

r 



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observed nor spoken of by our predecessors: are we to 

 leave these new objects without a name ? or describe them 

 by tedious circumlocution ? or adopt an old denomination 

 which must necessarily belong to something else? This 

 would be a solecism in knowledge. A new name must 

 be called in, and the reader must learn it (he will find them 

 few and useful), or remain without the pale of the pro- 

 gress of knowledge. We do not here, of course, include 

 the abuse of this liberty: to this every good is liable. To 

 strip the study of natural history of abstruseness, and 

 withdraw it from the sphere of abstraction, in which it 

 has been too often unduly involved, is quite another thing. 

 In regard to the task we have to perform, to render our- 

 selves intelligible to every class of readers, while we endea- 

 vour to familiarize them with the necessary new terms in 

 use, will be a constant aim. 



New names in the history of nature are but the conven- 

 tional abbreviations of long phrases and wide circumlocu- 

 tions ; their use is in some sort the same to the naturalist 

 that his algebraic signs and eqmvalents are to the geo- 

 metrician. If Botany had had its conventional signs to 

 work with as fer back as Geometry baa had hers, we should 

 not now find it the last on the list of sciences. 



VOL, IX. 



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