SOME NEURAL TERMS. 1 43 



it would not prove a serious burden, because the part is hardly 

 mentioned once while the cerebral septum is named ten times. 



Tentorium vs. tentoriwn cerebelli. — This case is even 

 stronger than that of falx, for tentorium is an idionym. 



Striatum vs. corpus stnatum. — See callosuvi. 



CoRNU DoRSALE VS. columtia {grisea) posterior. — Two dis- 

 tinct issues are involved here : {a) toponymic, between posterior 

 and dorsalis ; {b) organonymic, between colwnna and cornu. 

 The former will be considered in connection with conm ventrale 

 and radix dorsalis. 



Cornu vs. coluvma. — It is almost embarrassing to find 

 myself advocating the maintenance of ancient and general 

 usage against one comparatively novel. Probably most ana- 

 tomic teachers will sympathize with the German committee in 

 their objection to the application of conui to what is really one 

 of several ridges of a deeply fluted column of gray nervous tis- 

 sue constituting the core of the "spinal cord"; ridges that 

 resemble "horns" only when artificially exposed upon transec- 

 tion. At least ten years ago I was so deeply impressed by this 

 inappropriateness of cornu as to hunt up an architectural term, 

 namely, arris, signifying the ridge between two adjoining chan- 

 nels of a Doric column. Whether or not it was derived from 

 arista, it is excellent Latin in form, and acceptable in every 

 respect save its novelty. 



Yet I believe that I did well to refrain from its introduction ; 

 for, after all, in nine cases out of ten the artificial appearance 

 presented upon section is what is first offered the student, and 

 I have never known a case of misapprehension occasioned 

 thereby. Upon the whole, this has seemed to the American 

 committee a good case for the observance of Huxley's apho- 

 rism ('80, 16) as to the unadvisability of interfering with terms 

 that are well established and have a definite connotation, even 

 when they may be etymologically inadequate, e.g., callosinn. 

 Individually, I should feel that the case against coniu would be 

 much stronger were it a word of half a dozen syllables or 

 lacking in euphony. 



The assignment of cohimna to the ridges of the myelic 

 cinerea naturally involved the replacement of that word as 



