^8 Merriam on the 'Cones Check List and Lexicon.' [January 



and misleading. To show this with as much clearness and detail 

 as a limited space will permit is the purpose of this article. 



Since a very large part of the ornithological vocabulary is com- 

 posed of compound words, it is indispensably necessary that the 

 student and teacher should have a clear idea of the processes 

 which the genius of each of the two languages employed in weld- 

 ing words together. Of this the work before us often betrays 

 but vague and indefinite notions. For instance, in No. 56 we 

 read, "•Auriparus. Lat. aureus., golden, from aurum., gold; 

 and parus., a titmouse. ... A more strict method of com- 

 pounding aure-7is with parus would give aureipartis ; but 

 it may be taken direct from aiirum., making auripai'tis ad- 

 missible ; as we should say 'gold-tit,' like 'bush-tit,' 'coal-tit.' " 

 But it is a mistake at the outset to say that aiiripai-us is 

 derived from aureus ; it has nothing to do with this adjective, 

 but is made direct from the noun aurum. Some one hereafter, 

 reh'ing on Dr. Coues's statement, might propose to write aurei- 

 partis.^ thinking that to be the only strictly correct form. In like 

 manner, in No. 84, we have a similar treatment of the correspond- 

 ing Greek for gold: — "Chr3-solaema. Gr. xpt^'t^o-) golden, from 

 Xpwo-o's, gold." Again, this would make chryseolaema., not chryso- 

 laema., which is made from xP^fros immediately. The error here 

 seems to arise from the supposition that the first element of the 

 coiTipound ought to be an attributive form — adjective or genitive — 

 in order to obtain the adjective meaning. But when a noun 

 precedes a noun in composition it regularl}' assumes the sense of 

 an attributive by the law of composition, as Dr. Coues himself 

 shows in his "bush-tit," etc. An adjective or genitive form is 

 therefore superfluous, a principle which will also apply to the 

 correction of Sayornis (377) ^^ Sayiornis. The word is not im- 

 proved by the change. 



On the other hand, we have a general principle for the orthog- 

 raphy of a certain class of words evolved somewhat in this way 

 (43, 311) : — In Latin words, the terminal vowel of the first 

 component befoi^e a consonant should be ?", unless the second com- 

 ponent is a participial form ; then it should be c, because it is the 

 ablative, and we are to say albocaudatus., albolarvatus, atrocris- 

 tatus^ J'uscocatcdata. rti,fovirgata\ hut Jlaviviridis, etc. 



A question of this kind can be properly settled onlv by examin- 

 ing the usage of the Latin language in this particular. Taking 



