Some observations on puff-balls from British archaeological sites

The occurrence of the puff-ball Bovista nigrescens in four British archaeological sites, approximately 2000 years old, is investigated, and the related Calvatia utriformis is reported for the first time in archaeological excavations from one of these sites. The circumstances of their discovery at two of these sites (Skara Brae and Vindolanda) strongly suggest that they did not arrive there fortuitously. The puff-balls are considered to have been used as haemostatic agents and/or as tinder. A detailed morphological comparison of early specimens with present-day material is made.     

Some observations concerning antique and modern metre

1. Lettres lisibles: Efforts dans l'antiquité classique pour que les textes incisés sur pierre et affichés à usage public puissent être facilement lus. 2. Πoλιτικη et les Contes des Mille et Une Nuits: Πoλιτικη aus sens de prostituée apparaît encore dans les Contes des Mille et Une Nuits. 3. Kερκυσερα ou l'ambiguïté d'Achille: Par sa formation, le nom ou sobriquet Kερκυσερα d'Achille dissimule et en même temps révèle l'état ambigu d'Achille dans le gynécée du palais de Lykomède à Skyros. 4. Une expression poétique dans une novelle de Théodose H: L'expression poétique lux sola brevitatis et son corollaire nox longa. 5. Zenon rougissant: L'interpellation Foινικiδιoν de Zenon par son maître Kratès fait allusion à la rougeur d'embarras de Zenon plutôt qu'à son origine.     

Some observations on theObservations the decline of the French Jesuit scientific mission in China

In the late seventeenth century, French Jesuit missionaries in China transplanted a distinctively French and distinctively academic brand of scientific work from Paris to Beijing. This auspicious inauguration has obscured the later trajectory of the mission’s scientific ambitions within Old Regime arenas of scientific activity. In this paper, I argue that significant differences distinguish the French Jesuit scientific mission in its late seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century incarnations. By examining the various Parisian editions of French Jesuit scientific work carried out on the China mission, theObservations (1688, 1692, 1729), I trace the declining fortunes of the French Jesuit scientific mission to the dissolution of its alliance with the Académie des sciences and to its difficulties in sustaining a corporate identity and collective vision as investigators of natural phenomena.