in the majesty of Apollo, the god of light and warmth, and giver of the ripe fruits of the earth (see a passage from Polycrates, Laconica, quoted by Athenaeus 139 d; criticized by L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iv. 266 foll.). This festival is clearly connected with vegetation, and marks the passage from the youthful verdure of spring to the dry heat of summer and the ripening of the corn.
The precise relation which Apollo bears to Hyacinthus is obscure. The fact that at Tarentum a Hyacinthus tomb is ascribed by Polybius to Apollo Hyacinthus (not Hyacinthius) has led some to think that the personalities are one, and that the hero is merely an emanation from the god; confirmation is sought in the Apolline appellation τετράχειρ, alleged by Hesychius to have been used in Laconia, and assumed to describe a composite figure of Apollo-Hyacinthus. Against this theory is the essential difference between the two figures. Hyacinthus is a chthonian vegetation god whose worshippers are afflicted and sorrowful; Apollo, though interested in vegetation, is never regarded as inhabiting the lower world, his death is not celebrated in any ritual, his worship is joyous and triumphant, and finally the Amyclean Apollo is specifically the god of war and song. Moreover, Pausanias describes the monument at Amyclae as consisting of a rude figure of Apollo standing on an altar-shaped base which formed the tomb of Hyacinthus. Into the latter offerings were put for the hero before gifts were made to the god.
On the whole it is probable that Hyacinthus belongs originally to the pre-Dorian period, and that his story was appropriated and woven into their own Apollo myth by the conquering Dorians. Possibly he may be the apotheosis of a pre-Dorian king of Amyclae. J. G. Frazer further suggests that he may have been regarded as spending the winter months in the underworld and returning to earth in the spring when the “hyacinth” blooms. In this case his festival represents perhaps both the Dorian conquest of Amyclae and the death of spring before the ardent heat of the summer sun, typified as usual by the discus (quoit) with which Apollo is said to have slain him. With the growth of the hyacinth from his blood should be compared the oriental stories of violets springing from the blood of Attis, and roses and anemones from that of Adonis. As a youthful vegetation god, Hyacinthus may be compared with Linus and Scephrus, both of whom are connected with Apollo Agyieus.
See L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. iv. (1907), pp. 125 foll., 264 foll.; J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (1906), bk. ii. ch. 7; S. Wide, Lakonische Kulte, p. 290; E. Rhode, Psyche, 3rd ed. i. 137 foll.; Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Myth., s.v. “Hyakinthos” (Greve); L. Preller, Griechische Mythol. 4th ed. i. 248 foll. (J. M. M.)
HYADES (“the rainy ones”), in Greek mythology, the
daughters of Atlas and Aethra; their number varies between
two and seven. As a reward for having brought up Zeus at
Dodona and taken care of the infant Dionysus Hyes, whom they
conveyed to Ino (sister of his mother Semele) at Thebes when his
life was threatened by Lycurgus, they were translated to heaven
and placed among the stars (Hyginus, Poët. astron. ii. 21).
Another form of the story combines them with the Pleiades.
According to this they were twelve (or fifteen) sisters, whose
brother Hyas was killed by a snake while hunting in Libya
(Ovid, Fasti, v. 165; Hyginus, Fab. 192). They lamented him
so bitterly that Zeus, out of compassion, changed them into
stars—five into the Hyades, at the head of the constellation
of the Bull, the remainder into the Pleiades. Their name is
derived from the fact that the rainy season commenced when
they rose at the same time as the sun (May 7-21); the original
conception of them is that of the fertilizing principle of moisture.
The Romans derived the name from ὗς (pig), and translated it
by Suculae (Cicero, De nat. deorum, ii. 43).
HYATT, ALPHEUS (1838–1902), American naturalist, was born at Washington, D.C., on the 5th of April 1838. From 1858 to 1862 he studied at Harvard, where he had Louis Agassiz for his master, and in 1863 he served as a volunteer in the Civil War, attaining the rank of captain. In 1867 he was appointed curator of the Essex Institute at Salem, and in 1870 became professor of zoology and palaeontology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (resigned 1888), and custodian of the Boston Society of Natural History (curator in 1881). In 1886 he was appointed assistant for palaeontology in the Cambridge museum of comparative anatomy, and in 1889 was attached to the United States Geological Survey as palaeontologist for the Trias and Jura. He was the chief founder of the American Society of Naturalists, of which he acted as first president in 1883, and he also took a leading part in establishing the marine biological laboratories at Annisquam and Woods Hole, Mass. He died at Cambridge on the 15th of January 1902.
His works include Observations on Fresh-water Polyzoa (1866); Fossil Cephalopods of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (1872); Revision of North American Porifera (1875–1877); Genera of Fossil Cephalopoda (1883); Larval Theory of the Origin of Cellular Tissue (1884); Genesis of the Arietidae (1889); and Phylogeny of an acquired characteristic (1894). He wrote the section on Cephalopoda in Karl von Zittel’s Paläontologie (1900), and his well-known study on the fossil pond snails of Steinheim (“The Genesis of the Tertiary Species of Planorbis at Steinheim”) appeared in the Memoirs of the Boston Natural History Society in 1880. He was one of the founders and editors of the American Naturalist.
HYBLA, the name of several cities In Sicily. The best known
historically, though its exact site is uncertain, is Hybla Major,
near (or by some supposed to be identical with) Megara Hyblaea
(q.v.): another Hybla, known as Hybla Minor or Galeatis, is
represented by the modern Paternò; while the site of Hybla
Heraea is to be sought near Ragusa.
HYBRIDISM. The Latin word hybrida, hibrida or ibrida
has been assumed to be derived from the Greek ὕβρις, an insult
or outrage, and a hybrid or mongrel has been supposed to be
an outrage on nature, an unnatural product. As a general rule
animals and plants belonging to distinct species do not produce
offspring when crossed with each other, and the term hybrid
has been employed for the result of a fertile cross between
individuals of different species, the word mongrel for the more
common result of the crossing of distinct varieties. A closer
scrutiny of the facts, however, makes the term hybridism less
isolated and more vague. The words species and genus, and
still more subspecies and variety, do not correspond with clearly
marked and sharply defined zoological categories, and no exact
line can be drawn between the various kinds of crossings from
those between individuals apparently identical to those belonging
to genera universally recognized as distinct. Hybridism therefore
grades into mongrelism, mongrelism into cross-breeding, and cross-breeding
into normal pairing, and we can say little more than
that the success of the union is the more unlikely or more unnatural
the further apart the parents are in natural affinity.
The interest in hybridism was for a long time chiefly of a practical nature, and was due to the fact that hybrids are often found to present characters somewhat different from those of either parent. The leading facts have been known in the case of the horse and ass from time immemorial. The earliest recorded observation of a hybrid plant is by J. G. Gmelin towards the end of the 17th century; the next is that of Thomas Fairchild, who in the second decade of the 18th century, produced the cross which is still grown in gardens under the name of “Fairchild’s Sweet William.” Linnaeus made many experiments in the cross-fertilization of plants and produced several hybrids, but Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter (1733–1806) laid the first real foundation of our scientific knowledge of the subject. Later on Thomas Andrew Knight, a celebrated English horticulturist, devoted much successful labour to the improvement of fruit trees and vegetables by crossing. In the second quarter of the 19th century C. F. Gärtner made and published the results of a number of experiments that had not been equalled by any earlier worker. Next came Charles Darwin, who first in the Origin of Species, and later in Cross and Self-Fertilization of Plants, subjected the whole question to a critical examination, reviewed the known facts and added many to them.
Darwin’s conclusions were summed up by G. J. Romanes in the 9th edition of this Encyclopaedia as follows:—
1. The laws governing the production of hybrids are identical, or nearly identical, in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
2. The sterility which so generally attends the crossing of two specific forms is to be distinguished as of two kinds, which, although
