is the most noteworthy of its parks; and there are Chautauqua grounds on the lake front. Yacht races take place annually on Lake Winnebago. Among the public buildings are the City Hall, Post Office, Winnebago County Court House, Public Library (22,000 volumes). Oshkosh is the seat of a State Normal School (1871), the largest in the state. The principal industries are the manufacture of lumber and of lumber products, although the former, which was once of paramount importance, has declined with the cutting of neighbouring forests. In 1905 the value of the city’s factory product was $8,796,705, the lumber, timber and planing mill products being valued at $4,671,003, the furniture at $751,511 and the waggons and carriages at $475,935. Oshkosh is an important wholesale distributing centre for a large part of central Wisconsin. Farming and dairying are important industries in the vicinity.
Under the French régime the site of Oshkosh was on the natural route of travel for those who crossed the Fox-Wisconsin portage, and was visited by Marquette, Joliet and La Salle on their way to the Mississippi. There were temporary trading posts here in the 18th century. About 1827 the first permanent settlers came, and in 1830 there were a tavern, a store and a ferry across the river to Algoma, as the S. side of the river was at first called. The settlement was first known as Saukeer, but in 1840 its name was changed to Oshkosh in honour of a Menominee chief who had befriended the early settlers and who lived in the vicinity until his death in 1856. The real prosperity of the place began about 1845 with the erection of two saw mills; in 1850 Oshkosh had 1400 inhabitants, and between 1860 and 1870 the population increased from 6086 to 12,663. In July 1874 and April 1875 the city was greatly damaged by fire.
OSIANDER, ANDREAS (1498–1552), German reformer,
was born at Gunzenhausen, near Nuremberg, on the 19th of
December 1498. His German name was Heiligmann, or, according to others, Hosemann. After studying at Leipzig, Altenburg and Ingolstadt, he was ordained priest in 1520 and appointed Hebrew tutor in the Augustinian convent at Nuremberg. Two years afterwards he was appointed preacher in the St Lorenz Kirche, and about the same time he publicly joined the Lutheran party, taking a prominent part in the discussion which ultimately led to the adoption of the Reformation by the city. He married
in 1525. He was present at the Marburg conference in 1529,
at the Augsburg diet in 1530 and at the signing of the Schmalkald
articles in 1537, and took part in other public transactions of
importance in the history of the Reformation; that he had an
exceptionally large number of personal enemies was due to his
vehemence, coarseness and arrogance in controversy. The
introduction of the Augsburg Interim in 1548 necessitated his
departure from Nuremberg; he went first to Breslau, and
afterwards settled at Königsberg as professor in its new university
at the call of Duke Albert of Prussia. Here in 1550 he published
two disputations, the one De lege et evangelio and the other
De justificatione, which aroused a controversy still unclosed
at his death on the 17th of October 1552. While he was fundamentally
at one with Luther in opposing both Romanism and
Calvinism, his mysticism led him to interpret justification by
faith as not an imputation but an infusion of the essential
righteousness or divine nature of Christ. His party was afterwards
led by his son-in-law Johann Funck, but disappeared
after the latter’s execution for high treason in 1566. Osiander’s
son Lukas (1534–1604), and grandsons Andreas (1562–1617)
and Lukas (1571–1638), were well-known theologians.
Osiander, besides a number of controversial writings, published a corrected edition of the Vulgate, with notes, in 1522, and a Harmony of the Gospels—the first work of its kind—in 1537. The best-known work of his son Lukas was an Epitome of the Magdeburg Centuries. See the Life by W. Möller (Elberfeld, 1870).
OSIER (through Fr. from Late Lat. osaria, auxaria, a bundle of osier or willow twigs), the common term under which are included the various species, varieties and hybrids of the genus Salix, used in the manufacture of baskets. The chief species in cultivation are: Salix viminalis (the common osier) and S. triandra, S. amygdalina, S. purpurea and S. fragilis, which botanically are willows and not osiers. The first named with
some forty of its varieties, formed until recent times the staple
basket-making material in England. It is an abundant cropper,
sometimes attaining on low-lying soils 13 ft. in height. Full-topped
and smooth, it is by reason of its pithy nature mainly
cultivated for coarse work and is generally used as brown stuff.
Some harder varieties, known as stone osiers and raised on drier
upland soils, are peeled and used for fine work. S. fragilis,
with some half-score varieties, is almost exclusively used by
market gardeners for bunching greens, turnips and other produce.
Owing to the increased demand for finer work much attention
has been given (see Basket) in recent years to the cultivation of
the more ligneous and tougher species, S. triandra, S. purpurea
and S. amygdalina with their many varieties and hybrids.
It is commonly supposed that osiers or willows will prove remunerative and flourish with little attention on any poor, wet, marshy soil. This is, however, not the case. No crop responds more readily to careful husbandry and skilful cultivation. For the successful raising of the finer sorts of willows good, well-drained, loamy upland soil is desirable, which before planting should be deeply trenched and cleared of weeds. J. A. Krabe of Prummern near Aachen, the most scientific and practical of German cultivators, the results of whose experiments have been published in his admirable Lehrbuch der rationellen Weidenkultur (Aix-la-Chapelle, 1886, et seq.) went so far as to assert that willows prefer a dry to a wet soil. T. Selby of Otford, Kent, in a report dated the 18th of November 1800 (see Jour. Soc. Arts, 1801, xix., 75) stated that all kinds of willows invariably throve best on the driest spots of some wet land planted by him. Krabe found that in addition to loam, willows did well on dry ferrugineous, sandy ground with a good top soil of about 6 in. in depth; on poor loamy clay, and even on peaty moors.
At any time, from late winter to early spring, the ground may be planted with “sets,” i.e. cuttings of about 9 to 16 in. in length, taken from clean, well-ripened rods. These are firmly set to within 3 to 6 in. of the top in rows, 16 to 20 in. apart and spaced at intervals of 8 to 12 in. Yearling sets are largely planted, but the experiments of Krabe tend to prove, and the practice of the best Midland and West of England growers confirms, the superior productiveness of sets cut from two yearling rods. W. P. Ellmore of Leicester, the most experienced and enterprising of Midland cultivators, preferred to plant his sets in squares, 18 to 20 in. apart, in order to admit of the use of the horse hoe in both directions and a freer play of sun and air. Great care should be exercised in planting lest the bark be fractured, loosened or removed from the wood. The ground should be kept free of weeds by frequent hoeing and, if not subject to periodical alluvial floods, manured yearly. The coarser S. viminalis may be raised on lowland soil if not water-logged or marshy, but the same attention to trenching and weeding is imperative. Approved varieties of willows cost from 5s. to 17s. 6d. per 1000 sets. The more valuable kinds are known as: New kind, Black mauls, Spaniards, Glibskins, Long-bud, Long-skin, Lancashire red-bud, French, Italians, Pomeranians and Councillors and scores of other local names. A hybrid of S. viminalis and S. triandra, known as Black-top and introduced by Ellmore has been found to produce the heaviest crops on the best Leicestershire grounds.
Cutting and binding take place in early winter after the fall of the leaf, the crop being known as green whole stuff. The coarser kinds are sorted, cured (dried in the sun and wind) and stacked ready for market. These are known as brown rods. The finer kinds, after the more shrubby or ill-grown rods, termed Ragged, have been rejected, are peeled or buffed. Two methods of stripping are chiefly practised: from the heads (sets) and from the pit. By the former method the rods are left on the ground until spring advances, when a rapid growth of the cork cambium begins. They are then cut direct from the head and the bark is easily removed by drawing the rods through a bifurcated hand-brake of smooth, well-rounded steel, framed in wood. Improved brakes worked by a treadle strip two rods at a time. For the smaller sizes, rubber brakes are sometimes used and, for the very smallest, the fingers either bare or protected by linen bands. This method ensures a clean-butted unfractured rod, but unless great judgment is exercised in selecting the proper time for cutting, the rods will remain double-skinned and the head may bleed. By the “pit” process the green rods are stood upright in shallow pits of water at a depth of about 6 to 9 in. until the sap rises and growth begins, when they are ready for the brake. The defects of this method are that the tops are liable to split in the brake and the butts to remain foul. A third, known as the “pie” system enables the grower to bridge over the interval, and to keep his hands employed, between the end of the “head” and the
