272 Names of Animals [FOURTH WEEK 



wild creature comes instantly to his mind, but if you ask 

 him why it is called a wolf, a hundred chances to one he 

 will look blankly at you. It is the old fault, so common 

 among us human beings, of ignoring the things which lie 

 nearest us. Or perhaps your friend shares the state of 

 mind of the puzzled old lady, who, after looking over a 

 collection of fossil bones, said that she could understand 

 how these bones had been preserved, and millions of years 

 later had been discovered, but it was a mystery to her 

 how anyone could know the names of these ancient animals 

 after such a lapse of time! 



Some of the names of the commonest animals are lost 

 in the dimness of antiquity, such as fox, weasel, sheep, 

 dog, and baboon. Of the origin of these we have forever 

 lost the clew. With camel we can go no farther back 

 than the Latin word camelus, and elephant balks us with 

 the old Hindoo word eleph, which means an ox. The old 

 root of the word wolf meant one who tears or rends, and 

 the application to this animal is obvious. In several Eng- 

 lish and German names of persons, we have handed down 

 to us a relic of the old fashion of applying wolf as a com- 

 pliment to a warrior or soldier. For example, Adolph 

 means noble-wolf, and Rudolph glory-wolf. 



Lynx is from the same Latin word as the word lux 

 (light) and probably was given to these wildcats on account 

 of the brightness of their eyes. Lion is, of course, from 

 the Latin leo, which word, in turn, is lost far back in the 

 Egyptian tongue, where the word for the king of beasts 

 was labu. The compound word leopard is first found in 

 the Persian language, where pars stands for panther. Seal, 



