See Friederici and Stieve, Geschichte der Stadt Osnabrück (Osnabrück, 1816–1826); Wurm, Osnabrück, seine Geschichte seine Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler (Osnabrück, 1906); and Hoffmeyer, Geschichte der Stadt und des Regierungsbezirks Osnabrück (Osnabrück, 1904). See also the Osnabrücker Geschichtsquellen (Osnabrück, 1891 fol.); the Osnabrücker Urkundenbuch, edited by F. Philippi and M. Bär (Osnabrück, 1892–1902); and the publications of the Verein für Geschichte und Landeskunde von Osnabrück (Osnabrück, 1882 fol.). For the history of the bishopric see J. C. Möller, Geschichte der Weihbischöfe von Osnabrück (Lingen, 1887); and C. Stüve, Geschichte des Hochstifts Osnabrück (Jena, 1872–1882).
OSNABURG, the name given to a coarsish type of plain fabric,
originally made from flax yarns. It is now made from either
flax, tow or jute yarns—sometimes flax or tow warp with mixed
or jute weft, and often entirely of jute. The finer and better
qualities form a kind of common sheeting, and the various
kinds may contain from 20 to 36 threads per inch and 10 to 15
picks per inch.
OSORIO, JERONYMO (1506–1580), Portuguese historian, was a native of Lisbon and son of the Ouvidor Geral of India. In 1519 his mother sent him to Salamanca to study civil law, and in 1525 he went on to Paris to study philosophy, and there became intimate with Peter Fabre, one of the founders of the Society of Jesus. Returning to Portugal, Osorio next proceeded for theology to Bologna, where he made such a name that King John III. invited him in 1536–1537 to lecture on scripture in the reorganized university of Coimbra. He returned to Lisbon in 1540, and acted as secretary to Prince Luiz, and as tutor to his son, the prior of Crato, obtaining also two benefices in the diocese of Vizeu. In 1542 he printed in Lisbon his treatise De nobilitate. After the death of Prince Luiz in 1553, he withdrew from court to his churches. He was named archdeacon of Evora in 1560, and much against his will became bishop of Silves in 1564. The Cardinal Prince Henry, who had bestowed these honours, desired to employ him at Lisbon in state business when King Sebastian took up the reins of power in 1568, but Osorio excused himself on the ground of his pastoral duties, though he showed his zeal for the commonwealth by writing two letters, one in which he dissuaded the king from going to Africa, the other sent during the latter’s first expedition there (1574), in which he called on him to return to his kingdom. Sebastian looked with disfavour on opponents of his African adventure, and Osorio found it prudent to leave Portugal for Parma and Rome on the pretext of a visit ad limina. His scruples regarding residence, and the appeals of the king and the Cardinal Prince, prevented him enjoying for long the hospitality of Pope Gregory XIII., and he returned to his diocese and died at Tavira on the 20th of August 1580. An exemplary prelate, a learned scholar and an able critic, Osorio gained a European reputation by writing in Latin, then the lingua franca of the studious throughout Christendom, and the perfection of his prose style caused him to be named by contemporaries “the Portuguese Cicero.” His well-stocked library was carried off from Faro when the earl of Essex captured the town in 1596, and many of the books were bestowed on the Bodleian at Oxford.
His principal works written in Latin include: (1) De gloria et nobilitate civile et christiana, an English version of which by W. Blandie appeared in London in 1576. (2) De justitia. (3) De regis institutione et disciplina. (4) De vera sapientia. (5) De rebus Emmanuelis (1586), a history of the reign of King Emanuel which is little more than a translation of the chronicle on the same subject by Damião de Goes. Osorio’s book was turned into Portuguese by F. M. do Nascimento (q.v.), into French by J. Crispin (2 vols., Geneva, 1610), and an English paraphrase in 2 vols. by J. Gibbs came out in London in 1752. His Opera omnia were published by his nephew (4 vols., Rome, 1592). Two of his polemical treatises have been translated into English, his Epistle to Elizabeth Quene of England by R. Shacklock (Antwerp, 1565), and his Confutation of M. W. Haddon by J. Fen (Louvain, 1568). His Portuguese epistles, including the two before mentioned, were printed in Lisbon in two editions in 1818 and 1819, and in Paris in 1859. For his biography see Obras de D. F. A. Lobo, bishop of Vizeu, i. 293-301 (Lisbon, 1848). (E. Pr.)
OSPREY, or Ospray, a word said to be corrupted from
“Ossifrage,” Lat. ossifraga, bone-breaker. The Ossifraga of
Pliny (H.N. x. 3) and some other classical writers seems to have
been the Lämmergeyer (q.v.); but the name, not inapplicable
in that case, has been transferred to another bird which is no
breaker of bones, save incidentally those of the fishes it devours.[1]
The osprey is a rapacious bird, of middling size and of conspicuously-marked
plumage, the white of its lower parts, and often of
its head, contrasting sharply with the dark brown of the back and
most of its upper parts when the bird is seen on the wing. It is
the Falco haliaetus of Linnaeus, but was, in 1810, established by
J. C. Savigny (Ois. de l’Égypte, p. 35) as the type of a new genus
Pandion. It is closely related to the family Falconidae, but is
the representative of a separate family, Pandionidae. Pandion
differs from the Falconidae not only pterylologically, as observed
by C. L. Nitzsch, but also osteologically, as pointed out by
A. Milne-Edwards (Ois. foss. France, ii. pp. 413, 419). In some
of the characters in which it differs structurally from the
Falconidae, it agrees with certain of the owls; but the most
important parts of its internal structure, as well as of its pterylosis,
forbid a belief that there is any near alliance of the two groups.
The special characters of the family are the presence of a reversible
outer toe, the absence of an aftershaft and the feathering of
the tibiae.
The osprey is one of the most cosmopolitan birds-of-prey. From Alaska to Brazil, from Lapland to Natal, from Japan to Tasmania, and in some of the islands of the Pacific, it occurs as a winter-visitant or as a resident. Though migratory in Europe at least, it is generally independent of climate. It breeds equally on the half-thawed shores of Hudson’s Bay and on the cays of Honduras, in the dense forests of Finland and on the barren rocks of the Red Sea, in Kamchatka and in West Australia. Among the countries it does not frequent are Iceland and New Zealand. Where, through abundance of food, it is numerous—as in former days was the case in the eastern part of the United States—the nests of the fish-hawk (to use its American name) may be placed on trees to the number of three hundred close together. Where food is scarcer and the species accordingly less plentiful, a single pair will occupy an isolated rock, and jealously expel all intruders of their kind, as happens in Scotland.[2] Few birds lay eggs so beautiful or so rich in colouring: their white or pale ground is spotted, blotched or marbled with almost every shade of purple, orange and red—passing from the most delicate lilac, buff and peach-blossom, through violet, chestnut and crimson, to a nearly absolute black. The fierceness with which ospreys defend their eggs and young, in addition to the dangerous situation not infrequently chosen for the eyry, make the task of robbing the nests difficult.
The term “osprey,” applied to the nuptial plumes of the egrets in the feather trade, is derived from the French esprit; it has nothing to do with the osprey bird, and its use has been supposed to be due to a confusion with “spray.” (A. N.)
OSROENE, or Osrhoene, a district of north-western Mesopotamia,
in the hill country on the upper Bilechas (Belichus; mod.
Nahr Belik, Bilikh), the tributary of the Euphrates, with its
capital at Edessa (q.v.), founded by Seleucus I. About 130 B.C.
Edessa was occupied by a nomadic Arabic tribe, the Orrhoei (Plin.
v. 85; vi. 25, 117, 129), who founded a small state ruled by their
chieftains with the title of kings. After them the district was
called Orrhoene (thus in the inscriptions, in Pliny and Dio
Cassius), which occasionally has been changed into Osroene, in
assimilation to the Parthian name Osroes or Chosroes (Khosrau).
The founder of the dynasty is therefore called Osroes by Procop.
Bell Pers. i. 17; but Orhāi or Urhāi, son of Hewyā (i.e. “the
- ↑ Another supposed old form of the name is “Orfraie”; but that is said by M. Rolland (Faune popul. France, ii. p. 9, note), quoting M. Suchier (Zeitschr. röm. Philol. i. p. 432), to arise from a mingling of two wholly different sources; (1) Oripelargus, Oriperagus, Orprais and (2) Ossifraga. “Orfraie” again is occasionally interchanged with Effraie (which, through such dialectical forms as Fresaie, Fressaia, is said to come from the Latin praesaga), the ordinary French name for the barn-owl, Aluco flammeus (see Owl). According to Skeat’s Dictionary (i. p. 408), “Asprey” is the oldest English form; but “Osprey” is given by Cotgrave, and is found as early as the 15th century.
- ↑ Two good examples of the different localities chosen by this bird for its nest are illustrated in Ootheca Wolleyana, pls. B. & H.
