June 24, 1880] 



NATURE 



167 



student, on account of the diversity of beautiful and inter- 

 esting plants- they produce. In proper season, in most 

 places, they are redolent with the rich perfume of 

 Magnolia glauca and the fragrance of Chthra alnifoUa. 

 In early spring the ground is adorned ■with bright patches 

 of the little Pyx-idaiitlie7-a barbitlata, and the sand myrtle 

 {Lciophyllum biixifolium). Later the swamps display an 

 abundance of Helonias bulbala, and still later many other 

 liliaceous plants, Zygadoius limattthoidcs, Narthecium 

 americanum, besides more common ones. Rich are these 

 woods and swamps in genera of orchids. On the dry banks 

 gi'ow Vaccinia and other ericaceous plant=, amidst which 

 are conspicuously to be seen the spikes of white flowers of 

 the grassy-looking Xcrop/iylhan aspjtodchndcs, while the 

 bogs below are as conspicuously dotted with the curious 

 green and purple pitcher plant {Sarraccnia piirpttred) 

 nestling among sphagnum and entangled among sundews." 

 This rhizopod was first noticed by Prof. Leidy some thirty 

 years ago, but it was not until 1873, on the fiftieth 

 anniversary of his birth, that he commenced to study the 

 rhizopods with the assistance of the microscope. He had 

 scarcely begun to do so until he came again across this 

 form, and he then named it as Diffliigia papilio. It was 

 the re-discovery of this beautiful form which he tells us 

 impelled him to pursue the investigations which built up 

 the material of the present work. 



The greater part of this volume is taken up with the 

 details of the " Protoplasta," of which a few species are 

 for the first time described, but most of the peculiarly 

 American species figured have been already described by 

 Dr. Leidy in the Proceedings of the .Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia. In many of the species the 

 endosarc was bright green from the presence of chloro- 

 phyll (spelled chlorophyl in this volume throughout). The 

 forms recorded as belonging to the " Heliozoa " are not 

 very numerous, and among them no doubt a good deal of 

 work remains to be done. A Varnpyrella form is included 

 among these, but Dr. Leidy could detect no nucleus. 

 Of the free forms the most interesting are Aclinophiys 

 sol, Heierophrys niyriapoda, Raphidiophrys viiidis, Diplo- 

 phrys Arc/ieri, Aciinosphcerium cichoj-nii, and Hyalo- 

 lainpe feneslrata, while of the attached forms only 

 Clatlirulina elegaiis was met with, it is beautifully figured. 



Of the foraminiferous order one species of Gromia 

 {G. terricola) is described and figured, and a genus 

 Biomyxa is established for a rather problematic form, 

 consisting of what might prove yet to be the Plasmodium 

 of a fungus. No forms related to Chlamydomyxa were 

 met with, but we forbear to linger further over special 

 details, and we close a volume which will henceforth be 

 as useful to the investigator of these forms in Europe as 

 in America. E. P. W. 



THE RECENT PROGRESS OF ENGLISH 



PHILOLOGY 



The Jcunial of Philology. i.\-. 17. (Macmillan and Co., 



1880.) 

 The Am£7-ican Journal of Philology, i. i. (Macmillan 

 and Co., 18S0.) 



THE establishment of a new philological journal, 

 devoted more especially to the study of the classical 

 languages, seems a fitting occasion for reviewing the 

 present condition of philology, in the narrower and 



German sense of the word, among English-speaking 

 scholars. A great change has come over the study of 

 Latin and Greek during the last half century, and the 

 old-fashioned scholarship whose highest aim was the 

 composition of faultless verses seems likely soon to 

 become a thing of the past. 



The change has been largely due to the rise and growth 

 of comparative philology. The conception of law has 

 been introduced into the study of speech, and we have 

 learned that in language as in nature there is nothing 

 arbitrary and capricious, that what now e.xists is the 

 result of a long and gradual development determined by 

 ascertainable conditions and causes. Above all we have 

 come to know that we cannot pick out any one language 

 as superior to all others in the same way that we pick out 

 a particular literature as superior to other hteratures ; the 

 only test in fact of the worth of a language is its greate 

 or less capacity for expressing thought. The thought, it 

 is true, may be poor ; but this is the fault of the thinkers, 

 not of their language. 



Latin and Greek grammar has thus been brought down 

 from the lofty pedestal on which it once stood and showTi 

 to be neither better nor worse than the grammar of any 

 other form of speech. But in return a new spirit of life 

 has been breathed into it. It is no longer a collection of 

 arbitrary rules and lists of words compiled from the 

 literary usages of a certain number of writers. Its rules 

 have been explained, its words traced historically to their 

 earlier forms, and the grammar of the classical tongues 

 has once more become a living organism, developing and 

 changing in accordance with scientific laws like the 

 grammars of modern languages. 



Along with this truer conception of Greek and Latin 

 grammar has come a truer conception of the Greek and 

 Latin languages themselves. We have come to realise 

 that like our own mother-speech they consisted of sounds 

 not of letters, of living words not of the written symbols 

 that stood for them. A dead language differs from a 

 spoken one only in that we know less about it. We 

 cannot lay down that the particular form of language 

 used by certain hterary men at a particular period is 

 either Greek or Latin. If we would understand what 

 Greek really was we must study it in its various dialects, 

 must examine it in the inscriptions which represent the 

 language of everyday life more faithfully than an artificial 

 literature, and by the help of comparison and induction 

 must trace its history back to that early time when it was 

 still but a dialect of the common Aryan tongue. So, too, 

 we must divest ourselves of the notion that the idiosyn- 

 cracies of a few literary men alone constitute correct 

 Latin, and seek the true character and history of the 

 language rather in the inscriptions which modern research 

 has brought to light. 



Classical philology has further felt the intlucnce of the 

 comparative method of linguistic science even on its 

 purely literary side. We have ceased to regard the works 

 of the classical writers with the wondering awe of the 

 scholars of the Renaissance, or to determine their relativ-e 

 merits by the conventional standard of traditional or 

 subjective criticism. Manuscripts are now carefully 

 examined and collated, the accuracy of tradition is 

 questioned and the genuineness and date of the books 

 that have come down to us are sharply tested. We can 



