing the composition of water beyond dispute. He passed the steam of water through a red-hot iron tube, and found that the water was oxidised; that is, the oxygen attached itself to the iron, and the hydrogen disengaged. The hydrogen is, in this experiment, proved not to be steam by being forced through cold water. But what is called the grand experiment of the French chemists, as to the composition of water, occupied more than nine days of the month of May, 1790. The combustion of the gases was kept up by Fourcroy, Vauquelin, and Seguin, on this occasion, 185 hours, during which |