on the low forest underwood and the swamp-vegetation. The small size of the horns of the males is probably also an adaptation to life in thick underwood. In Dr David’s opinion an okapi in its native forest could not be seen at a distance of more than twenty or twenty-five paces. At distances greater than this it is impossible to see anything clearly in these equatorial forests, and it is very difficult to do so even at this short distance. This suggests that the colouring of the okapi is of purely protective type.
By the Arabianized emancipated slaves of the Albert Edward district the okapi is known as the kenge, ó-à-pi being the Pigmies’ name for the creature. Dr David adds that Junker may undoubtedly claim to be the discoverer of the okapi, for, as stated on p. 299 of the third volume of the original German edition of his Travels, he saw in 1878 or 1879 in the Nepo district a portion of the skin with the characteristic black and white stripes. Junker, by whom it was mistaken for a large water-chevrotain or zebra-antelope, states that to the natives of the Nepo district the okapi is known as the makapé. (R. L.*)
OKEHAMPTON, a market town and municipal borough in the Tavistock parliamentary division of Devonshire, England, on the east and west Okement rivers, 22 m. W. by N. of Exeter by the London & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 2569. The church of All Saints has a fine Perpendicular tower, left uninjured when the nave and chancel were burned down in 1842. Glass is made from granulite found in the Meldon Valley, 3 m. distant. Both branches of the river abound in small trout. Okehampton Castle, one of the most picturesque ruins in Devon, probably dates from the 15th century, though its keep may be late Norman. It was dismantled under Henry VIII., but considerable portions remain of the chapel, banqueting hall and herald’s tower. Immediately opposite are the traces of a supposed British camp, and of the Roman road from Exeter to Cornwall. The custom of tolling the curfew still prevails in Okehampton. The town is, governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 503 acres.
Okehampton (Oakmanton) was bestowed by William the Conqueror on Baldwin de Brioniis, and became the caput of the barony of Okehampton. At the time of the Domesday Survey of 1086 it already ranked as a borough, with a castle, a market paying 4 shillings, and four burgesses. In the 18th century the manor passed by marriage to the Courtenays, afterwards earls of Devon, and Robert de Courtenay in 1220 gave the king a palfrey to hold an annual fair at his manor of Okehampton, on the vigil and feast day of St Thomas the Apostle. In the reign of Henry III. the inhabitants received a charter (undated) from the earl of Devon, confirming their rights “in woods and in uplands, in ways and in paths, in common of pastures, in waters and in mills. They were to be free from all toll and to elect yearly a portreeve and a beadle.” A further grant of privileges was bestowed in 1292 by the earl of Devon, but no charter of incorporation was granted until that from James I. in 1623, and the confirmation of this by Charles II. in 1684 continued to be the governing charter, the corporation consisting of a mayor, seven principal burgesses and eight assistant burgesses, until the Municipal Corporations Act of 1882. On a petition from the inhabitants the town was reincorporated by a new charter in 1885. Okehampton returned two members to parliament in 1300, and again in 1312 and 1313, after which there was an intermission till 1640, from which date two members were returned regularly until by the Reform Act of 1832 the borough was disfranchised.
See Victoria County History, Devonshire; W. B. Bridges, History of Okehampton (1889).
OKEN, LORENZ (1779–1851), German naturalist, was born at Bohlsbach, Swabia, on the 1st of August 1779. His real name was Lorenz Ockenfuss, and under that name he was entered at the natural history and medical classes in the university of Würzburg, whence he proceeded to that of Göttingen, where he became a privat-docent, and abridged his name to Oken. As Lorenz Oken he published in 1802 his small work entitled Grundriss der Naturphilosophie, der Theorie der Sinne, und der darauf gegründeten Classification der Thiere, the first of the series of works which placed him at the head of the “natur-philosophie” or physio-philosophical school of Germany. In it he extended to physical science the philosophical principles which Kant had applied to mental and moral science. Oken had, however, in this application been preceded by J. G. Fichte, who, acknowledging that the materials for a universal science had been discovered by Kant, declared that nothing more was needed than a systematic co-ordination of these materials; and this task Fichte undertook in his famous Doctrine of Science (Wissenschaftslehre), the aim of which was to construct a priori all knowledge. In this attempt, however, Fichte did little more than indicate the path; it was reserved for F. W. J. von Schelling fairly to enter upon it, and for Oken, following him, to explore its mazes yet further, and to produce a systematic plan of the country so surveyed.
In the Grundriss der Naturphilosophie of 1802 Oken sketched the outlines of the scheme he afterwards devoted himself to perfect. The position which he advanced in that remarkable work, and to which he ever after professed adherence, is that “the animal classes are virtually nothing else than a representation of the sense-organs, and that they must be arranged in accordance with them.” Agreeably with this idea, Oken contended that there are only five animal classes: (1) the Dermatozoa, or invertebrates; (2) the Glossozoa, or Fishes, as being those animals in which a true tongue makes, for the first time, its appearance; (3) the Rhinozoa, or Reptiles, wherein the nose opens for the first time into the mouth and inhales air; (4) the Otozoa, or Birds, in which the ear for the first time opens externally; and (5) Ophthalmozoa, or Mammals, in which all the organs of sense are present and complete, the eyes being movable and covered with two lids.
In 1805 Oken made another characteristic advance in the application of the a priori principle, by a book on generation (Die Zeugung), wherein he maintained the proposition that “all organic beings originate from and consist of vesicles or cells. These vesicles, when singly detached and regarded in their original process of production, are the infusorial mass or protoplasma (urschleim) whence all larger organisms fashion themselves or are evolved. Their production is therefore nothing else than a regular agglomeration of Infusoria—not, of course, of species already elaborated or perfect, but of mucous vesicles or points in general, which first form themselves by their union or combination into particular species.”
One year after the production of this remarkable treatise, Oken advanced another step in the development of his system, and in a volume published in 1806, in which D. G. Kieser (1779–1862) assisted him, entitled Beiträge zur vergleichenden Zoologie, Anatomie, und Physiologie, he demonstrated that the intestines originate from the umbilical vesicle, and that this corresponds to the vitellus or yolk-bag. Caspar Friedrich Wolff had previously proved this fact in the chick (Theoria Generationis, 1774), but he did not see its application as evidence of a general law. Oken showed the importance of the discovery as an illustration of his system. In the same work Oken described and recalled attention to the corpora Wolffiana, or “primordial kidneys.”
The reputation of the young privat-docent of Göttingen had meanwhile reached the ear of Goethe, and in 1807 Oken was invited to fill the office of professor extraordinarius of the medical sciences in the university of Jena. He accepted the call, and selected for the subject of his inaugural discourse his ideas on the “Signification of the Bones of the Skull,” based upon a discovery he had made in the previous year. This famous lecture was delivered in the presence of Goethe, as privy-councillor and rector of the university, and was published in the same year, with the title, Ueber die Bedeutung der Schädelknochen.
With regard to the origin of the idea, Oken narrates in his Isis that, walking one autumn day in 1806 in the Harz forest, he stumbled upon the blanched skull of a deer, picked up the partially dislocated bones, and contemplated them for a while, when the truth flashed across his mind, and he exclaimed, “It
