2. The common name of the Chimæra is the Sea-cat. It is so called on account of its eyes. They have a greenish pupil surrounded by a white iris, and they shine, especially at night, like cats’ eyes. It is also called “King of the Herring.”
3. By the “Old Red Sandstone” of Europe is meant the Devonian Rocks. These rocks are called “red” on account of their color, and “old” to distinguish them from the New Red Sandstone, which appears in the triassic period.
4. Some of the eccentric features which probably caused the astonishment of Cuvier on examining the Plesiosauri for the first time are the following: to a lizard’s head it united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck like a serpent’s body, the trunk and tail of a quadruped, the vertebræ of a fish, the ribs of a chameleon, and the fins of a whale.
5. Some of the fossil footprints in the Connecticut Valley, made by colossal reptiles, are called “bird tracks” because they were at first supposed to be the tracks of birds, a large part of them resembling the impressions of birds’ feet more than those of any known animal.
6. The Loup Fork Beds are beds of Pliocene deposit which occur on the Loup Fork of the Platte River in the Upper Missouri region.
History of Greece.
1. The Helots were Spartan slaves. They were said to have been the native population of a portion of the Peloponnesus, and to have been subjected to slavery by the invading Dorians.
2. The “sacred wars” were wars relative to the possession of the Temple at Delphi and its treasures.
3. The Alkmæonidæ were a noble and wealthy family of Athens, descended from Alkmæon, who was a descendant of King Codrus. They were considered sacrilegious on account of the way in which Megacles, one of the family, treated the insurgents under Cylon. Having taken refuge at the altar of Minerva, on the Acropolis, Megacles induced them to withdraw on the promise that their lives should be spared, but their enemies put them to death as soon as they had them in their power.
4. The Untori, in the plague of Milan, in 1630, were persons suspected of anointing doors with pestilential ointment, and thus spreading the disease. Many persons were arrested and put to death on this suspicion.