OcTOBER 26, 19II J NATURE 549 impressed as he ought to be with the importance of native and introduced plants; the latter section includes the issue. The use of the word "saturating" (p. 197) nearly all the valuable economic pants. The cata• does not make for clearness. The working of the logue supplies Sinhalese and Tamil names, also refer• second tendency is to be seen chiefly in those parts of ences to the pages in Trimen's "Flora of Ceylon," the book which deal with social analogies and appli• where descriptions of the species can be found. It is ·cations. These appear to us, although interesting and noticeable that very few new species have been dis• unconventional, to be somewhat far-fetched. But the covered recently. The total numbers amount to 1095 book is a good one, and will make a strong appeal genera and 3074 species in the first section, and in the to the thoughtful. F. A. D. second to 285 genera and 387 species. About twenty genera and very many species are endemic. The Evolution of Kingston-upon-Hull, as shown by its Plans. By Thomas Sheppard. Pp. 203. (Hull; A. Brown and Sons, Ltd., 19II.) Price 3s. 6d. net. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. WHEN this island first became the home of man the site of the city of Kingston-upon-Hull bore an aspect [The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions very different from that which it assumes at present. expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake The North Sea washed a long line of cliffs extending to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected from Hessle to Bridlington, and the Humber, even manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. then a mighty river, ran straight out to sea. Then No notice is taken of anonymous communications.] followed the great Ice age, which left behind it masses of glacial drift, the foundation of the present city. The Scientific Misappropriation of Popular Terms. The milder climate which succeeded produced abundant vegetation, which gave rise to the bed of IN his interesting address to the Conference of Delegates peat which covered the site. A single bronze axe at the Portsmouth meeting of the British Association, found in it was probably dropped by some visitor as reported in NATURE of October 19, Prof. J. vV . Gregory makes certain remarks to which I venture to take excep• from a canoe, and supplies the only record of pre• tion. I comment on them partly because they push the historic man. Then the water encroached on the principle of priority further than it need be pushed, and land and laid down great deposits of silt along the partly because I am afraid that Prof. Gregory's advice '' to present valley. The Roma ns do not appear to have admit that the spider is an insect " may be taken to hea:t occupied the place, and the first attempt tc embank by some of his audience at Portsmouth or by some of hts it is attributed to the Danes, who have left marks readers in NATURE. of their occupation in the pla n of the older parts of Zoolo«ists will not be surprised to learn that the word the city. In time the place gained increased im• formerly had a wider application than a t present. portance by the absorption of the adjoining villages, Manv of them will feel that Messrs. 1. H. and A. B. and in the fourteenth century the site was surrounded Com-stock are not fairly treated by being taken to task for telling their readers, in a general manual, that a spider is by a wall, of which, and of the old manor and palace not an insect. So far as the account of the use of the of the King, whence the name of the city was word " insect " is intended to be a historical account of derived, only a few stones remain. The later develop• the subject, and no more, criticism is unnecessary. But if ment of the city can be traced in the fine series of it is a serious a ttempt to reinstate " insect " in its former reproductions of old maps and drawings which illus• meanin« I think it should be resisted on the ground that York: The Society, 1911.) Price 6 dollars. poda on nomenclatorial grounds; and it cannot be disputed Is it worth while? Here is a tome of 66o pages that to do so would be productive of endless confusion. I am prepared to follow Prof. in thinking that i.t may devoted to the investigation of an apparently healthy be inconv.enient to employ a famtltar popular term tn an young woman, Miss Burton (pseudonym), aged altered significa tion in scientific writings. But in the twenty-two, who is supposed to be able to pass into a present instance the wider use of " insect " has been so trance-like state at will in order to become a long abandoned in literature that even in popular works "medium " in communication with the spirit world. the majority of authors understand " insect " exactly as it There are the usual stories of raps, touchings, is understood by a zoologist. whistling, singing, combined whistling and singing, For one reason or another it is not unusual for a word whispering, tambourine-playing, table levitation, &c., in popular use to change its meaning the all by the spirits. The investigations show that the evolution of a language. It would be stmply pedantic, 111 many of these cases, to attempt to go back to what is whole thing is trickery; but the investigators con• supposed to be the original meaning. Would Prof. cede that this young damsel was perfectly honest so Gregory recommend us to use the last word in " mice and far as her phenomenal consciousness is concerned, but rats, and such small deer," in its earlier signification in that her subconscious self was deceitful. preference to the meaning it has acquired in modern times? A Revised Catalogue of the Indigenous Flowering Prof. D 'Arcy Thompson has put zoologists under a deep Plants and Ferns of Ceylon. By Dr. J. C. Willis. debt of gratitude by the recent publication of his transla• (Peradeniya Manuals of Botany, Entomology, Agri• tion of the " Historia Animalium " of Aristotle. Those culture, and Horticulture, No. z.) Pp. 188. of us to whom the original has hitherto been practicallv (Colombo: H. C. Cottle, GovernmentPrinter, 1911.) a sealed book may learn from this translation than Aristotle, in a professedly zoological work, . used }'lvos in A CATALOGUE of Ceylon p1ants was prepared by Dr. practicallv the sense in which we use " class." I wilt Trimen, and published in the Journal of the Ceylon conc.lude ·by asking whether the principles of priority are Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1885; this has to be held to give any countenance to the substitution of long been out of print; hence the necessity for the "genus" for "class" in systematic zoology. new cata.logue now issued by Dr. Willis. The book F. HAR:>!ER. ·is divided into two sections, enumerating respectively 58 Albemarle Road, Beckenham, October 21. NO. 2I91, VOL. 87]

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