152 The Compositce. 



THE COMPOSITE. 



There are about a hundred thousand different species of plaits growing 

 on this globe of ours. This is twice as many as the number of words that 

 Noah Webster found in the English language. To each plant, botany has 

 given, or is giving, its own scientific name ; which is Latin in form, but 

 equally understood at Moscow and Quito, at Boston and Berlin. These 

 names are a part of the universal language. They are all double, as Morns 

 jnulticaulis, Camellia jfaponica. There are two reasons for this : it would 

 be impossible to manufacture a hundred thousand names, and use them ; 

 and, again, many plants are so like each other, that it is very difficult to 

 know them apart. A man vvho should learn all the willows of the world 

 so as to know each species at sight, without reference to any memorandum, 

 would have no time to learn the Ten Commandments. 



So all the species are united into genera ; and each genus has its name, 

 as Mortis^ Camellia. Different species in a genus are distinguished by an 

 additional word, generally an adjective : thus different mulberries are 

 known as white, red, black, and inaiiy-sLinmcdrMorus alba, M. rubra, 

 M. nigra, and M. multicauUs. Even where a plant is so unlike all others 

 known as to be in a genus by itself, it has its double name. Indian-corn 

 (maize) is an example : its name is Z:a Mays. When the second name is 

 also a noun, as Mays, it begins with a capital letter. It is often an adjec- 

 tive derived from the name of a place or person, as japonica from Japan, 

 or Grayana from Prof Gray : in this case, those who write in English gen- 

 erally use capitals ; but others do not. Plants belonging to the same genus 

 are called congeners. When a botanist is studying a whole genus of plants, 

 and finds that it contains some which are tco different from the rest, he 

 makes a new genus of them, and gives it a name. When a genus is very 

 large, he does this if he can find a good mark to go by. The buckwheats, 

 of which there are half a dozen, have in this way been removed by Moench 

 from polyganum, a genus which included them with prince's-feather, smart 

 weed, heart's-ease, and more than two hundred other plants. This neces- 

 sary work occasions confusion and unavoidable inconvenience. 



The first person that publishes a description of a plant has a right to 



