ON VERNACULAR NAMES. 335 
Mr. Collins, whose honest labours in the little-cultivated field of 
economie botany are worthy of all encouragement, should be the last 
to depreciate the value of popular names. A closer study than he 
has made of them will doubtless convince him that they are of greater 
service to the working botanist than he seems at present inclined to 
concede. Besides the uses pointed out in my preface, above quoted, 
they furnish important data for the history of plants, and, in many 
cases, they serve as a guide to their native land, or the country where 
their uses were first discovered. We may search ancient records for 
the place whence the Sugar-cane was derived ; no hints are conveyed ; 
but in looking to the etymology of the name we recognize in * Sugar, 
Azucar, Zucker, Saccharum,” only so many corruptions of a Sanskrit 
root, carkara, directing our ideas into a quite new channel of inquiry, 
iransporting us from the banks of the Thames, the Po, or the Rhine, 
to the sacred waters of the Ganges; from the nineteenth century to 
the remotest period of Indian history. 
Many names are so euphonious, and constructed so cosmopolitically, 
—if that expression be admissible,—that they are readily received iuto 
different languages. Hence the extensive range which some enjoy, 
and their numerous modifications. From an opposite character a 
great, or rather the greater number, is very local. Such names as 
Coatzontecoxochitl will never pass beyond the lips of the nation that 
invented them ; their very nature is opposed to it. Yet we must not 
condemn them on that account. However barbarous they may a 
hardly necessary to add, are pronounced by them with as much ease 
as we do those belonging to our own native tongue. 
How many vernacular names are formed is illustrated when a people 
exchange one country for another. The immigrant arrives at his new 
home full of high expectation; he not only hopes to have left behind 
all the discomforts of his native land, but also trusts to meet again 
Am which from childhood have been dear to him. Everything is 
amined,—the stones, the plants, the animals. The trees under the 
rem of which he used to sit, the fruits whieh in his boyish days he 
gathered are sought for. At last they are found. But lo! on closer 
examination they turn out to be similar, but not identical, He is dis- 
appointed, and his disappointment is for ever recorded in such names 
