452 MORPHOLOGY. 



duced through a misconception. L. C. Richard called a drupa a nu- 

 culanium, which contained several stones, each containing one seed, 

 because he thought that in berries with a hard seed there must neces- 

 sarily be an envelope of the pericarp over the seed. But how many 

 study L. C. Richard ? Apparently, not even his son, who applies to the 

 expression nuculanium the meaning of an inferior berry. L. C. Richard, 

 as the examples given by him show, never thought about superior and 

 inferior. Since the name was once there, A. Richard applied it to 

 the superior, Lindley to the inferior berry, while otherwise very few 

 superior and inferior fruits are distinguished. This may suffice, not to 

 complete the criticism of the present theory of the fruit, but to show 

 by some examples how just the objection is which would reject the 

 whole. See also the accordant views of H. von Mohl (Botanische 

 Zeitung, 1843, p. 3.) 



Next to the store of these technical terms we have to consider their 

 application. With the language of common life, which establishes dis- 

 tinctions of the very slightest scientific importance, botanists have 

 gradually introduced certain words, as above named. In the application 

 of Fig and Apple no mistake can of course easily be made, since the 

 words have been in daily use since infancy ; but how stands it with the 

 rest, -which properly belong to science? A selection of examples, very 

 hastily selected, may suffice to show. The Grasses have, according to 

 Endlicher and others, a caryopsis ; Link, a seminium ; Reichenbach, a 

 nucula : the Gyperacece, according to Koch, a nux ; Endlicher, a cary- 

 opsis ; Kunth, an achenium ; Reichenbach, a nucula ; Link, a carpel- 

 letum: the Labiates and Boraginacea, according to Endlicher and others, 

 achenia; Lindley, nuces ; Reichenbach, capsulce ; the Labiatce, ac- 

 cording <to Link, a carpelletum ; the Boraginacea, according to Link, a 

 caryopsis : the JRanunculacecs, according to Link, a carpelletum ; Koch, 

 a carpellum nucamentaceum ; Lindley, a nux or caryopsis ; Endlicher, 

 achenia ; Reichenbach, carpidia : the Umbelliferce, according to Koch 

 and others, 2 mericarpia ; Link, 2 achenia ; Lindley, 2 carpella ; End- 

 licher, 2 carpidia; Reichenbach, 2 drupce. I have thought this fully 

 sufficient to place glaringly enough the wretched condition in which 

 our science is sunk before the eyes of the blindest of its worshippers. 

 That here the vanity of the individual who has an opinion of his own, 

 on any point whatsoever, no matter how subordinate, will so much 

 the less make a sacrifice to the general good the more he is conscious in 

 himself of having neither inclination nor skill to do anything really great 

 in science, that this curse, which is especially the visitation of bo 

 tanists, may have a share in this anarchy I will not wholly deny ; but 

 since most of the men named stand at the head of the science, one may 

 confidently conclude from such facts, that the rotten places are to be 

 sought not in the individual, but in the distorted position which the whole 

 science has assumed through manifold historical conditions, so that of 

 course the individual, proceeding on such a path as supporter of the same 

 bona fide, is not to be blamed. 



I think that for the present, with the correct naming of the naked 

 seeds and the compound fruits, and the correct distinction and charac- 

 terisation of the spurious fruits, the five kinds of fruit I have given 

 (A E) will fully suffice to name the little that remains to be named, if 

 a better and more profound method than we have hitherto had, allow 

 the minute description of the germen and the statement of the pecu- 

 liarities in its mode of development to precede. Most of the conditions 



