WINTER. SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN. 



WIRE-DRAWING. 



Mi 



are in the market wine* designated British champagne, British port, 

 British sherry, British Moselle, to. These are made in England 

 mostly from Eighth fruiU, by processes in which the rectifier and the 

 British wine maker are concerned. But the great fraud, which recent 

 investigation* bare brought to light, is the making up of a mixture 

 which shall bear the name and bring the price of foreign wine. It baa 

 been estimated that two out of three bottle* of all '.he so-called cham- 

 pagne sold in England are surreptitious : the wine being made chiefly 

 from English gooseberries. Cider ia a chief constituent in a very large 

 roportion of the low-priced port. Much of the port imported from 

 Portugal, also, is adulterated. It was proved before a committee 

 of the House of Commons on the Wine Duties, in 1852, that the 

 Portuguese mix elder-juice, apple-juice, sloe-juice, and logwood decoc- 

 tion, in the port wine intended for the English market ; and that the 

 Spaniards are not more scrupulous in reference to sherry. They 

 believe that the English taste for wine is so depraved, as to render 

 detection improbable. When the wines reach England, various other 

 ingredients are often added, including oak-bark, turnsole, elder, privet, 

 beet. Brazil-wood, cudbear, red Sanders woud, and catechu some to 

 hide the fact that a large quantity of water has been introduced, 

 some to imitate the right colour, some the right crust, to. It has even 

 been found that glass-makers are employed to make bottles of glass 

 having a peculiar chemical constitution, such as to lead to the forma- 

 tion of a sort of skin or scum which shall imitate the " bee's wing" of 

 " fine old crusted port." Many receipts for making so-called port wine 

 are extant, some of which contain not a drop of real port. It is known 

 that much of the port sold at public-houses can be made for 1. 6rf. 

 per bottle, thus leaving a large profit, even when sold at what seems to 

 be a low price. 



It may be well to remark that brandy, either real, foreign, or imita- 

 tive British, is used to mask the use of adulterants in port wine. In 

 imitating most other foreign wines, the produce of the British wine- 

 makers is more especially relied upon. 



WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN. The astronomical 

 moaning of these words is derived from the considerations in SEASONS, 

 and we are told and taught that winter begins at the winter solstice, 

 spring at the vernal equinox, summer at the summer solstice, and 

 autumn at the autumnal equinox. That is, according to the best 

 authorities, it is spring from the middle of March to the middle of 

 June, summer from thence to the middle of September, autumn from 

 thence to the middle of December, and winter from thence to the 

 middle of March again. At the same time the poets and the farmers, 

 who have a much better right than the astronomers to settle the 

 meaning of these terms for common use, agree in placing the rise of 

 vegetation, the pairing of birds, and the first appearance of flowers in 

 the spring : the hay harvest and the ripening of all the earlier fruitfl in 

 Bummer ; the grain harvest, the later fruits, and the fall of the leaves 

 in autumn ; and the heavier frosts, snow, and ice, in winter. 



It is impossible to fix a common commencement of the seasons even 

 for the parts of the earth which lie between the Arctic circle and the 

 tropic, which are all that need be considered ; for the polar and inter- 

 tropical regions have each a set of seasons of their own. But this we 

 may safely say. that the agricultural and poetical seasons are earlier 

 than the astronomical ones. All that distinguishes spring from winter 

 begins to take place before the vernal equinox, all that distinguishes 

 summer from spring before the summer solstice, and so on. Most 

 certainly it will be found that the greatest intensity of the several 

 seasons happens, one year with another, at a period not long after the 

 astronomical phenomenon at which the season is said to commence. 



When the year is divided only into summer and winter without 

 fuith. r subdivision, it is then an exact division to say that the two 

 halves begin and end with the equinoxes. But here the principal 

 phenomena, the solstices, on approach to which heat and cold depend, 

 are in the middle of the halves. If we were to divide the year into four 

 seasons, during which the earth should receive from the sun the 

 greatest and least portion of heat in two of them, and intermediate 

 portions in the other two, the four astronomical commencements 

 should be made the middle points of these seasons. The consideration 

 in SEASONS will easily moke it appear why, for the same reason as the 

 greatest heat is after the longest day, the middle of the agricultural 

 seasons should fall after the astronomical point of separation. 



Wl.XTEK'S BARK, the bark of On/mil Winteri (Linn.) ; called also 

 Wintera aramatica (Murray and Willd.), the true Winter's Bark, or 

 Magellanic Cinnamon, to distinguish it from the bark of CuntUa alba, 

 or false Winter's Bark. As one of the names imports, this is obtained 

 from a tree growing in South America, from Magalhaeu's Straits up to 

 Brazil. It is met with in cylinders, rarely flat pieces (these lost are 

 termed r./iyoonlin), from one to two feet long, and from six lines to 

 two or three inches in diameter. It is generally freed from the outer 

 rind (which is tasteless and without aroma), and is of a yellowish-red 

 colour, with reddish-brown poinia, the marks where the leaves and 

 young branches have been. The inner surface is tolerably smooth, 

 more or less clear, of a reddish-brown colour, which seizes to distin- 

 guish it from the bark ot Cunelln a/'<, which is much pater. The 

 ta*te is aromatic, sharp, burning, and pepjiery. The smell, when first 

 broken, is agreeable, resembling a mixture of cloves, cinnamon, pepper, 

 and marjoram. 



According to Henry, its chemical composition is resin, volatile oil, 



colouring matter, tannin, acetate of potass, chloride of potassium, sul- 

 phate of potash, oxalaU of lime, and oxide of iron. The volatile oil is 

 pala yellow, lighter than water, with a very hot and acrid last' 

 standing, it separate* into two part*: one, the most abundant, a 

 greenish-yellow liquid ; the other (heavier, but lighter than water), 

 white, and of a fatty consistence. The volatile oil of CaneUn ia heavier 

 than water: this serves to distinguish them, a* well as re-agent*, 

 showing in the true Winter'* Bark the preseuiv of both tannin and 

 iron, which are wanting in the Catulla. 



Winter's Bark is an aromatic stimulant and tonic, of a very valo .M- 

 kind, and it is to be regretted that its use ha* been almost <) 

 superseded by the false Winter's Bark (Oantli-i ). Dr. C. F. von Martial 

 says : " This bnrk deserves the first place among the arom . 

 this country that is, Brazil." When no inflammatory state 

 stomach contraindicates its use, in debility of the digestive organs, 

 with loss of appetite, or slow digestion, it is a valuable remedy. 



WIRE-DRAWING. Wire is metal elongated into the form of a 

 slender cylindrical rod, often so fine as to be comparable to a 

 thread, by the operation of wire-drawing. This process consists in 

 passing a piece of ductile metal through a series of holts, successively 

 diminishing in diameter, in a burdened steel-plate called :i 

 so as to reduce its cross-section to the size and figure of the last or 

 smallest hole, increasing its length at the same time in a certain propor- 

 tion to the diminution of thickness occasioned by the process. Though 

 ordinary wire is cylindrical, the nature of the process of wire-drawing 

 renders it available for the formation of slender rods of uuy other 

 required figure. An important application of the process to the pro- 

 duction of other forma is to the manufacture of pinion-wire for lime- 

 keepers. This is produced of any required size and number of teeth, 

 and the wire being cut to the required length for both pinions an 

 the teeth are filed away from the portion used for the latter. By this 

 mams pinions may be formed at much less expense than > 

 ordinary process of wheel-cutting. The grooved rims ol 

 frames are another example of the useful application of the wire- 

 drawing process, they being formed of wire made for the purpose. 



In early times, metals were probably beaten out with a hammer into 

 thin plates or leaves, which were then divided into small slips by 

 means of scissors or some other cutting instrument ; these slips were 

 subsequently rounded by a hammer and file, so as to form threads or 

 wires. Beckmann expresses his opinion that the rarity with wlm-h 

 works made with threads of metal are alluded to strengthens the pre- 

 sumption that the ancients were unacquainted with the process of 

 producing wire or metallic threads by drawing. So long as wh 

 formed by the hammer, the artists of Nuruberg, by whom it was 

 fabricated, were styled tcire-nmi'hs, but subsequent to the introduction 

 of the drawing process their designation was changed to wire-ii, 

 or wire-millers ; and as these appellations occur as early as 1351 and 

 1360, in the histories of Augsburg and Niirnberg respectively, Beck- 

 mami conceives that the invention of wire drawing must be assigned 

 to the 14th century. In all probability the earliest drawn wire was 

 made by hand, but ere long a machine, impelled by water-power, and 

 capable of drawing wire without the intervention of the hand, was 

 introduced. Though the point is not established, this 



ingenious machine appears to have been first constructed at Nurnberg 

 by a person named Ludolf, who kept it secret for some time, .mil 

 realised much money by the use of it. Niirnberg also gave birth to 

 many subsequent improvements in the manufacture of various kinds of 

 wire. The precious metals were undoubtedly among the first made 

 into wire ; and perhaps brass and iron were not drawn until sonic 

 time after the invention of the art. Blanch iron-wire, or whitr 

 is, however, mentioned in a list of manufactured articles the importa- 

 tion of which into England was prohibited by an act of the reign of 

 Edward III., in the year 1463; and in a similar act passed in 14S1 

 both iron and latten wire are mentioned. Anderson records, under the 

 year 1685, the granting of patents to certain Dutchmen or (uTinan.-t 

 for the prosecution in England of various manufactures, aiuong which 

 is that of wire. He states that prior to that time all English iron 

 wire appears to have been drawn by manual strength, in the Fo: 

 Dean and elsewhere ; and that until these foreigners introduced the 

 use of a drawing-mill, the quality of English wire was so bad that 

 most of that used in the country, as well as ready-made wool-cards and 

 similar articles, was imported from abroad. By the year 11330 the 

 manufacture appears to have made such progress, that in a proclama- 

 tion of Charles I. it is alluded to an a manufacture of long standing, 

 and one which employed many thousand persons ; and it is asserted 

 " that English wire is made of the toughest and best Osmond iron, a 

 native commodity of this kingdom, and is much better than what 

 comes from foreign parts, esjiecially for making wool-cards." The 

 proclamation then forbids the importation of foreign iron wire, ami of 

 wool-cards, hooks and eyes, and other articles made of it. The first 

 wire-mill in England was set up at Sheen, near Richmond, by a Dnt, li 

 man. in 16rt2. The wire-drawing business either following the cloth 

 manufacture or determined by the proximate localities of coal and 

 iron-stone, took deep root in the neighbourhood of Birnslcy in York- 

 shire. The manufacture of copper and bras* wire in this country wii 

 commenced about the year 1641), at Esher, by two foreigners; but 

 they used Swedish rose-copper. 



For the manufacture of iron wire the very best and toughest iron 



