Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/357

Rh W A L W A L 333 WALLSEND, a town of Northumberland, England, on the north bank of the Tyne and on the Newcastle and Tynemouth Railway, 4 miles east-north-east of Newcastle. The church of St Peter, erected in 1809 at a cost of 5000, has a tower surmounted by a spire. There are still some remains of the old church of the llth century in the Transition Norman style. The church of St Luke was erected in 1886 at a cost of 4000. At an early period Wallsend was famous for its coals, but the name has now a general application to coal that does not go through a sieve with meshes |ths of an inch in size. The colliery, which was opened in 1807, has frequently been the scene of dreadful accidents. There are also ship and boat building yards, engineering works, lead and copper smelting works, cement works, and brick and tile works. The ecclesiastical commissioners are lords of the manor. The town is governed by a local board of twelve members. The population of the urban sanitary district (area 1202 acres) in 1871 was 4169, and in 1881 it was 6351. Wallseud derives its modern name from its position at the extremity of HADRIAN S WALL (q.v.) originally it was the Roman station Scgedunum. It had a quay, of which remains have been discovered, and possessed a magazine of corn and other provisions for the supply of the stations in the interior. WALNUT (Juglani), a genus of seven or eight species, natives of the temperate regions of the northern hemi sphere, some even extending into Mexico and the West Indies. They are all trees, usually of large size, with alter nate, stalked, unequally pinnate leaves, and abounding in an aromatic resinous juice. The scars left by the fallen leaves are unusually large and prominent. The buds are not unlike those of the ash ; and it frequently happens that in the axils of the leaves, instead of one, several buds may be formed. The utility of this is seen in seasons when the shoot produced from the first bud is killed by frost; then one of the supplementary buds starts into growth, and thus replaces the injured shoot. The ilowers are unisexual and monoecious, the numerous males borne in thick catkins proceeding from the side of last year s shoot. The female flowers are solitary or few in number, and borne on short terminal spikes of the present season s growth. In the male flower the receptacle is &quot; concrescent &quot; or inseparate from the bract in whose axil it originates. The receptacle is, in consequence, extended more or less horizontally, so that the flowers appear to be placed on the upper surface of horizontally-spreading stalks. The perianth consists of five or six oblong greenish lobes, within which is found a tuft, consisting of a large number of stamens, each of which has a very short filament and an oblong two-lobed anther bursting longitudinally, and surmounted by an oblong lobe, which is the projecting end of the connective. There is usually no trace of ovary in the male ilowers, though by exception one may occasion ally be formed. The female flower consists of a cup-like receptacle, inseparate from the ovary, and bearing at its upper part a bract and two bracteoles, uplifted with the receptacle. From the margin of this latter organ springs a perianth of four short lobes. The one-celled ovary is immersed within the receptacular tube, and is surmounted by a short style with two short ribbon-like stigmatic branches. The solitary ovule springs erect from the base of the ovarian cavity. The fruit is a kind of drupe, the fleshy husk of which is the dilated receptacular tube, while the two-valved stone represents the two carpels. The solitary seed has no perisperm or albumen, but has two large and curiously crumpled cotyledons concealing the plumule, the leaves of which, even at this early stage, show traces of pinnax The species best known is J. ref/ut, the Common Walnut, a native of the mountains of Greece, of Armenia, of Afghanistan and the north-west Himalayas, and also found in Japan. Traces of the former existence of this or of a very closely-allied species are found in the Post- Tertiary deposits of Provence and elsewhere, proving the former much wider extension of the species. At the pre sent day the tree is largely cultivated in most temperate countries for the sake of its timber or for its edible nuts. The timber is specially valued for cabinet work and for gun- stocks, the beauty of its markings rendering it desirable for the first-named purpose, while its strength and elasticity fit it for the second. The leaves and husk of the fruit are resinous and astringent, and are sometimes used medicinally as well as for dyeing purposes. It is stated that sugar is prepared from the sap in a similar manner to that obtained from the maple Acer saccharinum in Canada. The young fruits are used for pickling. When ripe the seeds are much esteemed as a delicacy, while in France much oil of fine quality is extracted from them by pressure. There are several varieties in cultivation, varying in the degree of hardihood, time of ripening, thickness of shell, size, and other particulars. In the climate of Great Britain a late variety is preferable, as securing the young shoots against injury from frost, to which otherwise they are very subject. The kernel of the large-fruited variety is of very indifferent quality, but its large shells are made use of by the French as trinket-cases. Among the American species J. nigra, the Black Walnut, is especially noteworthy as a very handsome tree, whose timber is of great value for furniture purposes, but which is now becoming scarce. In Britain it forms a magnificent tree. The White Walnut, J. cinerea, is a smaller tree; its leaves are used medicinally. Closely allied to the walnuts and sometimes confounded with them are the hickories (see HICKORY). See also vol. xii. p. 278. WALPOLE, HORACE (1717-1797), who was born on 24th September 1717, was accepted and recognized throughout his life as the youngest of the six children of Sir Robert Walpole by Catherine Shorter, but by some of the scandal-mongers of a later age, Carr, Lord Hervey, the half-brother of the peer who wrote the Memoirs of the Court of George the Second, has been called his father. This parentage has been assigned to him partly through the circumstance that the first wife of Sir Robert Walpole lived for some time estranged from her husband and on terms of friendship with Carr, Lord Hervey, not the least clever or unprincipled member of a family notorious for ability and for laxity of morals, and partly through the antagonism of the qualities shown by Horace Walpole to those of the prime minister, and through their affinity with the talents of the Herveys. If this rumour be correct, no such suspicion ever entered into the mind of Horace Walpole. To his mother he erected a monument, with an inscription couched in terms of sincere affection, in the chapel of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey, and from the beginning to the end of his life his sarcasms never spared the Newcastles and the Hardwickes, who had shown, as he thought, lukewarmness in support of his father s ministry. About 1728 he was sent to Eton, and in 1735 matriculated at King s College, Cambridge. Two years (1739-41) were spent in the recognized grand tour of France and Italy, in company with Gray the poet, whose acquaintance had been made amid the classic groves of Eton and Cambridge. They stopped a few weeks in Paris, and lingered for three months under the shadow of the magnificent portals of the cathedral of Rheims, on the pretence of learning the French language. Henry Seymour Conway, whose mother was a sister of Lady Walpole, shared their society in the French city, and retained Horace Walpole s warm friendship during life. The other two members of this little circle next proceeded to Florence, where Walpole rested for more than a year in the villa of Horace Mann, the British envoy-extraordinary for forty-six