Ao Merriam on. the. '■Cones Check List and Lexicon.'' [January 



always a "slave"; so that the penult of such forms should be 

 long" and accented. 



This leads us to the correction of the accent of several words. 

 It may be premised that all such corrections are based upon the 

 principles of Greek and Latin quantity, whicli Dr. Coues habitu- 

 ally follows. If any one choses to say Lophopha'nes (40) for ease 

 of pronunciation, or to emphasize a stem syllable, he starts upon a 

 different basis entirely. He certainly must not suppose that "the 

 a in -fhanes represents two vowels, ai or cf, as in phceiiomenon.i 

 phcenoganious.'''' Both these words are made from the present 

 stem of the verb, which regularly adds an i {e) to the root of the 

 word, thus presenting the form phcen-. Usually, however, in 

 composition the genuine root phan- is employed which Is natui^ally 

 short, the i being confined to the present system. In fact, it is 

 very largely the rule in Greek compounds that the short root of 

 the verb is employed, and not the lengthened present stem, as in 

 Troglodytes y CarpodacHS^ etc. Thryothb'rus (68) and Cisto- 

 tho'rzts (81) ought not to be from Oovpos, but from the root Sop-, 

 giving T/wydt hones., Cistbthoriis., as PovOopos (yEschylus, 'vSup- 

 plices') . eovpos would transliterate -thurus., noi-thoriis. Pyr'ruhla 

 (191) should be Pyrrhu'la as taken directly from Aristotle's 

 ■jTuppovXtts. (See Gesner, 'Aves,' szib voc). Oregonus is accented 

 on both penult (303) and antepenult (363). The word is Latin- 

 ised, and words in -ojuis in Latin have the penult long. Molo- 

 thrtis., Scandiaca., Cantiaca., Satrapa should have a short pe- 

 nult, Coccygus., Aegialites a long one. Haliaetus and the other 

 words containing the same final component are marked with a 

 long penult, although Dr. Coues assumes the prosaic form as the 

 proper one to determine the spelling of the first syllable of that 

 component. In prose all the forms appear with a short penult, 

 and dtiTo's is a very rare form indeed, even in poetry ; so that it 

 seems hardly consistent to accent the penult on account of this 

 poetic form. 



Lastly, we must speak of some of the changes which are noticed 

 by Dr. Coues as having been made in long-standing words. It 

 would seem reasonable to lay down the rule that the inventor of a 

 word has a right to the maintenance of his form, unless some 

 sound objection can be urged against it. If genuine analogy can 

 be shown to support the form, it should not be altered to corres- 

 pond with something that may be of more frequent occurrence, 

 simply because it is unusual. Uniqueness ma}- be a strong 



