Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/486

Rh 460 W A X W A X sfocJcia ccrifera, Kars. As scraped from the trees and compacted by melting it is a mixture of resin and wax, having a melting-point ns high as 102 to 105 C. The pure wax may be separated by digesting with boiling spirit, when it is obtained with a melting- point of 72 C. and a composition analogous to carnauba wax, like which it is used for candles. Palm-tree wax is little seen in European commerce. For the compound called SEALING WAX, see vol. xxi. p. 586. WAX FIGURES. Beeswax is possessed of properties which, render it a most convenient medium for preparing figures and models, either by modelling or by casting in moulds. At ordinary temperatures it can be cut and shaped with facility ; it melts to a limpid fluid at a low heat ; it mixes with any colouring matter, and takes surface tints well ; and its texture and consistency may be modified by the addition of earthy matters and oils or fats. When molten, it takes the minutest impressions of a mould, and it sets and hardens at such a temperature that no ordinary climatic influences affect the form it assumes, even when it is cast in thin laminae. The facilities which wax offers for modelling have been taken advantage of from the remotest times. Figures in wax of their deities were used in the funeral rites of the ancient Egyptians, and deposited among other offerings in their graves ; many of these are now pre served in museums. That the Egyptians also modelled fruits can be learned from numerous allusions in early litera ture. Among the Greeks during their best art period, wax figures were largely used as dolls for children; statuettes of deities were modelled for votive offerings and for religious ceremonies, and wax images to which magical properties were attributed were treasured by the people. Wax figures and models held a still more important place among the ancient Romans. The masks (effigies or imagines) of ancestors, modelled in wax, were preserved by patrician families, thisjs imaginum being one of the privileges of the nobles, and these masks were exposed to view on ceremonial occasions, and carried in their funeral processions. The closing days of the Saturnalia were known as Sigillaria on account of the custom of making, towards the end of the festival, presents of wax models of fruits and waxen statuettes which were fashioned by the Sigillarii or manufacturers of small figures in wax and other media. The practice of wax modelling can be traced through the Middle Ages, when votive offerings of wax figures were made to churches, and the memory and lineaments of monarchs and great personages were pre served by means of wax masks as in the days of Roman patricians. In these ages malice and superstition found expression in the formation of wax images of hated persons, into the bodies of which long pins were thrust, in the confident expectation that thereby deadly injury would be induced to the person represented; and this belief and practice continued till the 17th century. Indeed the superstition still holds a place in the Highlands of Scot land, where within the last few years a clay model of an enemy was found in a stream, having been placed there in the belief that, as the clay was washed away, so would the health of the hated one decline. With the renaissance of art in Italy, modelling in wax took a position of high importance, and it was practised by some of the greatest of the early masters. The bronze medallions of Pisano and the other famous medallists owe their value to the art qualities of wax models from which they were cast by the cire perdue process ; and indeed all early bronzes and metal work were cast from wax models. The Tcte de cire in the Wicar collection at Lille, the work of a Florentine artist of the 15th century, is one of the most lovely creations of that fertile era. From that period till towards the close of the 18th century modelling of medallion portraits and of relief groups, the latter frequently polychromatic, was in considerable vogue throughout Europe. About the end of the 18th century Flaxman executed in wax many portraits and other relief figures which Josiah Wedgwood translated into pottery for his jasper ware. The modelling of the soft parts of dissec tions, &c., for teaching illustrations of anatomy was first practised at Florence, and is now very common. Such preparations formed part of a show at Hamburg in 1721, and from that time wax-works, on a plane lower than art, have been popular attractions. These exhibitions con sist principally of images of historical or notorious person ages, made up of waxen masks on lay figures in which sometimes mechanism is fitted to give motion to the figure. Such an exhibition of wax-works with mechanical motions was shown in Germany early in the 18th century, and is described by Steele in the Tatler. The most famous modern wax-work exhibition is that of Madame Tussaud in London. This collection was originated in Paris, dur ing the Revolution, by that lady, who, having modelled Charlotte Corday, Marat, and other well-known persons of that bloody period, settled in London with her collection early in the present century. WAXWING, a bird first so-called apparently by Selby in 1825 (Illustr. Brit. Ornithology, p. 87), having been before known as the &quot; Silk-tail &quot; (Philos. Transactions, 1685, p. 1161) a literal rendering of the German Seidenschwanz or &quot;Chatterer&quot; the prefix &quot;German,&quot; &quot; Bohemian,&quot; or &quot;Waxen &quot; being often also applied. Selby s convenient name has now been generally adopted, since the bird is readily distinguished from almost all others by the curious expansion of the shaft of some of its wing- feathers at the tip into a flake that looks like scarlet sealing- wax, while its exceedingly silent habit makes the name &quot; Chatterer &quot; wholly inappropriate, and indeed this last arose from a misinterpretation of the specific term c/arndus, meaning a Jay (from the general resemblance in colour of the two birds), and not referring to any garrulous quality. It is the Ampelis garndus of Linnaeus and of more recent ornithologists. 1 The Waxwing is a bird that for many years excited vast interest. An irregular winter-visitant, sometimes in countless hordes, to the whole of the central and some parts of southern Europe, it was of old time looked upon as the harbinger of war, plague, or death, and, while its harmonious coloration and the grace of its form were attractive, the curiosity with which its irregular appearances were regarded was enhanced by the mystery which enshrouded its birth place, and until the summer of 1856 defied the searching of any explorer. In that year, however, all doubt was dispelled, through the successful search in Lapland, organized by the late John &quot;Wollcy, as briefly described by him to the Zoological Society (Proceedings, 1857, pp. 55, 56, pi. cxxii.). 2 In 1858 Mr Dresser found a small settlement of the species on an island in the Baltic near Uleaborg, and with his own hands took a nest. It is now pretty evident that the Waxwing, though doubtless breeding yearly in some parts of northern Europe, is as irregular in the choice of its summer-quarters as in that of its winter-retreats. Moreover, the species exhibits the same irregular habits in America. Mr Drexler on one occasion, in Nebraska, sawitin &quot;millions.&quot; In 1861 Kennicott found it breed ing on the Yukon, and later Mr MacFarlane had the like good fortune on the Anderson River. Beautiful as is the bird with its drooping crest, its cinnamon- 1 Some writers, ignoring historical facts, have taken a South- American form (now known to belong to a wholly distinct Suborder of Birds) as the &quot;type&quot; of the Linnsean genus Ampelis. Linnoms had, as is well known, no conception of what is meant by the modern idea of a &quot; type&quot;; but none can doubt that, if such a notion had been entertained by him, he would have declared his type-species to be that to which the name was first applied, viz. , the present, and hence those systematists are wrong who would remove this to a genus variously called Ilombycilla, Bombiciphora, or, most absurd of all, Bombicivora, The birds which ought to be removed from Ampelis are those which are now generally recognized as forming a Family Cotinyidie, allied to the Pipridse (cf. MANAKIN ), and like them peculiar to the Neotropical llegion, in the fauna of which they constitute, according to the in vestigations of Garrod and Forbes (ORNITHOLOGY, vol. xviii. pp. 41, 47), the natural group Oligomyodae. 2 A fuller account of his discovery, illustrated by Hewitson, is given in The His (1861, pp. 92-106, pi. iv.).