NAMES OF PLANTS. 91 



Pbonunciation of Scientific Names. 

 It would be impossible to lay clown absolute rules for the 

 correct pronunciation of scientific names, and absurd to 

 insist upon the accuracy of a certain pronunciation when 

 another may be more usual. The Greek and Latin are dead 

 languages, and each nation pronounces them according to 

 the usage of its own language. We have good reason to 

 suppose that the purest Latin spoken in our English fashion 

 would have sounded exceedingly strange to an ancient Roman, 

 and we are told by those who have studied the subject that we 

 have no certain knowledge as to how these languages were 

 pronounced. Their poets yield us valuable information as to 

 the accentuation of words and the number of syllables, but 

 even in this they are not certain guides. The Greek language 

 guides us phonetically better than the Latin, because its 

 alphabet contains a letter representing our short e (as in 

 pet), and another representing the long sound (as in peat); 

 also it has a short o (as in on), and a long o (as in hone). 

 It was also the custom to write Greek with marked accents. 

 Rules have been laid down' in schools of learning, deduced 

 from the critical examination of classical writings, but it is 

 foreign to my purpose to dwell on them ;— further, critical 

 opinion on these subjects continually changes. 



We must then fall back on usage, but even then we have 

 this perplexity— What kind of usage? Suppose we examine 

 the English language as spoken in Great Britain; the 

 EngHshman, the Scotchman, the Irishman, the Welshman, 

 has each his own way of speaking it, and we may generally 

 at once distinguish his province by his accent. And what 

 is true of the greater divisions applies (though in a less 

 degree) to nearly every county : thus the Lancashire dialect 

 is all but incomprehensible to a native of the south of 

 England, and can be even readily distinguished from that of 



