POPULAR SCIENCE 447 



applied science, destined as these are to include an ever- 

 increasing proportion of national activities. Italy has shown 

 herself second to no nation, one might even say pre-eminent, 

 in the recognition and encouragement of science. For 

 example, at the Jubilee of Lord Kelvin's appointment to 

 the professorship of natural philosophy at Glasgow Uni- 

 versity, an occasion spontaneously recognised as one of 

 international importance, and attended by delegates from the 

 Universities, scientific societies and Academies of practically 

 all civilised nations, it was remarked that the only nation 

 represented by a State official was Italy. " At the Kelvin 

 Jubilee official recognition was studiously withheld. The King 

 of Italy could send an ambassador. But Italy is one of those 

 nations where science is honoured for its own sake " {Saturday 

 Review). For the sake of brevity nothing has been said as to 

 the claims of Greek, for it will be admitted probably by a large 

 majority that the balance of practical convenience is most 

 clearly on the side of Latin. 



The suitability of Latin as a medium for expressing the 

 ideas of most sciences in their early stages may be abundantly 

 illustrated, e.g. from the works of Copernicus, Newton, Leibnitz, 

 the two Bacons, Linnaeus, Harvey, Gilbert, and Napier of 

 Merchiston. As was remarked by Prof. F. Granger in the 

 Times correspondence mentioned above, " Science in the pages 

 of Descartes and Newton moved easily in a Latin dress, the 

 materials of which were derived from a still spoken but un- 

 Ciceronian tongue." It seems probable that a style modelled 

 upon one or other of these writers will suffice to express even 

 the more complex and specialised modes of thought which have 

 developed in modern science. A difficulty strongly felt by 

 some in connection with Latin is that due to the formal, and 

 to our ideas unnatural, arrangement of words in Ciceronian 

 Latin. This point, however, has already been dealt with by 

 Prof. Granger, who shows how much nearer to the modern 

 idiom is the language of the Vulgate, which arose from the 

 spoken language. The periodic style would no doubt have its 

 uses at international gatherings of a formal nature, and modern 

 precedents for these occasions are of course available, for 

 example in the Public Orations of Sir J. E. Sandys. 



The number of inflexions and the prevalence of exceptions 

 are indeed the features of Latin which are likely to prove most 



