If we examine the names of the Orders of Birds, we find that they are in Latin, Predatores or Accipitres, Passeres, Scansores, Rasores or Gallinæ, Grallatores, Palmipedes and Anseres: Cuvier’s Orders are, Oiseaux de Proie, Passereaux, Grimpeurs, Gallinacés, Échassiers, Palmipedes. These may be englished conveniently as Predators, Passerines, Scansors, Gallinaceans, (rather than Rasors,) Grallators, Palmipedans, [or rather Palmipeds, like Bipeds]. Scansors, Grallators, and Rasors, are better, as technical terms, than Climbers, Waders, and Scratchers. We might venture to anglicize the terminations of the names which Cuvier gives to the divisions of these Orders: thus the Predators are the Diurnals and the Nocturnals; the Passerines are the Dentirostres, the Fissirostres, the 335 Conirostres, the Tenuirostres, and the Syndactyls: the word lustre showing that the former termination is allowable. The Scansors are not sub-divided, nor are the Gallinaceans. The Grallators are Pressirostres, Cultrirostres, Macrodactyls. The Palmipeds are the Plungers, the Longipens, the Totipalmes and the Lamellirostres.
The next class of Vertebrals is the Reptiles, and these are either Chelonians, Saurians, Ophidians, or Batrachians. Cuvier writes Batraciens, but we prefer the spelling to which the Greek word directs us.
The last or lowest class is the Fishes, in which province Cuvier has himself been the great systematist, and has therefore had to devise many new terms. Many of these are of Greek or Latin origin, and can be anglicized by the analogies already pointed out, as Chondropterygians, Malacopterygians, Lophobranchs, Plectognaths, Gymnodonts, Scleroderms. Discoboles and Apodes may be English as well as French. There are other cases in which the author has formed the names of Families, either by forming a word in ides from the name of a genus, as Gadoides, Gobiöides, or by gallicizing the Latin name of the genus, as Salmones from Salmo, Clupes from Clupea, Ésoces from Esox, Cyprins from Cyprinus. In these cases Agassiz’s favourite form of names for families of fishes has led English writers to use the words Gadoids, Gobioids, Salmonoids, Clupeoids, Lucioids (for Ésoces), Cyprinoids, &c. There is a taint of hybridism in this termination, but it is attended with this advantage, that it has begun to be characteristic of the nomenclature of family groups in the class Pisces. One of the orders of fishes, co-ordinate with the Chondropterygians and the Lophobranchs, is termed Osseux by Cuvier. It appears hardly worth while to invent a substantive word for this, when Bony Fishes is so simple a phrase, and may readily be understood as a technical name of a systematic order.
The Mollusks are the next Class; and these are divided into Cephallopods, Gasteropods, and the like. The Gasteropods are Nudibranchs, Inferobranchs, 336 Tectibranchs, Pectinibranchs, Scutibranchs, and Cyclobranchs. In framing most of these terms Cuvier has made hybrids by a combination of a Latin word with branchiæ which is the Greek name for the gills of a fish; and has thus avoided loading the memory with words of an origin not obvious to most naturalists, as terms derived from the Greek would have been. Another division of the Gasteropods is Pulmonés, which we must make Pulmonians. In like manner the subdivisions of the Pectinibranchs are the Trochoidans and Buccinoidans, (Trochoïdes, Buccinoïdes). The Acéphales, another order of Mollusks, may be Acephals in English.
After these comes the third grand division, Articulated Animals, and these are Annelidans, Crustaceans, Arachnidans, and Insects. I shall not dwell upon the names of these, as the form of English words which is to be selected must be sufficiently obvious from the preceding examples.
Finally, we have the fourth grand division of animals, the Rayonnés, or Radiata; which, for reasons already given, we may call Radials, or Radiaries. These are Echinoderms, Intestinals, (or rather Entozoans,) Acalephes, and Polyps. The Polyps, which are composite animals in which many gelatinous individuals are connected so as to have a common life, have, in many cases, a more solid framework belonging to the common part of the animal. This framework, of which coral is a special example, is termed in French Polypier; the word has been anglicized by the word polypary, after the analogy of aviary and apiary. Thus Polyps are either Polyps with Polyparies or Naked Polyps.
Any common kind of Polyps has usually in the English language been called Polypus, the Greek termination being retained. This termination in us, however, whether Latin or Greek, is to be excluded from the English as much as possible, on account of the embarrassment which it occasions in the formation of the plural. For if we say Polypi the word ceases to be English, while Polypuses is harsh: and there is the additional inconvenience, that both these forms would indicate the plural of individuals rather than of classes. 337 If we were to say, ‘The Corallines are a Family of the Polypuses with Polyparies,’ it would not at once occur to the reader that the last three words formed a technical phrase.
This termination us which must thus be excluded from the names of families, may be admitted in the designation of genera; of animals, as Nautilus, Echinus, Hippopotamus; and of plants, as Crocus, Asparagus, Narcissus, Acanthus, Ranunculus, Fungus. The same form occurs in other technical words, as Fucus, Mucus, Œsophagus, Hydrocephalus, Callus, Calculus, Uterus, Fœtus, Radius, Focus, Apparatus. It is, however, advisable to retain this form only in cases where it is already firmly established in the language; for a more genuine English form is preferable. Hence we say, with Mr. Lyell, Ichthyosaur, Plesiosaur, Pterodactyl. In like manner Mr. Owen anglicizes the termination erium, and speaks of the Anoplothere and Paleothere.
Since the wants of science thus demand adjectives which can be used also as substantive names of classes, this consideration may sometimes serve to determine our selection of new terms. Thus Mr. Lyell’s names for the subdivisions of the tertiary strata, Miocene, Pliocene, can be used as substantives; but if such words as Mioneous, Plioneous, had suggested themselves, they must have been rejected, though of equivalent signification, as not fulfilling this condition.
4. (a.) Abstract substantives can easily be formed from adjectives: from electric we have electricity; from galvanic, galvanism; from organic, organization; velocity, levity, gravity, are borrowed from Latin adjectives. Caloric is familiarly used for the matter of heat, though the form of the word is not supported by any obvious analogy.