WATER HEMLOCK, also known as cow-bane, is botani cally Cicuta virosa, a poisonous weed found growing at the edges of ponds, ditches and rivers in Great Britain. It is a perennial plant of the family Umbelliferae, and has large compound leaves and small white flowers appearing from July to August. It has been mistaken by human beings for celery, with fatal results, and is responsible for the death of cattle. In North America there are six native species of Cicuta, all similarly poisonous, especially the spotted cow-bane or musquash-root (C. maculata) of the eastern States and Canada, and the western water hemlock (C.
Douglasii) of the Pacific coast. Before its virulence became known to cattle-raisers the western species caused serious losses of live stock in Oregon and other north-western States.
The closely allied poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) is a bi ennial plant of the family umbelliferae, found wild in many parts of Great Britain and Ireland, where it occurs in waste places on hedge-banks, and by the borders of fields, and also widely spread over Europe and temperate Asia, and naturalized in the culti vated districts of North and South America. It is an erect branching plant, growing from 3 to 6 ft. high, and emitting a dis agreeable smell, like that of mice. The stems are hollow, smooth, somewhat glaucous green, spotted with dull dark purple, as al luded to in the specific name, maculatum. The root-leaves have long furrowed footstalks, sheath ing the stem at the base, and are I large, triangular in outline, and repeatedly divided or compound, the ultimate and very numerous segments being small, ovate and deeply incised at the edge. These leaves generally perish of ter the growth of the flowering stem, which takes place in the second year, while the leaves produced on the stem became gradually smaller upwards. The branches are all terminated by compound many-rayed umbels of small white flowers, the general involucres consisting of several, the partial ones of about three short lance olate bracts, the latter being usually turned towards the outside of the umbel. The flowers are succeeded by broadly ovate fruits, the mericarps (half-fruits) having five ribs which, when mature, are waved or crenated ; and when cut across the albumen is seen to be deeply furrowed on the inner face, so as to exhibit in section a reniform outline. The fruits when triturated with a solution of caustic potash evolve a most unpleasant odour. WATERHOUSE, ALFRED (183o-1905), English archi tect, was born at Liverpool on July 19, 1830, and died on Aug. 22, 1905. He was a pupil of Richard Lane in Manchester. His earliest commissions were of a domestic nature, but his position as a designer of public buildings was assured as early as 1859 when he won the open competition for the Manchester assize courts. This work marked him not only as an adept in the planning of a complicated building on a large scale, but also as a champion of the Gothic cause. In 1868 he won the competition for the Manchester town-hall, where he showed a firmer and perhaps more original handling of the Gothic manner. The same year brought him the rebuilding of part of Caius College, Cam bridge, not his first university work, for Balliol, Oxford, had been put into his hands in 1867. At Caius, out of deference to the Renaissance treatment of the older parts of the college, the Gothic element was intentionally mingled with classic detail, while Balliol and Pembroke, Cambridge, which followed in 1871, may be looked upon as typical specimens of the style of his mid career —Gothic tradition (European rather than British) tempered by individual taste and by adaptation to modern needs. Girton Col
lege, Cambridge, a building of simpler type, dates originally from the same period (1870), but has been periodically enlarged by further buildings. Two important domestic works were under taken in 1870 and 1871 respectively—Eaton Hall for the duke, then marquis, of Westminster, and Heythrop Hall, Oxfordshire, the latter, a restoration, being of a fairly strict classic' type. Iwerne Minster for Lord Wolverton was begun in 1877. In 1865 Waterhouse had removed his practice from Manchester to Lon don, and he was one of the architects selected to compete for the Royal Courts of Justice. He received from the government, with out competition, the commission to build the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, a design which marks an epoch in the modern use of terra-cotta. The new University Club—a Gothic design—was undertaken in 1866, to be followed nearly twenty years later by the National Liberal Club, a study in Renaissance composition. Waterhouse's series of works for Victoria University, of which he was made LL.D. in 1895, date from 1870, when he was first engaged on Owens College, Man chester. Yorkshire College, Leeds, was begun in 1878; and Liverpool University College in 1885. St. Paul's School, Hammer smith, was begun in 1881, and in the same year the Central Technical College in Exhibition Road, London. Waterhouse's chief remaining works in London are the new Prudential Assur ance Company's offices in Holborn; the new University College Hospital; the National Provincial Bank, Piccadilly, 1892; the Surveyors' Institution, Great George Street, 1896; and the Jenner Institute of Preventive Medicine, Chelsea, 1895. For the Prudential Company he designed many provincial branch offices, while for the National Provincial Bank he also designed premises at Manchester. The Liverpool Infirmary is Water house's largest hospital ; and St. Mary's Hospital, Manchester, the Alexandra Hospital, Rhyl, and extensive additions at the general hospital, Nottingham, also engaged him. Among works not already mentioned are the Salford gaol ; St. Margaret's School, Bushey; the Metropole Hotel, Brighton; Hove town hall; Alloa town-hall; St. Elizabeth's church, Reddish; the Weigh House chapel, Mayfair; and Hutton Hall, Yorks.
Waterhouse became a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1861, and president from 1888 to 1891. In 1878 he received the royal gold medal of the institute, and was made an associate of the Royal Academy, becoming a full member in 1885 and treasurer in 1898. He became a member of the acade mies of Vienna (1869), Brussels (1886), Antwerp (1887), Milan (1888) and Berlin (1889), and a corresponding member of the Institut de France (1893). After 1886 he was constantly called upon to act as assessor in architectural competitions, and was a member of the international jury appointed to adjudicate on the designs for the west front of Milan Cathedral in 1887. In 1890 he served as architectural member of the Royal Commission on the proposed enlargement of Westminster Abbey as a place of burial. From 1891 to 1902, when he retired, his work was conducted in partnership with his son, Paul Waterhouse.
See Memoir in The Builder, Aug. 19o5.