Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 3 (1797).djvu/112



HE Latin has been adopted as the language of natural history; but the latinity of the natural historians has undergone no small censure.

By the adoption of the Latin as the common language of the science, in the degree in which it obtains, new discoveries in it are propagated with great facility. Other branches of philosophy have not had the same good fortune; and every European nation is become philosophical: and thus, as Mons. D'Alembert has observed, he who devotes himself to the cultivation of any one of them, if he would keep his knowledge up to the level of its state, is reduced to the necessity of flinging away a very valuable part of his life, in acquiring seven or eight languages.

But the latinity of the terms in which natural history is written, has been censured: upon this charge the following remarks may be made.

Such terms must be either primitives or derivatives; now either of these may be barbarisms, when not found in any good Latin author; or improprieties (verba impropria, Quint.), when, although so found, they are not to be found used in the same sense. This Rh