THE STORY OF A WORD— MAMMAL. 435 



requisite for a full understanding of the significance or aptness of the 

 names. 



It was one of the happiest inspirations of Linnaeus to segregate all 

 the mammiferous animals — the hairy quadrupeds, the sirenians, and 

 the cetaceans — in a single class. No one before had appreciated the 

 closeness of the relations of the several types, and there was no name for 

 the new class (or concept) as there was for all the others.* A name, 

 therefore, had to be devised. It was another happy inspiration that 

 led Linnaeus to name the class mammalia. Those who are familiar 

 with the works and ratiocination, and especially the nomenclature of 

 the great Swede, may divine his thoughts and share with him in the 

 execution of his ideas, although he did not give eytmologies. For those 

 'animalia' which are animals par excellence he would coin a name which 

 would recall that fact. (Animal, be it remembered, is often used in 

 popular converse in the sense of mammal.) 



The name in question was evidently made in analogy with animalia. 

 In animalia, the principal component was anima, the ' vital principle' 

 or animal life. (Old Nonius Marcellus well defined and contrasted the 

 word — 'animus est quo sapimus, anima qua vivimus.') The singular 

 of the word was animal. In mammalia, the essential component is 

 mamma, breast; the singular should be mammal. The terminal ele- 

 ment (-al) was coincident with rather than derived directly from the 

 Latin suffix (-alis) which expressed the idea of resemblance or rela- 

 tionship; anyway, it was used in substantive form, and the idea of 

 possession or inclusion was involved, as in the case of animal, capital, 

 feminal, tribunal — all well-known Latin words. In fine, a mammal 

 is a being especially marked by, or notable for having, mammae. 



The truth embodied in the word was almost immediately appre- 

 ciated by naturalists at least, and the class of mammals has been 

 adopted ever since the Linnaean period by zoologists. Naturally the 

 new Latin name was to some extent replaced by names in the vernacular 

 tongues of most nations. 



In the accommodating English alone the Latin word was adopted 

 with only a change in its ending, and thus the class name mammals 

 was introduced, and the singular form — mammal — followed as a matter 

 of course, and by chance (or rather the genius of language) exactly 

 coincided in form with the singular of the Latin word. 



Not only had the name nothing to do with the alleged derivative 

 Latin words. It was not admitted at all into the vernacular speech of 



* The assertion of Owen that Aristotle fully recognized the class of mam- 

 mals under the name Zootoca is without proper foundation. Long ago, in the 

 American Naturalist (VII, 458), I showed that different passages in Aris- 

 totle's books negatived such a statement and that the word zootoka was not 

 used as a substantive. 



