26 
year 164 a. d. The tablets, of which photographs had been sent by 
Mr. Paget, the author of Travels in Hungary, had not then been 
decyphered. 
Dec. 2.— The Rev. J. Kenrick made some remarks on the Coins 
presented by Mr. Hopkins. That of the Emperor Hadrian exhibited 
on the reverse the legend Restitutio Hispanic and the figure of the 
Emperor standing, with Spain kneeling and a rabbit at her feet. 
The origin of this symbol is said to have been the abundance of rabbits 
on the south coast of Spain. The people of the Balearic Islands are 
reported to have sent an embassy to Rome, requesting that another 
residence might be assigned to them, as the rabbits had made the 
Islands uninhabitable. 
The abundance of rabbits in Spain has suggested a plausible 
etymology of the name Hispania. Shaphan, in which the three radi¬ 
cals are the same, is the word which in Ps. 104, 18, and in Prov. 20, 36, 
our translators have rendered conies. Our rabbit, however, cannot be 
meant, as it does not inhabit mountains, but sandy plains or hills. It is 
probably the Hyrax Syriacus, which sufliciently resembles a rabbit in 
shape and habits to be confounded with it in the looseness of 
ancient zoological nomenclature. The Romans called an elephant hos^ 
and the hyrax is much more like a rabbit than a hippopotamus is like 
a horse. The Phoenician language-is almost identical with the Hebrew, 
and it is not improbable that when these eastern visitors found the 
country swarming with rabbits, they called it the Land of the Shaphan. 
