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HARD WICKE : S SCIENCE - G OS SI P. 



C hristian era, was pronounced as /•. Again, a joke 

 preserved by Quintilian serves to show that qu was 

 also pronounced like k, not, as in English and 

 modern Italian, as coo. Quintilian mentions that" a 

 man who had formerly been a cook, but had risen in 

 life till he had become a great swell, having on some 

 occasion said something insulting to a man who knew 

 his origin, the latter replied, " Et tu quoque," 

 where the whole force of the joke lies in the pro- 

 nunciation of quoque and cogue being identical. 



But I must not continue these illustrations at a 

 length which would suit a philological rather than a 

 natural history journal. Suffice it to say that there 

 is plenty of proof of the sound of all the vowels, and 

 of most, if not all. of the consonants. And I live in 

 hopes that, if not the present, the next, or perhaps 

 the paulo-post-futurum generation will not only, by 

 careful research, have recovered the genuine old 

 pronunciation, but will make use of it in reading or 

 speaking Greek and Latin. 



But when we have arrived at the conclusion of its 

 1 ieing both desirable and possible to pronounce Greek 

 and Latin literature as Greeks and Romans would 

 have pronounced it, it still remains to consider how 

 far it is either desirable or possible to pronounce 

 botanical, or other scientific terms, according to the 

 rules of genuine Greek or Latin pronunciation. As re- 

 gards genuine Greek or Latin words, such as Geranium, 

 Hieracium, Cineraria, I know no reason, except 

 persistence in a vicious custom, why they should not 

 be pronounced in proper Greek or Latin fashion, 

 with the c or the g hard. But what are you to do 

 with the atrocious barbarisms, the disgrace of all 

 sciences alike, with which the bad taste of modern 

 times has encumbered our nomenclature ? Take such 

 words as Brozonii, Smithii, Lecocquii, Hoekeria, 

 Scheuchzeria, and (worst and most frightful of all) 

 IVarsieioiezii. No rules for the pronunciation of 

 Greek or Latin words will ever enable any one to 

 make any of these sound in the least degree like a 

 I .atirl word. And for this very good reason ; namely, 

 that they are not Latin words, but only English, 

 French, or German, slightly disguised by having a 

 Latin tail tacked on to them ; and reminding one 

 very much of the statues of old George III., with his 

 stiff pig-tail protruding, clad in a Roman toga, or a 

 Greek chlamys. With such words, as I fear it is 

 quite hopeless to get rid of them, the only thing to 

 be done is to mark their bastard and mongrel origin, 

 by pronouncing them, the head according to its 

 nationality, and the tail only in Latin fashion. 



How the Romans themselves would have dealt 

 with these uncouth sounds we are not left to con- 

 jecture merely. A characteristic instance presents 

 itself in the place at which I am now writing, Church 

 Stratton, in Shropshire. Close by is a hill, on which 

 the British chieftain Caradoc maintained his last 

 fight against the Roman power. The hill still bears 

 his name, arid is called Caer Caradoc, the Seat of 



Caradoc. This name (with the accent on the penul- 

 timate syllable, according to the general rule in 

 Celtic words) is obviously the original of the, not 

 uncommon, surname of Cradock, or Craddock. Now, 

 suppose the discoverer of a new plant, wishing to 

 honour a botanist of the name of Cradock, in 

 all probability he would designate his discovery by 

 the hideous title of " herba CradockiV But what 

 did the Romans themselves do with such an unac- 

 commodating word ? Now it so happens that one of 

 the most classical of Roman writers, viz. Tacitus, 

 had a good deal to say about Caradoc, but he has 

 adapted his name to Latin ears, and speaks of him 

 always as Caraciacus. Plentiful instances of this 

 adaptation of names occur even in Scripture, to 

 which I need not more particularly refer. The New 

 Testament version of Old Testament names, such as 

 yesus for Joshua, Eliseus for Elisha, Sec. , shows the 

 principle upon which the writers of that age pro- 

 ceeded. In the time of the Renaissance they adopted 

 a, perhaps better, plan, wherever it could be resorted 

 to ; that, namely, of translating those names which 

 (as is the case with most) have a distinct meaning. 

 Thus, Hausschein becomes CEcolampadius ; Schwarzerd 

 is rendered Melancthon ; Hahn is known as Gall us : 

 and so on. Now, if these writers had been botanists, 

 instead of theologians and musicians, and it had been 

 desired to commemorate them by giving their names 

 to plants, we should have been tortured by the bar- 

 baric words — HausscJieinii, ScJnvarzerdia, Ilahnii, 

 Sec. Sec, instead of the equally commemorative, but 

 far more euphonious designations of CEcolampadii, 

 Melancthonia, Galli, Sec. And why cannot we now 

 adopt the same plan, and instead of Brown take 

 Fuscus, for Smith write Faber, for Hooker, Hamator, 

 Sec. &c. &c. Linnaeus himself is, no doubt, re- 

 sponsible for many of the uncouth names with which 

 botanical nomenclature abounds. But even he on 

 occasion could make a concession to euphony, as 

 witness his turning such a harsh-sounding word as 

 the German for a sore-throat, Breune (pronounced 

 Broina), into the pleasant-sounding Prunella. 



But the great difficulty in the way of a correct pro- 

 nunciation of classical and pseudo-classical words used 

 in botany is undoubtedly the question of quantity ; and 

 it is perfectly astonishing, in turning over botanical 

 works, written, too, by persons who are supposed to 

 have some scholarship, to see the flagrant blunders and 

 erroneous marking of quantities which they exhibit. 

 Many of these are simply the result of carelessness, 

 and arise from the author not giving himself the 

 trouble to think for a moment of the real origin of a 

 word. Thus the very common pronunciation of 

 (Enothera, with the e short, arises only from the 

 carelessness of not remembering that the plant origi- 

 nally so called (by Dioscorides I think, but I have 

 not got him at hand to refer to) was used by the 

 Greeks as we use olives, to give an appetite for 

 wine, and thence derived its name from Oinos and 



