603 
The Bishop of Cartsle to Sir J. EB. Smith. 
Dear Sir James, _Berners Street, March 8, 1822. 
You are entered indeed upon a Herculean task, 
if your English Flora be intended to embrace what 
you propose; to fix the language, revise generic 
and specific characters, enrich and correct syno- 
nyms, add remarks on natural affinities, and clear 
away the mischief done by compilers,—and to cor- 
rect habitats. One would think that this is suffi- 
cient for a first edition. As the object of your 
work is botanical determination, it certainly might 
fairly include the accenting of the generic and spe- 
cific names throughout. But have you time for 
all this before the beginning of May? I shall very 
gladly lend you all the assistance which I can give. 
When I turned my thoughts to this subject, I 
adopted two characters to mark the quantity of the 
penultimate and antepenultimate syllables. Where 
the syllable was pronounced long, as in purus, edu- 
lis, Polypodium, I put one straight stroke (| ); where 
it was pronounced short, as magnus, palustris, 
Chrysanthemum, I put two straight strokes (il). Z 
preferred this to the more learned characters of 
“and “, because we accent aliving language according 
to the wse, not the nature of the syllable. Thus 
there are some refined critics who would pro- 
nounce polypodium polypodium, the o in podium 
being an omicron, and thus by nature short. But 
this in the present state of things would be per- 
plexing, because great tenderness and attention 
