of which settled in Sweden, Russia and Germany. His father, Hermann von Wrangel (1587–1643), was a Swedish field marshal in Gustavus Adolphus’s wars. Karl Gustav was born near Upsala on the 23rd of December 1613, and at the age of twenty distinguished himself as a cavalry captain in the war against the Army of the League. Three years later he was colonel, and in 1638 major-general, still serving in Germany. In 1644 he commanded a fleet at sea, which defeated the Danes at Fehmarn on the 23rd of October. In 1646 he returned to Germany as a field marshal and succeeded Torstensson as commander-in-chief of the Swedish army in Germany, which post he held during the last three campaigns of the Thirty Years’ War. Under Wrangel and Turenne the allied Swedish and French armies marched and fought in Bavaria and Württemberg. At the outbreak of a fresh Polish war in 1655 Wrangel commanded a fleet, but in 1656 he was serving on land again and commanding, along with the Great Elector of Brandenburg, in the three days' battle of Warsaw. In 1657 he invaded Jutland and in 1658 passed over the ice into the islands and took Kronborg. In 1657 he was appointed admiral and in 1664 general of the realm, and as such he was a member of the regency during the minority of Charles XI. But his last campaign was unfortunate. Commanding, ineffectively owing to his broken health, in the war against Brandenburg, he was recalled after his stepbrother Waldemar, Freiherr von Wrangel (1647–1676), had been defeated at Fehrbellin. He died at Rügen shortly afterwards, on the 5th of July 1676.
WRASSE, a name given to the fishes of the family Labridae
generally, and more especially to certain members of the
family. They are very abundant in the tropical zone, less so
in the temperate, and disappear altogether in the Arctic and
Antarctic Circles. Their body is generally
Lips of Labrus festivus.
compressed, like that of a carp,
covered with smooth (cycloid) scales;
they possess one dorsal fin only, the
anterior portion of which consists of
numerous spines. Many wrasses are
readily recognized by their thick lips,
the inside of which is sometimes
curiously folded, a peculiarity which has
given to them the German name of
“lip-fishes.” The dentition of their
jaws consists of strong conical teeth, of which some in front, and
often one at the hinder end of the upper jaw, are larger than the
others. But the principal organs with which they crush shellfish,
crustaceans and other hard substances are the solid and
strongly-toothed pharyngeal bones, of which the lower are
coalesced into a single flat triangular plate. All wrasses are
surface fishes, and rocky parts of the coast overgrown with
seaweed are their favourite haunts in the temperate, and coral-reefs
in the tropical seas. Some 450 species of wrasses (including
parrot-wrasses) are known, chiefly from the tropics.
Of the British wrasses the ballan wrasse (Labrus maculatus) and the striped or red or cook wrasse (Labrus mixtus) are the most common. Both belong to the genus Labrus, in which the teeth stand in a single series, and which nas a smooth edge of the praeoperculum and only three spines in the anal fin. The ballan wrasse is the larger, attaining to a length of 18 in., and, it is said, to a weight of 8 ℔; its colours are singularly variegated, green or brownish, with red and blue lines and spots; the dorsal spines are twenty in number. The cook wrasse offers an instance of well-marked secondary sexual difference—the male being ornamented with blue streaks or a blackish band along the side of the body, whilst the female has two or three large black spots across the back of the tail. This species possesses only from sixteen to eighteen spines in the dorsal fin. The goldsinny or corkwing (Crenilabrus melops) is much more frequent on the S. coasts of England and Ireland than farther N., and rarely exceeds a length of 10 in. As in other wrasses, its colours are beautiful, but variable; but it may be readily distinguished from the two preceding species by the toothed edge of the praeoperculum. The three other British wrasses are much scarcer and more local, viz. Jago’s goldsinny (Ctenolabrus rupestris), with a large black spot on the anterior dorsal spines and another on the base of the upper caudal rays; Acantholabrus palloni, which is so rarely captured that it lacks a vernacular name, but may be easily recognized by its five anal spines and by the teeth in the jaws forming a band; and the rock-cook (Centrolabrus exoletus), which also has five anal spines, but has the jaws armed with a single series of teeth.
On the Atlantic coasts of the N. states of the United States the wrasses are represented by the genus Tautoga. The only species of this genus, known by the names of tautog or blackfish, is much esteemed as food. It is caught in great numbers, and generally sold of a weight of about 2 ℔.
WRAXALL, SIR NATHANIEL WILLIAM (1751–1831), English author, was born in Queen’s Square, Bristol, on the 8th of April 1751. He was the son of a Bristol merchant, Nathaniel Wraxall, and his wife Anne, great niece of Sir James Thornhill the painter. He entered the employment of the East India Company in 1769, and served as judge-advocate and paymaster during the expeditions against Guzerat and Baroche in 1771. In the following year he left the service of the company and returned to Europe. He visited Portugal and was presented to the court, of which he gives a curious account in his Historical Memoirs; and in the N. of Europe he made the acquaintance of several Danish nobles who had been exiled for their support of the deposed Queen Caroline Matilda, sister of George III. Wraxall at their suggestion undertook to endeavour to persuade the king to act on her behalf. He was able to secure an interview with her at Zell in September 1774. His exertions are told in his Posthumous Memoirs. As the queen died on the 11th of May 1775, his schemes came to nothing and he complained that he was out of pocket, but George III. took no notice of him for some time. In 1775 he published his first book, Cursory Remarks made in a Tour through some of the Northern Parts of Europe, which reached its fourth edition by 1807, when it was renamed A Tour Round the Baltic. In 1777 he travelled again in Germany and Italy. As he had by this time secured the patronage of important people, he obtained a complimentary lieutenant’s commission from the king on the application of Lord Robert Manners, which gave him the right to wear uniform though he never performed any military service. In this year he published his Memoirs of the Kings of France of the Race of Valois, to which he appended an account of his tour in the Western, Southern and Interior Provinces of France. In 1778 he went again on his travels to Germany and Italy, and accumulated materials for his Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw and Vienna (1799). In 1780 he entered parliament and sat till 1794 for Hinton in Wiltshire, Ludgershall and Wallingford, in succession. He published in 1795 the beginning of a History of France from the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Louis XIV., which was never completed. Little is known of his later years except that he was made a baronet by the prince regent in 1813. His Historical Memoirs appeared in 1815. Both they and the Posthumous Memoirs (1836) are very readable and have real historical value. Wraxall married Miss Jane Lascelles in 1789, and died suddenly at Dover on the 7th of November 1831. His grandson, Sir F. C. Lascelles Wraxall (1828–1865), was a miscellaneous writer of some note.
See preface to The Historical and Posthumous Memoirs of Sir N. W. Wraxall, by H. B. Wheatley (London, 1884).
WREATH (O. Eng. wræð, from wrīðan, to twist), a band of leaves, flowers or metal, twisted into a circular form, and used either as a chaplet or diadem for the head or as an ornament to be hung upon or round an object. For the ancient usages of crowning victors in the games with wreaths, and the bestowal of them as marks of honour see Crown and Coronet.
WRECK, a term which in its widest sense means anything without an apparent owner that is afloat upon, sunk in, or cast ashore by the sea; in legal phraseology, as appears below, it has a narrower meaning. Old Norman forms of the word, varec and veresc, are to be found in charters of 1181 and later date; and the former is still in use in Normandy. Latinized it becomes wreccum, wreckum or warectum) and such phrases as maris ejectum, jactura maris, adventura maris, shipbryche, are all used as descriptions of wreck. In Anglo-Saxon charters sǽ-úpwyrp, and in the charters of the Cinque Ports inventiones, a translation of “findalls,” probably a local word, are synonymous with wreck. Formerly an appreciable source of revenue to the crown, afterwards a valuable addition to the income of a landowner
