"Further Observations:" 327 



afterwards, and therefore means nothing. Numerous names 

 used by Aristotle and Pliny are in this predicament, and there- 

 fore it is that modem naturalists do not scruple to exclude 

 those names altogether, or to use them in new and conven- 

 tional senses. 



It is on the strength of these three special exceptions that 

 Mr. Ogilby accuses me of "inadvertently" making my rules 

 retrospective, and it is " against the interminable mischief and 

 confusion resulting from the introduction of a principle at once 

 so dangerous, so unfair, and so uncalled for," that he "direct- 

 ed the weight of his censure." I appeal to impartial judges 

 to pronounce what there is dangerous, unfair, or uncalled for 

 in Rules 5, 6, and 7. 



Mr. Ogilby further writes, "But is not the fact cited by Mr. 

 Strickland himself, of the well-known naturalist from whose 

 works he has chiefly compiled his "rules," having sanctioned 

 their retrospective character, — a sufficient justification of the 

 severity with which I deprecated the mischievous tendency 

 of these codes ? " So, because Mr. Swainson chooses to make 

 his code retrospective and consequently mischievous, there- 

 fore my code, and codes in general, retrospective or not, arc 

 to be deprecated as mischievous. 



§ 2. — Terminations in idae and adae. — Mr. Ogilby is per- 

 fectly right in stating that the affix oidce expresses the rela- 

 tionship of similarity, — " the o being merely the last letter of 

 the primitive Greek word with which eiftg is most commonly 

 joined in composition." But all classical scholars will agree 

 in thinking that he is "greatly mistaken" when he considers 

 the patronymic affix idea or adce to be "absolutely identical 

 with the affix oidce:' Matthias, (no mean authority), in his 

 'Greek Grammar,' section 99, classes patronymics in idee not 

 among compound words, but among substantives which re- 

 ceive a new meaning by a change of form. Therefore idee is 

 a mere formal termination, — not a super-added word. Vari 

 ous forms of these terminations were used by the Greeks to 

 express family relationship, — the principal of which were this, 

 a&K, and lav. ^ Indeed the quantity of idee proves it not to be 

 derived from htibg, similitudo, for it would then be long instead 

 of short. It is true that some patronymics have the diphthong 

 si instead of the simple i, but in such cases the £ belongs to 

 the preceding root, — not to the affix. Thus, no one would 

 derive 'Ar^sifts from 'Arp-Eifts, resembling Atreus, but from 

 'Ar^e-ifts, akin to Atreus. When resemblance is implied, the 

 o is always prefixed to the lifts, and therefore, if that be Mr. 

 Ogilby's object, he must, as I before remarked, write Siniioi* 



Vol. II.— No. 18. n. s. e e 



