TERMINOLOGY AND NOMENCLATURE 315 



plants, than would otherwise be possible. The unusual 

 fullness of their special vocabulary enables botanists to tell 

 what they know in the fewest possible words and with least 

 danger of being misunderstood. False ideas are the greatest 

 hindrance to the pursuit of knowledge; and whatever will 

 lessen the danger of these, especially to the beginner, is sure 

 to save labor in the end. 



We have already seen (page 4) that the practice of hav- 

 ing a double name for each species, instead of giving twice 

 as much to remember as if the name of each sort were a 

 single word, almost halves the burden upon one's memory 

 that one-word names would impose. The ease ^vith which 

 words are remembered depends, as we know, largely upon 

 how frequently the word is encountered; hence, the student 

 is helped not a little by the circumstance that a large majority 

 of specific names are the very words from which the descrip- 

 tive terms in common use have been derived. Further- 

 more, these descriptive terms, as well as the names of the 

 parts of plants and of genera and other groups, are in large 

 part made up of a comparatively small number of Latin and 

 Greek words, which once learned serve as helpful aids to the 

 memory, and, indeed, often enable the student to tell at sight 

 the meaning of a new botanical word. 



In our study of systematic botany we shall learn the 

 more important descriptive terms as we need them in de- 

 veloping a general idea of the natural classification of plants. 

 The student will learn how to distinguish some of the more 

 important families and higher groups, so that when he ex- 

 amines a plant he can tell at least the sub-kingdom to which 

 it belongs, usually also the class, sometimes the order, often 

 the family, and in certain cases even the genus and species. 

 At first we shall confine our study to those plants which 

 produce flowers and seeds, leaving for later consideration the 

 groups including ferns, mosses, lichens, mushrooms, and sea- 

 vveeds. 



