206 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 555. 



conjunction with, the well-known treatise of 

 Thomson and Tait. 



Ernest W. Brown. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



ON THE SPELLING OP ' CLON.' 



To THE Editor of Science: The original 

 orthography of ' elon ' should he retained, in 

 the opinion of the present writer, for the fol- 

 lowing reasons : ' Clone' the form preferred by 

 Mr. Pollard (Science, XXIL, p. 87), is 

 already in use as a medical term, and is of 

 different origin and significance from clon. 

 If the latter word should take final e in or- 

 der to mark an omega soimd in the original, 

 so also should eon, pseon, autochthon, halcyon 

 and similar words in common use. 



Linguistic usage does not require, however, 

 that loan-words and derivatives from other 

 languages should always preserve the same 

 vowel quantities, and in transliteration from 

 the Greek no distinction is made between the 

 long and short sounds of o and e. In fact, 

 fj and oi were unknown until the introduction 

 of scholastic writing, and remained long after- 

 wards confused with e and o. Final e in 

 English derivatives may stand for a distinct 

 syllable in the original, as iii the other ex- 

 amples given by Mr. Pollard, or may be added 

 for euphony, biit not for the sole purpose of 

 indicating quantity. Sometimes the final 

 vowel is arbitrarily syncopated, whence the re- 

 sulting variants of metaphor and semaphore, 

 plasm and plasma, hypogyn and hypocrite, 

 rhyme and rhythm, etc. ; or we may even write 

 both synonym and synonyme, though the latter 

 form is antiquated. 



Scarcely germane to this matter, but sug- 

 gested by it, is the popular habit of miscalling 

 under a variety of un-English names one of 

 the most famous masterpieces of Greek art. 

 When we say ' Milo,' we are merely following 

 the continental pronunciation of Melos, in 

 which the final s is no longer soimded. Venus 

 de Milo is the French name of the statue. 

 Aphrodite of Melos the correct English name.. 

 The most unpardonable combination of all is 

 ' Venus of Milo,' with the long (English) 

 sound of the i in Milo ; for in the first place, 



the Italian goddess is not the precise equiva- 

 lent of Aphrodite, and in the second place 

 there is no such geographical name as ' Milo,' 

 at least, not in Greece. C. E. Eastman. 



Haevakd University. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 



the laws of evolution. 



That account of universal evolution which 

 we owe to Mr. Herbert Spencer may be sup- 

 plemented by a formulation of certain quan- 

 titative laws which Mr. Spencer seems not to 

 have apprehended. Mr. Spencer's own so- 

 called ' Law of Evolution ' is in reality only a 

 great generalization, and not in a stricter 

 sense of the word a law at all. It tells us 

 that everywhere the loss and redistribution 

 of the internal motion of a finite aggregate 

 are accompanied by the concentration or ' in- 

 tegration ' of mass, a ' differentiation ' of 

 arrangements, forms and activities, and a 

 ' segregation ' or drawing together of like 

 units. It does not tell us anything about the 

 rate or amount of ' compound evolution ' to 

 be expected from any given expenditure of 

 energy under given conditions. 



Economists have long been familiar with 

 certain laws of differential cost and gain. 

 They are commonly called laws of increasing 

 and of diminishing return. The usual state- 

 ment of them in the text -books is inadequate. 

 A more accurate, and possibly a sufficient, 

 statement is, that in any given state of in- 

 dustry and the arts, an increasing outlay of 

 labor and capital in agricultural, manufac- 

 turing, or commercial operations conducted 

 upon a given area,^ will, up to a given limit, 

 yield returns increasing faster than the out- 

 lay, and will, beyond that limit, yield returns 

 increasing less rapidly than the outlay. 



In the course of my sociological studies I 

 have been led to believe that increasing and 

 diminishing returns, within the realm of eco- 

 nomic phenomena, are only special cases of 

 relations that hold good throughout all phe- 

 nomena, physical, chemical, biological, psy- 

 chological and social. In a future publica- 

 tion I hope to set forth the grounds of this 



^ Observe, space not ' land.' 



