55 



ized form, they are not all of Latin or even of classical origin. 

 Actual census of the generic names in Gray's Manual shows 

 that 48 per cent of them are of Greek origin, 21 per cent of 

 Latin origin, 18 per cent are commemorative names, and 12 per 

 cent are miscellaneous in character. Practically four-fifths of 

 them are not of Latin derivation, and there is little reason why 

 one-fifth of the names should determine the pronunciation for 

 all the rest. Of course, a much greater proportion of specific 

 names are actually Latin adjectives. 



If classical pronunciation is to be followed, it should be fol- 

 lowed consistently, and this involves a number of difficulties in 

 execution. It requires, in the first place, a classical education of 

 an extent which few of us receive in these days of specialization. 

 And if we possess this education and follow classical pronuncia- 

 tion exactly, we may again have some difficulties and meet with 

 some apparent inconsistencies. Thus we must say kee-koo-ta for 

 Cicnta, not sy-cue-ta; for Dicentra we must say dee-ken-tra in- 

 stead of dye-sen-tra, in direct contravention of the general rule 

 in our language governing the pronunciation of the letter c. We 

 should say nutans, not nutans, although the spelling carries no 

 indication of the nasal n; P'hiladelphus, not Philadelphia; 

 Rossa, not Rosa, and one hesitates to guess how Zizia should be 

 pronounced. Then the final m of Latin words, according to cer- 

 tain classicists, receives different pronunciations depending on 

 the initial letter of the following word, and instead of Lilium 

 we must say Liliun tigrinum, Liliung canadense, and Liliu 

 longiflorum. Also we have to dispose of certain sounds which did 

 not exist in the Latin at all, such as the sh of Shortia and the th 

 of Erythronium. Besides the difficulty of achievement, this 

 method of pronunciation sometimes destroys all oral resem- 

 blance of a scientific name to its English equivalent and thereby 

 conceals the meaning of the name from all except those with a 

 classical education. Thus a common specific name pronounced 

 keeliahta bears little audible resemblance to the cognate English 

 word ciliate. 



The location of the accented syllables is also a matter of 

 difficulty. Half of our generic and a few of our specific names are 

 taken from the Greek, in which the accent was probably musical 

 in nature. In the Latin language, the nature of the accent is 



