Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/84

 74 U G U S drew attention to him ; be was transferred to the regular army in November 1793, and after serving in all the numerous actions on the Belgian frontier he was promoted : general of brigade in June 1794 for his conduct at the battle of Kaiserslautern. He continued to serve with the , greatest distinction on the German frontier under Hoche, j Pichegru, and Moreau, and was repeatedly wounded and J once (in 1795) made prisoner. He was Masse na s right hand all through the great Swiss campaign of 1799 first as a general of division, to which grade he was promoted in April, and then as chief of the staff and was instru mental in winning the battle of Zurich. He was present under Massena at the defence of Genoa, and so distinguished himself at the combat of Monzambano that Napoleon pre sented him with a sword of honour. On the declaration of the empire he was given the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, but was not included in the first creation of marshals. In the same year he received the command of ten battalions of the army of the reserve, which he formed into the famous division of the &quot;grenadiers Oudinot,&quot; and with which he won the battle of Ostrolenka and decided the fate of at least three great battles Austerlitz, Fried- land, and Wagram. A week after the last-named battle he was promoted to the rank of marshal, and he was made Due de Reggio in the following month. He admin istered the government of Holland from 1810 to 1812, and commanded the 2d corps of the grand army in the Russian campaign. He was present at Liitzen and Bautzen, and when holding the independent command of the corps directed to take Berlin was defeated at Gross Beeren. He was then superseded by Ney, but the mischief was too great to be repaired, and Napoleon was utterly defeated at Leipsic. Though superseded, Oudinot was not disgraced, and held an important command throughout the campaign of 1814. On the abdication of Napoleon he rallied to the new Government, and was made a peer by Louis XVIII., and, unlike many of his old comrades, he remained faithful to his new sovereign, and did not desert to his old master in 1815. He died on September 13, 1847. Oudinot s son, Charles Nicolas Victor, second duke of Reggio (1791-1S63), served through the later campaigns of Napoleon from 1809 to 1814, but is chiefly known by his capture of Rome from Garibaldi in 1849. OUGHTRED, WILLIAM (1574-1660), an eminent mathematician, was born at Eton in 1574, and educated j there and at King s College, Cambridge, of which he became fellow. Being admitted to holy orders, he left the uni versity about 1603, and was presented to the rectory of j Aldbury, near Guildford in Surrey ; and about 1628 he i was appointed by the earl of Arundel to instruct his son in mathematics. He corresponded with some of the most eminent scholars of his time on mathematical subjects ; and his house was generally full of pupils from all quarters. It is said that he expired in a sudden transport of joy upon hearing the news of the vote at Westminster for the restora tion of Charles II. He published, among other mathematical works, Claris Mathe- matica, in 1631; A Description of the Double Horizontal Dial, in 1636; and OjnisculaMathematica, in 1676. OUNCE. See MAMMALIA, vol. xv. p. 435. OURO PRETO, a city of Brazil, the chief town of the extensive province of Minas Geraes, lies 170 miles north by west of Rio de Janeiro, in the upper part of the Rio Sao Francisco basin, at a height of 3757 feet above the sea. A steep hill to the north of the peak of Ita- colurni (5740) is broken up by ravines into a number of distinct plateaus ; and it is round these plateaus, generally crowned by a church, that most of the houses of Ouro Preto cluster in irregular and almost independent groups. The streets run up and down hill in such a way as to make riding on horseback hazardous and the use ot carriages impossible. The stream which passes through the town and was formerly the scene of the most exten sive gold washing operations, the Ribeirao de Ouro Preto or Do Carmo, is a subtributary of the Sao Francisco. Besides the churches, the prominent buildings are the pre sident s palace, the town-house, and the prison, all fronting the principal square, the treasury, the theatre (the oldest in Brazil, and restored in 1861-62), and the hospital. The botanical garden, dating from 1825, used to distribute speci mens of different kinds of tea, but is now practically defunct. A public library has been in existence since before 1865. At present the importance of Ouro Preto is almost entirely administrative ; formerly it was one of the great mining centres of Brazil. Its population is about 8000. The first &quot; prospectors,&quot; finding the hills full of a gold ore which, from the presence of silver alloy, turned black on exposure to the air, called them Serra do Ouro Preto, and the village, built in 1701 by Antonio Dias of Taubate, bore at first the same name (meaning Black Gold). In 1711 the settlement was formally constituted as the city of Villa Rica, and for sixty or seventy years it continued to deserve its new title, the population amounting to 25,000 or 30,000, and 12,000 slaves being employed in its gold mines. When in 1720 Minas Geraes was separateofrom the captaincy of S. Paulo, Villa Rica was made the capital of the new province. In 1788 it was the centre of the disastrous attempt made by Tiradentes, the poet Gonzaga, &c., to found an independent republic in Brazil with Sao Joao d el Rei as its capital and Villa Rica as its university town (see GONZAGA) ; and in 1821 it took a vigorous part in the successful revolution. A comarca of Ouro Preto was created in. 1823, and Villa Rica received back its original name. OUSEL, or OUZEL, Anglo-Saxon Osle, equivalent of the German Amsel (a form of the word found in several old English books, and perhaps yet surviving in some parts of the country), apparently the ancient name for what is now more commonly known as the Blackbird, the Turdus merula of ornithologists, but at the present day not often applied to that species, though, as will immediately be seen, used in a compound form for two others. In many parts of Britain the Blackbird is still called the Merle, a name had directly from the French, and abbreviated from the Latin Merula, which has the same meaning. The adult male of this beautiful and well-known species scarcely needs any other description than that of the poet : &quot; The Ouzel-cock, so black of hue With orange-tawny bill.&quot; Midsummer Night s Dream, act iii. sc. 1. But the female is of an uniform umber- brown above, has the chin, throat, and upper part of the breast orange- brown, with a few dark streaks, and the rest of the plumage beneath of a hair-brown. The young of both sexes resemble the mother. The Blackbird is found in every country of Europe, even breeding though rarely beyond the arctic circle, and in eastern Asia, as well as in Barbary and the Atlantic islands. Resident in Britain as a species, its numbers yet receive considerable accession of passing visitors in autumn, and in most parts of its range it is very migratory. The song of the cock has a peculiarly liquid tone, which makes it much admired, but it is rather too discontinuous to rank the bird very high as a musician. The species is very prolific, having sometimes as many as four broods in the course of the spring and summer. The nest, generally placed in a thick bush, is made of coarse roots or grass, strongly put together with earth, and is lined with fine grass. Herein are laid from four to six eggs of a light greenish-blue closely mottled with reddish-brown. Generally vermivorous, the Blackbird will, when pressed for food, eat grains and seeds, while berries and fruits in their season are eagerly sought by it, thus earning the enmity of gardeners. More or less allied to and resembling the Blackbird are many other species which inhabit most parts of the world, excepting the Ethiopian Region, New Zealand and Australia proper, and