battle of Bosworth; then followed for him a series of ecclesiastical preferments, the most important of which was to the deanery of York. He was sent on several weighty embassies, including one to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to arrange the marriage between Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon, and another to France in 1492, when he signed the treaty of Etaples. In 1495 he became dean of Windsor, and he died on the 24th of March 1522. Urswick was very friendly with Erasmus and with Sir Thomas More. He did some building at Windsor, and one of the chapels in St George's chapel there is still called the Urswick chapel. Urswick's kinsman, Sir Thomas Urswick, was a Yorkist partisan, who was recorder of London and chief baron of the exchequer.
See Urswick, Records of the Family of Urwick or Urswick (1893).
URTICACEAE (nettle family), in botany, an order of Dicotyledons belonging to the series Urticiflorae, which includes
also Ulmaceae (elm family), Moraceae (mulberry, fig, &c.)
and Cannabinaceae (hemp and hop). It contains 41 genera,
with about 500 species, mainly tropical, though several species
such as the common stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) are widely
distributed and occur in large numbers in temperate climates.
Two genera are represented in the British Isles, Urtica (see
Nettle) and Parietaria (pellitory, q.v.).
The plants are generally herbs or somewhat shrubby, rarely, as
in some tropical genera, forming a bush or tree. The simple,
often serrated, leaves have sometimes an alternate sometimes an
opposite arrangement and are usually stipulate—exstipulate in
Parietaria. The position of the stipules varies in different genera;
thus in Urtica they are lateral and distinct from the leaf-stalk, in
other cases they are attached on the base of the leaf-stalk or stand
in the leaf-axil when they are more or less united. Stinging hairs
often occur on the stem and leaves (fig. 1). The bast-fibres of the
From Strasburger's Lehrbuch der Botanik, by permission of Gustav Fischer.
Fig. 1.—Stinging Hair of Urtica dioica, with a portion of the epidermis, and, to the right, a small bristle (⨉60).
Fig. 2.—Male Flower of the Nettle (Urtica). The four sepals are arranged symmetrically, an outer median and an inner lateral pair. A stamen is opposite each sepal, and in the centre of the flower is the rudiment of a pistil.
From Vines’s Students’ Text-Book of Botany, by permission of Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
Fig. 3.—A staminal (♂), B carpellary (♁) flower of the Nettle. p, perianth; a, Stamen; n′, rudimentary ovary of the ♁ flower; ap, outer, ip, inner, whorl of the perianth; n, stigma of the ♂ flower (enlarged).
stem are generally long and firmly attached end to end, and hence
of great value for textile use. Thus in ramie (q.v., Boehmeria nivea)
a single fibre may reach nearly 9 in. in length, and in stinging nettle
as much as 3 in. The small inconspicuous regular flowers (figs. 3
and 4) are arranged in definite (cymose) inflorescence's often crowded
into head-like clusters. 'They are uni sexual and monoecious or
dioecious. The four or five green perianth leaves (or sepals) are
free or more or less united; the male flowers (fig. 2) contain as
many stamens, opposite the sepals, which bend inwards in the bud
Fig. 4.—Urtica urens (after Curtis, Flora Londinensis). 1, male flower; 2, female flower in fruiting stage-the dry compressed fruit 3 escaping from the persistent perianth; 4,fruit cut open, revealing the seed within the large straight embryo e. 1, 2, 3, enlarged.
stage, but when mature spring backwards and outwards, the
anther at the same time exploding and scattering the pollen.
The flowers are thus adapted for wind-pollination. The female
flower contains one carpel bearing one style with a brush-like
stigma and containing a single erect ovule. The fruit is dry and
one-seeded; it is often enclosed within the persistent perianth.
The straight embryo is surrounded by a rich oily endosperm.
URUGUAY (officially the Oriental Republic of the Uruguay, and long locally called the Banda Oriental, meaning the land on the eastern side of the river Uruguay, from which the country takes its name), the smallest independent state in South America. It runs conterminous with the southern border of Brazil, and lies between 30° and 35° S. and between 53° 25′ and 57° 42′ W. (for map, see Argentina). It has a seaboard on the Atlantic Ocean of 120 m., a shore-line to the south on the Rio de la Plata of 235 m., and one of 270 In. along the Uruguay on the west. The boundaries separating it from Rio Grande do Sul, a province of Brazil, are Lake Mirim, the rivers Chuy, Jaguarão and Quarahy, and a cuchilla or low range of hills called Santa Ana. The extent of the northern frontier is 450 m. The southern half of the country is mostly undulating grass land, well watered by streams and springs. The northern section is more broken and rugged; barren ridges and low rocky mountain-ranges, interspersed with fertile valleys, being its characteristic features. There is no forest, timber of any size being found only in the valleys near running water. Uruguay is intersected nearly from west to north-east by the river Negro and its affluent the Yi. The Uruguay is navigable all the year by steamers from the island
