Il6 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. [Proc. 3D Ser. 



now prevails in regard to the formation, gender and inflec- 

 tion of certain New Latin words derived from the Greek. 

 Definite rules have been wanting, or at least not readily 

 available. Accordingly, at Dr. Jordan's request, and with 

 his kind assistance, I have undertaken to formulate a set of 

 rules based upon philological principles and at the same 

 time agreeing with the practice of consistent nomenclators. 

 Ultra-purism, however, as the writing of ai and oi for the 

 Greek at and ot or of k for Greek k, shall have no more 

 consideration than the philological monstrosities produced 

 by a Rafinesque or a Swainson. 



There is no essential difference in the method of proced- 

 ure whether we are adopting from the classical languages 

 simple words or compound words; but as not all the desired 

 compounds exist ready made for us in Greek and Latin, and 

 as their formation causes more trouble, the compounds will 

 be assumed as the subject of these rules. 



Compounds in scientific terminology, whether Latin or 

 Greek, are usually made up of two parts, which would nat- 

 urally be separate words standing in some syntactical rela- 

 tion to each other and which combine that relation in one 

 word; either member may be a form that is not a word by 

 itself but appears only in compounds: e. g. Eng. un- told; 

 tin- appears only as inseparable prefix; in up-ward -ward 

 appears only as inseparable suffix. So Latin z>e-sanus (in- 

 separable prefix ve- -fsanus) out of one's senses; fun- a fn- 

 bulus, rope-walker; Greek S v a -akaTo? , hard to be caught; 

 ttoXv-tt p d<y imu) v (7J-0A.U, much, -f- -irpd.TT(o, do) , meddlesome. 

 Besides these two elements, a third is in every case to be 

 taken into consideration — the inflectional ending, which de- 

 termines the sentence relation of the word; this inflectional 

 ending may or may not be identical with that of the last 

 member of the compound: e. g. in \ev/c-6<f)6a\pLo<; (\euK09, 

 white, -\- otydaX/jLos, eye), white-eyed, and in H.eXoirov-vrjao'i 

 (ne'A.077-0?, Pelofts' , -j-vfjaos, island), Peloponnesus, it is ; but 

 it is not so in paicpo-icecfraXos, long-headed, derived from 

 fia/cpos, long,-\- ice(f>a\r), head, nor in p.aicp-ovpos, long-tailed, 

 derived from /Aa/cpos, long, -\-ovpd, tail; but in passing into 



