170 Proceedings of the Asiatie Society. [July, 



phenomena, the custom has grown up of endeavouring to collect the 

 meaning of technical terms from that of the elementary sounds com- 

 posing them. 



" Let us see now how far technical terms are really descriptive. In 

 Zoology and Botany, to begin with, a very large number of names are 

 simply the names of places or individuals, with a slight alteration or 

 addition of the terminal syllable. When any fact at all is recalled 

 by the name, it is usually nothing more important than that the 

 animal or plant or fossil so named was first noticed at such a place, 

 or first collected by such a person. Even this last is quite ex- 

 ceptional, and more frequently the name is given as a mere verbal 

 monument of some friend's merits. In the Physical Sciences, in 

 which the mere nomenclature is less copious, and therefore less ex- 

 haustive of our resources, terms of similar derivation are also frequent, 

 and thus we have Magnetism, Galvanism, Leyden jar, Frauenhofer 's 

 lines, Boyle'' s law, NicholVs prism, Ammonia, Magnesia, Andalusite, 

 Siluria?i or Cambrian systems, &c, a list that might be extended 

 almost ad infinitum. Among these, we frequently find two or more 

 terms of totally different technical signification, derived from the same 

 source, as e. g. Magnesia and Magnetism, Ammonia and Ammonite. 

 Another class of technical terms are based on some fanciful analogy 

 or erroneously supposed relation. Such are anode and cathode in Elec- 

 tric Science, Hematite, Topaz, Blende, and Crystal and its derivatives 

 in Mineralogy, Porphyry and Trap in Geology, and a host of others. 

 And in Zoology or Botany, even when the name used has some de- 

 scriptive meaning, it would be frequently as applicable to those 

 objects which it counter-indicates, as to those which, by convention, it 

 denotes. Thus such names as formosa, splendens, magnus, similis, 

 dubius, problematicus are of constant occurrence as specific names, 

 when they would greatly mislead, were they supposed to be descrip- 

 tively distinctive. Lastly, to take those cases in which well known 

 vernacular terms are used in Science, we frequently find them used 

 with a distinct or specially restricted meaning, so that it is a question 

 whether, in such cases, their use is not apt to foster that very vagueness 

 and confusion of thought, which it is the chief condition of Science to 

 avoid. Such are fault, joint, rock, cleavage in Geology ; current, pole, 

 posit.ii -r, negative, salt, atomic weight, acid, base, &c. in Physics and Che- 



