198 KOYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



names, which by usage have attained to a certain stability within the 

 limits of any given region. This stability of the common nomenclature 

 in face of the fluidity of the scientific names makes it not only need- 

 less, but even an encumbrance, to quote the latter except for those rarer 

 kinds which have no others. 



The names applied to our animals and plants by the early voyagers 

 were drawn from four sources. 



First, they were general or generic names of familiar European 

 forms extended with perfect correctness to forms within the same genus 

 occurring in the new world. Thus Ours, Loups, Loutres of our French, 

 and Bears, Wolves, Otters of our English, together with the names of 

 most plants, have this origin. 



Second, they were names of familiar European forms having no 

 exact representatives in the new world, but transferred to other some- 

 what similar forms which in some way took the place of the familiar 

 ones lat home, either in appearance, in habit, in utility, in cry or note, 

 in marking a season, or in some other dominant feature. Very often 

 this resulted in giving a European name to an American animal or 

 plant scientifically very different, as when the English applied Eobin 

 to our Thrush, Partridge to our Grouse, Rabbit to our Hare, or when 

 the French applied Outarde to our Canada Goose, Eossignol to out 

 Song Sparrow, or Merle to our Red-breasted Thrush. 



Third, they were new names evolved, no doubt for the most part in 

 description of some striking peculiarity, in the speech of the earliest 

 explorers or fishermen to whom the forms were new. Such names have 

 mostly persisted, passed along from their originators through pilots, 

 traders and settlers down to our own day. Examples are: Mermette, 

 Gode, Esterlet, Marionette. 



Fourtli, they were native Indian names adopted directly by the 

 earliest persons who had much contact with the Indians, viz., traders, 

 fishermen and settlers. Such names have mostly persisted, as witness 

 Caribou, Moose, Carcajou, Chicamin, Pounamon. 



The above four classes of names stand in the order both of abun- 

 dance and of chronological development. It was the very earliest 

 explorers who were most prone to extend and transfer familiar names 

 to the animals and 'plants of the new country, which they did partly 

 because of the inertia of the familiar names, partly because of their pre- 

 occupation with other matters and failure to note exact identities, and 

 partly because of unfamiliarity with floral and faunal matters gen- 

 erally : for it must be remembered that very many of the sailors who 

 first saw the animals of the American forests had never seen the corre- 

 sponding forms of Europe, but knew them only by hearsay, and had 



