fn ee 
WATSONIA. 
WATSONIA. A genus ‘of ornamental, bul- 
bous-rooted, Cape-of-Good-Hope plants, of the 
iris order. Nearly twenty species have been in- 
troduced to the greenhouses of Britain. They 
vary in height from 5 or’6 inches to about 4 
feet; they display great diversity in the co- 
lour of their flowers, composing white, carmine, 
lake, pink, crimson, scarlet, purple, and varie- 
gations; and some bloom in spring, others in 
summer, and others in autumn. All love a mix- 
ed soil of sand, peat, and loam, and are propa- 
gated from offsets. 
WATTLE. A kind of hurdle formed of split 
wood, and used either in the same way as hur- 
dles or for any similar purpose. See the article 
HURDLE. 
WAX. A substance of medium character be- 
tween a fat andaresin. The best known kind 
of it is a peculiar and abundant secretion or 
product of the honey bee. See the article 
Ber. On straightening the lower part of the 
body of the insect, and raising the segments 
| into which it is divided, eight little bags will 
_ be discovered, four on each side; these are the 
wax bags, and belong to an organ the secre- 
tions of which contribute to form the wax,—and 
| this is elaborated from the same substances 
which are collected for the honey. It is certain 
that bees confined and fed upon sugar only, form 
wax; and it is equally certain, from long and 
careful experiment, that they could produce no 
wax if they had neither sugar nor honey to make 
it from, when debarred from flowers. It is there- 
fore a reasonable inference that the substance 
sucked in by the bee from the nectaries of flowers 
forms both wax and honey, the difference con- 
sisting only in the mode of its elaboration, and 
in the peculiar secretions of the stomach, and 
the organ to which the wax-bags belong. Hiber 
found that from sugar bees produced much more 
wax than from honey. The natural colour of 
wax is the purest white; in which state, and 
quite odourless, the new cells of the honeycomb 
remain, until filled with the luscious deposit they 
are formed to contain. The yellow colour which 
the wax assumes, is therefore due to the honey, 
—a portion of which always remains in the wax 
until bleached; and indeed one of the strong 
characteristics of bees’ wax, with reference to any 
other wax, is the odour of honey which it retains 
in its unbleached condition. The wax of bees has 
the same precise elements as that found in vege- 
ble matter; and, though an animal product, it 
contains no nitrogen. Dr. Ure makes it to con- 
sist of thirteen atoms of carbon, eleven of hydro- 
gen, and one of oxygen; which would thus make 
eleven atoms of olefiant gas or bicarburetted hy- 
drogen, one atom of oxide of carbon, and one 
atom of surplus carbon,—because olefiant gas is 
formed of an atom of carbon and an atom of hy- 
drogen, whilst oxide of carbon consists of one of 
carbon and one of oxygen—the hydrogen and 
carbon in the former being bulk to bulk, the 
ew 
WAX. 633 
carbon in the latter being double the bulk of the 
oxygen. Theodd atom of carbon seems so sin- 
gular that there was perhaps an error in the 
analysis, so that there may really exist twelve 
atoms of hydrogen instead of eleven; in which 
case the constituents of wax would be twelve 
atoms of olefiant gas and one of oxide of carbon. 
It is this richness in olefiant gas which renders 
wax so valuable a combustible material for afford- 
ing light; and if it were plentiful enough to be 
converted into gas, the light from it would be 
probably much more brilliant than that from 
even oil gas. 
Two separate principles are found in wax, 
which of themselves constitute two different wax- 
like substances having distinct properties. If 
pure wax be treated with boiling alcohol, a con- 
siderable portion of itis dissolved. The solution, 
when cool, deposits the substance called cerin. 
If the portion of the wax undissolved be again 
treated with boiling alcohol, an additional quan- 
tity of cerin is obtained, and so on until no more 
of the residuum will dissolve. This residuum is 
myricin,—a suBstance much denser than wax, 
insoluble in boiling alcohol, and of the same spe- 
cific gravity as water. The average proportions, 
in bees’ wax, of cerin and myricin are about 75 
parts of the former, and 25 of the latter. Cerin 
is perfectly white, strongly resembling bleached- | 
wax; it is decomposed by distillation, and is fu- 
sible at a temperature more than 20° lower than 
this latter; and if treated with caustic alkaline 
ley, it 1s converted into margaric acid, and a 
substance termed cerain. Myricin is greyish 
white; and it does not decompose in distillation, 
but may be vaporised with scarcely any change 
Though cerin, when separated from wax, will 
form margaric acid, which is a product of sapo- 
nified fat, wax itself will not saponify with the 
alkalies, a fact that distinguishes it from fats, oils, 
and resins. Wax therefore contains neither elain 
nor stearin, the two principles of fat and oil, re- 
sins containing both in a very concrete form. 
For making candles, for the use of the surgeon 
the perfumer, and the confectioner, for model- 
ling, doll-making, and for many other purposes, 
yellow wax must be rendered white. It is usually 
bleached by the following process :—Being melt- 
ed by either hot water or steam in a vessel of 
wood or copper tinned, the clear liquid is poured 
off from the sediment into an oblong trough with 
a line of holes in its bottom, through which the 
melted wax runs upon wooden revolving cylin- 
ders set horizontally, the lower half of their dia- 
meter as they revolve being immersed in cold 
water. By these means the cylinders become 
covered with thin layers or ribbons of wax, 
which are stripped from them, and set to blanch 
in the sun, during which process they are kept 
constantly wet. The blanching takes place 
in an open field, the wax being laid upon long 
webs of canvass, stretched horizontally two or 
three feet above the surface of the soil, and then 
