in matters of literature, an error with respect to chronology, whereby an event is placed earlier than it really happened. The word is compounded of the negative ἀν, and χρόνος, time. Such is that of Virgil, who places Dido in Africa at the time of Æneas, though in reality she did not come thither till 300 years after the taking of Troy.

ANAACLASTIC GLASSES (ἀνακλαστικόν), a breaking), a kind of sonorous flat-bellied phials, resembling inverted funnels, with bottoms extremely thin, and slightly convex. They have the property of emitting a vehement noise when alternately filled with air and exhausted by the mouth. In Germany, where they are chiefly made, they are called vexier glaser, i.e., vexing glasses, on account of the disturbance they occasion by their resillition.

ANAACLASTICS, that part of optics which considers the refraction of light, commonly called Dioptries. See Optics.