Observations on Rules for Nomenclature. 153 



Simla are both desirable and necessary, there is no doubt ; 

 but I think I have sufficiently shewn that they would not be 

 promoted by the adoption of the alterations proposed by Mr. 

 Strickland ; and I feel convinced that Mr. Strickland himself, 

 who has earned more substantial claims to scientific reputa- 

 tation, than any which can be conferred by the change of a 

 name, will join with me in reprobating that wholesale love of 

 innovation, that inundation of new terms and synonymes, 

 which, breaking down all the established land-marks of sci- 

 ence, threatens to overwhelm the principles of zoology in a 

 chaos of words. 



To demonstrate the perfectly arbitrary and dogmatical na- 

 ture of these "rules," their opposition to good sense, sound 

 criticism, and fixed principles, and the consequent careless- 

 ness, to use the mildest possible expression, with which they 

 have been drawn up, let us take the following example. — - 

 " Names," say the legislators, " should be taken either from 

 the Latin or Greek languages." Now, at the risk of shocking 

 the refined taste of these fastidious arbitri elegantiarum, who, 

 more classical than the Greeks and Romans themselves, would 

 fetter our free choice of terms, and impose restraints upon the 

 ancient languages which the ancients themselves repudiated, 

 I must beg leave to differ with them in toto : and my reasons 

 are, because their rule is opposed to the genius and spirit of 

 all languages, ancient and modern, and directly contradicted 

 by the practice of the Greeks and Romans themselves. 



First, it is opposed to the genius and spirit of all language; 

 for no language thinks it necessary to form new names from 

 its own resources, to designate new objects with which it was 

 originally unacquainted, but adopts the names which those 

 objects bear in their native countries, only modifying them in 

 such a manner as to suit them to its own peculiar harmony 

 and orthography. All language, moreover, has an instinctive 

 horror of compound epithets ; and it is only where the sim- 

 ple and appropriate native names cannot be obtained, or 

 readily adapted to the peculiar genius of its harmony and or- 

 thography, that it ever condescends to employ them. This 

 leading principle of sound criticism, founded upon the nature 

 and practice of all languages, whether ancient or modern, is 

 entirely disregarded by the legislators "for scientific nomen- 

 clature," who, besides, forget that the compound epithets 

 which they patronise so exclusively, are no more entitled to 

 be considered as pure Greek or Latin, than the so-called bar- 

 barous adaptations. Nay, I shall presently shew, that the 

 Greeks and Romans themselves would have rejected them, in 

 favour of these very identical adaptations of barbarous terms so 



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