HARD WICKE 'S S CI EN CE-GO SSI P. 



business, and gave a friendly puff to Paris green. 

 Then the oil-and-colourman advertises in some 

 agricultural papers that he has the " never-failing 

 exterminator " of potato-bugs — Paris green, and the 

 editor of that journal at once strongly recommends 

 it. You do not do things in that way in honest old 

 England, but we do here. 



One word of advice. When your potatoes are 

 four or five inches high, just occasionally turn up 

 the leaves and examine the under side. If you find a 

 bunch of orange-coloured eggs, nip them off. They 

 probably were deposited by D. decemlineata. In a 

 week or so look again. If you find that the foliage 

 has been eaten from a plant pretty thoroughly, and 

 should find a dirty brick-red animal, like that figured 

 by Mr. Rye, on that plant, remove the animal the 

 way I have advised. It is the beetle in its larval 

 state ; and, recollect, that in that state it does most 

 of its eating. But it is a poor traveller, and does 

 not wander about unnecessarily. So, when you 

 have found one from a batch of eggs, you may be 

 sure the others are near at hand. One stroke from 

 the net will capture most of them. Work atten- 

 tively, now and again, and your potato crop will 

 not suffer. Recollect, however, that other things 

 besides D. decemlineata eat potato vines. Here we 

 frequently suffer from the attacks of the Lyttas, or 

 blister-beetles, which devour lots of potato foliage. 



Caution ! Mind, that all striped beetles found 

 on potatoes are not Colorado potato beetles, but 

 may be useful little fellows, whose larva; devour 

 other larv;£ injurious to us. 



THE PRONUNCIATION OF SCIENTIFIC 

 NAMES. 



IN regard to the pronunciation of Latin and Greek, 

 perhaps the confusion of theory and practice is 

 greater at the present time than it has ever been. 

 The attempt to give c and g the hard (guttural) sounds 

 in all such words is really only a part of a much 

 wider scheme, which aims at restoring, as far as 

 possible, the actual pronunciation of the ancients 

 themselves. If these actual sounds can be recovered 

 with any certainty, there is a possibility that some 

 time Latin and Greek will be pronounced in a similar 

 way by all who learn them, to whatever nation they 

 belong. This is only what is done, as a matter of 

 course, in the case of all other tongues, and no reason 

 could be assigned for adopting a different practice in 

 this instance. Prejudice stands in the way, but we 

 need not despair of overcoming it. When I began to 

 learn Latin, I was told that when I travelled in a 

 foreign country, the language of which was unknown 

 to me, I should be able to communicate my wants to 

 any well-educated man by expressing them in Latin. 

 In writing, of course, this could always be done, as, 

 in fact, it is in the correspondence of many scientific 



men of the present day, especially those who belong 

 to the Russian, Swedish, and other nations, whose 

 languages are not generally known. But if two of 

 these savans met, they would be as entirely unable to 

 communicate orally with one another as if they knew 

 no Latin at all — a result which I have no hesitation 

 in calling ridiculous. 



But is there any possibility of recovering the actual 

 sounds used by the Greeks and Romans at the time 

 of their greatest literary prosperity? — the last clause 

 being necessary, because their pronunciation changed 

 with time, as ours has done. This is not the place to 

 discuss the question, but the attempt has been made, 

 and, I believe, with success ; not with absolute 

 certainty, perhaps, but sufficient to remove, at any 

 rate, most of the difficulties in the way of the adoption 

 of a universal standard. It is no objection to this 

 proposal to say that the people of each nation are in- 

 capable of pronouncing certain sounds. This is not 

 true, so far as relates to the languages with which we 

 have practically to do. No Englishman, for instance, 

 if properly instructed, can fail to learn the sound of 

 the German ch, or the French u or eu in a short time, 

 and practice will then make it easy. Moreover, the 

 number of sounds peculiar to each nation is much 

 exaggerated. The French, it is said, have a dislike 

 to the sound of w. It would not be difficult, were 

 this the place for doing so, to make out a long list of 

 words which every Frenchman uses, in which this 

 sound occurs, though not the letter. Conversely, the 

 so-called peculiar vowel-sound of the word cueillir 

 has its exact counterpart in English words. 



Although the time is not ripe for the adoption of 

 the above-mentioned scheme in its entirety, there is 

 one feature of it which will form a good step in ad- 

 vance, and which may be at once accepted. This is 

 the absolutely certain fact that c and g should invari- 

 ably have a guttural sound. I am not speaking of the 

 attempt to make this rule apply to English words 

 derived from classical roots. That is quite a distinct 

 subject, though it is not always kept distinct. Scien- 

 tific names are Latin words, and should be so pro- 

 nounced. The case of Geranium and the like will be 

 no obstacle, for it is easy to pronounce the g hard 

 when we speak of Geranium molle to a fellow-botanist, 

 and soft when we speak to a lady-friend of the 

 geraniums in her conservatory. This is no more than 

 is done every day by people who can speak more than 

 one language. They do not, for instance, give the 

 same sound to ball in English, and ball in German, 

 because they are spelled the same, and are names of 

 the same object : and similarly with the French and 

 English point. 



With reference to the pronunciation of words 

 derived from names of persons and places, it will be 

 only consistent to insist that they shall be sounded 

 according to the rules of the language from which 

 they are taken. In so far as they are neither classical 

 words nor derived directly from classical sources, 



