1846-47 TECHNICAL TERMS 293 



rise, sometimes by rejecting both names and 

 suggesting a word more descriptive than either, 

 sometimes by compounding the two in such a way 

 as to suggest, by the very name, both the ideas 

 which the two names contained. He gives the 

 reasons which ' compel him in some instances to 

 dissent from the high authority of Cuvier, 

 G.eoffroy, and Agassiz. The objection to some 

 of the French nomenclature was that it often dealt 

 in descriptive phrases rather than in single 

 expressive terms — for example, the word ' hypo- 

 branchial ' replaces what Cuvier calls the l piece 

 interne de la partie inferieure de l'arceau bran- 

 chiate. ' The German language, on the other 

 hand, though susceptible of happy combinations 

 as regards description, yields such results as to 

 make it impossible for many words to become the 

 current language of anatomy ; for example, Owen's 

 comparatively harmless words ' supra-orbital ' and 

 ' supra-temporal ' contrast favourably with the 

 terrible expressions used by German naturalists 

 — Oberaugenhohlenbein and Augenbogensckuppe ! 

 for, as Owen himself remarks, such terms, ex- 

 cellent as they are in their way, ' are likely to be 

 restricted to the anatomists of the country where 

 the vocal powers have been trained from infancy 

 to their utterance. 



The Hunterian Lectures given by Owen this 

 year were on the ' Anatomy of Fishes.' These 

 lectures were afterwards published from notes 



