PREFACE. V 



English names, and others are decided improvements on older names. 

 As an instance in which it is a clear gain to " ring in the new, ring out 

 the old," I may mention " Torch Lily," which I should think few would 

 hesitate to adopt instead of " Eed-hot-poker Plant." In giving the 

 popular and the scientific names of plants together, there is little left 

 for the scientists to complain of. 



" One very simple view of the subject has been apparently overlooked, perhaps 

 from its very simplicity. Why should plants and flowers be the only things that we 

 are to have no means of speaking of in our own language ? The utility and necessity 

 of the botanical names no one denies — a noble and simple invention, a " lingua franca " 

 for the learned of all nations, though grievously overburdened with synonyms and 

 masses of cumbersome " uncrystallised " matter. But why must ])eople who love 

 flowers know them by these names only — names that to many of them convey no sort 

 of meaning — for all people who cultivate or enjoy flowers have not such a knowledge 

 of the dead languages as to make the names intelligible ? And why in any case speak 

 in a dead language only of things so essentially living and affecting our daily use and 

 happiness ? Why should a piece of pedantic tyranny be imposed on us in this matter, 

 and this only ? Animals, birds, and insects also have their necessary scientific names, 

 but no one reproves us for talking of a horse, or a sparrow, or a dragon-fly. Diseases 

 have their universal names derived from Latin and Greek, used in scientific treatises and 

 among members of the medical profession, and yet we commonly talk of gout, and small- 

 pox, and scarlet fever. The bones and muscles of our bodies are all known in anatomy by 

 such technical names, and yet in our every-day talk we may speak of rib, thigh-bone, 

 and shoulder-blade. Why, then, should flowers only, of all tlie subjects that need a 

 common language for purposes of classification and scientific research, have their 

 purely technical appellations imposed on us, to the exclusion of such simple words in 

 our own language as we use in other absolutely analogous cases ? . . . . 

 Does it not come to this, that both kinds of names are necessary, each for 

 its proper purpose ; the scientific name for classification, for study, for international 

 research and correspondence, for business, for all rather dry and hard purposes ; but 

 for daily life among flowers, in poetry and popular books, for common use among the 

 many people whose enjoyment of flowers does not approach any scientific purpose, the 

 familiar names in our own tongue? Let me ask our learned men, who possess 

 the dead languages, and therefore do not feel the need of the simpler means of 

 expression, to descend in imagination to the level of those to whom Day Lily has 

 a distinct meaning, while Hemerocallis is a jumble of senseless syllables. Let them 

 think how absurd it would be if some arbitrary tyranny obliged us to call other 

 things of common utility or enjoyment by long Latin names. .... 

 Why are plants, and plants only, to be banished to this philological limbo, a 

 place of weariness and lifelessness, that those who love flowers for their beauty's 

 sake do not care to have to explore in order to find names by which to know 

 their treasures ? Will not our kindly savants rather help us to the supply of the 

 living want and give us well-made English names in place of the perhaps ill-constructed 

 ones that we should find for ourselves ? " (The Garden, vol. xxiv., p. 59.) 



The above from a lady correspondent of The Garden puts the case 

 fau'ly for English names, and I shall conclude my quotations with Mr. 

 Kuskin's remarks (in " Proserpina") on botany as now taught: — 



" Yesterday evening I was looking over the first book in which I studied botany — 

 "Curtis's Magazine," pubhshed in 1795 at No. 3, St. George's Crescent, Blackfriars 

 Road, and sold by the principal booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland. Its plates 

 are excellent, so that I am always glad to find in it the picture of a flower I know. 

 And I came yesterday upon what I suppose to be a variety of a favourite flower of mine. 



