WELWITSCHIA 



6245 



WESLEY 



Welsbach gas burner, which revolutionized 

 methods of lighting by gas, was an Austrian 

 inventor, born and educated in Vienna. Later 

 he attended the University of Heidelberg, where 

 he studied with Bunsen, the inventor of the 

 Bunsen burner (see page 999). The Welsbach 

 burner has about its nonluminous flame a cone- 

 shaped, cotton-gauze mantle of oxides of tho- 

 rium and cerium. When first lighted the cot- 

 ton burns away and there is left a skeleton of 

 the oxides. This becomes incandescent and 

 throws out a strong, clear light. Welsbach also 

 invented an incandescent electric lamp, and in 

 1907 discovered a new element known as lute- 

 cium. He is the author of several scientific 

 works in the German language. 



WELWITSCHIA, welwich'ia, one of the 

 strangest members of the vegetable kingdom, 

 a plant bearing but two leaves. It often lives 

 to be a hundred years old. It is named after 

 I-'. Welwitsch, an Austrian botanist. The short, 

 woody trunk, seldom more than a foot high, 

 spreads its tablelike top to a width of five or 

 six feet, until it somewhat resembles a gigantic, 

 flattened mushroom. From the top spring two 

 green, woody leaves two or three feet wide and 

 about twice as long. These split into slender 

 shreds and remain in that condition as long as 

 the plant lives. Every year stiff, jointed, stem- 

 like growths, from six to twelve inches in length, 

 bearing scarlet flower spikes, develop at the 

 point where the leaves join the trunk. The 

 welwitechia grows in sandy soil in the south- 

 ern part of Africa. 



WENTWORTH, went'vntrth, THOMAS, EARL 

 OF STRAFFOBD. See STRATFORD, THOMAS WENT- 

 WORTH, FIRST EARL OF. 



WESER, va'zer, a river which is formed in 

 the Prussian province of Hanover by the union 

 of the Fulda and the Werra, at Miinden. It 

 follows a winding northerly course through 

 picturesque country, emptying into the North 

 Sea through a wide estuary, 280 miles from the 

 union of the head streams. In 1894 the river 

 was deepened to Bremen, forty-six miles from 

 tli- North Sea, greatly increasing its commer- 

 cial importance. Such navigation as there was 

 on the Weser was impeded by the rival claims 

 of the provinces through which it flows until 

 treaties were made in 1825. Hameln (modern 

 form), the "Hamelin Town" of Browning's Pied 

 Piper, is on its banks. 



WESLEY, u'cs'li, the family name of two 

 brothers whose lasting fame rests on the fact 

 that they founded the religious sect which has 

 developed into the powerful Methodist Church 



JOHN WES I. 

 Revered by Methodists 



John Wesley, four years older than his brother 

 Charles, was the actual head of the movement, 

 but Charles had no small part in its develop- 

 ment. 



John Wesley (1703-1791) was bora at Epworth, 

 England, June 17, 

 1703, the fifteenth 

 child of Samuel 

 Wesley, rector of 

 Epworth. His 

 mother was a 

 woman of intelli- 

 gence and deep 

 religious life, and 

 her influence 

 upon the charac- 

 ters of her chil- 

 dren was strong 

 and lasting. John 



studied at Char- the founder of their Church, 

 terhouse School, and at Christ Church, Oxford, 

 from which he was graduated in 1724. In the 

 next year he was ordained to the ministry, 

 but seems to have had at the time no very 

 high spiritual conception of his calling. He 

 was an active, "gay and sprightly" youth, with 

 a great fondness for athletics. Gradually, how- 

 ever, while acting as his father's curate, his 

 mind turned to more serious matters, and when 

 in 1729 he returned to Oxford he became rec- 

 ognized as the leader of the "Holy Club/' as 

 the little circle which his brother Charles had 

 gathered about him was derisively called. 



Influence of American Trip. In 1735, with 

 his brother Charles, he went to America ^s a 

 missionary to Georgia, at the invitation of 

 Oglethorpe, founder of the colony, but the 

 work among the Indians was not successful, and 

 Wesley lost popularity there by reason of his 

 strictness. He returned home in 1738, having 

 accomplished little of his original purpose, but 

 the journey was by no means without siu 

 cance in his own life, for on the voyage out he 

 met a number of the Moravian Brethren whose 

 calm faith convinced him that there was some- 

 thing in religion far beyond what he had at- 

 tained. On his return to London he visited 

 one of the Moravians, Peter Bo'hler, from whom 

 he learned much of the necessity for "saving 

 f:nh;" and in May, 1738, in a little meeting in 

 Aldersgate Street, there occurred what Wesley 

 himself considered the turning point in his ca- 

 reer there came to him a firm conviction of the 

 saving power of Christ. A visit to the Mora- 

 vian Brethren on the Continent confirmed him 

 in his new faith, and on his return to England 



