744 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



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 : — 



' Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there, 

 That kills and pains not ? ' 8 



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 freshwater fish. 9 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 ierevisse. 

 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 

 language, 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 of the zoologist is only a 

 return to the primary meaning of the word. 



Chemistry supplies an excellent illustration of the justifiable adoption of an 

 old term with a revised meaning. Element is used in its classical meaning, 

 though with a new interpretation; and Chaucer in 1386 shows that it was used 

 in Early English in a similar sense. He says in the Frere's Tale (line 200) : — 



' Make ye yow newe bodies alway 

 Of elementz.' 



Its modern chemical use means the resurrection of the Lucretian word to a new 

 period of usefulness. 



The chemical adoption of the terms metal and non-metal for the two classes 

 of elements is, on the other hand, an example of the inconvenience that results 

 when a new definition is only approximately coincident with a well-established 

 current meaning. The word metal appears to be derived from the Greek 

 ' metallon,' connected with metallao, ' to seek after,' through the Latin metallum, 

 a mine or quarry, or substance obtained by mining. Hence road-metal for stone 

 is correct. 



By the time of Johnson the word metal was usually restricted to those pro- 

 ducts from mines which have metallic as distinct from earthy or stony properties. 

 Johnson's definition — ' We understand by the term metal a firm, heavy, and hard 

 substance, opake, fusible by fire, and concreting again when cold into a solid 

 body such as it was before, which is malleable under the hammer, and is of a 

 bright, glossy, and glittering substance where newly cut or broken,' states 

 the general idea of a metal. 



The chemical adoption of the word metal for the larger of the two classes of 

 elements has resulted in its use in science with two contradictory senses; thus 

 in elementary geology the word is used with its chemical meaning; but in 

 economic geology in its commercial sense. 



Sodium and potassium are therefore metals in elementary geology and 

 academic mineralogy ; but they are not metals in advanced economic geology. 

 This double use of the word is an occasional source of confusion, and it dis- 



* Antony and Cleopatra, V. 2. 



9 See 0. Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, 1890, pp. 117- 

 118, 127-128, 353-364. 



