1911.] natural sciences op philadelphia. 47 



Catalogue and Vocabulary. 



In the case of the great majority of the plants dealt with in these 

 pages, the Gosinte names have been tested repeatedly in order, so far 

 as possible, to eliminate errors and to determine the standard and 

 pure as distinguished from the occasional and extraneous. The work 

 has been carried on largely as recreation at different seasons of the 

 year ; and at these various times tests have been made through various 

 better informed men and women of the Skull Valley division of the 

 tribe, these being consulted both singly and in groups. However, 

 there remains a certain number of species the names and uses of which 

 I have not as yet been able to test in a way wholly satisfactory to 

 myself. 



The Gosiute plant names, like our own popular ones, with which 

 they are properly to be compared, are frequently generic rather than 

 specific in compass and, naturally, may sometimes apply to species 

 lying in technically different though usually closely allied genera. In 

 some cases they are the practical equivalents of popular English names, 

 while in others they are distinctly different in scope from these or may 

 be without any name in our language at all corresponding, for a large 

 proportion of the native plants in the West are as yet without popular 

 designations of any sort. It often happens that one single kind of 

 plant is known under two or more names to the Gosiutes. In such 

 cases one name is commonly more comprehensive than the other and 

 applicable likewise to various other related or supposedly related 

 forms, while the other may be strictly applicable only to the species 

 under consideration. Then, again, the same plant may be regarded 1 

 from different points of view, classed on correspondingly different 

 bases, and so come to be designated under several class or generic 

 names indicating these several relations. Thus, it may be regarded 

 as to its habitat, as to its structure or appearance, as to its service to 

 man or animal as food, or as medicine, etc. It may bear a different 

 name indicative of each of these relations in addition to that which 

 may be regarded as in a measure specific and restricted to it alone. 

 The restriction in use of a name depends much upon the commonness 

 or importnce of the plant, there being different names even for closely 

 related species in many cases — proportionately much more numerous 

 than is the rule among our own people. 



In ordinary conversation among the Gosiutes a long plant name may 

 frequently be shortened through the omission or dropping out of one 

 or more syllables. Such abbreviations may result in changes in the 

 remaining syllables thus brought into different relations to each other 



