f South America they gave it the name of _Brazil_ from the wood.
The island of _Madeira_ got its name in the same way, this being the
word for "timber," from the Latin word _materia_.

Again, guinea-pigs do not come from Guinea, on the west coast of
Africa, though guinea-fowls do so. Guinea-pigs really come from
Brazil. The name _guinea-pig_ was given to these little animals
because, when the sailors brought them home, people thought they had
come from Africa. But in the seventeenth century a common voyage for
ships was to sail from English or other European ports to the west
coast of Africa, where bands of poor negroes were seized or bought,
and carried over the Atlantic to be sold as slaves in the American
"plantations." The ships naturally did not come home empty, but often
people were not very clear as to whether the articles they brought
back came from Africa or America.

Again, _India ink_ comes, not from India, but from China. _Indian
corn_ comes from America. _Sedan chairs_ had nothing to do with Sedan
in France, but probably take their name from the Latin verb _sedere_,
"to sit."

In these words, as in many others, we can see that it is never safe to
_guess_ the derivation of words. Many of the old philologists used to
do this, and then write down their guesses as facts. This caused a
great deal of extra work for modern scholars, who will not, of course,
accept any "derivation" for a word until they have clear proof that it
is true.

CHAPTER XI.

PICTURES IN WORDS.

Everybody who has thought at all about our ways of speech must have
noticed that we are all constantly saying things in a way which is not
literally true. We say a child is a "sunbeam in the house;" but, of
course, we only mean that she is gay and happy, and cheers every one
up by her merriment. Or we describe some one as a "pearl among women,"
meaning that by her splendid qualities she is superior to most women
as a pearl is to common stones.

Or, again, we may read in the newspaper that a statesman "spoke with
sudden fire;" by which, of course, we understand that in the course of
a calm speech he suddenly broke out passionately into words which
showed how keenly he felt on the subject of which he was speaking.

Our language is full of this kind of speaking and writing, which is
called "metaphorical." The word metaphor comes from two Greek words
meaning "to carry over." In "metaphorical" speech a name or
description of one thing