430 Correspondence — G. W. Grabham. 



and still adhere to it, though I certainly should have written ' Zeuge ' 

 and ' Zen gen'. I wrote ' dreikanter ' because it was the form used bj' 

 your reviewer, and should certainly not have used ' Dreikante ', as 

 this form does not appear in the only German work 1 dealing with the 

 subject that was available to me for reference. No doubt Dr. Bather 

 has excellent grounds for the use of the form ' Dreikante ', and so 

 perhaps my authority was mistaken in his use of ' Dreikanter ' in 

 a German work presumably written for Germans. 



His letter suggests the question of how far it is necessary to adhere 

 to the original terminations for borrowed words when they fall into 

 common use in English writings. It does not appear to be a great 

 sin to drop them, while it would be intolerable to adhere to them in 

 every case, and I am glad to find the form 'horsts' in the textbook 

 reviewed. 



After suggesting that we should be careful to avoid the use of 

 foreign words through laziness or ignorance of our language and 

 defining the qualities that a technical term should possess, Dr. Bather 

 goes on to point out that wind-wearing is not implied by the word 

 ' Dreikante ', which, he says, means a tripyramidal or triquetral 

 pebble, and that wind-worn stones of this shape are. in a minority. 

 ' Dreikante ' implies three-edged and certainly might be rendered by 

 'triquetral '. Tripyramidal, however, is not such a happy suggestion. 

 Dr. Evans, in a subsequent letter, speaks of the " tetrahedral or 

 tripyramidal form", so we have two authorities each using the same 

 term for something different. It may be suggested that, even if 

 a tripyramid is a possible figure, it must have more than three edges, 

 while it would be more correct to regard a tetrahedron as a tetra- 

 pyramid, since any of its four faces can be considered as the base of 

 a pyramid formed of the other three. No doubt the idea Dr. Bather 

 desired to convey by ' tripyramidal ' was a closed form bounded by 

 three curved faces, any one of which may be regarded as the base of 

 a pyramid whose apex is the summit of the curved edge in which the 

 two other faces meet. Such a figure is probably more coi'rectly 

 described as a trigonal bipyramid with curved faces. 



The term 'Dreikanter', though it does not literally imply wind- 

 action, probably suggests the most typical form of a wind-worn 

 pebble, and has gained wide acceptance in this particular sense, 

 whether the form is only in the process of achievement or whether it 

 has been modified by the formation of other facets. 



I have not yet seen dreikanters in the Sudan, nor had the 

 opportunity of studying their formation elsewhere. The object of 

 my former letter was to point out that the phrase suggested as an 

 alternative by your reviewer did not mean the same thing, and, 

 though Dr. Bather admits the truth of this, I regret that his letter 

 gives the impression that he attaches more importance to the 

 correctness of the terminations than to the sense of the word. Doubt- 

 less this is not the impression he desired to convey. 



G. W. Grabham. 



Madeira. 



July 10, 1911. 



1 Walther, Denudation in der Wilste. 



