4 Forestry Quarterly. 



(b) Words which are current with well established mean- 

 ings should not be employed as terms in another sense, especially 

 where it is likely that ambiguity would be introduced by the 

 simultaneous use of the ordinary sense and the term meaning. 



(c) Age is a virtue: a long-established, sufficiently well de- 

 fined and understood term should not be lightly discarded or 

 supplanted unless very considerable improvement were gained. 

 Convenience, we repeat, is the object of language, and it is more 

 convenient to use established language than to fish for new words. 



(d) Terms should be as short and as nearly as possible self- 

 explanatory. It is, of course, well nisfh impossible, nor is it 

 necessary, that a term explain all that is implied in it: it is the 

 very impossibility of doing so that leads to the use of special 

 terms which to the initiated at once convey the full explanation. 

 But, if the term suggests its own explanation, it will be the 

 more acceptable. 



(e) Finally, the word or word combination should have a 

 term-quality. This is, perhaps, the most difficult requirement 

 to define or to discover: it is like taste in art, it requires a 

 language sense which by instinct or intuitively rejects the un- 

 suitable. A word infrequently used in common language has 

 thereby more term-quality, than one in common use; a Roman 

 word more than a Saxon ; a brief combination more than a long 

 one ; a compound more than a phrase ; an unusual compound 

 more than a common one. 



If the term fulfills all these conditions, it is perfect; by so 

 much as it fails, it is deficient and open to criticism, calling for 

 improvement. 



We may add, that there is a movement on foot to have a 

 Committee of the Society of American Foresters revise the 

 terminology — a most excellent proposition ! Such committee 

 may then be made permanent or self -perpetuating. 



