588 THE NAME MAMMAL AND THE IDEA EXPKESSED. 



At last a veiy bright English naturalist, the great(\st naturalist ot" 

 the seventeenth century, John Ray, was suggestive in this, as in many 

 other cases. Ray, in his Synopsis Methodica Aninialiiini Quadni- 

 pedum et Serpentini Generis (1093, p. 53), gave an "Animalium tabula 

 generalis" in which he bracketed the terrestrial or quadruped niannuals 

 with the acpiatic as vivipara, and contrasted them with the ovipara or 

 aves. The vivipara are exactly coextensive with what were later called 

 mammalia, l)ut the w^ord vivipara was used as an adjective and not as 

 a noun. This was a most happy suggestion, but it was long before it 

 was acted on or before anyone advanced as far in the appreciation of 

 the facts involved. 



Linngeus, the Swedish naturalist, published the tirst edition of his 

 Systema iS'atun^ in 1735, and in that and every succeeding edition up 

 to the ter>th adopted the idea current for so many generations, so far 

 at least as the union of cetaceans with fishes was concerned. But in 

 1758 he at last caught on to the idea of Ray and for the first time 

 separated the cetaceans from the fishes and combined them with the 

 hairy quadrupeds in a special class. There was no name for that class; 

 for though Ray had suggested the grouping of the two together, he 

 did not propose a collective name. A new^ name, therefore, had to be 

 given, and that was "mammalia.'' Some curious mistakes have been 

 made respecting this name. 



In the great Centur}' Dictionary, a deservedly esteemed work, and 

 which may generally be implicitly trusted, the etymology of mammalia 

 is given as "NL. (sc. anlmalia')^ neut. pi. of LL. main ma lis {newt. sing, 

 as noun, mammale)^ of the breast: see marninal^'''' and, under mammal, 

 we have ^^a. and n. [ = OF. mammal— Sp. mamal — l^g. inanial^ mam- 

 mal-— \i. manrmal(\ n.; << NL. ma,mmale^ a mammal, neut. of LL. 

 raammaUs^ of the breast, < L. mamma ^ the ])reast]." 



All this is misleading, if not absolutely erroneous. The name 

 ''mammalia," as just indicated, was first coined and used by Linnaeus, 

 and was formed directly from the Latin; it had nothing whatever to 

 do with French, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian words. The concept 

 of which the Linna^an wor^ is the expression is as remote from a pop- 

 ular notion as could well be, and even the necessity for the word (or 

 an analogous one) can be appreciated really only by the educated or, 

 pro tanto, the scientifically educated. Buff'on and Pennant, for exam- 

 ple, could not realize the reason for its use. 



It is noteworth}^ that, in the Century Dictionary, even the very word 

 that might have given the clew to the formation of "■ maumiar' is 

 cited, and yet the excellent professional etymologist who worked on it 

 was not guided into the right path. With the hint given to him, he 

 failed to see the point. Evidently, then, the et3aiiolog3^ is not as 

 obvious as it might seem to be. 



