Aubrey's lights
Sir:. Mr Robert Hughes in reviewing Black and White: A Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley. (24 January) talks about Sigmund Freud 'who could not read Italian' as having erroneously inter- pitted the noun nibbio, and therefore as having given to posterity a lot of nonsense in his study on Leonardo da Vinci. That Mr Freud might have given to the world a lot of nonsense in psychology may be possible, but not on account of the nibbio.
Mr Hughes says that the nibbio of Leonardo's. dream is a kite. But what kite? In fact, nibble,- from the later latin nibulus, means a bird of the rapacious kind, similar to the hawk and the vulture (more like the buzzard vulture). The ornithological nameof this bird is Mi/vus (from which nibulus) ictinus and the English name of Ma bird is kite.
The Italian names for the toy made of paper to fly in the air attached to a string are: aquilone: big eagle; nibbio: vulture and some-. times also cervo volante: flying deer. The toy is named after these two birds of prey because of its peculiar ability to hover in the air.
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