FOREIGN NOTICES. 



187 



mon hardy trees and shrubs in the usual 

 modes, they have adopted quite another plan 

 with new and rare sorts it is desired to multi- 

 ply as rapidly as possible. An extensive range 

 of low pits with sunken beds or borders, un- 

 der which warm water pipes circulate, so as to 

 communicate a genial bottom heat, is devoted 

 to a continual system of propagation at all 

 seasons. In these warm beds or borders, pots, 

 containing cuttings, stocks newly grafted, &c., 

 are plunged. As soon as they have "taken," 

 the heat is allowed gradually to decline, or 

 the plants, as soon as potted off, are placed in 

 another pit with less heat — but still enough to 

 stimulate- the production of an abundance 

 of new roots to the cuttings. Afterwards the 



plant is gradually hardened till it will bear full 

 exposure to the open air. In this way we saw 

 the operations of grafting rare shrubs and ev- 

 ergreens, usually performed only in spring, 

 continued through the whole growing season, 

 and thousands of cuttings, usually struck with 

 difficulty, are made to root with surprising fa- 

 cility in this gentle bottom heat so favorable 

 to the granulation of the organizable matter 

 and the emission of new roots. The com- 

 pleteness of the system was only equalled by 

 its economy in the cheap and admirably ar- 

 ranged structures, which, like everything else 

 here, bear the stamp of an inventive and sci- 

 entific mind, combined with the strictest and 

 most practical business system. 



\^"^^ 



Scientific Nomenclature. — When one looks 

 through modern Books on Natural History with 

 unprejudiced eyes, it would appear that the great 

 object of some authors was to mystify their read- 

 ers. There is not a common thought or thing 

 that is spoken of in common English. A hole is 

 a foramen, a stalk a caudicula or a funiculus, a 

 shield an apothecium ; and minute anatom\' is 

 called histiology. If we go on in this manner, 

 science will have to take rank with quackerv, en- 

 tomologists will sink to the level of chiropodists, 

 and botanists may yield precedence to thermothe- 

 riaiists and homoBpathists. 



To avoid these consequences, natural history 

 must address itself more to the feelings and habits 

 of the Odmmiinity. English naturalists must write 

 English, and not indulge in a jargon that can only 

 be paralleled on the stage of a mountebank. 

 Little things dressed up in big words are like the 

 ass in the lion's skin; as soon as they are found 

 out, they become objects of contempt. Let us 

 suppose that a man sets about studying certain 

 modern works which we could point out; that he 

 has mastered endless technicalities, at the ex- 

 pense of much time and trouble; and that having 

 done SO; he finds the latter needless, denoting no- 



thing but what his mother tongue would have de- 

 noted quite as well; we are afraid that, in such a 

 case, disgust would get the better of zeal, and 

 that he would be apt to apply to the science and 

 its expounder an epithet of two syllables, which 

 we have no doubt that the ingenuity of our read- 

 ers will readily suggest. 



But we shall be assured that our case is stated 

 in terms stronger and more general than the facts 

 will justify: and that the technicalities of which 

 we complain are necessary, if natural history is to 

 have any precision. Undoubtedly, if this be so, 

 we shall have received a conclusive answer; for 

 no means by which precision can be secured will 

 admit of being neglected, and the inconvenienL-e 

 of adopting these means is nothing in comparison 

 with the advantages to be derived from them. 

 But is this so? Do men, by assigning special and 

 strange names to every trifling modification of 

 structure, attain the end proposed? Is it possi- 

 ble, bj' means of words, however ctmningly de- 

 vised, to give precision to things which have lit- 

 tle precision in their nature? To our mind such 

 exactness as is attainable in natural history is, in 

 the majority of cases, to be secured by plain Eng- 

 lish as well as by crabJed barbarisms. We be- 



