578 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 225. 



It may be doubted whether scientific 

 literature can furnish a single sentence of 

 equal length containing so many erroneous ' 

 statements and implications. For clear dis- 

 crimination the several points shall be put 

 in the form of questions : 



1. In the article purporting to be the 

 source of the criticism quoted is there men- 

 tioned either the word hijjpocamp or any 

 other word representing a comparable ety- 

 mologic category .' 



In that article, beyond the reproduction 

 of reports including the words hippocampus 

 and hippocampus major, the single reference 

 is as follows (translated) : 



' ' Wilder holds that there is no longer ground for 

 retaining avis with calcar, a term which is to be used 

 in place of hippocampus minor. If this be granted, 

 then naturally the major of hippocampus major can be 

 dropped. The writer approves of these changes." 



2. Is the reviewer himself on record as 

 preferring the apparently alternative term, 

 ' hippocampus major,' to hippocampus ? 



The reviewer, as a member of our Com- 

 mittee ou Anatomical Nomenclature, signed 

 the first report, in 1889, which recom- 

 mended the replacement of ' hippocampus 

 major ' by hippocampus. Since this change 

 was also adopted in 1895 by the Anatom- 

 ische Gesellschaft, I have not supposed that 

 its abandonment was embraced within the 

 proposition of the ' Minoritj' Report ' that 

 the Association should ' reconsider its acts 

 from the beginning.' 



3. Has the word hippocamp ever been used 

 or proposed by me in any other status than 



passing counterfeit money; as if the nature of one of 

 Roe's occupations at the time rendered it particularly 

 desirable that bis character be unimpeached; as if 

 Xiart of the evidence against him were a spurious coin 

 that bad been dropped into his pocket accidentally by 

 an employee of Doe himself ; and, finally, as if Doe 

 held adequate reparation to be made by confining the 

 admission of the mistalce to the officers of the law and 

 his personal friends. Nevertheless, in order that the 

 issues before us may be kept free of all points upon 

 which there may be room for diversity of opinion, this 

 mischance shall be hereafter ignored. 



that of a national, English form (Anglo- 

 paronym) of the international, Latin hip- 

 ■pocampus f 



The negative answer to this may be found 

 in various publications during the last 

 fifteen years. Among the fuller and more 

 accessible presentations are these passages 

 from 'Neural Terms' (pp. 231-232, 226): 



" Each anatomist prefers to employ terms belonging 

 to his own language ; at the same time he prefers 

 that others should employ Latin terms with which he 

 is already familiar. Sea horse, Cheval marin and See- 

 pferd are synonyms (in the broader sense, 242), but 

 to either an Englishman, a Frenchman or a German, 

 two of them are foreign words and unacceptable. 

 Hippocampus is distinctly a Latin word, and the fre- 

 quent occurrence of such imparts a pedantic charac- 

 ter to either discourse or written page. Hippocamp, 

 hippocampe, hippocampo, and Hippolcamp are as dis- 

 tinctly national forms of the common international 

 antecedent (not to invoke the original Greek 

 OTTrd/ca/jTrof), and are readily recognized by all, while 

 yet conforming to the 'genius' of each language." 



4. Does the reduction of hippocampus to 

 hippocamp represent a group of cases so nu- 

 merous iu even my complete list of neural 

 terms as to constitute a prominent feature 

 of what is called my ' system?' 



The list embraces about 440 terms; besides 

 hippocamp there are just two cases in which 

 I have been apparently the first to Angli- 

 cize Latin words by dropping the last sylla- 

 ble, the inflected ending ; viz., myelon, myel, 

 and encephalon, encephal (and its com- 

 pounds). 



5. If, finally, every one of the 440 Latin 

 terms happened to consist of a single word 

 ending in either a, ma, us, on, is, um, or ium, 

 and if I had proposed that English-speak- 

 ing anatomists should customarily omit 

 those syllables, would that render the ' sys- 

 tem ' open to the charge of ' mutilation of 

 words ' or ' disregard of the ordinary prin- 

 ciples of language formation?' 



For a negative answer to this question we 

 need not look beyond the limits of the re- 

 view itself, the language of which is pre- 



