subsidence, but in the limited and modern acceptation of the term, it conveys an erroneous idea; for instead of the active principle of the juice residing in _fecula_, it is a peculiar proximate principle, _sui generis_, to which I have ventured to bestow the name of _Elatin_. For the same reason, much doubt and obscurity involve the meaning of the word _Extract_, because it is applied _generally_ to any substance obtained by the evaporation of a vegetable solution, and _specifically_ to a peculiar proximate principle, possessed of certain characters, by which it is distinguished from every other elementary body." A generic term is always liable to become thus limited to a single species, or even individual, if people have occasion to think and speak of that individual or species much oftener than of anything else which is contained in the genus. Thus by cattle, a stage-coachman will understand horses; beasts, in the language of agriculturists, stands for oxen; and birds, with some sportsmen, for partridges only. The law of language which operates in these trivial instances, is the very same in conformity to which the terms Θεός, Deus, and God, were adopted from Polytheism by Christianity, to express the single object of its own adoration. Almost all the terminology of the Christian Church is made up of words originally used in a much more general acceptation: _Ecclesia_, Assembly; _Bishop_, Episcopus, Overseer; _Priest_, Presbyter, Elder; _Deacon_, Diaconus, Administrator; _Sacrament_, a vow of allegiance; _Evangelium_, good tidings; and some words, as _Minister_, are still used both in the general and in the limited sense. It would be interesting to trace the progress by which _author_ came, in its most familiar sense, to signify a writer, and _ποίητης_, or maker, a poet. Of the incorporation into the meaning of a term, of circumstances accidentally connected with it at some particular period, as in the case of Pagan, instances might easily be multiplied. Physician (_φυσίκος_, or naturalist) became, in England, synonymous with a healer of diseases, because until a comparatively late period medical practitioners were the only naturalists. _Clerc_, or clericus, a scholar, came to signify an ecclesiastic, because the clergy were for many centuries the only scholars.