CHEMICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL WORDS. 695 



formerly called Great Pedee ; Pittsburg (Pa.), without final h, this 

 being really the official form of the city's name ; Mohave instead 

 of the Spanish form Mojave, and Blackivells Island in place of 

 Black well's. Wood's Holl, the meaningless corruption of Wood's 

 Hole effected by finical summer visitors, is not meddled with 

 except to drop the apostrophe. 



Among foreign names Colon has been adopted, to the exclusion 

 of AspinwaU, Bermuda instead of The Bermudas, and Salvador 

 (Central America) for San Salvador. The spelling Fiji is pre- 

 ferred to the now antiquated Feejee ; Baluchistan has been adopted 

 for Beloochistan; and a few other accepted spellings are Kaffraria, 

 Chile, Haiti, Kamerun (Cameroon), Kashmir, Kongo, Puerto Rico, 

 Sind (Sindh), and Tokyo. 



The accepted forms are used by the Coast and Geodetic Survey, 

 on its charts of the coasts of the United States ; the Hydrographic 

 Office of the Navy Department, on the charts of foreign coasts 

 that it publishes; the Geological Survey, which is making a 

 mother-map of the United States ; the General Land Office, which 

 compiles from its plats maps of most of the States and Territo- 

 ries ; and the Post-Office Department, which decides the names of 

 all post-offices. They are used more or less also by nearly every 

 other bureau of the General Government in fact, wherever geo- 

 graphical names occur in all printing done at the Government 

 printing-office. 



The new forms are also coming into use rapidly among pub- 

 lishers of books and newspapers and the general public. The 

 American Book Company, which furnishes the greater portion of 

 the school-books used in this country, has adopted the decisions 

 of the board for all its text-books on geography. Publishers of 

 atlases and other geographical works generally are using them, 

 so that in a few years it will be easy to tell that a map is old 

 from the fact that the old forms of names are engraved on it. 

 Many newspapers also, that have received copies of the first re- 

 port of the board, have stated that they should follow it. 



The good work of the chemists and geographers in the interest 

 of simplicity and uniformity gives hope that similar changes 

 may be made in other classes of words. Medical terms might 

 come next. Few persons would be sorry to see the ce and ce re- 

 placed by e and the silent consonants omitted in " hcemorrTiage," 

 " gynaecology," " cesophagus," " diarWicea," "phthisis," "pneu- 

 monia," "r7ieumatism," "ptyalism," "psora," etc. There is a 

 growing tendency toward such simplifications on all sides, and 

 the direct efforts that are being made in this direction are only 

 furthering the progress of a natural evolution. It has been said 

 that we ought to wait for these changes until the natural process 

 makes them ; but if men want to put city streets and blocks where 



