Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/285

 2- 1 S. N 14., APRIL 5. '56.}

NOTES AND QUERIES.

277

cnce," which seems never to have attracted the notice of your correspondent. The word ire\\a, skin, or hide, the root of the Latin pellis, is not a " new word." It is .admitted in Scott and Lid- dell's Lexicon, and in several other Lexicons not so common. I was perfectly aware that Ipvctire- \as, and not epv0pdtrf\as, was the right reading in Pollux ; and, as erysipelas itself means " a red eruption on the skin," it was not necessary to con- found it with any other word of no authority.

Nor was I ignorant of the more common senses of ireAAa. I did not, however, search for them in authors so recent as Athenaeus and Nicander. The word is of not infrequent occurrence in Homer and Theocritus.

The various Greek derivatives of W\Aa leave no doubt about the original sense of the word :

rteAAopavpa, HeSVChius.

MovdireAfios, with one sole.


 * EAicos &ire\ov, an unskinned wound.

II'ATT), a leathern buckler.

IlijAij j and TrtAos are well compared by Benfey with these

derivatives j for caps and helmets were originally of

leather.

And, lastly, the very word Wx\a is introduced in Pollux as a material for writing on, between xap- roi and S'i(j>9fpai, lib. x. 56., on which your corre- spondent may consult a note by the editor whom he so justly commends. There seems good reason to believe that the Greek milking pail or WAA was originally formed of leather, and thence de- rived its name ; for skins were in the earliest use for containing liquids. One can easily account for the wrong reading of tpvOp6ire\as in Pollux. The transcriber saw the definition was /u^Ao^ EPT0PO2, and he did not know that and \oyafffas ; " and Celsus (lib. v.), " Super inflammation em RTJBOR ulcus ambit."

The explanation given in the ~Etym. Magnum seems to me very forced. It in no way describes the external appearance of the disease, nor, with- out supplying additional thoughts to the com- pound, does it in any way express its " erratic character." It puts one in mind of the whimsical etymology of AxiAAews, in the Homeric Scholia of the Pseudodidymus : "irapd rl> ^ Sti-ycuv x*^* 1 &r)\ijs' o\<as yap ov fitre^e 7aAaKToj.

I trust that I have at least proved that I neither confounded together fpvdp^ireXas and fyvo-nreAas, nor have I supplied to tho Greek language a new

word, T for which no authority can be discovered but my own. E. C. H.

EHRENBERG AND HIS MICROSCOPES.

(1 st S. xii. 305. 459.)

In a paper by Ehrenberg (Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, vol. i. p. 555.), your correspondent E. C. will perhaps find the origin certainly a complete refutation of the note he quotes from the trans- lation of Schleiden's Principles of Scientific Botany.

Far from asserting that " with a thirty shilling microscope he produced his great work on In- fusoria," which, by the way, did not appear until nearly twenty years afterwards, Ehrenberg men- tions this imperfect instrument for a very different purpose, in the following words :

"I was not then (1819) desirous of making publicly known any of those observations, because I saw on the one hand that they were capable of being carried to much greater perfection, and on the other hand, I possessed at that time only a very incomplete thirty shilling wooden, compound microscope from Nurenberg, which I had, ac- cording to my own views and wants, rendered more powerful." Scient. Mem., vol. i. p. 559.

If you think that the following extracts, illus- trating Ehrenberg's advance in microscopical acquisitions, will interest E. C. or any other of your readers they are at your disposal :

" From 1820 I made my observations in Africa with a microscope made by Hofman of Leipzig, of the cost of about 61., which, with a greater magnifying power, gave a much better image ; and from the year 1824 I used, together with that, an English microscope by Bleuler, which cost about lo/., and the power of which was still higher." Sc. Mem., i. 560.

" The reputation of Chevalier's microscope, from Sel- ligue's intimation that at a cheaper rate it would produce greater effects than those in general use, induced me to purchase one in 1828." 2b., 561.

The letter found by your correspondent CA- NONBURY is probably the one published in Che- valier des Microscopes, at p. 279., dated Berlin, March 17, 1833. Addressing Chevalier, Ehren- berg says :

"In 1829 and 1830 I completed with your microscope that discovery of the perfect organisation of infusoria which other microscopes, previously employed by me, had not sufficiently revealed. My observations led me to suppose that there existed a still finer structure, and I was very anxious to see the microscope by Ploesk of Vienna, which was said to be stronger than yours ; but although the amplification of this new microscope was really greater than that of your instrument, which I had then at hand, I have not succeeded in making profitable use of it for my purpose, because two microscopes by Ploesk of the price of 200 ecus, which I examined at Berlin, had too short a focus for the observation of objects in water. On this account I requested Messrs. Pistor and Schiek of Berlin to attempt the construction of a micro- scope with a focus as great as yours, and a magnifying power at least equal to that by Ploesk. So soon as M. Schiek had completed this microscope, I discovered