690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a melody or a picture. Its function is, nevertheless, very impor- 

 tant. By virtue of its volatility it is a valuable prophylactic ; 

 by the great intensity of its effects it can bring about salutary 

 modifications of physiological functions, particularly of the am- 

 plitude of respiration ; and it possesses in the highest degree the 

 luxurious character of every artistic enjoyment. Flavor has an 

 essential part in nutrition ; so has touch. Hearing and sight are 

 indispensable to relations with other persons; but smell, neces- 

 sary to the animal for finding its prey and avoiding danger, has 

 become, under normal conditions, an almost useless sense to man, 

 since the refinements of civilization tend to prevent the produc- 

 tion of miasms and the pestilential odors from which he has to 

 protect himself. It is therefore becoming more and more a sense 

 of luxury for civilized man ; and that, perhaps, is the reason why 

 poets, from the author of the Song of Songs down, have associ- 

 ated all kinds of beauty and joy with perfumes. Translated for 

 The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. 



++ 



CHANGES IN CHEMICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL 



WORDS. 



By FREDERIK A. FERNALD. 



' ' "I TOW do you pronounce quinine ? " is a question that is 

 J L often asked, and, unless the person appealed to is unusu- 

 ally dogmatic, the answer is never decisive. Webster's Interna- 

 tional Dictionary gives three forms as being in good use name- 

 ly, hwl'nin, kwi'nin, and hwl'nen ; the Century Dictionary gives 

 two of these and a fourth form, Icwln'en, hinen', and kwi'nin ; 

 while a fifth variant is found in Stormonth, which has only 

 kwln'ln and kwinln! . Physicians and chemists, from having to 

 use this word oftener than the general public, have been more 

 annoyed by the conflicting pronunciations. Other words that 

 have troubled the chemists are the names of the halogens, some 

 pronouncing them chlo'rln, bro'min, I'ddln, and flu'orln, while 

 others said chlo'ren, etc. A more serious difficulty is the liability 

 to mistake certain substances for others, from the close likeness 

 of whole classes of names, both when spoken and when written. 

 This occurs with the chlorides and the chlorltes, also with the 

 sulphides and the sulphites. In order to do away with these 

 difficulties, a proposition for a revision of the spelling and pro- 

 nunciation of chemical terms was made in the Chemical Section 

 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at 

 the annual meeting in 1887. Accordingly, a committee to make 



