208 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



three or four on one side would be the Oxyrrhis of Dujardln ; and those 

 with six or seven processes, the Hexamita of the same author. 



" To complete the apparently truthful determinations of these micro- 

 scopists, I would only have to place before them some of these cells 

 which I have found in a state of self-division, each half possessing its 

 genital-like mesoblast. In all their various shapes and actions, and in 

 the mode of self-division, there is a remarkable and undistinguishable 

 resemblance to numerous moving bodies which go under the name of 

 Infusoria, and which may be found, unconnected with any living or- 

 ganism, in various kinds of infusions." 



The character of these movements being discussed, Mr. 

 Clark remarked, that he was disposed to attribute them to 

 endo-exosmotic action. 



Mr. Folsom read an extract from some philological notes, 

 containing the results of an investigation he had recently 

 been called on to make for an immediate practical end, in 

 reference to lexicography. The subject was the common 

 English words Turtle and Tortoise, their origin and history, 

 and especially their complication with each other in modern 

 use. 



" This has been an occasion of perplexity to English lexicogra- 

 phers ; but it does not appear that the subject has ever been histori- 

 cally investigated, or that it has yet engaged the attention of those 

 philologists who, in England and in this country, are now so intent on 

 tracing the pedigree, and exhibiting the successive changes in the 

 meaning, of the words that make up our composite language. Who- 

 ever attempts to investigate it may well take for his motto the Greek 

 proverb that will presently have to be cited. 



" There is no difficulty as to the word turtle in itself, for it has 

 always been applied to the bird from whose note it was originally 

 taken ; toor * representing it in Hebrew, toortoor (among other names) 

 in Arabic, and turtur in Latin. Beautiful changes are rung upon it, as 

 it passes into the languages derived from the Latin. Tortorella, tour- 

 terelle, tortola, and other sweet diminutives, are heard in the Italian, 

 French, and Spanish tongues. In Anglo-Saxon it was slightly modi- 

 fied into turtel, which form it also bears in other languages of the same 



* linn Sl'pi , " and the voice of the turtle." 



