the history of fossils, a substance much resembling the morochthus or French chalk, in many respects; but different from it in colour. The ancients found it in the Nile and in some rivers in Greece, and used it in medicine as an astrigent, and for defluxions and ulcers of the eyes. At present it is common in Germany, Italy, and some parts of France, and is wholly overlooked, being esteemed a worse kind of morochthus. See Morochthus.

Galactophagi, and Galactopotae, in antiquity, persons who lived wholly on milk, without corn or the use of any other food. The words are compounded of γάλα, γάλακτος, milk; γασίν, to eat; and συρόν, I drink.

Certain nations in Scythia Asiatica, as the Getæ, Nonades, &c. are famous, in ancient history, in quality of galactophagi, or milk-eaters. Homer makes their eloge, Iliad, lib. iii.

Ptolemy, in his geography, places the Galactophagi between the Riphean mountains on one side, and the Hircanian sea on the other.

Galangals, in the materia medica. See Kamferia.