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JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
THE ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF THE 
HOMEEIC OLYMPUS. 
ABSTRACT OF REV. 8. BEAL's PAPER. 
(Read January 13th, 1876.) 
The object of this lecture was to show that the Indian fable of 
Mount Meru and its occupants was probably the foundation of the 
Greek or Homeric myth of Olympus and its various gods. The 
very word Olympus was traced to the old term Avalambhin — 
" hanging down like the skies;" and the close relationship between 
Yaisravana and Hephoestus was a further argument in favour of 
the common origin of both mythologies. 
SOME FACTS CONCERNING DIET. 
ABSTRACT OF DR. W. H. PEARSE's PAPER. 
(Read 20th January, 1876.) 
Food treated theoretically and practically ; the paper aimed at a 
natural-historic view of food, embracing the chemical, physical, 
physiological, and historic. Comparative natural history, com- 
parative microscopic anatomy, and the highest chemistry, all, he 
contended, bore on food. Firstly, the lecture treated of the 
vegetable-organic and its relation to food. The vegetable kingdom 
converted the inorganic into the organic for animal wants : the 
three conditions were parts of a series. " Evolution " meant the 
order of the series, of the successive forms of living beings, all in 
harmony with the continuous, and so -far uniform laws or order of 
nature. Secondly, the lecture treated of the animal kingdom. 
