Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/488

Rh 462 W E A W E A desired into the things and to place the things where they are wanted. The idea of value is again secondary and subordinate. We can readily see the part played by nature, labour, and capital respectively in the production of any commodity without considering the effects on its value of the various factors ; we can understand the principles of division of labour and of the relative productiveness of large and small industries without entering into questions of value except in the most general manner. In the department of the distribution of wealth the fundamental conception is the right of appropriation; and accordingly J. S. Mill very properly commences this part of his subject by an account of the relative advantages of the socialistic and individual systems of property. It is quite possible under the former to conceive of all the distribution being made without any exchange and with reference simply to the wants or the deserts of the members of the society. Thus it is not until we arrive at the department of the exchange of wealth that the characteristic of value becomes predominant, although of course value is closely connected with utility and labour and sacrifice. Usually, however, it will be found that in most cases anything which can fairly be classed as wealth in one department is also wealth in the others, and thus the definition is reached that wealth in general consists of all &quot; consumable utilities which require labour for their pro duction and can be appropriated and exchanged.&quot; It only remains to add that &quot; utilities &quot; may be divided into &quot;inner&quot; and &quot;outer &quot; (to translate the German literally), the &quot; inner &quot; being such as are simply sources of personal gratification to their possessor, e.g., a good ear for music; the &quot; outer &quot; utilities again may be divided into &quot; free &quot; and &quot;economic,&quot; the former, as a rule, e.g., sunlight, not being the result of labour and not capable of appropriation or exchange, and the latter as a rule possessing each of these marks. It is these &quot; economic utilities &quot; which con stitute wealth in the specific sense of the term, although its use may be extended by analogy to include almost all utilities. (j, s. N|.) WEASEL. The smallest species of the group of animals of which the polecat and stoat are well-known members (see MAMMALIA, vol. xv. p. 440). It is Mustela vulgaris of Linnaeus, but belongs to the section (Putorius) of the genus which has but three premolar teeth on each side above and below, instead of four as in the martens (to which Mustela is commonly restricted) and hence is now called Putorius vulgaris. The dentition is i f, c i, p f , m i = t; t ota l 34. The weasel is an extremely elegant little animal, with elongated slender body, the back generally much arched, the head small and flattened, ears short and rounded, neck long and flexible, limbs very short, five toes on each foot, all with sharp, compressed, curved claws, tail rather short, slender, cylindrical, and pointed at the tip, fur short and close. The upper parts, outside of limbs and tail, are a uniform reddish-brown, the under parts pure white. In very cold regions, both in Europe and America, it turns completely white in winter, but less regularly and at a lower temperature than its near ally the stoat or ermine, from which it is easily distinguished by its smaller size, and by its wanting the black end of the tail. The length of the head and body of the male is usually about 8 inches, that of the tail 2J inches ; the female is smaller. The common weasel is pretty generally distributed through out Europe, Northern and Central Asia, British North America, and the northern portions of the United States. It possesses in a full degree all the active, courageous, and bloodthirsty disposition of the rest of the genus, but its diminutive size prevents it attacking and destroying any but the smaller mammals and birds. Mice, rats, voles, and moles, as well as frogs, constitute its principal food. It is generally found on or near the surface of the ground, but it can not only pursue its prey through very small holes and crevices of rocks and under dense tangled herbage, Weasel. but follow it up the stems and branches of trees, or even into the water, swimming with perfect ease. It constructs a nest of dried leaves and herbage, placed in a hole in the ground or a bank or hollow tree, in which it brings up its litter of four to six (usually five) young ones. The mother will defend her young with the utmost desperation against any assailant, having been often known to sacrifice her own life rather than desert them. WEAVER-BIRD, the name 1 by which a group of between 200 and 300 species are now usually called, from the elaborately interwoven nests that many of them build, some of the structures being of the most marvellous kind. By the older systematists such of these birds as were then known were distributed among the genera Oriolus, Loxia, Emberiza, and Frimjilla ; and it was Cuvier who in 1817 first brought together these dissevered forms, comprising them in a genus Ploceus. Since his time others have been referred to its neighbourhood, and especially the genus Vidua with its allies, so as to make of them a Subfamily Ploceinas, which in 1847 was raised by Prof. Cabanis to the rank of a Family Ploceidse,, a step the propriety of which has since been generally admitted, though the grounds for taking it far too technical to be here criticized are very slight, and such as could not be held valid in any other Order than that of Passeres. Where so many forms are concerned, only a few of the most im portant can now be mentioned. The type of Cuvier s genus is certainly the Loxia philippina of Linnjeus, so termed from the islands it inhabits. But the typical Weaver-bird of Latham (not that he had the name in that precise form) is the Hypliantornis cucullata or textor of modern writers, an African species, and it is to the Ethiopian Region that by far the greatest number of these birds belong, and in it they seem to attain their maximum of development. They are all small, with, generally speaking, a Sparrow-like build ; but in richness of colouring the males of some are very conspicuous glowing in crimson, scarlet or golden-yellow, set off by jet-black, while the females are usually dull in hue. Some species build nests that are not very remarkable, except in 1 First bestowed in this form apparently by Stephens in 1826 (Gen. Zoology, xiv. pt. i. p. 34) ; but in 1782 Latham (Synopsis, i . p. 435) had called the &quot; Troupiale du Senegal&quot;&quot; of Buffon the &quot; Weever Oriole,&quot; from its habit of entwining the wires of the cage in which it was kept with such vegetable fibres as it could get, and hence in 1788 Gmelin named it Oriolus textor. In 1800 Daudin used the term &quot; Tisserin &quot; for several species of the Linnxan genus Loxia, and this was adopted some years later by Cuvier as the equivalent of his Ploceus, as mentioned in the text.