1869.] 



237 



would have to bo guided by liia own good taste, and if he felt himself at a loss, ho 

 might remember a precept, devised to meet a similar difficulty, viz., Tliat the 

 masculine gender is more worthy than the feminine, &c., &c. This would be my 

 argument for making the names masculine. For making them feminine or neuter 

 I should not be able to give any reason. 



5. As to the word Harma, chariot, — I adopted the reading because " chariot " 

 is an apt similitude for the form of tho insect. The only meanings of Arma are 

 (1) A medical term for patient's food, and (2) Union of the sexes. Neither of these 

 significations are likely to have been in the author's mind. The Latin word, 

 meaning " weapons," is still less reasonable, on account of its being plural. 



6. If there were an Acanthosoma which affected the ground ivy, I should, as 

 Mr. Dunning rightly infers, make its gender to be Acanthosomos Glechomatis. 



7. I am unable to propose any remedy for Chinese and other unclassical names 

 generally current, or for badly-constructed words like Derejpliysia. It would require 

 a much higher authority than mine to procure their rejection, or probably the con- 

 current authority of some of the great " head-centres " of entomology. But if by 

 calling attention to them I could be the humble instrument of checking the forma- 

 tion of such names for the future, I should consider that I had effected a good 

 thing. 



8. Mr. Dunning quotes the word HiiJpojpotamiis as a case in point, subversive 

 of the rules for compound terms which I brought forward. I need hardly say that 

 these rules are not of my invention, but are to be found in many gi'ammatical 

 works, and apply to languages generally, as being essential to the process of human 

 thought. Hvppopotamtis means Horse-River and not River-Horsc. It is an incorrect 

 compound, used only by Strabo and Galen, and must have sounded strangely to 

 Greek ears. Better writers called the animal Hippos potamios. The wart-hog of 

 South Africa in the Regent's Park probably does not know that he stands ticketed 

 as a River (Choeropotamus) , instead of a porcine animal. Nevertheless we shall 

 continue to speak of the Hippopotamus without much self-reproach, and may throw 

 the blame upon the blundering ancients, who ought to have known better. 



9. Mr. Dunning asks the question (p. L86) whether " Rhinoceros is to be turned 

 into Ceratorhinus ? " For no reason that I can see. Both words are correct, and 

 are equivalent terms, differing only in their arrangement of the parts of the 

 predicate. 



E/itnoceros=IIaving a nasal horn. 



Cerator7itmts=flaving a horned nose. 

 Like Bjlnnoc&ros is Monoceros, having a single horn, and Diceros having two horns. 

 In a Greek author we have Diceros Selene, the two-horned Moon. Such words are 

 of course adjectives, and, like our names of genera, only become substantives 

 conventionally. 



10. As to the difference between such names as Acetropis, Oonianotus^ &c., 

 and the classical forms not compounded with an o, (Edipus, Calliope, &c. The 

 subject is much too extensive to be entered upon here, and is of little interest to 

 entomologists. They will seldom be wrong in compounding names from Greek 

 nouns by the intervention of the letter o, elided before a vowel. Those who wish 



