Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/874

810 O R A O R A Valencia, Cartagena, Malaga, and Gibraltar in Spain, and with the various ports on the Barbary coast. A railroad (261 miles) runs to Algiers and is joined at Perregaux by the line from Arzeu to Saida and the Kreider. which serves the high halfa (esparto) plateaus. There is also a railway to Sidi Bel -Abbes. Previous to the French occupation there was no port at Oran, vessels anchoring at Mers al-Kebir at the north-west entrance of the bay. Mers al-Kebir is now reserved for the navy, and a harbour of 60 acres has been constructed by means of a pier 3280 feet long from Fort de la Moune, and two cross piers. A geographical society was founded at Oran in 1878. If Oran was not already occupied iu the time of the Romans, its foundation must be ascribed to the Andalusian seamen who settled there in the beginning of the 10th century. Rapidly rising into importance, it was taken and retaken, pillaged and rebuilt, by the various conquerors of northern Africa. Almoravides, Almohades, and Merinides succeeded each other, and in the space of half a century the town changed hands nine times. At length, in the latter half of the 15th century, it was subject to the sultans of Tlemcen, and readied the height of its prosperity. Active com merce was maintained with the Venetians, the Pisans, the Genoese, the Marseillese, and the Catalans, who imported the produce of their looms, glass-wares, tin-wares, and iron, and received in return ivory, ostrich feathers, gold-dust, tanned hides, grain, and negro slaves from the interior of Africa. Admirable woollen cloth and splendid arms were locally manufactured. The magnificence of its mosques and other public buildings, the number of its schools, and the extent of its warehouses shed lustre on the city ; but wealth and luxury began to undermine its prosperity, and its ruin was hastened by the piracy to which the Moorish refugees from Spain betook them selves. Animated by the patriotic enthusiasm of Cardinal Ximenes, the Spaniards determined to put a stop to those expeditions which were carrying off their countrymen, destroying their commerce, and even ravaging their country. Mers al-Kebir fell into their hands on 23d October 1505, and Oran in May 1509. The latter victory, obtained with but trifling loss, was stained by the massacre of a third of the Mohammedan population. From 6000 to 8000 prisoners, 60 cannon, engines of war, and a considerable booty from the wealth accumulated by piracy fell into the hands of the conquerors. Car dinal Ximenes introduced the Catholic religion, with its churches, convents, Inquisition, &c., and also restored and extended the forti fications. Oran became the penal settlement of Spain, but neither the convicts nor the noblemen in disgrace who were also banished thither seem to have been under rigorous surveillance ; fetes, games, bull-fights, &c., were held. Meanwhile the Turks had become masters of Algeria, and expelled the Spaniards from all their pos sessions except Oran. The bey, finally settling at Mascara, watched his opportunity ; and at length, in 1708, the weakness of Spain and the treason of the count of Vera Cruz obliged the city to capitu late. The Spaniards recovered possession in 1732, but found the maintenance of the place a burden rather than a benefit, all the neighbouring tribes having ceased to have dealings with the Chris tians. The earthquake of 1790 furnished an excuse for withdrawing their forces. Commencing by twenty-two separate shocks at brief intervals, the oscillations continued from 8th October to 22d November. Houses and fortifications were overthrown, and a third of the garrison and a great number of the inhabitants perished. Famine and sickness had begun to aggravate the situation when the bey of Mascara appeared before the town with 30,000 men. By prodigies of energy the Spanish commander held out till August 1791, when, having made terms with the dey of Algiers, he was allowed to set sail for Spain with his guns and ammunition. The bey Mohammed took possession of Oran in March 1792, and made it his residence instead of Mascara. On the fall of Algiers the bey placed himself under the protection of the conquerors. The French army entered the town 4th January 1831, and took formal pos session on the 17th of August. ORANG. See APE, vol. ii. p. 149. ORANGE (Citrus Aurantium), the plant that produces the familiar fruit of commerce, is closely allied to the citron, lemon, and lime, all the cultivated forms of the genus Citrus being so. nearly related that their specific demarca tion must be regarded as somewhat doubtful and inde finite. Risso and Poiteau have described eighty kinds of orange (including the bergamots), chiefly differing in the external shape, size, and flavour of the fruit ; but all may probably be traced to two well-marked varieties the Sweet or China Orange and the Bitter Orange or Bigarade, though several of these modifications seem to indicate crossing with the lemon or citron, if, indeed, they do not rather point to a more remote common origin from a primi tive citrine type. The bitter orange, by some made a sub-species (C. v^d- gctris), is a rather small tree, rarely exceeding 30 feet in height. The green shoots are furnished with sharp axillary spines, and alternate evergreen oblong leaves, pointed at the extremity, and with the margins entire or very slightly serrated; they are of a bright glossy green tint, the stalks Orange (Citrus Auraiitium], from nature, about one-third natural size, a, diagram of fruit, after Laurssen, Med.-Pharm. Botanik, 1882. distinctly winged and, as in the other species, articulated with the leaf. The fragrant white or pale pinkish flowers appear in the summer months, and the fruit, usually round or spheroidal, does not perfectly ripen until the following spring, so that flowers and both green and mature fruit are often found on the plant at the same time. The bitter aromatic rind of the bigarade is rough, and dotted closely over with concave oil-cells ; the pulp is acid and more or less bitter in flavour. The sweet orange generally has the shoots destitute of spines, the petioles less distinctly winged, and the leaves more ovate in shape, but chiefly differs in the fruit, the pulp of which is agreeably acidu lous and sweet, the rind comparatively smooth, and the oil-cells convex. The ordinary round shape of the sweet orange fruit is varied greatly in certain varieties, in some being greatly elongated, in others much flattened ; while several kinds have a conical protuberance at the apex, others are deeply ribbed or furrowed, and a few are dis tinctly "horned " or lobed, by the partial separation of the carpels. The two sub-species of orange are said by some authorities to reproduce themselves infallibly by seed ; and, where hybridizing is prevented, the seedlings of the sweet and bitter orange appear to retain respectively the more distinctive features of the parent plant ; but where grow ing wild for successive generations they show a tendency to degenerate, the progeny of the sweet orange being apt to assume the broadly-winged petioles and spiny shoots of the bigarade. Though now cultivated widely in most of the warmer parts of the world, and apparently in many completely naturalized, the diffusion of the orange has taken place in comparatively recent historical periods. To ancient Medi terranean agriculture it was unknown ; and, though the later Greeks and Romans were familiar with the citron as an exotic fruit, their "Median Apple" appears to have been the only form of the citrine genus with which they Avere acquainted. The careful researches of Gallesio have