CHAPTER XII 

 PLANT NAMES 



PLANTS must have names, and most of the 

 names which are now so fixed have gone through 

 many changes, and I do not intend to tell how 

 they have changed and how they have become 

 finally fixed. That has been done by many 

 writers on botany, and can be well studied in a 

 small compass in Professor Earle's excellent little 

 book on English Plant Names, in the Introduc- 

 tion to which he gives the account of the progress 

 of plant-naming from Theophrastus to Linnaeus 

 and Jussieu. What I rather wish to do is to show 

 that however unattractive at first sight the study 

 of plant names (I mean their scientific, botanical 

 names) may be, there is in them a fund of instruc- 

 tion and interest which will well repay the labour 

 spent upon them. That there must be such 

 names, joined or not with popular English names, 

 is an absolute necessity in botany, as in every 

 other science ; for " the first necessity for science," 

 says Professor Earle, " was to know the objects, 

 and to know them by their names." In botany 

 these names are certainly very often long and 

 cumbrous, uncouth and unclassical, and to many 



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