6o THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



brachy, Icptostafilmo and the like are not my words. It appeared 

 that the vocabulary would be enormous aiid sibylline when other 

 expressions were added to the name of stenocephalo, etc. The 

 French school, as regards nomenclature, is the most exaggerated. 

 I need but state that besides the words above given and common 

 to all anthropological schools, it has basioii, episthion, pterion, 

 obelion, mion, nasion, ophryon, ,inetopion, stphanion and the like. 

 If in adopting the zoological method which I have indicated we 

 abandon craniometry, and with it its nomenclature, there will 

 remain but few technical terms for the indications of varieties and 

 subvarieties, and then nomenclature will be brief and significative. 

 Whoever reads my Memoirs from the first, that upon the Melan- 

 esians, to the last, upon " microcephalic varieties," will observe 

 how I have little by little eliminated names and confusing and 

 wearisome measurements, and have reduced classification by tech- 

 nical terms for nomenclature to the greatest simplicity. 



Objections made against the nomenclature which I have intro- 

 duced can also be applied to that used in zoology and botany and 

 in all the sciences which have one. An important objection seems 

 to me that of Professor Benedict of Vienna, who would like to 

 abolish every word of Greek and Latin origin, because they are 

 dead languages which in a few years will no longer be taught in 

 schools of science. I agree with him. But, as I have above said, 

 it matters little whether a technical name of a variety be under- 

 stood in its signification provided that the variety denominated 

 be known by means of the name, and nothing more, when it 

 refers to a determinate form. Moreovei^, a reform in classification 

 should not sufifer through a difficulty in names, which, if they were 

 Italian, would not be easily accepted and understood by strangers. 

 Greek and Latin have at least the advantage of being languages 

 which can now be universally retained for the sciences. The 

 objections, or rather I should say the observations, made by 

 Hovelacque and Mantegazza are of no value and do not merit 

 attention. 



I at first adopted technical names Italianized, but afterwards, 

 in order to render the meaning easy to foreigners, I adopted the 

 Latinized form, which has the advantage of preserving the original 

 vowels and consonants. The naturalist, accustomed to zoological 

 nomenclature, finds nothing newi,, much less strange, in this 



