just ground for offence. At this period some more communistic experiments were made, of which the most important were that at Ralahine, in the county of Clare, Ireland, and that at Tytherly in Hampshire. It is admitted that the former (1831) was a remarkable success for three and a half years, till the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, was obliged to sell out. Tytherly, begun in 1839, was an absolute failure. By 1846 the only permanent result of Owen’s agitation, so zealously carried on by public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, was the co-operative movement, and for the time even that seemed to have utterly collapsed. In his later years Owen became a firm believer in spiritualism. He died at his native town on the 17th of November 1858.
Owen left four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, all of whom became citizens of the United States. Robert Dale Owen, the eldest (1801–1877), was for long an able exponent in his adopted country of his father’s doctrines. In 1836–39 and 1851–52 he was a member of the Indiana House of Representatives and in 1844–47 was a Representative in Congress, where he drafted the bill for the founding of the Smithsonian Institution. He was elected a member of the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and was instrumental in securing to widows and married women control of their property, and the adoption of a common free school system. He later succeeded in passing a state law giving greater freedom in divorce. From 1853 to 1858 he was United States minister at Naples. He was a strong believer in spiritualism and was the author of two well-known books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debateable Land Between this World and the Next (1872). Owen’s third son, David Dale Owen (1807–1860), was in 1839 appointed United States geologist, and made extensive surveys of the north-west, which were published by order of Congress. The youngest son, Richard Owen (1810–1890), was a professor of natural science in Nashville University.
Of R. Owen’s numerous works in exposition of his system, the most important are the New View of Society; the Report communicated to the Committee on the Poor Law; the Book of the New Moral World; and Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. See Life of Robert Owen written by himself (London, 1857), and Threading my Way, Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography, by Robert Dale Owen (London, 1874). There are also Lives of Owen by A. J. Booth (London, 1869), W. L. Sargant (London, 1860), Lloyd Jones (London, 1889), F. A. Packard (Philadelphia, 1866) and F. Podmore (London, 1906). See also H. Simon, Robert Owen: sein Leben und seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart (Jena, 1905); E. Dolléans, Robert Owen (Paris, 1905); G. J. Holyoake, History of Co-operation in England (London, 1906); and the article Communism.
OWENS, JOHN (1790–1846), English merchant, was born at Manchester in 1790, the son of a prosperous merchant. Early in life he became a partner in his father's business and was soon noted for his ability as a cotton buyer. His business prospered, and the firm traded with China, India, South America and the United States, dealing in many other commodities. His large fortune he suggested leaving to his friend and partner George Faulkner (1790–1860), already a rich man. But by the latter's advice he bequeathed it to trustees for the foundation of a college (Owens College, Manchester, opened 1851, now part of Victoria University), based upon his own ideas of education. He died in Manchester on the 29th of July 1846. His bequests to friends and charities amounted to some £52,000, while for the college he left £96,654. Among the conditions for its foundation the most important was that which discountenanced any sort of religious test for students or teachers.
OWENSBORO, a city and the county-seat of Daviess county, Kentucky, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, 112 m. by rail W.S.W. of Louisville. Pop. (1890) 9837; (1900) 13,189, of whom 3061 were negroes; (1910 census) 16,011. The city is served by the Illinois Central, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Louisville, Henderson & St Louis railways, and by steamboat lines to river ports. At Owensboro are the Owensboro College for women (nonsect.), opened in 1890, Saint Francis Academy, and a Roman Catholic school for boys. Two miles S. of the city is Hickman Park (20 acres), a pleasure resort, and E. of the city is a summer Chautauqua park. Owensboro is situated in a good agricultural region; coal, iron, building stone, clay, oil, lead and zinc abound in the vicinity; and the city has a notably large trade in tobacco (especially strip tobacco) and has various manufactures. The value of the city's factory products increased from $1,740,128 in 1900 to $4,187,700 in 1905, or 140.6%. The municipality owns and operates its electric-lighting plant and water-works. Owensboro was settled about 1798, and for several years was commonly known as Yellow Banks; in 1816 it was laid out as a town and named Rossborough, and two years later the present name was adopted in honour of Colonel Abraham Owen (1769–1811), a Virginian who removed to Kentucky in 1785, served in several Indian campaigns, and was killed in the battle of Tippecanoe. Owensboro was incorporated as a city in 1866.
OWEN SOUND, a town and port of entry in Ontario, Canada, and capital of Grey county, situated 99 m. N.W. of Toronto, on Georgian Bay. Pop. (1901) 8776. It is the terminus of branches of the Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk railways, and of the Canadian Pacific and other steamship lines plying to ports on Lakes Huron and Superior. Its harbour is one of the best on Lake Huron, and navigable by lake vessels of the largest size. It is a flourishing town, containing shipbuilding yards. and manufactories of mill machinery, agricultural implements, furniture and sewing-machines, flour-mills, saw-mills and large grain elevators.
OWL (O. Eng. Úle, Swed. Uggla, Ger. Eule—all allied to Lat. Ulula, and evidently of imitative origin), the general English name for every nocturnal bird of prey, of which group nearly two hundred species have been recognized. The owls form a very natural assemblage, and one about the limits of which no doubt has for a long while existed. They were formerly placed with the Accipitres or diurnal birds of prey, but are now known to belong to a different group of birds, and are placed as a suborder Striges of Coraciiform birds, their nearest allies being the goatsuckers. The subdivision of the group has always been a fruitful matter of discussion, owing to the great resemblance obtaining among all its members, and the existence of safe characters for its division has only lately been at all generally recognized. By the older naturalists, it is true, owls were divided, as was first done by F. Willughby, into two sections—one in which all the species exhibit tufts of feathers on the head, the so-called “ears” or “horns,” and the second in which the head is not tufted. The artificial and therefore untrustworthy nature of this distinction was shown by Isidore Geoffroy St-Hilaire (Ann. Sc. Naturelles, xxi. 194-203) in 1830. The later work of C. L. Nitzch on pterylography and of A. Milne-Edwards on osteology has led to a division of the family Strigidae into the sub-families Striginae, in which the unnotched sternum has its broad keel joined to the furcula, and Buboninae, in which the sternum is notched posteriorly, the clavicles do not always meet to form a furcula, nor meet the sternum. The Striginae contain the screech- or barn-owls (Strix) and the partly intermediate Heliodilus of Madagascar, whilst all the other genera are now placed with the Buboninae.
Among owls are found birds which vary in length from 5 in.—as Glaucidium cobanense, which is therefore much smaller than a skylark—to more than 2 ft., a size that is attained by many species. Their plumage, none of the feathers of which possesses an aftershaft, is of the softest kind, rendering their flight almost noiseless. But one of the most characteristic features of this whole group is the ruff, consisting of several rows of small and much curved feathers with stiff shafts—originating from a fold of the skin, which begins on each side of the base of the beak, runs above the eyes, and passing downwards round and behind the ears turns forward, and ends at the chin—and serving to support the longer feathers of the “disk” or space immediately around the eyes, which extend over it. A considerable number of species of owls, belonging to various genera, and natives of countries most widely separated, are remarkable for exhibiting two phases of coloration—one in which the prevalent browns have a more or less rusty-red tinge, and the other in which they incline to grey. Another characteristic of
