268 Miscellaneous. 



on the south-west coast of England, especially towards the western 

 side of it. I suppose it wanders here from the Mediterranean, per- 

 haps accompanying several of the Cetacea and fish of those seas or the 

 warmer parts of the North-east Atlantic, and must be considered 

 an occasional visitor ; and it would be curious to learn whether any 

 of these wanderers ever find their way back to their breeding- 

 grounds or native regions. — J. E. Geat. 



Necessity of a Commoyi Language in Natural Science. 

 By Professor T. Thorell, of Upsala. 



" It may be asked why I, in my catalogue of arachnological 

 literature, have not included any other works than those written in 

 Latin or in the living languages of Teutonic or Roman origin. The 

 reason is, not that I undervalue what may have been written in other 

 languages (which I am very far from doing), but simply that I am 

 unable to understand even the titles of works written in, for example, 

 Russian, Polish, Bohemian, Finnish, or Magyar ; and thus I have 

 only by accident come to learn that a couple of works in these lan- 

 guages treat on arachnological subjects. 



" It may in general be taken for granted that a person of liberal 

 education has some acquaintance with Latin, and knows at least one 

 Teutonic and one Romanic language ; and when this is the case, he 

 can, without any great waste of time, learn so much of the others as 

 to be able, with the help of a grammar and dictionary, to understand 

 the purely descriptive works within his own department that are 

 written in those languages. This is probably the reason why, in 

 determining questions of priority, it is customary to attribute as m.uch 

 importance to works written in, for instance, Portuguese or Swedish 

 as to those written in any of the more generally studied languages. 

 But it is, of course, impossible to assign the same weight to all lan- 

 guages. No naturalist can have time to acquire the knowledge of all 

 the Earopean languages which have already a scientific literature to 

 show ; and the languages of this part of the world will assuredly not 

 long continue to keep exclusive possession of that territory. It would 

 seem, therefore, to be absolutely necessary, even for the future, in 

 the selection of the works of which a zoologist or botanist ought to 

 be expected to possess a knowledge, and which, in the determination 

 of questions of priority, ought to be taken into account, to confine 

 one's self to those which are written in the living languages of Teu- 

 tonic or Roman origin and in Latin. 



" The want of a common scientific language will unquestionably 

 become gradually more and more felt ; and as a return to Latin can 

 hardly be expected, it is not improbable that English may some time 

 or other acquire that rank, not only because that language is far more 

 widely diffused over every part of the earth than any other culture- 

 language, and that already two of the greatest nations publish in it 

 the results of their scientific labours, but because English, on account 

 of its simple grammar and as combining in nearly the same degree 

 Teutonic and Romanic elements, is by most Europeans more easily 

 acquired than any other language." — Remarhs on Symnyms of 

 Earopean Spiders. 18?;^, p. o83 (a woi'k written entivply in elegant 

 idiomatic English). 



