579 
lence in the natural world, will.be an offence of the 
grossest sort: Religio vetuit. A bad name, Linneus 
says, had better be retained, than that a change 
should be made. But really there is reason in 
roasting of eggs. You cannot be bound down to 
a name that is execrable, and which must excite in 
all minds ideas of execration. Besides, how con- 
trary is it to all rules of analogy, to make a noun 
Castalia, from Castus -a-um? Is there any other 
word of the form in all Latin? Would /atus make 
latala ? or bonus, bonalia? Really if such things, 
so very gross, are to be allowed, natural history 
Latin must soon come to be a language fit for bar- 
barians. Dryander himself cannot plead for such 
coarse liberties. Still further, Castalia is a Greek 
word, and has nothing to do with Latin etymology 
or meaning. In point of priority of language, Cas- 
tus might have been formed (but who can say that 
it was?) from Castalia, the chaste Greek virgin (it 
would have been castalus, not castus) ; but it was 
impossible that Castalia could be formed from cas- 
tus :—so much for that absolutely inadmissible word. 
Philip of Macedon would not have attempted to 
profit from such conceit and folly : he would have 
placed such a correction amongst his contemnenda, 
Kkatadpovnvea, to speak as a Grecian. 
Biedapa is the plural of the neuter noun Brcpa- 
pov. I suppose Dioscorides meant that the petals, 
particularly the outward ones, or our calyx, closed 
curvingly, if I may so say, as the eyelids do: and 
if you observe, he calls the flower BrAchapa, not the 
plant itself; so that it would be false unity to make 
2P2 
