WILLOW-LICE. 



WINE. 



ed. Leaves scattered, numerous, nearly sessile, 

 linear-lanceolate, acute, various in breadth, 

 veiny, smooth. Flowers crimson, inodorous, 

 very handsome, numerous, in long terminal 

 upright clusters. This is a very ornamental 

 flower, common in gardens, where it increases 

 but too rapidly; thriving, like many mountain 

 plants, even in the smoky air of London. There 

 is a white variety. 2. The great hairy willow- 

 herb (E. hirsulum). This species is very com- 

 mon in England in all watery places, ditches, 

 and the margins of rivers; among reeds, coarse 

 grasses, and willows. It has an extensively 

 creeping root. The whole herbage is downy, 

 soft, and clammy, exhaling a peculiar but tran- 

 sitory acidulous scent, justly compared to the 

 flavour of boiled codlings and cream. Steins 

 four feet or more in height, round, leafy, 

 copiously branched, and bushy. Leaves half, 

 clasping the stem, ovate-lanceolate, hairy. 

 Flowers in leafy corymbose clusters, large, of a 

 delicate pink. Of this genus, which is most 

 multiplied in the North of Europe, there are 8 

 species enumerated in Nuttalfs Genera as in- 

 digenous to North America. 



WILLOW-LICE. See APHIDIANS. 



WILLOW-WEED. In England, a name 

 applied ia the fens to the snake-weed, or pale- 

 flowered persicaria (Polygonum lupathifolium), 

 an annual plant, which grows very freely on 

 all loose and deep soils, and on marshy lands, 

 though it be scarcely known to any of the cul- 

 tivators of clay, and it is as rarely to be seen 

 on any sort of turnip land. This plant grows 

 commonly from 18 inches to 2 feet; its stalks 

 are tender and succulent, pale, spotted, or red- 

 dish ; the joints much swollen. The plant 

 branches most when it has free growth, and 

 produces a great number of crowded spikes of 

 seeds. The leaves resemble those of the wil- 

 low, but are charged with dark spots in the 

 middle. The seeds are very bright and heavy, 

 highly nutritious, and therefore very grateful to 

 birds, especially partridges. Those who keep 

 decoys for catching wild ducks will buy the 

 seeds to feed and entice the fowl. Pigs will do 

 well on them, if boiled. These seeds very 

 much infest samples of fen corn, whether 

 wheat, oats, or barley. As a weed in fen soils, 

 this plant is the most ramping and cumber- 

 some of any weed that grows. 



WIND. See WEATHER. 



WIND-FLOWER. One of the names of the 

 marsh gentian. See GENTIAN. 



WIND, in HORSES. See BROKE* WIWD 

 and RoAuiifo. 



WINDMILL. A well-known contrivance 

 for grinding corn or raising water, which is 

 put in motion by the action of the wind upon 

 its sails or vanes. They are of two kinds, ver- 

 tical and horizontal, but the former is generally 

 preferred. Since the extensive introduction of 

 improved horse power, hand, and steam ma- 

 chinery, windmills are becoming much less 

 common throughout the country ; and from 

 depending entirely upon the caprice of the 

 weather, they are only suited to elevated or ex- 

 posed situations, where they will catch every 

 passing breeze; and are much less useful than 

 water-mills, which can generally be kept at 

 work continuously, or for a much longer 

 1144 



period. A set of arms and sails might he ad- 

 vantageously used in some situations for pump- 

 ing up water from a well into a trough or cis- 

 tern for cattle, or for the purposes of irrigation. 

 In the West Indies, a simple apparatus of (his 

 kind is usually attached to the pump or well in 

 the farm-yard. The velocity of the sails of a 

 windmill, in a moderate wind, was calculated 

 by Mr. Ferguson to be thirty miles an hour. 



WIND-PLANT. Wood or Grove Anemone 

 (A. nemorosa). An American plant, with a pe- 

 rennial root, found in the moist woodlands and 

 thickets of the Middle States, flowering in April 

 and May. Flowers white, often tinged with 

 purple. 



WINDROW. A term signifying in England 

 the green parts, or borders of a field, dug up, 

 in order to carry the earth on other land to 

 mend it; so called because it is laid in rows, 

 and exposed to the wind. It is also applied 

 to a row of peats or a line of hay exposed to 

 dry, and also to turfs cut up in paring and 

 burning. 



WINE (Vinum, Lat.; vin, Fr. ; vino, Ital. 

 and Span.; vinho, Portu.; wein, Germ.; ></, 

 Dutch; win, Swed. ; viin, Dan.; vino, Russ.) A 

 well-known agreeable, and, when moderately 

 used, wholesome liquor, prepared from the 

 juice of the grape, and that of some other 

 fruits. The invention of wine is involved in. 

 the obscurity of the earliest ages. The sacred 

 writings, however, lead us to believe that it 

 must have been known before the deluge; for 

 we are informed that the patriarch Noah, im- 

 mediately after that overwhelming event, " be- 

 gan to be a husbandman ; and he planted a 

 vineyard ; and he drank of the wine, and was 

 drunken" (Genesis, ch. ix. v. 20, 21), a suffi- 

 cient reason for supposing that it was a fer- 

 mented liquor, and not merely the simple juice 

 of the grape. It is, indeed, natural to imagine, 

 that in those countries where the vine is a 

 native, the spontaneous fermentation of the 

 juice of the fruit, when it was expressed, either 

 purposely or accidentally, and not immediately 

 used as a beverage, would have naturally led 

 to the invention of making wine at a very 

 early period. It is, nevertheless, certain, that 

 until modern times the preparation of wine 

 was purely empirical. 



The history of wine is of great interest, but 

 it would be impossible to attempt even a very 

 brief sketch of it in an article of this descrip- 

 tion, and therefore we shall confine our remarks 

 upon that part of the subject to some account 

 of the wines used in England, our object 

 being rather to treat of the general rules to be 

 followed in making and preserving wine, and 

 to explain its dietetic qualities, than to trace its 

 history. 



Wine, at a former period, was made in 

 England for sale, and most of the large abbeys 

 were supplied with it from grapes raised in 

 their own vineyards ; but at no time was it con- 

 sidered equal in quality to foreign wine ; and 

 certainly no stronger reason for the neglect 

 into which wine-making in England fell need 

 be stated. Soon after the Norman conquest, 

 much encouragement was given to the importa- 

 tion of the wines of Anjou and of Poitou; and 

 in the time of Henry III. we find those of the 



