to the life-renter for the purpose of keeping up the estate or repairing
buildings. Before making use of mature timber for estate purposes,
the life-renter should give notice to the fiar. He is also entitled
to the benefit of ordinary windfalls. Extraordinary windfalls are
treated as grown timber. Life-renters by “constitution” (i.e. by
grant from the proprietor) as opposed to life-renters by “reservation”
(where the proprietor has reserved the life-rent to himself in
conveying the fee to another) have, as a rule, no right to coals or
minerals underground if they are not expressed in the grant or
appear to have been intended by a testator to pass by his settlement,
for they are partes soli. Where coals or minerals are expressed in
the grant, and also in cases of life-rent by “reservation,” the
life-renter may work any mine which had been opened before the
beginning of his right, provided he does not employ a greater number
of miners, or bring up a greater quantity of minerals, than the
unburdened proprietor did. All life-renters are entitled to such
minerals as are required for domestic use and estate purposes.
British Possessions.—French law is in force in Mauritius, and has been followed in substance in the civil codes of Quebec (art. 455) and St Lucia (art. 406). In most of the other colonies the rules of English law are followed, and in many of them there has been legislation on the lines of the English Settled Land Acts. In India the law as to waste is included to some extent in the Transfer of Property Act (No. IV. of 1882) and its amendments. Section 108 deals with the liabilities of lessees for waste, which may be varied by the terms of the lease or by local usage. The liabilities for waste of persons having under Hindu or Mahommedan law limited interests in reality depend in the main upon those laws and not on Indian statute law.
United States.—“In the United States, especially in the Western states, many acts are held to be only in a natural and reasonable way of using and improving the land—clearing wild woods, for example—which in England, or even in the Eastern states, would be manifest waste” (Pollock, Torts, 7th ed., 345). Thus Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont and Tennessee have deviated in favour of the tenant from English rules, while Massachusetts has adhered to them (Ruling Cases, tit. “Waste,” xxv. 380, American notes). In certain states, e.g. Minnesota, Oregon and Washington (ibid., p. 381), the action of waste is regulated by statute.
Europe.—The French Civil Code provides (art. 591) that the usufructuary may cut timber in plantations that are laid out for cutting, and are cut at regular intervals, although he is bound to follow the example of former proprietors as to quantity and times. This provision is in force in Belgium (Civil Code, art. 591). Analogous provisions are to be found in the civil codes of Holland (art. 814), Spain (art. 485), Italy (art. 486), and cf. the German Civil Code, art. 1036.
Authorities.—English law: Bewes, Law of Waste; Fawcett, Law of Landlord and Tenant; Foa, Law of Landlord and Tenant; Woodfall, Law of Landlord and Tenant. Scots law: Erskine, Principles (Edinburgh). Irish law: Nolan and Kane, Statutes relating to the Law of Landlord and Tenant in Ireland (Dublin); Wylie, Judicature Acts (Dublin). American law: Bouvier, Law Dict. (Boston and London). Indian law: Shepherd and Brown, Indian Transfer of Property Act 1882. (A. W. R.)
WATCH (in O. Eng. wæcce, a keeping guard or watching, from wacian, to guard, watch, wacan, to wake), a portable timepiece. This is the most common meaning of the word in its substantial form, and is the subject of the present article. The word, by derivation, means that which keeps watchful or wakeful observation or attention over anything, and hence is used of a person or number of persons whose, duty it is to protect anything by vigilance, a guard or sentry; it is thus the term for the body of persons who patrolled the streets, called the hours, and performed the duties of the modern police. The application of the term to a period of time is due to the military division of the night by the Greeks and Romans into “watches” (φυλακαί, vigiliae), marked by the change of sentries; similarly, on shipboard, time is also reckoned by “watches,” and the crew is divided into two portions, the starboard and port watches, taking duty alternately.[1] The transference of the word to that which marks the changing hours is easy.
The invention of portable timepieces dates from the end of
the 15th century, and the earliest manufacture of them was in
Germany. They were originally small clocks with mainsprings
enclosed in boxes; sometimes they were of a globular form
and were often called “Nuremberg eggs.” Being too large for
the pocket they were frequently hung from the girdle. The
difficulty with these early watches was the inequality of action
of the mainspring. An attempt to remedy this was provided
Fig. 1.
by a contrivance
called the stack-freed,
which was little more
than a sort of rude
auxiliary spring. The
problem was solved
about the years 1525–1540
by the invention
of the fusee. By this
contrivance the mainspring
is made to turn
a barrel on which is
wound a piece of
catgut, which in the
latter part of the 16th
century was replaced
by a chain. The other end of the catgut band is wound upon
a spiral drum, so contrived that as the spring runs down and
becomes weaker the leverage on the axis of the spiral increases,
and thus gives a stronger impulse to the works (fig. 1).
In early watches the escapement was the same as in early clocks, namely, a crown wheel and pallets with a balance ending in small weights. Such an escapement was, of course, very imperfect, for since the angular force acting on the balance does not vary with the displacement, the time of oscillation varies with the arc, and this again varies with every variation of the driving force. An immense improvement was therefore effected when the hair-spring was added to the balance, which was replaced by a wheel. This was done about the end of the 17th century. During the 18th century a series of escapements were invented to replace the old crown wheel, ending in the chronometer escapement, and though great improvements in detail have since been made, yet the watch, even as it is to-day, may be called an 18th-century invention.
The watches of the 16th century were usually enclosed in cases ornamented with the beautiful art of that period. Sometimes the case was fashioned like a skull, and the watches were made in the form of octagonal jewels, crosses, purses, little books, dogs, sea-shells, &c., in almost every instance being finely engraved. Queen Elizabeth was very fond of receiving presents, and, as she was also fond of clocks, a number of the gifts presented to her took the form of jewelled watches.
The man to whom watch-making owes perhaps most was
Thomas Tompion (1639–1713), who invented the first dead-beat
escapement for watches (fig. 2). It consisted of a balance-wheel
Fig. 2.
mounted on an axis of semi-cylindrical form
with a notch in it, and a projecting stud.
When the teeth of the scape-wheel came
against the cylindrical part of the axis they
were held from going forward, but when the
motion of the axis was reversed, the teeth
slipped past the notch and struck the projection, thus giving
an impulse. This escapement was afterwards developed by
George Graham (1673–1751) into the horizontal cylindrical
escapement and into the well-known dead-beat escapement for
clocks.
The development of escapements in the 18th century greatly
- ↑ In the British navy the twelve hours of the night are divided into three watches of four hours—from eight to twelve the first watch, from twelve to four the middle watch, and from four to eight the morning watch. The twelve hours of the day are divided into four watches, two of four hours—eight to midday, midday to four P.M.—and two of two hours, from four to six and six to eight. These are the “dog watches,” and their purpose is to change the turn of the watches every twenty-four hours, so that the men who watch from eight to midnight on one night, shall watch from midnight till 4 A.M. on the next. The “watch bill” is the list of the men appointed to the watch, who are mustered by the officers. Time was originally kept by an hour-glass, every half-hour; the number of the half-hour is shown by striking the watch bell, hanging on a beam of the forecastle, or by the mainmast, with the clapper. One stroke is given for each half-hour. Thus 12.30 A.M. is one bell in the middle watch, and 3 A.M. is six bells. The bell was also used to indicate the course of a ship in a fog. A vessel on the starboard tack tolled the bell, a vessel on the port tack beat a drum. The watch guns were tired when setting the watch in the evening and relieving it in the morning. The gun is now only fired at sundown.
