OF NAMES. 327 



lichen which was mentioned before, as furnishing 

 the bloom-die called cudbear. They are, 



There are seven names, two of them given by the 

 one author, and four by another, and these too not 

 the specific but the generic part of the names ; and 

 if the first one were not, if quoted, a description and 

 not a name, it is the most expressive of the whole. 

 Perhaps that abundance of nomenclature may have 

 facilitated the progress of the knowledge of plants 

 among professional botanists ; but in a popular point 

 of view it has been the reverse ; because nobody 

 who has not leisure to learn all those names, or 

 who is not daily occupied on the subject, so as not 

 to forget them, can possibly obtain a knowledge of 

 the plants themselves to say nothing of their hab- 

 its; and though one had ever so much capacity, it 

 is not possible, without contriving a set of new 

 names, and making them English, and generally 

 known and used (which is also an impossibility), to 

 write any thing popular upon the subject to help be- 

 ginners. 



The case of animals is not quite so bad, because, 

 to most people, there is more excitement about ani- 

 mals than about plants. There are many people in 

 towns who do not know the name of a single vege- 

 tableor, which comes to the same thing, cannot 

 name the vegetable if they were to see it, or find it 

 out among others by its name, unless they are 

 vegetables which they have seen in the markets; 



