DOMESTIC NOTICES. 



141 



fully enough in their own fields and gardens. 

 Hence, in the matter of pears, for instance, they 

 •either comprehend every variety and description 

 of them, under the everlasting titles of " Sugar 

 Pear," or " Virgaloo," or alfix to them names of 

 their own invention, (by which the existing con- 

 fusion is constantly augmented,) rather than in- 

 •ii r the risk of strangulation and ridicule in an 

 attempt to give utterance to the snufflings and 

 gutturals which, under a diversity of modulations, 

 represent the names of most pears of foreign ori- 

 gin. True, there is now and then a customer 

 who is not " put back" any, to speak of, by such 

 impediments; who, either in contempt of every- 

 thing foreign, or in the bliss of the infallibility ac- 

 quired in his spelling-lessons at the district school, 

 talks the Ihin^ straight out. My neighbor, John 

 Green, is one of this favored class. He stam- 

 mers at nothing short of the Russian. Returning 

 once from an exhibition of rare fruits, he brought 

 away a few specimens, duly labelled, with which 

 he proposed to test the knowledge of an amateur 

 fruit-grower, of whose pretensions he felt a little 

 jealous. Withholding the label from one of them, 

 he accordingly asked him its name. The ama- 

 teur unhesitatingly pronounced it the " Gloomer- 

 so." " No sir-ee," says John, triumphantly dis- 

 playing his label, "it is not the Gloomer, either; 

 it's the Gluowt Morsaow." And John was sus- 

 tained by the almost unanimous voice of his neigh- 

 borhood. Now sir, if " Glout Morceau" means 

 anything, why not render it into language spoken 

 by' the Democrats of our own land, and let the 

 fruit be known by an appropriate name, — retain- 

 ing in the books its foreign appellation as the 

 ruling synonym? And so of half the fruits in cul- 

 tivation. What possible idea would friend Green 

 and his constituents derive from hearing a con- 

 vention full of well Frenchified Yankee stalk glib- 

 ly of (I give the pronunciations,) Coorpahndup- 

 lah, Draw-door, Begareogro-cure-eye, See-oat-ah, 

 Duke-do-tell-ye. Onfoutprodeeje, Keeltet, Sahn- 

 gwenoleahshareadhayrout. Bellybun, Sahnpo,De- 

 ahprayrooje, and an hundred other sounds equally 

 heathenish and unintelligible. Resolute as he is, 

 I doubt whether he would not turn pale to be told 

 he had swallowed such things ; an experiment 

 upon the imagination which I would not recom- 

 mend a trial of during the prevalence of the 

 cholera. 



As the task of modifying a few hundred of 

 these foreign abominations to the capacities of 

 common tongues and understandings, would be 

 somewhat more practicable than to teach some 

 millions to comprehend and pronounce them, and 

 as the evil is one of frequent complaint, and is, in 

 reality, to large numbers even of intelligent per- 

 sons, a constant source of vexation and annoy- 

 ance, I most earnestly and respectfully urge upon 

 you to lay the subject before your committee, and 

 to lend the influence of your high authority toward 

 the mitigation of their sufferings; by a speedy cor- 

 rection of the cause. Sincerely sympathising with 



hem, I am, &c., /. C. H. Syracuse, 8th Au. 

 gust, 1849. 



[There is a great deal of pith in what our cor- 

 respondent says, and we have very seriously con- 

 templated bringing out an edition of our work on 

 Fruits, with a translation of all foreign standard 

 names of fruits, instead of the foreign names, our- 

 selves. In the nomenclature of natural history, 

 where a dead language is universally used, there 

 is a great and manifest advantage in the use of a 

 language which is the same in all countries; so 

 that if a collection of seeds or plants botanically 

 named, is received from any part of the globe, the 

 names are alike understood and recognized by all 

 botanists, whether Russian, German, French, or 

 English. 



But the names of fruits are mostly local names, 

 in modern tongues, and as ninety-nine hundredths 

 of all the large and increasing class of fruit-grow- 

 ers in this country are unfamiliar with any foreign 

 language, it is of course not to be expected that 

 they should always pronounce foreign names of 

 fruits correctly. 



We see no reason why all the French names of 

 fruits should not be Anglicised in pomological 

 works ; the translation being adopted as the stan-^ 

 dard name in every country where the fruit is 

 known, and the original foreign name bein^ "iven 

 as the synonym. Thus, instead of saying Fon- 

 dante d'Automne, we would say Autumn Melting- 

 and instead of Ananas d'Ete, Summer Pine-apple. 

 '1 his has already been done in many cases; as 

 Belle de Flanders is now always called Flemish 

 Beauty; and Nelis d'Hiver, Winter Nelis. Local 

 names, like Urbaniste, would of course be re- 

 tained, and would receive our common pronuncia- 

 tion, (as no one thinks of calling Paris, Par-e; or 

 Ghent, Gannd.) 



This subject is well worthy of serious considera- 

 tion; for it is clear, that pomology and fruit- 

 growing are destined to be matter of more gene- 

 ral attention in the United States than in any 

 other country; and the best nomenclature for us, 

 is one best adapted to the wants of the class for 

 whose daily use it is intended, — a class, not of 

 scholars, but of workers. We shall be glad to 

 gather a more definite idea of the state of publio 

 opinion generally on this subject, and hope the 

 fruit conventions will consider it. Ed.] 



Night Blooming Cereus. — Having a fine 

 plant of the Night Blooming Cereus, which has 

 bloomed a number of times this season, and a friend 

 wishing to see it who could not be present on ac- 

 count of ill health, I tried the experiment of cut- 

 ting off a flower towards the night it. was to open, 

 and putting it into water the same as a boquet. 

 The result was that it opened as well as those on 

 the plant. 



One other was cut off towards night, the eve it was 

 to open and carried seven miles with the stem wrap- 

 ped in wet cotton. This was put into water in 

 the same way, and I afterward learned that it 



