a canonical book of the Old Testament, written by the prophet Jeremiah. The two first chapters of this book are employed in describing the calamities of the siege of Jerusalem. In the third, the author deplores the persecutions he himself had suffered. The fourth turns upon the defolation of the city and temple, and the misfortune of Zedekiah. The fifth chapter is a prayer for the Jews in their dispersion and captivity; and, at the end of all, he speaks of the cruelty of the Edomites, who had insulted Jerusalem in her misery. The first four chapters of the Lamentations are an abecedarium, every verse or couplet beginning with one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. LAMMÆ, among the ancients, a kind of demons, or evil spirits, who, under the form of beautiful women, are said to have devoured children.

Horace makes mention of them in his Art of Poetry. Some authors call them lamiae, à lamianos. Philolatus says, they are also called larvae, or lemures, as if they were all the same thing. Bochart will have the word to be Phoenician, and derives it from εἰνεῖν "to devour;" alleging the fable of the lamiae came from Libya.

LAMINÆ, in physiology, thin plates, or tables, whereof any thing consists; particularly the human skull, which are two, the one laid over the other.