Page:Midland naturalist (IA midlandnaturalis01lond).pdf/188

 NOUNS.

Examples are found in polyzoön, plur. polyzoa, and stoma, plur. stomata, the stem of which, as is the case in all Greek nouns ending in a, is formed by adding t to the nominative.

Having obtained the stem of a word, of whatever declension, if we wish to form a derivative, we add to it any termination which expresses the required idea. The only point of importance occurs when this termination begins with a consonant. In this case the letter i is generally inserted, if the word is of Latin, and the letter o, if if is of Greek origin. Thus from the Latin heder-a, "ivy." we get heder-aceus and hederi-folius; but some botanists, wishing probably to retain the a, write hederæfolius. For this there seams to be no classical authority whatever, and it should therefore be avoided, as founded upon a mistaken idea. Other examples are Boragin-aceæ, from borago, linarii-folius, from linaria, anagallidi-folius, from anagallis, formicæ-forme, from formica. As before, some entomologists write formicæ-forme, but the very same persons spell tipuliforme, from tipula, without the a. Similarly from the Greek we get chloro-phyll, morpho-logy, Gastero-poda, &c. This inserted o generally serves as a mark that the roots from which the word is derived are Greek; I say generally, because some words, as Fungology, are hybrids, Fungus being a Latin, and logos, a Greek word. There is one case where this o is inserted, which is seldom suspected. Thus hypnoides is compounded of hypn-um, a moss, and the termination -ides, meaning "resembling, similar to." This termination was used by the Greeks, but, since in very ancient times it began with a consonant having a sound like f or v, it required the insertion of o before it. Thus we should get hypno-fides. This consonant, (called the "lost" Digamma,) ceased to he used by the Greeks thousands of years ago, but they still retained the o, and we follow their example. Thus the o and i in hypnoides belong to distinct syllables: the importance of this will be seen when we come to pronunciation. There are many words used in scientific English of the same kind, e.g., albuminoid, anthropoid, and botryoid. The same termination is sometimes used in the plural in the names of sections of the animal and vegetable kingdoms; thus Crinoidea, from crin-on, "a lily," is really crino-idea, and means "lily-like" animals, and Aroideæ, from ar-um, the cuckoo-pint, means "arum-like" plants. There is another class of words, apparently similar, but really of a different origin, those ending in -idæ or -iadæ, which must not be confounded with those just mentioned. This latter termination was used to designate the children and remoter descendants of any person; thus the Pelopids were the descendants or family of Pelops, and the meaning with which it is employed now is, whether purposely or not, very similar. The Equidæ, for instance, are the descendants of some common original form, which existed in geologic times, to which indeed the name Equus could not be applied, but which was the typo and first foreshadowing of