July 7, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



23 



important articles relating to the smut-fungi, 

 and a full index complete this important con- 

 tribution to our knowledge of this groi;p. 



Charles E. Bessey. 

 The UtvIVErsity of Nebraska. 



ARCHEOLOGIGAL NOTES. 



ICHTHYOLOGICAL NAMES. 



Much attention was given by the older ich- 

 thyologists, notably Conrad Gesner, Eondelet, 

 Artedi, Linne and Cuvier, to classical names 

 of fishes, and their identification with well- 

 known forms. In this country Louis Agassiz, 

 upon the occasion of his rediscovery of 

 Parasilurus aristotelis (Proc. Amer. Acad., 

 III., p. 325), was one of the first to bring 

 home the importance of comparing ancient 

 and modern vernacular names of plants and 

 animals, his remarks being ably seconded by 

 a later communication from Professor Sopho- 

 cles in the same volume. 



Within recent years President Jordan and 

 H. A. Hoffmann^ have attempted a thorough- 

 going revision of classic and modem designa- 

 tions of the Hellenic fish fauna, overlooking, 

 however, some of the best work that has been 

 done by their predecessors in this field. For 

 instance, they seem to have taken no heed 

 of the extremely valuable historical and 

 bibliographical works of Artedi, nor of the 

 indispensable commentaries of A. Koraes on 

 the fishes mentioned by Galen and Xenocrates. 

 A propos the last-named author, we owe to 

 Koraes the correction of Artedi's error in con- 

 fusing the physician Xenocrates with the 

 illustrious philosopher of the same name who 

 flourished, as the Swedish naturalist gravely 

 tells us, ' anno mundi S630, circiter.' 



Among-st the numerous attempts that have 

 been made to identify Aristotelian species, two 

 or three are of superior merit. These are the 

 ' Index Aristotelicus,' published by the Ber- 

 lin Academy, Aubert-Winuner's ' Aristoteles 

 Tierkunde' (Leipzig, 1868), and Sundevall's 

 ' Thierarten des Aristoteles ' (Stockholm, 

 1863). A work that might serve as a model 

 for a revised Synonymia Piscium Orceca, apart 

 from the author's peculiar ideas on animal 



^ ' A Catalogue of the Fishes of Greece,' etc., 

 Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. PUla., 1892, pp. 231-285. 



symbolism, is D'Arcy W. Thompson's ' Glos- 

 sary of Greek Birds' (Oxford, 1895). Writ- 

 ing in the same year, H. Lewy argues very 

 plausibly for a Semitic origin of a great many 

 Greek names of plants and animals, including 

 fishes. Thus, when we say tunny, carp, 

 "chameleon, etc., — though Mark Twain can not 

 consistently allow this — we approach pretty 

 closely to the speech of Adam. Other contri- 

 butions of real value that deal with the ety- 

 mology of the Greek fauna are the following: 

 Nicolas C. Apostolides, ' La peche en Grece ' 

 (Athens, 1883) ; T. de Heldreich, ' La faune de 

 Grece' (Part I., Athens, 1878); B. Bikelas, 

 ' Sur la nomenclature de la faune grecque ' 

 (1878), and Dr. Erhard's 'Fauna der Cycla- 

 den ' (Leipzig, ,1858). Finally attention may 

 be called to the newly discovered Byzantine 

 ' Fish Book,' a work dating presumably from 

 the thirteenth century, for the elucidation of 

 which scholars are indebted to Professor 

 Krumbacher, of Munich. 



Before leaving this subject, there is one fea- 

 ture in Homeric zoology which deserves no- 

 tice. Fish, the great delicacy of Attic days, 

 never enters into the diet of the great chiefs, 

 who partake of great meals of roast meat in 

 contradiction of all that we know of any his- 

 torical Greeks, as Professor Mahaffy has 

 shown, from the earliest to the present day. 

 Even the early athletes trained on cheese, and 

 the people were probably never a meat-eating 

 race. The Dublin professor is inclined to be- 

 lieve, with all its implied significance respect- 

 ing authorship, that the exclusion of fish from 

 Homeric banquet scenes is ' a piece of deliber- 

 ate archaism. 



PREPHSTORIC DARWINIANS. 



Zeller and shorn have critically investi- 

 gated the extent to which evolutionary ideas 

 were developed among Ionian philosophers 

 several centuries before our era, and it is 

 doubtful if their main conclusions can be con- 

 ' troverted. One must marvel, therefore, at the 

 fertile ingenuity of a French writer, M. Henri 

 Coupin,^ who has out-Champollioned Cham- 



' J. P. IVtahaffy, ' Problems in Greek History,' 

 p. 49 (London, 1892). 



2 ' Le poulpe et la croix gammee,' La Nature, 

 May 20, 1905, p. 396. 



