818 LETTER TO THE EDITOR. 



familiar appellations have no real or necessary connection with 

 science. The first and most important requisite in scientific terms 

 is that they should be universally adopted, and hence the fathers of 

 natural history have wisely employed the Latin language as the 

 source of their nomenclature, being generally understood by the 

 learned among all civilized nations. English names are useful 

 only to denote those natural objects which are so common or 

 remarkable in our own country as to attract the attention even of 

 the vulgar, but as the science of natural history does not in the least 

 require their assistance, I should be sorry to see them in any degree 

 substituted for those Latin appellations which are universally current 

 in the republic of science. I may remark that French naturalists 

 are much more addicted to the adoption of vernacular names to the 

 exclusion of scientific ones, than the English. By endeavouring 

 to coin a French term for every natural object, in addition to the 

 Latin one which it already possesses, they exactly double the 

 enormous labour of bearing in memory the innumerable terms 

 with which science is unavoidably encumbered. 



If, then, I am correct in regarding the English names of Birds as 

 belonging not to science, but to our mother tongue, it is clearly 

 better to let them remain as they are than by endeavouring to 

 reform the English language, to make changes which are certain 

 not to be universally adopted. 



The second requisite in scientific nomenclature is, that when 

 once established, it should remain unaltered. Hence 1 cannot but 

 regard as erroneous the prevailing notion that improved names may 

 be at any time substituted for those which, though already estab- 

 lished, are less appropriate. In naming a new genus or species, 

 for the first time, it is of course desirable to give it the most appro- 

 priate appellation that can be found, but when a name has once 

 become current, it is no longer the sense but the sound that recalls 

 the idea of the object to our minds, and it is therefore of more im- 

 portance that a name should be universally adopted, than that its 

 meaning should be exclusively applicable to the object it denotes. 

 To insure this universality in the use of terms, the only rule is to 

 recur to the name originally given by the founder of the genus or 

 species, which name I think no modern innovator has any more 

 right to alter than he has to improve upon the name bestowed on a 

 child by its godfathers. For these reasons I must still continue to 

 prefer the term Motacilla alba to either M. lotor or M. maculosa, 

 and to call the goatsucker Caprimulgus, instead of either Nyctiche- 

 lidon or Vociferator. I will now conclude these hasty remarks by 

 referring Mr. Wood to " Loudon's Magazine of Natural History," 

 for January last, p. 36, where he will find the same subject treated 

 of more at large. 



I remain, &c, 



H. E. S. 



