102 CHARLES R. KEYES 



changes in terminology will go on unabated. Protest is of no 

 avail. A refusal on the part of the general scientific public to 

 understand or to use the new names cannot prevent their adop- 

 tion. Such action merely sets the majority outside the realm of 

 influence. It is the specialist who sets the pace in nomencla- 

 ture ; others must keep up or drop out entirely. There is no 

 other choice. 



Protests against the use of new scientific names are really 

 aimed at the unnecessary terms. In all of these protests there 

 is almost invariably a failure to distinguish between two very 

 different classes of terms. On the one hand the launching of 

 new names is accompanied by a conscientious desire to better 

 the condition of a science by clothing with suitable words the 

 new ideas ; on the other hand there is what a recent writer has 

 aptly called a " prevalent and apparently incurable form of mania 

 which busies itself in burdening science with a useless and for- 

 midable terminology." The first cannot be too highly com- 

 mended, nor the second too deeply deplored. To be sure, it is 

 not always possible for one not thoroughly up in a particular 

 department to clearly discern, except in a few cases, the useful 

 or the useless. Time alone can determine. Every progressing 

 science must finally discard all of those titles that have served 

 their purpose. It must also be prepared to receive all of the 

 new ones demanded. Indeed, the rapidity with which a science 

 is advancing is measurable, with but small degree of error, by 

 the number of useful terms that are being proposed. 



Much as it is to be deplored, it is nevertheless a fact that the 

 mill from which the large and indifferent grist of new names is 

 continually streaming is not wholly in the hands of those best 

 qualified to manage it. From the very nature of the case there 

 must ever be in its running almost no control. The real factor 

 rendering the mighty host of unfamiliar titles so appalling is 

 that a very large proportion of all of the new names published 

 in the various sciences are proposed by those who are least fitted 

 for the task. The great burden which the literature of a science 

 must carry is the work of amateurs or those who are incapaci- 



