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I have not seen Dr. Martyn's Botanic Dictionary. 

 That, if well executed, would be a very convenient 

 and desirable work ; but dictionaries are generally 

 loaded compilations, in which you meet with a 

 crowd of things, except the very thing you want to 

 find. It would be excellent if he would refer to 

 the particular flower, leaf, plant, or root, that might 

 illustrate his article : he should mention three or 

 four of the sort, that if the reader could not pro- 

 cure one, he might another. A collection of dried 

 specimens, ranged in the order of the dictionary, 

 would explain the terms infinitely beyond any 

 plates or verbal descriptions that could be given. 

 The reader should be impressed with a particular 

 caution as to terms that resemble and might be 

 easily confounded ; for instance, pinnatifid and 

 pinnate, — the one seeming the substantive, and the 

 other the adjective. I could wish Linnaeus had 

 dropped one of those terms, and invented a new 

 word. The difference between Ranunculus Flam- 

 mula and R. Lingua is not very satisfactory : the 

 Flammula is not procumbent, and difference as to 

 size is vague and uncertain : if it be decided that 

 the bottom leaves of one are always ovate, though 

 concealed in the grass, and the other never so, that 

 would be something to depend on. I wonder it 

 is not mentioned that the leaves rise each from a 

 sheath that envelopes the stalk. There is often oc- 

 casion to lament that, in describing a flower, the 

 student is not sufficiently cautioned against con- 

 founding it with another to which it may bear a 

 striking resemblance ; for example, St achy s and 



