Theophrastus, in his botanical works, anticipated the {575} sexual system of Linnæus. Philolaus of Crotona maintained that comets appeared after a certain revolution—and Æcetes contended for the existence of what is now called the new world. Pulci, “the sire of the half-serious rhyme,” has a passage expressly alluding to a western continent. Dante, two centuries before, has the same allusion. De vostri sensi ch è del rimanente Non vogliate negar l'esperenza Diretro al sol, del mondo sensa gente. * * * * * Cicero makes _finis_ masculine, Virgil feminine. Usque ad eum finem—_Cicero_. Quæ finis standi? Hæc finis Priami fatorum—_Virgil_. * * * * * Dante left a poem in three languages—Latin, Provençal, and Italian. Rambaud de Vachieras left one in five. * * * * * Marcus Antoninus wrote a book entitled Των εις εαυτον—Of the things which concern himself. It would be a good title for a Diary. * * * * * Lipsius, in his treatise “De Supplicio Crucis,” says that the upright beam of the cross was a _fixture_ at the place of execution, whither the criminal was made to bear only the transverse arm. Consequently the painters are in error who depict our Savior bearing the entire cross. * * * * * The stream flowing through the middle of the valley of Jehoshaphat, is called, in the Gospel of St. John, “the brook of cedars.” In the Septuagint the word is κεδρον, darkness, from the Hebrew Kiddar, black, and not κεδρων, of cedars. * * * * * Seneca says that Appion, a grammarian of the age of Caligula, maintained that Homer himself made the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into books, and evidences the first word of the Iliad, Μηνιν, the Μη of which signifies 48, the number of books in both poems. Seneca however adds, “Talia sciat oportet qui multa vult scire.” * * * * * The tale in Plato's “Convivium,” that man at first was male and female, and that, though Jupiter cleft them asunder, there was a natural love towards one another, seems to be only a corruption of the account in Genesis of Eve's being made from Adam's rib. * * * * * Corneille has these lines in one of his tragedies; Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau— La moitié de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau which may be thus translated, Weep, weep, my eyes! it is no time to laugh For half myself has buried the other half. * * * * * Over the iron gate of a prison at Ferrara is this inscription—“Ingresso alla prigione di Torquato Tasso.” * * * * *