342 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



spike, a panicle, an umbel, a, corymb, respectively. 

 Linnaeus extended such distinctions, retaining com- 

 plete clearness in their separation. Thus, with him, 

 composite leaves are further distinguished as digi- 

 tate, pinnate, bipinnate, pedate, and so on ; pinnate 

 leaves are abruptly so, or with an odd one, or with 

 a tendril; they are pinnate oppositely, alternately, 

 interruptedly, articulately, decursively. Again, the 

 inflorescence, as the mode of assemblage of the 

 flowers is called, may be a tuft, (fasciculus,) a head, 

 (capitulum,) a cluster, (racemus,) a bunch, (thyrsus,) 

 a panicle, a spike, a catkin, (amentum,) a corymb, 

 an umbel, a cyme, a whorl, (verticillus.) And the 

 rules which he gives, though often apparently arbi- 

 trary and needless, are found, in practice, to be of 

 great service by their fixity and connexion. By the 

 good fortune of having had a teacher with so much 

 delicacy of taste as Linnaeus, in a situation of so 

 much influence, Botany possesses a descriptive lan- 

 guage which will long stand as a model for all 

 other subjects. 



It may, perhaps, appear to some persons, that 

 such a terminology as we have here described must 

 be enormously cumbrous ; and that, since the terms 

 are arbitrarily invested with their meaning, the in- 

 vention of them requires no knowledge of nature. 

 With respect to the former doubt, we may observe, 

 that technical description is, in reality, the only 

 description which is clearly intelligible; but that 

 technical language cannot be understood without 



