WIIKTST. 



UlllilUNG-MACHINi:. 



utterly uiiMiiul.le for them. Cut-iron wheel* hare been much used 

 co colliery railways, and in some cases where rapid motion i* required; 

 but while they may be made abundantly strong, as far as direct pres- 

 sure in concerned, their brittleneas renders them very unsuitable for 

 |nsinnnr carriage*. Many ingenious plans for the combination of 

 wrought-iron and oast-iron in the same wheel have been devised ; but 

 while some of these hare been brought into operation, wheels entirely 

 composed of wrought-iron bare been by far the most generally adopted. 

 The facility with which that material may be worked into form has 

 led to endless variety of plans, some of which are highly ingenious, for 

 combining the requisite degrees of strength and elasticity. In some 

 wheels the annular space between the central boss or nave and the rim 

 is filled up by a series of elliptical loops, formed of thin bars of in>n, 

 abutting against each other ; in others there are spokes, but instead of 

 consisting of single rigid bars, each consists of two halves, having a 

 slight degree of curvature. By these and similar contrivances elasticity 

 is insured without dishing the wheels, which would, for railway 

 carriages, be inconvenient. In some cases a portion of the. annular 

 space above described is filled with segmental blocks of wood, resem- 

 bling the felloes of a common wheel; but while this arrangement 

 claims some advantages, its appearance is very inferior to that of the 

 light and often elegant wheels formed entirely of wrought-iron. One 

 kind of iron wheel which claims notice is that patented by Mr. 

 Theodore Jones. These wheels may be compared to double-dished 

 wheels in general appearance, but their principle is very different. 

 They consist of an iron rim pierced at intervals with conical holes, the 

 largest apertures of which are on the outside ; two sets of round rods 

 or spoke*, with pyramidal heads to fit in the conical holes of the rim, 

 the two sets radiating or inclining alternately inwards and outwards, 

 like the spokes of a double-dished wheel ; and a cast-iron nave, which 

 is formed hollow, with holes to receive the inner ends of the spokes, 

 which are secured by nuts screwed on to them within the nave. The 

 peculiarity of this construction is, that instead of the weight resting 

 almost entirely, as in a common wheel, upon those spokes which happen 

 to be below the nave, it is, as it were, suspended by means of the rods 

 or spokes which are above the nave, from the top of the wheel, the rim 

 of which is considered as an inflexible arch. On this account the 

 wheels are called nupaulon-vhedt ; and as the strength of wrought- 

 iron to resist tension is far greater than its strength to resist compres- 

 sion, a wheel on this principle may be made to bear a much greater 

 load in proportion to its bulk and weight than any other. 



As an example of railway-wheels, we may advert to' that of Messrs. 

 Hollis & Lee. It is built together in four parts, of which each com- 

 prises two spokes, a quadrant of rim, and one fourth part of the nave. 

 The nave thus formed is square. The rim-pieces are a continuation of 

 the spokes, bent round to a curve, and fastened at the spoke ends by 

 tenon and mortice joints. 



1 '.i tent noitelat wheels have been made with tires of india-rubber, and 

 with various contrivances for ensuring durability while obtaining 

 elasticity and noiselessuess ; but they have not come extensively 

 into use. 



The wheels used by cutler*. lapidaries, seal-engravers, and glass 

 engraver*, under the names of brush-wheels, buff-wheels, cloth-winds, 

 composition-wheels, crocus-wheels, emery-wheels, lap-wheels, Ac., are 

 mostly made of metal or wood, coated with some other substance at 

 the edge. Their manufacture needs no description. 



\\ 1 1 KTSTONE, a smooth flat stone used for tchelliny or sharpening 

 edged instruments by friction. Whetstones, which are sometimes 

 called hoxa. are made of various kinds of hard close-grained stone, and 

 are moistened, when in use, with either oil or water. The latter is 

 preferred by some, for giving a keener edge to cutting instruments ; 

 but as it allows closer contact between the atone and the metal, it does 

 not appear so well adapted for producing a very smooth surface. The 

 proper use of a whetstone involves a degree of skill and dexterity which 

 can only be obtained by much practice. 



WHEY. [CHEESE.] 



VVlll'!. This term, like that of Tour, was adopted as a term of 

 reproach, although its origin is by no means certain. North, in liis 

 Examen,' says it " was very significative as well as ready, being ver- 

 nacular in Scotland (from whence it was borrowed) for corrupt 

 and sour whey." In |wint of fact, vltig, acorn ling to the Scottish 

 lexicographers, in not whey, but the slightly acidulated serum of 

 butter milk. 



(juito a different account from this, however, is given by Burnet, in 

 hi ' Hintory of his Own Time,' under the year 1648. That writer says, 

 " The south-west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to 

 serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more 

 than they need, those in the west came in the summer to buy at Leith 

 the stores that come from the north ; and from a word wkigyam, used 

 in driving their hones, all that drove were called vhigyamon and, 

 shorter, the vktyyt. Mow, in that year, after the news came down of 

 hiike Hamilton's defeat, the minuter* animated their people to rise 

 and march to Edinburgh ; and they came up marching on the li 

 their parishes, with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the 

 way M they came. The Marquis of Argyle and hi* |>arty came and 

 bearded them, they being about 6000. This was called the whigga- 

 mors' inroad; and ever after that all that opposed the court came 

 in contempt to be called vhiyyt ; and from Scotland the word was 



brought into England, where it is now one of our unhappy terms 

 of distinction." 



Probably this is the true origin of the name Whig, and that it was 

 really its previous application to the Scotch Covenanters which led to 

 it* revival as a designation for the opponents of the court in England 

 in 1670. Kirkton, in hi* ' History of the Church of Scotland from t !,.- 

 Restoration to 1678' (edited by C. K. Sharpe, Esq., 4to., Edinb.. 1817), 

 says, under the year 1667, " The poor people, who were in contempt 

 called Whiggs, became name-fathers to all that owned one I 

 interest in Britain, who were called Whiggs, after them, even at the 

 court of England : so strangely doth providence improve man's 

 mistakes for tlic furthering of the Lord's purposes." 



With regard to the party opinions of the Whigs, it is scarcely neces- 

 sary to add anything to what has been stated under the word TORT. 

 The Whigs of the last century and a half are generally viewed as the 

 representatives of the friends of reform or change in the I 

 stitution of the country, ever since the popular element became 

 in the legislature, whether they wore called puritans, non 

 round-heads, covenanters, or by any other name. Down 

 Revolution of 1688 the object of this reform party was to make such 

 change ; since that event, at least till recently, it lias priucijally been 

 to maintain the principles of the change then made. Of course, h..w- 

 i-v.-i. this |aity. like all other parties, has both shifted or ino.! 

 professions, principles, and modes of action within certain limit 

 time to time, in conformity with the continual variations of circum- 

 stances, and has seldom been without several shades of opinion 

 among the persons belonging to it in the same age. These differ- 

 ences have been sometimes less, sometimes more distinctive ; at one 

 time referring to matters of apparently mere temporary policy, as 

 was thought to be the case when the Whigs of the last age, soon after 

 the breaking out of the French Revolution, split into two sections, 

 which came to be known as the Old and New Whigs ; at another, seem- 

 ing to involve so fundamental a discordance of ultimate views and 

 objects, if not of first principles, as perhaps to make it expedient for 

 one extreme of the party to drop the name of Whig altogether and 

 to call itself something else, as we have seen the Radicals do in our 

 own day. All parties in politics indeed are liable to be thus drawn 

 or forced to shift their ground from time to time ; even that party 

 whose general object is to resist change and to preserve what exists, 

 although it has no doubt a more definite course marked out tor it 

 than the opposite party, must still often, as Burke expresses it, vary 

 its means to secure the unity of its end; besides, upon no principles 

 wiU precisely the same objects seem the most desirable or impor- 

 tant at all times. But the innovating party, or party of the move- 

 ment, is more especially subject to this change of views, aims, and 

 character : it can, properly speaking, have no fixed principles ; as soon 

 as it begins to assume or profess such, it loses its true character and 

 really passes into its opposite. Accordingly, in point of fact, much 

 of what was once Whiggism has now become Toryism or Conserva- 

 tism, the changes in the constitution which were formerly sought 

 for being now attained; and. on the other hand, as new objects 

 have presented themselves to it, Whiggism has, in so far as it retains 

 its proper character, put on new aspects, and even taken to itself 

 new names. 



WH11UJXO-MACHINE is an apparatus invented by Mr. Robins for 

 the purpose of determining the resistance of the air against bodies 

 moving with velocities less than those for which the resistance can be 

 determined by the Ballistic pendulum. 



It consists of a brass cylinder, 2 inches in diameter and about 6 

 inches long, which is fitted in a frame so as to be capable of turning 

 freely with its axis in a vertical position between the base of the frame 

 and a horizontal plate of wood or metal which is supported above the 

 base by four small pillars. The axle of tin eylindi T. which is of steel, 

 passes through that plate, and terminates about 4 inches above it. To 

 this is attached horizontally, and immediately upon the plate, a thin 

 arm of wood or metal about 4 feet long, and formed with what is called 

 a feather edge on each side : to the extremity of this arm is affixed the 

 object which is to be used in the experiment, and a wire proceeding 

 from the top of the steel axle to the extremity of the arm serves to 

 prevent the latter from bending by it* weight. 



A silk line made fast at one end to the surface of the cylinder i - in 

 part wound round the Iatti-r : the' line then passes over a pulley fixed 

 in a vertical position at the opposite extremity of the machine, and to 

 its lower end is attached some given weight : the descent of the weight 

 causes the cylinder, and consequently the object at the exti. in 

 the arm above mentioned, to revolve about the vertical axis during the 

 experiment The weight at the end of the line being acted <ui l>y 

 gravity descends at first with an accelerated motion, and consequently 

 the circular movement of the object at the extremity of the bar is also 

 accelerated ; but after a few revolutions the resistance of the air against 

 the object becomes very nearly equal to the weight of the descending 

 body, and from that time the descent of the weight and the revolving 

 motion of the object become, as to sense, uniform. When this in 

 or terminal velocity is obtained in any experiment, the descending 

 weight evidently expresses the amount of the air's resistance together 

 with the inertia of the machine. 



An instrument of this kind was much used by Dr. Mutton, of 

 Woolwich, during the years 1786 and 1787, in his researches concern- 



