mmg Naturalist: 



A Penny Weekly Magazine of Natural History. 



No. 5. 



NOVEMBER 29th, 1879. 



Vol, 1. 



TECHNICAL TERMS. 



h GOOD friend who wishes our little 

 paper every possible success, tells 

 h that it will not be possible for us to 

 ~licceed, unless we write what everyone 

 Hll understand, avoid technical terms 

 ..{together, and above all things, call things 

 fr their English names. A joke that has 

 ascended, we believe, from classical times, 

 i is so old, tells of a father who advised 

 a s son, if he wished to avoid drowning, 

 Iver to enter the water till he had learnt 

 I swim. We can imagine our friend, 

 >tio recommended us as we have told, 

 jfving this sort of advice to his son, but 

 Jte are at a loss to conceive how anyone 

 J to be taught what he does not know, 

 4 r telling him only what he knows al- 

 :ady. We hope we will be able to write 

 'l that we may be understood, and we 

 it»ll avoid technical terms as far as possi- 

 ; but technicalities cannot always be 

 i oided, and it is quite likely we may 

 fmetimes, if we strive too much for sim- 

 : J city of style, become too involved for 

 ^cr readers to comprehend us. No doubt 

 sue writers find hard words flow so 



fluently from their pens, that they never 

 notice them. We remember reading a 

 description of an animal of which it was 

 said it had " anterior extremities elongated" 

 which meant that it had " long fore legs.'' 

 No doubt the latter would be most intel- 

 ligible to everyone, but while such expres- 

 sions as the former are better avoided, 

 how shall we do with words like Thorax. 

 Thorax means the chest, and when you 

 know that much, the one term is as in- 

 telligible as the other, and much more 

 expressive, for who ever heard of the 

 chest of a flea or a house fly. But there 

 are other terms that are in constant use, 

 which we can only express in English by 

 a long sentence. As for instance truncate, 

 which means, as if the point were cut off. 

 There are others too for which there is no 

 English equivalent, such as cilia. Some 

 technical terms have become ingrafted in- 

 to the language, and are now used com- 

 monly. Some people still talk of t\\a leaf 

 of a flower, but most adopt the scientific 

 term, and say petal. In short it only re- 

 quires that these terms be thoroughly 

 understood, an^ then they are as easy as 

 the purest Anglo Saxon. Do not be dis" 

 couraged then, should you meet with a 

 word you have not seen before. Try and 



