NATURE NAMES IN AMERICA 63 



NATURE NAMES IN AMERICA 



By SPENCER TROTTER 



SWARTHMOEE COLLEGE 



WHEN Adam, or the cave man, began giving names to the things 

 of the earth and the things of the sky, it was probably with a 

 view to a better personal acquaintance with the objects and for a ready 

 means of conjuring up their images to the mind. In the same spirit a 

 learned professor later defined a system of classification as a series of 

 pegs to hang ideas on. If we are of a mind with Juliet as to the 

 matter of calling a rose by any other name, we accept an undeniable 

 fact, a scientific proposition, but we are at the same time in danger 

 of losing a certain flavor and zest of life, a subtle something in our 

 conscious relation to the things of this world. At least this is true of 

 those of us who are highly endowed with a sense of the fitness of a 

 name for the thing that it stands for. It is more than likely that the 

 man or woman possessing this keen relish for a name will unhesitatingly 

 repudiate the statement of Juliet, preferring rather to live in the 

 delightful delusion of the name itself. It is the conjuring up the 

 image of the thing, the making it a part of the inner conscious self, 

 that has so much to do with the background of our happiness. How 

 could it be otherwise in this age-long association of words and things? 

 Our life is a life of words, and whether we see the printed word, or 

 hear it spoken, it is to us one with the thing itself, and the thing itself 

 is but the word materialized. 



This delight in a word for the sake of its associations, though in- 

 tensely personal, is after all in a large way a matter of race history. 

 What we call the ' mother tongue/ an expression that in itself suggests 

 the most vital relation in human life, is the handing down of inherited 

 speech; as important in its way as the transmission of blood and of 

 brain cell. As the bodily substance may change under the influence 

 of new environments, so a language may change under like conditions, 

 and yet each will bear throughout its structure the large features of 

 its ancestry. It is a matter of some interest to trace out the effects 

 of the new world on the thought and speech of the early colonists and 

 the incorporation of any changes thus wrought into the language of 

 the people. In pursuing this inquiry I have directed my attention to 

 the names imposed by the settlers on the natural features of the land 

 and the more familiar living objects, such as plants, mammals and 

 birds. These were obvious features in the physical environment, a 

 knowledge of which was often of the first moment to the pioneer, and 



