(anc. geogr.), an island at no great distance from the promontory Mycale, on the continent of the Hither Asia, and opposite to Ephesus; the distance only seven stadia, (Strabo); a free island, in compass eighty-seven miles, (Pliny); or one hundred, (Hidorsus): with a cognominal town, (Ptolemy, Horace); famous for the worship and a temple of Juno, with a noted asylum, (Virgil, Strabo, Tacitus); and hence their coin exhibited a peacock, (Athenaeus): The country of Pythagoras, who, to avoid the opprestion of tyrants, retired to Italy, the land of freedom. Samos, tho' not so happy in producing wine, which Strabo wonders at, all the adjoining islands yielding a generous sort, yet abounding in all the necessaries of life. The Vasa Samia, among earthen ware, were held in high repute. Samii, the people, (Ovid).—The island is now in the hands of the Turks. It is about 32 miles in length, and 22 in breadth, and extremely fertile. The inhabitants live at their ease, their taxation by the Turks being moderate. The women are very natty and ugly, and they never shift above once a month. They are clothed in the Turkish manner, except a red coat, and their hair hanging down their backs, with plates of silver or block-tin fastened to the ends. They have abundance of melons, lentils, kidney-beans, and excellent mulkedine grapes. They have white figs, four times as big as the common sort, but not so well tasted. Their silk is very fine, and their honey and wax admirable; besides which, their poultry are excellent: they have iron mines, and most of the soil is of a rusty colour: they have also emery stone, and all the mountains are of white marble. The inhabitants are about 12,000, who are almost all Greeks; and the monks and priests occupy most part of the island. They have a bishop who resides at Cora.

SAMIAN earth, in the materia medica, the name of two species of marl used in medicine, viz. 1. The white kind, called by the ancients collyrium sanium, being astringent, and therefore good in diarrhoeas, dysenteries, and hemorrhagies; they also used it externally in inflammations of all kinds. 2. The brownish-white kind, called after sanium, by Dioscorides; this also stands recommended as an astringent.