124 Alexander Goodman More. [i860 



Conserv. I beg to observe they get quite as thorough knowledge at 

 our hands, and more philosophical views. 



Lib. Only, I am afraid they will lose altogether any idea of the dis- 

 tinction of species. 



Conserv. With you, they will learn to call mere varieties by that 

 name, but how shall we distinguish a species ? 



Lib. Cultivate, cultivate, cultivate ! and all that can be proved one 

 shall have my hearty concurrence. 



If in one respect the Benthamites were too " conser- 

 vative," they merited rather the contrary reproach for 

 their attempt to revolutionize the old English plant-names, 

 as in the above-quoted instance of calling the mouse-ear 

 chickweeds, " Cerasts." In a review of Bentham's " Hand- 

 book," he protested against this disfigurement of the lan- 

 guage ; and the passage, in several respects a characteristic 

 one, was dictated by a thoroughly " conservative " love on 

 his part for our real English names ( u true sons of the soil 

 like the plants themselves," as he calls them elsewhere) 

 as opposed to the spurious and artificial ones which those 

 who would banish Latin from botanical nomenclature have 

 no alternative but to resort to. 



The English names are, many of them, of the author's own and his 

 friends' coining. We think this innovation has led in many instances to 

 a needless sacrificing of the older Celtic and Saxon terms, and to too 

 free an importation of hybrid Latinisms. With regard to a complete 

 system of English generic and specific names, we cannot hope or wish 

 to see it adopted. In their present form the specific names remind one 

 of poor M'Gillivray's proposition of dubbing some of our birds afresh 

 after the same strict fashion, "Raven Crow," "Daw Crow," "Rook 

 Crow," &c., but we have never met with an ornither who had adopted 

 this nomenclature. Besides, we suspect Mr. Bentham's English names 

 are full as difficult to learn as the Latin, without the advantages which 

 the latter give us of following a plant into the foreign Floras. 



Besides Bentham's " Handbook," which he reviewed 

 both for the "Phytologist" and for the "Annals," the books 

 on which he expended most pains this year were Watson's 

 " Cybele Britannica " and the first volume of the " Ibis." 

 If his review of the former was, as was gently hinted to him 

 by some of his correspondents, a trifle long, he could, at 

 least, urge in extenuation of the fault, u it was rather a pet 

 subject of mine "; and this was quite as true of the other 



