REFORM OF LINNAEUS. 341 



raon language cannot hold objects steadily enough 

 for scientific examination, or lift them from one 

 stage of generalization to another. They must be 

 secured by the rigid mechanism of a scientific 

 phraseology. This necessity had been felt in all 

 the sciences, from the earliest periods of their pro- 

 gress. But the conviction had never been acted 

 upon so as to produce a distinct and adequate 

 descriptive botanical language. Jung, indeed 3 , had 

 already attempted to give rules and precepts which 

 should answer this purpose ; but it was not till the 

 Fundamenta Botanica appeared, that the science 

 could be said to possess a fixed and complete ter- 

 minology. 



To give an account of such a terminology, is, in 

 fact, to give a description of a dictionary and gram- 

 mar, and is therefore what cannot here be done in 

 detail. Linna3us's work contains about a thousand 

 terms of which the meaning and application are 

 distinctly explained ; and rules are given, by which, 

 in the use of such terms, the botanist may avoid 

 all obscurity, ambiguity, unnecessary prolixity and 

 complexity, and even inelegance and barbarism. 

 Of course the greater part of the words which Lin- 

 naeus thus recognized, had previously existed in 

 botanical writers; and many of them had been 

 defined with technical precision. Thus Jung 4 had 

 already explained what was a composite, what a 

 pinnate leaf; what kind of a bunch of flowers is a 



3 Isagoge Phytoscopica, 1679. 4 Sprengel, ii. 28. 



