242 NATURAL SCIENCE. Oct., 



workers if they are able to make any suggestions for rendering records 

 of progress more systematic and elaborate than they are at present. 



Scientific Linguistics. 



When a layman asks a naturalist why he invents and employs 

 such a multitude of incomprehensible technical terms, the common 

 reply is that exact ideas necessitate a precise and universally- 

 understood nomenclature. We wonder how this explanation would 

 apply to the terms of " Auxology " or " Bioplastology " just discussed 

 again by Professor A. Hyatt in the Zoologiscliev Anzeiger (concluded 

 August 28). We should like to know how much scientific precision 

 there is in the determination of the nepionic, metaneonic, gerontic, 

 paragerontic, etc., stages of any organism ; and what grain of solid 

 fact, as compared with mere speculation, in the so-called definition of 

 the phylonepionic, phyloneanic, phylogerontic, etc., phases of develop- 

 ment in any group of animals. We may be enslaved by some 

 prejudice, and our patience may have been ruffled in the attempt to 

 decipher some recent writings of American authors on fossil shells ; 

 but we cannot help uttering a protest against the clothing of a tissue 

 of hypothetical fabrications in the garb of a precisely-defined scientific 

 nomenclature. It is, of course, a matter of everyday knowledge that 

 each organism passes through several marked stages in its individual 

 development ; and most naturalists will admit that a good deal 

 of evidence is constantly being discovered as to the evolution of races, 

 genera, and species in course of time. Nevertheless, there is as yet 

 nothing very exact in this knowledge; and until that exactitude is 

 reached, the invention and application of scientific terms is a delusion 

 and a snare, and a veritable hindrance to progress. 



The embryologists need not be considered in the matter ; for they 

 do not seem to have taken kindly to the classification of stages of 

 development by those whose practical acquaintance with the study of 

 embryos is, for the most part, probably nil. The latest work on the 

 subject (Marshall's " Vertebrate Embryology ") does not even mention 

 that any such classification has been attempted. When they begin 

 to discuss protembryos, mesembryos, metembryos, etc., it will be time 

 to return to the subject, and examine the cogency of their reasoning. 



It is with the speculative palaeontologists that we have to deal. 

 It is they who arrange ammonites and brachiopods in rows, and 

 unfold to us, with surprising confidence, the history of a genus, a 

 species, or a race. The manner in which they are studying growth, 

 variation, and the stratigraphical sequence of forms, by the examina- 

 tion of enormous collections, is one of the most gratifying signs of the 

 times. This is certainly the only method by which the modern ideas 

 of Biology can be advanced. It ought, however, to suffice at present 

 to record clearly and simply the facts, carefully distinguishing all 

 legitimate suggestions as to their likely explanation ; and, to our mind, 



