INTRODUCTION. 5 



what lie has to say in Latin, finishedly and exquisitely, if 

 it take him a month to a page.* 



But if which, unless he be one chosen of millions, is 

 assuredly the fact his lucubrations are*only of local and 

 temporary consequence, let him write, as clearly as he can, 

 in his native language. 



This book, accordingly, I have written in English ; (not, 

 by the way, that I could have written it in anything else 

 so there are small thanks to me) ; and one of its pur- 

 poses is to interpret, for young English readers, the nec- 

 essary European Latin or Greek names of flowers, and to 

 make them vivid and vital to their understandings. But 

 two great difficulties occur in doing this. The first, that 

 there are generally from three or four, up to two dozen, 

 Latin names current for every flower ; and every new bot- 

 anist thinks his eminence only to be properly asserted by 

 adding another. 



The second, and a much more serious one, is of the 

 Devil's own contriving (and remember I am always 

 quite serious when I speak of the Devil,) namely, that 

 the most current and authoritative names are apt to be 

 founded on some unclean or debasing association, so that 

 to interpret them is to defile the reader's mind. I will 

 give no instance ; too many will at once occur to any 



* I have by happy chance just added to my Oxford library the poet 

 Gray's copy of Linnaeus, with its exquisitely written Latin notes, exem- 

 plary alike to scholar and naturalist. 



