XIV PKEFACE. 



Having said thus much in the way of explanation, 

 apology, or whatever else it may be called, I must now 

 leave the work to its fate, in the anxious hope that some 

 readers might derive, not from its perusal, but from 

 that study of nature to which it may lead them, some 

 portion of the same pleasure which I have enjoyed in 

 that prolonged course of simple observation, of which it 

 is one of the results. 



But having thus spoken of myself, or of my produc- 

 tion (which is of course nearly the same), I may per- 

 haps be permitted to say a few words to others. These 

 I say, not with the dictation of a pedagogue, but with 

 the anxious desire of a scholar, trusting that they will 

 be received as such. They are these : the nomenclature 

 of science, more especially of natural science, is an ab- 

 solute chaos, of good materials I grant, but in perfect 

 confusion, huddled together, not only without organiza- 

 tion, but absolutely without that polarity which belongs 

 to the smallest and simplest atom of mere matter. 

 Over this chaos I wish the spirit of the learned to 

 brood, and to turn it to a systematic world of light and 

 of life : by fixing, at their first national meeting, (if 

 they can as soon make up their minds,) AN ENGLISH 

 NOMENCLATURE OF SCIENCE, which shall be classical, by 

 issuing from under the authority of the combined talent 

 of the nation. Such an act would not surely be 

 difficult for so many : and besides enabling observers 

 and inquirers, in all parts of the empire, to understand 

 each other, it w r ould repress, if not utterly destroy, that 

 "calling of names," which, on the part of the lower 

 orders in science, is as offensive as similar practices 

 among lower orders of any other description. 



The circumstances of the times render the fixing 



