THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NAMES OF PLANTS. 615 



should enquire into their origin, and try to ascertain when, how, and 

 why, and also, if possible, where and by whom a beech tree came to be 

 called beech ; a cabbage, cabbage, and wheat, wheat. Before entering 

 on the special subject I should like to say a few words upon names in 

 general. A name, as we now use it, is simply a conventional term 

 whereby we indicate to others the particular object to which by long 

 usage it has been applied ; but, if we can succeed in tracing it back 

 to its origin, we shall find that it had at first not a conventional but 

 an expressive meaning, and that the meaning it expressed was, 

 in one way or other, descriptive of some peculiarity which 

 served to distinguish the object to which it was applied from other 

 objects. Some names of recent origin have not yet passed, or are only 

 just passing, from the descriptive into the conventional stage. Thus 

 " India-rubber ", though we use it now conventionally for the well-known 

 elastic substance, has not yet lost its expressive character, and still seems 

 to remind us that the substance came, or was supposed to come, from the 

 Indies, and that it is used to rub out pencil marks. Sooner or later names 

 los9 their expressive character either by the slow change of language in 

 the long course of time, or, more rapidly, by passage from one language 

 to another. For example, when we talk of " roast beef ' ! or a ''bull- 

 dog ", we use terms that are to us expressive and describe beef cooked 

 in a particular way, and a dog of a breed formerly kept for baiting 

 bulls: but when these terms pass into French, as "rosbif" and 

 " buldogue " they entirely lose their descriptive meaning; and, 

 although still applied to the same objects, they become purely 

 conventional. It is one of the most interesting of studies thus to 

 trace back a name, and hunt' it from one language to another, until 

 at last we run it aground in its original starting place, and ascertain 

 what it originally expressed when it first came into existence. Of course 

 very old words, close down to the foundations of language, have their 

 origin in very elementary roots ; but even so we can frequently arrive 

 at the primary idea that they were intended to convey. Thus, when we 

 find that the word " man '' springs from a root that means to 

 think, we can readily understand that our early forefathers fixed upon the 

 reasoning powers of the human race as the best distinction whereby to 

 separate it from the brute creation ; and, regarding man as preeminently 

 the thinking animal, they adopted "as bis designation a name which 

 expressed the attribute of thought, and called him the " thinker ". In 



