proposed species of' the Genus Homo. 35 



have already succeeded in making it extremely difficult, with- 

 out immense labour, to ascertain the identity of species 

 through their multiplied synonyms ; and all distinctive cha- 

 racteristics are lost in the search of mere words without mean- 

 ing, in the works of these minute philosophers.* 



It is time for those who feel more interested in the know- 

 ledge of things than terms, to raise a barrier against the 

 contagion of these encumbering nomenclaturists, who, by 

 everlastingly quoting one another, or their own inedited 

 manuscripts, have contrived to push themselves into ephe- 

 meral notice. Luckily in Britain, except among a very few, 

 and those of no very overpowering genius or learning, this 

 revolutionary frenzy has made but little progress. But 

 every Frenchman who knows any thing of science must be 

 an author, and not only so, but the author of a system in 

 some particular department ; and his presumption, in nine 

 cases out of ten, being in an inverse ratio to his qualifications 

 and his judgment, his book comes forth studded with a ter- 

 minology composed of Greek and Latin compounds of the 

 most unreadable and unpronounceable nature, and these are 

 indicated as the classical and future names by which the ob- 

 jects of which he affects to treat are alone to be known, ■f 



* M. de Riviere, in the Annals of the Linnwan Society of Paris, proposes 

 a new language of Botany, in which each organ shall be expressed by a 

 letter, and the number of organs by the place which the letter occupies 

 in the word. This botanical notation he wishes the Society to promulgate, 

 " and thus to do for the scientific world what the French Academy has 

 done for the literary I" 



+ In a book published at Frankfort in 1825, on the Natural History of/J- 

 chens, M.Walroth, a German, has followed the French nomenclaturists even 

 to unintelligibility. Not satisfied with the terms in use among former bo- 

 tanical writers, or even with those attempted to be introduced by modem 

 reformers, he has created a set of barbarous terms, which he uses in his de- 

 scriptions, and which even his French critics are not disposed to allow. 

 For the use of philosophical recorders of aberrations of mind, we quote the 

 following passage : 



" Patellaria fusco-lutea (Lecidea, Achar. Syn. p. 42,) Blastemate acoly- 

 to verrucoso chlorogonimicio stephrophseno, facile in massam chlorophse- 

 nam fatiscente ; cymatis piano convexiusculis marginem excludentibus, 

 ex speirematum ubertate varia nunc dilute fusccscentibus intusque albi- 

 dis, lividis intusque melunophaenis." — Bull, des Sciences Nat., Nov. 1825, 

 p. 586. 



