312 CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION 



best advantage the important results which botanists have 

 achieved in systematic classification. 



87. Technical description. One of the most serious diffi- 

 culties with which the earlier botanists had to contend was 

 the problem of giving one another a clear idea of what each 

 had seen. It is plain that so long as they failed in this, their 

 discoveries were of little consequence. At first sight it may 

 seem a simple matter enough to tell what one sees, and be- 

 ginners often wonder why botanists use so many peculiar 

 words in their descriptions. "What is the reason," they ask, 

 "that ordinary English is not sufficient for the purpose?" If 

 the reader has ever attempted to use "ordinary English" in 

 the way proposed, he will realize that it is far from easy to 

 give a clear account of the peculiarities of a plant in that way. 

 The result is much as when a landsman ignorant of nautical 

 terms tries to describe the features of a vessel so that it may 

 be recognized. Success may not be impossible, but such a 

 method of going to work is at its best clumsy, roundabout, 

 and misleading. It was largely because the early botanists 

 had nothing better to use than the ordinary language of their 

 day, that it often proved impossible for others to tell what 

 the plants were that they had tried to describe. But little 

 progress towards a satisfactory classification of plants could 

 be expected as long as descriptions were so vague and incom- 

 plete as to be largely unintelligible. 



Since an ideal botanical classification represents, as we 

 have seen, the expression of all the resemblances and differ- 

 ences among plants, its attainment must involve the use of 

 words especially fitted to express unmistakably all the pe- 

 culiarities that may be observed. Each part must have a 

 special name, and the innumeraljle forms and features of 

 each part must be indicated by simple words or phrases. 

 Ordinary language has not been developed to serve any such 

 botanical purposes any more than it has to serve similar 

 nautical needs; hence, botanists have been forced to make a 

 language of their own consisting largely of technical terms. 



88. Early attempts at describing. Before the time of 

 Linnoeus, the attempt was made by many botanical writers 

 to avoid the language difficulty by the use of pictures to 



