184 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



sion only by the halter with which he also slips out of 

 life. Unfortunately, it has not fared with ' proper' as 

 with improper names. When Nature came fresh from 

 the hands of the Creator unnamed, the various subjects 

 of the animal kingdom were brought successively before 

 our first parent for recognition and calling: ' And Adam 

 gave names to all cattle and fowl of the air, and to every 

 beast of the field, and what Adam called every living 

 creature that was the name thereof.' There is some dif- 

 ficulty with regard to fish, on which the sacred record is 

 silent ; Milton scarcely obviates it where he sings, 



Hacli bird and beast beliold 

 After tbeir kinds ; I bring tbem to receive 

 From tliee tbeir names ; and understand the same 

 Offish within their watery residence; 

 Not hither summon'd, since they cannot change 

 Their element, to draw the thinner air ; 



since it was as difficult for Adam to name fish he had 

 never seen, as for them . to go to Adam for a name. 

 How long the primitive nomenclature lasted we know 

 not, any more than to what extent it obtained ; but that 

 the original names began to be corrupted not long after 

 the Fall is probable ; and error had so far spread in the 

 days of Greece and Rome that few traces of the archaic 

 onomasia are to be found, but in place a number of false 

 synonyms, invented to perplex objects once clearly recog- 

 nized. Grammar, representing words as they ought to 

 be, not as they are, defines a noun as ' the name of a 

 thing j' but every one at all conversant with filoras and 

 faunas knows right well that the nouns they employ are 

 not always the names of an equal number of things; 

 that sometimes under the same substantive, unduly 

 stretched (like an India-rubber band beyond its tether) , 

 a number of very miscellaneous objects are often col- 

 lected ; and again, that one single object may sometimes 

 have as many different terms of designation as a Persian 



