OVIEDO 



OVULE 



669 



in 17 A.D. This period constitutes the third of his 

 poetic activity in which his genius, bereft of its 

 gaiety, responds to his invocation only in the minor 

 notes of melancholy. Already on his last journey 

 from Rome he began the elegies which he pub- 

 lished in five books, by name the Tristia. Similar 

 in tone and theme are the four books of the 

 Epistohe ex Ponto, differing only in this from the 

 Tristia that they are addressed to a particular 

 friend in Rome a step he did not venture on in 

 the composition of the latter. His Ibis, written in 

 imitation of Callimachus, in which he invokes 

 destruction on an enemy unknown, and his Hali- 

 eittica, a poem, extant only in fragments, on the 

 fish of the Euxine, complete the list of his remains. 



In mastery of metrical form and in creative 

 fecundity Ovid outsoars all the poets of the 

 Augustan cycle. From his youth up he was so 

 favourably circumstanced that he passed quickly 

 through the successive stages of his development 

 till he reached the highest perfection of which 

 he was capable. The struggle between the new 

 poetry and the old had issued in the subjection of 

 the latter, and he entered immediately on the 

 inheritance prepared for him by others. This he 

 carried to its culmination, in finish as in form. 

 He stands at the limit of the Augustan without 

 by a hair's breadth encroaching on the Silver 

 age. The poetic circle in which he lived, the beau 

 monde of Rome in which he moved, the favour of 

 the court in which he basked, all contributed 

 to mould his genius and stamp its products 

 with the hall-mark of 'society.' In that world 

 he hits always been a favourite, contriving as he 

 did to combine learning with lightness of touch, 

 force with finish, variety with order. He knew 

 the vie intime of the contentporary world, in 

 its real as in its conventional forms, and he could 

 sweep the collective chords of human passion, from 

 love to hate, with the assured boldness of a master. 

 He is the most voluminous of Latin poets, and in 

 this characteristic may be found the cause of his 

 chief defects his self 1 - repetition, his too frequent 

 echoings of former felicities, the monotony of his 

 cadences, particularly in the elegiac distich. In 

 this metre, where the thought rarely overflows the 

 two line limit, he has developed a sententiousness 

 in which Quintilian traces his forensic education. 



There are old translations of the Mctamorphoneg by 

 Golding (In65>, and Garth (qv. ), and others; and an 

 admirable one by Kinz ( 1871 ). Complete editions of the 

 text are by Merkel ( 185:i I and Riese (1872-74); of the 

 Ueroviet, by A. Palmer (1874), Ilin, by Robinwm Ellis 

 (1882), and TrMia, by S. G. Owen (1899). See the 

 judgments of Bernhardy. Teuffel, and Ribbeck ; also 

 Zingerle's Ooitl urul gfin Vtrhdltnis* zu den Voryanyern 

 ( 3 vols. 1869-71 ), and Rev. A. Church's study in ' Ancient 

 Classics for English Reader.*' ( 1876). 



Oviedo, the capital of the Spanish province of 

 Asturias (q.v.), 20 miles by rail SSW. of Gijon on 

 the Bay of Biscay ami 87 N. by W. of Leon. 

 Standing in a plain between the rivers Nalon and 

 Nora, and sheltered to the north by a hill 470 feet 

 high, it has four main streets, branching off from a 

 central square, and possesses a cathedral, a univer- 

 sity (1604), a theatre, a botanic garden, a line 

 aqueduct, &c. The cruciform cathedral, dating 

 from 781, but mainly rebuilt lietween 1388 ami 

 1528, is a noble specimen of richly ornamented 

 (iothu;, with a tower 284- feet high, the remains of 

 fourteen early kings and queens of Asturias, many 

 much-prized relics, and a fine old library. In or 

 near the city there are several ancient Romanesque 

 churches. Linens, woollens, hats, and firearms are 

 manufactured ; whilst in the neighliourhood are 

 many ironworks, and at Prutia (12 miles W.) 

 a great government foundry, producing cannon, 

 rifles, bayonets, &c. Pop. ( 1887) 42,716. Oviedo, 

 the ancient Asturum Lucus or Oeetum, was known 



during the middle ages as Civitas Ejnscoporum, 

 because many of the Spanish prelates, dispossessed 

 of their sees by the Moors, took refuge nere. It 

 was twice plundered by the French of its ecclesias- 

 tical and other treasures, in 1809 and 1810. 



Oviedo y Valdes, GONZALO FERNANDEZ DE, 

 born at Madrid in 1478, was sent by Ferdinand 

 to St Domingo, in the West Indies, in 1514, as 

 inspector-general of the gold-mines, and subse- 

 quently was appointed historiographer of the 

 Indies. After his return to Spain he published a 

 history thereof (1526). Of a second edition (21 

 vols. 1535) an English translation was made by 

 Eden in 1555 ; a complete edition of the entire work 

 appeared at Madrid in 4 vols. 1851-55. Oviedo 

 died at Valladolid in 1557. He likewise wrote 

 Las Qitincnaffemts, a valuable gossiping account of 

 the principal personages of Spain in his time. 



Oviparous is an objectionable term applied to 

 the great majority of female animals, whose eggs 

 are first laid and then hatched. Ovovivipurmts 

 is a corresponding term applied to animals in 

 which the eggs are hatched within the l>ody of the 

 mother, and where there is no nutritive connection 

 ln'tween parent and offspring. Some reptiles, am- 

 phibians, fishes, &c. which do not lay their eggs 

 illustrate this mode of parturition. In regard to 

 the terms oviparous and ovoviviparous it should be 

 noted (1) that all animals are in one sense vivi- 

 parous, for whatever is born is normally alive; 

 (2) that 'viviparous' animal* par excellence viz. 

 the placental mammals differ from ' ovoviviparous ' 

 animals, such as the brown li/.ard (Zooiuni vivi- 

 jxtra), the blindworm, the black salamander (Sala- 

 mandra ati-u), one of. the blennies (Zoarces vivi- 

 I'iii-Ns), and many invertebrates which bring forth 

 already hatched young, not so much in the manner 

 of birth as in the relation between mother and 

 offspring before birth ; ( 3 ) that oviparous and vivipar- 

 ous parturition often occur in thesameclass witness 

 the oviparous Monotremes among mammals; (4) 

 that oviparous and ovoviviparous parturition often 

 occur in nearly related forms among reptiles, fishes, 

 amphibians, and invertebrate that they even 

 occur in the same animal : e.g. the grass-snake 

 (Tro/rit/onotiis nutrix), which usually lays eggs, 

 but may in artificial conditions bear already 

 hatched young ; or some aphides in which the 

 parthenogenetic generations are usually born as 

 young insects, while the fertilised eggs are laid 

 as such. In short, the distinctions are for the 

 most part differences of degree. 



Ovoca. See AVOCA. 



Ovule, a little egg ; in Botany the rudimentary 

 seed. It needs to be fertilised by the pollen tube 

 before it can develop anil grow into the seed. The 

 ovule has a complicated structure which can only 

 be properly understood by comparing it with the 

 corresponding parts of the lower plants known as 

 the Vascular Cryptogams. In the common Ferns 

 (q.v.), when a spore is sown a small green plant, the 

 prothallium, grows from it ; this bears male and 

 female organs called antheridia and archegonia. 

 A male sperm from an antheridium fertilises the 

 egg-cell of an archegonium, and a plant which we 

 call the fern grows from it. In other plants called 

 heterosporous ferns, because the differentiation into 

 sexes has been carried further back in the life- 

 history of the plant, and the spores are of two 

 kinds, male and female, the female prothallium 

 grows inside the apore-case, bursting it, but not 

 leaving it. In Conifers the prothallium is still 

 more reduced, is surrounded by a mass of tissue 

 called the nucellus, and also by an 'integument.' 

 In ordinary flowering plants the history of the 

 ovule is as follows : On a special leaf called a cariiel 

 a mass of tissue grows called the nucellus ; this 



