GENEALOGY. 129 



some specialty of sensitiveness, or association with legend 

 (Berberis, Clematis.) No neuters in f e' will be admitted. 



15. Participial terminations (Impatiens), with neuters in 



* en ' (Cyclamen), will always be descriptive of some special 

 quality or form, leaving it indeterminate if good or bad, 

 until explained. It will be manifestly impossible to limit 

 either these neuters, or the feminines in ' is ' to Latin forms ; 

 but we shall always know by their termination that they can- 

 not be generic names, if we are strict in forming these last on 

 a given method. 



16. How little method there is in our present formation of 

 them, I am myself more and more surprised as I consider. A 

 child is shown a rose, and told that he is to call every flower 

 like that, ' Eosaceous ' ; * he is next shown a lily, and told 

 that he is to call every flower like that, ' Liliaceous ' ; so far 

 well ; but he is next shown a daisy, and is not at all allowed 

 to call every flower like that ' Daisaceous,' but he must call it, 

 like the fifth order of architecture, ' Composite ' ; and being 

 next shown a pink, he is not allowed to call other pinks 



* Pinkaceous,' but ' Nut-leafed ' ; and being next shown a 

 pease-blossom, he is not allowed to call other pease-blos- 

 soms ' Peasaceous,' but, in a brilliant burst of botanical 

 imagination, he is incited to call it by two names instead of 

 one, ' Butterfly-aceous ' from its flower, and 'Pod-aceous' 

 from its seed ; the inconsistency of the terms thus enforced 

 upon him being perfected in their inaccuracy, for a daisy is 

 not one whit more composite than Queen of the meadow, or 

 Jura Jacinth ;f and ' legumen ' is not Latin for a pod, but 

 ' siliqua,' so that no good scholar could remember Virgil's 

 ' siliqua quassante legumen/ without overthrowing all his 

 Pisan nomenclature. 



17. Farther. If we ground our names of the higher orders 

 on tho distinctive characters of form in plants, these are so 

 many, and so subtle, that we are at once involved in more 

 investigations than a young learner has ever time to follow 

 successfully, and they must be at all times liable to disloca- 



* Compare Chapter V. , 7. 



f * Jacinthus Jurae," changed from " Hyaciiithus Comosus." 



