CHANGES OF NAMES. 



29" 



Siftervvards became a lofty bisb.op, and in whose work 

 upon water I find the followmg quotation from Seneca 

 in the hand-writing of Linnaeus : " Many might attain 

 wisdom, if they did not suppose they had aheady reach» 

 ?d it." In Hke manner Bufonia tenuifolia is well known 

 to be a satire on the slender botanical pretensions of the 

 great French zoologist, as the Hillia parasitica of Jac- 

 quin, though perhaps not meant, is an equally lust one 

 upon our pompous Sir John Hill. I mean not to approve 

 of such satires. They stain the purity of our lovely 

 science. If a botanist does not deserve commemora- 

 tion, let him sink peaceably into oblivion. It savours of 

 malignity to make his crown a crown of tliorns, and if 

 the application be unjust, it is truly diabolical 



Before I conclude the subject of nomenclature, I beg 

 leave to offer a few reflections on changes of established 

 tiames. It is generally agreed among mankind that 

 names of countries, places, or things, sanctioned by gen- 

 eral use, should be sacred ; and the study of natural his^ 

 tory is, from the multitude of objects with which it is 

 conversant, necessarily so enc^jmbered with names, that 

 students require every possible assistance to facilitate the 

 attainment of those names, and have a just right to com- 

 plain of every needless impediment. The grateful Hol- 

 landers named the island of Mauritius after the hero 

 who had established their liberty and prosperity ; and it 

 ill became the French, at that period dead to such feel- 

 ings, to change it, when in their power, to Isle de 

 France, by which we have in some late botanical works 

 the barbarous- Latin of Insula FrgnQW^ Ngr is it allow" 



00 



