Apeil 21, 1899.] 



SCIENCE, 



577 



cbairman of the Nomenclatur Commission, 

 Professor Kolliker, it might naturally be 

 inferred that the list of terms adopted by 

 that body is free from hybrid words. Yet 

 not only does the B. N. A. contain several 

 such, but certain of them are less eupho- 

 nious than most of those for which I am 

 responsible. Comparison is invited between 

 the Grseco-Latin combinations in the two 

 following groups, the first from my list, the 

 second from the B. IST. A.; iu each case the 

 Greek element is printed in italics : Meta- 

 tela, (:^tatela,pa7'atela, 'meteplexus, dt'aplexus, 

 j3a?-aplexus, ectocinerea, entooinerea, hemice- 

 rebrum, Ae}?i/septum ; ejjidurale, mesovaricus, 

 ^a?-umbilica.les, jparolfactorius, suprac/iorioi- 

 ^deci,* pterygopalatinvLS, pterygomandibnlaris, 

 phrenicocostalis, sp/ienopalatinum, sphenooc- 

 cipitalis, occipito«iastoi(Zea, squamosomas- 

 toidea. 



XXIII. That progress toioard the right so- 

 lution of the questions involved is really facili- 

 tated by general denunciations of a given system 

 or its advocates. — The attitude of some may 

 be likened to that of the child in the lines : 



" I do not love thee, Dr. Fell, 

 The reason why I cannot tell, 

 But this alone I know full well, 

 I do not love thee. Dr. Fell.'' 



History will record whether such con- 

 servatives shall rank with heroic defenders 

 of law and order, or be I'ated among the 

 Canutes of science, their utterances, in re- 

 spect to nomenclature, remembered mainly 

 as ' things one would rather have left un- 

 said.' 



History will likewise record whether 

 some others, including, of course, the fra- 

 mers of the ' Majority Report,' shall be meta- 

 phorically ' hanged, drawn and quartered ' 



* In Table IV., p. 290 of 'Neural Terms' (likewise 

 in Biological Lectures, p. 158) suprachorioidea was 

 printed without the first (and, as it seems to me, 

 superfluous) i; also, most regrettably, there was in- 

 cluded in the list per ichor ioideale, a wholly Greek 

 combination. 



as rebels, or, notwithstanding errors of 

 judgment, credited with leaving the path- 

 way of future students of anatomy smoother 

 than they found it themselves. 



XXIV. That the English- speaking anatomists 

 who have been laboring long for the simplification 

 of nomenclature are called upon to submit in- 

 definitely to animadversions based upon inertia, 

 lack of information, misapprehension, or undue 

 deference to the adverse pronunciamentos of scien- 

 tific potentates abroad. — Speaking for myself 

 alone, the spirit in which I prefer to meet 

 hostile criticism is fairly exemplified in my 

 reply (JV. Y. Medical Record, Oct. 2, 188G, 

 389-390) to an article in a leading medical 

 journal containing an egregious and inex- 

 cusable misstatement that might readily 

 have led uninformed readers to question the 

 soundness of all my proposals. That article, 

 however, although upon the editorial page, 

 was evidently prepared in haste. But such 

 extenuation will scarcely be urged in the 

 case of the publication numbered 6 in the 

 list in the note on p. 566. This is a review 

 of an article (no. 5), and to avoid confu- 

 sion I shall speak of the ' article' and its 

 ' author,' of the ' review ' and the ' re- 

 viewer.' 



The review contains this passage : 

 " Some of the peculiarities of the A¥ilder 

 system are then briefly discussed [in the 

 article] , attention being called to its disre- 

 gard of the ordinary principles of language 

 formation as exemplified by 1st. The muti- 

 lation of words as by using * * * hippo- 

 camp '■'•' for hippocampus major. ' ' 



■■<■ In the original this is 'chippoeamp'. The re- 

 viewer promptly assured me that the mistake was the 

 printer's and that it would be 'corrected wherever 

 possible'. I assume that the copies of Science sent by 

 him to others were emended like that received by 

 me. But, so far as I am aware, no public correction 

 has been made. Under some circumstances this might 

 be regarded as superfluous. But it must be borne in 

 mind that unjustifiable verbifactiou constituted the 

 very substance of the indictment; hence the situation 

 was as if John Doe accused Richard Eoe publicly of 



