voyages to the East, and was distinguished as a painter of oriental scenes. In 1895 he wrote and illustrated a book of travels, From the Black Sea through Persia and India, and two years later he published Episodes of Mountaineering. He died on the 17th of November 1903. He was a member of the Legion of Honour, France, an officer of the Order of St Michael, Germany, and a member of the Secession, Munich.
WEENIX, JAN BAPTIST (1621-1660), Dutch painter, the son of an architect, was born in Amsterdam, and studied first under Jan Micker, then at Utrecht under A. Bloemaert, and at Amsterdam under Moijaert, and finally, between 1643 and 1647, in Rome. In that city he acquired a great name and worked for Pope Innocent and Cardinal Pamphili. He returned to his native country in 1649, in which year he became master of the gild of St Luke at Utrecht, where he died in 1660. He was a very productive and versatile painter, his favourite subjects being landscapes with ruins and large figures, seaports, and, later in life, large still-life pictures of dead game. Now and then he attempted religious genre, one of the rare pieces of this kind being the “Jacob and Esau” at the Dresden Gallery. At the National Gallery, London, is a “Hunting Scene” by the master, and the Glasgow Gallery has a characteristic painting of ruins. Weenix is represented at most of the important continental galleries, notably at Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, and St Petersburg. His chief pupils were his son Jan, Berchem, and Hondecoeter.
His son, Jan Weenix (1640-1719), was born at Amsterdam and was a member of the Utrecht gild of painters in 1664 and 1668. Like his father he devoted himself to a variety of subjects, but his fame is chiefly due to his paintings of dead game and of hunting scenes. Indeed, many of the pictures of this genre, which were formerly ascribed to the elder Weenix, are now generally considered to be the works of his son, who even at the early age of twenty rivalled, and subsequently surpassed, his father in breadth of handling and richness of colour. At Amsterdam he was frequently employed to decorate private houses with wall-paintings on canvas; and between 1702 and 1712 he was occupied with an important series of large hunting pictures for the Prince Palatine Johann Wilhelm's castle of Bensberg, near Cologne. Some of these pictures are now at Munich Gallery. He died at Amsterdam in 1719. Many of his best works are to be found in English private collections, though the National Gallery has but a single example, a painting of dead game and a dog. Jan Weenix is well represented at the galleries of Amsterdam, The Hague, Haarlem, Rotterdam, Berlin, and Paris.
WEEVER, JOHN (1576–1632), English poet and antiquary, a native of Lancashire, was born in 1576. He was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he resided for about four years from 1594, but he took no degree. In 1599 he published Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, containing a sonnet on Shakespeare, and epigrams on Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, William Warner and Christopher Middleton, all of which are valuable to the literary historian. In 1601 he published The Mirror of Martyrs or The Life and Death of . . . Sir John Oldcastle, which he calls in his preface the "first trew Oldcastle," perhaps on account of the fact that Shakespeare's Falslaff first appeared as Sir John Oldcastle. In the fourth stanza of this long poem, in which Sir John is his own panegyrist, occurs a reminiscence of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar which serves to fix the date of the play. After travelling in France, the Low Countries and Italy, Weever settled in Clerkenwell, and made friends among the chief antiquaries of his time. The result of extensive travels in his own country appeared in Funerall Monuments (1631), now valuable on account of the later obliteration of the inscriptions.
The Huth Library contains a unique copy of a thumb-book Agnus Dei (1606), containing a history of Christ. The Mirror of Martyrs has been reprinted for the Roxburghe Club (1872).
WEEVER. The weevers (Trachinus) are small marine fishes which are common on the coasts of Europe, and which have attained notoriety from the painful and sometimes dangerous wounds they are able to inflict upon those who incautiously handle them. They belong to a family of spiny-rayed fishes (Trachinidae), and are distinguished by a long low body with two dorsal fins, the anterior of which is composed of six or seven spines only, the posterior being long and many-rayed; their anal resembles in form and composition the second dorsal fin. The ventral fins are placed in advance of the pectorals, and consist of a spine and five rays. The caudal fin has the hind margin not excised. The body is covered with very small scales, sunk in and firmly adherent to the skin, but the upper surface of the head is bony, without integument. The head, like the body, is compressed, with the eyes of moderate size and placed on the side of the head; the mouth is wide, oblique, and armed with bands of very small teeth.
Several species of weevers are known, but two only occur on the British coasts, viz., the Greater Weever (Trachinus draco) and the Lesser Weever (T. vipera); the former is frequently found of a length of 12 in., and possesses some thirty rays in the second dorsal fin, whilst the latter grows only to about half that length, and has about ten rays less in the dorsal. The coloration of both is plain, but the short first dorsal fin is always of a deep black colour. The weevers are bottom fish, burying and hiding themselves in the sand or between shingle—the lesser species living close inshore and the greater preferring deeper water, and being found sometimes floating on the surface at a distance of several miles from the shore. Although weevers, especially the lesser, are in the habit of burying themselves in the sand, and are abundant in some localities much resorted to by bathers, accidents from stepping upon them are much more rare than from incautiously handling them after capture. They probably make their escape on perceiving the approach of a person. The wounds are inflicted by the dorsal and opercular spines, are very painful, and sometimes cause violent local inflammation. The spines are deeply grooved, and the poisonous fluid which is lodged in the grooves is secreted by small glands at their base. The flesh is not bad eating, and great numbers of the larger species (T. draco) are brought to the Paris market. On the poisonous properties, cf. G. J. Allman, Ann. and Mag. N.H., vi. (1841), p. 161; L. Gressin, Contribution à l'étude de I'appareil à venin chez les poissons du genre Vive (Paris, 1884); W. N. Parker, Proc. Zool. Soc. (1888), p. 359; C. Phisalix, Bull. Mus. Paris (1899), p. 256; A. Briot, C. R. Soc. Biol., liv. (1902), pp. 1169 and 1197, and Iv. (1903), p. 623.
WEEVIL, Anglo-Saxon wifel, a term now commonly applied to the members of a group of Coleoptera termed the Rhyncophora. This group is characterized by the prolongation of the head into a rostrum or proboscis, at the end of which the mouth, with its appendages, is placed. The antennae are usually elbowed, and often end in a club-shaped swelling. The basal portion of the antennae frequently lies in a depression at the side of the rostrum, and this gives the antennae the appearance of emerging half-way along the rostrum. The mouth appendages are small; the mandibles, however, are stout. The palps are very short and conical as a rule. The body is usually small; in shape it varies very much. The elytra are very hard, and in some cases fused with one another, rendering flight impossible. The larvae are white, fleshy, apodal grubs, with a series of tubercles along each side of the body; the head is round, and bears strong jaws, and sometimes rudimentary ocelli. They are exclusively phytophagous. The Rhyncophora embrace four families,—(1) the Curculionidae, or true weevils, (2) the Scolytidae, or bark-beetles, (3) the Brenthidae, (4) the Anthribidae.
The Curculionidae form one of the largest families amongst the Coleoptera, the number of species described exceeding 20,000, arranged in 1150 genera. The antennae are elbowed, and clavate, with the basal portion inserted in a groove. The third tarsal joint is generally bilobed. Over 400 species exist in Great Britain, few of which exceed half an inch in length. The genera Phyllobius and Polydrosus include some of the most beautiful insects found in Britain—their brilliancy, like that of the Lepidoptera, being due to the presence of microscopic scales. The diamond beetle of South America, Entimus imperialis, is another singularly beautiful weevil; its colour is black, studded with spangles of golden green. The immense family of the Curculionidae includes members which differ greatly from one another in size, colour, and appearance; even the rostrum, the most striking common characteristic, varies greatly. The form of the body is very various: some are rounded or oval, others elongated, almost linear; some are covered with warty protuberances, whilst others are smooth and shining, often with a metallic lustre.
One of the commonest members of this family in Great Britain is the nut weevil, Balaninus nucum. It is of a brownish colour,
