5690 • Etymology of 



have lately been published, — and especially in Mr. Bell's ' History 

 of British Mammalia,' — the derivations of many of our vernacular 

 names are given or attempted. These are signs which show that 

 a want is being felt, which there is at present nothing capable of 

 supplying. 



Great progress, as I have said, has been made in unravelling the 

 true family history of words. We are no longer confined to Johnson, 

 but have other dictionaries to fall back upon, and, in particular, that 

 of Webster, which is immeasurably the best, both in the amount of 

 information supplied, and in general soundness of principle. Still, 

 these are cumbrous volumes; their price makes them generally inac- 

 cessible ; their information needs to be put in a less scattered, as well 

 as in a more inviting form. A sounder and more comprehensive 

 system, too, is very desirable : and, if this last remark be true of the 

 whole subject, still more is it applicable to the names of objects 

 belonging to natural science. Whatever dictionary we may con- 

 sult, we cannot help feeling that the thing needed is a mind which 

 combines some knowledge of Natural History with skill as a 

 scholar and a linguist. We constantly find an origin ascribed 

 to some name, from some supposed habit or characteristic which 

 has its only existence in the fertile imagination of the ingenious 

 lexicographer. 



This subject has for some years been one of great interest to my- 

 self. I have felt the difficulties and deficiencies to which I have 

 alluded, and I have therefore thought it would not be unacceptable to 

 naturalists if some information of this kind could be presented to them 

 in a condensed and readable form. And here I must, at the outset, 

 express my utter abjuration of that system of philological falsehood in 

 which people are now being educated, when they are taught that a cer- 

 tain word in one language is " derived from" a similar word in another 

 language. The languages of Europe, as is well known, have a common 

 origin : what that original stock was we cannot say, — probably the 

 Sanscrit is the nearest approach to it. As the various tribes of men 

 migrated westward, climate and other local influences modified their 

 speech into dialects of the old root language. Thus, as we should ex- 

 pect, we usually find the same word, though often strangely modified, 

 expressing the same idea in the kindred dialects of Europe, and often 

 traceable back to its Eastern birth-place also. But we must remember 

 that these forms have an independent existence ; nor must we say that 

 one is " derived from" another, unless a clear case of importation can 

 be established. 





