Correspondence. 
625 
1884., 
mean their habit of distorting foreign names of places, sometimes 
even of persons, thus rendering their identification often a matter 
of doubt to a non-Frenchman. In a similar manner they murder 
scientific and technical terms of Greek or Latin origin. Surely 
it would be no great hardship for the French were they, in future, 
for intelligibility’s sake, to leave foreign and classical names as 
they find them. 
An Old Technologist. 
THE MERIT OF MESSRS. THOMAS AND GILCHRIST 
VERSUS THE ARISTOCRACY. 
A contemporary of yours, whom I leave you to guess or to 
search out, winds up a slashing article with the diCtum that 
“ these young men have done more for England’s greatness 
than all her aristocracy, kings and queens into the bargain.” 
Now I should be very loth to depreciate the merit of Messrs. 
Thomas and Gilchrist, though, as their process is being worked 
in foreign countries more extensively than at home, it will leave 
our iron trade pretty much as it found it, if not in a relatively 
worse position. This, however, is no fault of the inventors. 
But the writer to whom I refer seriously under-rates the intel- 
lectual achievements of the aristocracy. Robert Boyle and 
Henry Cavendish were members of the aristocracy. The Mar- 
quis of Worcester, the Viscount St. Albans (incorrectly termed 
Lord Bacon), and the Earl Dundonald were all peers. So in 
our own day are Lords Rayleigh and Walsingham. Sir Charles 
Lyell, though not a peer, belonged to the baronetage. 
These instances, to which more might be added, prove that 
the aristocracy have done things for England’s greatness fully 
equal, to say the least, with the invention of the Thomas and 
Gilchrist process. 
J USTITIA. 
POLYGAMY IN CONNECTION WITH THE SUPERIOR 
SIZE OF MALE ANIMALS. 
Great superiority of size and strength in any male animal, as 
compared with the female of the same species, seems to be so 
closely conneded with polygamous habits, that the one faCt may 
