60 The Scottish Naturalist. 



"cavity," or, better still, "loculus," whose companion-word, 

 "locellus," is found extremely useful. 



So with Zoology. " Auricle," for example, is sometimes re- 

 stricted to the auricular part of the heart in mammals; more 

 commonly, it is extended so as to include other than mammalian 

 hearts. "Cell," in the animal organism, is properly the name 

 for the well-known microscopic unit, but it has also the wider 

 signification of " small cavity " in general, as when we speak of a 

 bee's cell, &c. 



The second kind of infringement we see in such a technical 

 botanical word as "superior," with its correlative "inferior." One 

 part of a flower is said to be superior to another when it is above 

 it; this is mere position. A calyx is superior when its tube clasps 

 or encloses the ovary (wholly or in part) ; this is container and 

 contained. An embryo is superior when its radicle points towards 

 the apex of the fruit ; this is mere direction. Here, then, we have 

 three distinct significations (above-below, without-within, up-down ; 

 or, position, enclosure, and direction) ; and the word, which might 

 serve a good purpose if restricted to one special use, becomes worse 

 than useless — it is misleading and confusing — when thus extended. 

 There is also a fourth signification, when applied to the relation 

 of parts of a flower to the axis. It is now distance that is denoted : 

 nearer to the axis is superior, further from the axis is inferior. 



The same thing occurs in Zoology. Thus, the "operculum " in 

 fishes is one thing ; in univalve molluscs it is another. Again, 

 the word " nucleolus " stands both for the minute solid matter 

 found inside the nuclei of some cells, and the minute solid matter 

 found outside the so-called nucleus of certain of the Infusoria. 

 And " nucleus " itself has a two-fold application — first to the solid 

 germinal, body that many cells contain, next to the solid band- 

 shaped body found inside certain of the Protozoa ; just as 

 " nucleus," in botany, is applied both to the nucleus of a cell and to 

 the inner mass of the ovule and seed — two entirely different things. 



III. The third rule lays down : Avoid exuberance of technical 

 names, and beware of multiplying synonymous terms. 



In some instances, the existence of synonyms in science has an 

 archaeological value : synonyms are historical landmarks. But, in 

 that case, they are synonyms only in name; the seemingly equivalent 

 terms have really different associations and raise different ideas in 

 the mind. Thus, the synonyms of the two primary divisions of plants, 

 Phanerogams, and Cryptogams, are respectively Cotyledonese or 



