on the Language of Botany. 153 
for culmus, &c. Some of thefe words, as nectarium and pericarpium, 
are become fo familiar to learned botanifts, that they will perhaps 
hardly be perfuaded to give up the Latin termination. The final 
ina may be admitted more readily; and coroa having ufe on its fide, 
will doubtlefs be preferred by many to coro/, which has not fo melo- 
dious a found. Naturalifts talk familiarly of a butterfly’s antenna; 
and cupola, which in the laft century was confidered as a ftranger, 
is in this admitted to be a denizen. I muft obferve, however, that 
by changing the final a into e, fome confufion will be avoided, 
which arifes from not diftinguifhing the Latin feminine fingular 
from the neuter plural; and by ufing /ipule for /ipula, we {hall no 
longer hear of a leaf-ftalk or petiole having two fipula. 
But whatever allowance may be made in fingular terminations, 
the plurals muft certainly follow the analogy of the Englifh tongue; 
and if we tolerate corolla and anthera, ne£tarium and pericarpium, we 
cannot poflibly allow of corolle and antheræ, neétaria and pericarpia 
but we muft ufe either corollas or corols, antberas or anthers, neélariums 
or nectaries, pericarpiums or pericarps, according as we preferve the 
original term entire, or anglicize it. 
All derivatives and compounds ought to follow the analogy of 
the original words from which they are derived, or of which they 
are compounded. Thus from coro we regularly form corellet, as from 
crown, coronet : if we adopt the terms prickle and thorn, we mutt ufe 
the adjectives prickly and thorny, not aculeate and fpinofe: from glume 
we form glumofe; from ament, amentaceous; from awn, awned and 
awnlefs; from axil or axilla, axillary; from pinna, pinnate, bipinnate, &c. 
from calyx are formed calycle, calycled, calycine; from petal, anther, 
berry, we make the compounds five-petalled, anther-bearing, berry- 
bearing, not bacciferous; from cell, noma from af, two-leaved; 
from /eed, two-feeded. 
Without, however, entering too much into the minutenefles of 
X this 
