SOME NEURAL TERMS. 143 



it would not prove a serious burden, because the part is hardly 

 mentioned once while the cerebral septum is named ten times. 



TENTORIUM vs. tentorium cerebelli. This case is even 

 stronger than that of falx, for tentorium is an idionym. 



STRIATUM vs. corpus stnatitm. See callosum. 



CORNU DORSALE vs. columna (grisea) posterior. Two dis- 

 tinct issues are involved here : (a) toponymic, between posterior 

 and dorsalis ; (b] organonymic, between columna and cornu. 

 The former will be considered in connection with cornu ventrale 

 and radix dorsalis. 



CORNU vs. columna. It is almost embarrassing to find 

 myself advocating the maintenance of ancient and general 

 usage against one comparatively novel. Probably most ana- 

 tomic teachers will sympathize with the German committee in 

 their objection to the application of cornu to what is really one 

 of several ridges of a deeply fluted column of gray nervous tis- 

 sue constituting the core of the " spinal cord"; ridges that 

 resemble " horns " only when artificially exposed upon transec- 

 tion. At least ten years ago I was so deeply impressed by this 

 inappropriateness of cornu as to hunt up an architectural term, 

 namely, arris, signifying the ridge between two adjoining chan- 

 nels of a Doric column. Whether or not it was derived from 

 arista, it is excellent Latin in form, and acceptable in every 

 respect save its novelty. 



Yet I believe that I did well to refrain from its introduction ; 

 for, after all, in nine cases out of ten the artificial appearance 

 presented upon section is what is first offered the student, and 

 I have never known a case of misapprehension occasioned 

 thereby. Upon the whole, this has seemed to the American 

 committee a good case for the observance of Huxley's apho- 

 rism ('80, 1 6) as to the unadvisability of interfering with terms 

 that are well established and have a definite connotation, even 

 when they may be etymologically inadequate, e.g., callosum. 

 Individually, I should feel that the case against cornu would be 

 much stronger were it a word of half a dozen syllables or 

 lacking in euphony. 



The assignment of columna to the ridges of the myelic 

 cinerea naturally involved the replacement of that word as 



