ENGLISH NAMES IN BOTANY 395 



dispense with the word Bammculaceous than with 'perigynous 

 if they are going to progress in Botany, but if they are going 

 to learn only a little, they had better take the English generic 

 name and add ' Family of ' to it. It appears to me essential 

 that you should not throw a word or termination away.^ 



[February 1855.] I have gone over the accompanying 

 very carefully, but fear it will hardly answer the purpose. 

 It appears to me (but I may very well be wrong) far too 

 laboured ; too much is attempted to be taught by each 

 sentence, they are hence too long and involved ; there is 

 a constant wandering from particulars to general Laws ; and 

 a great many too many words just a little too difficult for 

 beginners. To be so philosophical it should be in aphorisms, 

 for you cannot be clear, concise, and learned too, in a con- 

 versational form. My own impression is, that it would be 

 better to make the demonstration of the Bean first, simple, 

 clear and to the point, giving no words except the simplest. 

 I object to ' axis,' ' relative,' * modification,' etc., when super- 

 added to the necessary and unavoidable technicalities ; each 

 of these, though familiar to us, being a subject of thought, 

 to the * village school,' before understood. 



Having demonstrated the Bean, etc., you might then go 

 over it again and another dissimilar plant along with it, and 

 explain how the buds form, and the leaf buds give place to 

 flower buds and how the leaves become floral whorls, how 

 simple leaves become compound, how petals unite, etc., etc., 

 but I am sure no pupil can learn all these things at once. 



You are so much accustomed to teach with specimens 

 and pictures, illustrating every point and making everything 

 clear, that you perhaps forget how much of these advantages 

 you lose in a book ; and how necessary it is to be extremely 

 simple in diction and in separating your kinds of information. 

 In short I doubt if you will succeed in teaching the uninitiated 

 young structure and morphology at once, which you here 

 attempt. I further doubt your being able to do a book of 

 this kind piecemeal. It is a most difficult task the writing 

 down to the capacity of ignorance. I know it by experi- 

 ence ; you must weigh every word and prune and clip every 



^ This is a rooted objection, repeated emphatically in a letter to Harvey, 

 July 1858 : ' I hate the whole system of English names. Why is not 

 Myosotis and Epilobium better than Mouse-ear (of which there are two), or 

 Willow Herb, to which there is as good an objection ? ' 



