4888 Notices of New Books. 



zoologist as a convenient medium of reference. Many of the diffi- 

 culties in the path of science are not inseparable from it; the 

 language used is often unnecessarily technical, and yet, strange to 

 say, loose withal. Thus we sometimes find one species described as 

 having ' the fore limbs short, 7 and the next, which is to be dis- 

 tinguished from it, not as having ' the fore limbs long,' but ' the 

 anterior extremities elongated.' Sometimes in the long descriptions 

 which must be waded through and carried in mind, the head in one 

 case is mentioned first, then the tail, then the trunk, the limbs, and so 

 on: but in the succeeding example, which has to be compared with 

 it, perhaps the limbs come first, then the head, then the trunk, &c. 

 Such difficulties as these are most perplexing ; and yet it is easy to 

 see that a little care might entirely remove them. If a certain order 

 were maintained in the details of description of kindred forms, and a 

 fixed phraseology, I need not point out how much the work of 

 comparison would be lightened. 



" In the wording of the following definitions I have endeavoured to 

 make the phraseology as Saxon as possible. I am far from desiring 

 to rob our language of its Latin element ; it would be greatly im- 

 poverished by such a privation ; and multitudes of words of Latin 

 derivations are as familiar as the homeliest Anglo-Saxon. Still our 

 scientific language might be much more Saxonised than it is, without 

 losing that precision which is indispensable. 



" On the other hand, the student must bear in mind that so many 

 of the ideas themselves in modern science are new, and custom has so 

 generally affixed to these new ideas classical expressions, that it 

 would be both absurd and often unintelligible to substitute homelier 

 expressions for them — to exchange, for example, such words as 

 thorax, abdomen, oval, for chest, belly, egg-shaped ; that others, as 

 homogeneous, parasitic, truncate, &c, can be otherwise expressed 

 only by using many words ; and that not a few, as cilia, tentacle, 

 antenna, have really no correspondent words in Saxon English. 



" I have, however, added a glossary for the explanation of such 

 technical terms as were unavoidable ; or else have taken care to 

 expound them on their first occurrence. With these aids I trust 

 there is not an expression in the book which a person of average 

 English education will not understand. 



" But what I consider the principal feature of this work is the 

 copiousness and character of its illustration. Perhaps I may say that 

 1 have enjoyed more than ordinary facilities for a labour of this kind. 

 Having been accustomed from childhood to draw animals from the 



