OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 219 



pressure in glaciers at a temperature below 32°. He thought 

 the same might be the case with other crystalline bodies ; 

 and if true of granite, the earth's crust must be much thin- 

 ner than is generally supposed. So that, at present, all the 

 current estimates of the thickness of the earth's solid crust 

 must be very uncertain. 



Professor Felton (through Mr. Goodwin) communicated a 

 continuation of his paper upon the Modern Greek language. 



" I desire to add to the remarks submitted by me at a former meet- 

 ing, on the pronunciation of the Greek language, a few observations, by 

 way of illustrating its present condition, and the manner in which it 

 adapts itself to the wants of modern society. When we consider that 

 the earliest monuments of the Greek language, which belong to a 

 period dating at least a thousand years before Christ, are of such 

 perfection as necessarily implies a long previous cultivation, and that 

 the language has been spoken and written uninterruptedly through all 

 changes, social, religious, and political, down to the present day, and 

 that all these changes act directly upon language, as the organ of 

 human thought, we naturally expect corresponding changes in the 

 forms and construction and pronunciation of the language. Dividing 

 all this extent of time in a general way, and without any attempt at 

 precision, we may say that there are three great periods : the first, 

 that of the Ancient Classical Greek ; the second, the Byzantine Greek ; 

 and the third, the Modern Greek. The period of the Ancient Greek 

 would last as long as the forms of the ancient inflections and the 

 constructions of the ancient syntax continued to be used in literature 

 and society. The Byzantine form of the Greek, as its name indicates, 

 would embrace those modifications of the language which were gi-ad- 

 ually introduced during the time of the Roman domination and the 

 Byzantine Empire, and the ecclesiastical Greek. The Modern Greek 

 may be considered as embracing those modifications of the language 

 gradually introduced among the people in the Middle Ages, son^etimes 

 called the Romaic, and the improvements made upon that basis by the 

 scholars of the last half-century, forming the cultivated language of 

 the present Greeks. This, however, is a very crude arrangement. 

 In point of fact, the Ancient Greek not only had a variety of con- 

 temporary dialects, but underwent great changes from age to age. 



