OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 407 



more convex lobules occur, and these have something (in miniature) of 

 the plicate aspect of L. Waldenhergii, but the latter is entirely distinct, 

 both in thallus and in its very short and obtuse ellipsoid once-septate 

 spores. 



Professor Sophocles read the following communication, — 



On the Difficulty of Identifying- Plants and Animals mentioned 

 by Ancient Greek Authors. 



Few things connected with Greek philology present more perplexity 

 to the scholar than the identification of plants and animals whose names 

 occur in ancient Greek authors. With regard to the Greek naturalists, 

 as a common rule, they were content to mention only some of the most 

 striking peculiarities of plants and animals. Minuteness of observation 

 and accuracy of description were apparently undervalued by most of 

 them. Consequently they had no technical language, properly so called ; 

 the popular language of the day being deemed sufficiently definite for 

 their purpose. And as each Greek city had its local peculiarities, it 

 was natural that more names than one should be employed to designate 

 a given species. Thus, the dpin ( Quercus Ilex) of most of the Greeks 

 was called ^eXAo'Spvs (literally cork-oak) by the Arcadians. 



The definitions of classical names of plants and animals found in 

 later and Byzantine glossarists are to be received with caution ; for 

 in many instances they are nothing more than cliildish conjectures. 

 Thus, according to one of Homer's commentators, cpvXia is a kind of 

 olive ; according to another, a wild olive. A third tells us that it is 

 a kind o? fig-tree ; and a fourth, a kind of oak. Apion supposes it to 

 be a species of tree. Ammonius regards it as identical with the mastic- 

 tree (o-x'ws). Lastly, a scholiast gravely affirms, that the cfivXia is a 

 kind of olive called (f)v\la ! Again, the xotpoypvXKios of the Septuagint 

 corresponds to the Hebrew shaphan H^^^y It was one of the ani- 

 mals whose flesh the children of Israel were forbidden to eat. The 

 Jewish doctors of later times imagined it to be the same as the rabbit 

 (the co7iy of the English version of the Old Testament). St. Jerome, 

 who lived many years in Palestine, where this animal abounded, de- 

 scribes it in such a manner as to leave very little doubt that it was the 

 Hgrax Syriacus of zoologists. His Italian readers, however, finding 

 that his description of it applied equally well to the Alpine marmot, 



