JANUARY 13 



everybody knows a buttercup when he sees it ; but there 

 are thirteen different species of British buttercups, to 

 distinguish which is hopeless without having recourse 

 to the dead languages, which do not change their mean- 

 ing. A living language is constantly changing, notwith- 

 standing that change has been retarded by writing and 

 printing. Just as everybody knows a buttercup, so would 

 any Briton be indignant were he suspected of not know- 

 ing a robin when he saw it. Yes, but although all Britons 

 speak English, all who speak English are not Britons. 

 Over the way there, to the west, there is an English- 

 speaking population of some sixty-five millions who 

 apply the name robin, not to our familiar little fellow- 

 creature with the red vest, but to a kind of thrush which 

 has no other English name but robin. So if a Briton 

 wishes to indicate the American robin, he must speak 

 of Turdus migratorius ; and if an American wants to 

 speak of the British robin, he must use the term Eritha- 

 cus rubecula, and thus avoid inevitable confusion. 



The American cowslip (Dodecatheon) is more like a 

 cyclamen than the familiar ornament of our meadows in 

 May, which, by-the-bye, retains in the eastern counties 

 of England its old name ' paigle.' The evening primrose 

 of American woods is a very different flower from our 

 familiar harbinger of spring, for it stands three feet high 

 and belongs to a widely different order of plants. Again, 

 the American blackbird is not our British merle, but a 

 kind of oriole; even the American sparrow is not the 

 disreputable little rascal of our streets and stableyards, 

 but a kind of woodland bunting. So it is in another 

 hemisphere : the Australian trout is not a member of the 

 salmon family, but a diminutive kinsman of the pike; 



