1882.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



817 



was a wonderful learned man — why " bless you 

 I couldn't understand a word he said." 



Now, returning to our grandfathers, the plain 

 facts are that when they wisely decided on the 

 decimal system for recoining money, they had 

 enough good hard common sense to choose 

 short names for the denominations such as com- 

 mon people could read and pronounce. 



In mill, cent, dime, there is to be sure a hint 

 of Latin, thousandths, hundredths and tenths, 

 but our grand old common sense ancestors 

 cut down and anglo-saxonized them to monosyl- 

 lables which we can pronounce. Now suppose 

 instead they had started with dollar, then in- 

 stead of dime, cent and mill, they had said, de- 

 cemfiddollar, centidoUar and millidollar, and in- 

 stead of eagle and double eagle had said decem- 

 dollar and duodecemdollar. We would to-day 

 look back upon them as a super-literary dilettant 

 leatherheaded lot of old blockheads to attempt 

 to saddle such a mess of foreign polysyllables 

 upon a busy people, and we would probably be 

 still wrestling with pounds, shillings and pence. 



Now if the servants and legislators of today 

 were possessed of the clean-cut practical com- 

 mon sense of our grandfathers, and would 

 abandon KM(5g^-rilmme^, hSc-t5K-i-tre and c6n- 

 tlm-i-tre^ (are these correct?) and all such 

 foreign polysyllabic nonsense, and adopt a 

 decimal system of weights and measures with 

 short names that we common plowjoggers can 

 pronounce, then the Gardener's Monthly can 

 cease its efforts to " convert the master of the 

 National Grange," and it will not be necessary 

 to set his lecturers to work in the interests of this 

 reform. But now, bad as it actually is for school 

 children to •' flounder " through gills, pints and 

 quarts, for a few brief school days, it is nothing 

 compared to the everyday use of those intermin- 

 able French polysyllables for threescore years 

 and ten. 



The American merchants, manufacturers, rail- 

 roaders, farmers and ctheM are eminently ^ 

 practical go-ahead people with abundance of 

 good business common sense, and they will 

 never willingly consent all their lives to pro. 

 nounce and write those French polysyllabical 

 monstrosities. 



[The subject is one of great importance, and 

 Mr. Adams' letter will serve to draw attention 

 to it. As the Gardener's Monthly understands 

 Mr. Adams, he is in favor of the French decimal 

 system, but objects to the French names. The 

 way is open for some one to impose convenient 



English names for the French ones as was done 

 with dollars and cents. But as we have no 

 English equivalents, and these terms are now of 

 continual occurrence in English literature, it 

 seems best that readers should familiarize them- 

 selves with the few terms or go to their dictionaries 

 every time they see them, rather than that the 

 newspaper should be called on to make the exact 

 calculations every time they are used. 



There is however much to be said on both 

 sides and we are quite willing to confess since 

 Mr. Adams took us to task, that it would have 

 been better had we made the calculation for the 

 reader than have copied the term as used in 

 our extract. — Ed. G. M.] 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Mr. Warren H. Manning. — In the last issue 

 of the magiizine the chapter on Herbaceous 

 plants was credited to Mr. Wm. Sutherland in- 

 stead of to Mr. W. H. Manning. Mr. Manning 

 is the son of Mr. Jacob W. Manning of the 

 Reading Nurseries near Boston, and one of the 

 rising race of intelligent and worthy young men. 

 of whom the generation now passing away may 

 well be proud. Besides taking a pleasure in his 

 respected father's business, he is ardently de- 

 voted to Botanical studies and other scientific 

 pursuits, and is already an honored member of 

 The American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science. We very much regret that the paper 

 of one so worthy of credit, should have been 

 mis-appropriated by an oversight of our own. 



Maurice Vilmorin. — The many friends made 

 by this highly intelligent gentleman during his 

 tour through America, will be glad to learn 

 that in testimony of the value to France of his 

 botanical and horticultural labor, he has recent- 

 ly received from his government the decoration 

 of the Legion of Honor. 



Estate of the Late Charles Darwin. — Mr. 

 Darwin's personal property proves to be about 

 three-quarters of a million of dollars. By his 

 will Prof. Huxley has $5000 and Sir Joseph 

 Hooker $5000. The balance of his estate is divided 

 between his wife, five sons, and two daughters. 



Nepenthes Rajah.— The curious family of 

 pitcher plants known under the name of ne- 

 penthes is among the anomalies of the vegetable 

 kingdom. It has no known relations. Some 

 botanists have thought they saw some connec- 



