viii CONSTRUCTION OF SYSTEMATIC NAMES IN PALEONTOLOGY. 



Indeed their introduction cannot well be opposed, as they often offer 

 useful characters. But the laws of Latin should nevertheless control 

 their formation. They should be made, as nearly as possible, what the 

 Roman would have made them had they been introduced from outside 

 into the language while yet living. In this way no violence is done to it, 

 and in all countries words will be formed in a similar manner. 



In the year 1862, a committee of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, published a set of rules and recommendations 

 on the subject of Scientific nomenclature, the former of which may be 

 said to be a summary of the practice of the best scientific writers in all 

 lands, and therefore binding, and the latter have been, with a few ex- 

 ceptions, almost universally adopted. Thus, alluding to the point 

 above mentioned, the committee in its " Recommendations " says : 



b. Sarbarous names. — Some authors protest strongly against the introduction of exotic 

 words into our Latin nomenclature ; others defend the practice with equal warmth. We 

 may remark, first, that the practice is not contrary to classical usage, for the Greeks 

 and Eomans did occasionally, though with reluctance, introduce barbarous words in a 

 modified form into their respective languages. Secondly, the preservation of the trivial 

 names which animals bear in their native countries is often of great use to the traveler, in 

 aiding him to discover and identify species. We do not, therefore, consider, if such 

 words have a Latin termination given to them, that the occasional and judicious use of 

 them as scientific terms can be justly objected to. 



In addition to drawing up a mere list of the North American Palaeo- 

 zoic Fossils, an attempt has been made to give some help to the many 

 workers in the palaeontological field towards rightly naming their 

 fossils at the outset. A mistake once in print is very difficult to 

 eradicate. It reappears, it crops out in some unexpected place and with 

 every reappearance has a new lease of life. Few who have not made 

 some study of the subject have any conception of the confusion now 

 existing in the nomenclature of science. The errors are of two kinds — 

 scientific and grammatical. To such a length has synonymy or the giving 

 of different names to the same species now arrived, that it not unfre- 

 quently happens that the common English name is more definite and 

 vivid, and therefore more useful than the Scientific. Read, for instance, 

 the twelve different names which have been given to the common Chain 

 Coral, from Fougt, in 1765, to Bronn, in 1835. This, in many cases, arises 

 from mistaken identification, which with all care must sometimes hap- 

 pen, but it arises in a still greater degree from the impossibility of learn- 

 ing what species have been found and what names have been given, 

 when they were given and by whom. 



Another source of confusion is the erroneous nomenclature often 

 adopted. All whose duty calls them to the study of palaeontology are 

 not, and cannot be, classical scholars, and consequently not a few names 

 are formed in violation of the recognised rules of language. Some errors 

 of this kind have been corrected and a few rules are appended to aid 

 in preventing others. 



0. Corrupted vjords.—ln the construction of compound Latin words, there are certain 

 grammatical rules which haye been known, and acted on for two thousand years, and 



