October 19, 191 1] 



NATURE 



539 



for the improvement of the language of scientific literature 

 are therefore direct contributions to scientific method ; and 

 as the societies represented at this conference are the 

 strongest link between the technical specialist and those 

 who take a friendly interest in science, special sympathy 

 may lie expected here with the complaints against the 

 unintelligibilitj "I -■> une scientific writings owing to the 

 excessive use of technical terms. I wish this afternoon, 

 without denying that technical terms are sometimes used 

 unnecessarily, to direct attention to a more neglected and 

 insidious evil — ih./ use of well-known English words with 

 a technical meaning. The temptation to adopt an old 

 word for a new idea, instead of inventing a fresh term, 

 is often strong. It saves trouble — at the time. The old 

 word is probably shorter than a new one would have to 

 be, and its use avoids burdening a passage with an un- 

 known and perhaps uncouth term. A sentence in which 

 all the words are familiar appears to present no diffi- 

 culties ; a reader skims lightly over it pleased with the 

 lucidity of the author and ignorant of the fact that it has 

 been misunderstood, as the leading word conveyed to him a 

 meaning different from that intended by the writer. The 

 danger of a passage being misunderstood is more serious 

 than that of its being not understood. It is worse to be 

 misled by a plausible phrase than to be startled or repelled 

 by a correct technical statement. A new word compels a 

 conscientious reader to determine its true meaning, and 

 should help him to a clear conception of the fresh idea ; 

 whereas the use of an old word with a new meaning dis- 

 courages inquiry and encourages slovenliness in work and 

 thought. The use of popular phraseology may render 

 scientific literature apparently less strange; but if that 

 phraseology be incorrectly used, the ultimate effect is to 

 increase the divergence between the scientific and popular 

 languages, and the estrangement between science and public 

 opinion. For the scientific use of terms inconsistently 

 with their ordinary meanings is apt to persuade the lav- 

 man that the language of science is so different from his 

 own that it is no use attempting to understand it. 



Most sciences have adopted popular terms with new and 

 restricted moaning* ; and if the origin of such a word be 

 forgotten, scientific writers are apt to treat any use of it 

 in its original sense as a popular blunder. For example, 

 zoologists not only now reject spiders from the class of 

 Insecta, but treat the idea that a spider is an insect as a 

 mistake due to simple ignorance. Thus, to quote a recent 

 standard work, J. H. and A. B. Comstock, in their 

 " Manual for the Study of Insects " (1909, p. 12), remark 

 that spiders " are often mistaken for insects," although 

 the authors have abandoned " Insecta " as the name of the 

 class in favour of Hexapoda. The word insect is much 

 older than modern systematic zoology and the class 

 Insecta. The word insect is derived from the Latin 

 insectum, which is based on the verb insecure, " to cut 

 into " : and it was used for animals the bodies of which 

 are notched or incised into sections. This meaning of the 

 word is well expressed in the definition by Philemon 

 Holland, who is the earliest English author quoted in the 



New English Dictionary " as having used the word 

 insect. In his book, " The Historie of the World, com- 

 monlv called the Natural! Historic of C. Plinius Secundus " 

 (1601). he says. " Well mnv they all be called Insecta, by 

 reason of those cuts and divisions, which some have about 

 the necke, and others in the breast and belly; the which 

 do go round and part the momhers of the bodie, hanging 

 together only by a little pipe and fistulous conveinnce." 



The class Insecta was based by its founder, Linnaeus, 

 on the segmentation of the body, and not on the number 

 of legs; it therefore included scorpions, millipedes, and 

 spiders. It was not until half a centurv later that 

 Lamarck excluded spiders from the class Insecta ; and as 

 late as 1864 we find so distinguished a naturalist as Bates ' 

 remarking that the spiders " Mygales are quite common 

 insects." Even such a recent standard modern cyclopaedia 

 as the " Jew-ish Encyclopaedia" 2 retains the millipedes as 

 insects. The term insect should not, however, be applied 

 to a coral polyp; " coral insect " is justly denounced as a 

 misleading blunder, due to ignorance of the nature of 

 the coral animal. The terms insectum and insect accord- 

 ing to their original usage no doubt included worms, and 



1 " A Naturalist on the Amazon," p. 96. 2 I g 6 > vol. vi., p. 105, 



XO. 2190, VOL. 87] 



Holland expressly mentioned earth-worms as insects. In 

 many worms, however, the body is not divided into 

 segments, and worms were therefore early and appro- 

 priately excluded from insects ; so Milton writes ' in his 

 description of the bower in Eden : — 



' 'Oilier creature here, 

 Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none." 



Johnson's Dictionary (first edition, 1755) accepted a 

 definition restricting insects to animals whose body is 

 nearly divided in the middle into two parts. " Insects may 

 be considered together as one great tribe of animals ; they 

 are called insects from a separation in the middle of their 

 bodies whereby they are cut into two parts, which are 

 joineu together by a small ligature, as we see in wasps and 

 common flies." This definition, while admitting spiders, 

 excluded worms. The present zoological separation of 

 insects from other air-breathing arthropods is based mainly 

 on the presence of six legs. The term Hexapoda is there- 

 fore more suitable for the class as now defined than 

 Insecta ; and the restriction of Insecta in systematic zoology 

 to a group based not on the insection of the body, but on 

 the number of legs, is less accurate and appropriate than 

 its previous use in zoology and in popular English. It 

 would seem better to admit that the spider is an insect, but 

 insist that it is not a hexapod. 



The term worm, on the other hand, illustrates cases in 

 which a restriction of popular meaning is both appropriate 

 and convenient. A worm was originally not necessarily 

 one of the Vermes of the zoologist. Thus the worms men- 

 tioned in the Old Testament included various insect larvae. 

 Dr. Ridewood tells me that the manna collected by the 

 Israelites in the desert was probably a small lichen, and 

 that the worms bred in it - were probably fly grubs ; and 

 the references by Job and Isaiah to worms that cover the 

 dead may include both insect grubs and nematodes. When 

 Job reminds the sinner of the worm that " shall feed 

 sweetly upon him," 3 he had in mind the larvae of blow- 

 flies ; and though the worms that ate Herod * may have 

 been an endoparasitic worm or fluke, the worm that caused 

 the withering of Jonah's gourd 5 was probably a beetle 

 larva. 



In popular English, moreover, worms always included 

 snakes, as shown both by Dr. Johnson's definition of a 

 worm, " A small, harmless serpent that lives in the earth," 

 and by Shakespeare in Cleopatra's inquiry : — 



Uniformity between popular and zoological terminology 

 can best be secured in regard to the term worm by inducing 

 the public to use it only for one of the Vermes, for it is 

 less necessary to have one term for all creeping things than 

 to distinguish noxious snakes and centipedes from the 

 lowly and useful worm. 



The word fish illustrates how a popular word may become 

 unduly extended and then be again restricted with fuller 

 knowledge. The word is of very ancient origin, and was 

 probably originally limited to what the zoologist accepts 

 as fish. The term fish is not derived from the primitive 

 Aryan language, and it was not introduced until the Latin- 

 Teutonic section had separated from the Indian and the 

 Greek ; and as the term was invented by people who 

 apparently had no knowledge of the sea, they doubtless 

 used it for fresh-water fish.' The primitive hunters who 

 went to the coast may have extended it to shellfish, and 

 it was adopted in the English crayfish by a corruption of 

 the French ecrevisse. When whales and dolphins were 

 discovered, they were accepted as fish in ignorance of their 

 affinities, for such aquatic animals as seals and otters were 

 never included among fish, since their mammalian 

 characters were obvious. That whales, porpoises, and 

 their allies are not fish is now admitted in current lan- 

 guage, though the old usage survives among whalers. The 

 terms whale-fishery and seal-fishery are firmly established ; 

 but they are unobjectionable, because those industries have 

 so many important features in common with the capture 

 of fish. The general current limitation of fish to the fish 



1 " Paradise Lost," iv. 2 Exodus, xv. 20. 3 Job, xjriv. 20. 



4 Acts, xii. 23. 5 Tonah, iv. 7. 6 "Antony and Cleopatra," v. 2. 



' See O. Schrader, " Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples," 1890, 

 pp. 117-118, 127-128, 353-354. 



