Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/726

 712 ORSINI ORTOLAN the family is still extant. Some of its early members became counts of Nola and dukes of Gravina in the 15th century. Pietro Fran- cesco gave up his duchy to his brother Dome- nico, entered the church, and in 1724 became pope under the name of Benedict XIII. The family still hold the highest rank among Ital- ian nobles. Prince Domenico Orsini, duke of Gravina, born Nov. 23, 1790, died in Rome, April 18, 1874. He was a lieutenant general, and bore the honorary appellations of assistant prince of the holy see and senator of Rome. He married, Feb. 6, 1823, Maria Luisa, daugh- ter of the celebrated banker Torlonia, duke of Bracciano, who bore him three daughters and one son, Filippo, present duke of Roccagorsa. The seat of the family is still at Rome, but their usual residence until the revolution of 1860 was at Naples in the Gravina palace. ORSINI, Felice, an Italian revolutionist, born in Meldola, near Forli, in 1819, executed in Paris, March 13, 1858. He early engaged with his father in political plots, and when scarcely 25 years of age was sentenced to penal labor for life. Restored to liberty in 1846, he par- ticipated in various revolutionary movements. After the suppression of the revolution of 1848-'9 he lived for some years in England, and was employed in several revolutionary mis- sions by Mazzini. In 1854 he was arrested in Hermannstadt, Transylvania, and carried to the fortress of Mantua, whence he succeeded in escaping in 1856. Returning to England, he published " The Austrian Dungeons in Italy." In 1857 he went to Paris to assassinate Napo- leon III., whom he considered the main ob- stacle to the progress of revolution. He had three associates named Pieri, Rudio, and Go- mez. On the evening of Jan. 14, 1858, as the emperor and empress were approaching the Grand Opera, three bombs were thrown under their carriage and exploded, killing or wound- ing a large number of persons, though the intended victims escaped. Orsini, Pieri, and Radio were sentenced to death and Gomez to hard labor for life. Through the intercession of the empress Eugenie the life of Rudio was spared. Orsini died with perfect composure, having a few days before his execution ex- horted Napoleon in a letter to liberate Italy. His autobiography, translated by G. Carbonel, was published at Edinburgh in 1857. ORTHOCERAS (Gr. bp66^ straight, and /cpa<r, horn), a fossil tetrabranchiate cephalopod, con- fined to the palaeozoic and early mesozoic pe- riods, in which it played the part now taken by the carnivorous cuttle fish. Though the shell is chambered, with a perforating siphon, as in the living nautilus, it is generally straight ; in some allied genera, as lituites and cyrtoceras, the shell is partially coiled, but never so com- pletely as in the mesozoic ammonites. It is like- ly that the animal could not get entirely within the outer chamber, and that from the buoyancy of the shell it must have remained head down- ward. It attained a very large size, some being more than 10 ft. long, and as large round as a man's body. None have been found in strata later than the triassic age. They are allied to the nautilus on the one hand and to ammo- nites on the other. It is interesting to ob- serve that these Silurian straight tetrabranchi- Orthoceras explorator. 1. Side view of fragment, showing septa. 2. Transverse section of same, showing the siphuncle, 3. ate cephalopods gradually gave place to forms more and more coiled, till the tightly coiled ammonites of the mesozoic age appeared; then, as the type retrograded from this culmi- nating point, the whorls began to unroll again, and such forms as ancyloceras, toxoceras, sca- phites, Tiamites, and baculites marked the ex- tinction of the many-chambered cephalopods, whose principal present form is the nautilus. ORTHOPTERA, an order of insects, with chew- ing jaws, two rather thick and opaque upper wings, slightly overlapping on the back,, and two larger thin, plaited, straight wings under these; they undergo partial transformation, and the larvae and pupae, though wingless, are active. It contains the four groups of runners (earwigs and cockroaches), graspers (mantes or soothsayers), walkers (spectres and walking leaves), and jumpers (crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts). The mantes are carnivorous, and the other groups are more or less destructive to vegetation and household articles. Some of the strangest insect forms occur in this order. ORTOLAN, or Ortolan, a bunting of the ge- nus emberiza (Linn.). The bill is small, acute, and conical, and the palate is furnished with a prominent bony knob ; the wings are moder- ate, the tail lengthened and somewhat forked, with feathers rather lanceolate ; tarsi as long as the middle toe. This well known bird (E. hortulana, Linn.) is about 6J in. long; the head and neck are greenish gray with dusky spots ; the throat, space around eye, and band from bill downward, yellow ; upper parts red- dish bay, each feather black in the middle; below bay red, tipped with gray ; tail blackish ; the female is smaller, with brown spots on the breast and fainter colors. Rare in England, it is very abundant in southern Europe, where great numbers are caught in snares in early autumn, and fattened for the table in constantly lighted