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, and has been known to sacrifice her own life rather than desert them. (R. L.*)
The Weasel (Putorius nivalis).
WEATHER (O. Eng. weder; the word is common to Teutonic languages; cf. Du. weder, Dan. veir, Icel. veðr, and Ger. Wetter and Gewilter, storm; the root is wa- to blow, from which is derived “wind”), the condition of the atmosphere in regard to its temperature, presence or absence of wind or cloud, its dryness or humidity, and all the various meteorological phenomena (see Meteorology). The term “weathering” is used in geology of the gradual action of the weather upon rocks, and is also applied, in architecture, to the inclination or slope outwards given to cornices, string courses and window sills, to throw off the rain.
WEAVER, JAMES BAIRD (1833–) American lawyer and political leader, was born at Dayton, Ohio, on the 12th of June 1833. He studied law at Cincinnati, Ohio, and served on the Federal side in the Civil War, becoming colonel in November 1862; he was mustered out in May 1864, and in March 1865 was breveted brigadier-general of volunteers. He was district-attorney for the second Judicial District of Iowa in 1866–1870 and an assessor of internal revenue in Iowa in 1863–1873; and was a representative in Congress in 1879–1881 and in 1885–1889, being elected by a Greenback-Democratic fusion. In 1880 he was the candidate of the Greenback party for president and received a popular vote of 308,578; and in 1892 he was the candidate of the People's party, and received 22 electoral votes and a popular vote of 1,041,021.
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 Fringilla; and it was G. L. 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 Ploceinae, which in 1847 was raised by J. Cabanis to the rank of a family Ploceidae—a step the propriety of which has since been generally admitted, though the grounds for taking it are such as could not be held valid in any other order than that of Passeres. The Ploceidae are closely related to the Fringillidae (see Finch), and are now divided into two subfamilies, the Ploceinae and Viduinae, the former chiefly found in Africa and its islands, the latter in the Ethiopian, Australian and Indian regions.
Perhaps the most typical Ploceine weaver-bird is Hyphantornis cucullata, 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 being almost invariably domed—others (such as the most typical Indian weaver-bird, Ploceus baya) fabricate singular structures[2] of closely and uniformly interwoven tendrils or fine roots, that often hang from the bough of a tree over water, and, starting with a solidly wrought rope, open out into a globular chamber, and then contract into a tube several inches in length, through which the birds effect their exit and entrance. But the most wonderful nests of all, and indeed the most wonderful built by birds, are those of the so-called sociable grosbeak, Philhetaerus socius, of Africa. These are composed wholly of grass, and are joined together to the number of 100 or 200—indeed 320 are said to have been found in one of these aggregated masses, which usually take the form of a gigantic mushroom,[3] affording a home and nursery to many pairs of the birds which have been at the trouble of building it. These nests, however, have been so often described and figured by South African travellers that there is no need here to dilate longer on their marvels. It may be added that this species of weaver-bird, known to French writers as the Républicain, is of exceptionally dull plumage.
The group of widow-birds,[4] Viduinae, is remarkable for the extraordinary growth of the tail-feathers in the males at the breeding-season. In the largest species, Vidua (sometimes called Chera) progne, the cock-bird, which, with the exception of a scarlet and buff bar on the upper wing-coverts, is wholly black, there is simply a great elongation of the rectrices; but in V. paradisea the form of the tail is quite unique. The middle pair of feathers have the webs greatly widened, and through the twisting of the shafts their inferior surfaces are vertically opposed. These feathers are comparatively short, and end in a hair-like filament. The next pair are produced to the length of about a foot—the bird not being so big as a sparrow—and droop gracefully in the form of a sickle. But this is not all: each has attached to its base a hair-like filament of the same length as the feather, and this filament originally adhered to and ran along the margin of the outer web, only becoming detached when the feather is full grown.[5] In another species, V. principalis, the middle two pairs of rectrices are equally elongated, but their webs are convex, and the outer pair contains the inner, so that when the margins of the two pairs are applied
- ↑ First bestowed in this form apparently by J. F. Stephens in 1826 (G. Shaw's Gen. Zoology, xiv. pt. i. p. 34); but in 1782 J. Latham (Synopsis, i., p, 435) had called the “Troupiale du Senegal” of Buffon the “weever oriole,” 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 F. M. Daudin used the term “Tisserin” for several species of the Linnaean genus Loxia, and this was adopted some years later by Cuvier as the equivalent of his Ploceus, as mentioned in the text.
- ↑ These differ from those built by some of the orioles (q.v.) and other birds, whose nests may be compared to pensile pockets, while those of these weaver-birds can best be likened to a stocking hung up by the “toe,” with the “heel” enlarged to receive the eggs, while access and exit are obtained through the “leg.”
- ↑ But at a distance they may often be mistaken for a native hut, with its grass-roof.
- ↑ It has been ingeniously suggested that this name should be more correctly written Whydah bird—from the place on the West Coast of Africa so named; but Edwards, who in 1745 figured one of the species, states that he was informed that “the Portuguese call this bird the widow, from its colour and long train” (Nat. Hist. Birds, i. p. 86).
- ↑ This curious structure was long ago described by Brisson (Ornithologie, iii. p. 123), and more recently by Strickland (Contr. Ornithology (1850), pp. 88 and 149, pl. 59).
