eatedly expressed injunction to have him laid in Dalmeny.

[Footnote 22: Since deceased--October 30, 1881--and also buried there.]

KATHARINE BURTON.
MORTON, _20th September 1881_.

[Illustration: _Dalmeny Church._]

[Illustration: A Nook in the Author's Library.]

[Illustration]

THE BOOK-HUNTER.

_PART I.--HIS NATURE._

Introductory.

Of the Title under which the contents of the following pages are ranged
I have no better justification to offer than that it appeared to suit
their discursive tenor. If they laid any claim to a scientific
character, or professed to contain an exposition of any established
department of knowledge, it might have been their privilege to appear
under a title of Greek derivation, with all the dignities and immunities
conceded by immemorial deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not
only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but
am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to
have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections
and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek
an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead
language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common
talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are
scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you
are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting or boiling merits;
and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not
naturally be supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster sauce.

Like many other meritorious things, however, Greek nomenclature is much
abused. The very reverence it is held in--the strong disinclination on
the part of the public to question the accuracy of anything stated under
the shadow of a Greek name, or to doubt the infallibility of the man who
does it--makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent protector of
fallacies and quackeries. It is an instrument for silencing inquiry and
handing over the judgment to implicit belief. Get the passive student
once into palaeozoology, and he takes your other hard names--your
ichthyodorulite, trogontherium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron--for
granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind of religious awe or
devotional reverence. If it be a question whether a term is
categorematic, or is of a quite opposite description, and ought to be
descri