woodcut and wood engraving, prints made from designs cut in relief on wood, in contrast to copper or steel engraving and etching (which are intaglio). The term woodcutting is loosely included within the wood-engraving process, from which, however, it can be distinguished. Woodcutting, the oldest method of printmaking, is accomplished using soft wood with a knife employed along the grain. Wood engraving, which developed in the 18th cent., is a technique using hard, end-grained wood worked with a graver or burin.

History

Woodcuts were used in ancient Egypt and Babylonia for impressing intaglio designs into unpressed bricks and by the Romans for stamping letters and symbols. The Chinese used wood blocks for stamping patterns on textiles and for illustrating books. Woodcuts appeared in Europe at the beginning of the 15th cent., when they were used to make religious pictures for distribution to pilgrims, on playing cards and simple prints, and for the block book which preceded printing. At that time the artist and the artisan were one, the same person designing the cut and carving the block. One of the first dated European woodcuts is a St. Christopher of 1423.

After the invention of the printing press, woodcuts, being inked in the same way as type, lent themselves admirably to book illustration. Albrecht Pfister first put them to this use c.1460. Other early woodcut illustrations are in the Bibles of the late 15th cent. and in the French Lyons edition (1493) of the works of Terence. The first Roman book with woodcuts appeared in 1467, but Venice became the center of Italian wood engraving. In the 16th cent. in France woodcuts frequently served to illustrate books of hours. The actual cutting was often performed by a specialist rather than by the designer.

In Germany, where the form was particularly well developed, Dürer and Hans Holbein the younger were the most eminent woodcut designers of the Renaissance. Dürer's Life of the Virgin (1509-10) and Great Passion (1510-11) and Holbein's Dance of Death (1523-26) are among the best-known works of these masters. Lucas Cranach the elder, Albrecht Altdorfer, and Hans Baldung also worked in wood engraving, employing a chiaroscuro technique originated by Jobst de Negker of Augsburg.

Decline and Revival

There was a decline in woodcutting with the increasing versatility and popularity of line engraving on metal. Even in the Netherlands, where woodcuts lasted longest, they were almost obsolete by the 18th cent. In England, however, Thomas Bewick popularized wood engraving. He brought to perfection the technique of white-line engraving, in which lines print white on a black background. Gustave Doré was the best-known French master in this medium in the 19th cent.

William Blake also made wood engravings for some of his best book illustrations (e.g., for Thornton's Vergil; 1821). The Victorian weeklies used numerous wood-engraved drawings as illustrations. Most famous of English wood engravers were John Swain and the Dalziel brothers. In the United States wood engraving was practiced from the 19th cent. by such masters as Alexander Anderson, William James Linton, and Timothy Cole.

As photographic technology advanced, photography and photographic processes slowly replaced woodcut as a means of book illustration and wood engraving for reproduction of oil paintings. In the 1890s in France a revival of woodcutting to produce original prints was initiated by Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, and Felix Vallotton, who cut their blocks themselves. Their influence on 20th-century expression in this medium was enormous. Derain, Dufy, and Maillol also made notable woodcuts. After World War II many artists in the United States, such as Leonard Baskin, Sue Fuller, and Seong Moy, explored new formal and technical possibilities in the medium of woodcutting.

wood sorrel: see oxalis.

wood rat: see pack rat.

wood pulp: see paper.

wood louse: see crustacean.

wood carving, as an art form, includes any kind of sculpture in wood, from the decorative bas-relief on small objects to life-size figures in the round, furniture, and architectural decorations.

The woods used vary greatly in hardness and grain. The most commonly employed woods include boxwood, pine, pear, walnut, willow, oak, and ebony. The tools are simple gouges, chisels, wooden mallets, and pointed instruments. Although they were universally one of the earliest art media, wood carvings have withstood poorly the vicissitudes of time and climate. A few ancient examples have been preserved in the dry climate of Egypt, e.g., the wooden statue of Sheik-el-Beled (Cairo) from the Old Kingdom.

The carving of wooden masks and statuettes was common to the African tribes (see African art), and totem poles were used for the basic religious rites of the tribes of the Northwest Coast of America (see North American Native art). The wooden objects of Oceania include animated designs, incised and in relief, on canoes and large standing figures (see Oceanic art). In Japan and China wooden carvings have long been used to decorate temples and private dwellings (see Chinese architecture; Japanese architecture). The Muslim countries of North Africa abound in intricate architectural carvings.

In Europe wood carving was highly developed in Scandinavia, and examples have been preserved of 10th- and 11th-century work. In England the Gothic period produced extremely fine carving, especially on choir stalls (see misericords) and rood screens. Although the Puritans destroyed much of this, enough has been preserved to show its beautiful workmanship. In France wood carving was also a part of religious art, and there the carved altarpieces were especially notable. Italian wood carving flourished during the Gothic period in Pisa, Siena, and Florence, as well as in the southern monasteries; during the Renaissance it remained an adjunct of Italian artistic development.

Many of the 15th- and 16th-century artists in Germany worked in wood, creating monumental sculptures and altarpieces; among the greatest were Hans Multscher, Michael Pacher, Veit Stoss, and Tilman Riemenschneider. Fine retables were also created in Flanders and Spain. After the Renaissance wood carving went into a slight decline. It had a revival in the early 18th cent. when Grinling Gibbons in London carved for Sir Christopher Wren's buildings. In colonial America fine ships' figureheads and many other pieces now considered important folk art were executed in wood.

The 20th cent. has seen a resurgence of interest in the medium of wood. Notable modern sculptors who have used wood include Archipenko, Barlach, Henry Moore, and the Finnish Tapio Virkkala. An appreciation of the basic material—the grain and texture of wood—led many figurative artists including William Zorach, Chaim Gross, Robert Laurent, and José de Creeft to work with wood. Wood has also held a fascination for some abstract artists, notably Louise Nevelson who created large, intricate sculptural compositions of carved and turned wood forms.

wood alcohol: see methanol.

wood, botanically, the xylem tissue that forms the bulk of the stem of a woody plant. Xylem conducts sap upward from the roots to the leaves, stores food in the form of complex carbohydrates, and provides support; it is made up of various types of cells specialized for each of these purposes. Among them are tracheids, elongated conduction and support cells; parenchyma (food storage) cells, some of which form rays for transverse conduction; xylem vessels, formed of hollow cells joined end to end; and fiber cells that reinforce these tubes. In the conifers the xylem is made up mainly of tracheids, thus presenting a uniform, nonporous appearance; their wood is called softwood. Deciduous trees have more complex xylem, permeated by vessels, and are called hardwoods, although the description is sometimes inaccurate.

The xylem is formed in the growing season by the cambium; in temperate regions the cells formed in the spring are larger in diameter than those formed in the summer, and this results in the annual rings observable in cross section. The new cells lose their protoplasm as they form the various tissues; the older, nonfunctional cells become plugged up, darken in color, and often accumulate bitter or poisonous substances (tannins, dyes, resins, and gums). This inner wood (the heartwood, as opposed to the functional sapwood) is valued for outdoor construction because of its resistance to moisture and to decay-producing organisms.

Commercial Uses

Freshly cut wood contains much moisture and tends to warp and split as it dries. Lumber is therefore seasoned before use—dried either slowly in the sun and air or more quickly by artificial means (kiln drying). Seasoning increases wood's buoyancy, strength, elasticity, and durability. Although synthetic materials have supplanted wood in many of its former uses, it is still widely employed for furniture, floors, railway ties, paper manufacture, and innumerable other purposes. Wood distillation yields methyl alcohol, wood tar, acetic acid, acetone, and turpentine; charcoal is made by burning or heating wood in insufficient air to consume it.

The wood of different species of trees varies considerably in weight, strength, and appearance. Softwood is normally uniform in grain (texture) and color; hardwood, in which the rays are more prominent and the arrangement of tissues is variable, produces lumber in which the grain may run vertically or horizontally and be coarse or smooth. The manner in which a log is cut results in lumber with thin or wide ray markings. A log cut horizontally shows the concentric annual rings; lengthwise cuts through the center are marked by thin vertical ray lines; and lengthwise cuts through the outer sections show the wood's characteristic wavy grain and wider ray markings, prized for their beauty. The rarer decorative woods may be cut in thin layers and glued to other wood structures (see veneer). Plywood, made of thin layers of wood glued so that the grains alternate in direction, makes an especially strong construction material. For some applications composition board offers another inexpensive substitute. Pressure-treated wood is lumber that has had a preservative forced into it under pressure.

shittim wood, in the Bible, wood of the shittah tree, probably an acacia, from which the Ark of the Covenant and furniture of the Tabernacle were made. The Revised Version of the Bible calls it acacia wood. It seems to have been held in high esteem. The name shittim wood is also sometimes applied to two plants that are not acacias, the buckthorn and the false buckthorn.

pressure-treated wood, wood that has had a liquid preservative forced into it in order to protect against deterioration due to rot or insect attack. The most commonly used preservatives are chromated copper arsenate (CCA) and pentachlorophenol. In the treatment process, finished lumber is placed in large container, which is sealed and filled with the preservative solution. As the pressure in the container is increase, the preservative is forced into the lumber; the excess preservative is drained from the container and recycled. The preservative makes pressure-treated wood suitable for long-term outdoor uses where ordinary wood would soon deteriorate. Because of concerns about the possible leaching of arsenic from CCA-treated wood, the use of such wood in most residential and general consumer construction was ended beginning in 2004. Wood for these uses is now treated with ACQ (alkaline copper quat, a copper oxide-quaternary ammonium compound mixture), copper azole, disodium octaborate tetrahydrate (DOT), or other chemicals.

laminated wood: see plywood.

canary wood or canary whitewood, name applied to the timber of the tulip tree (see magnolia) in some parts of the United States, also to that of an Australian eucalyptus, the Indian mulberry, and to two species of the genus Persea of the laurel family.

calamander wood: see ebony.

Wood, Sarah: see under Kemble, Roger.

Wood, Robert Williams, 1868-1955, American physicist, b. Concord, Mass., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1891). After studying abroad he became associated with Johns Hopkins Univ. as professor of experimental physics in 1901, professor emeritus in 1938, and later research professor. Internationally known for his work in optics and spectroscopy, he made important researches in resonance radiation and in the use of absorption screens in astronomical photography and devised a vastly improved diffraction grating. He also developed a color-photography process, originated the method of thawing street mains by passing an electric current through them, and studied the biological and physiological effects of high-frequency sound waves. He wrote Physical Optics (1905) and Researches in Physical Optics (2 parts, 1913-19). Wood was also the author of The Man Who Rocked the Earth (with Arthur Train, 1915) and nonsense verse, How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers (rev. ed. 1917).

Wood, Mrs. Henry, 1814-87, English novelist whose maiden name was Ellen Price. Her melodramatic and sensational novel East Lynne (1861) was dramatized and became a permanent stock piece for more than a generation. Most of her work appeared first in the magazine Argosy, which she bought in 1867.

Wood, Leonard, 1860-1927, American general and administrator, b. Winchester, N.H. After practicing medicine briefly in Boston, he entered the army in 1885 and was made an assistant surgeon; in 1891 he was promoted to captain. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War he joined with his friend Theodore Roosevelt in organizing a volunteer cavalry unit—the Rough Riders—and as their commander he participated in the attack on Santiago de Cuba. He was military commander of Santiago (1898-99), and as military governor (1899-1902) of Cuba until the republic was formed, he cooperated in improving sanitary conditions on the island. Sent (1903) to the Philippines as governor of Moro prov., he was promoted (1903) to major general. He helped crush the opposition to U.S. occupation there, although he was criticized for his ruthlessness. From 1906 to 1908 he commanded U.S. military forces in the Philippines. Returning to the United States, he served (1910-14) as U.S. army chief of staff. He was commander (1914-17) of the Dept. of the East and after the outbreak of World War I in Europe led the movement for preparedness in America. He advocated the creation of civilian training camps, which brought him into conflict with the neutralist position of President Wilson, and incurred the President's displeasure. After the U.S. entry into World War I, Wood was refused a commission on the European front. He failed to win the Republican nomination for President in 1920, but he was appointed (1921) governor-general of the Philippines. Distrusting the natives' capacity for self-government, he reversed the lenient policy of his predecessor, F. B. Harrison. Wood liquidated the economic enterprises of the Philippine government, assumed wide powers of control, allowed little prerogative to the legislature, and surrounded himself with military advisers. Until Wood died in 1927, unrest was widespread among the Filipinos, and in 1925 the Philippine senate unanimously voted to hold a plebiscite on independence. The report of the Thompson Commission, sent to the islands in 1926, sharply criticized Wood's rule.

Wood, John, 1704-1754, English architect, called Wood of Bath. When he went (1727) to Bath from Yorkshire to begin his career as a road surveyor, the city was at its height as a center of fashion. Wood devised civic layouts on a grand scale. His executed schemes exhibit entire streets and terraces formally arranged in continuous rows, curves, or circles. He designed Queen's Square, North and South Parade, and the Circus. Wood of Bath also designed the mansion of Prior Park, near Bath, his most handsome detached building. His work, by its charm and imagination, set a standard for the architects who later worked at Bath, and it remains an inspiration for modern city planners. His son, John Wood, Jr., 1728-81, completed the Circus and also built the Royal Crescent and the Assembly Rooms.

Wood, Jethro, 1774-1834, American inventor, b. either in Dartmouth, Mass., or in Washington co., N.Y. In 1814, while a farmer in Cayuga co., N.Y., he patented a cast-iron plow in which he later embodied improvements (patented 1819). He used in the improved model replaceable cast-iron parts and a curved plate called a moldboard from which the shape of the modern moldboard is derived. Litigation concerning his patent rights impoverished him.

Wood, Grant, 1891-1942, American painter, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris. In Munich in 1928 he was decisively influenced by German and Flemish primitive painting. Subsequently in the 1930s he created his "American scene" works in which stern people and stylized landscapes offer rigid, decorative images of the rural Midwest. He taught at the State Univ. of Iowa and was director of WPA art projects in Iowa. His American Gothic (Art Inst., Chicago) and Daughters of Revolution have been many times reproduced; other works include Stone City (Joslyn Art Mus., Omaha, Nebr.) and a series of murals at Iowa State Univ.

Wood, Fernando, 1812-81, American politician, b. Philadelphia. He became a successful shipping merchant in New York City and a leader of Tammany Hall. Wood was elected mayor in 1854 and was reelected in 1856, but he displeased the other Tammany leaders in dispensing patronage and was ousted in 1857. He formed Mozart Hall, a rival organization, and won reelection in 1859. Pro-South, Wood suggested in Jan., 1861, that New York establish itself as an independent city. He was defeated for reelection in that year. During the Civil War he was a leading Peace Democrat. As a Congressman (1841-43, 1863-65, 1867-81) he reflected the views of the city's moneyed interests.

Wood, Edward Frederick Lindley: see Halifax, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st earl of.

Wood, Clement, 1888-1950, American writer, b. Tuscaloosa, Ala., grad. Univ. of Alabama, 1909, LL.B. Yale, 1911. Among his many works are books on the craft of poetry; biographies, including a critical one of Amy Lowell (1926); novels; and a rhyming dictionary (1943). His most famous poem is the title piece of his collected poems, The Glory Road (1936).

Wood or à Wood, Anthony, 1632-95, English antiquary. His painstaking researches into the history of Oxford resulted in two great works, The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford (in Latin, 1674; in English, tr. by him but not published until 1792-96), and Athenae Oxoniensis (1691-92; rev. and enl. ed. 1721) containing biographies of noted Oxford graduates. The second work included statements about the 1st earl of Clarendon that were adjudged libelous and for which he was expelled from Oxford. Wood's own Life and Times (comp. from his papers by Andrew Clark, 5 vol., 1891-1900) was abridged by Llewelyn Powys (1932).

Wood River, city (1990 pop. 11,490), Madison co., SW Ill., on the Mississippi River just above its junction with the Missouri; inc. 1923. It has oil refineries and pipeline terminals, and petroleum additives are produced.

Wood Buffalo National Park, 17,300 sq mi (44,807 sq km), in NE Alta., Canada, extending into the Northwest Territories; est. 1922 to protect the only remaining herd of buffalo. It lies between Lake Athabasca and Great Slave Lake and is crossed by the Peace River. A vast, unfenced region of forests, plains, and lakes, it is the largest game preserve in North America, containing buffalo, bear, beaver, caribou, moose, and varied waterfowl, including whooping cranes, which nest there.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, charitable organization devoted exclusively to health care issues. It was established in 1936 by Robert Wood Johnson (1893-1968), board chairman of the Johnson & Johnson medical products company. The foundation grew in endowment and in the scope of its mission after it received (1971) the majority of Johnson's estate. Based in Princeton, N.J., the Johnson Foundation's basic mission is "to improve the health and health care of all Americans," and toward this end it supports training, education, research, and projects related to U.S. health-care services.

Krutch, Joseph Wood, 1893-1970, American author, editor, and teacher, b. Knoxville, Tenn., grad. Univ. of Tennessee, 1915, Ph.D. Columbia, 1923. He was on the editorial staff of the Nation (1924-52), and held a professorship at Columbia (1937-53). Highly regarded as a social and literary critic, Krutch's writings include Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius (1926), The Modern Temper (1929), Samuel Johnson (1944), and Henry David Thoreau (1948). After he moved to Arizona, he turned to the study of nature; his books in this field include The Twelve Seasons (1949) and The Voice of the Desert: A Naturalist's Interpretation (1955).

Halifax, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st earl of, 1881-1959, British statesman. He entered the House of Commons (1910) as a Conservative and was president of the Board of Education (1922-24) and of the Board of Agriculture (1924-25). Created Baron Irwin in 1925, he served (1926-31) as viceroy of India. Confronted with the civil disobedience campaign of Mohandas Gandhi and his followers, he promised (1929) dominion status for India and induced Gandhi to participate in the further roundtable conferences on India's future. Succeeding his father as Viscount Halifax in 1934, he became Conservative leader of the House of Lords in 1935, serving also as secretary for war (1935) and lord privy seal (1935-38). As foreign secretary (1938-40) Halifax firmly supported Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. From 1941 to 1946 he was ambassador to the United States. He was created an earl in 1944. He wrote John Keble (1932); his speeches are collected as Indian Problems (1932), Speeches on Foreign Policy (1940), and American Speeches (1947).

Fort Leonard Wood, U.S. army post, 71,000 acres (28,700 hectares), S central Mo.; est. 1940. It is one of the largest basic-training centers in the United States and also provides training for army engineers.

Belleau Wood, forested area in Aisne dept., N France, E of Château-Thierry. The scene of a victory over the Germans after hard fighting (June 6-25, 1918), involving chiefly U.S. troops, it was dedicated in 1923 as a permanent memorial to the American war dead.

Design printed from a plank of wood incised parallel to the vertical axis of the wood's grain. One of the oldest methods of making prints, it was used in China to decorate textiles from the 5th century. Printing from wood blocks on textiles was known in Europe from the early 14th century but developed little until paper began to be manufactured in France and Germany at the end of the 14th century. In the early 15th century, religious images and playing cards were first made from wood blocks. Black-line woodcut reached its greatest perfection in the 16th century with Albrecht Dürer and his followers. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, artists such as Edvard Munch, Paul Gauguin, and the German Expressionists rediscovered the expressive potential of woodcuts. Woodcuts have played an important role in the history of Japanese art (see ukiyo-e).

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or methyl alcohol or wood alcohol

Simplest of the alcohols, chemical formula CH₃OH. Once produced by destructive distillation of wood, it is now usually made from the methane in natural gas. Methanol is an important industrial material; its derivatives are used in great quantities for making a vast number of compounds, among them many important synthetic dyes, resins, drugs, and perfumes. It is also used in automotive antifreezes, in rocket fuels, and as a solvent. It is flammable and explosive. A clean-burning fuel, it may substitute (at least in part) for gasoline. It is also used for denaturation of ethanol. A violent poison, it causes blindness and eventually death when drunk.

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or pack rat

Any of 22 species (genus Neotoma, family Cricetidae) of rodents that are nocturnal vegetarians of North and Central American deserts, forests, and mountains. Wood rats are buff, gray, or reddish brown, usually with white undersides and feet. They have large ears and are 9–19 in. (23–47 cm) long, including the 3–9-in. (8–24-cm) furry tail. The nest, up to 3 ft (1 m) across and usually built of twigs or cactus, is placed in a protected spot (e.g., under a rock ledge). Wood rats are sometimes called pack rats because they collect material to deposit in their dens.

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or wood mouse

In general, any mouse that normally lives in fields; more strictly, any of about seven species of small, long-tailed mice in the genus Apodemus (family Muridae). Field mice in this genus are found in fields, woodlands, and mountain meadows in the warm and temperate parts of Eurasia. They are grayish or light or reddish brown and are 2–5 in. (6–12 cm) long excluding the tail. They generally live in burrows and build nests of grass and other plants. They eat seeds, roots, and other plant material, occasionally damaging crops or young trees.

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North American duck (Aix sponsa, family Anatidae); a popular game bird. Wood ducks, 17–21 in. (43–52 cm) long, nest in a tree cavity up to 50 ft (15 m) off the ground; they have long-clawed toes for perching. Both sexes have a head crest in winter. The beautifully coloured male has a purple and green head, red-brown breast flecked with white, and bronze sides; the female has a white eye ring and duller colouring. Ducklings eat aquatic insects and other small organisms; adults prefer acorns or other nuts. Hunted nearly to extinction for its flesh and feathers, it has been restored to healthy populations by strong conservation efforts.

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Hard, fibrous material formed by the accumulation of secondary xylem produced by the vascular cambium. It is the principal strengthening tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and shrubs. Wood forms around a central core (pith) in a series of concentric layers called growth rings. A cross section of wood shows the distinction between heartwood and sapwood. Heartwood, the central portion, is darker and composed of xylem cells that are no longer active in the life processes of the tree. Sapwood, the lighter area surrounding the heartwood, contains actively conducting xylem cells. Wood is one of the most abundant and versatile natural materials on earth, and unlike coal, ores, and petroleum, is renewable with proper care. The most widely used woods come from two groups of trees: the conifers, or softwoods (e.g., pine, spruce, fir), and the broadleaves, or hardwoods (e.g., oak, walnut, maple). Trees classified as hardwoods are not necessarily harder than softwoods (e.g., balsa, a hardwood, is one of the softest woods). Density and moisture content affect the strength of wood; in addition to load-bearing strength, other variable factors often tested include elasticity and toughness. Wood is insulating to heat and electricity and has desirable acoustical properties. Some identifying physical characteristics of wood include colour, odour, texture, and grain (the direction of the wood fibres). Some 10,000 different wood products are commercially available, ranging from lumber and plywood to paper, from fine furniture to toothpicks. Chemically derived products from wood and wood residues include cellophane, charcoal, dyestuffs, explosives, lacquers, and turpentine. Wood is also used for fuel in many parts of the world.

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Fossil formed by the infiltration of minerals into cavities between and within cells of natural wood, usually by silica (silicon dioxide, SiO₂) or calcite (calcium carbonate, CaCO₃). Often this replacement of organic tissue by mineral deposits is so precise that the internal structure as well as the external shape is faithfully represented; sometimes even the cell structure may be determined.

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(born Oct. 9, 1860, Winchester, N.H., U.S.—died Aug. 7, 1927, Boston, Mass.) U.S. army officer. He studied medicine and became a contract surgeon with the U.S. Army. In the Spanish-American War he and his friend Theodore Roosevelt recruited and commanded the volunteer Rough Riders. Promoted to brigadier general, Wood served as military governor of Cuba (1899–1902) and organized a modern civil government. After service in the Philippines, he was chief of staff of the U.S. Army (1910–14). Though he had advocated preparedness for war, as a Republican he was passed over for a command post in World War I by the Democratic administration. He later served as governor general of the Philippines (1921–27).

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(born Feb. 13, 1891, near Anamosa, Iowa, U.S.—died Feb. 12, 1942, Iowa City, Iowa) U.S. painter. He was trained as a craftsman and designer as well as a painter. On a visit to Germany in 1928, he was strongly influenced by the sharp detail of 15th-century German and Flemish paintings, and he soon abandoned his Impressionist manner for the detailed, realistic manner for which he is known. His American Gothic caused a sensation when exhibited in 1930. A telling portrait of the sober, hardworking Midwestern farmer, it has become one of the best-known icons of U.S. art, though it is often misinterpreted: the woman is not the man's wife but rather the unmarried daughter designated to stay on the farm to assist her widowed father.

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Park, western Canada. Situated between Athabasca and Great Slave lakes, it was established in 1922; it occupies an area of 17,300 sq mi (44,807 sq km). The world's largest park, it is a vast region of forests and plains, crossed by the Peace River and dotted with lakes. The habitat of the largest remaining herd of wood buffalo (bison) on the North American continent, as well as of bear, caribou, moose, and beaver, it also provides nesting grounds for the endangered whooping crane.

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(born Oct. 9, 1860, Winchester, N.H., U.S.—died Aug. 7, 1927, Boston, Mass.) U.S. army officer. He studied medicine and became a contract surgeon with the U.S. Army. In the Spanish-American War he and his friend Theodore Roosevelt recruited and commanded the volunteer Rough Riders. Promoted to brigadier general, Wood served as military governor of Cuba (1899–1902) and organized a modern civil government. After service in the Philippines, he was chief of staff of the U.S. Army (1910–14). Though he had advocated preparedness for war, as a Republican he was passed over for a command post in World War I by the Democratic administration. He later served as governor general of the Philippines (1921–27).

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(born April 16, 1881, Powderham Castle, Devonshire, Eng.—died Dec. 23, 1959, Garroby Hall, near York, Yorkshire) British statesman. He was elected to Parliament in 1910. As viceroy of India (1925–31), he worked on terms of understanding with Mohandas K. Gandhi and accelerated constitutional advances. His tenure as foreign secretary (1938–40) in Neville Chamberlain's government was controversial because of Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler, but Halifax kept the post into Winston Churchill's ministry. As ambassador to the U.S. (1941–46), he greatly served the Allied cause in World War II, for which he was created earl of Halifax in 1944.

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(born Feb. 13, 1891, near Anamosa, Iowa, U.S.—died Feb. 12, 1942, Iowa City, Iowa) U.S. painter. He was trained as a craftsman and designer as well as a painter. On a visit to Germany in 1928, he was strongly influenced by the sharp detail of 15th-century German and Flemish paintings, and he soon abandoned his Impressionist manner for the detailed, realistic manner for which he is known. His American Gothic caused a sensation when exhibited in 1930. A telling portrait of the sober, hardworking Midwestern farmer, it has become one of the best-known icons of U.S. art, though it is often misinterpreted: the woman is not the man's wife but rather the unmarried daughter designated to stay on the farm to assist her widowed father.

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(born April 16, 1881, Powderham Castle, Devonshire, Eng.—died Dec. 23, 1959, Garroby Hall, near York, Yorkshire) British statesman. He was elected to Parliament in 1910. As viceroy of India (1925–31), he worked on terms of understanding with Mohandas K. Gandhi and accelerated constitutional advances. His tenure as foreign secretary (1938–40) in Neville Chamberlain's government was controversial because of Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler, but Halifax kept the post into Winston Churchill's ministry. As ambassador to the U.S. (1941–46), he greatly served the Allied cause in World War II, for which he was created earl of Halifax in 1944.

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