August 30, 1877] 



NATURE 



385 



success of the various excursions organised. The uncertainty of 

 public affairs, moreover, has caused the French papers to give 

 the most meagre reports of the proceedings ; indeed only the 

 titles of a number of communications are given without any 

 attempt at a report. 



On Friday tA. Fremy was elected president for 187S by a full 

 house, and almost unanimously. The place of the next meeting 

 will be Paris in all probability. Consequently an opportunity 

 will be afforded to influential members of the French Institute 

 to give a new impulse to the organisation of the French Associa- 

 tion, and to remodel it more fully according to the pattern of its 

 English sister. 



A number of members of the British Association arrived at 

 Havre at the beginning of the session, including Dr. Iluggins, 

 Prof. Sylvester, Messrs. Glaisher, sen. and jun. It has been 

 regretted that no formal delegation from France was sent to 

 Plymouth, as contemplated, and that no direct request was sent 

 to Mr. Bell to bring over his wonderful telephone. 



A committee was appointed at Clermont-Ferrand to report on 

 the position of French meteorology. A report was drawn up 

 pointing out tlie necessity of memorialising the French Govern- 

 ment to establish a special meteorological nistitute. The report 

 was not adopted by the Meteorological Seclion, and a new 

 report will be drawn up, and was to be proposed on Monday. 

 But the discussion will offer little interest, o.ving to the absence 

 of the leading French meteorologists. 



The mathematical and astronomical section has been well 

 attended under the presidency of Professors Catalon (Liege Uni- 

 versity) and .Sylvester, the former being acting president and the 

 second honorary. 



The Geological Society of Normandy has organised an exhi- 

 bition of local geology in the old Palais de Justice, which may 

 be considered as a model of care, order, and completeness. A 

 number of large oil pictures have been executed to show the 

 different stages of the evolution of life before the appearance of 

 man on earth, from the age of coal-measures. 



M. Gabriel de Mortillet, general secretary to the section of 

 anthropology of the International Exhibition, has delivered a 

 lecture on the organisation of that section. The Trocadero 

 Palace will be devoted entirely to " Ilistoire de I'llomme." 

 One of the aisles will be devoted to the ethnography of living 

 savage nations, and will be considered as affording a fjir repre- 

 sentation of primordial ages. The other aisle will be entirely 

 devoted to the history of the arts, which are supposed to represent 

 civilisation in its highest state of development. The central part 

 of the building is devoted to anthropological science, viz., 

 European anthropology, prehistoric anthropology, demography, 

 comparative linguistic, &c. Exhibitors of all nations will be 

 admitted, and all the expenses of the exhibition will be supported 

 by the French administration. The space allotted to (oreigntrs 

 for this exceptional exhibition will not be reckoned as part of the 

 total space granted to their own nation in the Champ de Mars. 

 M. Gabriel de Mortillet, Chateau de Saint Germain, Seine-et- 

 Oise, willanswerany letters addressed to him, and give practical 

 directions to intending exhibitors. 



The scheme, of which we gave details some lime since, has 

 been conceived by M. Krantz himself, who was desirous to see 

 the science of man utilised as an introduction to the exhibition of 

 the works of man. 



ENGLISH NAMES OF WILD FLOWERS AND 



PLANTS 1 

 "LTIGHT years ago I was piloting a famous botanist from the 

 east of England among the fields and lanes round Taunton, 

 when he asked me the name of a plant which he did not at the 

 moment recognise. I answered that it was the gipsy-wort, and 

 received a prompt rebuke. " This is the third time," he said, 

 "that I have inquired the name of a flower, and you have 

 answered me in English. The Latin names are universal, the 

 English at best are local. It is to be wished that all English 

 names of plants could be forgotten, and their scientific names 

 become popularised instead." Unquestionably a foolish utter- 

 ance, it was of great service to myself, for it set me to consider 

 the real value of these names which my pedantic guest despised, 

 and from that time to this I have never encountered the popular 

 name of any linglish wild flower without questioning it closely 

 as to its etymological history and meaning, and noting the 



■ Lecture liy Rev. W. TiickueU before the Somersetsllire Arclviologiral 

 a:.d Natural History Society. 



passages in our literature where it occurs. It would be a great 

 pleasure to me to believe that the knowledge gained by these 

 inquiries, put together to the best of my power, could interest 

 you to-night as much as it has interested myself. 



It is no new thing to infer from the terms in use at the beginning 

 of a nation's history the arts and customs of the nation using them. 

 Thus the fact that in all or nearly all the Aryan languages the 

 words for the Supreme Being, for the king, for brother and'sister, 

 for ploughing, grinding, building, closely resemble one another, 

 is admitted to show that our common forefathers in times when 

 they were still one people, and had not yet scattered into India, 

 Persia, Europe, had the beginnings of religion and government, 

 possessed the family life, knew the simple arts which are 

 most needed for the comfort of home life. Let us see what-lio-ht 

 will be thrown upon the habits of our Teutonic forefathers iflve 

 apply their method of investigation to the popular names of 

 plants. 



The following words are common to all the Teutonic lan- 

 guages ; must have been known, that is, to the race from 

 which we ourselves, with the Germans, Danes, Swedes, and 

 Norwegians, are descended, on their first settlement in Europe, 

 and before they broke up into sitb-c'ivided nations. The first 

 I will take is birc/i, the rind of which must, we find, have 

 been used for boat-building and for roofing houses ; for boat- 

 building, since the word liark, from the same root as birch, 

 stands for ship in English, Dutch, Icelandic, Danish ; for roofing 

 houses, since the Old English Ihorgaii and the German ba-^m, 

 .ilso from the same root, mean to cover, protect, or shelter. 

 From this simple word, then, we gather that our ancestors pos- 

 sessed the arts of building boats and of roofing or thatching 

 houses. Houses could not be built without timber ; and we 

 find the word tree in alinost every Aryan language standing for 

 three things—for a tree, for timber, and for an oak, extending the 

 use of oak wood for building purposes back to the first formation 

 in Asia of our mother language, and presenting us with the 

 additional facts that our European ancestors built of oak timber 

 the houses which they roofed with birch. In hazj a fresh fact 

 lies buried. It is in all Gerinanic dialects the instrumental form 

 of /;.r/, command or fe/ii-v/', a hazel stick having been used, as 

 Jacob Grimm informs us, in the earliest times as a sceptre or 

 baton to keep order among slaves and cattle. Without dwelling 

 on the fact that the old word luchian, to foretell, indicates the 

 use of the hazel rod for purposes of divination, we have the addi- 

 tional probability revealed in a single word that our remote 

 ancestors possessed slaves and cattle. In hxiulhorn, common to 

 Swedish, German, and English, we have testimony to the use of 

 a haw, hic^, Jiedgc, or fence, "honouring the holy bounds of 

 property," and consequently to the division and appropriation 

 of land, in the earliest Teutonic time. My next word makes 

 some demand upon your etymological credulity. Without tracing 

 particulars, I will ask you to believe that the Sanskrit Kshi, to 

 dwell, passes through various forms in one direction to the 

 English hoDu; in another to the word heath ,■ now meaning the 

 plant which grows wild on open land, standing originally fi?r the 

 land itself. "My foot," says Rob Roj-, "is on my native 

 heath ; " and the same idea was enshrined in the same word to 

 the first Teuton settlers. In the forest he fought his enemies, 

 hunted his prey, hewed timber for his fences, and peeled bark 

 for his roofs ; his home was in the open land, or healh, from 

 which, again, when ages had passed away and Christianity pos- 

 sessed the towns, he still worshipped his father's gods upon his 

 father's heath, and gained, as Trench thinks, his .ancient name 

 of heathen. A sixth word lifts him higher than all the rest. 

 The wordfcv//, in Gothic, Old-IIigh-German, modern German, 

 Norse, Danish, Dutch, English, is identical with book, the 

 Runic t.ablets of our ancestors having been carved upon 

 this \yood. In sloe, the wild plum, we have ihc root of 

 slay, its _ tough wood having been used for bludgeons ; 

 dog-ioood is da^ger-\\oo3, from dag, to strike ; from ash, whose 

 wood was therefore used for spear-shafts, came the Old English 

 cese, a spear ; sedge is allied to scceg, a sharp small iron sword. 

 Anil let us observe that while all these plants, bearing purely 

 Teutonic names, extend far into Northern Asia, trees which stop 

 short at a more southern limit — the elm, chestnut, holly, syca- 

 more, plum, pear, peach, cherry — all have Latin names, showing 

 that the Teuton squatters came from a colder country than that 

 in which they are supposed to have settled near the Roman 

 Provincials on the Lower Rhine. The knowledge that wheat, 

 barley, oats, corn, rye, are all Teutonic words, completes the 

 historical picture given by the first list of names. They show 

 us a race of men coming from a northern to a southern region, 



