158 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



Proton. This neuter noun was used by me ('93a, 46, 

 note) to designate the comparatively undifferentiated mass in 

 which two or more parts might afterward be distinguishable. 

 It is free from certain obvious and by no means inconsiderable 

 objections that may be brought against Anlage and fundament 

 as English words. It is subject to inflection, and may be 

 adopted into any language. In many derivatives or compounds 

 it is associated in the minds of all educated persons with the 

 general idea of primitiveness. Its employment is in harmony 

 with the following phrases from Aristotle cited for me by Prof. 

 B. I. Wheeler: TO TT/SCOTOZ/, 77 TT/OWTT; v\r], f) Trpcorrj atria. 



In short, all my regrets for the errors already confessed 

 (p. 125) and for others of which I may be convicted, together 

 with all my doubts regarding certain of the terms not as yet 

 acted upon by the American committees, shrink into the back- 

 ground of my mind as I reflect upon the nature and significance 

 of anla and proton, and upon the advantages that have been 

 and may be gained from their employment. 



Apparently, also, Professor Kolliker objects to hybrid words 

 as " Barbarismen." Yet the German list, adopted by a com- 

 mittee of which he was chairman, contains at least fourteen 

 compounds of Greek and Latin elements, viz., ^/zdurale, 

 mesovaricus, /^rumbilicales, /^rolfactorius, pmckorioidiale, 

 suprac/iorioidea, c/wri0ca.pi\la.ris, flterygopalatmus, pterygoman.- 

 dibularis, fl/trenicvcostalis, sfl/ienopalatinum, jr/^?;/06ccipitalis, 

 occipitomastoidea, and squamosomastotdea. 



The reasonable view of hybrid terms seems to me to be 

 embodied in the following remark of Barclay in 1803 : 



"Notwithstanding the opprobrium attached by some to certain con- 

 nections and intermarriages among harmless vocables, I should be 

 inclined not to reject the cooperation of the two languages (Greek 

 and Latin) where experience shows it to be convenient, useful, or 

 necessary." 



Abstractly, we may all prefer horses to mules, but this need 

 not hinder us from recognizing that, under certain circumstances, 

 the latter are more efficient than the former, and that, in a given 

 case, a horse may not be even so handsome as a mule. 



