Prof. Blumenbach on the PricMe in the Lion's Tail. S07 
view of rousing it to a higher pitch Again, Alexander 
Aphrodisiensis has among his problemata the following : “ Why, 
since the moving of the tail is, in most animals, a sign of their 
recognition of friends, does the lion lash his sides when enraged, 
and the bull in the same manner ?” t 
But the ancient commentator of Homer, who commonly goes 
by the name of Didymus Alexandrinus, asserts, with reference 
to the place of the Iliad, which we have cited, “ that the lion 
has a black prickle in its tail among the hair, like a horn, when 
punctured, with which it is still more irritated by the pain J.” 
This opinion, however, which has been noticed also by late 
commentators §, we were the more disposed to take for a mere 
fiction, that no anatomist, who had possessed an opportunity of 
dissecting a lion, had hitherto made mention of any prickle of 
this kind ||. 
I had the good fortune, however, when, through the muni- 
ficence of a friend, to whom I owe so many splendid ornaments 
of my cabinet, I was presented with a lioness, which had died 
very soon before, to find, in consequence of an anxious search 
which I had made, in order to satisfy myself regarding the as- 
sertion of the Greek scholiast, a very small dark-coloured 
prickle in the very tip of the tail, as hard as a piece of horn, 
and surrounded at its base with an annular fold of the skin ; 
and when I cautiously dissected the hide in this place, I found 
a singular follicle of a glandular appearance, to which the 
prickle firmly adhered. (See Plate IV. Fig. 8. in last Num- 
ber.) All these parts, however, were so minute, and the little 
horny apex so buried among the tufted hairs of the tail, that 
the use attributed by the ancient scholiasts cannot be regarded 
* Lib. viii. * * * § f* Problema cxlviii. 
+ E%Sl ^6 Tl iV Tvl OV^ci CiVOtftiO-OV TMV TQffcCJV KZVTgtOV ftZXoCV, (*>$ ZSgO&TlOV, V<$ 
8 VVTTOf .1 6V6J (some read rV7tTC(&Ws) 7T?iZ0V Cty^lOVTUl. p. 596 . Oxf, Ed. 
1695. 
The same is more concisely repeated by Eustathius , at this place, and under the 
words and 
§ See, for example, Heyne Observat. in Iliadem, Vol. ii. part 3. P. 43. 
|| Even Franc. Serao , who gives an accurate description of the lion’s tail, makes 
ho mention of it. — See his Consider aziones anat. fattc sopra un lcone t in the 69th 
page of his Opus colt di jisico argumcnto. 
