552 
Italians. The more ancient Greeks gene- 
rally wrote ee in words where » was used 
after. the invention of this last letter. 
Homer, Jb. K. 466, writes, dd0v d iaiciipa 
v'tOnxe, which in later times would have 
been written 3%, which mode of writing, 
Barnes says, exists in one MS. that he 
saw. Why it is not general is, that trans- 
eribers altered the spelling to the modern 
mode in some instances, and left it unal- 
tered in others, as in the line above cited, 
where £xxe occurs. We must recollect 
that the n was one of the letters added in 
the fifth or sixth centuries before Christ by 
the Sicilians, and from them first adopted 
by the JIonians, then the Samians, and 
lastly the Athenians. In words which the 
Greeks copied from the Latins, the long @ 
Latin was written 1. 
In the chorus of frogs, introduced by 
Aristophanes into his comedy of that name, 
the poet represents the noise of those ani- 
mals by the words @gexexexé£, nok, xo2€ ; 
might it not be deduced from this that the 
attic pronunciation of the « approached to 
that of the English a incall? Such at least 
is the note of the frog. In the Menechmei 
of Plautus, act 4, sc. 2, v- 88, there is the 
following passage: Quis is Menzchmus 
est? Mu. Tuisticinquam. Me. Egone? 
Mu. Tu! Me. Quisarguit? Mu. Ego- 
met. Pe. Et ego—atque huic amice de- 
tulisti Erotio. Me. Egon’ dedi? Pe. Tu, 
tu istic, inquam viri afferri noctuam, qui 
tu, tu, usqne dicat tibi? nam nos jam de- 
fessi sumus. This would lead us to iden- 
tify the sound of the Roman and Italian w 
with that of the English 00 in hoot. The 
same may be said of the Greck v, from the 
name of the cuckoo (an imitative sound). 
*Hyaog xixnvé xoxntCer Qeuds ty mi7arcict. He- 
siod in fey. 2, and consequently that it is 
incorrectly replaced by y in our words 
taken from the Greek. In the 30th epi- 
gram of Callimachus, Echo answers vaty: 
by exst.. The Beeotians were said to pro- 
nounce the part. pres. pass. Atysséva: as 
Aeyofaém, which shows that the similarity of 
sound between a: and » was peculiar to the 
Beeotians, or such a remark would scarcely 
have been made; and ‘so the epigram of 
Callimachus my not be valid as an indica- 
tion of the pronunciation of that diphthong 
by the Greeks generally. The Dorians 
usually wrote « instead of n, while the Boeo- 
tians wrote & for 1, so that the sound of » 
was like the Italian a with the former, and 
like the Italian z with the latter, and both 
these were considered as dialects proper to 
those people respectively, and hence of 
course different from the pronunciation of 
the Greeks generally. It seems probable 
that the Romans sounded g in a hard tone, 
universally, that is before all the vowels, as 
well asc. Plautus frequently uses the ex- 
clamation apage, as the Greeks used avaye ; 
now he would hardly have borrowed a sort 
of exclamation without preserving the ori- 
ginal pronunciation, and therefore that writ- 
Varieties. 
[ Nov. 
ten as itis, apage, must be sounded apaghe. 
These hints on. the pronunciation of the 
ancients are’ only thiown ‘out with much 
diffidence, and in the hope ' of attracting the 
notice of some person possessing more lei- 
sure, and better able'to enter mto the in- 
vestigation. ja 
The Planets’ Saturn and Supiter.—The 
following are the results for the mean dis- 
tance of the planet Saturn, of some micro- 
metrical observations made with’a refraet- 
ing wire micrometer attached to Fraun- 
hofer’s large telescope, and employing @ 
power of 540, by Professor Sturve, at Dor- 
pat. 
External diameter of the external ring = 40/215 © 
Internal ditto - 2 = BE 895 
External diameter of the internal ring = 34 +579 
Internal ditto - = ee = 26 +748 
Equatorial diameter of Saturn -  -=18 7045 
Breadth of the exterrral ring >  -= 2-410 
Breadth of the chasm. between. the 
rings - - - fs ~ 2 -= 0 408 
Breadth of the internalring - -= 3-915 
Distance of the ring from Satum -= 4 °352_ 
Equatorial radius of Saturn - -= 9 022 
The mean value of the inclination of the 
ring to the ecliptic is 28° 5/9, with a pro- 
bable errour not exceeding 6’°9. 
The mean results for the planet Jupiter 
and its satellites, made with the same in- 
struments, and with the same power, 540 or 
from thence to 600, are 
Jupiter’s major axis - <- = 
Jupiter's minor axis - - - 
~ = 387442 
-_= 35 +645 
Compression - = -= 0/0728, or yx.44 
Mean diameter of the first satellite of 
Jupiter - - = (= =- ‘“L='] 918 
—_——_——————— second - -= 0914" 
third «0 -¢) += 1 49 
fourth = 9 += 1 ‘277, 
Schroeter and Harding have: often jima- 
gined that they have detected a deviation 
of Jupiter from the’ elliptical form ;  Struve 
thought so likewise, but a closer examina- 
tion enables him to explain the illusion. ‘On 
March-7th of this year, he conceived that 
the diameter, which extended ‘from 61°-4 
latitude preceding S., to 61°°4 latitude fol- 
lowing N., was obviously smaller than the 
ellipsis would allow. But the micrometric. 
measurement proved that that was not the 
case. That evening the major axis A was 
= 44/75, the minor axis B = 41”°72; and 
the diameter in’ question taken with the 
same micrometer was'42”*34. . Calling this 
diameter z, and the latitude of the planet /. 
IAG 7B: : ; 
% (A2 sin 2/ + B? cos 22), andthe np- 
merical result is z = 42”°38, differing only 
0”-04 from the measurement. Most’ pro- 
bably it is the slanting position of the axis 
of the ellipse with regard to the vertical 
circle which causes the illusion, © “7 
Preservation of Timber from Dry Rot.— 
A series of experiments was instituted a 
short time since at Geneva, to shew the 
effect of mineral and vegetable poisons upon 
vegetable life. A gentleman in this coun- 
try has adopted the principle to preyent 
