WALK. 
may be twelve or fourteen feet wide, but in small 
gardens five or six. The ground for. them being 
traced, the earth should be taken out, and laid 
in the quarters. The depth must be propor- 
tioned to the nature of thesoil; for where the 
ground is dry, the walks need not be elevated 
above the quarters, and the earth may be taken 
out to the depth of four or five inches; but 
where the ground is wet, only two inches may 
be taken out, and the surface should be raised so 
high as to throw off the wet into the quarters. 
After the earth is taken out, the bottom should 
be laid with rock rubbish, coarse gravel or any 
similar material, to the thickness of five or six 
inches, and beaten down close; and then a layer 
of sand about 3 inches thick should be laid on, 
trodden down, raked over, and made thoroughly 
level and smooth. The sand should be such as 
will bind well and at the same time have no ten- 
dency to become mortary; for if it be too inco- 
hesive and loose, it will slide from under the feet 
in dry weather, and may even be drifted by 
strong gales of wind; and if it be too much of a 
loamy nature, it will stick to the feet in wet 
weather, and become poached and corrugated. 
WALK. The slowest natural pace of a biped 
or a quadruped, In the first action of the walk 
of the horse, one of the hind legs is lifted and 
carried forward, both of the fore legs become 
inclined backward, and the diagonal fore leg is 
lifted and carried forward; and in the second 
action, the other hind leg is lifted and carried 
forward, both of the fore-legs again become in- 
clined backward, and the opposite fore leg is 
lifted and carried forward. But the pace, though 
thus simple in its easiest and slowest mode, is 
completely altered by acceleration of speed, and 
may be performed laterally as well as diagonally, 
and may become ready to glide into either the 
trot or the amble according to the mode of its 
movement and the degree of its speed. 
WALKERIA. A small genus of ornamental, 
tropical, evergreen, yellow-flowered, ligneous 
plants, of the ochna family. Two species, the 
serrated and the entire-leaved, have been in- 
troduced to British hothouses from respectively 
India and Guiana; and both have a height of 
about 12 or 14 feet, and love a soil of peaty loam, 
and are propagable from cuttings. The roots and 
leaves of the serrated species have a bitter taste; 
and a decoction of them, either in water or in 
milk, is used in India as a tonic, a stomachic, and 
an antiemetic. 
WALL. The elementary structure of mason- 
ry,—whether of stone, or brick, or of other mate- 
rial; and it either may exist in its simple elemen- 
tary character, as when it forms a plain fence, or 
may be combined with all the other structures 
of masonry, and with many of those of ornamen- 
tal architecture, as when it constitutes the main 
fabric of houses, from the smallest and humblest 
to the largest and most ornate. The chief kinds 
and properties of it, when built of stone, are dis- 
WALL. 
cussed in the article Masonry; the principal con- 
structions of it, when built of brick, are discussed 
in the article Brickwork; the main forms and 
adaptations of it for the purposes of the farmery, 
are noticed in the article Farm-Buripines; and 
the most important kinds and varieties of it suit- 
able for horticulture, are noticed in the article 
GarpEen. All that remains to be done in this 
place is to discuss the important practical sub- 
ject of dry stone walls as a fence for fields; and 
this we shall do by giving an abridgment of a 
long and valuable paper by Mr. Stephens in the 
third volume of the Quarterly Journal of Agri- 
culture. 
Should materials appropriate to the purpose 
of building stone-walls be plentiful at a short 
distance—should the situation be so elevated, or 
exposed to such a cutting wind, as to produce 
baneful effects on the growth of hedges—should 
much of the time in summer not be always re- 
quired to prosecute what may be called the 
extraordinary operations in summer fallowing, 
such as draining, carting lime and manure from 
a distance—by all which favourable circum- 
stances the expense of constructing stone-walls 
will be much decreased—stone-walls may be 
preferred to hedges as a fence. There are some 
situations, too, in the most favoured soils for 
the growth of hedges, in which walls may be 
introduced with advantage; as in those parts 
of low lying fields near the margins of sluggish 
rivers, which are liable to inundate their banks 
in winter, or even during the periodical rains in 
summer. Hedges in such situations lose their 
vigour of growth, and become a prey to parasi- 
tical mosses and lichens. In hollow grounds 
near bogs or fresh-water lakes, over which va- 
pours are frequently suspended during the nights 
in summer, and which blight the vegetation of 
the most vigorous hedges, stone-walls are pre- 
ferable to hedges. The sides of paths leading to 
watering places from fields, and particularly if 
they are environed with plantations, are best 
protected by stone-walls. Around plantations 
on sandy or gravelly soils, where no ditch is re- 
quired to carry off surface-water, or on a bleak 
moor, where the soil may be too scanty and 
poor for the successful growth of a hedge, a 
stone-wall may be found the most efficient fence. 
Most of the stone obtained from quarries of 
amorphous rock, however durable it may be in 
its texture, forms inconvenient materials for dry 
built walls. Basalt, and some of the older sand- 
stones, together with most of the rocks of the 
older formations, may be classed under this cha- 
racter. Greenstone, clinkstone, and the newest 
sandstones, often exhibit even cleavages which 
qualify them as useful materials for dry-stone 
walls. And yet, either from the want of care, or 
knowledge in the proper dressing of these latter 
stones by the hammer, they frequently form un- 
couth-looking fences. From their rugged ap- 
pearance, they indeed form formidable barriers 
