N. border is the chief) abound in salmon.  Owing to the mountain shelter and the Japanese ocean currents the climate is mild.  The capital is Salem (4), the largest city Portland (46), both on the Willamette River.  The State offers excellent educational facilities; it has 17 libraries, many schools and colleges, and the Blue Mountain University.  The State (constituted in 1859) forms part of the territory long in dispute between Great Britain and the United States.  It was occupied jointly from 1818 to 1846, when a compromise fixed the present boundary of British Columbia.

ORELLI, CONRAD VON, theologian, born at Zurich; professor at Basel; has written commentaries on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the minor prophets; b. 1846.

ORELLI, JOHANN KASPAR VON, a Swiss scholar, born at Zurich, where he was professor of Classical Philology; edited editions of the classics, particularly Horace, Tacitus, and Cicero, highly esteemed for the scholarship they show and the critical judgment (1787-1849).

ORESTES, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and brother of Electra and Iphigenia, who killed his mother to avenge the murder by her of his father and went mad afterwards, but was acquitted by the Areopagus and became king of Argos and Lacedaemon; his friendship for Pylades, who married his sister Electra, has passed into a proverb; the tragic story is a favourite theme of the Greek tragedians.

ORFILA, M. J. BONAVENTURE, French chemist and physician, born in Minorca; mainly distinguished for his works on toxicology (1787-1853).

ORGANISM, a structure instinct with life, and possessed of organs that discharge functions subordinate and ministrative to the life of the whole.

ORGANON, a term adopted by Bacon to denote a system of rules for the regulation of scientific inquiry.

ORGIES, festivals among the Greeks and Orientals generally connected with the worship of nature divinities, in particular DEMETER (q. v.), DIONYSOS (q. v.), and the Cabiri, celebrated with mystic rites and much licentious behaviour.

ORIFLAMME (i. e. flame of gold), the ancient banner of the kings of France, borne before them as they marched to war; it was a red flag mounted on a gilded staff, was originally the banner of the abbey of St. Denis, and first assumed as the royal standard by Louis VI. as he marched at the head of his army against the Emperor Henry V. in 1124, but one hears no more of it after the battle of Agincourt in 1415, much as it was at one time regarded as the banner of the very Lord of Hosts.

ORIGEN, one of the most eminent of the Fathers of the Church, born at Alexandria it is presumed, the son of a Christian who suffered martyrdom under Severus, whom he honoured and ever reverenced for his faith in Christ; studied the Greek philosophers that he might familiarise himself with their standpoint in contrast with that of the Christian; taught in Alexandria and elsewhere the religion he had inherited from his father,