280 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN aUIDE. 



never give rise to perplexity by their peculiar association of mythological or historical 

 names with the plants they stand for. Linnseus naming the Andromeda is an event 

 full of poetry, and illustrates in a most happy manner the great botanist's quick 

 perception of analogies, a quality in v,'hich he stands alone among the masters of 

 modern science. Liiinfeus met with the plant on turfy hillocks in the midst of 

 swamps abouiiding with toads and snakes, and he thought of the fair virgin Andro- 

 meda, chained to a rock in the midst of the sea, exposed to dragons and serpents. 

 He observed also that in due time the heat of the sun dried up the swamps, and then, 

 the plant put forth its flowers, and smiled upon the spring with its cold classic beauty. 

 So again he thought of Perseus, who in the fable comes to deliver the afflicted 

 maiden from her enemies, and thus likening the plant to the mythological heroine 

 he adopted for it her name, and by the elegance of the designation made ample 

 amends for leaning to poetry rather than to philosophical technology. Among 

 names of recent introduction, we may search in vain for an example which may be 

 so fully j ustified by its elegance, where the descriptive element is altogether wanting. 

 The great sin of modern botanists is the wholesale adoption of commemorative 

 names. They have indeed in this practice some small excuse in the commemorative 

 principle on which many of the best known names are founded. Andromeda is 

 indeed an example. But there is one still more noteworlliy ; it is that of the genus 

 Linnaea, which Linnceus named in commemoration of himself, and perhaps to remind 

 future ages of his own early lot, describing it as a "little northern plant, flowering 

 eaily, depressed, abject, and long overlooked." But the extent to which the com- 

 memorative principle has been carried is ridiculous. Botanists need not now 

 examine the new plants they find or have submitted to them ; they have only to 

 remember the name of a friend if the plant is beautiful or sweet-scented, or of an 

 enemy if it is ugly or emits a fetid odour. A plant comes to hand, the characters 

 of which separate it from all known genera. The trouble of inventing a name by 

 means of an exploration of Greek roots is saved, because the botanist has a friend 

 named Smith to whom it would be agreeable to pay a compliment. So Smith 

 furnishes the generic name. For the specific name there stands Brown, and the 

 thing is done. By and by a variety of the species is met with, and again the process 

 is repeated, and the variety is named after Jones. It is perhaps a fortunate thing 

 for mankind that Adam had no ancestors and no brethren, for he might hav3 named 

 the lions and tigers and antelopes after such people as Methuselah, and Enoch, and 

 Abimelech, for such names would no doubt have been common had there been a pre- 

 existing population at the time when our great progenitor named the creatures. The 

 good ancients of the truly classic period flung their heroes up among the stars, and 

 the piocess was called an Apotheosis. We dash them down into beds of nettles, and 

 bury them amongst the herbage before their time, that they may live with posterity 

 in the names of plants, though perhaps they never lived for fame, and have no desire 

 to do anything for posterity at all, not even to mock its understanding, or needlessly 

 burden its memory. Among the reputed British species of Salix, there are no fewer 

 than twenty-two named after persons or places, and not one of the names is .so good 

 as that devised by a humble botanist who, finding a plant he had never seen before, 

 and having no means of ascertaining its name, called it, because found by the road- 

 side, Rhodium sidus, as good a name perhaps as Georgium sidus, and one that 

 migiit be adopted and pass ciirrent without raising a laugh. In the 21st volume 

 of the tliird series of Curtis's Botanical ilar/azine (1865), there are figures and 

 desciiptions of sixty-six plants, of which ro less than twenty-eight derive their 

 specific names from places or persons ; or,- to be more particular, nine are named 

 from the countries or districts in which they grow, and nineteen from persons. With 

 all respect to the hot mists present, I must siy that these nineteen names at least are 

 frivolous. Geographical names are, as a rule, not good. Very many of the plants 

 found in Japan, and named (with how little eflort!) Japonica, are also found in 

 China ; and species that inhabit both the old and new world cannot with any 

 propriety at all have geograpliical names fssigned them. If books of authority 

 like the Botanical Magazine are thus open to animadversion, what shall we say to 

 trwde catalogues ? Wiiat shall we say ? I quit the unwelcome theme, and leave 

 the trader in plants at his own free will to commemorate his relations, friends, and 

 customers ear officio, for the simple reason that we are not bound to trade names, 

 but we are bound to the names in the Botanical Magazine, and to all that come to 

 us with the stamp of authority. 



