THE USE OF LOCAL NAMES IN GEOLOGY. 



No field of knowledge has ever experienced in the same 

 short period, such a rapid expansion as have the geological sci- 

 ences in these closing years of the nineteenth century. With 

 this unparalleled advancement of modern geology, occasioned 

 by the changes in fundamental conceptions, and the application 

 of more refined methods of investigation, there has appeared, 

 in every branch, an endless multitude of new and often seem- 

 ingly useless names. The dropping of the old and familiar 

 terms, the change in meaning of those retained, and the intro- 

 duction of an unheard-of host of others, has brought forth long 

 and emphatic protests against such innovations. 



Many of these protests are not untimely. They come not 

 alone from the layman, but from teachers and specialists. Every- 

 one, who has come in contact with those not specialists, knows 

 that the vast mass of technical terms and the cumbersome ver- 

 biage that is everywhere met with in the natural sciences are 

 most disheartening features to the student, and at once raise 

 well-nigh unsurmountable barriers to those who would only be 

 too glad to take up such subjects. To the adoption of an elab- 

 orate terminology in any science this phase of the subject pre- 

 sents an obstacle more serious than all others combined. 



The whole question is one that cannot be decided by discus- 

 sion, no matter how able may be the arguments presented on 

 either side. It is not whether the old terms alone are to be used 

 in place of the free and unlimited coinage of new ones at a ratio 

 perhaps of 16 poor ones to I good one, but whether from the 

 very nature of the attendant conditions, the adoption of either 

 plan is feasible. It seems not. As long as any branch of sci- 

 ence lasts the specialists in that department will continue to 

 introduce new terms to denote new conceptions and to make 

 definitions more precise. In spite of all that others can do, 



161 



