X Stiggestions for Future Study 195 



of some plant whose beauty has excited a momentary 

 enthusiasm, but cross-examination leaves in nine cases out 

 of ten its beauty wholly indistinct : not a word of intelligible 

 {i.e. intelligent) description can be given. Here is a real 

 disclosure of deteriorated observing power, of utter vague- 

 ness of memory and language, on which the conventional 

 educationist would do well to ponder, and which is by no 

 means limited to things botanical. 



This matter of systematic botany is in fact one which 

 the most strictly linguistic of educationists would do well to 

 consider. Limits of space prevent any adequate present- 

 ment of its advantages ; but the proposition may be formally 

 advanced, with definite offer of detailed evidence to any 

 teacher who cares to inquire further into the matter, that 

 here is assuredly a subject from which the accurate use of 

 language may be rapidly and surely learned (probably more 

 rapidly and surely than from any other study) ; clearness and 

 order, precision of details yet subordination of these in re- 

 spective rank being carried out here — thanks to Linnaeus — 

 as in no other science. Here, however, a mere suggestion 

 must suffice ; so let the reader try to write a description for 

 himself of primrose and snowdrop, violet and hawthorn, 

 daisy and dandelion, so that a correspondent, say in tropical 

 India, should be able to tell what they were like ; then com- 

 pare these with the descriptions in the appendix of Lindley's 

 School Botany (a treatise well worth hunting for through 

 old book-shops), and see whether botany has not something 

 to teach him in the use of language, and what is the real 

 need and justification of scientific nomenclature. 



Systematic Botany. — We have not only to describe 

 our plants, but to name and classify and group them ; and 

 here again begins the vastest chapter — say rather literature 

 — of the science. How we are to name, and why we must 

 name in the universal language ; what are the difficulties 



