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OATMEAL 504 OBELISK precation, or as a profane exclamation or ejaculation. Ex officio oath, in old English law, an oath whereby any per- son was obliged to make any presentment of any crime or offense, or to confess or accuse himself or herself of any criminal matter or thing, "whereby he or she might be liable to any censure, penalty, 3r punishment whatsoever. OATMEAL, panic-grass ; a plant of the genus Panicum. Also the meal of the oat deprived of its husk. It is one of the most important and valuable articles of food, containing a greater proportion of proteine compounds than the finest wheaten flour. An analysis of a sample of oatmeal gave 13 per cent, of nitro- genous material, 60-70 per cent, of heat givers, and 3 per cent, of mineral matter. OAXACA. See Oajaca. OB, or OBI, the great river of western Siberia, rising in two branches, the Biya and the Katun (both of which have their origin in the Altai Mountains, within the frontier of the Chinese dominions) and flowing N. W. and N. for 2,300 miles to the great Gulf of Ob in the Arctic Ocean. Its chief tributaries are the Irtish, Tcharysh, Tom, and Tchulym, all navigable. On the banks of the Ob are Barnaul, Tomsk, and Narym. At pres- ent only a few steamers ply on the great water-system of the Ob, which never- theless seems destined to become a great commercial thoroughfare. OBADIAH ("servant of God"), the name of various persons mentioned in the Old Testament. Also the fourth of the minor prophetic books. OBALDIA, JOSE DOMINGO, some- time President of Panama; bom at David, province of Chii'iqui, 1845, son of a former president of Colombia. Ed- ucated at College of Bogota. Elected to Colombian Congress, 1900. A Senator in 1902, he was the only member of the House to favor ratification of the Hay- Herran Treaty, resigned, and was soon appointed Governor of province of Pan- ama. Joined the revolution of 1903, and became second Vice-President of the new Panama Republic. Minister to United States, and member of governing board Pan-American Union, 1906. President of Panama, 1908. Served capably un- til his death in 1910. OBAN, a fashionable watering-place of Argyllshire, Scotland, 84 miles W. N. W. of Stirling, and 136 of Edinburgh. It is the great tourist headquarters of the West Highlands. Objects of inter- est are the picturesque ruins of Dunolly and Dunstaffnage Castles, and a prehis- toric cave-dwelling, discovered in 1890. Pop. (1916) 5,600. OBEID, EL, capital of Kordofan, in the Sudan, 220 miles S. W. of Khartum. It consists of a number of villages, orig- inally separate and inhabited by distinct races, but now joined together into one town. Gum-arabic, ivory, gold, and os- trich feathers are the chief articles of trade. Near this place, in 1883, a jforce of Egyptians under Hicks Pasha, with an English staff, was exterminated by a large army of the Mahdi. OBELISK, in printing and writing, in its Latin sense, a sign like a sharp- pointed spear ( ! ) with which doubtful passages were marked, or references made to notes in the margfin, or at the foot of a page; a dagger. In architecture, a quadrangular, slender stone shaft, with a pyramidal apex. The width of the base is usually about one-tenth of the height, and the pyramidal apex has about one-tenth of the whole length. Obelisks were com- monly formed from a single stone, mostly of granite. Obelisks were erected in pairs, and many still exist on the an- cient sites, while others have been re^ moved and set up elsewhere. The obelisk was the Egyptian symbol of the supreme God. The Arabians called them Pharaoh's needles, and the Egyptian priests the fingers of the sun. The first obelisk is said to have been erected by Rameses, King of Egypt, in the time of the Trojan war; it was 40 cubits high, and employed 20,000 men in building. There are about a dozen Egsrptian obelisks erected in Rome. One was erected by the Emperor Augustus in the Campus Martius, on the pave- ment of which was a horizontal dial that marked the hour, about 14 B. C. Of the obelisks brought to Rome by the em- perors, several have been restored and set up by various Popes. The largest is that from Heliopolis. It is of granite, and now stands before the N. portico of the Church of St. John Lateran, where it was erected in 1588. Its whole height is about 149 feet; without the base, 105 feet. It was removed to Alexandria by Constantine, and to Rome by his son Constantius, and placed in the Circus Maximus. The obelisk at Luxor was presented to the French nation, in 1820, by Mehemet Ali, and was re-erected in Paris in 1833. Its height is 73 feet. The obelisk presented to the English nation was removed to England and set up on the Thames Embankment in London. Of Egyptian obelisks 42 are known, some broken; 12 at Rome; 1, from Luxor, set