Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/894

828 R F R G In these legends it is apparent that Orestes is the guilt -laden mortal who is purified from his sin by the grace of the gods ; his purification is a type of the merciful justice which the gods in tend should be shown to all persons whose crime is mitigated by extenuating circumstances. These legends belong to an age when higher ideas of law and of social duty were being established ; the implacable blood-feud of primitive society gives place to a fair trial of the culprit, and in Athens, when the votes of the judges are evenly divided, mercy prevails. In the religion of Delphi similar ideas underlie the ancient festival Septerion : in it Apollo himself is the murderer, and his example sets forth to mankind the method of purification which heaven opens to such sinners, if they are not entirely and wilfully guilty, Orestes is not a figure of the Apollo religion, but is clearly connected with the cultus of the Erinnyes ; and his relation to these goddesses, and the intention of the myth, are very plain in the Megalopolitau legend above mentioned. The Trcezenian legend has no appearance of being really ancient, just as the tales that connect Orestes with the district Orestea in Arcadia, or Orestias in Epirus, are obviously fictions of a later time. On the other hand, the Orestes of Tauric and Cappadocian legend is a different person, connected with the spread of Artemis-worship ; it is not improbable that a similarity of name caused the identification of two heroes belonging respectively to the cultus of Artemis and of the Erinnyes. Orestes had an historic part assigned to him as Greek mythology became systematized. Fhocian auxiliaries restored him to the throne of his father, and, according to Hellanicus, he began the JEolic migration to Asia Minor. He was buried 011 the road from Tegea to Thyrea, and Herodotus (ii. 67) tells a quaint story of the manner in which the Spartans discovered his bones and, in obedience to an oracle, carried them to Sparta. ORFA. See EDESSA, vol. vii. p. 652. ORFILA, MATHIEU JOSEPH BONAVENTURE (1787-1853), the founder of modern toxicology, and one of the most eminent of the French school of medicine during its brightest period, was by birth a Spaniard, having been born at Mahon in Minorca on 24th April 1787, An island merchant s son looked naturally first to the sea for a pro fession ; but a voyage at the age of fifteen to Sardinia, Sicily, and Egypt did not prove satisfactory. He next took to medicine, which he studied at the universities of Valencia and Barcelona with so great applause that the local authorities of the latter city granted him a pension to enable him to follow his studies at Madrid and Paris, preparatory to appointing him professor, He had scarcely settled for that purpose in Paris when the outbreak of the Spanish war, in 1807, threatened destruction to his pro spects. But he had the good fortune to find a parent in a merchant uncle at Marseilles, and a patron in the good and great Vauquelin the chemist, who braved the wrath of Napoleon against the Spaniards, claimed him as his pupil, guaranteed his conduct, and saved him from expulsion from Paris. Four years afterwards he graduated, and immedi ately became a private lecturer on chemistry in the French capital. In 1819 he was appointed professor of medical jurisprudence, and four years later he succeeded Vauquelin as professor of chemistry in the faculty of medicine at Paris. In 1830 he was nominated dean of that faculty, a high medical honour in France. Under the Orleans dynasty, honours were lavishly showered upon him : he became successively member of the council of education of France, member of the general council of the department of the Seine, and commander of the Legion of Honour. The republic of 1848 put an end to these adventitious dis tinctions ; and chagrin at the treatment he experienced at the hands of the Governments which succeeded that of Louis Philippe is supposed to have shortened his life. He died, after a short illness, in March 1853. Orfila s chief publications are four in number : On General Toxi cology (1814), On Medical Jurisprudence (1823), A Treatise on Chemistry (1817), and Medico -legal Exhumations (1836); but he also wrote many valuable papers, chiefly on subjects connected with medical jurisprudence. His fame will rest mainly on the first- named (Traite de Toxicologw Generale), published when he was only in his twenty -seventh year. It is a vast mine of experimental observation on the symptoms of poisoning of all kinds, on the appearances which poisons leave in the dead body, on their physio logical action, and on the means of detecting them. Few branches of science, so important in their bearings on every-day life and so difficult of investigation, can be said to have been created and raised at once to a state of high advancement by the labours of a single man. ORFORD, EARLS OF. See WALPOLE. ORGAN, The notes of the organ are produced by/>t/>?s, which are blown by air under pressure, technically called u ind. Pipes differ from one another in two principal ways (1) in pitch, (2) in quality of tone. (1) Consider first a series of pipes producing notes of similar quality, but differing in pitch. Such a series is called a stop. Stops. Each stop of the organ is in effect a musical instrument in itself. (2) The pipes of different stops differ, musically speaking, in their quality of tone, as well as sometimes in their pitch. Physically, they differ in shape and general arrangement. The sounding of the pipes is determined by the use of keys, some of which are played by the hands, some by the feet. A complete stop possesses a pipe for every key of some one row of manuals or pedals. If one stop alone is caused to sound, the effect is that of performance on a single instrument. There are such things as incom plete stops, which do not extend over a Avhole row of keys ; and also there are stops which have more than one pipe to each key. Every stop is provided with mechanism by means of which the wind can be cut off from its pipes, so that they cannot sound even when the keys are pressed. This mechanism is made to terminate in a handle, which is commonly spoken of as the stop. When the handle is pushed in, the stop does not sound ; when the handle is pulled out, the stop sounds if the keys are pressed. An organ may contain from one to four manuals or keyboards and one set of pedals. There are exceptional instruments having five manuals, and also some having two sets of pedals. The usual compass of the manuals is four and a Com- half octaves, from C to a " inclusive. The compass of the pass, pedal is two and a half octaves, from C to/. This repre sents the pitch in which the notes of the pedal are written ; but the pedal generally possesses stops sounding one octave lower than the written note, and in some cases stops sounding two octaves below the written note. Each manual or pedal has as a rule one soundboard, on which Sound, all its pipes are placed. Underneath the soundboard is hoard, the windchest, by which the wind is conveyed from the bellows, through the soundboard, to the pipes. In large organs there may be two or more soundboards for one manual or pedal. The windchest contains the mechanism of valves by which the keys control the admission of wind to the soundboard. The soundboard contains the grooves which receive the wind from the valves, and the slides by which the handles of the stops control the transmission of the wind through the soundboard to the pipes of the different stops. The grooves of the soundboard are spaces left between wooden bars glued on to the table of the soundboard. There is usually one groove for every key. The grooves of the bass notes, which have to supply wind for large pipes, are broader than those of the treble. The bass bars are also thicker than those of the treble, that they may the better support the great weight which &c. Fio. 1. A portion of the table with the open grooves seen from below. rests on the bass portion of the soundboard. The table