336 AsTER History ; HERMOLAUS 
called Buphthalmum. Of the latter he says ‘‘ Sunt qui Buphthal- 
mum, et bovis oculum appellent. Nam qui Antipatrum vulga- 
rentur eum esse, liquido falluntur. Haec Barbarus.”’ 
Hermolaus’ Asteriscus—Hermolaus has another remark for 
which I have not discovered the Greek foundation, when, coroll. 
680, he states that the Greeks called poppy-heads by the name of 
doteptoxoc, Asteriscus (/. Bauhin, Hist., 2: 1044.); [from the 
radiating grooves on the top of the capsule ?]. 
Hermolaus’ Identification of Amellus as Chamomile.—Another 
remark of Hermolaus Barbarus which relates to Aster, is that in 
book I of his Corollaries, c. 59, where he suggests the identity of 
chamomile with the Amellus of Vergil, since believed to be the 
Aster Atticus, of Dioscorides. Hermolaus’ suggestion is founded 
on phonetic grounds, That there may be a phonetic connection 
between these words had occurred to me independently in 1909, 
before I learned, on May 19, 1901, that Hermolaus had thought 
out the same solution four hundred years before. My hypothesis 
was that of the existence of an early generalized plant name, amuilla 
or amella, meaning little bushy plant, widely diffused in editer- 
ranean mountain lands anterior to Greek or Latin culture ; and 
that this name survives, 1st, in the modern Greek local name in 
Arcadia for the mistletoe, of Me//a, which the Greeks interpret as 
due to black berries (we/dz, black); 2d, in Amellus of Vergil ; 
3d, in Chamomilla, the camomile, yapuipyiov, which latter became, 
from the apple-like scent of its flowers, assimilated to Greek 740% 
an apple. 
Hermolaus offers his theory in this form: ‘ Amilla flos apud 
Graecos autores quosdam, Gallico vocabulo herba ea qua vocatur 
anthemis, sive chamaemilon, ut forte amilla vel idem vel similis sit 
amello, nihil asseveramus, sed in medium posuisse nihil offecit,”” 
z. ¢., Amilla is a flower among certain Greek authors, called so by 
a Celtic name ; it is the plant which is called Anthemis or Cham- 
omile ; that perhaps Amilla may be the same or similar to Amel- 
lus, I do not assert, but it does no harm to consider it.” * 
n pjectur ay 
5 own 
elilot 
* Wedel, De Amello, 4 (1686, Jena), considers the above a pecudiarts ¢? : 
and dismisses it as repugnant alike to both Chamomile and Amellus. But Wedel 
judgment was so ‘peculiar’? that he identified Amellus itself with the ye/low ™ 
