154 -D/*. Young’s Account of a numerical Table 
four numbers only, its attractive powers might be expressed 
in the shortest and most general manner. 
I have thought it necessary to make some alterations in the 
orthography generally adopted by chemists, not from a want 
of deference to their individual authority, but because it ap- 
pears to me that there are certain rules of etymology, which 
no modern author has a right to set aside. According to the 
orthography universally established throughout the language, 
without any material exceptions, our mode of writing Greek 
words is always borrowed from the Romans, whose alphabet 
we have adopted : thus the Greek vowel T, when alone, is 
always expressed in Latin and in English by Y, and the Greek 
diphthong OY by U, the Romans having no such diphthong 
as OU or OY. The French have sometimes deviated from 
this rule, and if it were excusable for any, it would be for 
them, since their u and ou are pronounced exactly as the Y 
and OY of the Greeks probably were : but we have no such 
excuse. Thus the French have used the term acoustique , which 
some English authors have converted into “ acoustics our ana- 
tomists, however, speak, much more correctly, of the “ acustic” 
nerve. Instead of glucine, we ought certainly, for a similar 
reason, to write glycine ; or glycina, if the names of the earths 
are to end in a. Barytes, as a single Greek word, means 
weight, and must be pronounced barytes ; but as the name of 
a stone, accented on the second syllable, it must be written 
barites; and the pufe earth may properly be called barita. 
Yttria I have altered to itria, because no Latin word begins 
with a Y. 
