35(5 , PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1753. 



Siberia ate the stalks of the sphondylium hirsutum C. B. P. But Mr. Miller 

 had great reason to believe that Gmelin mistook the species; for he describes 

 that plant as growing upwards of 6 feet high ; whereas the common sort seldom 

 rises much above half that height. Therefore probably the plant mentioned by 

 Gmelin was that species, which Breyn mentions in his 2d Prodromus, under the 

 title of sphondylium maximum Transilvanicum Ricini folio, the seeds of which 

 Mr. Miller brought from Dr. Boerhaave's garden in the year J 727, where it was 

 gi-owing near the common sort of Caspar Bauhin, and in the same soil and situa- 

 tion was more than twice the height; and the same difference has continued in 

 the growth of both these plants since, in the Chelsea garden; where the large 

 sort constantly rises to a stem, at least a month sooner in the spring than the 

 common sort, and the leaves are much larger, less divided, and not so hairy; so 

 that there can be no doubt of their being distinct species. 



• The seeds of that species of Breyn Mr. M. had received from Siberia, by the 

 title of sphondylium vulgare, and Dr. Boerhaave told him, he had received the 

 seeds from Austria, Hungary, and Petersburg, by the same name ; so that it 

 is certainly the common sort in those countries. And it is very usual to find 

 many mistakes in the writers on botany ; which has happened from their suppos- 

 ing that the plants, which have been mentioned as common in one country, were 

 the same with those of the country where they inhabited. An instance of this 

 was the parietaria minor ocymi folio. C. B. which is the only species found wild 

 in England ; and so was by all the English botanists taken for the parietaria offi- 

 cinarum et Dioscoridis C, B. which are distinct species. And many "other in- 

 stances might be mentioned. 



XXIII. Of an Eclipse mentioned by Zenophon. By the Rev. G. Costard, p. 155. 



The doctrine of eclipses is of great use in history and chronology. The ear- 

 liest account of any in the Greek history is that said to have been foretold by 

 Thales to the lonians, which Mr. C. has already treated of. The next, gene- 

 rally taken notice of by writers, is that in the first year of the Peloponnesian 

 war mentioned by Thucydides. But there is another before, which Mr. C. 

 thinks equally remarkable, deserving some further consideration. 



It is well known, that Herodotus and other writers make Cyrus to have de- 

 posed Astyages. On the contrary, Zenophon says, that Astyages was succeeded 

 by his son Cyaxares, who left the kingdom to Cyrus by will. The truth, Mr. 

 C. thinks, is, that Cyrus did not depose Astyages, and therefore so far Zenophon 

 is right ; but deposed Cyaxares, in which he was designedly wrong. That he 

 knew the Persians forced the empire from the Medes, appears from some no 

 very obscure hints even in the Cyropagdia itself. After some critical remarks on 

 the situation of certain places mentioned by ancient geographers, and astrono- 

 mical calculations of eclipses adapted to them, Mr. C. finds that the centre of 



