INTRODUCTION. Ixxxi 



culture, Botany, are all Romanesque. 

 There are few things that more forcibly 

 illustrate the mixture of our language than 

 this inability to discourse of the vegetable 

 world in terms that are purely English. 

 But our Lists, and especially the oldest of 

 them, carry us back to a time, when the 

 condition of our herbal vocabulary was not 

 indeed free from such elements, but when 

 it was much less mixed than it is now. 



Some philological notes will make this 

 old plant-speech more interesting to us. 

 And first of 



Letters. Under this head there is only 

 the 3 that requires notice. This is a post- 

 Saxon character, intermediate between the 

 Saxon g and the modern y ; thus gearwe, 

 5arow, yarrow. 



Pronunciation. The 5 is to be pro- 

 nounced as y. 



In the Saxon Lists there is no silent 

 e-final. In these rose is of two syllables ; 

 so is ininte ; and lilie is of three. Of the 

 latter fact we are indeed apprised by a 

 collateral form lilige. Here the g has 

 only the value of 5 ; performing the office 



