234 



FOREIGN NOTICES. 



of Clianth and Oncid, instead of Clianthus and 

 Oncidium, is regarded as a troublesome innovator; 

 and if he ventures somewhat further, and prefers 

 Birthwort to Aristoloehia, Tangle to Fucus, or 

 Liverwort to Marchantia, he may expect to take 

 rank as a scientitic Chartist. Nevertheless, the 

 very persons who condemn such modes of speak- 

 ing would be the first to exclaim against calling 

 Viburnum opulus by any other name than Guel- 

 dres Rose, or Galanthus nivalis otherwise than 

 Snowdrop. 



How is it that the practice of pedantry among 

 scholars is admitted on all hands to be an offence 

 against good taste, and that the absence of it 

 among naturalists is also looked upon as an offence 

 against good taste? Why do men thus blow hot 

 and cold with the same breath? How is it that 

 scholars who understand Greek and Latin, drop 

 those languages in English composition, and that 

 naturalists require persons who know nothing of 

 such tongues to be always making grotesque ef- 

 forts at talking them? This seems to deserve some 

 examination on the part of those who think that 

 natural history should be made interesting to all 

 classes, and identified with their familiar thoughts, 

 a result that will never be arrived at so long as 

 the nomenclature of organized bodies is a chaos of 

 Greek and Latin compounds, whether barbarous or 

 formed upon the soundest principles. 



It may be alleged that the practice of adapting 

 classical names to the English tongue is not uni- 

 versal; and that, if wc have pruned Virgilius 

 and OviDius down to Vikgil and Ovid, we have 

 left Cornelius Nepos and Quintus Curtius in 

 their ancient shape. Why this has happened we 

 know not. Possibly because these names are much 

 less used in conversation than the others, for 

 Cornel sounds as well as Virgil, and would 

 arise out of an application of the same process of 

 curtailment; nor do we see why Quintin Curt 

 should be excluded from the language which re- 

 cognises Quintin Dick. At any rate, among the 

 best authorities, the practice has gone much fur- 

 ther than is suspected ; in proof of which we have 

 only to refer to the words Cynosure, Zephyr, 

 Ethiop, Arcady, employed by Milton and others, 

 or to such names as Cephise, Hippolyt, ^scu- 

 LAPE, Dian, Camill, and Hyacinct, which are 

 familiar to all readers of Spencer. 



Our good old Saxon tongue consists mainly of 

 •words of one or two sylables; and it will always 

 be found that the purest and best English writers 

 shunned long words taken from Greek and Latin. 

 The sonorous but corrupt style of some of our great 

 authors introduced, indeed, a great change in this 

 respect. With them language was — 



" English cut on Greek and Latin, 

 Like fustian heretofore on satin." 



But scholars happily saw the evil of this, and 

 hence the sesquipedalian style has made no pro- 

 gress. Had it been otherwise, we should by this 

 time, like the Germans, have excited the astonish- 



ment of the world by words extending across a 

 page. Does any one imagine that our forefathers 

 would have kept even Quercus in their vocab- 

 ulary, if they had not possessed its equivalent 

 in Ac or Oak ; undoubtedly tbey would have cut it 

 down to Querk in spite of the lawyers. And, in 

 like manner, Fag us would have become Fage, 

 or Fege, or Phege; but they seem to have found 

 a substitute in Beech. 



The universal practice of society is to expel 

 technical words from familiar language, wherever 

 it is possible to do so. A naturalist would be 

 laughed at who talked of a Rana temporaria, 

 meaning a frog, or of Curruca Luscinia, meaning 

 nightingale, or of Falco fulvus, or ^quila chry- 

 saetos, meaning a golden eagle. Would anything 

 be more preposterous than to call Keens' Seedling 

 Strawberry, Frugaria virginiana, or Sweet Ver- 

 nal Grass and Cocksfoot, Jlathoxanthum odoratum 

 and Dactijlis glomerata ? It is only necessary to 

 allude To such cases to show their extreme ab- 

 surdity. 



The truth is, that all nations like to speak their 

 own language, if they can, and to fashion foreign 

 words to the shape of their own organs of speech 

 as nearly as they find possible; and hence we En- 

 glish have changed Taillebois into Talbot, 

 cinqfeuille into cinqfoil, and so on. And we can- 

 not but think that those who have kept this in view 

 in modifying the foreign names current in natural 

 history, have acted upon a principle, the sound- 

 ness of which cannot be well disputed. It does 

 not. however, follow that the principle has been 

 judiciously applied. On the contrary, it must be 

 conceded that an error has been committed — that 

 error is translation instead of adaptation. A bet- 

 ter course would have been adaptation to the ex- 

 clusion of translation. The best course is the 

 skilful mixture of the two. 



The objection to translated names consists in 

 this — that the naturalist who uses them has to 

 burthen his memory with two names instead of 

 one — the vernacular and the technical. And this 

 we take to be the true and only valid objection 

 to translated names, provided the translation is 

 made on correct principles. It must we think be 

 admitted that Toothtongue is more conformable to 

 the English language than Odontoglossum, and 

 Cutridge than Acrotemnus. Nor is there any- 

 thing in such names at variance with the usual 

 construction of English compounds. Objections 

 to them on such a ground are only prejudices. 

 The great fault in Toothtongue and Cutridge is — 

 not that they are badly constructed words but — 

 that they compel the naturalist to recollect them, 

 in addition to Odontoglossum and Acrotcmviis, 

 which are indispensable. Science requires a uni- 

 versal nomenclature, suitable to all countries, and 

 that must be preserved, in addition to any local 

 nomenclature. 



We freely admit the force of this objection, and 

 for this reason, but for no other, willingly advise 



