To meet the need of a text-book for this purpose in his own classes the author has been for several years gathering material and information from all available sources, and it is hoped that the arrangement of this material in related groups as here presented will serve to give the student not only some insight into the present meaning of a goodly number of terms, but will also enable him to see more clearly why certain terms have the meaning which at present attaches to them.

To this latter end the derivations of many of the terms are given in connection with their definition.