WACO, Tex., city and county-seat of McLennan County, on the Brazos River at the mouth of the Bosque, and on the San Antonio and Aransas Pass, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas the International and Great Northern, the fiouston and Texas Central, the Texas Central, and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railroads, 60 miles east of the geographical centre of the State, and 94 miles north by east of Austin and 85 miles south by west of Dallas. Waco is in a fertile agricultural region in which grain and cotton are the chief products. The chief manufactures are cotton products, printing plant products, men's clothing, wagons and carnages, watches, foundry and machine shop products, saddlery and harness and min eral and soda waters. The city is the principal interior cotton market of the State and is the great distributing centre between Austin and Dallas. It is well laid out, with fine broad streets, of which 75 miles are permanently paved, while the others are paved with ma cadam and gravel. Fourteen hard-surfaced macadam roads connect the city with the smaller neighboring towns. It has an excel lent sewage system with over 100 miles of mains. The waterworks are owned by the mu nicipality. There are a number of artesian wells. A tubular well system furnishes daily 2,000,000 gallons of water. There are 12 parlcs comprising 355 acres of which Cameron Park (130 acres) is the principal and among the most beautiful in Texas. Waco is noted for its healthfulness, cool in summer, mild in win ter. Several bridges span the Brazos River. The principal public buildings are the govern ment building, county courthouse, churches, schools, banlcs the Carnegie library, Masonic temple, the Amicable building, the highest in the Southwest, the Hotel Waco, Hotel Raleigh and the Texas Cotton Palace, wherein is held an annual exhibition of the superior products of agriculture, horticulture, stock-raismg, tex tile industries, etc. The city has hospitals, sana toriums and an orphans' home.
There are nine banks, five of which are national. The combined capital is $2,663,000 with deposits aggregating $15,000,000. There are 62 churches, representing nearly all de nominations. The educational institution.s are 29 in number, 17 of which are public schools and the remainder private, such as Baylor Uni versity, the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Paul Quinn College, Central Texas College, Saint Basil's College, Providence Training School, etc. There are two business colleges, which
have a MO standing, and several school li braries. The municipal receipts and expendi tures are about $500,000. The chief items of expense are the schools and the interest on the bonded and floating debt. The total tax rate (city, county, State, special road) was $2.85% in 1917 assessed on valuation of 65 per cent in the city.
The site of Waco was selected, long before die advent of the white man, as a camp-site by local tribes of Indians on account of the abundant springs and the natural protection afforded from storms, cyclones, etc. The In dians named the site Huaco, which the whites corrupted to Waco. It was surveyed as a town in 1849 and incorporated in 1850. Its growth in populStion has been steady and has more than kept pace with the growth in com merce. The rich surrounding country fur nishes raw products sufficient for the support of a large manufacturing and commercial city. Waco has a commission form of government.
In 1917 the McArthur army training camp, cov ering 15,000 acres, was established to the west and northwest of the city, while to the south was constructed the Rice Flying Field for the training of army aviators. Pop. 49,289.
WAD, a soft black mineral, consisting chiefly of the oxides of manganese, MnO, and MnO, but with varying percentages of one or more other metallic oxides and also water. Sev eral permanent varieties and many minor varie ties have been named, thus ((bog manganese' contains iron, silica, alumina and baryta besides the usual much larger percentage of the man ganese oxides and water. Asbolite or uearthy cobalt" contains oxide of cobalt up to 32 per cent. Lampadite contains from 4 to 18 per cent of oxide of copper. Wad frequently occurs in loosely aggregated masses which thus seem very light, but its specific gravity rarely falls below 3, and is sometimes as much as 426. Though. usually so soft as to soil the fingers, its hard ness may be as high as 6. Besides the common amorphous form, reniform masses and incrusta tions are frequently found, while beautiful ar borescent infiltrations of wad occur in seams of quartz and other minerals (see Fig. 12 under MINERALOGY). Wad and the closely related mineral psilomelane are important ores of man ganese and occur abundantly in very many lo calities.