AND HORTICULTURIST. 



sympathized, greatly with plain ways of talking 

 about things, especially about plants. But I am 

 sure you do not want to be unjust to my book, 

 and therefore I want you to print a few words 

 about your notice of the " Wild Garden." From 

 the tenor of your review any one would suppose 

 that my mission was to use English names in- 

 stead of Latin ones! I never thought of this, 

 though I have sympathy enough with non-tech- 

 nical people— that is to say, with the public, 

 educated or non-educated — to know that you 

 will never succeed in cramming Latin — dog 

 and otherwise — down their throats. I also 

 know that in other countries, as scientific as the 

 country of your adoption, or as this country, 

 writers habitually use their native tongue in 

 speaking of plants and other things that men of 

 science talk about. I could refer you to excel- 

 lent books in French and German where men of 

 the highest knowledge use their own language 

 (sometimes in addition to the Latin nomencla- 

 ture) in speaking of things that ought to be so 

 familar to everybody as the flowers of our gar- 

 dens, and the trees of our woods. No one 

 would suppose, from your review of the '• Wild 

 Garden," that the Latin names were given in the 

 descriptive part, as well as the English names, 

 when good or fitting English names happened 

 to exist. When you go on to criticise the Eng- 

 lish names that are given, and express surprise 

 at such a name as the " Cheddar pink," then 

 one sees the amount of attention you have paid 

 to the subject. 



You say : " Though we have endeavored to 

 keep the track of Mr. Robinson's new names as 

 they appeared in the Garden, we find a large 

 number here that we know nothing about, and 

 in consequence all that he says about the plants 

 might as well have been written in Chinese. We 

 suppose " Cheddar pink " is some sort of a Dian- 

 thus." 



If, indeed, your knowledge of the English 

 flower does not inform you that the Cheddar 

 pink is a well-known English plant, that grows 

 in that most interesting and beautiful rocky 

 gorge at Cheddar, in Somerset, then one cannot 

 suppose you have gone very deeply into English 

 plant names. The name Cheddar pink is not 

 mine, but a well-established English name. So, 

 too, the other English names you speak of are, 

 some of them, mere translations, which ought 

 not to be difficult to anybody that knows plants, 

 and which would be used in preference by many 

 persons who knew both names. I have no 

 doubt that many American lovers of plants 



would willingly use fitting English names, and I 

 have reason to know that the leading weekly 

 journals in America sympathiate with eflforta in 

 this direction. 



Further on you take a set of phrases used in 

 the '' Wild Garden " as descriptive, such as 

 "pretty little rosy bindweed," which is part of 

 the text, and has nothing to do with English 

 names, and you call it an English name ! 



If one advocated the abolition of Latin names 

 altogether — an absurdity, in the ftice of the fact 

 that we have no organized English names — one 

 could understand your objections in the matter, 

 but that you should object to the use of an Eng- 

 lish name where it is possible to get a good one, 

 or to the invention of a name where the Latin 

 one is very awkward, seems to us to indicate a 

 want of sympathy with the real wants of the 

 flower-loving public, as distinguished from those 

 brought up on botanical terms, so to say. It 

 may suit a minute philosopher to raise a question 

 of this kind (entirely apart from the aim and plan 

 of the book), and to take no account of the 

 book itself, its artistic illustrations or what it ad- 

 vocates. But that is not fair to the book, and is 

 scarcely common sense. English names are in 

 no way made more prominent than they are in 

 Professor Gray's book on the plants of North 

 America, abook on a professedly more technical 

 subject. Indeed my practice is that of your best 

 American authors, and is justified alike by the 

 genius of our language, the wants and tastes of 

 our people, and in the interest of science itself! 

 We have no right, as the Professor of Anglo- 

 Saxon at Oxford says, to bar the fiiirest gate of 

 knowledge, by the use of more technical terms 

 than are necessary. I find that American books 

 and American literature help me, in my desire 

 to give an English name in addition to the Latin 

 one. I am now preparing the English Floiver 

 Garden, the vast mass of matter for which must 

 be arranged alphabetically after the Latin names, 

 but it is pleasant to be able, instead of saying 

 Epigaea repens alone, to add the pretty name of 

 May flower, which is an American name. How 

 very shocking of some American botanists to 

 add that this plant is also called " trailing arbu- 

 tus! " I am sure they will meet with your disap- 

 probation ! But this simple New England name, 

 with the associations it calls up, tells even in this 

 country, where it has only been used of late, 

 more of the history of the plant than its Latin 

 name ever can. Wishing you a happy New 

 Year, and that Heaven may deliver you and 



