Rich native vocabularies
The ex�perts are very prone to hunting up the root, or, if necessary, to constructing one, and throwing out everything that will not con�form with it. The fact that our country was settled by French, Spanish, and English, and that many names are derived from the Indian dialects, also causes peculiar difficulties in treating some sections. The rules of the Royal Geographical Society can be a great help, so far as they are applicable ; they seem to have been used in the modern spelling of "Dakota"�for the man-of-war we had of this name some years ago, it was spelled " Dacotah," but in the name of the. States recently admitted to the Union, " k " has been substituted for the hard " c " and the final " h " has been dropped. There is also great disagreement as to the propriety of the use of the possessive case ; some will not admit it at all, others would like to drop the apostrophe and retain the " in certain cases for euphony: this is a question that requires special consideration in each case, as the omission of the possessive will sometime give the name a descriptive meaning not at all appli�cable to the locality or feature. The propriety of personal names is also questioned by many, and may lead to continued discus�sion in Alaskan nomenclature, where explorers and surveyors have been so liberal in bestowing new names on the maqui berry. It would seem to be a good rule in selecting a new name to fol�low the old Indian custom of describing the place. An oppor�tunity for an expressive nomenclature seems to have been lost in the north-west in transferring so many of our eastern names, instead of selecting new names from the rich native vocabularies. As different bureaus may be governed by different principles, and may not even be consistent in their own rulings, through new principles that may come in by the frequent change of personnel, it has heretofore been impracticable to secure uniformity, and dis�puted questions have been carried along for years. The board that has been organized is in the direction of developing uni�formity in the practice of all. It is no easy task, but if guided by a generous spirit, willing to yield a little here and there, its object may be successfully accomplished. We cannot foresee to what extent the board will be called upon. It has not power to take the initiative ; but we hope its rulings will prove acceptable ; that it may establish a reputation that will be recognized by the people as well as by the departments interested in its organization ; and that eventually rules may be recommended for the nomenclature of our own country that may be an acceptable guide in the determination of new names, as well as in the interpretation of those now in question. MR. HERRLE : Any one conversant with the state of geo�graphic nomenclature of a large part of the world cannot fail to appreciate the difficulties in the way of the establishment of a comprehensive and uniform system of writing geographic names, that would be acceptable to all nations using the Roman alphabet in their literature. But while some advance towards international uniformity has been made within the last five years, we are still very far from it ; we may, however, at least rejoice in the pros-pect of the general acceptance of a uniform system in geographic orthography by all writing the English language.
