130 Notice of Jackson on Geographical Arrangement, 8fC. 



we are led to expect, from our friends in South America and the West 

 Indies, both geographical and geological communications, in which we are 

 very desirous that some intelligible system of nomenclature should be 

 adopted. 



How much may be done, both in science and art, by a strict attention 

 to the signification of words, independently of, or with but little aid from 

 diagrams, the existing systems of Zoology and Botany, and the treatise of 

 Mr. Rickman,and the Hints of Professor VVhewel, upon English and German 

 Architecture, amply evince. No student need dread a well-conducted, 

 what may be called a conservative reform, in the nomenclature of his pur- 

 suit ; for although it is true that the zeal of one or two leading naturalists 

 has led them rather to obscure with hard names, the sciences which in 

 other respects they have elucidated, yet by far the grossest abuses of 

 this nature have arisen from the expansion of a science, without a corres- 

 ponding expansion of its nomenclature ; by which means, new facts are 

 left to be designated by old terms, and an obscure and indefinite system of 

 synonymes is introduced, utterly incapable of any thing like accurate em- 

 ployment, and any attempt to patch up which, is likely only to make 

 confusion worse confounded. 



We do not mean to say, that in remodelling the nomenclature of a 

 science, every old term is to be swept away, and a set of entirely new ones 

 introduced, this would be absurd. The obvious method of proceeding will 

 be, to preserve all well-defined terms — unless, as formerly in chemistry, 

 they are founded upon false views of the facts; — to take such other terms 

 as are unobjectionable, but ill-defined, and after strictly limiting their sig- 

 nification, to retain them also ; utterly rejecting such only as are absurd, 

 or founded upon misapprehensions of the facts. By such means, many of 

 the advantages of a well-known, will be combined with those of a well- 

 arranged system. 



The adoption of a systematic nomenclature in Physical Geography would 

 be of inestimable advantage, both to that science and to Geology, as it 

 would enable a clear-headed traveller to give a more intelligible description 

 of a country, or of a mountain chain, in a few lines, than he is now able to 

 do in as many pages ; not to mention that the substitution of strictly de- 

 fined words for others of no meaning at all, would, as a contingent advan- 

 tage, strike at the ver" root of the intolerable practice of book making. 



The two principal features in the Physical Geography of a country, are 

 its mountains and its rivers ; and before a country can be considered as 

 well described, geographically, the general distribution of these must be 

 understood and explained ; and if once this be well done with respect to 

 these great outlines, the task of filling up the details will be comparatively 

 light, and when once learned they are not very likely to be forgotten. 



Col. Jackson considers, first, the incompetency of the present system, 

 both in this country and in France ; and offers, secondly, the principles of 



