within the municipal limits. The manufacture of lumber is the principal industry of the city. On Indian Island (opposite the city) is the principal settlement of the Penobscot Indians, an Abnaki tribe, now wards of the state. The abbe Louis Pierre Thury was sent here from Quebec about 1687 and built a church in 1688–1689; in 1705 the mission passed under the control of the Jesuits. The first white settler in the vicinity seems to have been John Marsh, who came about 1774, and who bought the island now known as Marsh Island. From 1806 to 1840, when it was incorporated as a separate township, Old Town was a part of Orono. In 1891 it was chartered as a city. One of the oldest railways in the United States, and the first in Maine, was completed to Old Town from Bangor in 1836.
OLDYS, WILLIAM (1696–1761), English antiquary and bibliographer, natural son of Dr William Oldys, chancellor of Lincoln, was born on the 14th of July 1696, probably in London. His father had also held the office of advocate of the admiralty, but lost it in 1693 because he would not prosecute as traitors and pirates the sailors who had served against England under James 11. William Oldys, the younger, lost part of his small patrimony in the South Sea Bubble, and in 1724 went to Yorkshire, spending the greater part of the next six years as the guest of the earl of Malton. On his return to London he found that his landlord had disposed of the books and papers left in his charge. Among these was an annotated copy of Gerard Langbaine's Dramatick Poets. The book came into the hands of Thomas Coxeter (1689–1747), and subsequently into Theophilus Gibber's possession, and furnished the basis of the Lives of the Poets (1753) published with Gibber's name on the title page, though most of it was written by Robert Shiels. In 1731 Oldys sold his collections to Edward Harley, second earl of Oxford, who appointed him his literary secretary in 1738. Three years later his patron died, and from that time he worked for the booksellers. His habits were irregular, and in 1751 his debts drove him to the Fleet prison. After two years' imprisonment he was released through the kindness of friends who paid his debts, and in April 1755 he was appointed Norroy king-at-arms by the duke of Norfolk. He died on the 15th of April 1761.
Oldys's chief works are: The British Librarian, a review of scarce and valuable books in print and in manuscript (1737–1738); the Harleian Miscellany (1744–1746), a collection of tracts and pamphlets in the earl of Oxford's library, undertaken in conjunction with Dr Johnson; twenty-two articles contributed to the Biographia Britannica (1747–1760); an edition of Raleigh's History of the World, with a Life of the author (1736); Life of Charles Cotton prefixed to Sir John Hawkins's edition (1760) of the Compleat Angler. In 1727 Oldys began to annotate another Langbaine to replace the one he had lost. This valuable book, with a MS. collection of notes by Oldys on various bibliographical subjects, is preserved in the British Museum.
OLEAN, a city of Cattaraugus county, in south-western New York, U.S.A., on Olean Creek and the N. side of the Allegheny river, 70 m. S.E. of Buffalo. Pop. (1880), 3036; (1890), 7358; (1900), 9462, of whom 1514 were foreign-born and 122 were negroes; (1910 census), 14,743. The city is served by the Erie, the Pittsburg, Shawmut & Northern, and the Pennsylvania railways (the last has large car shops here); and is connected with Bradford, Pa., Allegany, Pa., Salamanca, N.Y., Little Valley, N.Y., and Bolivar, N.Y. by electric lines. Olean is situated in a level valley 1440 ft. above sea-level. The surrounding country is rich in oil and natural gas. Six miles from Olean and 2000 ft. above the sea-level is Rock City, a group of immense, strangely regular, conglomerate rocks (some of them pure white) covering about 40 acres. They are remnants of a bed of Upper Devonian Conglomerate, which broke along the joint planes, leaving a group of huge blocks. In the city are a public library, a general hospital and a state armoury; and at Allegany (pop. 1905, 1330), about 3 m. W. of Olean, is St Bonaventure's College (1850; Roman Catholic). Olean's factory product was valued at $4,677,477 in 1905; the city is the terminus of an Ohio pipe line, and of a sea-board pipe line for petroleum; and among its industries are oil-refining and the refining of wood alcohol, tanning, currying, and finishing leather; and the manufacture of flour, glass (mostly bottles), lumber, &c. The vicinity was settled in 1804, and this was the first township organized (1808), being then coextensive with the county. Olean Greek was called Ischue (or Ischua); then Olean was suggested, possibly in reference to the oil-springs in the vicinity. The village was officially called Hamilton for a time, but Olean was the name given to the post-office in 1817, and Olean Point was the popular local name. In 1909 several suburbs, including the village of North Olean (pop. in 1965. 1761), were annexed to Olean, considerably increasing its area and population.
See History of Cattaraugus County, New York (Philadelphia, 1879).
OLEANDER, the common name for the shrub known to botanists as Cerium Oleander. It is a native of the Mediterranean and Levant, and is characterized by its tall shrubby habit and its thick lance-shaped opposite leaves, which exude a milky juice when punctured. The flowers are borne in terminal clusters, and are like those of the common periwinkle(Vinca), but are of a rose colour, rarely white, and the throat or upper edge of the tube of the corolla is occupied by outgrowths in the form of lobed and fringed petal-like scales. The hairy anthers adhere to the thickened stigma. The fruit or seed-vessel consists of two long pods, which, bursting along one edge, liberate a number of seeds, each of which has a tuft of silky hairs like thistle down at the upper end. The genus belongs to the natural order Apocynaceae,
Nerium Oleander.
a family that, as is usual where the juice has a milky appearance, is marked by its poisonous properties. Cases are recorded by Lindley of children poisoned by the flowers. The same author also narrates how in the course of the Peninsular War some French soldiers died in consequence of employing skewers made from fleshly-cut twigs of oleander for roasting their meat. The oleander was known to the Greeks under three names, viz. rhododendron, nerion and rhododaphne, and is well described by Pliny (xvi. 20), who mentions its rose-like flowers and poisonous qualities, at the same time stating that it was considered serviceable as a remedy against snake-bite. The name is supposed to be a corruption of lorandrum, lauridendrum (Du Gange), influenced by olea, the olive-tree, lorandrum being itself a corruption of rhododendron. The modern Greeks still know the plant as ῥοδοδάφνη), although in a figure in the Rinuccini MSS. of Dioscorides a plant is represented under this name, which, however, had rather the appearance of a willow herb (Epilobium). The oleander has long been cultivated in greenhouses in England, being, as Gerard says, "a small shrub of a gallant shewe"; numerous varieties, differing in the colour of their flowers, which are often double, have been introduced.
OLEASTER, known botanically as Elaeagnus hortensis, a handsome deciduous tree, 15 to 20 ft. high, growing in the Mediterranean region and temperate Asia, where it is commonly cultivated for its edible fruit. The brown smooth branches are more or less spiny; the narrow leaves have a hoary look from the presence of a dense covering of star-shaped hairs; the small fragrant yellow flowers, which are borne in the axils of the leaves, are scaly on the outside. The genus contains other species of ornamental deciduous or evergreen shrubs or small trees. E. argentea, a native of North America, has leaves and fruit covered with shining silvery scales. In E. glabra, from Japan, the evergreen leaves are clothed beneath with rust coloured scales; variegated forms of this are cultivated, as also of E. pungens, another Japanese species, a spiny shrub with leaves silvery beneath.
