Editorial. 



Editors Journal of Geology : 



I would like to call attention to the constant misuse of a 

 foreign word much used by glacial geologists. The word aas in 

 the Danish, as in Swedish, which in Norway is used for a rounded 

 hill, and in Sweden and Finland especially for those long gravel 

 ridges which are clearly of glacial origin, has its plural dsar. 

 The word is pronounced like the oas of boast, and really the best 

 way to transliterate it into English would be to spell it oas rather 

 than os, as the long sound would then be more certainly given it. 

 The plural would then be osar or oasar, which is, perhaps, prefer- 

 able to oases for obvious reasons. 



Therefore the writers who speak about "an osar," and men- 

 tion "the osars," are producing the same kind of horrible hybrids 

 that foreigners would who should speak of "an oxen' or " I saw 

 three mices," mistakes of a kind which, in writing, are unneces- 

 sary. 



L. V. PlRSSON. 



* 

 * * 



Any protest that will help to a better use of terms in science 

 or elsewhere is to be welcomed as a contribution toward the 

 relief of one of the most grievous burdens of the intellectual 

 world. The incompetencies and inadaptabilities of our vehicle 

 of thought, to say nothing of its absurdities, are already most 

 serious obstacles to intellectual progress, and they are daily 

 growing in intensity and threaten to become altogether unen- 

 durable in the near future. In former times, when the substance 

 of thought was limited, the intellectual gymnastics involved in 

 mastering the idiosyncrasies of language were not without their 

 compensations. But the time has come when even the essence 



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