398 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Eecherches Astronomiques de FObservatoire d’Utrecht. Par M. 
Hoek. La Haye, 1864. 4to . — From the Author. 
Eecherches sur la quantite d’Ether, continue dans les Liquides. 
Par M. Hoek, et A. 0. Oudemans. La Haye, 1864. 4to. — 
From the Authors. 
Nova Acta Academic Csesarese Leopoldino-Carolin^ Grermanieas, 
Naturse Curiosorum. Dresden, 1864. 4to . — From the Aca- 
demy. 
Monday, 20th March 1865. 
Sir DAYID BHEWSTEH, President, in the Chair. 
The following Communications were read : — 
1. On the Pronunciation of Greek. By Professor Blackie. 
I. On the revival of learning at the middle of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, the Hellenists of Europe took the pronunciation of Greek 
from their teachers, the learned Greek refugees who fled from Con- 
stantinople when that city was taken by the Turks in 1453, and 
who carried with them the Greek language, both as the living 
people who used it, and as the inheritors of the rich store of philo- 
logical learning accumulated by an unbroken succession of Alex- 
andrian, Eoman, and Byzantine scholars. 
II. This Greek pronunciation of Greek remained undisturbed 
among European scholars till Erasmus, in the year 1528, published 
an essay on Greek pronunciation, at Basle, to prove that the By- 
zantine Greeks had in this matter departed in many points from 
the practice of their ancestors. The effect of this essay was not to 
reconstruct the lost pronunciation of classical Greek upon any 
scientific basis, but merely to unsettle the minds of men, and to set 
every European people upon the task of inventing a pronunciation 
of Greek according to their own conceit, and after the model gene- 
rally of their own national peculiarities. The consequence of this 
unreasoning procedure has been that Babel of confusion which now 
reigns with regard to the pronunciation of that noble language, of 
