Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/444

438 component. Consequently suggestions were made to correct the word to mammology if not mammalology. Others would compound a name of two Greek constituents (θῄρ, a wild beast, and λόγος). Therology was the result. Dr. John D. Godman, in his 'American Natural History' (1824), entitled the first (and only published part) 'Mastology,' thus borrowing a word first used by Desmarest. The writer of the long article on mammalia for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia (1819) coined the word Mazology ('μαζος, a breast, and λόγς, discourse'). None of these words has found general admission into the language. Notwithstanding the philological objections, mammalogy of late years has been generally accepted and general consensus establishes its right of being.

I have derived the terminal form of words ending in-ology from λόγς rather than λογία, which latter has sometimes been given, because the only Greek word λογία (occurring in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, 16: 1, 2) means 'a, collection for the poor,' and therefore λογία is misleading and has misled several to my knowledge. The Greek words dikologia, etymologia, philologia and theologia of course are good precedents for the English words ending in-ology and consequently we may use, as a suffix, -λογία (but not simply λογία) in explanation of the etymology.

While reading the proof of the preceding article I found reason to fear that, through my desire to be concise and not discursive, I might give a misleading idea of the originality of Linnæus. The concept of the class of Mammals did not spring Minerva-like from the head of the Swede, but the great English naturalist of the seventeenth century (John Ray), to whom Linnæus owed so much, was suggestive in this as in other cases. Ray, in his 'Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini Generis' (1693, p. 53), gave an 'Animalium Tabula generalis' in which he bracketed the terrestrial or quadruped mammals with the aquatic as 'Vivipara,' and contrasted them with the 'Ovipara' or 'Aves.' The Vivipara are exactly coextensive with Mammalia but the word vivipara was used as an adjective and not as a noun. Linnæus did not catch up with this concept till 1758 when he advanced beyond it by recognizing the group as a class and giving it an apt name. To go farther into details is tempting, but would be out of place here.