348 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



gave general currency to these trivial names, he 

 does not seem to have yet dared to propose so great 

 a novelty. They only stand in the margin of the 

 work. " I have placed them there," he says in his 

 Preface, " that, without circumlocution, we may call 

 every herb by a single name ; I have done this 

 without selection, which would require more time. 

 And I beseech all sane botanists to avoid most reli- 

 giously ever proposing a trivial name without a 

 sufficient specific distinction, lest the science should 

 fall into its former barbarism." 



It cannot be doubted, that the general reception 

 of these trivial names of Linnaeus, as the current 

 language among botanists, was due, in a very great 

 degree, to the knowledge, care, and skill with which 

 his characters, both of genera and of species, were 

 constructed. The rigorous rules of selection and 

 expression which are proposed in the Fundamenta 

 Botanica and Critica Botanica, he himself con- 

 formed to ; and this scrupulosity was employed 

 upon the results of immense labour. "In order 

 that I might make myself acquainted with the spe- 

 cies of plants," he says, in the preface to his work 

 upon them, " I have explored the Alps of Lapland, 

 the whole of Sweden, a part of Norway, Denmark, 

 Germany, Belgium, England, France : I have ex- 

 amined the Botanical Gardens of Paris, Oxford, 

 Chelsea, Harlecamp, Leyden, Utrecht, Amsterdam, 

 Upsal, and others : I have turned over the Herbals 

 of Burser, Hermann, Clifford, Burmann, Oldenland, 



