being the imitation which nurserymaids teach
children, and a sufficiently close imitation
too, to recal the animal to mind. The word
dog, again, is not, it is alleged, a perfect verbal
representation of the sound emitted by the
animal. But if it were, it would not be a name
formed according to the theory of those who
search for the origins of words among the sounds
of nature; for, they say that in imitating these
sounds nothing more is needed than a suggestion
of the original sound—of necessity modified,
altered, shortened, or softened, to suit the human
voice and ear. Dog is the Phrygian daus, the
French dogue, the Teutonic doche; and every one
who chooses to listen attentively to the barking of
dogs may hear many dogs pronounce their
names plainly and unmistakably. Cat, again,
is not a perfect echo of the sound emitted by the
caressing tigress of our households when her
tail is trodden upon. But the German Katz is
a tolerable representation of the name given
herself by the animal; and getting rid of sibilants
is one of the processes always going on in the
formation and modification of language. The
Sanscrit name for a cat, marjara, is not, it is
said, an imitation of purring, but a derivative of
"mrig," to clean: marjara being the animal
which cleans herself; but the process is more
likely to have been exactly the reverse, and the
name of the action derived from the sound
uttered by the cat while performing it. The
horse neighs and he is called a nag. There is an
animal the cry of which is a whistle, and it is
called a weasel in English, wesle in Saxon, and
wisel in German. The nursery name for the
grunter or porker is " piggy-wiggy," and the
Danish is "bigghe-wigghe:" obviously enough
the name given itself by the animal softened to
adapt itself to human speech.

Weke! weke! so cries a pig prepared for the spit,

says Aaron, in Titus Andronicus, and the sound
of the animal when undergoing this process is
not far from its name, which is still less remote
from its ordinary squeak. The animals that
supply us with food, when alive retain their Saxon
names; but when they are dead and prepared for
the table they bear Norman appellations: ox
becoming beef, sheep mutton, and pig pork, except
in the form of bacon. Hog, like pig, is a name
derived from the sound natural to the animal,
"ugh," which in Welsh is hioc and in Persian
chuk. Bull in English, bœuf in French, bos in
Latin, '' bekar" in Hebrew, bous in Greek, are
all imitations of " boo." The cry of the female is
different from that of the male, and "cow"
resembles it: hence the name of the animal in
many languages is an imitation of the sound she
emits: and thus, while in Sanscrit a cow is
called " gaus," in Greek the laud is called ge,
and in German gau, and hence country, from the
animal which tills it and feeds upon it. Cattle in
Sanscrit are passu, and hence pasture, pastor,
and peasant. The coco-palm, as shown some
years ago in Household Words, is named from
the resemblance between its nut, and the head of
a monkey which cries koko.

In every language there are several, and in
some a great many, names for well-known
animals. The Arabians have one hundred and sixty
names for an old woman, one hundred and
twenty for a hyæna, and a very great number of
names for the lion, the camel, and the horse.
When animals were tamed and trained or
domesticated, they were named after the uses
made of them. For instance, we don't know
why the hominal instrument of prehension
should be called the hand, from the Gothic
hiuthan and Latin prehendere, to seize; but,
it being so called, it is easy to understand
how a hunting-horse came to be called a
hunter, and a hunting-dog a hound. A bandog
may have meant a bound-dog, or one kept tied
up on account of its fierceness. Puppy was
probably applied to the little young dogs,
which were made poupets in French, or
puppets in English, or, in other words, children's
playthings. A cur, from the Latin curtus,
short, is a curtailed dog, whose tail has been
cut off for straying in the forests. A greyhound
is a grey dog used in hunting. A pug is a
monkey-like dog, the monkey being called Puck;
a terrier is from the Latin terrarius, an earthdog;
a spaniel is a Spanish dog; a mongrel is
a dog of mingled breed; your lurcher lurks for
game; and your mastiff guards your maison, in
French (whence masonry), or house. Similarly,
a horse is called pony when puny, a cob when
cobby or stout, a drayhorse from drawing, a
hack from hackney; and the lady's horse was
called a palfrey because it was led by the rein,
or par le frein.

The Hebrew name of the partridge is quera,
from its call-note: of the sparrow, tuppor,
from its chirping. The shrew, or scher-ew, the
mouse, which has given us the word shrewd,
and beshrew, utters a sharp shrill cry, of which
the name as pronounced by country folk is an
imitation. The rook has a harsh voice, and the
Latin word for harsh is raucus, and the French
rauque. The murmuring note of the turtledove
is its Hebrew name tur. The Greek name
for a filly is hinny; hinnio is the Latin verb for
neighing; and all, like our own whinny, are
imitations of the cries of the animal. The
Greek verb onkaomai means the act of braying,
of which musical performance it is an echo;
this is the source of the name of the animal
called ane by the French and asinus by the
Romans, from the length of his ears, and pra
by the Hebrews, on account of his bray, but
which retains in English the name he gives
himself—" donkey." Nature has always had, and
will always have, a large part in the formation of
language.

The history of the word cotton, very often on
our lips just now, shows how a word comes to
be applied to different substances in the course
of centuries in the historical period and not at
all remote. The word cotton was in Great
Britain long before the hairs of the Gossipium
shrub. Wool was cotton, five hundred years
ago. In the fourteenth century, a colony of
Germans were brought over from the Continent