154 



BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



of segmental value, and who has needlessly and unjustifiably 

 modified the scope oi prosencephalon and reversed the hitherto 

 commonly accepted sense of metencepJialon. 



Medipedwicuhis. — To this term Professor His devotes one- 

 fourth of his entire criticism. Hence some rejoinder should be 

 made, although the objections impress me as either ill-founded 

 in themselves or inconsistent upon the part of the objector. 

 As a word medipediinciiliis is no more " barbarous " than 

 viediUtlliitni, Mediterranean, or medieval. As a designation 

 rather than a description, it requires definition. The beginner 

 would remember medipediinciUiis quite as easily as " pedunculus 

 cerebelli ad pontem "; ^ and since experienced anatomists know 

 that there are three cerebellar "stalks" on each side, but only 

 two " pedunculi cerebri," one on each side, he is not likely to 

 infer that either of the latter is meant by medipediinculiis. In 

 fact, this term, as coined and defined by me,^ is now an idio- 

 nym, applicable to but a single part of the brain. 



In order to be absolutely explicit and independent of the 

 context, the following terms from the German list should be 

 accompanied by the words here bracketed after them: Clivns 

 [occipitalis'], Clivns \sphcnoidalis\ Pars cervicalis [inedullae 

 spinalis], Sulcus lateralis anterior [inedullae oblongatae], Sulcus 

 limitans ventriculorum [encephali], Pars centralis [vetitriculi 

 lateralis], Ventricuhcs terminalis [niedullae spinalis], Lamina 

 terminalis [encephali]. The identity of the, adjective in the 

 last two terms would lead the beginner to associate them topo- 

 graphically, and he certainly would never infer that they 

 designate parts at opposite poles of the cerebro-spinal axis.^ 



From the standpoint of Professor His the foregoing must 

 be regarded as serious blemishes upon the German list. From 



1 This term, by the way, does not occur in the German list, where apparently 

 it is replaced by brachiurn poiitis. 



'^ In this connection two remarks are naturally suggested: (i) Medipeduncidus 

 is an adjectival locative, it and its correlatives, praepedunciihis and postpedunctiliis, 

 constituting one of the most perfect groups of that kind (pp. 113-114); {2) the 

 obtrusively Latin termination of these words, as well as the length of the words 

 themselves, forced upon me in 18S4 (p. 122) the consideration of the whole subject 

 of paronymy. 



3 In the absence of adequate context or prior definition, would any reader 

 imagine that spongiocyte ■a.wA spongioplasm refer to elements of the nervous tissue!^ 



