312 CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION 
best advantage the important results which botanists have 
achieved in systematic classification. 
87. Technical description. One of the most serious diffi- 
culties with which the earlier botanists had to contend was 
the problem of giving one another a clear idea of what each 
had seen. It is plain that so long as they failed in this, their 
discoveries were of little consequence. At first sight it may 
seem a simple matter enough to tell what one sees, and be- 
ginners often wonder why botanists use so many peculiar 
words in their descriptions. ‘‘ What is the reason,” they ask, 
‘that ordinary English is not sufficient for the purpose?” If 
the reader has ever attempted to use “ordinary English” in 
the way proposed, he will realize that it is far from easy to 
give a clear account of the peculiarities of a plant in that way. 
The result is much as when a landsman ignorant of nautical 
terms tries to describe the features of a vessel so that it may 
be recognized. Success may not be impossible, but such a 
method of going to work is at its best clumsy, roundabout, 
and misleading. It was largely because the early botanists 
had nothing better to use than the ordinary language of their 
day, that it often proved impossible for others to tell what 
the plants were that they had tried to describe. But little 
progress towards a satisfactory classification of plants could 
be expected as long as descriptions were so vague and incom- 
plete as to be largely unintelligible. 
Since an ideal botanical classification represents, as we 
have seen, the expression of all the resemblances and differ- 
ences among plants, its attainment must involve the use of 
words especially fitted to express unmistakably all the pe- 
culiarities that may be observed. Each part must have a 
special name, and the innumerable forms and features of 
each part must be indicated by simple words or phrases. 
Ordinary language has not’ been developed to serve any such 
botanical purposes any more than it has to serve similar 
nautical needs; hence, botanists have been forced to make a 
language of their own consisting largely of technical terms. 
88. Early attempts at describing. Before the time of 
Linneus, the attempt was made by many botanical writers 
to avoid the language difficulty by the use of pictures to 
