Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 10.djvu/368

LEFT WASP 310 WATER the two latter armed with an exceed- ingly venomous sting. The last are the workers in the hive; they also go out to bring in provisions for the com- munity. Wasps are nearly omnivorous, feeding on honey, jam, fruit, butcher's meat, and any insects which they can overpower. A share of these viands is given to the males and females, whose work lies more in the vespiary. The combs of a large nest may amount to more than 15,000. In these the females, which are few in number, deposit eggs, hatched in eight days into larvae. These again go into the chrysalis state in 12 to 14 days more, and in 10 more are perfect insects. The males do no work. Most of the workers and all the males die at the wasp's nest approach of winter, and in the spring each surviving female having been im- pregnated in autumn, looks out for a suitable place to form a new vespiary. A wasp's nest may be destroyed by burning sulphur inside the hole. The economy of the other social wasps is essentially the same, whether like V. Jwlsatica, they build a nest of paper in trees, or, like other Polistes, place their combs in trees or bushes without a papery defense. The economy of the solitary wasps is essentially that of their type, Odynerus, differing only in the material and locality of their nests, some building them of clay or aggluti- nated sand, and attaching them to or placing them in holes in walls, while a few burrow in sandy ground. WASTE LANDS, according to thi general use of the term, uncultivated^ and unprofitable tracts in populous and cultivated countries. The term waste lands is not employed with reference to land not reduced to cultivation in coun- tries only partially settled. WATCH, any contrivance by which the progress of time is perceived and measured; as a timekeeper actuated by a spring, and capable of being carried on the person. The essential difference between a clock and a watch has been defined to be that the latter will run in any position, but the former in a ver- tical position only. Since the invention of the cheap spring clock this definition must be abandoned. Another character- istic which was formerly distinguishing was that the watch escapement was al- ways controlled by a balance wheel and spring, while the clock escapement was generally governed by a i)endulum. Watches are said to have been invented at Nuremberg, about the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century. The essential portions of a watch are the dial, on which the hours, minutes, and seconds are marked, the hands, which by their movement round the dial point out the time, the train of wheels, which carry round the hands, etc., the balance, which regulates the motion of the wheels, and the mainspring, whose elastic force produces the motion of the whole machinery. The works are in- closed in a case of metal, usually silver or gold. The shape is now universally circular and flat, so as to be easily carried in the pocket. The early watches had but one hand, and required winding twice a day. The spring was at first merely a straight piece of steel, not coiled. A spring to regulate the balance was first applied by Dr. Hooke, 1658; this v/as at first made straight, but soon improved by making it of spiral form. A repeating watch, or repeater, has a small bell, gong, or other sounding ob- ject, on which the hours, half hours, quarters, etc., are struck on the com- pression of a spring. The most perfect form of watch is the Chronometer (g. v.) WATER, a clear, colorless, transpar- ent liquid, destitute of taste and smell, and possessing a neutral reaction. It is one of the most important and most widely distributed substances in nature, occurring universally in one or other of its three physical states = liquid, solid, or gaseous. As a liquid it constitutes the great mass of the oceans, rivers, and lakes, which cover nearly three-fourths