272 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. iv. SEPT. so, 1905. Viscount). He was probably father of the Henry Pound (Her. and Gen., iii. 415), of Bernons (? Beamond), Hants, who married Dorothy, daughter of Arthur Warren, Esq., of Thorpe Ernold, Leicestershire, and whose daughter Henrietta Pound was one of the English ladies of Pontoise, and died there in 1745, aged seventy-eight. Tradition says that the last of the Pound family of Farlington sold the estates and adhered to King James when he abdicated the throne; possibly there is some truth in this, for a Mr. Brereton was the patron of the living in 1689, and the name of " Henry Pounds" appears as captain of one of the Independent Companies of Foot raised by King James in 1688 (Dalton's 'English Army Lists,' ii. 180). Capt. Henry Bruning received his commission in one of the same companies at the same time as Henry Pounds; he was probably Henry, second son of Edmund Bruning (died 1706, aged ninety-eight), of Wyroering, Hants, about two miles west of Farlington. Henry's stepmother, Elizabeth Bruning, was a daughter of Henry Henslowe, of Boarhunt, and was living a widow at Petersfield in 1715 ('English Catholic Non- jurors, 1715,' p. 239). ALFRED T. EVERITT. High Street, Portsmouth. GIBBON, CH. LVI. NOTE 81 (10th S. iv. 167).—In the 1828 edition of 'The Decline and Fall' the reference is vol. vii. chap. Ivi. p. 242, note c. The quotation from the ' Alexias' is re- ferred to 1. iii. pp. 93-5. The expression— a<TTpoir(.iKvv SeStpevov fj.era pv<ra<j>iov—ap- pears in the note without breathings or accents. According to 'A Greek-English Dic- tionary,' by A. Kyriakides (Nicosia, Cyprus, Herbert E. Clarke, 1892), uo-Tpo7r«A.«Ki is a vulgar" synonyme for /cepawos, a thunder- bolt. In 'A Concise Dictionary of the English and Modern Greek Languages,' by A. N. Jannaris, Ph.D., 'English - Greek' (London, John Murray, 1895). thunderbolt is Ktpauvos, acTTpOTrecKi, the latter word having the sign of "colloquial or spoken Greek." Kyria- kides in his preface says that he has used as the groundwork of his dictionary that of Mr. N. Contopoulos—last edition. In 'Neohellenica, an Introduction to Modern Greek,' by Prof. Michael Constantinides, translated into English in collaboration with Major-General H. T. .Rogers, R.E. (Macmillan & Co.. 1892), pp. 213-14, in an extract from the ' Rhetoric ' of Francisco Scouphos, is the following :— /iavpa KCU vt<f>rj, riav oTroiW TO onrdy)^va dorpajrais (cat TO. aorpoTreXticia, Tvcf><avow TO. 0/ifj.ara xaOfvus jit -ri)V Aa/i^rtv. Translated thus :— " Dense black clouds collect, whose entrails the lightning-flashes and the thunderbolts rending asunder, blind the eyes of every one with their glare." The ' Rhetoric' of Francisco Scouphos, of Crete, was apparently first published in Venice in 1681. He was a "highly educated man, knowing Latin and Italian in addition to Greek. He wrote in the Greek language spoken at the time" (pp. 211-12). On p. 216 Scouphos is spoken of as having written "in the vulgar tongue," and yet having "im- parted to his language no little grace and elegance." In ' Guide de la Conversation en Franc,ais et en Grec Moderne' (Paris, Robee et Hingray, 1852), p. 18, TO a<TTpoTT(X.fKi is a translation of "le coup de tonnerre"; p. 118, Tifipovrrjl tiricrtv aarrpoirf(KL is the translation of " Quel coup de tonnerre ! la foudre est tombee." May not aoTpo7r«A«cvs and its more modern form da-rpoTreMKi mean a "star-stone"? In 'Precious Stones and Gems,' by Edwin W. Streeter, sixth edition (Bell <fe Sons, 1898), p. 193, in the chapter on 'Star Stones,' is the following: "A purplish Star Sapphire was known to Pliny as the Ceraunia, or ' Light- ning-stone,' and it was probably the same stone that was termed Astrapia." Pliny,' Hist. Nat..' xxxvii. (9), 51, speaks of the ceraunia as " fulgorem sideruin rapiens," and of a very rare sort as found nowhere but " in loco fulmine icto." The "ceraunia" was by Prudentius and Martianus Capella called " ceraunus." It is certain that the modern Greek ao"TpojrtA.«Ki equals xepawos, a thunderbolt; it is probable that the mediaeval Greek ao-rpojrtA«vs also equalled (ct/jovi-os, a thun- derbolt ; it appears to be probable that it also equalled "ceraunus" and "ceraunia," a gem which under the variant" ceraunium " is described in the 'Lexicon Antiquitatom Romanorum' of Pitiscus (1737) as "gemma ignei coloris, qure a fulmine nomen sumpsit" If these inferences are correct, the transla- tion of the expression quoted by Gibbon would appear to be " a star-stone set in gold ": SiSffifvov (passive participle of Siva, modern Greek) means " set," of jewels ; and xpvo-dfc means " gold." Mr. Streeter, in his book quoted above, says:— "Certain varieties of Corundum, especially the greyish-blue semi-transparent Sapphires when cn»
