o 



the fifteenth letter of our 

 alphal>et, is the only letter 

 which cannot be traced to the 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is 

 believed to have been an ideo- 

 graphic picture invented by the 

 Semites to express a sound only 

 found in Semitic languages. 

 This supposition is supported 

 by the correspondence of its Semitic name 'ayt'n, 

 which means an ' eye,' with its oldest form O, which 

 may be regarded as the picture of an eve. The 

 sound of iiijui was a finical breath, resembling the 

 A in huge. The Greeks, who took over the Phoeni- 

 cian alphaliet, having no corresponding sound in 

 their language, u-ed t he sy mliol for the vowels 6, ou, 

 and 6, which they required. In the earliest Greek 

 inscriptions O represents all three sounds. About 

 650 B.C. the symbol was differentiated, the closed 

 form o, called umicron, or 'little o,' being appro- 

 priated for the short 6, while it was opened out at 

 the Imttom, 0, to represent the long o, which was 

 called omega or 'great o.' In the Italic alphabets, 

 which were obtained from Greece before the inven- 

 tion of omega, only the first of these symbols appears, 

 whereas in the Runes, which were obtained at a 

 somewhat later date, the vowel o is expressed 

 bv a synilml derived from omega. In our English 

 alphabet this letter has been more stable than any 

 other. Its form is the same as that found on the 

 Moahite stone, and its value agrees with its value 

 in (Ireek and Latin, while it is the only English 

 vowel which normally possesses the same sound 

 which it has in French, German, and other modern 

 continental languages. The sound is intermediate 

 between a and , and mav arise out of either i.e. 

 it may represent an Anglo-Saxon a or u as well 

 aa an Anglo-Saxon o. In English it has three 

 values : the name-sound heard in note, which is the 

 original sound, the shorter sound heard in not, and 

 the neutral vowel heard in son. In English the 

 name-sound may be represented in ten ways, as in 

 the words pole, goat, toe, yeoman, sow, tew, haut- 

 boy, beau, owe, and though. 



Oahil. one of the Hawaiian Islands, north-west 

 of Hawaii. Area, 600 sq. m. It has two parallel 

 volcanic mountain-chain.-, with many inactive 

 craters. IU valleys and plains are fertile, yield- 

 ing indigo, cotton, sugar, and coffee. Containing 

 Honolulu, the capital, it is the most important 

 island of the group. Pop. ( 1900) 58,604. 



O:i ja ra. the capital of the mountainous Oajaca 

 state, on the south coast of Mexico, lies in the fertile 

 valley of the Atoyac ; altitude, 6060 feet. It lias a 

 large cathedral ( 1729) and educational institutions, 

 and manufactures chocolate, cotton goods, cigars, 

 &c. Pop. (1895)32,641. 



Oak (Qucrriif), a genus of trees and shrubs of 

 tin 1 natural order Cupulifenr, having monnecious 

 flowers, the male in slender catkins or spikes, the 

 female solitary or clustered : the fruit a nut or acorn, 

 oblong, ovoid, or globular, protruding from a woody 

 cap formed by the enlarged scales of the involucre ; 

 the leaves are deciduous or evergreen, alternate, 

 entire, lobed, ordinate. There are about 300 -pe- 



cies, spread over nearly tin- whole northern hemi- 

 sphere, except the extreme north. They arc mure 

 numerous in America than in Europe; a few are 

 found in Asia, none in tropical Africa, in Austiali.'i, 

 or in South America except about the Andes. The 

 common or English oak ( Q. mlntr ), the most widely 

 di-tril>uted of the species, extends all over Euro[>e, 

 except the extreme north, and penetrates into 

 central Asia by way of the Caucasus. In Britain 

 there are two well-marked 'races,' which in their 

 more extreme forms have been darigMtad and 

 described by some authorities as species, while by 

 others they are, anil with better reason, regarded 

 merely as distinct seminal varieties of (J. robur. 



fig. 1. Common Oak ( Quercta robur pedunculate) : 

 a, branch in fruit ; 6, male flower ; c, female flower. 



The form that is most common Q. r. pedunctiJata, 

 is characterised by having stalkless or nearly 

 stalkless leaves, while the acorns are borne on 

 more or less elongated stalks. The other form 

 Q. r. tetsiliflora has these features inveited ; the 

 leaves are stalked and the acorns Malkless. The 

 former is found most plentifully in the south and 

 midland counties of England, the hitter in the 

 west and north, and in Scotland. But though 

 these peculiarities of structure and geographical 

 distribution are more or less true and constant, the 

 two forms are not only found growing together in 

 sill districts, but. the extremes of structural differ- 

 ence arc also linked together by individual trees 

 which exhibit r\ery internieiliute gradation of 

 -Inictiiral disparity. The Durmast Oak (Q. r. 

 .w ,v.w/i/A,r.< pwMMMf] which is most abundant in the 

 New rOre*t| Hampshire, but is also found in com- 

 pany with the others in various parts of the coun- 

 try ."differs only from the stalkless fruited variety 

 in having the leaves more or less downy on tlie 

 under Mile, and ill retaining them longer in winter 

 than either of the others. Prior to the introduc- 

 tion of iron into shipbuilding, the comparative 

 merits of the timber W these several forms of oak 

 were vigorously discussed in both Britain and 

 France, out without any sound conclusion being 

 deduced. So much is the quality of oak timber 



