FOURTH WEEK] October 273 



very appropriately, was once a word meaning " of the sea"; 

 close to the Latin sal, the sea. 



Many names of animals are adapted from words in 

 the ancient language of the natives in whose country the 

 creatures were first discovered. Puma, jaguar, tapir, and 

 peccary (from paquires) are all names from South American 

 Indian languages. The coyote and ocelot were called 

 coyotl and ocelotl by the Mexicans long before Cortes landed 

 on their shores. Zebra, gorilla, and chimpanzee are native 

 African words, and orang-utan is Malay, meaning Man of 

 the Woods. Cheetah is from some East Indian tongue, as 

 is tahr, the name of the wild goat of the Himalayas. 

 Gnu is from the Hottentots, and giraffe from the Arabic 

 zaraf. Aoudad, the Barbary wild sheep, is the French 

 form of the Moorish name audad. 



The native Indians of our own country are passing 

 rapidly, and before many years their race may be extinct, 

 but their musical, euphonious names of the animals they 

 knew so well, often pleased the ear of the early settlers, 

 and in many instances will be a lasting memorial as long 

 as these forest creatures of our United States survive. 



Thus, moose is from the Indian word mouswah, meaning 

 wood-eater; skunk from seganku, an Algonquin term; 

 wapiti, in the Cree language, meant white deer, and was 

 originally applied to the Rocky Mountain goat, but the 

 name is now restricted to the American elk. Caribou is 

 also an Indian word; opossum is from possowne, and 

 raccoon is from the Indian arrathkune (by further aphe- 

 resis, coon). 



Rhinoceros is pure Greek, meaning nose-horned, but 



