Vlii.. PREFACE of the TRANSLATORS 



keel'd, faw'd, halberted, targeted, or by the com- 

 pounds heart-Jhaped, egg-Jhaped, moon-fnaped, lance- 

 feaped, fpatule-fiaped, keel-fiaped, faw-fiaped, halbert- 

 flaped, target-fiaped and the like. After having 

 much canvaffed the fubjecl, we were at length re- 

 folved to adopt the former, I. becaufe the englifh 

 botanical language became thus a more exact refem- 

 blance of the original ; 2. becaufe it became thus much 

 more concife ; 3. becaufe fiape includes the whole 

 external furface, whereas the words above mentioned 

 mean only to exprefs the outline of a particular fection. 

 4. becaufe when thefe words already compounded 

 with the participleyZ^jW, become compounded afecond 

 time, (feveral of which double combinations would 

 occur in almoft every page of the work) as egg-lance- 

 Jhaped, lance-egg-ftaped, egg- heart-Jhaped, heart -egg- 

 jhaped, they were more difficultly affociated with 

 the ideas they were defigned to exprefs, than the 

 compounds of the fimple words, egg-lanced, lance- 

 egg d> egg-hearted, heart-egg'd. We found ourfelves 

 further under the necelTity of forming participles from 

 our numerical adjectives, uiing the words twod 

 three d, fourd, jived, eight ed, for the words bina, 

 tema, quaterna, quina, oclona ; becaufe binata, ter- 

 nata, quaternata, had previoully been translated by 

 the words twofold, threefold, fourfold, &c. bis by twice, 

 duo by two, jugum by pair, geminus by double, ant 

 didymus by twin ; and the fame of the other numerals 

 Though fome of the compound words above mentionel 

 are perhaps rather warped from their ufual fignific^- 

 tions, yet the fame objection lies againft the correfpor- 

 dent original ones of Linneus. His words are indeed 

 not clafTkal, they are not to be found in the works of 

 Cicero, but they might have been, as Mr. RoufTeau well 

 obferves, had Cicero written a Syftem of Botany. 



The 



