familiar in the cultivated oat (fig. 1), 
Fig. 1.—Panicle of Oat, Avena sativa. (After Le Maout.)the flowering glume having its dorsal rib prolonged into an awn (fig. 2), which is in some species twisted and bent near the base.
The origin of the cultivated oat is generally believed to be A. fatua, or “wild oat,” or some similar species, of which several exist in southern Europe and western Asia. Professor J. Buckman succeeded in raising “the potato-oat type” and “the white Tatarian oat” from grain of this species. A. strigosa, Schreb, “the bristle-pointed oat,” is the origin of the Scotch oat, according to Buckman. The white and black varieties of this species were cultivated in England and Scotland from remote times, and are still grown as a crop in Orkney and Shetland. A. strigosa is probably only a variety of the cultivated oat. The “naked oat”, A. nuda, was found by Bunge in waste ground about Peking; it was identified by the botanist Lindley with the pilcorn of the old agriculture and we see from Rogers[1] that it was in cultivation in England in the 13th century. Both this and the “common otes,” A. vesca, are described by Gerard.[2] Parkinson tells us that in his time (early in the 17th century) the naked oat was sown in sundry places, but “nothing so frequent” as the common sort. The chief differences between A. fatua and A. sativa, are, that in the former the chaff-scales which adhere to the grain are thick and hairy, and in the latter they are not so coarse and are hairless. The wild oat, moreover, has a long stiff awn, usually twisted near the base. In the cultivated oat it may be wanting, and if present it is not so stiff and is seldom bent. The grain is very small and worthless in the one, but larger and full in the other. There are now many varieties of the cultivated oat included under two principal races—common oat or panicled oats with a spreading panicle, A. sativa proper, and Tatarian oats or banner oats which has sometimes been regarded as a distinct species, A. orientalis, with contracted one-sided panicles. With regard to the antiquity of the oat, A. de Candolle[3] observes that it was not cultivated by the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the ancient Greeks and the Romans. Central Europe appears to be the locality where it was cultivated earliest, at least in Europe, for grains have been found among the remains of the Swiss lake-dwellings perhaps not earlier than the bronze age, While Pliny alludes to bread made of it by the ancient Germans. Pickering also records Galen’s observations (De Alim. Fac. i. 14), that it was abundant in Asia Minor, especially Mysia, where it was made into bread as well as given to horses.
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| Fig. 2.—Spikelet of Oat, A. sativa, with two fertile florets, and one terminal, rudimentary. | Fig. 3.—Spikelet of Wild Oat, A. fatua, glumes hairy and long- pointed, awn twisted at base. (After Buckman.) |
Besides the use of the straw when cut up and mixed with other food for fodder, the oat grain constitutes an important food for both man and beast. The oat grain (excepting the naked oat), like that of barley, is closely invested by the husk. Oatmeal is made from the kiln-dried grain from which the husks have been removed; and the form of the food is the well-known “porridge.” In Ireland, where it is sometimes mixed with Indian-corn meal, it is called “stirabout.” Groats or grits are the whole kernel from which the husk is removed. Their use is for gruel, which used to be consumed as an ordinary drink in the 17th century at the coffee-houses in London. The meal can be baked into “cake” or biscuit, as the Passover cake of the Jews; but it cannot be made into loaves in consequence of the great difficulty in rupturing the starch grains, unless the temperature be raised to a considerable height. With regard to the nutritive value of oatmeal, as compared with that of wheat flour, it contains a higher percentage of albuminoids than any other grain, viz. 12·6—that of wheat being 10·8—and less of starch, 58·4 as against 66·3 in wheat. It has rather more sugar, viz. 5·4—wheat having 4·2—and a good deal more fat, viz. 5·6, as against 2·0 in flour. Lastly, salts amount to 3·0% in oat, but are only 1·7 in wheat. Its nutritive value, therefore, is higher than that of ordinary seconds flour.
OATES, TITUS (1649–1705), English conspirator, was the son of Samuel Oates (1610–1683), an Anabaptist preacher, chaplain to Pride, and afterwards rector of All Saints’ Church, Hastings. He was admitted on the 11th of June 1665 to Merchant Taylors’ school, having, according to one authority, been previously at Oakham. There he remained a year, more or less, and “seems afterwards to have gone to Sedlescombe school in Sussex, from whence he passed to Caius College, Cambridge, on the 29th of June 1667, and was admitted a sizar of St John’s, on the 2nd of February 1668-1669, aged 18.” Upon very doubtful authority he is stated to have been also at Westminster school before going to the university. On leaving the university he apparently took Anglican orders, and officiated in several parishes, Hastings among them. Having brought malicious charges in which his evidence was rejected, he narrowly escaped prosecution for perjury. He next obtained a chaplaincy in the navy, from which he appears to have been speedily dismissed for bad conduct with the reputation of worse. He now, it is said, applied for help to Dr Israel Tonge, rector of St Michael’s in Wood Street, an honest half-crazy man, who even then was exciting people’s minds by giving out quarterly “treatises in print to alarm and awake his majesty’s subjects.” Oates offered his help, and it was arranged that he should pretend to be a Roman Catholic so as the better to unearth the Jesuit plots which possessed Tonge’s brain. Accordingly he was received into the church by one Berry, himself an apostate, and entered the Jesuit College of Valladolid as Brother Ambrose. Hence he was soon expelled. In October 1677 he made a second application, and was admitted to St Omer on 10th December. So scandalous, however, was his conduct that he was finally dismissed in 1678. Returning in June 1678 to Tonge, he set himself to forge a plot by piecing together things true and false, or true facts falsely interpreted, and by inventing treasonable letters and accounts of preparations for military action. The whole story was written by Oates in Greek characters, copied into English by Tonge, and finally told to one of Charles II.’s confidential servants named Kirkby. Kirkby having given the king his information, Oates was sent for (13th August), and in a private interview gave details, in forty-three articles, of the plot and the persons who had engaged to assassinate Charles. The general improbability of the story was so manifest, and the discrepancies were so glaring, that neither then nor at any subsequent time did Charles express anything but amused
