288 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



rata," and " Ulex europseus," belong to its nomen- 

 clature. 



A nomenclature may be defined, the collection of 

 the names of all the Kinds with which any branch of 

 knowledge is conversant, or more properly, of all the 

 lowest Kinds, or infimcz species, those which may be 

 subdivided indeed, but not into Kinds, and which 

 generally accord with what in natural history are 

 termed simply species. Science possesses two splendid 

 examples of a systematic nomenclature ; that of 

 plants and animals, constructed by Linnaeus and his 

 successors, and that of chemistry, which we owe to 

 the illustrious group of chemists who flourished in 

 France towards the close of the eighteenth century. 

 In these two departments, not only has every known 

 species, or lowest Kind, a name assigned to it, but 

 when new lowest Kinds are discovered, names are at 

 once given to them upon an uniform principle. In 

 other sciences the nomenclature is not at present con- 

 structed upon any system, either because the species 

 to be named are not numerous enough to require one, 

 (as in geometry for example) , or because no one has 

 yet suggested a suitable principle for such a system, 

 as in mineralogy; in which the want of a scientifically 

 constructed nomenclature is now the principal cause 

 which retards the progress of the science. 



5. A word which carries on its face that it 

 belongs to a nomenclature, seems at first sight to 

 differ from other concrete general names in this 

 that its meaning does not reside in its connotation, in 

 the attributes implied in it, but in its denotation, that 

 is, in the particular group of things which it is ap- 

 pointed to designate ; and cannot, therefore, be un- 

 folded by means of a definition, but must be made 



