22 
INTRODUCTION. 
merating all the individual contents or the characteristics of 
these groups is avoided. Thus the single word Ruminantia 
stands for camels, lamas, giraffes, deer, antelopes, goats, sheep, 
and kine, or for all the hoofed quadrupeds which ruminate 
or chew the cud, and have no front teeth in the upper jaw ; 
Lepidopiera includes all the various kinds of butterflies, hawk- 
moths, and millers or moths, or insects having wings covered 
with branny scales, and a spiral tongue instead of jaws, and 
whose young appear in the form of caterpillars. It would he 
difficult to find or invent any single English words which 
would be at once so convenient and so expressive. This, 
therefore, is an additional reason why scientific names ought 
to be preferred to all others, at least in works of natural his- 
tory, where it is highly important that the objects described 
should have names that are short, significant in themselves, 
and not liable to be mistaken or misapplied. 
There is no art, profession, trade, or occupation, which can 
be taught or learned without the use of technical words or 
phrases belonging to each, and which, to the inexperienced 
and untaught, are as unintelligible as the terms of science. 
It is not at all more difficult to learn and remember the latter 
than the former, when the attention has been properly given 
to the subject. The seaman, the farmer, and the mechanic 
soon become familiar with the names and phrases peculiar to 
their several callings, uncouth, and without apparent signifi- 
cation, as many of them are. So, too, the terms of science 
lose their forbidding and mysterious appearance and sound 
by the frequency of their recurrence, and finally become as 
harmonious to the ear, as they are clear and definite in their 
application. 
