12 REMARKS ON THE USE OF NAMES. 



The remaining names, not classic in origin, are a miscellaneous lot not easy to 

 characterize tersely. Many are modern geographical or personal names in Latin 

 form ; as, wittoni, genitive case of Alexander Wilson's name, Latinized Wilsonus ; 

 or wilsonianus, an adjectival form of the same ; americana for" American ; hudson- 

 icus, after the territory named for Henry Hudson ; noveboracensis, which is liter- 

 ally, inhabiting New York. Some others are post-classic, or late Latin, though in 

 perfectly good form ; and there are more of these, we find, than is generally sup- 

 posed. Not a few are wholly barbarous, as Pyranga, Guiraca ; and some of these, as 

 cheriway, wurmizusume, are barbarous in form as in fact. Some are monstrous 

 combinations, like Embernagra from Emberiza and Tanagra, or Podilymbus from Podi- 

 ceps and Colymbus. Some are simply Latin translations of vernacular names ; as, 

 Pujfinus anglorum, the puffin of the English. Finally, some are anagrams, like 

 Dacelo from Alcedo, or pure nonsense-words, as Dafila, Viralva, Xema. 



The student who confidingly expects to discover erudition, propriety, and perti- 

 nence in every technical name of a bird, will have his patieuce sorely tried in dis- 

 covering what lack of learning, point, and taste many words imply. Besides the 

 barbarisms, anomalies, and absurdities already indicated, he must be prepared to 

 find names used with as little regard for precision of meaning, almost, as those of 

 Smith, Brown, and Jones. Nothing like the nice distinctions, for example, that the 

 Romans made between ater and niger, both meaning u black," or between albus and 

 Candidas, t4 white," obtains in modern science, where names are too often mere 

 sounds without sense, and where the inflexible rules of technical nomenclature com- 

 pel us to recognize and use many terms of slight or obscure or entirely arbitrary 

 applicability, if only they be not glaringly false or of express absurdity. Let him 

 for example, compare the several birds whose specific name is fuscus, and see what 

 color-blindness this word covers. 



The large majority of the names being, as already said, of Greek or Latin deriva- 

 tion, we are enabled to give a reasonably full and fair account of their et}*mology, 

 and to point out their significance and application. There are, perhaps, not two 

 dozen words of the whole list which we are unable to explain and define. 



2. ORTHOGRAPHY, OR SPELLING. 



The literation of the scientific names is fixed and exact in nearly all cases. 

 Their derivation being known, and their form having crystallized in a language 

 " dead" for centuries, the proportion of cases in which the orthography is unsettled 

 is comparatively small. In general, there is no alternative spelling of a Greek or 

 Latin word, and the modern derivatives are or can be compounded according to 

 rules so fixed as to leave little latitude. In some instances, of course, two or more 

 admissible forms of the same word occur: as hyemalis or hiemalis, cceruleus or 

 cceruleus, Haliceetus or Haliaetus. But, in general, there remains only one right way 

 of spelling, and that wa} T easily ascertained. We say, there remains ; for of course 



