when the non-white element is not negro but some other coloured blood.
OCTOSTYLE (Gr. ὀκτώ eight, and στῦλος, a column), in architecture, a portico of eight columns in front (see Temple).
OCTROI (O. Fr. octroyer, to grant, authorize; Lat. auctor), a local tax collected on various articles brought into a district for consumption. Octroi taxes have a respectable antiquity, being known in Roman times as vectigalia. These vectigalia were either the portorium, a tax on the entry from or departure to the provinces (those cities which were allowed to levy the portorium shared the profits with the public treasury); the ansarium or foricarium, a duty levied at the entrance to towns; or the edulia, sale imports levied in markets. Vectigalia were levied on wine and certain articles of food, but it was seldom that the cities were allowed to use the whole of the profits of the taxes. Vectigalia were introduced into Gaul by the Romans, and remained after the invasion by the Franks, under the name of tonlieux and coutumes. They were usually levied by the owners of seigniories. But during the 12th and 13th centuries, when the towns succeeded in asserting their independence, they at the same time obtained the recognition of their right to establish local taxation, and to have control of it. The royal power, however, gradually asserted itself, and it became the rule that permission to levy local taxes should be obtained from the king. From the 14th century onwards, we find numerous charters granting (octroyer) to French towns the right to tax themselves. The taxes did not remain strictly municipal, for an ordinance of Cardinal Mazarin (in 1647) ordered the proceeds of the octroi to be paid into the public treasury, and at other times the government claimed a certain percentage of the product, but this practice was finally abandoned in 1852. From an early time the octroi was farmed out to associations or private individuals, and so great were the abuses which arose from the system that the octroi was abolished during the Revolution. But such a drastic measure meant the stoppage of all municipal activities, and in 1798 Paris was allowed to re-establish its octroi. Other cities were allowed gradually to follow suit, and in 1809 a law was passed laying down the basis on which octrois might be established. Other laws have been passed from time to time in France dealing with the octroi, especially those of 1816, 1842, 1867, 1871, 1884 and 1897. By the law of 1809 octroi duties were allowed on (1) beverages and liquids; (2) eatables; (3) fuel; (4) forage; (5) building materials. A scale of rates was fixed, graduated according to the population, and farming out was strictly regulated. A law of 1816 enacted that an octroi could only be established at the wish of a municipal council, and that only articles destined for local consumption could be taxed. The law of 1852 abolished the 10% of the gross receipts paid to the treasury. Certain indispensable commodities are allowed to enter free, such as grain, flour, fruit, vegetables and fish.
French octroi duties are collected either by the (1) régie simple, i.e. by special officers under the direction of the maire; (2) by the bail à ferme, i.e. farming, the contractor paying yearly a certain agreed upon sum calculated on the estimated amount; (3) the régie interessé, a variation of the preceding method, the contractor sharing the profits with the municipality when they reach a given sum; and (4) the abonnement avec la régie des contributions indirectes, under which a department of the treasury undertakes to collect the duties. More than half the octrois are collected under (1), and the numbers tend to increase; (2) is steadily decreasing, while (3) has been practically abandoned; (4) tends to increase. The gross receipts in 1901 amounted to £11,132,870. A law of 1897 created new sources of taxation, giving communes the option of (1) new duties on alcohol; (2) a municipal licence duty on retailers of beverages; (3) a special tax on wine in bottle; (4) direct taxes on horses and carriages, clubs, billiard tables and dogs; (5) additional centimes to direct taxes.
From time to time there has been agitation in France for the abolition of octroi duties, but it has never been pushed very earnestly. In 1869 a commission was appointed to consider the matter, and reported in favour of their retention. In Belgium, on the other hand, they were abolished in 1870, being replaced by an increase in customs and excise duties; and in 1903 those in Egypt were also abolished. Octroi duties exist in Italy, Spain, Portugal and in some of the towns of Austria.
Authorities.—A. Guignard, De la suppression des octrois (Paris); Saint Julien and Bienaimé, Histoire des droits d'octroi à Paris; M. Tardit and A. Ripert, Traité des octrois municipaux (Paris, 1904); L. Hourcade, Manuel encyclopédique des contributions indirectes et des octrois (Paris, 1905); much useful matter from some of the foregoing will be found in Report on the French Octroi System, by Consul-general Hearn (British Diplomatic and Consular Reports, 1906); the abolition of the Belgian octrois produced a voluminous official report: Abolition des octrois communaux en Belgique: documents et discussions parlementaires. (T. A. I.)
O'CURRY, EUGENE (1796–1862), Irish scholar, was born at Dunaha, county Clare, in 1796, the son of a farmer who was a man of unusual intelligence. After being employed for some time in the topographical and historical section of the Irish ordnance survey, O'Curry earned his living by translating and copying Irish manuscripts. The catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Museum was compiled by him. On the founding of the Roman Catholic University of Ireland (1854) he was appointed professor of Irish history and archaeology. His lectures were published by the university in 1860, and give a better knowledge of Irish medieval literature than can be obtained from any other one source. Three other volumes of lectures were published posthumously, under the title On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (1873). His voluminous transcripts, notably eight huge volumes of ancient Irish law, testify to his unremitting industry. The Celtic Society, of the council of which he was a member, published two of his translations of medieval tales. He died in Dublin in 1862.
OCYDROME, a word formed from Ocydromus, meaning “swift-runner,” and suggested by J. Wagler in 1830 as a general term for the New Zealand bird called in the then unpublished manuscripts of J. R. Forster Rallus troglodytes, and so designated in 1788 by S. G. Gmelin, who knew of it through J. Latham’s English description. Wagler’s description has since been generally adopted, and the genus Ocydromus is accepted by most ornithologists as a valid group of Rallidae; but the number of species it contains is admittedly doubtful, owing to the variability in size and plumage which they exhibit, and their correct nomenclature must for the present be considered uncertain. Sir W. Buller in his Birds of New Zealand identifies the “Wood-hen,” observed in great abundance on the shores of Dusky Bay in 1773 by Cook and his companions on his second voyage, with the Gallirallus fuscus described and figured by Du Bus in 1847, and accordingly calls it O. fuscus; but it cannot be questioned that the species from this locality—which appears to have a somewhat limited range in the Middle Island,[1] and never to be met with far from the sea-coast, where it lives wholly on crustaceans and other marine animals—is identical with that of the older authors just mentioned. In 1786 Sparrman, who had also been of Cook’s company, figured and described as Rallus australis a bird which, though said by him to be that of the southern coast of New Zealand, differs so much from the R. troglodytes as to compel a belief in its special distinctness; and indeed his species has generally been identified with the common “Weka” of the Maories of the Middle Island, which can scarcely be the case if his statement is absolutely true, since the latter does not appear to reach so far to the southward, or to affect the seashore. It may therefore be fairly inferred that his subject was obtained from some other locality. The North Island of New Zealand has what is allowed to be a third species, to which the name of Ocydromus earli is attached, and this was formerly very plentiful; but its numbers have rapidly decreased, and there is every chance of its soon being as extinct as is the species which tenanted Norfolk on its discovery by Cook in 1774,
- ↑ It also occurs in Stewart Island, and singularly enough on the more distant group known as the Snares. The Gallirallus brachypterus of Lafresnaye, of which the typical (and unique?) specimen from an unknown locality is in the Caen Museum, has also been referred to this species, but the propriety of the act may be doubted.
