160 PROSERPINA. 



the claim I have made for the limitation of language to the 

 use made of it by educated men. The word ' carp ' could 

 never have multiplied itself into the absurdities of endo-carps 

 and epi-carps, but in the mouths of men who scarcely ever 

 read it in its original letters, and therefore never recognized 

 it as meaning precisely the same thing as fructus,' which 

 word, being a little more familiar with, they would have 

 scarcely abused to the same extent ; they would not have 

 called a walnut shell an intra-fruct or a grape skin an extra- 

 fruct ; but agaiu, because, though they are accustomed to the 

 English 'fructify,' ' frugivorous ' and 'usufruct/ they are 

 unaccustomed to the Latin * fruor,' and unconscious therefore 

 that the derivative ' fructus ' must always, in right use, mean 

 an enjoyed thing, they generalize every mature vegetable prod- 

 uct under the term ; and we find Dr. Gray coolly telling us 

 that there is no fruit so " likely to be mistaken for a seed," as 

 a grain of corn ! a grain, whether of corn, or any other grass, 

 being precisely the vegetable structure to which frutescent 

 change is forever forbidden ! and to which the word seed ia 

 primarily and perfectly applicable ! the thing to be sown, 

 not grafted. 



9. But to mark this total incapability of frutescent change, 

 and connect the form of the seed more definitely w r ith its 

 dusty treasure, it is better to reserve, when we are speaking 

 with precision, the term ' grain ' for the seeds of the grasses : 

 the difficulty is greater in French than in English : because 

 they have no monosyllabic word for the constantly granular 

 * seed ' ; but for us the terms are all simple, and already in 

 right use, only not quite clearly enough understood ; and 

 there remains only one real difficulty now in our system of 

 nomenclature, that having taken the word ' husk ' for the seed- 

 vessel, we are left without a gerieral word for the true fringe 

 of a filbert, or the chaff of a grass. I don't know whether the 

 French 'frange' could be used by them in this sense, if we 

 took it in English botany. But for the present, we can man- 

 age well enough without it, one general term, ' chaff,' serving 

 for all the grasses, ' cup ' for acorns, and ' fringe ' for nuts. 



10. But I call this a real difficulty, because I suppose, among 



