A.O Merriam 0/1 the '■Cones Check List and Lexico7i.'' [January 



since he retains pallidlcincta and zuticincta. In these the second 

 component is a participle, and he could have supported pallido- 

 cincta and unocincta hy limochictus quoted above, if not by 

 Plautus's tiii&mammia. In all cases where a genuine compound is 

 formed it is well to keep in mind the principle thus laid down by 

 R:)by (Latin Grammar, 979) : — One of "the distinctive features 

 of two ^vords being compounded is the possession of but one set 

 of inflections," and that, of course, at the end of the word, not at 

 the point of junction. 



Notwithstanding the small number of ancient Latin compounds 

 with 0, it is a familiar fact to any one conversant with modern 

 scientific nomenclature that this peculiarity has been adopted and 

 fost:ired to an extent that would have made a Roman stare. But it 

 is mainly within the present century that this growth has taken 

 place. In names, Linnaeus writes the o a few times only, and 

 scarcely at all among bird-names, unless the compound is a hy- 

 brid. Occasionally he will employ it when he attaches two 

 adjectives together by a hyphen, which indicates that he does not 

 regard them as a genuine compound. The same sparing is 2 is 

 apparent in the editions of Gmelin and Turton, but during the 

 next half century the crop that springs up is large and thrift^'.* 

 The index of Gray's 'Genera of Birds' (1S49) contains more 

 than a hundred naines with 0, and considerable additions must 

 have since been made. Little if anything can be said in favor of 

 this o in ornithology ; but in chemistry, where the slight but im- 

 portant distinctions in difterent compounds is to be marked, the o 

 has been utilised to some advantage, so that ferr(?cyanicle and fer- 

 r/cyanide stand side by side to indicate the distinction of a single 

 atom of metal. This is both legitimate and ingenious, which 

 cannot always be said of its usage. 



* The real genesis may be this. The Latin language was poor in words of color, 

 and lacked definiteness and distinctness in such as it did possess. Naturalists have 

 accordingly found it necessary to eke out the scanty stock by uniting two or more epi- 

 thets, and in order to stamp such as mere agglutinatives, not regular compounds, they 

 joined the elements by a hyphen, with o as the final vowel before the hyphen. Such 

 or similar forms were gradually transferred from the language of description to the list 

 of names, where the hyphen was sometimes retained, sometimes dropped, especially 

 within more recent days. In ornithology it has disappeared almost entirely, but 

 Paxton's 'Botanical Dictionary' (1868) shows it to be still employed in Botany in a large 

 proportion of the compounds which are written with the o, and we see it occasionally 

 elsewhere. 



