182 REPRODUCTIVE APPENDAGES. CHAP. IV. 



nectary. And yet no term he has introduced has 

 been more severely censured by contemporary 

 and succeeding botanists, upon the score of its 

 having been made to include a variety of minute 

 parts or organs not certainly known to discharge 

 the functions of which it is descriptive. 

 The name If it is necessary that a botanical term should 

 pnate" always express the use or function of the parts 

 signified, then the term nectary is not indeed quite 

 so appropriate as could be wished, at least as it was 

 used by Linnaeus, who applied it unquestionably to 

 a variety of parts or organs of which it cannot be 

 certainly said that they secrete or contain a honied 

 juice. But neither can it be positively said that 

 they do not secrete it. The presumption then from 

 analogy seems still to be in favour of the Linnaean 

 application of the term. 



But it is not necessary that a botanical term 

 should always, or perhaps even in any case, be de- 

 scriptive of the thing signified ; otherwise botanists 

 have sadly misapprehended the object of giving 

 names to plants, arid have adopted a nomenclature 

 that is almost altogether founded in error. There 

 cannot therefore be any material inconvenience in 

 using the term nectary as Linnaeus did, to signify 

 all such supernumerary appendages of the flower 

 as cannot be reduced to one or other of the fore- 

 going heads. 



But as the term nectary professes to be descrip- 

 tive, and is not in fact always strictly so, the best 



