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making the trees of the forest dance in concert to his lyre, Eury-dice made a deep impression on the melodious musician, and theirnuptials were celebrated. Their happiness, however, was butshort: for Aristscus became enamoured of her; and as she liedfrom her pursuer, a serpent bit her foot, and she died of the poi-soned wound. Her loss was severely felt by Orpheus , and he re-solved to recover her or perish in the attempt. With his lyre inhis hand, he entered the infernal regions, and gained an easy ad-mission to the palace of Pluto. Having charmed all hell with hisstrains, Pluto and Proserpine consented to restore Eurydice , pro-vided he forbore looking behind him till he had come to the ex-tremest borders of hell. The conditions were gladly accepted,and Orpheus was already in sight of the upper regions of the air,when he forgot his promise, and turning back to look at his wife,lost her for ever. The only comfort he could find was to sootiiehis grief by the sound of his musical instrument in grottoes, or onmountains. He totally separated himself from the society of man-kind; and the Thracian women, whom he had offended by hiscoldness lo their amorous passion, attacked him while they cele-brated the orgies of Bacchus ; and after they had torn his body topieces, they threw his head into the Hebrus , which still articulatedEurydice! Eurydice ! as it was carried down the stream into theAegean sea. Others say, that, as he attempted to conjure his wifefront the dead, which they understand by the slory of his goingdown to hell, he thought he saw her; and when afterwards, onlooking back, he missed, he diet! of grief. Pausanias speaks of atemple in Thcsprotia, where Orpheus went to call up the ghost ofEurydice . Some say that he was killed by a thunder-bolt. Hewas buried at Pieria, in Macedonia, according to Apollodorus .The inhabitants of Dion boasted that his tomb was in tiieir city,and the people of Mount Libethrus in Thrace claimed the samehonour; and reported that the nightingales, which built their nestsnear his tomb, sang with greater melody than all other birds. Or-pheus, after death, received divine honours ; the Muses gave anhonourable burial to bis remains, and his lyre became one of theconstellations. Tzetzes explains the fable of his drawing his wileEurydice from hell, by his great skill in medicine, with which heprolonged her life, and thus snatched her from the grave. Withrespect to the writings of Orpheus, he is mentioned by Pindar asauthor of the Argonautics, and Herodotus speaks of his Orphics.Ilis by inns, says Pausanias , were very short, and but few in num-ber. Those poems that bear bis name, were published at Nurem-berg 1702, and reprinted at Eeipsic, in 1704, under the title ofOP<I>JiUI AIIANTA.
Orpheus, in ichthyology, the name of a fish caught in (he Ar-chipelago . ft is of a broad and flat figure, and of a fine purplecolour; its eyes are large and prominent, am! its teeth serrated ; ithas only one fin on the back, and the anterior ravs of that are
lir npmv,'','v'c' s - soft to lhe touch.
UUIMI.M, in natural history, a mineral composed of sul-phur and arsenic, sometimes artificially produced, but found alsonative, and constituting one of the ores of arsenic, ft is of twokinds, led and yellow, the former called Realgar. It is commonlyfound m shapeless masses, very seldom crystallised; though BaronBorne once found it m a polyhedral form on a blue elav in Hun-gary . It Is a very beautiful substance of a fine bright "red, veryglossy, and a little transparent, and is found in the furkish domi-nions, in the islands of the Archipelago , and even in our owncountry, Dr. Hill having received some of it from Cornwall , un-der the name of red niundic. The yellow kind contains aboutone-tenth of its weight of sulphur, ll is the common orpiment ofthe shops. Some think that the noxious qualities of the arsenicare sc much counteracted by the sulphur with which this substanceis mixed, that it may be swallowed with safety ; but Macquer po-sitively asserts the contrary, and cautions against its use, eventhough \ve be certain that the orpiment is native. VV lien relinedby distillation, it forms the colour called king’s yellow.
ORPINE, in botany. See Sf.dum.
ORRERY, an instrument which, by means of certain move-ments, represents the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. It wasfirst made by Mr. Rowley, a mathematician born at Litchfield,and so named from his patron, the earl of Orrery: by one or otherof this family, almost every art lias been encouraged or improved.See Planetarium.
Orrery, Earls of. Sec Boyle.
ORKUS, in botany, a name by which many of the ancientscalled the cultivated pine-tree, from its being remarkably full ofjuice.
ORSOY, or ORSAW, a town of France , in the department ofthe lloer, and late duchy of Cleves, 20 miles S. E. of Cleves.
ORTKGAL, Cape, the most northern promontory of Spain ,where there is also a castle of the same name. Lon. 8. 20. W.Lat. 44. 0. N.
ORTEGIA, a genus of plants of the class triandria, and ordermonogynja; natural order, Caryophyliete. Calyx fivexleaved;corolla none; capsule one-celled; seeds very many. There aretwo species, viz. O. llispanica, Spanish ortegia, tuidO. dichotoma,forked ortegia, natives of Spain and Italy .
ORTENAU, a territory of Germany, in Suabia , bounded S.by Breslau, N. by Baden, and E. by Wirtemberg .
"ORTENBURG, a town of Austria, in Carinthia , on the Drave,'six miles E. S, E. of Saxenburg. Lon. 13. '38. E. Lat. 46,32. N.
Ortenburg, a county, town, and fort, of Lower Bavaria , tenmiles W. of l’assau.
ORTHES, or ORTHEZ, a city of France , in the departmentof the Lower Pyrenees , and late province of Bearn, 20 milesN. \V. of Pau, and 30 E. of Bayonne . Lon. 0. 24. W. Lat. 43.
5. N.
OllTHOCERATITES, a species of fossile shells. SeePlate CXLIL
ORTHOCOLON, [oWSe and xu-mu,] in surgery, the preterna-tural straightness of a joint.
ORTHODORON, an ancient measure of length, shorter by afinger’s breadth than a span.
ORTHODHOMICS, [from cfTgj', and Loy.©q] the art of sail-ing in the arc of some great circle, which is the shortest aiulstraightest distance between any two points on the surface of theglobe.
ORTHOEPY, a branch of prosody, comprehending the rulesof pronunciation. See Grammar.
ORTHOGON, [ojAss-and jw<«,] a rectangled figure.
ORTHOGRAPHICAL PROJECTION OF THESPHERE, that wherein the eye is supposed to be at an infinitedistance; so called, because the perpendiculars from any point ofthe sphere will all fall in the common intersection of thb spherewith the plane of the projection. See Geography, and Pro-jection.
ORTHOGRAPHY , [o^oj and ;«}»,] that part of gramma?which teaches the nature of letters, and is one of the four great di-visions of grammar. See Grammar.
Orthography , in geometry, the art of drawing or delineatingthe fore right plan of any object, and of expressing the heights orelevations of each part. It is called orthography , for its determinemg things bv perpendicular lines falling on the geometrical plane.
Orthography, in perspective, is the fore right side of anyplane, i. e. the side or plane that lies parallel to a straight line,that may he imagined to pass through the outward convex pointsof the eyes, continued to a convenient length.
ORTHOMETRY, [ojb©' and .ustmw,] a branch of prosody,comprehending the laws of versification.
ORTHOPNOKA, [ojtjowvotrs, Gr.] a species of asthma, wherethere is such a difficulty of respiration, that the patient is obligedto sit or stand upright in order to be able to breathe. See Me-dicine.
ORTIIUS, in the mythology, a dog which had two heads. Hewas the son of Tvphon and Echidna , and the brother of Cerberus,and tin- Hydra. lie was kept by Gervon, and killed along withhim, by Hercules.
ORTlVF, [ortivus, Lat.] in astronomy, is the same witheastern. The orlive or eastern amplitude, is an arch of the hori-zon intercepted between the place where a star rises, and the eastpoint of the horizon, or point where the horizon and equatorintersect.
ORTOLAN. See Emberiza.
ORTON, a town of Westmoreland, 12 miles S.'W. of Appleby.Lon. 2. 40. W. Lat. 54. 28. N.
ORTONA, or ARTONA, an ancient town of Latium, whichwas taken by the Asqui. Liv. ii. c. 43.
ORTYGI A, the birth-place of Diana, was a beautiful grove of
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