NEW NAMES AND OLD 203 



commercial horticulture. The pork-butcher who objects 

 to " them crack jaw names " is not the person who would 

 buy and grow the plants which bear them under what- 

 ever names they might be grown. More congenial than 

 the garden to him is the bar-parlour of the "Purple 

 Unicorn." 



There is one more reason why " popular " names of 

 plants are never likely to gain free currency, and that is 

 that they stand as a bar to free intercourse between 

 people of different nationalities, and in these days of 

 travel and cosmopolitan talk and correspondence this is 

 no small factor. Flower-lovers of different nationalities 

 meeting at the tables and in the smoking-rooms of hotels 

 when on visits to plant centres may find a common 

 language in which to express themselves so far as the 

 ordinary matters of life are concerned, but if each knows 

 only the folk-names of his country's flowers there will be 

 no chance of a mutual understanding on the subject 

 which is nearest to the heart of all parties. When, how- 

 ever, the Latin names are used the only bar to compre- 

 hension is the difference which may exist between the 

 quantitative values of the vowels, and that rarely forms 

 a serious obstacle. 



At the least Latin words have a meaning, but Bouncing 

 Bet and Jocund Joan do not, as names of flowers, convey 

 very much. We had better, therefore, be satisfied with 

 the " popular " names which we have already, and 

 abstain from coining more that nobody wants. Even 

 uneducated people will not learn to love flowers the more 

 slowly because the names of most of them are Latin. 

 Is it not among the daughters of this class that we find 

 the fewest Janes and Marys, and the largest proportion 

 of Evelyns, Gladyses and Dorises ? 



