In My Vicarage Garden 



in these sciences the names are not laughed at, 

 nor any attempts made to do without them in 

 common use. Take the case of entomology, and 

 especially that part of it which deals with butter- 

 flies and moths, probably the most popular part 

 certainly the part that is first taken up by young 

 people. Many of these have popular English 

 names, and some of them are fairly descriptive of 

 the insects, but the collector is soon taught to 

 ignore them, and to keep steadily to the scientific 

 names ; and when he does so he must be often 

 puzzled to find any reason for the names given, 

 or to trace any connection between the name and 

 the thing. I take up the Accentuated List of the 

 British Lepidoptera, and in the first page I find 

 the following names of butterflies : Pieris, a muse ; 

 Daphlidoce, one of the daughters of Danaus ; 

 Colias, a surname of Venus ; Edusa, a Roman 

 divinity ; Hyale, a nymph in the train of Diana ; 

 Argyunis, a surname of Venus, etc. Such names 

 can give the student no information about the 

 nature of the butterflies so named, or induce him 

 to try and find out from the names something of 

 the history of the insects. In botany the case is 

 quite different. I believe it would be hard to find 

 among plants a single plant name that had not 

 a meaning ; in every plant name, not only the 

 specific, but the generic name as well, there is 

 something that tells of the history of the plant, 

 either its discoverer, or its native place, or its 

 structure, or its appearance as distinguished from 



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