AND tOV/ER EGYPT. 229 



6crvcd, that in order to make the layer of white, 

 to which the gold was applied, adhere to the 

 bronze, the artist had first overlaid the figure 

 with a good layer of glue, besprinkled all over 

 with chips of rice-straw *. 



On the report of Herodotus, one of the alimen- 

 tary plants of the ancient Egyptians, was the 

 olyra\. There cannot he a greater conformity, 

 unless being absolutely the same, between this 

 word and osayraf, the name which the Greeks 

 gave to rice, and this conformity so striking would 

 be an incontestable proof of the antiquity of the 

 culture of rice in Egypt, if Citizen Larcher, whose 

 opinion is preponderating on such a subject, had 

 not assured us, that after a close and accurate 

 examination of a great number of passages of the 

 ancients, the olyra is not the rice-plant, but spelt §. 

 M. Pauvv had asserted that it was the rye||, the 

 name of which is totally unknown at this day in 



* Mem. of the Acad, of Inscr. and Belles-Lettres, the passage 

 above quoted. 



f Book ii. § 77. 



% This cannot be a typographical error, but a mistake of the 

 Author. The Greek word is opi/£a, o>yza, and not ozyra ; the 

 fanciful etymological resemblance of course disappears, and all 

 the learned reasoning upon it falls to the ground. — H. H. 



§ Triticum spelt*. Lin. See Larclier's Translation of Hero- 

 dotus, book ii. § 77, note 258. 



j| Philosophical Researches, p. 138. 



a 3 Egypt* 



