6 PROSERPINA. 



and one of its purposes is to interpret, for young 

 English readers, the necessary 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 botanist thinks his eminence only to be pro- 

 perly 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 in- 

 stance ; too many will at once occur to any learned 

 reader, and the unlearned I need not vex with so 

 much as one : but, in such cases, since I could only 

 take refuge in the untranslated word by leaving 

 other Greek or Latin words also untranslated, 

 and the nomenclature still entirely senseless, — and 

 I do not choose to do this, — there is only one other 

 course open to me, namely, to substitute boldly, to 

 my own pupils, other generic names for the plants 

 thus faultfully hitherto titled. 



As I do not do this for my own pride, but 



