THE IVY. 



^ 



varieties that were considered suitable to put into commerce. Before tins was 

 done, however, a careful revision of the names, and a close comparison of all 

 known garden ivies was made, in order to eliminate from the catalogue a mass 

 of confusing jargon, and remove from the garden every named variety that lacked 

 distinctness of character. This proved a laborious though most agreeable task, 

 and it is hoped that the results herein offered to public notice will prove 

 sufficiently interesting to justify the author in having bestowed so much time 

 and thought upon the subject. 



It is proper, in these prefatory observations, to indicate to what extent 

 the author is indebted to other than his own labours and resources. As to 

 the collection then; many of the varieties have been obtained from gardens 

 again and again, but usually under different names, and those names too 

 often so utterly unsuitable as to convey false impressions of the plants they 

 were applied to. Others have been obtained direct from woods and ruins, 

 where nature had produced and planted them in her own way ; and others, 

 again, have been raised in the author's garden, and represent the capabilities 

 of the ivy for variation as the result of crossing. As to the names, there 

 was but one course possible so it seemed, at least and that was, to abolish 

 them without hesitation in every case in which they had a cumbrous form, 

 or were misleading, or were other than descriptive. The result is, that only 

 some half-dozen of the original garden names remain, and the whole of the 

 names in the enumeration now presented are framed upon a system the two 

 principal requirements of which are, that they must be as simple as possible, 

 and in every case indicative of the most striking characteristics of the plants 

 to which they are applied. The rude handling to which the names heretofore 

 recognised have been subjected, will, perhaps, arouse a shadow of indignation ; but 

 the reader who is familiar with the incongruities and absurdities of botanical 

 nomenclature, and especially the more strictly horticultural branch of it, will only 

 need to glance through the following pages to be convinced that in a work of this 

 kind a new and systematic nomenclature was actually needed to save it from the 

 guilt of making confusion worse confounded. 



In a paper on " Garden Ivies," contributed to the Linnasan Society by the 

 author, in 1869, the necessity for a revision of the names was thus explained : 



" In adopting or inventing names for the most distinctive kinds in the 

 collection, an endeavour has been made to harmonise the requirements of the 

 cultivator with the usages of the botanist. For garden purposes, one descriptive 

 name, which can be easily remembered, or, at all events, easily associated with 



