v] Terminology 1 33 



sharpe greene pricke or point in the middest thereof," 

 vague as it seems to the twentieth-century botanist, is by- 

 no means to be despised, when we remember that the writer 

 was handicapped by complete ignorance of the function of 

 the structures which he saw before him. 



A further hindrance to improvement in plant description 

 was the lack of a methodical terminology. As we have al- 

 ready shown, both Fuchs and Dodoens attempted glossaries 

 of botanical terms, but these do not seem to have become 

 an integral part of the science. It is a common complaint 

 among non-botanists at the present day, that the subject 

 has become incomprehensible to the layman, owing to the 

 excessive use of technical words. There is, no doubt, 

 some truth in this statement, but, on the other hand, 

 a study of the writings of the earlier botanists makes it 

 clear that a description of a plant couched in ordinary 

 language — in which the botanical meaning of the terms 

 employed has been subjected to no rigid definition — often 

 breaks down completely on all critical points. 



It is to Joachim Jung and to Linnaeus that we owe the 

 foundations of the accurate terminology, now at the disposal 

 of the botanist when he sets out to describe a new plant. 

 The published work of these two writers belongs, however, 

 to the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is thus 

 outside the scope of the present volume. 



