17 i SUBSTANCE, &X, OF LEAVES. 



E?iqL Bot. t. 253, 254, have numerous 

 bladders attached to the leaves, which 

 seem to secrete air, and float the plants. 

 Many of the preceding terms applied to 

 leaves are occasionally combined to express a 

 form between the two, as ovato-lanceolatitm, 

 lanceolate inclining to ovate, or elliptico-lan- 

 ccolatum, as in the Privet, Engl. Bot. t. 764. 

 When shape, or any other character, cannot be 

 precisely defined, sub is prefixed to the term 

 used, as subrotimdum, roundish, subsessile* 

 not quite destitute of a footstalk, to which is 

 equivalent subpctiolatum, obscurely stalked. 

 By the judicious use of such means, all ne- 

 cessary precision is attained- It is to be 

 wished that authors were always uniform and 

 consistent, at least with themselves, in the 

 application of terms ; but as Linnaeus, the 

 father of accurate botanical phraseology, very 

 frequently misapplies his own terms, it is 

 perhaps scarcely to be avoided. I have ob- 

 served botanists most critical in theory, to be 

 altogether deficient in that characteristic 

 phraseology, that power of defining, which 

 bears the stamp of true genius, and which 

 renders the works of Linnaeus so luminous in 



