| 
WENDLANDIA. 
660 
are quite impervious to water, but not very deep 
and nowhere far from rivers or estuaries; and 
they commonly afford a supply through any ex- 
cavation which is merely deep enough to reach 
the level of the bed of the nearest river or es- 
tuary, yet can seldom command it of such plea- 
sant quality as is common in drift and sandstone 
districts. The lands of the London great clay 
basin are as impervious to water as the carse 
lands, but greatly or even prodigiously deeper, 
so that they often need to be pierced to the 
depth of from 100 to upwards of 560 feet before 
they can command supplies. The chalk districts 
of Hampshire, too, are nearly as unfavourable as 
the worst parts of the London clay basin; for 
they sometimes will yield little or nothing till 
bored to the depth of from 300 to 400 feet, 
though they then yield in great abundance. 
Districts of trap rocks, granite, and other 
amorphous or crystalline rocks, wherever they 
are bare and homogeneous, or want a deep co- 
vering of diluvium or a great intricacy from 
geognostic disturbance, are eminently unfavour- 
able for wells. The effecting of excavations in 
them by blasting is very expensive, and may be 
perfectly useless; yet when they present many 
cracks and fissures, and are known or well con- 
jectured to overlie a system of stratified rocks 
at a small or manageable depth, they may some- 
times be easily and economically enough pierced, 
from the bottom of a blasted excavation, with an 
augur and rod in the manner of an Artesian 
well. 
WENDLANDIA. An ornamental, greenhouse, 
evergreen, white-flowered, twining plant, of the 
moonseed family. It was introduced to Britain 
from Florida about 90 years ago; it consti- 
WHEAT. 
WHEAT,—botanically 7rticum. <A large and 
very important genus of grasses, of the terminal- 
ly spiked order. About thirty species, besides a 
great multitude of varieties, at present belong to 
it; about as many more which formerly belong- 
ed to it, are now assigned to the recently consti- 
tuted genus agropyrum; and several others. 
which were formerly included in it, more pro- 
perly belong to the genera secale, schlerochloa, 
and brachypodium. All the present triticums 
are hardy exotic annuals,—four of them varying 
in height from 6 to 24 inches, and possessing 
very little interest, and the rest varying in height 
from 24 to 6 feet, and ranging in value from in- 
ferior economical plants cultivable only in their 
native regions to the richest cereal grasses of all 
the temperate parts of the civilized world. All 
or almost all the agropyrums are hardy peren- 
nials, and either worthless or mischievous weeds ; 
most have a height of between 6 and 18 inches; 
four, including the notorious couch-grass with 
its several varieties, are natives of Britain; and 
nearly all the rest have been introduced as bota- 
nical curiosities, principally from Siberia, Tauria, 
and Continental Europe. 
Ancient Wheat.—Cereal wheat, like cereal bar- 
ley, was known at a very early age of the world, 
and figures in remote records of both sacred and 
civil history, and has been unintermittedly and 
extensively cultivated, in many parts of the 
world, from ancient times till the present day. 
So early as the time of the patriarch Jacob, “the 
days of the wheat harvest” seem to have been a 
recognised and signal period of the annual sea- 
sons. When the hail-plague fell on Egypt, pre- 
vious to the exodus of the Israelites, “ the wheat 
and the rye were not smitten, for they were not 
tutes a genus of itself, and is specifically called | grown up.” The land of Promise, when the Is- 
the poplar-leaved; it attains a height of about | raelites were about to be conducted into it as 
10 or 12 feet, and blooms in June and July; and | their inheritance, was described to them as “a 
it thrives in any common soil, and is propagated 
from cuttings. 
- WERNERIA. A small, handsome, greenhouse, 
evergreen herbaceous plant, of the jacobea divi- 
sion of the composite order. It was introduced 
to Britain about 21 years ago from Quito; it con- 
stitutes a genus of itself, and is specifically called 
the rigid; and it loves a soil of sandy peat, and 
is propagated by radical division. It was named 
in honour of the distinguished mineralogist Wer- 
ner. 
WESTRINGIA. A genus of ornamental, Aus- 
tralian, evergreen shrubs, of the labiate order. 
Nearly a dozen species have been introduced to 
the greenhouses and conservatories of Britain ; 
and most have a height of about 3 feet, and 
bloom from May till August,—two or three have 
pale blue flowers, and the rest have white flowers, 
—most love a soil of sandy peat,—and all are pro- 
pagated from cuttings. 
WEYMOUTH PINE. See Pinu. 
WHALE OIL. See the articles Buupper and 
Om. 
good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains | 
and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, a | 
land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig- 
trees, and pomegranates, a land wherein they 
should eat bread without scarceness.” In the 
peculiar constitution which was established over 
them for the joint guidance of their political 
conduct and their religious behaviour, they were 
bound to “observe the feast of weeks, of the 
first-fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of in- 
gathering at the year’s end.” When Gideon was 
summoned by a special call from the Divine 
Being to go forth as their Judge, and to deliver 
them from the Midian oppression, he was found 
“thrashing wheat by the wine-press to hide it 
from the Midianites.’ During the long and 
close league which subsisted between Solomon 
and the king of Tyre, for the supply of cedars | 
from Lebanon for the building of the temple at 
Jerusalem, “Solomon gave to Hiram year by 
year twenty thousand measures of wheat for 
food to his household, and twenty measures of 
pure oil.” The impartation of great prosperity 
