120 
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
desirable that writers, who composed or adapted generic names from the Greek, 
should have a knowledge of the letters of the Greek alphabet, beyond their simi¬ 
larity in shape to the Roman letters of the printer. It must be conceded that, for 
instance, Spavius , as the representative of HiravioQ, was open to criticism. Indeed 
a considerably greater degree of etymological attainments than this inferred might 
be expended on the construction of generic names, without inconvenience ; but, 
perhaps, stiffness and monotony would be the chief result from an unbending ap¬ 
plication of the rules devised by grammarians, but from which the Greek as a living 
language admitted so many variations. Dr. Leach—of whom Kirby has said, 
Nihil non tetigit , et omnia quce tetigit ornavit —had been a considerable maker of 
genera and generic names, which had found general acceptance. His ear had led 
him to introduce various compounds in which the more ordinary short o, for the 
close of the precedent member (a noun) in composition, was replaced by long e. 
These Agassiz has remodelled, for Limnebius , Limnephilus , &c., substituting Lim- 
nobius , Limnophilus , and the like. Yet Elaphebolus, Stephanephorus, Zoephorus, 
Poephagus, Moeregenes, and more of this class stand unchallenged in the Lexicon. 
E venPhysapus ( Physapi , Pliysapoda ), sanctioned by the names of Degeer, Linnasus, 
Illiger, Latreille, &c., might be vindicated against Burmeister’s newer candidate, 
Physopoda , while Tala and Tana imprinted the characteristic a on so many com¬ 
pounds. But Burmeister, in his critical sagacity (nasi emunctioris), has not with¬ 
held his castigating hands, in yet other instances, from the style of Linnasus, whose 
Myrmeleon has expanded, under the ferule, into Myrmecoleon , MIHI. Erichson 
upon this has remarked, that if the lengthened form be more accordant with the 
canons of grammarians, that chosen by Linnaeus savours more of the idiom of the 
Greek. That he might not appear before this court as a merely gratuitous advocate, 
Mr. Haliday would instance a compound of his own fabrication, Melanthrips , 
which under Burmeister’s reforming hands had shot up into the tetrasyllabic 
dignity of Melanothrips , MIHI. Then the critic would strip the spear of its gar¬ 
niture melandeton ; the river must roll no more melandines in song ; while in com¬ 
pensation Melancholia should hold no more sad victims in horrid chains! But 
to take defence on the very lowest grounds, there was an old legal maxim not 
inapplicable to any debatable cases—“Fieri non oportebat, facta valent.” To 
go a step beyond generic names ; Jussieu’s plan of an uniform termination, as 
distinctive of the natural families, had been applied to the animal kingdom by 
Leach, deriving the family names from the typical genus, in the form of the 
patronymic in idae. The modem families are in great part equivalent to the 
genera of Linnasus, or of Fabricius, in entomology, and thus may rank among the 
most marked groups in the systematic scale. Hence there was an obvious advan¬ 
tage in discriminating them by some such device; and the method of Leach had 
been very generally adopted in England, as well as in France of late, and in Ger¬ 
many by Germar and probably by others. Burmeister has objected to this plan, 
that idae can properly be appended to Greek roots alone, and that if a few examples 
can be produced of Latin names so modified (e.gr., PomuHdae of the Satirist, 
Scipiadae of Lucilius) they are only from the poets, while the language of zoo¬ 
logy is simple prose. There is some reason in this; but we may add, that the 
vocabulary of the classics is necessarily insufficient for the extended wants of 
technical language, and that a form which, in virtue of these instances, is at least 
not foreign to the genius of the language, nor more obnoxious to criticism than 
other classes of modern derivatives and compounds, introduced of necessity, may 
claim some favour, as meeting an acknowledged want. The only other uniform 
termination which has been proposed instead, not liable to yet stronger exceptions, is 
ina; but this is also in use for subordinate divisions of the families, and for the 
higher group the substantive has some obvious advantages over the adjective form. 
Having ascended from the genera so far, a few remarks may be allowed upon the 
names of orders. Linnaeus in the compounds of ptera found denominations for them, 
uniform and euphonious, while expressive of the characters to which he gave most 
weight in their discrimination. Fabricius, founding his system primarily on another 
set of organs, substituted names comparatively dissonant, uncouth, and etymo¬ 
logically corrupted. Even the signal benefits which he had conferred on 
science, by generic characters established on a surer base, as well as by a long 
